Morphologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung Morphology: an international handbook on inflection and word-formation (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft Handbooks of Linguistics and communication science, Ban

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Morphologie / Morphology HSK 17.1

≥

Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science Manuels de linguistique et des sciences de communication Mitbegründet von Gerold Ungeheuer

Herausgegeben von / Edited by / Edite´s par Armin Burkhardt Hugo Steger Herbert Ernst Wiegand Band 17.1

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 2000

Morphologie Morphology Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung An International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation

Herausgegeben von / Edited by Geert Booij · Christian Lehmann · Joachim Mugdan in collaboration with Wolfgang Kesselheim · Stavros Skopeteas 1. Halbband / Volume 1

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 2000

앝 Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier, das die 앪

US-ANSI-Norm über Haltbarkeit erfüllt.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morphologie : ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung / herausgegeben von Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann, Joachim Mugdan, unter Mitarbeit von Wolfgang Kesselheim und Stavros Skopeteas ⫽ Morphology : an international handbook on inflection and wordformation / edited by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann, Joachim Mugdan in collaboration with Wolfgang Kesselheim, Stavros Skopeteas. p. cm. ⫺ (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft ⫺ Handbooks of Linguistics and communication science ; Bd. 17-1) German, English, and French. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 3-11-011128-4 1. Grammar, Comparative and general⫺Morphology⫺Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title: Morphology. II. Title: Internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung. III. Title: International handbook on inflection and word-formation. IV. Booij, G. E. V. Lehmann, Christian. VI. Mugdan, Joachim. VII. Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft ; Bd. 17-1 p241 M599 2000 415⫺dc21 00-063804

Die Deutsche Bibliothek ⫺ CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Morphologie : ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung ⫽ Morphology / hrsg. von Geert Booij …. ⫺ Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft ; Bd. 17) Halbbd. 1. ⫺ (2000) ISBN 3-11-011128-4

쑔 Copyright 2000 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany Satz: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin Druck: Hubert & Co, Göttingen Buchbinderische Verarbeitung: Lüderitz & Bauer-GmbH, Berlin Einbandgestaltung und Schutzumschlag: Rudolf Hübler, Berlin

Inhalt / Contents 1. Teilband / Volume 1 Vorwort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I. 1. 2. 3.

Morphologie als Disziplin Morphology as a discipline Wolfgang U. Wurzel, Der Gegenstand der Morphologie . . . . . . Paul Salmon, The term morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vladimir A. Plungian, Die Stellung der Morphologie im Sprachsystem (Übersetzung: Robert Hammel) . . . . . . . . . . . .

II.

Geschichte der morphologischen Forschung I: von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert History of morphological research I: From antiquity to the 19th century

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Jeremy Black, The Ancient Near East . . . . . . George Cardona, Old Indic grammar . . . . . . Robert H. Robins, Classical Antiquity . . . . . Jonathan Owens, Traditional Arabic grammar Vivien Law, The Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . Von der Renaissance bis ca. 1800 . . . . . . . . . Sabine Ziegler, Das 19. Jahrhundert . . . . . . .

III.

Geschichte der morphologischen Forschung II: Forschungstraditionen im 20. Jahrhundert History of morphological research II: Research traditions in the 20th century

11.

Clemens Knobloch, Schulgrammatik als Modell linguistischer Beschreibung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henry M. Hoenigswald, Historical-comparative grammar . . . Überblick: die europäische Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sebastian Kempgen, Osteuropa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Françoise Kerleroux, France and Switzerland (Translation: Rachel Pankhurst) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Even Hovdhaugen, Scandinavia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Francis Katamba, Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

XIII XXI

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1 15 22

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35 41 52 67 76 90 91

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. . . .

104 117 124 125

.. .. ..

138 145 149

VI

Inhalt / Contents

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Wolfgang Motsch, Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henk Schultink, The Netherlands (Translation: Geert Booij) John Fought, American Structuralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ruth M. Brend, Tagmemics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Aronoff, Generative grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IV.

Grundbegriffe Basic concepts

23. 24. 25.

Pierre Swiggers, Linguistic sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jaap van Marle, Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations . . . Jose´ Luis Iturrioz Leza & Stavros Skopeteas, Variation und Invarianz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laurie Bauer, Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Croft, Lexical and grammatical meaning . . . . . . . Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Category and feature . . . . . . Linda R. Waugh & Barbara A. Lafford, Markedness . . . . . John Haiman, Iconicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wolfgang U. Dressler, Naturalness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ferenc Kiefer, Regularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geert Koefoed & Jaap van Marle, Productivity . . . . . . . .

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

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157 162 170 191 194

... ...

210 225

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234 247 257 264 272 281 288 296 303

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312 335 344 349 360

370 377 388 404

V.

Die Rolle der Morphologie in Grammatik und Lexikon The role of morphology in grammar and lexicon

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Andrew Spencer, Morphology and syntax . . . . . . . . . . . Geert Booij, Morphology and phonology . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Aronoff, Morphology between lexicon and grammar Pius ten Hacken, Derivation and compounding . . . . . . . Geert Booij, Inflection and derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . .

VI.

Einheiten der morphologischen Struktur Units of morphological structure

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Joan Bybee, Lexical, morphological and syntactic symbolization Hans Basbøll, Word boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joel A. Nevis, Clitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rochelle Lieber & Joachim Mugdan, Internal structure of words Elena S. Kubrjakova, Submorphemische Einheiten (Übersetzung und Bearbeitung: Joachim Mugdan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edmund Gussmann & Bogdan Szymanek, Phonotactic properties of morphological units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henning Bergenholtz & Joachim Mugdan, Nullelemente in der Morphologie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44. 45.

. . . . .

417 427 435

VII

Inhalt / Contents

VII.

Allomorphie Allomorphy

46. 47. 48. 49.

Hans Christian Luschützky, Morphem, Morph und Allomorph . Martin Neef, Phonologische Konditionierung . . . . . . . . . . . . . Martin Neef, Morphologische und syntaktische Konditionierung Henriette Walter, Fluctuation and free variation (Translation: Marie Landick) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tsutomu Akamatsu, Generalized representations . . . . . . . . . . . Edmund Gussmann, Underlying forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Igor Mel’cˇuk, Suppletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50. 51. 52.

VIII.

Formale Prozesse Formal processes

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

Igor Mel’cˇuk, Morphological Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christopher J. Hall, Prefixation, suffixation and circumfixation Edith A. Moravcsik, Infixation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ellen Broselow, Transfixation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caroline Wiltshire & Alec Marantz, Reduplication . . . . . . . . Rochelle Lieber, Substitution of segments and features . . . . . . Thomas Becker, Metathesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wolfgang U. Dressler, Subtraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Larry M. Hyman & William R. Leben, Suprasegmental processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

523 535 545 552 557 567 576 581

.

587

. . . . . . .

595 607 616 630 638 647 654

....

665

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674 693 708 732 757

Flexion Inflection

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Lexeme, word-form, paradigm . Aleksandr V. Bondarko, Meaning vs. use in inflection . . . . . Richard Coates, Exponence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Inflection classes . . . . . . . . . . Silvia Luraghi, Synkretismus (Übersetzung: Simona Fabellini) Fred Karlsson, Defectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Martin Haspelmath, Periphrasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

X.

Wortarten Word classes

69.

˚ ke Forsgren, Wortart, syntaktische Funktion, Kjell-A syntaktische Kategorie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clemens Knobloch & Burkhard Schaeder, Kriterien für die Definition von Wortarten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barbara Kaltz, Wortartensysteme in der Linguistik . . . . . Nicholas Evans, Word classes in the world’s languages . . . Christian Lehmann & Edith Moravcsik, Noun . . . . . . . . D. N. S. Bhat & Regina Pustet, Adjective . . . . . . . . . . .

71. 72. 73. 74.

484 489 499 510

. . . . . . . .

IX.

70.

451 463 473

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VIII

Inhalt / Contents

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Joseph H. Greenberg, Numeral . . . . . Linda Schwartz, Pronoun and article . Joan Bybee, Verb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John M. Anderson, Auxiliary . . . . . . Casper de Groot, Minor word classes .

XI.

Wortbildung I: Grundprobleme Word formation I: Fundamental problems

80. 81.

Laurie Bauer, System vs. norm: coinage and institutionalization Wiecher Zwanenburg, Correspondence between formal and semantic relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jacob Hoeksema, Compositionality of meaning . . . . . . . . . . Geert Booij, Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Claudio Iacobini, Base and direction of derivation . . . . . . . . Franz Rainer, Produktivitätsbeschränkungen . . . . . . . . . . . .

82. 83. 84. 85.

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XII.

Wortbildung II: Prozesse Word formation II: Processes

86.

Wolfgang Fleischer, Die Klassifikation von Wortbildungsprozessen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan Olsen, Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marianne Mithun, Incorporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bernd Naumann & Petra M. Vogel, Derivation . . . . . . . . . . Jan Don & Mieke Trommelen & Wim Zonneveld, Conversion and category indeterminacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Garland Cannon, Blending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charles W. Kreidler, Clipping and acronymy . . . . . . . . . . . Philip Baldi & Chantal Dawar, Creative processes . . . . . . . .

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

. . . . .

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832 . . . . .

840 851 857 865 877

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886 897 916 929

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943 952 956 963

2. Teilband (Vorgesehener Inhalt) / Volume 2 (Prospective Contents) XIII.

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

Semantische Kategorien und Operationen in der Morphologie I: Entitätsbegriffe Semantic categories and operations in morphology I: Entity concepts Entity concepts Deixis and reference Person Classifiers Gender and noun class Diminution and augmentation

770 783 794 808 820

IX

Inhalt / Contents

100. 101. 102. 103.

Numerus Mass and collection Case Possession

XIV.

Semantische Kategorien und Operationen in der Morphologie II: Sachverhalts-, Eigenschafts- und verwandte Begriffe Semantic categories and operations in morphology II: State-of-affairs, property and related concepts

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

State-of-affairs concepts Property concepts Circumstance concepts Valency change Voice Aspect and aktionsart Tense Mood and modality Interclausal relations Negation Comparison and gradation

XV.

Morphologische Typologie und Universalien Morphological typology and universals

115. 116. 117. 118.

Approaches to morphological typology Types of morphological structure Quantitative Typologie Cross-linguistic generalizations and their explanation

XVI.

Systeme morphologischer Struktur: Sprachskizzen Systems of morphological structure: Illustrative sketches

119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131.

English (Indo-European: Germanic) Deutsch (Indogermanisch: Germanisch) French (Indo-European: Romance) Russisch (Indogermanisch: Slavisch) Altgriechisch (Indogermanisch) Finnish (Finno-Ugric) Hebrew (Semitic) Türkisch (Turk) Hunzib (North-East Caucasian) Ketisch (Jenisseisch) West Greenlandic (Eskimo) Koyukon (Athapaskan) Montagnais (Algonquian)

X

Inhalt / Contents

132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144.

Guaranı´ (Tupı´-Guaranı´) Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan) Quechua (Quechua) Yagua (Peba-Yaguan) Tagalog (Austronesian) Diyari (Pama-Nyungan) Wambon (Awyu) Turkana (Cushitic) Twi (Kwa) Rwanda (Bantu) Vietnamesisch (Viet-Muong) Deutsche Gebärdensprache Plansprachen

XVII.

Morphologischer Wandel I: Theoretische Probleme Morphological Change I: Fundamental Issues

145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154.

Fundamental concepts Grammaticalization: from syntax to morphology Morphologisierung: von der Phonologie zur Morphologie Analogical change Remotivation and reinterpretation Lexicalization and demotivation Change in productivity Morphologische Entlehnung und Lehnübersetzung Pidginization, creolization and language death Morphological reconstruction

XVIII.

Morphologischer Wandel II: Fallstudien Morphological Change II: Case studies

155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161.

From Old English to Modern English Vom Althochdeutschen zum Neuhochdeutschen From Latin to French From Vedic to modern Indic languages From Archaic Chinese to Mandarin From Classical Arabic to the modern Arabic vernaculars Tok Pisin

XIX.

Psycholinguistische Perspektiven Psycholinguistic perspectives

162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167.

Mentale Repräsentation morphologischer Strukturen Speech production and perception Speech errors First language acquisition Second language acquisition Sprachstörungen

XI

Inhalt / Contents

XX.

Morphologie in der Praxis Morphology in practice

168. 169. 170. 171. 172.

Field work Interlinear morphemic glossing Grammaticography Lexicography Computational linguistics

XXI.

Morphologie und Nachbardisziplinen Morphology and related fields

173. 174. 175. 176.

Etymologie Schriftsysteme Terminology in Special Languages Sprachunterricht

I. Morphologie als Disziplin Morphology as a discipline 1. Der Gegenstand der Morphologie 1. 2. 3. 4.

Allgemeine Morphologie Morphologie in der Linguistik Morphologische Form in der Sprache Zitierte Literatur

1.

Allgemeine Morphologie

1.1. Form Auf den Begriff der Form trifft man allenthalben, nicht nur im Bereich der Wissenschaft, sondern auch im Sprachgebrauch des Alltags. In der Alltagssprache bezeichnet Form bekanntermaßen die sichtbare, äußere Gestalt oder Ausprägung von Dingen; man vergleiche etwa die Form eines Baums oder die Form eines Tisches. Diese Verwendungsweise bildet auch den Ausgangspunkt für den Gebrauch des Begriffs in der Wissenschaft. Doch in der Wissenschaft, genauer in den Wissenschaften, wird der Terminus Form (wie ja auch viele andere Termini) nicht in einheitlicher Weise benutzt. Vielmehr tritt Form, in Abhängigkeit vom Faktenbereich und von der Spezifik der jeweiligen Wissenschaft, aber auch von der jeweils zugrunde gelegten Theorie, in einer Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Bedeutungen auf; man denke hier nur an die Linguistik! Bei all ihrer Unterschiedlichkeit lassen sich diese Bedeutungen jedoch (zumindest im Prinzip) auf drei Hauptbedeutungen zurückführen, die ihrerseits nicht unverbunden nebeneinanderstehen, sondern als drei Stufen eines einheitlichen Abstraktions- und Generalisierungsprozesses auszumachen sind: Erstens bezeichnet Form (noch in starker Anlehnung an die Alltagssprache) die sinnlich zugängliche, d. h. in den meisten Fällen sichtbare, in bestimmten Fällen auch hörbare Gestalt von Objekten, ihre “äußere Seite”. In diesem Sinne spricht man beispielsweise in der Botanik von der Form von Blüten, in der Geologie von der Form von Bergen und in der Linguistik von der lautlichen oder gra-

phischen Form sprachlicher Zeichen. So haben z. B. die sprachlichen Zeichen bunt und Bund die gemeinsame lautliche Form [bwnt]. Zweitens bezeichnet Form die Gesamtheit der Relationen, die zwischen den Einheiten oder Elementen eines Systems existieren. Der Terminus steht damit für die nicht unmittelbar beobachtbare innere Organisation eines Systems und die Wechselwirkung seiner Elemente, mit anderen Worten für die Struktur des Systems. In diesem Sinne kann man z. B. von der Form von Sternensystemen, Wirtschaftssystemen oder eben auch von Flexionssystemen sprechen. Auf dieser Stufe der Abstraktion (und nicht auf der vorangehenden) ist auch die Anwendung des Terminus Form auf solche Einheiten anzusiedeln, denen ihre relevanten Eigenschaften nicht per se, sondern durch ihre Stellung in einem System zukommen. Hier ist damit faktisch der auf dem System beruhende Formbegriff auf das vom System geprägte Element projiziert. Diese Verwendungsweise ist typisch für die Linguistik, wo der Begriff der Flexionsform für ein Element des Flexionssystems mit all seinen “formalen” und “inhaltlichen” Eigenschaften steht, so daß z. B. Hund als Nominativ und Hund als Akkusativ Singular trotz gleicher phonologischer Struktur zwei unterschiedliche Flexionsformen darstellen. Auf dieser Ebene ist es wichtig, im Rahmen welches Systems eine Form betrachtet wird. So kann man beispielsweise eine Form wie (den) Hund als Element des entsprechenden Flexionsparadigmas, im Rahmen sämtlicher substantivischer Akkusativformen, im Rahmen des substantivischen Deklinationssystems oder im Rahmen des gesamten Flexionssystems des Deutschen betrachten, wobei sich relational zum zugrunde gelegten System jeweils unterschiedliche Eigenschaften “ein und derselben Form” ergeben. Drittens schließlich bezeichnet Form eine Struktur, ein Relationsgefüge, die bzw. das

2 eine andere Struktur abbildet, widerspiegelt. In diesem Sinne spiegeln Denkformen, also Begriffe, Aussagen, Theorien usw., Erscheinungen der existierenden oder vorgestellten Welt wider. Das gilt speziell für wissenschaftliche Gesetze und Theorien, wobei (was ebenso trivial wie wichtig ist) ein und dasselbe Faktensystem einer gegebenen Form durch Theorien sehr unterschiedlicher Ausprägung abgebildet werden kann, ganz gleich, ob es sich um ein Sternsystem, ein Wirtschaftssystem oder ein Sprachsystem handelt (vgl. dazu auch Kröber & Warnke 1974: 409ff.). Ein Blick auf die höchst verschiedenen Theorien, die grammatische Systeme in höchst unterschiedlicher Weise widerspiegeln, belegt das deutlich. Der Begriff der Form, in welcher spezifischen Bedeutung auch immer, macht eigentlich nur dann Sinn, wenn er sich auf eine andere Größe bezieht, der die Form zukommt. Diese Größe wird im allgemeinen als Inhalt (bzw. Gehalt) oder als Stoff (bzw. Substanz) bezeichnet. Den Inhalt kann man kurz als die “Gesamtheit der einem Ding innerlich zukommenden Eigenschaften im Gegensatz zu dessen äußerer Gestalt” (Warnke 1974: 524) fassen. Form und Inhalt (im folgenden sei einfachheitshalber dieser Terminus benutzt) setzen sich gegenseitig voraus; sie bilden eine dialektisch-widersprüchliche Einheit im Sinne von Hegel und Marx: Form ist immer Form eines Inhalts, und Inhalt existiert immer in einer bestimmten Form. Es gibt, worauf bereits Aristoteles hinweist, weder Form ohne Inhalt noch Inhalt ohne Form. Zugleich stehen sich Form und Inhalt nicht beziehungslos gegenüber, sondern beeinflussen sich gegenseitig. Eine gegebene Form kann nicht durch jeden beliebigen Inhalt ausgefüllt werden, und ein gegebener Inhalt kann nicht jede beliebige Form ausfüllen. Primär ist die Form durch den Inhalt bestimmt, aber die Form kann auch auf den Inhalt zurückwirken. Doch muß festgehalten werden, daß die gegenseitige Zuordnung von Form und Inhalt nicht absolut und unveränderlich ist. Man kann also durchaus von einer relativen Autonomie der Form gegenüber dem Inhalt sprechen, was vor allem Konsequenzen für den Verlauf von Veränderungsprozessen hat. Unter entsprechenden Umweltbedingungen können sich Form und Inhalt relativ unabhängig voneinander verändern, so daß sich neue Formen mit alten Inhalten und neue Inhalte mit alten Formen ergeben können. Für komplexere Systeme ist dabei charakteri-

I. Morphologie als Disziplin

stisch, daß sich bei Veränderungen nicht die Gesamtform oder der Gesamtinhalt des Systems wandelt, sondern jeweils nur Elemente der Form oder des Inhalts. Wenn in einem System Veränderungen eingetreten sind, die Form und Inhalt über ein gewisses Maß hinaus voneinander entfernen, dann setzen im allgemeinen Veränderungen ein, die nicht extern durch die Umwelt, sondern intern durch die solcherart entstandenen Widersprüche zwischen den beiden Seiten bedingt sind und die diese Widersprüche wieder beseitigen. Beispiele für das Verhältnis von Form und Inhalt im Wandel lassen sich aus den verschiedensten Wissenschaftsbereichen beibringen: Wenn sich in einem Wirtschaftssystem die Produktion als sein Inhalt in einer Weise entwickelt hat, daß seine Form zum Hindernis für die Produktion geworden ist, dann muß die Form des Wirtschaftssystems wieder an den Stand der Produktion angepaßt werden; wenn sich in einem Sprachsystem (etwa durch phonologische Veränderungen) Form und Semantik von Flexionsformen (!) in einem bestimmten Maße auseinanderentwikkelt haben, dann treten in der Regel kompensatorische Anpassungen der Form an die Semantik ein usw. usf. Im Verhältnis von Form und Inhalt ist zu beachten, daß die Entgegensetzung beider Seiten keine absolute, sondern eine relative ist. Was unter einem Gesichtspunkt Form ist, kann unter einem anderen Gesichtspunkt durchaus Inhalt sein und umgekehrt. Das ergibt sich zum einen aus den unterschiedlichen Abstraktionsstufen bei der Verwendung des Terminus Form. So erfaßt der Terminus in der ersten Bedeutung wie gesagt nur die sinnlich wahrnehmbare, äußere Gestalt von Objekten, also z. B. einer Blüte; alles andere, so auch die nicht sichtbaren Elemente ihrer Struktur, ist Substanz (um den hier angemessensten Begriff zu wählen). Dagegen bezieht sich Form in der zweiten Bedeutung auf die Struktur der Blüte insgesamt, also ihre äußere und innere Struktur. Zum anderen resultiert die Relativität der Entgegensetzung daraus, daß die Bedeutung der zweiten Stufe recht unterschiedlich große Systeme (bzw. Teilsysteme) betreffen kann. So werden bekanntlich in verschiedenen traditionellen grammatischen Konzepten innerhalb des Sprachsystems phonologische, morphologische und syntaktische Form als “Ausdrucksebene” und Bedeutung als “Inhaltsebene” einander gegenübergestellt. Dagegen unterscheidet die strukturalistische Richtung der

1. Gegenstand der Morphologie

Glossematik auf beiden genannten Ebenen zwischen Form und Substanz. Die Substanz der Ausdrucksebene bilden die Laute als phonetische Ereignisse, die Form das sprachspezifische phonologische System. Die Substanz der Inhaltsebene wird von der ungeordneten Menge von Gedanken und Vorstellungen gebildet, ihre Form vom sprachspezifischen System der abstrakten Bedeutungsrelationen, die die Bedeutungssubstanz ordnen (Hjelmslev 1943). Die Form steht nicht nur im Gegensatz zum Inhalt, sondern auch zur Funktion. Unter Funktion versteht man zunächst ganz allgemein die “Fähigkeit eines dynamischen Systems, bestimmte Verhaltensweisen hervorzubringen” (Klaus 101974: 437). Diese Fähigkeit wird durch die Struktur des Systems (also seine Form in der zweiten Bedeutung des Terminus), d. h. durch die Relationen zwischen seinen Elementen bestimmt. Dabei werden in komplexeren Systemen Teilfunktionen von ihren Elementen wahrgenommen; man denke an die Organe höherer Lebewesen oder an die verschiedenen Institutionen in einem Staat. In genau diesem Sinne kommen auch den verschiedenen Einheiten des Sprachsystems, seinen Formen, unterschiedliche Funktionen zu. Funktion meint dann Aufgabe oder Leistung im Rahmen des gegebenen Sprachsystems. So hat beispielsweise das Formativ /st/ im Rahmen des deutschen Flexionssystems die Funktionen der Symbolisierung der 2. Person Singular. Ganz wie es generell der Fall ist, gibt es auch in der Sprache keine eineindeutige Zuordnung von Form (Struktur) und Funktion. Gleiche Formen können unterschiedliche Funktionen haben, denn das Formativ /st/ symbolisiert auch den Superlativ, und gleiche Funktionen können durch unterschiedliche Formen wahrgenommen werden, wie die verschiedenen Pluralformen des deutschen Substantivs zeigen. 1.2. In welchen Faktenbereichen existiert Form? In welchen Bereichen gibt es eine Morphologie? Die Beantwortung der Frage, wo überall Form existiert, ergibt sich plausiblerweise aus der Bestimmung dessen, was Form ist. Deshalb ist hier auf die eben explizierten unterschiedlichen Bedeutungen von Form zurückzukommen. In seiner ersten, noch sehr konkreten Bedeutung bezieht sich Form auf sichtbare bzw. hörbare, also materielle Objekte. Es ist evident, daß solchen Objekten eine Form zu-

3 kommt. So gesehen ist die uns umgebene materielle Welt eine Welt der Formen. Die entsprechenden Objekte gehören in den Bereich von Natur, Technik und Sprache. Doch Form in diesem Sinne ist (zumindest heute) für die Wissenschaft nur von eingeschränktem Interesse, da der Begriff hier nur die äußere Gestalt der Dinge erfaßt. In seiner zweiten, demgegenüber stärker abstrahierenden Bedeutung bezieht sich Form auf objektiv, d. h. unabhängig von ihrer wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung existierende Systeme wie organische Systeme, Sternsysteme, Wirtschaftssysteme, soziale Systeme und Sprachsysteme. Form in diesem Sinne gehört in die Domäne von Naturwissenschaften, technischen Wissenschaften, Sozialwissenschaften bis hin zu Geisteswissenschaften wie der Linguistik, denn sie alle haben es mit der Struktur solcher Systeme zu tun. In seiner dritten, am stärksten abstrahierenden Bedeutung schließlich bezieht sich Form auf Systeme, die andere Systeme widerspiegeln. Das sind Systeme, die von allgemeinen Strukturwissenschaften wie Mathematik, Logik und Systemtheorie untersucht werden. Wenn man alle Bedeutungen einbezieht, die der Formbegriff abdeckt, so läßt sich sagen, daß Form in der gesamten materiellen und ideellen Erfahrungswelt des Menschen existiert; es gibt keinen Bereich, der sich der Geformtheit grundsätzlich entzieht. Daraus kann man schlußfolgern, daß alle Wissenschaften, wollen sie ein angemessenes Bild ihres jeweiligen Faktenbereichs vermitteln, sich auch mit Form befassen müssen. Dem kommen sie auch nach, aber doch in recht unterschiedlicher Weise. Überprüft man, wie es die Wissenschaften im einzelnen mit der Form halten, so stellt man fest, daß der Terminus Form in den modernen Wissenschaften außerhalb der Linguistik nicht allzu häufig auftritt; vgl. etwa Formen der Erdoberfläche in der Geologie und Geographie, Kristallformen in der Kristallographie, Staatsformen in den politischen Wissenschaften, Formen der Produktionsweise in der Ökonomie und soziale Form in der Soziologie (hier geht der Terminus auf Simmel zurück, der Form und Inhalt der Gesellschaft gegenüberstellt; vgl. Simmel 41958 passim). Im allgemeinen erscheint in der ersten Bedeutung von Form der Terminus Gestalt, so etwa in der Biologie. In der zweiten Bedeutung treten normalerweise die Termini Struktur oder Aufbau auf, so wiederum in der Biologie (wo daneben

4 auch der Terminus Anatomie zu finden ist), in der Physik und in der Chemie. Auch in der dritten Bedeutung von Form tritt heute gemeinhin Struktur auf, so (natürlich) in den allgemeinen Strukturwissenschaften. Die “Wissenschaft von der Form” ist die Morphologie. Sie wurde vor annähernd zweihundert Jahren von J. W. von Goethe, der auch den Terminus Morphologie prägte (vgl. Art. 2), als eine Wissenschaft begründet, die sowohl die speziellen als auch die allgemeinen Strukturgesetzmäßigkeiten der von den anderen Wissenschaften behandelten Gegenstände erfassen sollte (vgl. Wildgen 1984: 3f.). Die moderne Wissenschaft folgt dem bekanntlich nur sehr bedingt. Eine allgemeine Morphologie, so wie Goethe sie konzipierte, gibt es im heutigen System der Wissenschaften nicht. An ihre Stelle sind die eben erwähnten allgemeinen Strukturwissenschaften getreten, Disziplinen, die sich von Goethes allgemeiner Morphologie durch ihre konsequente Mathematisierung unterscheiden. Aber auch die Anzahl der modernen Wissenschaften, die als Teildisziplin eine spezielle Morphologie aufweisen, ist recht gering. Es sind im wesentlichen nur die Biologie (Zoologie und Botanik), die Geologie/Geographie, die Kristallographie und die Linguistik. In der Biologie ist die Morphologie die Lehre vom inneren und äußeren Bau der Organismen, in der Geologie/Geographie ist sie die Lehre von den Formen der Erdoberfläche und in der Kristallographie die Lehre von den geometrischen Formen der Kristalle. (In der moderneren Soziologie nicht durchgesetzt hat sich Durkheims Terminus “soziale Morphologie”, den er z. B. für die Demographie verwendet.) Diese Gruppe von Wissenschaften erscheint sehr heterogen. Sie haben aber zumindest gemeinsam, daß sich erstens in allen Fällen die jeweiligen Strukturaspekte als Gegenstand der Morphologie relativ gut aus dem Gesamtgegenstand der Wissenschaft ausgliedern lassen (z. B. in der Physik, deren Gesamtgegenstand ja die Struktur der unbelebten Materie ist, wäre das nicht möglich) und daß zweitens die jeweiligen Strukturen in relativ starkem Maße geordnet und überschaubar sind (was z. B. nicht für die Ökonomie gilt). Weiterreichende Gemeinsamkeiten hinsichtlich von Stellung und Aufgaben der Morphologie in den unterschiedlichen Wissenschaften lassen sich am ehesten für die Biologie und die Linguistik finden: Sowohl die biologische als auch die linguistische Morphologie untersucht die Struktur, nicht einfach die äußere Gestalt (die ältere Biologie unterschied hier


noch zwischen Morphologie als der Lehre vom äußeren Bau und der Anatomie als der Lehre vom inneren Bau), von komplexen, hochgradig organisierten und integrierten sowie sich verändernden Systemen, d. h. von Organismen bzw. Sprachen. Sie setzen die Teilsysteme oder Elemente der Systeme mit deren Funktion in Beziehung, sie führen die scheinbar uneingeschränkte Vielzahl der unterschiedlichen vorkommenden Strukturen auf durch Abstraktion gewonnene morphologische Bauplantypen zurück (für die Biologie vgl. Voigt 1978: 320), und sie erforschen die Bedingungen der Veränderung der von ihnen betrachteten Objekte.

2.

Morphologie in der Linguistik

2.1. In welchem Sinne befaßt sich die linguistische Morphologie mit Form? Die Linguistik betrachtet ihren Gegenstand, die natürliche Sprache, bekanntlich unter verschiedenen Aspekten. Der zentrale, weil auf das Wesen der Sprache gerichtete Aspekt ist der grammatische. Die Betrachtung der Sprache unter dem grammatischen Aspekt konstituiert die linguistische Disziplin der Grammatik im weiteren Sinne als die Wissenschaft vom Sprachsystem. Ihr Gegenstand ist damit die gegenseitige Zuordnung von Bedeutungseinheiten und Lauteinheiten in den natürlichen Sprachen. Daß es die Grammatik immer mit Form bzw. mit Formen zu tun hat, ist unbestritten. Wie aber soll der Formbegriff in der Grammatik genauer gefaßt werden, und auf welche Gegebenheiten ist er zu beziehen? Ganz offensichtlich dem Gegenstand nicht angemessen sind doch recht verbreitete Auffassungen, in deren Rahmen der Bedeutung sprachlicher Zeichen als ihrem “Inhalt” eine einheitliche, vorgeblich rein sinnlich erfaßbare Form gegenübergestellt wird, in der phonetische, phonologische, morphologische und syntaktische Charakteristika undifferenziert zusammengefaßt sind (so u. a. Meier 1961: 15f.). Hier wird erstens Form im Sinne von ‘äußerer Form von Objekten’ auf ein komplexes System bezogen, dem eine Form im Sinne von ‘Struktur’ zukommt. Zweitens ist dieser Formbegriff nicht geeignet, die unterschiedlichen Strukturschichten sprachlicher Formbildung in ihrer relativen Eigengesetzlichkeit und ihrer Interaktion zu erfassen. Drittens schließlich wird vernachlässigt, daß ja auch semantische Formen oder Strukturen existieren.


Alle Teildisziplinen der Grammatik untersuchen die Form ⫺ die Struktur ⫺ sprachlicher Äußerungen, nur jeweils unter spezifischen Gesichtspunkten; die Phonologie untersucht die Lautstruktur, die Morphologie die Wortstruktur, die Syntax die Satzstruktur und die Semantik die Bedeutungsstruktur. Doch wenn damit faktisch alle grammatischen Teildisziplinen “Formenlehren” sind, in welchem Sinne befaßt sich dann die Morphologie mit sprachlicher Form? Die Morphologie untersucht die Form des Wortes, wodurch sie sich klar von der Syntax unterscheidet, deren Domäne die Form des Satzes ist. Doch eine solche Bestimmung reicht ganz offensichtlich noch nicht aus, wenn man die anderen beiden grammatischen Teildisziplinen, die Phonologie und die Semantik, in die Betrachtung einbezieht. Auch die Phonologie untersucht ja, wenn auch nicht ausschließlich, die Form des Wortes; es gibt eine spezielle Wortphonologie, deren Gegenstand die Lautstruktur des Wortes ist. Ebenso hat es die Semantik u. a. auch mit der semantischen Form des Wortes zu tun, die den Gegenstand der Wortsemantik konstituiert. Diese beiden grammatischen Teildisziplinen untersuchen die Wörter ohne Berücksichtigung der jeweils anderen Seite. Hieraus ergibt sich ein weiteres Abgrenzungskriterium für die Morphologie, denn deren Spezifik besteht gerade darin, daß sie die Bedeutungsstruktur und die Lautstruktur des Wortes in ihrer Interrelation betrachtet. Sie befaßt sich mit der Form des Wortes unter dem Gesichtspunkt der gegenseitigen Zuordnung von Bedeutungs- und Lauteinheiten. Anders gesagt, sie betrachtet das Wort als ein sprachliches Zeichen, das eine Bedeutung und einen Ausdruck hat. Gegenstand der Morphologie ist damit nicht (wie soeben vereinfachend konstatiert) die Form des Wortes schlechthin, sondern die semiotische Form des Wortes. Genau das ist gemeint, wenn ⫺ scheinbar pleonastisch ⫺ von “morphologischer Form” gesprochen wird. Mit dieser Einordnung der Morphologie wird zugleich auch deutlich, wo sich Probleme der Abgrenzung zu ihren Nachbardisziplinen ergeben können. Das betrifft erstens den Übergangsbereich zur Syntax. Hier ist die Abgrenzung der Morphologie von der Entscheidung darüber abhängig, ob eine gegebene grammatische Einheit (schon) als ein Wort oder aber (noch) als eine syntaktische Konstruktion zu werten ist. Als relevante Fälle können etwa Klitisierungen wie engl.

5 I’ve (been) und (the man of) yesterday’s (mother in law) genannt werden. Zweitens betrifft das den Übergangsbereich zur Phonologie, wo die Abgrenzung davon abhängt, ob eine Lautalternation (schon) eine Bedeutung symbolisiert, also Zeichencharakter hat, oder aber (noch) durch die phonologische Umgebung bedingt ist. Einschlägige Fälle, die in dieser Hinsicht kaum eindeutig klassifiziert werden können, sind viele Umlauterscheinungen in den älteren germanischen Sprachen. Man vergleiche dazu den für diesen Übergangsbereich geprägten Terminus Morphonologie (vgl. Art. 3 und 35). Die Vorstellungen darüber, wie die Morphologie zu definieren oder einzugrenzen ist, sind in der Linguistik durchaus nicht einheitlich. Es gibt eine große Anzahl unterschiedlicher Definitionen von Morphologie, die sich teils auf die Wissenschaftsdisziplin, teils auf ihre Faktendomäne beziehen. Dabei wird die wichtige Gegebenheit, daß es in der Morphologie um die Form (des Wortes) unter dem spezifischen Gesichtspunkt des Zusammenhangs von Bedeutung und Ausdruck geht, in vielen Fällen vorausgesetzt und nur partiell expliziert. Doch die eigentlichen sachlichen Unterschiede zwischen den Definitionen liegen woanders. Es ist evident, daß man faktisch nicht bestimmen kann, was Morphologie ist, ohne auf den Wortbegriff Bezug zu nehmen, was auch alle vorliegenden Definitionen von Morphologie und Eingrenzungen ihrer Domäne zeigen. Doch die Bezugnahme auf das Wort erfolgt in recht unterschiedlicher Weise. Die meisten der einschlägigen Arbeiten betrachten das Wort (vgl. Art. 26) als die Basiseinheit der Morphologie und bauen ihre Definitionen von Morphologie unmittelbar auf dem Wortbegriff auf. Dafür nur wenige Beispiele. So wird die Morphologie gefaßt als “knowledge of word structure” (Spencer 1993: 7) oder als der Bereich der “‘forms of words’ in different uses and constructions” (Matthews 1992: 3). Die etwas detaillierten Definitionen unterscheiden sich im wesentlichen nur darin, daß sie unterschiedliche Aspekte des Wortbegriffs hervorheben. Das ist zum einen die Unterscheidung der morphologischen von der phonologischen Form des Wortes. Morphologie ist dann “the study of the shapes of words; not the phonological shape (which can be assumed to be fairly arbitrary) but rather the systematic changes in shape related to changes in meaning.” (Bauer 1988: 4)

6 Zum zweiten werden die syntagmatischen und paradigmatischen Bezüge der Wörter als wesentlich für die Morphologie hervorgehoben: “The object of study in morphology is the structure of words, and the ways in which their structure reflects their relation to other words ⫺ relations both within some larger construction such as a sentence and across the total vocabulary of the language.” (Anderson 1992: 7)

Zum dritten wird die Abgrenzung der Morphologie zur Syntax betont: “Die Morphologie einer Sprache wird durch die Fakten und Zusammenhänge konstituiert, die die Struktur der Wörter und Wortformen betreffen. Die Domäne der Morphologie ist das Wort; grammatische Erscheinungen, die die Grenzen des Wortes überschreiten, gehören in den Bereich der Syntax. Eine morphologische Theorie ist eine Theorie der Prinzipien der Wortstruktur.” (Wurzel 1984: 35)

Anders verfahren Arbeiten, die in der Tradition des amerikanischen Strukturalismus stehen, für den in seiner konsequentesten Ausprägung überhaupt keine Wörter, sondern nur Morpheme (vgl. Art. 46) und Morphemkombinationen existieren, wobei nicht unterschieden wird, ob letztere Wörter oder syntaktische Konstruktionen darstellen (u. a. Harris 1946). Wenn solche Arbeiten natürlich auch nicht ohne Rückgriff auf das Wort als “Obergrenze” des Bereichs der Morphologie auskommen, so gehen sie doch in ihren Definitionen vom Morphem als der morphologischen Basiseinheit aus. So etwa, wenn Morphologie als “the study of morphemes and their arrangement in forming words” gefaßt wird (Nida 1949: 1) oder wenn sie als Beschreibung von “morphemes and their patterns of occurrence within the word” charakterisiert wird (Alerten 1979: 47). Die einzelnen Definitionen, so unterschiedlich sie auch sind, zeigen, daß man Morphologie ohne jegliche Bezugnahme auf den Wortbegriff nicht bestimmen kann. 2.2. Zur Geschichte des Formbegriffs in der Sprachwissenschaft Der Begriff der Form spielt in der Linguistik seit der Antike eine wichtige Rolle. In ganz besonderem Maße gilt das für die deutsche Sprachwissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts, in der sich aufgrund von sprachwissenschaftlichen, aber auch von weitergehenden geisteswissenschaftlichen Entwicklungen Fragen nach der Form in der Sprache und von Spra-


che gleichsam bündeln. Da es nicht möglich ist, hier eine umfassendere Geschichte des Formbegriffs in der Sprachwissenschaft zu geben, soll wenigstens auf diesen Zeitraum etwas detaillierter eingegangen werden. Das Interesse der Sprachwissenschaft an der sprachlichen Form nimmt bereits zu Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts stark zu. Dafür sind im wesentlichen drei Gründe zu nennen. Zum ersten entwickelt sich in dieser Zeit in Deutschland mit der Stärkung des bürgerlichen Selbstbewußtseins auch das Interesse an der eigenen Geschichte, speziell am “deutschen Altertum” bis zurück zur indoeuropäischen Periode. In der Sprachwissenschaft äußert sich das in der Erarbeitung umfangreicher Kompendien der germanischen (vgl. J. Grimm 1818⫺1837) und der indoeuropäischen Sprachen (vgl. Bopp 1833). Die Verfasser dieser Kompendien betrachteten unter dem weiterwirkenden Einfluß der scholastischen Traditionen des Mittelalters die Beschäftigung mit dem Wort als entscheidend für das Verständnis des Funktionierens von Sprache überhaupt. So rückt die Form des Wortes ins Zentrum des grammatischen Interesses, wobei im übrigen die damit verbundenen Fragestellungen den heute als Morphologie verstandenen Bereich der Grammatik weit überschreiten und auch syntaktische und phonologische Phänomene umfassen (Anderson 1992: 7). Zum zweiten werden aufgrund der Kolonialisierung und des zunehmenden Welthandels bisher unbekannte, “exotische” Sprachen ferner Länder mit vom europäischen Muster stark abweichenden Strukturen auch in Deutschland bekannt. Das fördert auch die wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung mit solchen Sprachen, mit ihren Formen und ihrer Form insgesamt. Zum dritten wächst mit der Entwicklung der einzelnen Wissenschaften das Interesse, diese Wissenschaften in einen theoretischen Zusammenhang zu bringen, ihre Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede herauszuarbeiten. In diesen Kontext gehört nicht zuletzt auch der bereits erwähnte Versuch Goethes, eine Hierarchie der Naturwissenschaften zu schaffen, in der der von ihm konzipierten allgemeinen Morphologie eine übergreifende, generalisierende Funktion zukommt. Ihr Objektbereich ist “Gestalt in ihren Teilen und in ihrem Ganzen, Übereinstimmungen, Abweichungen” (Goethe 1955: 122f.). Dieses Konzept einer Morphologie als allgemeiner Formenlehre stimulierte in besonderem Maße die


Beschäftigung mit der Form, nicht nur mit Formen in der Sprache. Die führenden Vertreter der historisch-vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft des beginnenden 19. Jahrhunderts wie J. Grimm, R. Rask und F. Bopp stehen, was ihren Begriff von Form betrifft, noch weitgehend in den Traditionen der mittelalterlichen Grammatik. Form ist bei ihnen Bezeichnung für ein einzelnes grammatisches Wort; die Auffassung von Form als Element eines Sprachsystems, die die Grundlage für eine sprachtypologische Klassifizierung bildet (wie später bei A. W. von Schlegel und Humboldt), ist bei Grimm noch nicht zu finden. Formen sind für Grimm immer nur “Formen von etwas”, in erster Linie die Abwandlungen, die ein Stamm oder ein Wort aufgrund der “Wortbiegung” (partiell auch aufgrund der Derivation, vgl. die “Verkleinerungsform”) annehmen kann. Hier zeigt sich ein vierter Begriff von Form, der ähnlich dem oben explizierten ersten Formbegriff dem alltagssprachlichen Gebrauch recht nahe steht (vgl. 1.1). Er unterscheidet sich von diesem allerdings darin, daß er sich nicht nur auf die äußere Gestalt von sprachlichen Einheiten bezieht, sondern auch ihren Inhalt ⫺ d. h. die jeweiligen Kategorien ⫺ berücksichtigt. Damit sind beispielsweise gleichlautende Nominativ- und Akkusativformen eines Wortes für Grimm verschiedene Formen. Sein Formbegriff entspricht im wesentlichen der Terminologie der scholastischen Sprachbetrachtung; so verwendet z. B. Thomas von Erfurt (Anfang des 14. Jahrhunderts) im gleichen Sinne den lateinischen Terminus figurationes vocum ‘Abwandlungen/Formen der Wörter’ (vgl. Arens 1969: 48). Grimm erweitert allerdings diesen Gebrauch von Form, indem er z. B. auch von den Formen eines Kasus ⫺ also einer Kategorie ⫺ spricht, was meint ‘Formen, in denen ein Kasus erscheinen kann’. Den wichtigen Schritt, den Terminus Form ohne Bezug auf ein Wort/einen Stamm oder eine Kategorie anzuwenden, hat dann (offenbar als einer der ersten) Bopp (1816) getan, der gemäß dem heutigen diesbezüglichen Sprachgebrauch verallgemeinernd alle Wortformen als “grammatische Formen” der Sprache bezeichnet. Ein weiterer wichtiger Punkt verdient Erwähnung: Bei den Begründern der historischvergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft bleibt der Formbegriff strikt auf morphologische Einheiten eingeschränkt. Die Formen sind immer grammatische Wortformen. So bezeich-

7 net z. B. Grimm die Lautform der Wörter als deren “Aussprache” und die Form der Buchstaben als deren “Gestalt”. Ein wesentlich weiterer und zugleich komplexerer Begriff von Form in der Sprache findet sich demgegenüber bei W. von Humboldt. Zwar sind Humboldt die Traditionen, in denen die historisch-vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaftler stehen, keineswegs fremd, doch prägend für seinen Formbegriff wird Goethes (in 1.2) erwähntes Konzept einer allgemeinen Morphologie sowie auch dessen (leider nie systematisch dargestellte) Sprachauffassung, die ihrerseits stark von Herder geprägt ist (vgl. dazu Wildgen 1984). Vor allem auf dieser Grundlage entwickelt er seine durchaus als bahnbrechend zu charakterisierenden Auffassungen von der Form der Sprache (vgl. Coseriu 1972). Entscheidend ist, daß für Humboldt eine Sprache nicht nur einzelne Formen, von ihm verstanden als geformte Elemente, aufweist, sondern daß sie auch selbst als Ganzes eine Form hat. Dieser Begriff von Form entspricht im wesentlichen dem modernen Systembegriff und insofern auch dem oben (in 1.1) darstellten zweiten Formbegriff. Die Form einer Sprache steht nicht beziehungslos neben der Form anderer Sprachen. Humboldt unterscheidet zwischen der Form der einzelnen Sprache, der “allgemeineren Form”, die mehrere Sprachen gemeinsam haben können (von ihm auch “Sprachform” genannt) und der “allgemeinsten Form”, die allen Sprachen gemeinsam ist (Herders und Goethes “allgemeiner Sprache” entsprechend). Damit wird zwischen drei Schichten sprachlicher Struktur differenziert, die die Einzelsprache, den Sprachtyp und die sprachlichen Universalien reflektieren. An dieser Stelle soll wenigstens erwähnt werden, daß Humboldts linguistisches Interesse nicht zuletzt auch der “allgemeineren Form” der Sprachen, d. h. ihrer typologischen Klassifizierung galt, wobei er speziell die Ansätze von F. von Schlegel, dem eigentlichen Begründer der Sprachtypologie, und dessen Bruder A. W. von Schlegel weiterführte (vgl. u. a. Schlegel 1818). Die Form der Sprache ist in ganz entscheidendem Maße durch die für sie charakteristische “innere Sprachform” bestimmt: “Dieser ihr ganz innerer und rein intellectueller Theil macht eigentlich die Sprache aus” (Humboldt 1836: 107). Die “innere Sprachform” äußert sich sowohl in der “Bildung der einzelnen Begriffe” und in dem “verhältnismäßig verschiedenen Reichthum der Sprache in Be-

8 griffen gewisser Gattung” (114), also grob gesagt in der jeweiligen spezifischen Ausgestaltung des Lexikons, als auch in ihrer “intellectuellen Technik”, ihrer spezifischen Grammatik: “Die intellectuelle Technik begreift dagegen das in der Sprache zu Bezeichnende und zu Unterscheidende. Zu ihr gehört es also z. B., wenn eine Sprache Bezeichnung des Genus, des Dualis, der Tempora durch alle Möglichkeiten der Verbindung des Begriffs der Zeit mit dem des Verlaufs der Handlung u. s. f. besitzt.” (105)

Außer der “inneren Sprachform” besitzt jede Sprache ihre eigene Lautform. “Die Lautform ist der Ausdruck, welchen die Sprache dem Gedanken schafft” (100). Aus der Verbindung von “innerer Sprachform” und Lautform ergibt sich die Form der Sprache. Dabei ist wichtig, daß die Lautform der Sprache für Humboldt nicht einfach eine der “inneren Sprachform” zugeordnete äußere Hülle darstellt. Sie ist im Gegenteil wesentlich verantwortlich für die jeweilige Ausprägung der “inneren Sprachform”, was im Sprachwandel deutlich zum Ausdruck kommt (102f.). Das bedeutet, daß die “innere Sprachform” einer Sprache historisch veränderlich ist. Die Bedeutung der Lautform für die Form der Sprache ergibt sich auch daraus, daß sie “hauptsächlich dasjenige ist, wodurch der Unterschied der Sprachen begründet wird” (102). Damit ist Humboldts komplexer Formbegriff noch nicht erschöpft. Zusätzlich zu den dargestellten verschiedenen Aspekten sprachlicher Form, die die Sprache als Ganzes betreffen, sind für ihn auch die einzelnen Elemente der Sprache Formen. Dabei unterscheidet er zwischen grammatischen Formen und Lautformen. Doch die einzelnen Formen haben bei ihm einen grundlegend anderen Status als bei Grimm oder Bopp. Sie sind für ihn Formen einer Sprache, die ganz im Sinne von Goethes allgemeiner Morphologie von der Form der Sprache insgesamt geprägt sind: “Die charakteristische Form der Sprachen hängt an jedem einzelnen ihrer kleinsten Elemente; jedes wird durch sie, wie unerklärlich es im Einzelnen sei, auf irgend eine Weise bestimmt.” (59)

So ist bei Humboldt auch der strukturalistische Begriff der einzelnen grammatischen Form als ‘Form eines Systems’ faktisch vorweggenommen. Der Form stellt Humboldt den Stoff gegenüber. Sein Verständnis des Verhältnisses von Form und Stoff mutet ebenfalls sehr mo-


dern an (und wird in diesem Jahrhundert von der Glossematik wieder aufgegriffen; vgl. 1.1): Innerhalb der Sprache “läßt sich etwas nur beziehungsweise gegen etwas anderes als Stoff betrachten, z. B. die Grundwörter in Beziehung auf die Declination. In anderer Beziehung aber wird, was hier Stoff ist, wieder als Form erkannt […]. Absolut betrachtet, kann es innerhalb der Sprache keinen ungeformten Stoff geben, da alles in ihr auf einen bestimmten Zweck, den Gedankenausdruck, gerichtet ist, und diese Arbeit schon bei ihrem ersten Element, dem articulierten Laute, beginnt, der ja eben durch Formung zum articulierten wird. Der wirkliche Stoff der Sprache ist auf der einen Seite der Laut überhaupt, auf der anderen die Gesamtheit der sinnlichen Eindrücke und selbstthätigen Geistesbewegungen, welche der Bildung des Begriffs mit Hülfe der Sprache vorausgehen.” (61)

Während in der deutschen Sprachwissenschaft nach Humboldt wieder ein Formbegriff dominiert, der sich im Anschluß an die Vertreter der historisch-vergleichenden Schule nur auf die einzelnen morphologischen Formen bezieht, findet der umfassendere Begriff von sprachlicher Form in A. Schleicher einen wichtigen Proponenten. Schleichers Formbegriff ist nicht nur durch die sprachwissenschaftlichen Traditionen, sondern vor allem auch durch die zeitgenössische Naturwissenschaft und speziell durch Darwin geprägt. Für Schleicher ist die Sprache wie ein Kristall, eine Pflanze und ein Tier ein “natürlicher Organismus”; die Wissenschaft von der Sprache, die Linguistik oder “Glottik”, stellt (anders als die geisteswissenschaftliche Philologie) entsprechend eine Naturwissenschaft dar. Entscheidend für das Verständnis von Sprache ist ihr Wesen, das sich aus dem Wesen des Wortes als ihrer Grundeinheit ergibt: “das Wesen des Wortes und damit das Wesen der Sprache” beruht “im lautlichen Ausdrucke von Bedeutung und Beziehung; das Wesen einer jeden einzelnen Sprache wird bestimmt durch die Art und Weise, wie in ihr Bedeutung und Beziehung lautlich ausgedrückt wird.” (Schleicher 1869: 9f.)

“Bedeutung und Beziehung”, d. h. konzeptuelle und relationale Bedeutungen, bilden zusammen die “Function”. “Function” und “Laut” (die lautliche Struktur) sind nicht direkt aufeinander bezogen, sondern vermittelt durch die “Form”. Eine Form in Schleichers Sinne haben sowohl die Sprachen insgesamt als auch die einzelnen Wörter. Interessant ist, daß dabei “Form” bezogen auf das einzelne Wort nicht dessen konkrete morphologische Struktur einschließlich deren phonologischer


Ausprägung meint, sondern deren abstraktere morphologisch-typologische Struktur. Gleich strukturierte Wortformen (im modernen Sprachgebrauch) unterschiedlicher Wörter haben also die gleiche “Form”, Schleichers morphologische “Form” ist also der Formtyp. Die konkreteren Formaspekte werden durch den “Laut”, genauer durch den “Bedeutungslaut” und den “Beziehungslaut” (1869: 7), reflektiert. “Form” bezieht sich hier immer auf die morphologische Form der Wörter; für ihre phonologische Form verwendet Schleicher den Begriff der “lautlichen Wortform” (1859: 2). Die Wissenschaft, die sich mit der “Form” der Sprache und in der Sprache befaßt, ist die Morphologie, wobei die “allgemeine Morphologie” zu ermitteln hat, welche Sprachformen überhaupt möglich sind, und die “specielle Morphologie” die Formen der gegebenen Sprache darzustellen hat (127). Mit der Wahl von Goethes Terminus Morphologie, den Schleicher aus den Naturwissenschaften übernimmt, grenzt er sich ganz bewußt von der “Formenlehre” der historischen und beschreibenden Grammatik seiner Zeit ab: “Für die lere von der wortform wäle ich das wort ‘morphologie’, nach dem vorgange der naturwissenschaften, weil ‘formenlere’ für specielle morphologie verbunden mit functionslere der beziehungslaute bereits im gebrauche ist.” (1859: 35)

Die Unterschiede in der Form der einzelnen Sprachen beruhen für Schleicher in ganz entscheidendem Maße “auf dem Fehlen und Vorhandensein der Beziehungsausdrücke und auf der Stellung, welche Bedeutungs- und Beziehungsausdruck zu einander einnehmen” (1869: 9). Das heißt, sie ergeben sich aus der Form der Wörter in den einzelnen Sprachen, die Schleicher durch entsprechende Strukturformeln repräsentiert. Aufgrund der in den Einzelsprachen vorliegenden Formen der Wörter lassen sich diese zu “Classen”, d. h. Sprachtypen, zusammenfassen. Ganz im Sinne seines Jahrhunderts ist für Schleicher das Wort und nicht der Satz die prägende linguistische Einheit. Die Form des Wortes und die Form der Sprache stehen in einem engen Wechselverhältnis. Schleichers Konzept von sprachlicher Form ist (wie das Humboldts) dem in 1.1 aufgeführten zweiten Formbegriff zuzuordnen. Schleichers Komplementärbegriff zur Form ist nicht wie bei Humboldt der des Stoffs, sondern der des Inhalts. In seinem wissenschaftlichen Denken steht eine Form immer für

9 einen Inhalt. Form und Inhalt sind “untrennbar und stets zugleich vorhanden” (1869: 6). Das gilt natürlich auch für die Sprache. Der Inhalt der Sprache ist die “Function”, also die Semantik. Dieser wird eine “Form” im umfassenderen, morphonologischen Sinne, ein “Ausdruck” entgegengesetzt, der aus der (morphologischen) “Form” und dem “Laut” besteht (1869: 127f.). Doch auch Humboldts Konzept der “inneren Form” wirkt in der deutschen Sprachwissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts fort. Hier sind besonders A. F. Pott, H. Steinthal und G. von der Gabelentz zu nennen. Besonders bemerkenswert ist, daß für Gabelentz zu einer Zeit, wo die Junggrammatiker mit ihrem atomistischen Formbegriff längst die linguistische Szene beherrschen, der “Begriff der inneren Sprachformen […] zugleich einer der schwierigsten und der fruchtbarsten” ist (Gabelentz 21901: 327). Die “innere Sprachform” ist bei Gabelentz klar bestimmt; auf ihrer Grundlage wird festgelegt, was Grammatik ist: “Sprache ist gegliederter Ausdruck des Gedankens, und Gedanke ist Verbindung von Begriffen. Die menschliche Sprache will aber nicht nur die zu verbindenden Begriffe und die Art ihrer logischen Beziehungen ausdrücken, sondern auch das Verhältnis des Redenden zur Rede; ich will nicht nur etwas aussprechen, sondern auch mich aussprechen, und so tritt zum logischen Faktor, diesen vielfältig durchdringend, ein psychologischer. Ein dritter Faktor kann hinzukommen: die räumlichen und zeitlichen Anschauungsformen. Die innere Sprachform ist in ihrem grammatischen Theile nichts weiter als die Auffassung dieser drei Beziehungsarten: der logischen, der psychologischen und der raumzeitlichen. Die Art und Weise, wie diese drei zum Ausdrucke gebracht werden, nennen wir den Sprachbau. Grammatik ist nun die Lehre vom Sprachbau, mithin von der Sprachform, der äusseren, das heisst der Ausdrucksform für jene Beziehungen, und also mittelbar insoweit zugleich der inneren Form, das heisst der dem Sprachbaue zu Grunde liegenden Weltanschauung.” (81)

Auch bei Gabelentz gibt es einen Gegenpol zur Form der Sprache, gefaßt als Einheit von innerer und äußerer Form. Das ist (wie bei Humboldt) der Stoff. Der Stoff der Sprache besteht kurz gesagt “in Allem was des Menschen Denken erregt” (324). Die einzelnen Sprachen unterscheiden sich darin, auf welche spezifische Weise sie den sprachlichen Stoff formen, Sprachen, die “gänzlich formlos” sind, kann es nicht geben (327). Doch ein solch umfassender Begriff der sprachlichen Form ist für diese Zeit unty-

10 pisch. Für die bereits erwähnten Junggrammatiker, darunter auch solche führenden Sprachwissenschaftler wie K. Brugmann, H. Osthoff und H. Paul, gibt es, voll im Einklang mit ihrem empiristischen Verständnis von Wissenschaft, keine Form der Sprache mehr, sondern nur noch Formen in der Sprache (vgl. dazu etwa Paul 1880). Der Begriff Form wird ausschließlich für morphologische Wortformen, primär für Flexionsformen, verwendet. Diesen Formen kommt dann jeweils auch eine Lautform zu. Die einzelne Form steht dabei in bestimmten Zusammenhängen; sie ist vor allem Form eines Paradigmas, doch zugleich auch Form einer bestimmten Kategorie (z. B. Pluralform), was das Auftreten von Analogien zwischen den Formen möglich macht, die ja entweder zwischen den Formen eines Paradigmas oder zwischen den Formen einer Kategorie wirken. Der darüber hinausgehende Zusammenhang der einzelnen Form mit dem Gesamtsystem der Sprache, wie er von Humboldt und Schleicher thematisiert wird, findet kaum Beachtung. Eine Ausnahme dazu bildet eigentlich nur der bei den Junggrammatikern vereinzelt auftretende, nicht genauer ausgearbeitete Begriff des “Systemzwangs” (Paul 1879: 128ff.), der sich zumindest partiell auf Eigenschaften des morphologischen Systems bezieht. Im großen und ganzen aber drückt sich in der Einengung des Formbegriffs auf die einzelne morphologische Form nicht nur eine veränderte Terminologie aus; diese geht Hand in Hand mit einer Einengung des sprachwissenschaftlichen Interesses. Die Sicht auf die Sprache als Gesamtheit, als “Organismus”, als System wird ersetzt durch die Sicht auf die einzelnen morphologischen Formen und Paradigmen. Gegen Ende des Jahrhunderts hat damit die junggrammatische “Formenlehre” die Morphologie im Sinne von Goethe und Schleicher (und faktisch auch von Humboldt) aus dem Feld geschlagen. Im 20. Jahrhundert wird von der Linguistik der umfassende Formbegriff, wie er im 19. Jahrhundert ausgearbeitet wurde, in zweifacher Weise wieder aufgenommen und weitergeführt, erstens von der strukturalistischen Grammatik, die die einzelnen Formen (nicht nur die morphologischen) in ihrer Relation zum gesamten Sprachsystem untersucht, und zweitens von der Sprachtypologie, die sich mit der Form der unterschiedlichen Sprachsysteme und ihrer Elemente befaßt.


2.3. Form und Funktion in der Sprache Wie im Zusammenhang mit der Bestimmung von Morphologie festgestellt, weisen sämtliche Komponenten des Sprachsystems ihre spezifische Form auf. Im folgenden wird der Begriff der sprachlichen Form jedoch im Einklang mit den kurz skizzierten sprachwissenschaftlichen Traditionen ausschließlich als morphologische Form verstanden. Das Verhältnis von morphologischer Form und Funktion soll am Beispiel der Flexionsmorphologie dargestellt werden. Die flexionsmorphologische Form der Sprache insgesamt manifestiert sich in der Struktur des Flexionssystems. Hier liegt damit eine Form im Sinne des in 1.1 explizierten zweiten Formbegriffs vor. Die Elemente des Flexionssystems sind die einzelnen Flexionsformen mit ihren durch ihre Stellung im System geprägten formalen (ausdrucksseitigen) und inhaltlichen Eigenschaften. Doch will man der Form die Funktion gegenüberstellen, so ist eine solche Gegenüberstellung nur sinnvoll, wenn man sie auf die Form im engeren Sinne, d. h. auf die Ausdrucksseite des morphologischen Systems bzw. der einzelnen morphologischen Einheiten, bezieht. Die Funktion der Flexionsmorphologie im Sprachsystem, also ihre “Leistung”, besteht in der Symbolisierung von grammatischen Kategorien wie Numerus, Kasus, Tempus, Modus und Person usw. am Wort durch dessen formale Modifizierung. Die Funktion des einzelnen morphologischen Markers (oder Flexivs) als Formelement besteht entsprechend in der Symbolisierung wenigstens einer grammatischen Teilkategorie wie Plural, Genitiv, Präteritum, Konjunktiv und 1. Person. In der Flexionsmorphologie schlägt sich das Verhältnis von Form und Funktion im Zeichenverhältnis von Marker (Ausdruck) und Kategorie (Inhalt) innerhalb der Grenzen des Wortes nieder (vgl. Art. 64⫺66). Zunächst ist klarzustellen, in welchem Sinne die morphologischen Marker Form sind oder Form aufweisen. Es gibt sehr unterschiedliche Marker, die sich jedoch drei Haupttypen zuordnen lassen. Additive Marker resultieren aus der Hinzufügung phonologischer Substanz an das Wort (Affixe aller Art, Reduplikation), modifikatorische Marker aus der qualitativen Veränderung der phonologischen Substanz des Wortes (alle Alternationen) und subtraktive Marker aus der Tilgung phonologischer Substanz des Wortes (“Alternationen mit null”); vgl. dazu jeweils dt. Schwester ⫺ Plural Schwestern, dt.

11


Mutter ⫺ Plural Mütter und isl. sonur ⫺ Akkusativ Singular son. Additive Marker sind innerhalb des Wortes segmental abtrennbar, bilden Morpheme, die die grammatischen Kategorien direkt symbolisieren. Modifikatorische Marker symbolisieren die Kategorien dagegen indirekt durch eine formale Veränderung des Basismorphems, und dieses Morphem steht dann sowohl für die lexikalische Bedeutung als auch für die entsprechenden Kategorien. Subtraktive Marker schließlich symbolisieren die Kategorien ebenfalls indirekt, durch das Fehlen eines Morphems, das in der Grundform des Wortes vorhanden ist; es existiert überhaupt kein abtrennbarer Teil des Wortes, der für die Kategorien steht. Für zwei der Markertypen gilt also, daß sie keine eigene segmentale Form haben, sondern sich lediglich in der Form des Wortes ausdrücken. Sie haben keinen Morphem-, sondern Prozeßcharakter. Dennoch sind sie natürlich formale Einheiten der Morphologie, Ausdruckselemente. Auch in diesem Sinne ist also die Form der Wörter mehr als deren äußere Gestalt, denn sie reflektiert zugleich auch das formale Verhältnis zur jeweiligen paradigmatischen Grundform (vgl. Kap.VII). Das Verhältnis von Form und Funktion in der Flexionsmorphologie stellt sich keinesfalls als trivial dar. Die Flexionssysteme der meisten Sprachen (aller nicht strikt agglutinierenden) sind nicht nach dem Prinzip der Eineindeutigkeit von Marker und grammatischer Kategorie aufgebaut. Erstens repräsentieren formal identische Marker oft unterschiedliche Kategorien, und identische Kategorien werden oft durch unterschiedliche Marker repräsentiert. So symbolisiert einerseits der Marker -i in der russischen Form knig-i entweder den Genitiv Singular oder den Nominativ Plural, und andererseits wird der russische Genitiv Singular in der Form knig-i durch den Marker -i und in der Form stol-a durch den Marker -a symbolisiert. (Nicht so im Türkischen: hier symbolisiert z. B. der Marker -lar/-ler stets den Plural, und der Plural wird stets durch -lar/-ler symbolisiert.) Zweitens repräsentiert ein Marker oft mehrere Kategorien zugleich, und eine Kategorie wird durch mehrere Marker zugleich repräsentiert. Vgl. einerseits die lateinische Verbform put-o, wo der Marker -o die Kategorien 1. Person, Singular, Präsens, Indikativ und Aktiv zugleich symbolisiert, und andererseits die deutsche Verbform ge-sung-en, wo die Kategorie Partizip Perfekt durch das Präfix ge-, das Suffix -en und den Ablaut zu-

gleich symbolisiert wird. (Demgegenüber symbolisiert im Türkischen ein Marker stets genau eine Kategorie, und eine Kategorie wird stets durch genau einen Marker symbolisiert.) In einzelnen Sprachen finden sich mitunter sehr komplexe Ausprägungen des Verhältnisses von Marker und Kategorien; vgl. die Symbolisierungsverhältnisse in den deutschen (starken) Verbformen: er

3. PERS

wirf

SG

-t

PRÄS

IND

Abb. 1.1: Er wirft

Noch komplexer stellt sich das Verhältnis von Markern und Kategorien in den analytischen Verbformen dar, wo nach dem Tempus flektierte Verbstämme zusammen mit den morphologischen Markern eines zweiten (infiniten) Verbs syntaktische Tempusmarker bilden: er

3. PERS

wird

(-t)

werf

-en

IND

SG

PRÄS

INF

FUT

Abb. 1.2: Er wird werfen

Das Verhältnis von Form und Funktion in der Flexionsmorphologie (und in der Morphosyntax), das sich im Verhältnis zwischen den Markern und den grammatischen Kategorien ausdrückt, zeigt auf diese Weise deutlich die Spezifik der natürlichen Sprache gegenüber allen anderen semiotischen Systemen.

3.

Morphologische Form in der Sprache

Wie eben festgestellt, sind die natürlichen Sprachen semiotische Systeme einer besonderen Spezifik. Sie beruhen auf der dem Menschen eigenen, angeborenen Sprachfähigkeit.

12 Ihr Wesen besteht in der gegenseitigen Zuordnung von Bedeutungsstrukturen und Lautstrukturen, die jeweils nach grundlegend unterschiedlichen Prinzipien aufgebaut sind. Die Bedeutungsstrukturen stellen vieldimensionale, nichtlinear organisierte Komplexe von Konzepten mit logischen Verknüpfungen dar, die eng an das Denken gebunden sind. Ihr Aufbau ist determiniert durch die Bedingungen der menschlichen Kognition. Die Lautstrukturen bilden demgegenüber zeitlichlinear gegliederte Abfolgen von zu Silben zusammengefaßten Lauten mit entsprechenden suprasegmentalen Eigenschaften. Ihr Aufbau ist determiniert durch die Bedingungen der menschlichen Artikulation und Perzeption. Zwischen den Einheiten der beiden Ebenen der natürlichen Sprache gibt es (anders als in allen künstlichen Zeichensystemen) keine unmittelbare Zuordnung; die Zuordnung geschieht durch einen komplexen Umkodierungsmechanismus, das Sprachsystem. Ein wesentlicher Schritt der Umkodierung besteht dabei darin, daß semantischen Konzepten Wortschatzeinheiten, lexikalische Wörter, zugewiesen werden, die das Lexikon der jeweiligen Sprache bereitstellt. Wörter sind die kleinsten relativ selbständigen sprachlichen Einheiten, in deren Rahmen eine Bedeutung und eine Lautform einander zugeordnet sind, d. h. die kleinsten relativ selbständigen sprachlichen Zeichen. Hier liegt dann eine lexikalische Kodierung von Bedeutungseinheiten vor. Die Wörter werden nach den Regeln der Syntax zu Sätzen zusammengefaßt, die ihrerseits die größten grammatisch einheitlich strukturierten sprachlichen Zeichen darstellen, in deren Rahmen eine Bedeutung und eine Lautform einander zugeordnet sind. Das (lexikalische) Wort und der Satz sind die Grundeinheiten der Grammatik. Nicht alle semantischen Konzepte werden in der Form von lexikalischen Wörtern kodiert. Es existiert eine spezielle Klasse von Konzepten, die sich beziehen: ⫺ auf bestimmte allgemeine Eigenschaften und Sachverhalte der in den Äußerungen widergespiegelten objektiven Realität, die in der menschlichen Perzeption eine ausgezeichnete Rolle spielen und darüber hinaus für die gesamte kognitive und praktische Auseinandersetzung des Menschen mit seiner Umwelt von Bedeutung sind (z. B. die Zahligkeit von Objekten und die Aktantenrollen); ⫺ auf die allgemeinsten Faktoren der sprachlichen Kommunikation wie die Kommuni-


kationspartner, die Kommunikationssituation, die Kommunikationsintention usw. (z. B. die Personen der Rede und die zeitliche Fixierung von Handlungen bezogen auf die Zeit der Äußerung). Solche Konzepte tendieren aufgrund ihrer Generalität zur nichtlexikalischen, d. h. zur grammatischen Kodierung. Die grammatische Kodierung basiert auf den beiden grammatischen Grundeinheiten. So ergeben sich zwei Möglichkeiten: Die Konzepte können entweder im Satz, d. h. als syntaktische Kategorien, oder aber im Wort, d. h. als morphologische Kategorien, kodiert werden. Die syntaktische Kodierung erfolgt durch die Reihenfolge der syntaktischen Konstituenten oder durch die Verwendung von “grammatischen Wörtern”, die morphologische Kodierung durch formale Veränderungen am Wort. Man spricht hier auch vom “analytischen” bzw. vom “synthetischen Verfahren” in der Grammatik. Beide Verfahren leisten das gleiche, nur mit unterschiedlichen Mitteln (Humboldt 1836). Während alle Sprachen das analytische Verfahren zur Kodierung grammatischer Kategorien verwenden (auch die mit den am stärksten ausgeprägten Flexionssystemen), findet sich das synthetische Verfahren nur in einer Teilklasse der Sprachen, den Sprachen mit fusionierender (flektierender) und agglutinierender Strukturbildung. Anders gesagt, nur ein Teil der Sprachen hat eine “grammatische Morphologie”, eine Flexionsmorphologie. Diese “Bevorzugung” des analytischen Verfahrens resultiert aus der spezifischen Weise der Herausbildung grammatischer Einheiten im Laufe der Sprachgeschichte in den einzelnen Sprachen, der Grammatikalisierung: Wörter mit einer ursprünglichen lexikalischen Bedeutung entwickeln sich in einem ersten Schritt zunächst zu “grammatischen Wörtern”, also zu syntaktischen Kategorienmarkern. Diese tendieren dann längerfristig dazu, sich unter entsprechenden Bedingungen in einem zweiten Schritt mit ihrem jeweiligen Träger formal zu einem einheitlichen Wort zu verbinden, sich also zu morphologischen Markern weiterzuentwickeln (Lehmann 1995; Art. 145). Wenn man berücksichtigt, daß es aufgrund des unterschiedlichen Alters der syntaktischen Marker faktisch nicht möglich ist, daß zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt alle syntaktischen Marker einer Sprache zugleich in morphologische Marker übergehen, so ergibt sich, daß das Vorhan-


densein morphologischer Kategorienmarker in einer Sprache immer auch das Vorhandensein syntaktischer Kategorienmarker voraussetzt. Synchron gesehen läßt sich sagen, daß immer dann in einer Sprache Flexionsmorphologie existiert, wenn lexikalische und grammatische Kodierung innerhalb des Wortes miteinander kombiniert auftreten. Das Vorkommen bzw. Fehlen von morphologischen Kategorienmarkern bildet die Grundlage für die typologische Klassifizierung der Sprachen in fusionierende und agglutinierende Sprachen (flektierende im allgemeineren Sinne von ‘Flexion aufweisend’) einerseits und isolierende Sprachen andrerseits. Doch auch die Sprachen, die über eine Flexionsmorphologie verfügen, differieren beträchtlich darin, in welchem Maße sie von ihr “Gebrauch machen”, welche Rolle die Morphologie im Vergleich zur Syntax im Rahmen der grammatischen Strukturbildung jeweils spielt. So unterscheidet man unter ihnen häufig zwischen “synthetischen” Sprachen wie Latein bzw. Ungarisch und “analytischen” Sprachen wie Englisch bzw. den (meisten) Kreolsprachen. Das reicht jedoch nicht aus, um die wirklichen Verhältnisse adäquat zu erfassen, denn tatsächlich unterscheiden sich die existierenden Sprachen in der Ausprägung ihrer Flexionsmorphologie nicht binär, sondern graduell. Beispielsweise weisen die normalerweise gleichermaßen als fusionierend klassifizierten modernen germanischen Sprachen von Isländisch über Deutsch, Festlandsskandinavisch/Niederländisch und Englisch bis hin zum Afrikaans eine graduell abnehmende Ausprägung der Flexionsmorphologie auf. Will man erklären, weshalb die Sprachen die Flexionsmorphologie in so unterschiedlichem Maße zur Kodierung von grammatischen Kategorien nutzen, so muß man sich wiederum auf die Grammatikalisierung und damit auf die diachronen Verhältnisse beziehen. Die quantitative Ausprägung der Flexionsmorphologie in einer Sprache ergibt sich aus dem Entwicklungsstand der in ihr sich vollziehenden Grammatikalisierungsprozesse. Diese verlaufen in der Regel so, daß lexikalische Wörter zunächst zu analytischisolierenden Kategorienmarkern grammatikalisiert werden und sich im Laufe der Sprachgeschichte dann zu synthetisch-agglutinierenden und synthetisch-fusionierenden Markern weiterentwickeln, um schließlich wieder abgebaut zu werden. Sie werden dann in der Regel durch neu herausgebildete analy-

13 tisch-isolierende Marker ersetzt usw. (vgl. Lehmann 1995: 12⫺16). Bleiben wir beim genannten Beispiel. Das Isländische ist eine nahezu klassische fusionierende Sprache. Seit dem Beginn seiner Überlieferung hat es nicht nur keine Flexionsmorphologie abgebaut, sondern durch Morphologisierung (Art. 146), d. h. durch die Entwicklung von syntaktischen Fügungen zu morphologischen Formen, neue Morphologie herausgebildet. Beispiele dafür sind die Herausbildung der bestimmten Substantivformen (mit Schlußartikel), vgl. hinn hundr ‘jener Hund’ > ‘der Hund’ > hundr hinn > aisl. hundr-inn > nisl. hundur-inn, der medialen Verben, vgl. kalla sik ‘sich nennen, genannt werden’ (zu kalla ‘rufen’) > aisl. kallask > nisl. kallast ‘heißen’, und der Imperative mit inkorporiertem Pronomen, vgl. aisl. kalla ‘ruf’ > kalla pu´ ‘ruf (du)’ > nisl. kalla-du. Dagegen hat das Deutsche seit dem Althochdeutschen viel Morphologie eingebüßt, speziell im Bereich der substantivischen Kasusflexion und in der Konjunktivbildung (Art. 155). Die festlandsskandinavischen Sprachen haben zwar wie das Isländische bestimmte Substantivformen und mediale Verben herausgebildet, aber nahezu die gesamte Kasusmorphologie der Substantive und Adjektive sowie die gesamte Personalmorphologie der Verben verloren. Diese Entwicklung ist im Englischen bekanntlich noch wesentlich weiter vorangeschritten; es existiert nur noch eine rudimentäre Flexionsmorphologie. Im Afrikaans schließlich ist die Flexion noch in stärkerem Maße abgebaut worden als im Englischen, speziell im verbalen Bereich. So gibt es überhaupt keine Personalflexion und nicht einmal mehr ein synthetisches Präteritum (hy het gewerk ‘er arbeitete’). Die vorhandenen grammatischen Kategorien werden fast ausschließlich syntaktisch symbolisiert. Abgesehen von seiner recht komplexen Pluralbildung der Substantive tendiert das Afrikaans stark zu einer isolierenden Sprache. Synchronische Erklärungen dafür, weshalb bestimmte Sprachen viel, andere dagegen nur wenig oder überhaupt keine Flexionsmorphologie aufweisen, gibt es nicht. Natürlich existieren offensichtliche und plausible Zusammenhänge zwischen dem Auftreten von morphologischen und dem Nichtauftreten von syntaktischen Kategorienmarkern sowie umgekehrt; man vgl. etwa die morphologische Kodierung der Aktanten im Lateinischen und ihre syntaktische Kodierung im

14 Englischen. Doch das ist eine Faktenbeschreibung und keine Erklärung, mit welchen theoretischen Mitteln man solche Zusammenhänge auch zu erfassen trachtet. Außerdem ist zu berücksichtigen, daß die einzelnen Sprachen unterschiedlich viele grammatische Kategorien, unabhängig davon, ob morphologisch oder syntaktisch realisiert, aufweisen, so daß das Vorhandensein vieler morphologischer Marker nicht automatisch auch das Vorhandensein weniger oder gar keiner syntaktischer Marker bedeutet und umgekehrt. Des weiteren zeigt sich bei näherer Betrachtung, daß aus dem Auftreten morphologischer bzw. syntaktischer Marker für eine Kategorie keine strikten Schlußfolgerungen über das Auftreten von Markern des jeweils anderen Typs gezogen werden können. So läßt sich beispielsweise die häufig postulierte Annahme nicht halten, daß die Kategorien der Person und des Numerus in Sprachen mit einer ausgeprägten verbalen Personalmorphologie nicht durch obligatorische Personalpronomen symbolisiert werden, während sie in Sprachen mit einer wenig ausgeprägten oder ganz fehlenden verbalen Personalmorphologie durch Personalpronomen symbolisiert werden müssen. Zwar weisen erwartungsgemäß viele Sprachen mit einer ausgeprägten Personalmorphologie wie Lateinisch und Italienisch in ihren Verbparadigmen keine obligatorischen Personalpronomen auf, während viele Sprachen mit schwach ausgeprägter bzw. ohne Personalmorphologie wie Englisch und Schwedisch obligatorische Personalpronomen haben. Doch andererseits existieren entgegen dieser Annahme nicht nur Sprachen mit einer ausgeprägten Personalmorphologie und obligatorischen Personalpronomen wie Russisch und Deutsch, sondern sogar auch Sprachen ohne jede Personalmorphologie und ohne obligatorische Personalpronomen wie Japanisch (Comrie 1990: 141f.). Welche morphologischen Kategorien eine Sprache im Rahmen der universell gegebenen Möglichkeiten “auswählt”, resultiert aus dem Verlauf ihrer Geschichte. Das alles bedeutet jedoch nicht, daß die Sprachen mit ausschließlich isolierender grammatischer Strukturbildung überhaupt keine Morphologie aufweisen. Alle Sprachen sind aufgrund der gesellschaftlichen Weiterentwicklung mit der Notwendigkeit einer Erweiterung ihres Lexikons konfrontiert, um neue Begriffe ausdrücken zu können. Abgesehen von der (nicht immer gegebenen) Möglichkeit der Entlehnung kann das nur da-


durch geschehen, daß aus bereits vorhandenen Wörtern (oder Stämmen) neue Wörter gebildet werden. Hier liegt ein der Grammatikalisierung paralleler Prozeß vor, den man als Komposition bezeichnen kann. Zunächst werden zwei Wörter zu einem Kompositum zusammengefaßt. Unter entsprechenden Bedingungen kann sich eines der Glieder des Kompositums dann im Laufe der Sprachgeschichte zum Derivativ weiterentwickeln. Das Vorkommen von Derivation in einer Sprache setzt das Vorkommen von Komposition voraus. Da alle Sprachen zur Aufrechterhaltung einer effektiven Kommunikation ihr Lexikon erweitern müssen (wenn auch in unterschiedlichem Ausmaß), weisen auch alle Sprachen eine Wortbildungsmorphologie, eine “lexikalische Morphologie” auf. Das gilt für Sprachen jeder grammatischen Struktur, so auch für solche mit strikt isolierender grammatischer Strukturbildung wie beispielsweise Vietnamesisch. Sprachen ohne jede Morphologie, also ohne Wörter mit innerer Struktur, gibt es demzufolge nicht.

4.

Zitierte Literatur

Alerten, D. J. (1979), Essentials of Grammar Theory: A Consense View of Syntax and Morphology. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Anderson, Steven (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: University Press Arens, Hans (1969), Sprachwissenschaft: Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Bd. 1⫺2 Frankfurt/M.: Fischer Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Bopp, Franz (1816), Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache. Frankfurt/M.: Andraeische Buchhandlung Bopp, Franz (1833), Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslawischen, Gothischen und Deutschen. Berlin: Dümmler Comrie, Bernard (1990), “Holistic Versus Partial Typology”. In: Bahner, Werner & Schildt, Joachim & Viehweger, Dieter (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Linguists. Berlin/GDR, August 10 ⫺ August 15, 1987, Bd. I. Berlin/DDR: Akademie Verlag, 139⫺148 Coseriu, Eugeniu (1972), “Über die Sprachtypologie Wilhelm von Humboldts”. In: Hösle, Johannes & Eitel, Wolfgang (Hrsg.), Beiträge zur vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte. Festschrift für Kurt Wais zum 65. Geburtstag. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 107⫺135

2. The term morphology Gabelentz, Georg von der (21901), Die Sprachwissenschaft, ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse. Leipzig: Tauchnitz [11891] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1955), Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe, Bd. XIII: Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. Hamburg: Wegner Grimm, Jacob (1818⫺1837), Deutsche Grammatik, Bd. 1⫺4. Göttingen: Dietrich Harris, Zellig S. (1946), “From Morpheme to Utterance”. Language 18, 169⫺183 Hjelmslev, Louis (1943), Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæggelse. Festskrift udgivet af Københavns Universitet i anledning af Universitetets Aarsfest. Copenhagen: Bianco Lumo Bogtrykkeri Humboldt, Alexander von (1836), Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts. Berlin: Dümmler Klaus, Georg (101974), “Funktion”. In: Klaus & Buhr (Hrsg.), 437⫺438 Klaus, Georg & Buhr, Manfred (101974, Hrsg.), Philosophisches Wörterbuch. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut [11964] Kröber, Günter & Warnke, Camilla (1974), “Form”. In: Klaus & Buhr (Hrsg.), 409⫺412 Lehmann, Christian (1995), Thoughts on Grammaticalization: A Programmatic Sketch. München: Lincom Europa Matthews, P[eter] H[ugo] (21992), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [11974] Meier, Georg Friedrich (1961), Das Ze´ro-Problem in der Linguistik: Kritische Untersuchungen zur strukturalistischen Analyse der Relevanz sprachlicher Form. Berlin/DDR: Akademie Verlag (Schriften zur Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 2)

15 Nida, Eugene (21949), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press [11946] Paul, Hermann (1879), “Zur geschichte des germanischen vocalismus”. Halle: Niemeyer (Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 6) Paul, Hermann (1880), Principien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle: Niemeyer Schlegel, August Wilhelm (1818), Observations sur la Langue et la Litte´rature Provenc˛ales. Paris [Nachdruck: 1971], Tübingen: Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 7)] Schleicher, August (1859), Die deutsche Sprache. Leipzig: Cotta Schleicher, August (1869), Morphologie der Sprache. St. Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften Simmel, Georg (41958), Soziologie. Berlin [11908] Spencer, Andrew (1993), Morphological Theory: An Introduction to Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Voigt, Wolfram (1978), “Gestalt”. In: Hörz, Herbert & Löther, Rolf (Hrsg.), Philosophie und Naturwissenschaften. Berlin: Dietz, 320⫺321 Warnke, Camilla (1974), “Inhalt”. In: Klaus & Buhr (Hrsg.), 574⫺576 Wildgen, Wolfgang (1984), Goethe als Wegbereiter einer universalen Morphologie. Trier: Linguistic Agency University of Trier (L. A. U. T. Series A 125) [urspr. Abdruck aus dem Jahresbericht des Präsidenten 1982, Universität Bayreuth] Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit: Ein Beitrag zur morphologischen Theoriebildung. Berlin/DDR: Akademie Verlag (Studia grammatica 21)

Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel, Berlin (Deutschland)

2. The term morphology 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Morphology in German biology Morphology in French biology Early use of the term morphology in linguistics Some linguistic acceptations of morphology Conclusion References

1.

Introduction

The term morphology has been used in linguistics for well over a hundred years as a general description for the phenomena of ac-

cidence and word-formation. The term was borrowed from the biological sciences, and reflects, consciously or unconsciously, the view of language as an organism characterized by systems susceptible to synchronic and diachronic analysis. It was in German that the term was first used, and it is in a German work of reference that it is first glossed, with no details of source or date, as the “umfassende Lehre von Naturformen”, and the equivalent of Anatomie (Pierer 1835: 152). The Deutsches Wörterbuch, however, has no entry for the word

16 (Grimm & Grimm 1859⫺1960), which is also absent from many 19th- and 20th-century German dictionaries; but a recent Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen defines it as being concerned with forms and their development (Pfeifer 1989: 128). The first French dictionary definition of morphologie is that by Barre´ (1842: 806) as “Histoire des formes que peut reveˆtir la matie`re”, wording repeated verbatim by Littre´ (1863: 630 c), with further definitions, including one in which it is described as “l’organographie expliqueé par les transformations auxquelles sont soumises les parties des ve´ge´taux” (St.-Hilaire 1841: 17). Littre´’s entry continues with a note of the use of morphologie in linguistics, and glosses it as “doctrine de la forme des mots et de leurs transformations”. A further entry under morphologique notes morphological classification as the distinction of languages into isolative, agglutinative and inflective types. St.-Hilaire was not, however, the first French biologist to use the term; it had been used some twenty years earlier by Blainville (1822: 25, also titlepage). This is noted by the Grand Larousse de la langue française, which also gives a useful survey of the use of the term in linguistics (1975: 3645⫺3648). In English, morphology is glossed by the OED as “the science of form”, which gives acceptations in biology and philology. The definition of biological usage is comprehensive, covering structures, homologies and metamorphoses in animals and plants. The earliest citation, dated 1830, ascribed to “R. Knox, Cloquet’s Anat[omy]”, derives from a French work (see below, 3). After further instances of the use of the term in biology, indicating a rather varied usage in the 19th century, there follow three citations for the use of morphology in English linguistic contexts. The earliest is a footnote stating that “By the morphology of a language we mean the general laws of its grammatical structure” (Farrar 1870: 160 n). The next citation, only a year later, divides morphology into flexion, derivation and composition, offering the alternative term Wordlore, derived perhaps from the relatively infrequent Wortlehre (Kennedy 1871: 21). A third entry, from a London literary magazine, previews Joseph Wright’s Historical German Grammar (Wright 1907), the first volume of which was to deal with phonology, morphology and in-


flections, so that morphology implicitly excludes accidence; in the published work, Wright uses the terms phonology, word-formation and accidence.

2.

Morphology in German biology

The word Morphologie was unrecorded before Goethe used it in a diary entry for 25 September 1796; it occurs again a few weeks later (12 November) in a letter he wrote to Schiller, and in Schiller’s reply the following day. Goethe also used it as the heading of a loose-leaf fragment of about the same date (Matthaei & Troll & Wolf 1964, eds.: 128; Kuhn & Engelhardt 1986, eds.: 418⫺420). The conclusion of this fragment indicates clearly what Goethe understood by the term: “Die Gestalt ist ein bewegliches, ein vergehendes, Gestaltenlehre ist Verwandlungslehre. Die Lehre der Metamorphose ist der Schlüssel zu allen Zeichen der Natur” (Matthaei & Troll & Wolf 1964, eds.: 128). Goethe’s interest in metamorphosis found practical expression as early as 1790 in his Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, first published in 1817 in a collection of papers entitled Zur Morphologie. In an introductory essay he speaks of a new discipline, “welche wir die Morphologie nennen möchten”, and makes it clear in his ensuing remarks that he was ever conscious of the mutability of natural phenomena (Matthaei & Troll & Wolf 1954, eds: 7). In the later 19th century this insight was perhaps too readily interpreted as an anticipation of evolutionism, but it is also consistent with ontogenetic development. However Goethe’s views are interpreted, it is clear that he saw the underlying principle of morphology as dynamic rather than static. (On Goethe’s use of morphology see, for example, Altner 1986; Brady 1987; Kuhn 1987). While the date 1796 gives Goethe a strong claim to have coined the term, his first use of it in print (1817) has been shown, in a fully documented study (Schmid 1935), to have been antedated by the craniologist Karl Friedrich Burdach. Burdach used it as early as 1800, in a footnote in his Propädeutik zum Studium der gesammten Heilkunst, and several more times in other writings, before it appeared in the title of Ueber die Aufgabe der Morphologie, an address he gave on the occasion of the opening of the Anatomical Insti-

2. The term morphology

tute of the University of Königsberg in 1817, shortly after Goethe’s Zur Morphologie appeared. He sent a copy of the work to Goethe, who acknowledged it with gratitude, “da ich es durchaus mit meiner Sinnesweise stimmend fand” (Schmid 1935: 601, 603 f., 609). Burdach described morphology as the study not so much of product (Gewordenes) as of process (Werden); his conception of morphology may therefore, like Goethe’s, be considered to imply development. While Burdach’s priority in print is assured, it is likely that Goethe’s use of the word Morphologie was far more influential in giving it currency. This is particularly noticeable in the writings of such a prominent evolutionist as Ernst Haeckel, who devoted a whole book to a comparison of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck (Haeckel 1882). But Burdach was not entirely forgotten in his own day: two years after his 1817 paper his name appears conjointly with Goethe’s as a source, in which the subject, histology, is described as running “parallel der Lehre von dem räumlichen Verhältniß, von der Form und Lage der Organe, welche man nicht umfassend, doch bezeichnend mit Gˆthe und Burdach […] Morphologie nennen kann” (Mayer 1819: 7). It is clear from earlier remarks that Mayer sees histology and morphology alike as two branches of anatomy. Goethe, however, distinguished morphology from anatomy, for in the latter “[d]as Lebendige ist zwar in Elemente zerlegt, aber man kann es aus diesen nicht wieder zustellen und beleben” (Matthaei & Troll & Wolf 1954, eds.: 6 f.). There seems to be little trace of Goethe’s or Burdach’s vitalism in Mayer’s use of the term.

3.

Morphology in French biology

It is perhaps significant that the earliest French instances of the term morphology occur a few years after Goethe’s work, but they are not necessarily dependent on it. Blainville devotes De l’organisation des animaux, ou principes d’anatomie compareé (Blainville 1822) to “la Morphologie et l’Aiste´siologie”, the latter being approximately the functions of the senses. An early chapter makes it clear that morphology is understood as the study of exterior shapes, and sets out what may be broadly considered a programme for the systematic description of organisms; they are distinguished, for example, according to

17 whether the parts radiate from a central point or are arranged along a spine (Blainville 1822: 25⫺31). In this respect, Blainville’s remarks suggest an approach to anatomical typology. While his treatise is primarily concerned with static considerations, he also notes, inter alia, that the anatomist should observe such matters as the interaction of parts, the way in which one part may help to perfect another, and even the sequence of developments in the various parts (Blainville 1822: lvi). The next instances of the use of the term in French may be traced through the OED quotation, which proves to derive from a translation, not of Cloquet, but of P. A. Bećlard’s E´le´mens d’anatomie geńe´rale (21827). Bećlard notes that physical bodies may be investigated either at rest or in motion, the former study being anatomy, which some have designated as “morphology” (Bećlard 21827: 2; English translation: Knox 1830: 2). Bećlard’s wording is unchanged from his first edition (Bećlard 11823: 2). The work by Cloquet which Knox translated was the Traite´ d’anatomie descriptive (Cloquet 41824) which became A system of human Anatomy (Knox 1828). A footnote in this work lists, as rival terms for Anatomy, “Morphology, Physiography, Organography, and Organology, which, however, have by no means been generally adopted” (Knox 1828: 1; cf. Cloquet 61836: 1). (The possible presence of this note in Cloquet’s first edition (1816) would make him the first French scholar to speak of morphologie). In the prolegomena of another work Cloquet recommends the term Anatomie descriptive in preference to a suggestion by “M. Mayer” (i.e. Mayer 1819) of Morphologie. His reason, that the latter has more to do with the internal structure of organs than with their position and relationship (Cloquet 1826: 4), suggests Mayer’s description of histology, his main topic, rather than that of anatomy; it therefore matches the description of morphology in Cloquet 1824 and the other French scholars considered so far, and contrasts with the distinction Goethe drew between morphology and anatomy. It is not until St.-Hilaire (1841) that dependence on Goethe is explicit in French scholarship, and the concept of metamorphosis central to it. The Larousse du XIXe sie`cle (1874: 579) even gives St.-Hilaire the credit for introducing the term to the French language, and goes on to explain that morphol-

18


ogy is based on the underlying principle of metamorphosis, which is explicitly defined as the transformation of the embryo into the mature plant. Goethe, it notes, is generally considered to be the pioneer of plant morphology. In general, the term morphology seems to imply a concern for the living organism in botanical and biological sources, but to be coterminous with anatomy or dissection in medical texts. Burdach is an apparent exception here; his thought had known affinities with Naturphilosophie (see Schmid 1935: 617; Picard 1951).

4.

Early use of the term morphology in linguistics

4.1. August Schleicher In linguistics, as in biology, it was a German, August Schleicher, a friend of Haeckel and an avowed evolutionist, who introduced the term. He first used it in 1859 in the title of a paper which deals, initially at least, with the study of the structure of individual words, establishing on purely theoretical grounds that there are four possible structural classes, according to the relationship between the semantic and syntactic components (“bedeutung und beziehung”) of words. This may be absent, expressed by coalescence of words, by inflection, or by a combination of these features. The first three classes are then related to what are now known as isolative, agglutinative and inflective languages; corresponding to the fourth class of word-structures are languages which show both agglutinative and inflective features (Schleicher 1859: 2⫺5). Schleicher does not explicitly distinguish inflection and word-formation, though by implication inflection seems to be regarded as a subset of word-formation. On the whole, the paper is more interesting as an exercise in linguistic typology than as a study of morphology itself, but it is the first instance of the use of the term in a linguistic context. Schleicher discussed the term briefly the following year in Die deutsche Sprache, where he divided the study of language up into phonology, morphology, Functionslehre and syntax. Morphology apparently includes both accidence and word-formation, for Functionslehre is something like an inverse study of morphology, starting from the effects produced by affixes as well as inflections (Schleicher 1860: 122, 126). In this view,

Schleicher appears to anticipate Jespersen, who notes two ways of looking at language, to “take a form as given and then inquire into its meaning and function”, and to “take the meaning or function and ask how that is expressed in form” (Jespersen 1914: 39⫺44, esp. 40). Although Schleicher introduced the term into linguistics, he did not use the term exclusively; for while the text of Vol. II of his Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (Schleicher 1861⫺ 1862) is headed “Morphologie”, the titlepage describes the work as a “Kurzer Abriß einer Formenlehre der indogermanischen Ursprache”. However, the early date of the entry in Littre´ (1863) suggests that the term morphologie was rapidly gaining currency; and two years later the Revue des cours litte´raires for 1865 presented an account of a series of lectures on “Morphologie des langues” given by Schleicher at Jena, in which he again discusses typology, and speaks of the emergence of inflective languages as the third and culminating stage in the development of languages, in which language is “organized” (Schleicher 1865: 802). 4.2. Anticipations of Schleicher For a first statement of the evolution of linguistic types we may go back to Friedrich Schlegel’s Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808), which postulates a progression from isolative through agglutinative to inflectional languages. It does, however, also note a tendency in more recent languages towards analytical structure (Schlegel 1808: 49 f.). It is comparative grammar, i.e. the resemblance of the inflectional systems of the Indo-European languages, which allows us to postulate their relationship, rather than etymological sleight of hand (1808: 28). Inflections themselves are unanalysable (1808: 41), while affixes in agglutinative languages are themselves independent words. In determining the relationship of languages from their grammatical structure, though not in a preference for highly-inflected languages, Schlegel was anticipated by Sir William Jones. His celebrated statement that no “philologer” could compare Latin, Greek and Sanskrit without being convinced that they had a common origin (Jones 1788: 422⫺423) is also based on what may anachronistically be called morphological homologies.

19

2. The term morphology

Though these diachronic implications were new, accidence had long been familiar in the paradigms of teaching grammars; traces of the appreciation of word-formation, however, are rather more tenuous. Interest in compound words seems to have been semantic, and the relation between the parts of compound words was the subject of (largely fanciful) etymologies; derivational affixes might be treated alongside inflections (for Priscian see Robins 1993: 89), or examined under the heading of “etymology”, as in John Wallis’s Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae. There were numerous editions of this work, the earliest in 1653 (editor’s introduction to Wallis 1972: 28 f.). Schottelius, too, dealt exhaustively with both derivation and composition in Book II of the Ausführliche Arbeit von der teutschen HaubtSprache (Schottelius 1663; see Brekle & Kastovsky 1977: 9). Schleicher’s view of the morphological development of languages enabled him to suggest, in an open letter to Haeckel, that the positive results of linguistic comparison in tracing the affiliation of languages lent support to evolutionary theory in biology. The assertion also accords with his view that languages are natural organisms which have come into being involuntarily and grow in accordance with rigid laws (Schleicher 1860: 118⫺121; 1863: 6). A similar view had already been expressed by W. v. Humboldt, who begins a substantial passage in his Vergleichendes Sprachstudium (1820 [1905]) with a forthright declaration to this effect, and continues with the suggestion that languages should be classified according to their inner structures, as are the various families of plants (1905: 12 f.). A few years later, in 1827, Karl Ferdinand Becker began the preface to his Organism der Sprache with the bold claim that language, as an organic product of human nature, is itself in all its parts and relationships an organic whole. He goes on to note that he will apply the principle of the organism to the investigation of one special area of language ⫺ derivation (Becker 21841: vi). Later passages show an appreciation of language as an organism characterized throughout by the consistency of its structures, and observe, in the spirit of Goethe, that the naturalist will recognize from the structure (Bau) of the individual organ the nature of the whole creature (1841: 10).

5.

Some linguistic acceptations of morphology Ten years passed between Schleicher’s first use of the term Morphologie in a linguistic context and Farrar’s footnote of 1869. It is not, however, Schleicher whom Farrar quotes as his authority on the comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages, but Bopp, whose Vergleichende Grammatik had first appeared in 1833. Farrar cites this work from the French translation by Breál (1868), but neither the original nor the translation, in fact, speaks of “morphology”. Breál does, however, use the term explicitly after Schleicher in another work, which appeared in 1866 in the Revue des cours litte´raires (Breál 1866: 65). This antedates the first use of the term morphology in English, and may conceivably be its source, though such dependence can be no more than conjectural. Derivation and composition formed an integral part of the systematic analysis of languages as developed in the 19th century and afterwards, but while the methods used may be described as morphological, the study usually goes under another name; thus German scholars like Grimm, Wilmanns or Paul speak of Wortbildung, and differ in the place they accord it in their grammars. All deal first with phonology, but Grimm (1822) examines word-formation after accidence and before syntax; Wilmanns (1893⫺1909) deals with word-formation before accidence, and does not produce a syntax; Paul (1920) places word-formation after accidence and syntax. As Henzen (1965: 3) remarks, all these arrangements have their justification. Even for those who use the term morphology its demarcation from syntax is also rather indefinite. The extensive section on morphology in Meillet’s Caracte`res geńe´raux des langues germaniques (41930), concerned almost exclusively with accidence, concludes with a brief chapter on word-order, which in English has become something of a substitute for inflection, by inference changing the nature of the language from synthetic to analytic. Earlier in the century, Baudouin de Courtenay had challenged the traditional notions of typology more fundamentally: he pointed out the difficulty of distinguishing between inflective and agglutinative languages once it is accepted that derivational affixes have an etymology. He proposes the extension of its terms of reference to the sentence (Baudouin de Courtenay 1910: 51⫺58). Earlier writings of his seem to suggest that

20


the boundary between morphology and syntax is fluid (see Mugdan 1984: 49 f.). Bloomfield, unlike Baudouin de Courtenay, distinguishes morphology, as the study of the construction of words and parts of words, from syntax, the construction of phrases. Morphology comes into play when bound forms appear among the constituents. “[L]anguages differ more in morphology than in syntax”; and it is syntax which distinguishes classes of languages as analytic or synthetic, or, alternatively, as isolative, agglutinative, polysynthetic, and inflecting (Bloomfield 1935: 207). In the two editions of his textbook, Morphology, on the techniques of charting previously unrecorded languages, Nida admits both bound and free morphemes, making derivation and composition alike parts of morphology. He is also sceptical of any attempt to divide morphology too rigidly from syntax (1946: 1), as a result, perhaps, of experience with polysynthetic Amerindian languages. The structural approach to morphology, like all its predecessors, was essentially an analysis of pre-existent linguistic phenomena, but it gives no guidance on how to create new derivatives and compounds. Generative grammar brought fresh problems for the status of morphology, since the components of compounds were subject to syntactical analysis, while derivational syllables could be dealt with under morphophonemic rules. The position is still fluid (cf. Anderson 1988; Hammond & Noonan 1988; Jensen 1990 and Art. 3).

6.

Conclusion

The connotations of morphology prove, on examination, to be very diverse. In biology, there is an uneasy relationship between anatomy, physiology and morphology, where morphology is sometimes less dynamic than physiology and less intrusive than anatomy; but its early use by Goethe implied ordered change. It is hard to see such ordered change in language, in that accidence consists in the addition of predetermined inflections to roots which may vary only in accordance with rule. Derivation, again, involves the use of pre-existent affixes, though there is room for innovation to the extent that suffixes may be productive. Composition is open-ended, though subject to rules which are known to the com-

petent native speaker. The term morphology is not precise, as it borders on both syntax and typology, but it remains useful for general reference to the associated, but distinctive areas of accidence and word-formation.

7.

References

Altner, Günter (1986), “Gestaltwandel der Welt: zur Morphologie Goethes”. In: Glaser, Horst Albert (ed.), Goethe und die Natur. Referate des Triestiner Kongresses. Frankfurt/Main etc.: Lang, 69⫺82 Amrine, Frederick & Zucker, Francis J. & Wheeler, Harvey (1987, eds.), Goethe and the Sciences. Dordrecht etc.: Reidel, 257⫺300 (Boston Studies in the History of Science 97) Anderson, Stephen R. (1988), “Morphological Theory”. In: Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Vol. I: Linguistic Theory: Foundations. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 146⫺191 Barre´, Louis (1842), Comple´ment du Dictionnaire de l’Acade´mie Française. Paris: Didot Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1910), “Bericht über die Grazer 50. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner”. Beiblatt zu den Indogermanischen Forschungen 26, 51-58 [reprinted as: “Klassifikation der Sprachen”. In: Mugdan, Joachim (1984), Baudouin de Courtenay: Ausgewählte Werke in deutscher Sprache. München: Fink, 190⫺197] Becker, Karl Ferdinand (21841), Organism der Sprache. Frankfurt/Main: Kettembeil [With preface to 11827] Bećlard, Pierre Augustin (11823, 21827), E´le´mens de l’anatomie geńe´rale. Paris: Bećhet Jeune Blainville, Henri Marie Ducrotay de (1822), De l’organisation des animaux, ou principes d’anatomie compareé, Vol. I. Paris, Strasbourg: Levrault Bloomfield, Leonard (1935), Language. London: Allen & Unwin Bopp, Franz (1833), Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen, Gothischen und Deutschen. Berlin: Dümmler [21857-1863; 31868⫺1871] Bopp, Franz (1868), Grammaire compareé des langues indo-europeénnes […] par M. François Bopp, traduite sur la deuxie`me e´dition et preće´deé d’introductions par M. Michel Breál. Paris: Imprimerie Impe´riale Brady, Ronald H. (1987), “Form and Cause in Goethe’s Morphology”. In: Amrine et al. (eds.), 257⫺300 Breál, Michel (1866), “Grammaire compareé”. Revue des cours litte´raires 4, 65⫺71 Brekle, Herbert E. & Kastovsky, Dieter (1977), “Wortbildungsforschung: Entwicklung und Positionen”. In: Brekle, Herbert E. & Kastovsky, Dieter

2. The term morphology (eds.), Perspektiven der Wortbildungsforschung. Bonn: Bouvier, 7⫺17 Cloquet, Hippolyte (41824; 61836), Traite´ d’anatomie descriptive. Paris: Crochard Cloquet, Hippolyte (1826), Traite´ complet de l’anatomie de l’homme. Paris: Bre´geaut Farrar, Frederic W. (1870), Families of Speech: Four Lectures Delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain in March 1869. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Grimm, Jacob (21822), Deutsche Grammatik. Göttingen: Dieterich Grimm, Jacob & Grimm, Wilhelm [et al.] (1854⫺ 1960), Deutsches Wörterbuch, Vol. VI [bearbeitet von Moritz Heyne 1885]. Leipzig: Hirzel Grand Larousse de la langue française, Vol. IV (1971⫺1978). Paris: Larousse Haeckel, Ernst (1882), Die Naturwissenschaft von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck. Jena: Fischer Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (1988), “Morphology and the Generative Paradigm”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics. San Diego etc.: Academic Press, 1⫺29 Henzen, Walter (31965), Deutsche Wortbildung. Tübingen: Niemeyer [11947] Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1820), Ueber das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung. In: Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1903⫺1936), Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. IV, ed. Leitzmann, A. Berlin: Behr, 1⫺34 Jensen, John T. (1990), Morphology: Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Jespersen, Otto (1914), The Philosophy of Grammar. London: Allen & Unwin Jones, William (1788), “The Third Annual Discourse; Delivered 2 February 1786, by the President of the [Asiatic] Society [of Bengal] … [‘On the Hindus’]”. Asiatick Researches 1, 415⫺31

21 von 1796 bis 1815, Ergänzungen und Erläuterungen [bearbeitet von Dorothea Kuhn]. Weimar: Böhlau Littre´, E´mile (1863), Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris: Hachette Matthei, Rupprecht & Troll, Wilhelm & Wolf, Lothar (1954, eds.), Goethe: Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Erste Abteilung, Bd. 9: Morphologische Hefte. Weimar: Böhlau Matthei, Rupprecht & Troll, Wilhelm & Wolf, Lothar (1964, eds.), Goethe: Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Erste Abteilung, Bd. 10: Aufsätze, Fragmente, Studien zur Morphologie. Weimar: Böhlau Mayer, [Franz Joseph] C[arl] (1819), Ueber Histologie und eine neue Eintheilung der Gewebe des menschlichen Körpers. Bonn: Marcus Meillet, Andre´ (41930), Caracte`res geńe´raux des langues germaniques. Paris: Hachette [11916] Mugdan, Joachim (1984), Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845⫺1929): Leben und Werk. München: Fink Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press (Univ. of Michigan Publications: Linguistics 2) [11946] OED ⫽ The Oxford English Dictionary (21989), ed. Simpson, J. A. & Weiner, E. S. C. Oxford: Clarendon Press Paul, Hermann (1920): Deutsche Grammatik, Vol. V: Wortbildungslehre. Halle/Saale: Niemeyer Pfeifer, Wolfgang (1989), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen. Berlin: Akademie Picard, H. B. (1951), “Philosophie und Forschung bei K. F. Burdach”. Medizinische Monatsschrift 5, 125⫺128 Pierer, H[einrich] A[ugust] (1835⫺1836), UniversalLexikon oder vollständiges encyclopädisches Wörterbuch. Altenburg: Literatur-Comptoir Robins, Robert H. (1993), The Byzantine Grammarians. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter

[Kennedy, Benjamin Hall] (1871), The Public School Latin Grammar. London: Longmans, Green & Co.

Saint-Hilaire, Auguste Prouvensal de (1841), Leçons de botanique compareé comprenant principalement la morphologie ve´ge´tale. Paris: Loss

Knox, Robert (1828), A System of Human Anatomy, Translated from the Fourth Edition of the French of H. Cloquet. Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart

Schlegel, [Carl Wilhelm] Friedrich von (1808), Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer

Knox, Robert (1830), Elements of General Anatomy, Translated from the Last Edition of the French of P. A. Bećlard. Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart Kuhn, Dorothea (1987), “Goethe’s Relationship to the Theories of Development of his Time”. In: Amrine et al. (eds.), 3⫺15 Kuhn, Dorothea & Engelhardt, Wolf von (1986, eds.), Goethe: Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Zweite Abteilung, Band 9, Teil B: Zur Morphologie,

Schleicher, August (1859), Zur Morphologie der Sprache. St. Petersburg: Kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften (Me´moires de l’Acade´mie Impe´riale des Sciences de St.-Pe´tersbourg, VIIe se´rie, tome I, No 7) Schleicher, August (1860), Die deutsche Sprache. Stuttgart: Cotta Schleicher, August (1861⫺1862), Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar: Böhlau

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Schleicher, August (1863), Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft. Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Ernst Haeckel. Weimar: Böhlau Schleicher, August (1865), “Morphologie des langues”. Revue des cours litte´raires 2, 763⫺805 [Course on comparative grammar given at Jena; approved re´sume´ by Louis Koch] Schmid, Günter (1935), Über die Herkunft der Ausdrücke Morphologie und Biologie: Geschichtliche Zusammenhänge. Halle/Saale: Kaiserl. Leopoldinisch-Carolinisch Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, (Nova Acta Leopoldina, Neue Folge, Band 2, Heft 3/4, Nr. 8)

Schottelius, Justus Georg (1663), Ausführliche Arbeit von der teutschen HaubtSprache. Braunschweig: Zillinger Wallis, John (1972), Grammar of the English Language, a new ed., with Translation and Commentary by J. A[lan] Kemp. London: Longmans [11653; 61765] Wilmanns, Wilhelm (1893⫺1909), Deutsche Grammatik. Berlin: de Gruyter Wright, Joseph (1907), Historical German Grammar. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press [reprint 1966]

Paul Salmon, Oxford (Great Britain)

3. Die Stellung der Morphologie im Sprachsystem 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1.

Ausgangsvorstellungen vom Sprachsystem Die Morphologie als Teil des Sprachsystems Die Morphologie als sprachwissenschaftliche Disziplin Die innere Struktur der Morphologie Zitierte Literatur

Ausgangsvorstellungen vom Sprachsystem

In der zeitgenössischen Sprachwissenschaft ist im ganzen die Vorstellung von einer natürlichen Sprache als einem System von Regeln üblich, die es erlauben, mit dem menschlichen Denken (der “Inhaltsseite”) bestimmte materielle Träger (die “Ausdrucksseite”) in Übereinstimmung zu bringen. Die Einheiten der Ausdrucksseite können im Prinzip eine unterschiedliche materielle (akustische, graphische etc.) Substanz haben und bilden in ihrer Gesamtheit Texte in der einen oder anderen Sprache. Eine der wichtigsten Aufgaben der Linguistik ist es zu analysieren, wie Texte aufgebaut sind, und ein Modell der menschlichen Fähigkeit zu ihrer Erzeugung und ihrem Verständnis zu entwerfen. Bekanntlich sind Texte im allgemeinen nicht elementar und nicht homogen, sondern bestehen aus Einheiten verschiedener Ordnung, die fähig sind, sich gemäß bestimmter Regeln zu komplexeren Einheiten zusammenzufügen. Diese Besonderheit des Sprachbaus erlaubt es, von Sprachebenen zu sprechen, wobei jede Ebene durch einen Bestand an gleichartigen Einheiten mit identischen Eigenschaften gekennzeichnet ist, aus denen ihrerseits komplexere Einheiten gebil-

det werden, die hierarchisch höhere Ebenen formen. Die Anzahl von Texten in einer beliebigen natürlichen Sprache ist im Prinzip unendlich, die Anzahl der Einheiten der niedrigeren Ebenen hingegen endlich und noch nicht einmal sehr groß. Eine ökonomische Sprachbeschreibung, die diese Besonderheit des Sprachsystems berücksichtigt, beruht in der Mehrzahl der Fälle auf einer im theoretischen Modell vorgenommenen Abtrennung der “lexikalischen” Information über das Inventar konstruktiver Einheiten von der “grammatischen” Information über die Regeln ihrer Kombination untereinander. Zu solchen “sich ineinanderfügenden” konstruktiven Texteinheiten, die jeweils besondere Subsysteme bilden, werden üblicherweise zumindest folgende gezählt: ⫺ Phoneme oder minimale bedeutungsunterscheidende Einheiten eines Textes, die fähig sind, verschiedene sprachliche Ausdrücke gegenüberzustellen, aber selbst keine Bedeutung besitzen; ⫺ Morpheme oder minimale bedeutungstragende Einheiten; das prototypische Morphem ist eine Phonemfolge (obwohl dies nicht immer der Fall ist; man kann auch von Morphemoperationen oder Nullmorphemen sprechen; s. 2.2), welche im Unterschied zu den Phonemen über eine eigene Inhaltsseite verfügt; ⫺ Wortformen (slovoformy) oder minimale autonome Einheiten eines Textes: im allgemeinen Fall besteht eine Wortform (slovoforma) aus mehreren Morphemen; ein universelles Unterscheidungsmerkmal des Morphems von der Wortform kann man

3. Die Stellung der Morphologie im Sprachsystem

23

nur sehr allgemein formulieren: Innerhalb einer Wortform sind Morpheme erheblich starrer miteinander verbunden, als es Wortformen untereinander sind; ⫺ Sätze oder minimale Texte, d. h. sprachliche Strukturen, die Äußerungen darstellen und insbesondere fähig sind, eine kommunikative Funktion (eine der grundlegenden Sprachfunktionen) zu erfüllen.

bestehen, anzutreffen wären. Ein klassisches Beispiel, das in vielen Handbüchern zur Sprachwissenschaft angeführt wird, ist Lat. ¯ı ‘geh’, das den Imperativ Präsens der zweiten Person des Verbs eo darstellt und das formale Zusammenfallen aller angeführten Einheiten demonstriert. Gegenstand der Morphologie sind Wortformen und deren Struktur, d. h. die eine Wortform bildenden Morpheme und die Beziehungen zwischen diesen. Es ist dabei wichtig anzumerken, daß dem Forscher für die unmittelbare Betrachtung nur Texte zugänglich sind (genauer gesagt, die Ausdrucksseite der Texte); alle übrigen Einheiten sind das Resultat einer theoretischen Abstraktion des Forschers (obschon sie vermutlich bis zu einem gewissen Grade auch eine psychologische Realität beanspruchen können). Mehr noch, selbst in ihrer Eigenschaft als Ergebnisse theoretischer Abstraktion können nicht alle Einheiten den Status von Universalien beanspruchen. Insbesondere betrifft dies die Wortformen und folglich auch die Morphologie, da die Existenz dieser Disziplin in bedeutendem Maße dadurch gerechtfertigt ist, daß in Sprachen nichtelementare Morphemkombinationen bezeugt sind, die sich von den Einheiten der syntaktischen Ebene unterscheiden. Morpheme existieren in allen Sprachen (dabei anscheinend in ungefähr der gleichen Menge); nichtsdestotrotz spielt bei weitem nicht in allen Sprachen die Morphologie (als Sprachebene und folglich als sprachwissenschaftliche Disziplin) eine wichtige Rolle. Das hängt damit zusammen, daß, wie gerade gesagt wurde, der zentrale Gegenstand der Morphologie nicht Morpheme, sondern Wortformen sind. Sprachen “ohne Morphologie” (genauer, Sprachen mit einer minimalen Morphologie wie z. B. das Vietnamesische) sind selbstverständlich nicht Sprachen ohne Morpheme, sondern Sprachen ohne Wortformen (genauer: Sprachen mit einer minimalen Anzahl solcher).

Unter den angeführten Termini bedarf v. a. derjenige der Wortform eines besonderen Kommentars, da er am wenigsten bekannt ist und zugleich über die größte Bedeutung für die Morphologie verfügt. Dieser Terminus (der in Rußland zuerst wahrscheinlich von dem Anglisten und Theoretiker A. I. Smirnickij vorgeschlagen wurde und später Verbreitung in der russischen und anderen Schulen erlangte; vgl. Smirnickij 1955; Mel’cˇuk 1982; 1994; Spencer 1991: 45) ist das sprachwissenschaftliche Analogon zum naiven Konzept des Wortes. Während allerdings in der alltäglichen Sprache dem Wort Wort überaus verschiedene Begriffe entsprechen, deckt der Terminus Wortform v. a. den “linearen”, syntagmatischen Aspekt des Wortes ab: Gemeint ist das Wort als gesonderte Texteinheit, die über eine eigene Ausdrucks- und Inhaltsseite verfügt. Als Element des linearen Textes steht die Wortform einerseits dem Morphem (d. h. der syntagmatisch kleineren Einheit) und andererseits dem Syntagma (der Verbindung mehrerer Wortformen, d. h. der syntagmatisch größeren Einheit) gegenüber. Natürlich kann auch die Wortform (besonders die morphologisch nichtelementare Wortform, die zugleich lexikalische und grammatische Bedeutungen ausdrückt) wie jede sprachliche Einheit unter paradigmatischem Aspekt betrachtet werden. In diesem Falle kann von der Wortform als einem Element eines bestimmten Flexionsparadigmas gesprochen werden. Wortformen, welche eine gemeinsame lexikalische Bedeutung haben und sich voneinander nur durch ihre grammatische (flexivische) Bedeutung unterscheiden, bilden ein Lexem, d. h. ein “paradigmatisches” Wort (zu einer anderen Konzeption des Begriffs Wortform s. Art. 62). Im allgemeinen Fall besteht jede Einheit einer höheren Ebene aus mehr als einem Element der vorangehenden. Das bedeutet natürlich nicht, daß nicht Morpheme, die nur aus einem einzigen Phonem, Wortformen, die nur aus einem einzigen Morphem, oder Sätze, die nur aus einer einzigen Wortform

2.

Die Morphologie als Teil des Sprachsystems

2.1. Das Postulat von der “ersten Gliederung” Es ist folglich üblich, von der Morphologie einer gegebenen Sprache (und natürlicher Sprachen im allgemeinen) insofern zu sprechen, als zumindest in einigen Sprachen Klassen von Morphemen und Klassen von Wort-

24 formen nach ihrem Umfang nicht gänzlich zusammenfallen ⫺ mit anderen Worten, formal nichtelementare Wortformen funktionieren als gesonderte Einheiten. Man kann in diesem Sinne annehmen, daß die Morphologie in ihrer allgemeinsten Form auf die Struktur der “Wörter” einer Sprache bezogen ist, was mit gewisser Einschränkung der klassischen Auffassung von diesem Terminus (als “Lehre von den Formen des Wortes”; vgl. Art. 1) entspricht. Man kann auch sagen, daß die Morphologie im Raum zwischen Morphem und Wortform angesiedelt ist: Die Morphologie beginnt dort, wo die einseitigen, d. h. bedeutungslosen Einheiten der Phonologie (Figuren im Sinne Hjelmslevs; vgl. Hjelmslev 1971: 58⫺64) durch zweiseitige, d. h. bedeutungstragende Einheiten (Zeichen) abgelöst werden, und endet dort, wo die Regeln der starren Verbindung von Morphemen gegenüber den Regeln der relativ freieren syntaktischen Kombination von Morphemkomplexen ⫺ den Wortformen ⫺ zurücktreten. Auf diese Weise sind die Bildungselemente der Morpheme Gegenstand der Phonologie, die Morpheme selbst und ihre “starren” Verbindungen (Wortformen) hingegen der Gegenstand der Morphologie, die Verbindungen von Wortformen schließlich Gegenstand der Syntax. Bedingung für die Existenz einer Morphologie ist die Gliederbarkeit eines Textes im allgemeinen und die Gliederbarkeit von Wortformen im besonderen, d. h. die Möglichkeit innerhalb von Wortformen elementarere Segmente zu bestimmen und diesen elementarere Bedeutungen zuzuschreiben. Dieses Phänomen der Gliederbarkeit von Zeichen in kleinere Zeichen (d. h. die gleichzeitige Gliederung sowohl auf der Ausdrucksals auch auf der Inhaltsseite) ist in strukturalistischen Sprachtheorien ausführlich im Zusammenhang mit der sog. “zweifachen Gliederung” diskutiert worden (s. beispielsweise Martinet 1970: 13⫺15). Nach der Terminologie Andre´ Martinets ist die Gliederung sprachlicher Zeichen in kleinere Zeichen die “erste Gliederung” des Textes, die Gliederung signifikativer Einheiten in nichtsignifikative, d. h. in Phoneme, die zweite Gliederung des Textes. Die Möglichkeit der “ersten Gliederung” ⫺ d. h. der Parallelismus zwischen größerer formaler und größerer sematischer Komplexität sprachlicher Einheiten ⫺ liegt in der Tat dem gesamten Aufbau der Sprache in Ebenen zugrunde.


Dennoch ist die Möglichkeit einer solchen Gliederung bei weitem nicht in allen Fällen offensichtlich, und ihre Ergebnisse erweisen sich bei weitem nicht immer als eindeutig. Gerade in diesem Umstand sind viele Schwierigkeiten bei der Bestimmung der Grenzen der Morphologie und ihres Status im Sprachmodell begründet. Die gerade erläuterte Vorstellung von einem Text als einer additiven Gesamtheit von Einheiten verschiedener Ebenen spiegelt also ein etwas idealisiertes Bild wider. In natürlichen Sprachen sind mehr oder minder merkliche Abweichungen von diesem Idealzustand anzutreffen. Für uns sind zwei Typen solcher Abweichungen von größtem Interesse, welche man als Fälle zu enger bzw. zu freier Bindung zwischen Morphemen definieren kann. Im ersten Falle haben wir es mit inhaltlich nichtelementaren Wortformen zu tun, deren Segmentierung in bestimmte, der inhaltlichen Struktur entsprechende formale Elemente unmöglich oder problematisch ist. Im zweiten Falle haben wir es im Gegensatz dazu mit solchen Morphemen zu tun, welche in erheblichem Maße über die Eigenschaften autonomer Wortformen verfügen. Betrachten wir diese beiden Fälle der Reihe nach. 2.2. “Nichtgliederbare Wortformen” Die Vorstellung von einer Wortform als einer linearen Abfolge einzelner Morpheme stellt eine Vereinfachung dar. In einer ganzen Reihe von Fällen ist die lineare Segmentierung einer Wortform in Einheiten niedrigerer Ordnung erschwert oder sogar unmöglich. Die entsprechenden Phänomene werden eingehend in anderen Teilen des vorliegenden Werks betrachtet (vgl. v. a. Kap. VI und VII); wir beschränken uns hier auf ihre kurze Aufzählung. Der unmittelbare (oder sogar mittelbare) Kontakt zwischen Morphemen kann zu einer Veränderung ihrer äußeren Gestalt unter kontextuellem Einfluß führen (sog. “allomorphische Varianz”, bei der ein Morphem mit ein und derselben Bedeutung in einem Text durch eine Reihe komplementär verteilter kontextueller Varianten, “Allomorphe”, vertreten ist; vgl. Art. 46 und 47). Einen Grenzfall solcher Varianz bildet das Verschwinden der Grenze zwischen Morphemen in einem Text (“Morphemjunktur”), bei dem eines der Morpheme völlig von einem anderen verschluckt wird und wir nicht mehr von einem segmentalen signifiant des Morphems sprechen können. Als einfaches Beispiel betrach-


25

ten wir die Bildung des Partizip Perfekt Passiv im Lateinischen:

genannt. Die Beschreibung der Fusion setzt eine enge Wechselbeziehung zwischen Morphologie und Phonologie voraus und stellt eines der schwierigsten Probleme bei der Erstellung eines formalen Sprachmodells dar. Außer allomorphischer Varianz, die zu Fusion führt, existieren auch andere Abweichungen vom “agglutinativen Eichmaß”, welche sich ebenfalls darin äußern, daß wir mit einer bestimmten morphologischen Bedeutung keinen bestimmten segmentalen Marker in Übereinstimmung bringen können, da diese Bedeutung selbst durch nichtsegmentale Mittel ausgedrückt wird, d. h. nicht durch Hinzufügung irgendeiner Phonemkette zu einer Ausgangskette, sondern durch eine bestimmte bedeutungstragende Umformung dieser Kette, in anderen Worten: durch morphologische Operationen (vgl. Kap. VIII). Grundlegende Formen solcher Operationen sind Reduplikationen verschiedener Art und Alternationen, d. h. Austausch von Phonemen einer Klasse durch Phoneme einer anderen Klasse. Vergleiche die Bildung von Perfektformen im Lateinischen, bei der sowohl Suffigierung (Tab. 3.2(a)) als auch partielle Reduplikation (Tab. 3.2(b)) als auch Alternationen (Tab. 3.2(c)) verwendet werden:

(a) (b) (c)

Bedeutung

Infinitiv

Partizip (Nom. Sg. M.)

‘loben’ ‘singen’ ‘tragen’ ‘treiben’ ‘weggehen’ ‘spielen’

lauda¯-re can-ere ger-ere ag-ere ce¯d-ere lu¯d-ere

‘schicken’

mitt-ere

‘stoßen’

tund-ere

lauda¯-t-us can-t-us ges-t-us a¯c-t-us ces-s-us lu¯-s-us oder lu¯s-us? mis-s-us oder miss-us? tu¯n-s-us oder tu¯ns-us

Tab. 3.1: Bildung des Partizip Perfekt Passiv im Lateinischen

In der Gruppe (a) sind Fälle einer “agglutinierenden” (s. Art. 116) Anfügung des Partizipialsuffixes (-t-) an den Verbstamm aufgeführt, welche durch keinerlei phonologische Effekte begleitet wird und weder am Verbstamm noch am Suffix eine Varianz erzeugt. In der Gruppe (b) sind schwierigere Fälle aufgeführt, bei denen das Anfügen des Partizipialsuffixes verschiedene Veränderungen der äußeren Gestalt sowohl des Verbstammes als auch des Suffixes selbst hervorruft: assimilative Alternationen des Konsonanten im Stammauslaut (Stimmtonneutralisation, Assibilierung), Alternationen des Stammvokals (Längung, Kürzung); schließlich eine Assibilierung des suffixalen Konsonanten (-t- > -s-). All diese Alternationen erzeugen eine reiche kontextuelle Allomorphie, doch schränken sie nicht die Möglichkeit einer linearen Segmentierung selbst ein: In allen Beispielen der betreffenden Gruppe kann man noch verhältnismäßig leicht das Suffix vom Stamm trennen. Anders ist es um die Formen bestellt, die in Gruppe (c) aufgeführt sind: Ihre Segmentierung ist in unterschiedlichem Maße problematisch und in jedem Falle mehrdeutig, da wir auf das Phänomen des “Verschluckens” von Phonemen im Verlauf des Aneinanderfügens der Morpheme treffen. Doch wenn, wie in Formen des Typs lu¯sus, das Verschlucken eines einphonemigen Suffixes eintritt, so bedeutet dies faktisch, daß diesem im sprachlichen Ausdruck nichts entspricht (außer natürlich einem veränderten Stammallomorph). Ein solches Verschwinden der Morphemgrenze bei der Verbindung von Morphemen zu einer Wortform wird üblicherweise Fusion

(a) (b) (c)

Bedeutung

1. Pl. Präsens

1. Pl. Perfekt

‘loben’ ‘nehmen’ ‘verwunden’ ‘rennen’ ‘täuschen’ ‘schlagen’ ‘waschen’ ‘treiben’

lauda¯-mus su¯m-imus laed-imus curr-imus fall-imus caed-imus lav-imus ag-imus

lauda¯-v-imus su¯mp-s-imus lae(-)s-imus cucurr-imus fefell-imus cecı¯d-imus la¯v-imus e¯g-imus

Tab. 3.2: Das lateinische Perfekt

Es ist anzumerken, daß sowohl die Suffigierung (in der Eigenschaft eines Suffixes tritt der Präteritalmarker -v- oder -s- auf) als auch die Reduplikation zusätzlich von allomorphischer Varianz oder sogar Fusion begleitet werden kann, wofür Beispiele in Tab. 3.1(b) und (c) angeführt wurden. Die lateinische Sprache ist natürlich nicht die einzige Sprache, welche stark zu nichtsegmentalen Techniken beim Ausdruck grammatischer Bedeutungen greift. Zu den bekanntesten Beispielen gehört die Verwendung von Alternationen zur Bildung der Präteritalformen von Verben in den germanischen Sprachen (Ablaut), der Pluralformen von

26 Substantiven im Deutschen oder Rumänischen, der Diminutiv- und Pluralformen von Substantiven in afrikanischen Sprachen der westatlantischen Gruppe (Ful, Serer u. a.), der Kasusformen von Substantiven in den modernen keltischen Sprachen usw. Nach Ansicht vieler Theoretiker stellen sowohl nichtfusionale als auch (insbesondere) fusionale Alternationen letztendlich den Morphembegriff in Frage: In Sprachen mit überwiegend nichtsegmentaler Technik haben wir es faktisch mit Phonemen zu tun, welche (semantisch nichtelementare) Wortformen bilden, d. h. das Postulat von der “ersten Gliederung” erweist sich als auf der Ausdrucksseite verletzt. In den existierenden formalen Sprachmodellen wirken sich diese Besonderheiten der morphologischen Ebene verschieden aus: Die Modelle unterscheiden sich voneinander v. a. gerade dadurch, daß sie vorrangig an verschiedenen Gruppen morphologischer Erscheinungen orientiert sind. Es ist üblich, nach Hockett (1954) drei grundlegende Typen solcher morphologischer Modelle zu unterscheiden: das Item and Arrangement-Modell, das Item and Process-Modell und das Word and Paradigm-Modell. Item and Arrangement-Modelle sind am “durchsichtigsten” strukturiert und wurden bereits in der Blütezeit des Strukturalismus erarbeitet. Sie sind an der “agglutinierenden Idealwortform” orientiert und setzen ihre eindeutige Segmentierbarkeit in Übereinstimmung mit dem Prinzip der “ersten Gliederung” voraus. Wo es möglich ist, werden Allomorphe postuliert und Regeln ihrer Verteilung angeführt. Beispielsweise entsprächen dem Stamm des lateinischen Verbs ‘tragen’ in Tab. 3.1(b) zwei Allomorphe: ges- in der Position vor einem darauffolgenden Konsonanten, ger- in den übrigen Fällen. Fälle des Typs lu¯sus stellen für solche Modelle die größte Schwierigkeit dar, und für ihre Analyse werden verschiedene Lösungen vorgeschlagen: eine Segmentierung der Art lu¯-s- (mit einem verkürzten Verbstamm und einer unmotivierten frikativen Variante des Partizipialsuffixes) oder der Verzicht auf eine Segmentierung bei gleichzeitiger Postulierung einer besonderen Einheit ⫺ eines inhaltlich nichtelementaren, aber formal elementaren (d. h. nichtgliederbaren) Morphs lu¯s-, für dessen Bezeichnung Hockett den Terminus Portmanteau-Morph vorgeschlagen hat. Unter den zeitgenösischen Theorien ist den Modellen des Item and Arrangement-Typs die morphologische Konzep-


tion Mel’cˇuks (1982; 1994) am nächsten; für die Bezeichnung von (auf der Ausdrucksseite) nichtgliederbaren Einheiten bedient sich Mel’cˇuk des Terminus Megamorphe. Eine Alternative zum Item and Arrangement-Ansatz, der auf derselben Arbeit Hocketts beruht, ist der Item and ProcessAnsatz. Im Unterschied zu ersterem ist dieser Ansatz nicht statisch, sondern dynamisch. Er ist stärker an der Erklärung allomorphischer Varianz orientiert, verlangt aber die Einführung eines komplexeren und nicht immer unmittelbar einleuchtenden formalen Apparats. Dieser Ansatz beruht darauf, daß eine oder mehrere zusätzliche Ebenen der Darstellung von Wortformen eingeführt werden. Auf einer “tieferen” Ebene wird jede allomorphische Varianz beseitigt (jedes Morphem hat eine einzige Darstellung) und es werden Regeln für den Übergang zu einer “oberflächlicheren” Ebene aufgestellt, welche die äußere Gestalt des Tiefenmorphems in Abhängigkeit vom Kontext verändern (im Einzelfalle können selbstverständlich auch überhaupt keine Veränderungen eintreten). So würde in entsprechenden Modellen der Form gestus eine Tiefenrepräsentation des Typs ger ⫹ t ⫹ us, der Form lu¯sus eine Tiefenrepräsentation des Typs lu:d ⫹ t ⫹ us gegenübergestellt und daraufhin entsprechende Assimilationsregeln eingeführt (regressive konsonantische Stimmtonneutralisation, Assibilierung der Verschlußlaute, Vereinfachung von Konsonantengruppen etc.). Bei einem solchen Ansatz wird, obschon mit Hilfe etwas künstlicher Verfahren, die Erweiterung des “agglutinativen Ideals” auf ganze Klassen von Fällen erzielt, die zuvor von diesem nicht erfaßt wurden. Er sichert die Einheit des Morphems, erleichert in einer ganzen Reihe von Fällen die Beschreibung und außerdem (was nicht unwichtig ist) weisen die Regeln des Übergangs von der Tiefen- zur Oberflächenebene oftmals Parallelen zu realen Prozessen der historischen Sprachentwicklung auf, welche zur Herausbildung von Fusion geführt haben. Der Item and Process-Ansatz (oft auch als “morphonologische” oder “tiefen-morphonologische” Beschreibung bezeichnet) hat viele Befürworter: Seine Grundlagen wurden in den klassischen Arbeiten Bloomfields (1939) und Jakobsons (1948) erarbeitet, ähnliche Ideen wurden später sowohl im Rahmen generativer Paradigmen (Chomsky & Halle 1968; Kiparsky 1982) als auch anderer zeitgenössischer Theorien verwendet (vgl. speziell Bulygina 1977; Dressler 1985). Die grund-


27

legenden Argumente der Kritiker dieses Ansatzes laufen darauf hinaus, daß sich die Tiefenrepräsentation der Morpheme oft als zu willkürlich erweist und außerdem nicht alle Alternationen beim Übergang zur Tiefenrepräsentation beseitigt werden können. So ist die vokalische Alternation (Ablaut) in englischen Wortformen des Typs sing ⬃ sang nicht durch bloßen Bezug auf den phonologischen Kontext beschreibbar: Sie ist nur in gewissem Sinne ein Morphem und kann nicht auf natürliche Weise zugunsten der Postulierung irgendeines segmentalen Trägers der betreffenden Bedeutung (‘Präteritum ⫹ Perfektiv’) beseitigt werden. Dennoch sind beim Item and Process-Ansatz nichtsegmentale Morpheme dieser Art grundsätzlich nicht vorgesehen. Von ganz anderen Voraussetzungen geht das Word and Paradigm-Modell aus, das am stärksten an fusionierenden Sprachen mit einer entwickelten Morphologie und einer reichhaltigen allomorphischen Varianz orientiert ist. Eine frühe Etappe in der Entwicklung dieses Modells (welches sich auf eine lange, bis in die Antike reichende Tradition stützt) ist am vollständigsten bei Matthews (1972) wiedergegeben. Im weiteren Verlauf sind viele Annahmen dieses Ansatzes in der morphologischen Theorie Steven Andersons (1982; 1992) aufgegriffen worden. Beim Word and Paradigm-Ansatz sind zentraler Gegenstand der Analyse Fälle einer Störung der “ersten Gliederung”. Unter Berufung auf solche Fälle schlagen die Anhänger dieses Ansatzes vor, völlig auf den Morphembegriff zu verzichten (zumindest auf den Begriff des Flexionsmorphems!) und den Ausdruck grammatischer Bedeutungen unmittelbar durch eine Aufstellung von Wortformen des betreffenden Lexems zu beschreiben. So wird der Form lu¯sus ein Satz “morphosyntaktischer Merkmale” gegenübergestellt (lu:dere ⫹ Part. Pass. ⫹ Nom. Sg. Mask.) und die Form selbst als ganze im Lexikon gespeichert und nicht durch irgendwelche “analytische” Regeln generiert. Alle Wortformen des betreffenden Lexems bilden dann ein geschlossenes System ⫺ ein Paradigma (vgl. Art. 62). Das Paradigma wird zu einem besonderen Objekt mit einer Reihe nur ihm eigener Eigenschaften erhoben. Gemeint sind z. B. der systematische Ausdruck mehrerer flektivischer Bedeutungen innerhalb eines nichtgliederbaren Morphems, eine hochentwickelte Varianz, die besondere Rolle von Nullelementen etc. (zu Einzelheiten s. auch Carstairs 1987). Die Stärke des Word and Paradigm-Ansatzes

liegt in der Betonung des Paradigmas als eines selbständigen Forschungsgegenstandes (welcher in den “segmentierenden” Modellen des Item and Arrangement- und Item and Process-Typs fehlt) und in der Entdeckung einer Reihe interessanter universeller Gesetzmäßigkeiten des Aufbaus von Paradigmen. Besonders wichtig ist die Feststellung der Asymmetrie von Wortformen innerhalb eines Paradigmas, nach der die einen in gewissem Sinne “Basiswortformen” darstellen, die anderen dagegen marginaler (oder nach einer anderen Terminologie: markierter) sind. Allerdings erscheinen die extremen Spielarten solcher Beschreibungen, die eine morphematische Gliederung völlig ausschließen, unökonomisch und in einer Reihe von Fällen auch kontraintuitiv. Zum anderen sind Modelle des Word and Paradigm-Typs auf agglutinierende Sprachen gar nicht anwendbar, da deren Wortformen natürlich nicht in fertiger Form gespeichert sind, sondern nach ziemlich expliziten Regeln erzeugt werden. (Eine eingehendere vergleichende Analyse der drei Modelle sowie angrenzender Probleme bietet Bulygina 1977; Bybee 1988 und Spencer 1991: 49⫺57, 214⫺230 et passim.) Wir haben die grundlegenden Prinzipien einer Verletzung der Gliederung von Wortformen auf der Audrucksseite betrachtet. Die “Paradoxa der Gliederung” sind allerdings mit diesen Fällen noch nicht ausgeschöpft. Ein extrem wichtiges Problem für die Morphologie einer natürlichen Sprache bilden Fälle des Nullausdrucks einer Bedeutung (einem Element der Inhaltsseite entspricht nichts auf der Ausdrucksseite), aber auch Fälle sogenannter Konversion. Nach der Mehrzahl der Theorien ist die Bestimmung von Nullmarkern (vgl. Art. 45) nur im Rahmen der Flexionsmorphologie gerechtfertigt und eng mit anderen Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Struktur des Flexionsparadigmas verbunden: Das Fehlen eines Markers innerhalb der Wortform wird nur dann als Träger einer Bedeutung aufgefaßt, wenn der Sprecher erwartet, daß bei der betreffenden Wortform die betreffende Bedeutung ausgedrückt sein muß. Diese Eigenschaft der Obligatorietät sollte ihrerseits zweckmäßigerweise nur mit Flexionsmarkern verbunden werden (s. u., 4). Unter Konversion versteht man für gewöhnlich Fälle des Typs französisch Sg. (la) vis ‘Schraube’ ⬃ Pl. (les) vis ‘Schrauben’, spanisch manzan-a (F.) ‘Apfel’ ⬃ manzan-o (M.) ‘Apfelbaum’, englisch (a) cook ‘Koch’

28 ⬃ (to) cook ‘kochen’. In allen angeführten Paaren unterscheiden sich die Wörter auf der Inhaltsebene, ein segmentaler Bedeutungsträger, der für diesen Unterschied verantwortlich wäre, kann jedoch nicht ausgemacht werden (im spanischen Beispiel ist der auslautende Vokal im allgemeinen Genusmarker, nicht aber Träger des Gegensatzes ‘Frucht’ vs. ‘früchtetragender Baum’). Zugleich geht es hier nicht um einfache Homonymie, da die Bedeutungsunterschiede innerhalb der Wortpaare in den betreffenden Sprachen regulär sind und z. B. in anderen Wortformen durch segmentale Mittel ausgedrückt werden können. Zwischen den Elementen aller angeführten Paare besteht zwar ein regulärer Bedeutungsunterschied, doch kann man von einem morphologischen Mittel sprechen, das dem Ausdruck dieses Unterschiedes dient? Es erscheint zweckmäßig, als Träger der betreffenden Bedeutung auf der Ausdrucksebene eine Änderung der kombinatorischen Eigenschaften des Stammes zu betrachten, also z. B. die Fähigkeit zur Verbindung mit einem Artikel im Singular vs. Plural, mit einer Endung des maskulinen vs. femininen Genus oder mit der grammatischen Umgebung des Nomens vs. des Verbums im ganzen. Dies ist ein besonderer Typ von Morphemen, welche ebenso wie Alternationen des Typs sing ⬃ sang als Operationen betrachtet werden können, jedoch nicht als Operationen an einer Phonemkette, sondern am grammatischen Kontext bzw. an der Kombinierbarkeit des betreffenden Stammes (also als das, was Mel’cˇuk 1982; 1995 als eine Veränderung der Syntaktik des Zeichens zu bezeichnen vorschlägt; die Bezeichnung Nullaffigierung, welche in anderen Theorien geläufig ist, erscheint im Zusammenhang mit dem hier Gesagten erheblich weniger glücklich; vgl. Lyons 1977: 523). 2.3. “Ungebundene Morpheme” Im vorangehenden Abschnitt wurden Fakten aufgeführt, welche die Realität des Morphems als eines materiellen Segments innerhalb der Wortform bestätigen bzw. widerlegen. Nun wollen wir dagegen Fakten betrachten, die die Realität der Wortform als eines “starren” Morphemkomplexes bestätigen oder widerlegen. Um Unterschiede zwischen Morphem und Morphemkomplex (Wortform) aufzuzeigen, appelliert man für gewöhnlich an Fakten der nächsthöheren Ebene, d. h. an Fakten der Syntax. Gerade das unterschiedliche Ver-


halten in bezug auf syntaktische Regeln stellt die Wortform ihren Bestandteilen gegenüber, und gerade die Wortform kann als minimale syntaktische Einheit gelten, da sie, wie üblicherweise gesagt wird, für die Syntax “opak” ist (vgl. Chomsky 1970). Mit anderen Worten, es existiert eine genügend große Anzahl syntaktischer Regeln, welche auf Wortformen anwendbar sind, welche aber nicht auf die einzelnen Morpheme in ihnen anwendbar sind. Es sind dies v. a. Regeln der linearen Anordnung von Satzkomponenten (Wortformen werden innerhalb eines Satzes relativ frei zueinander angeordnet, während Morpheme innerhalb einer Wortform eine fest bestimmte Position innehaben), aber auch beispielsweise Regeln der anaphorischen Pronominalisierung (nur eine Wortform, nicht jedoch einer ihrer Bestandteile kann durch anaphorische Pronomina ersetzt werden), der Koordinationsreduktion, der Ellipse und vieles andere mehr. Das Problem besteht allerdings darin, daß auch diese Kriterien keinen universellen Charakter haben und in einer Reihe von Sprachen verletzt werden können. Die größte Aussagekraft besitzen sie natürlich für stark fusionierende Sprachen wie das Lateinische. Hier erscheint schon die lineare Segmentierung in Morpheme teilweise problematisch, von einer syntaktischen Selbständigkeit der Morpheme ganz zu schweigen. Fusionierende Sprachen sind mit Einschränkungen Sprachen mit “schwachen” Morphemen und “starken” Wortformen. Am anderen Ende der Skala befinden sich die agglutinierenden Sprachen, d. h. Sprachen mit “starken” Morphemen und “schwachen” Wortformen. Hier besitzen die Morpheme eine wesentlich stärkere syntaktische Selbständigkeit, was bisweilen dazu zwingt, die Rechtfertigung des Begriffs der Wortform (und damit die Rechtfertigung der Formulierung einer morphologischen Repräsentationsebene) in diesen Sprachen überhaupt in Frage zu stellen. Es genügt der Hinweis, daß in agglutinierenden Sprachen die syntaktische Ellipse von Morphemen (die sog. “Gruppenflexion”) weit verbreitet ist; vgl. das folgende Beispiel einer koordinierten Nominalgruppe mit ausgelassenem Pluralmorphem im Türkischen: (1) bayan ve bay-lar Dame und Herr-pl ‘Damen und Herren’ Auf analoge Weise können sich im Türkischen auch die Kasusmarker von Substantiven verhalten.


29

Vereinzelte Beispiele für die syntaktische Selbständigkeit von Morphemen sind in der einen oder anderen Form nicht nur in agglutinierenden, sondern sogar in fusionierenden Sprachen bezeugt. In diesem Zusammenhang wird häufig das Verhalten des Adverbsuffixes -mente im Spanischen besprochen, das ähnlich dem türkischen Pluralmarker in Beispiel (1) mit einer koordinierten Gruppe kombiniert werden kann:

Bei der Komposition (vgl. Art. 87) werden syntaktische Beziehungen, die für gewöhnlich durch die lineare Anordnung syntaktisch selbständiger Wortformen (oder durch Affixe) ausgedrückt werden, durch Komplexe aus mehreren, der Selbständigkeit entbehrenden Stämmen wiedergegeben, die Objekte bilden, die bezüglich ihrer Eigenschaften kanonischen Wortformen nahestehen. So werden syntaktische Beziehungen des “genitivischen Typs” zwischen einem Substantiv X und einem Substantiv Y in der einen Sprache mit Hilfe von Komplexen zweier Wortformen, X und Y wiedergegeben (vgl. russ. sposob upotreblenija, frz. mode d’emploi ‘Gebrauchsanweisung’), in der anderen hingegen mit Hilfe eines einzigen morphologischen Objekts ⫺ durch ein Kompositum (vgl. ndl. bereiding-swijze). Einerseits gehören solche Bildungen zur Morphologie, da es sich um einzelne Wortformen und nicht um Verbindungen von Wortformen handelt. Andererseits gehören sie aber zur Syntax, da sie genauso frei gebildet werden wie syntaktische Fügungen und deren funktionales Äquivalent darstellen. Außerdem ist die syntaktische Selbständigkeit der die Komposita bildenden Stämme oftmals größer als bei “gewöhnlichen” Morphemen; vgl. die Möglichkeit der syntaktischen Ellipse in ndl. bereidings- en behandelingswijze ‘Bearbeitungs- und Behandlungsweise’, die der Ellipse affixaler Morpheme im Türkischen und Spanischen analog ist (s. Beispiele (1) und (2)). Einen wichtigen Sonderfall syntaktischer Komposition stellt die sog. “Inkorporation” dar, d. h. die Bildung von Verbformen, die eine nominale Wurzel enthalten (s. Art. 88). In der Eigenschaft von Substantiven, die in die Verbformen inkorporiert werden, treten üblicherweise das syntaktische Objekt oder das Subjekt des Verbs auf. Auf ähnliche Weise verfügen Klitika (vgl. Art. 41), die nicht die phonetische Selbständigkeit einer vollwertigen Wortform besitzen (was sie Affixen annähert), über viele (oder alle) übrigen Eigenschaften kanonischer Wortformen. Ein markantes Beispiel für Klitika sind die sogenannten “unbetonten” Personalpronomina in den romanischen Sprachen oder der postpositive Artikel im Bulgarischen und Makedonischen. Sowohl synchron als auch diachron sind Klitika den Morphemen agglutinierender Sprachen näher (und oft in diesen Sprachen nur schwer von ihnen zu unterscheiden) als den Morphemen fusionierender Sprachen. Andererseits sind für Sprachen, die traditionell als analytisch (Hausa oder Maori)

(2) clara y precisa-mente klar und präzis-adv ‘klar und präzis’ Ein schwierigerer Fall ist mit der Fähigkeit von Substantivstämmen (nicht Wortformen!) sogenannter “possessiver Adjektive” in den slavischen Sprachen verbunden, eine Reihe syntaktischer Prozesse zu steuern, wie im folgenden Beispiel aus dem Makedonischen (Corbett 1987): (3) Pred nas e vor uns sein:pr‰s. 3.sg majcˇ-in-i-ot Mutter-poss-m.sg-det.sg stan Appartement(m.sg) koja sˇto saka welche (f.sg) daß wollen(pr‰s. 3.sg) da go prodad-e kon ihn verkaufen-pr‰s. 3.sg ‘Vor uns ist das Appartement der Mutter, die es verkaufen will.‘ Hier verhält sich der Stamm des Adjektivs majcˇini ’mütterlich, der Mutter gehörend’ (maskulines Genus!), welches von dem Substantiv majka ‘Mutter’ (feminines Genus) abgeleitet ist, wie eine selbständige substantivische Wortform: Er kontrolliert das Genus des anaphorischen Relativpronomens mit femininem Genus koja. Mit anderen Worten, die betreffende Wortform ist syntaktisch einer analytischen Konstruktion des Typs (stan) na majka ‘Wohnung der Mutter’ gleichwertig. Das wiederum bedeutet aber, daß sich der gebundene Stamm in syntaktischer Hinsicht wie eine autonome Wortform verhält, das heißt, daß im betreffenden makedonischen Beispiel die Morphologie eben “transparent” für die Syntax ist. Außer syntaktisch selbständigen Morphemen innerhalb einer Wortform stellen für die Abgrenzung der Morphologie von der Syntax auch Phänomene syntaktischer Komposition einerseits und Klitika andererseits ein nicht geringes Problem dar.

30 oder isolierend (Vietnamesisch oder Ewe) bezeichnet werden, Probleme anderer Art charakteristisch: Hier handelt es sich um Sprachen, in denen Wortformen meist elementar sind, das heißt, ein bedeutender Teil der Wortformen fällt einfach mit Morphemen zusammen. Auch für solche Sprachen kann sich, ebenso wie für agglutinierende, der Begriff einer selbständigen morphologischen Ebene als problematisch erweisen, da auf dieser Ebene auch keine (oder zu wenig) Elemente mit besonderen strukturellen Eigenschaften auftreten können. 2.4. Morphologie und angrenzende Ebenen Aus dem oben Gesagten wird deutlich, daß die Morphologie einer Sprache mit anderen Teilen des Sprachsystems in Wechselbeziehung steht. Eine enge Verbindung zwischen der Morphologie und der Phonologie beruht sowohl darauf, daß Phonemketten (und Operationen an ihnen) als signifiants von Morphemen auftreten (das heißt, phonologische Oppositionen werden für die Unterscheidung von Morphemen genutzt) als auch darauf, daß phonologische Effekte die Folge allomorphischer Varianz sein können (d. h. phonologische Oppositionen werden lediglich für die Unterscheidung von Allomorphen eines Morphems genutzt). Die Grenze zwischen der Phonologie und der Morphologie verläuft gerade in diesem Bereich: Eine “bedeutungsfreie” Varianz gehört eher zum Verhalten der Phonologie (oder einer besonderen intermediären Disziplin ⫺ der Morphonologie), während die “bedeutungstragende” eher zum Verhalten der Morphologie gehört. Im übrigen waren in der Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft auch andere Unterscheidungen verbreitet, die den Geltungsbereich der Morphologie sowohl erweitert als auch eingeengt haben (vgl. 3). Die Verbindung zwischen Morphologie und Syntax wird durch zwei Gruppen von Fakten bestimmt. Erstens kann in einer Sprache eine scharfe Trennung zwischen Morphem und Wortform auch fehlen, und eine ganze Reihe von syntaktischen Regeln im eigentlichen Sinne kann auch im Innern von Wörtern wirken, indem sie die sog. “Morphosyntax” der betreffenden Sprache bilden. Zweitens kann in Sprachen beliebigen Typs (darunter auch in Sprachen mit scharf bestimmbaren Wortformen) eine ganze Reihe von affixalen Morphemen syntaktische Beziehungen ausdrücken: In solchen Fällen doubelt die Morphologie mit ihren Mitteln


gleichsam die Syntax, wodurch sie die Bereitstellung syntaktischer Mittel im eigentlichen Sinne (wie der Wortfolge) zum Ausdruck nicht grammatischer, sondern kommunikativ-pragmatischer Oppositionen erlaubt. Die Rede ist v. a. von solchen grammatischen Kategorien wie dem Kasus oder dem Isafet bei Substantiven oder dem Genus verbi bei Verben, die mit morphologischen Mitteln Beziehungen syntaktischer Subordination oder Aktant-Prädikat-Bindungen ausdrücken. Natürlich gehört hierzu auch der morphologische Ausdruck von Kongruenzbeziehungen verschiedener Art, sei es eine Kongruenz bezüglich einer einzelnen grammatischen Kategorie (eines Adjektivs mit einem Substantiv bezüglich Kasus und/oder Numerus, eines Verbs mit einem Substantiv bezüglich Person, Numerus und/oder Determination etc.) oder eine Kongruenz, die mittelbar eine Kategorisierung der nominalen Lexik ausdrückt (die grammatische Kategorie des Genus und der Nominalklasse bei den Substantiven). Solche Kategorien weisen insofern Beziehungen zur Morphologie auf, als sie formal innerhalb der Wortform ausgedrückt sind, sowie zur Syntax insofern, als sie inhaltlich Beziehungen zwischen Wortformen im Satz und Text ausdrücken. Morphologie und Syntax (unabhängig davon, wie scharf man die Grenze zwischen ihnen zieht) werden häufig als Bestandteile der ”Grammatik” einer Sprache angesehen, wodurch sie der “Lexik” bzw. der lexikalischen Komponente der Sprachbeschreibung gegenübergestellt werden. Diese Trennung beruht auf der für die Linguistik überaus wichtigen Unterscheidung zwischen regulärer Information (die in Form von Regeln gespeichert ist, die mit Klassen von Einheiten operieren) und irregulärer, idiosynkratischer Information (die unmittelbar zu jeder Einheit im Lexikon gespeichert ist; vgl. Art. 32). Auch in dieser Hinsicht nimmt die Morphologie eine intermediäre Stellung ein. Erstens bedient sie die Grammatik in den Fällen, in denen mit morphologischen Mitteln Formenbildungs- und reguläre Wortbildungsbedeutungen ausgedrückt werden. Zweitens bedient sie die Lexik, v. a. in Fällen, in denen irreguläre, idiomatische Wortbildung als Mittel der Vervollständigung des Lexikons auftritt und nicht in der Grammatik beschrieben werden kann; Suppletivismus und irreguläre Formen in der Formenbildung betreffen üblicherweise ebenfalls die Lexikoninformation. Dieses Problem


31

ist eng mit der Möglichkeit einer Grenzziehung zwischen Wort- und Formenbildung verbunden, die wir in 4 berühren werden.

taren Wortformen (die in der lexikalischen Komponente des Modells bearbeitet und gespeichert werden) und Verbindungen von Wortformen, die in der syntaktischen Komponente des Modells bearbeitet werden, angeführt wurden. Dadurch wurde die Morphologie ⫺ wohlgemerkt, gemeint ist hier v. a. die Wortbildungsmorphologie ⫺ von der Syntax abgetrennt (die Flexionsmorphologie schlug man vor, grundsätzlich in die syntaktische Komponente aufzunehmen), doch noch nicht von der Lexikologie, da Verbindungen (wortbildender) Morpheme in Wortformen als idiomatisch angenommen wurden. Dies ist die sog. “lexikalistische Morphologiekonzeption”. Etwa zur gleichen Zeit trat eine schärfere Abgrenzung morphologischer Erscheinungen von phonologischen im eigentlichen Sinne ein. In den Arbeiten Aronoffs (1976), Kiparskys (1982), Dresslers (1985) u. a. wurde überzeugend dargelegt, daß die Varianz der äußerlichen Seite des Morphems grundsätzlich verschiedenartiger Natur ist: Wenn auch ein Teil dieser Art von Veränderungen tatsächlich dem (phonologischen) Kontext zugeordnet und mit Hilfe phonologischer Regeln widerspruchsfrei beschrieben werden kann, so verlangt die Beschreibung anderer Erscheinungen einen Rekurs auf die Bedeutung der entsprechenden Einheiten, und solche Alternationen müssen dann Gegenstand der Morphologie und nicht der Phonologie sein. Auf diese Weise erhielt die “Wiederbelebung” der Morphologie als eigenständiger Disziplin in den siebziger Jahren Unterstützung sowohl seitens phonologischer als auch seitens syntaktischer Untersuchungen. Das lexikalistische Morphologiemodell ist in der einen oder anderen Spielart bis heute eines der populärsten im Rahmen der generativen Theorie geblieben. Es beschreibt gut idiomatische, nichtadditive Morphemkomplexe, die in fusionierenden Sprachen in der Regel Wortformen sind. Dabei wird in einer Reihe von Varianten dieses Modells nicht einmal eine Grenze zwischen verschiedenen Morphemtypen gezogen: Sowohl Wurzeln als auch Affixe werden als gleichartige Objekte behandelt und die Beziehungen zwischen Morphemen denen zwischen Wortformen gleichgesetzt. Eine solche Auffassung von Morphologie kann man als “radikal-syntagmatisch” bezeichnen. Sie wird z. B. in den Arbeiten von Lieber (1981), Selkirk (1982), in vielem auch Di Sciullo & Williams (1987) vertreten.

3.

Die Morphologie als sprachwissenschaftliche Disziplin

Der intermediäre Charakter der Morphologie und die enge Bindung der morphologischen Spezifik einer Sprache an deren typologische Charakteristiken hat eine unterschiedliche Haltung zur Morphologie in den modernen sprachwissenschaftlichen Theorien bedingt ⫺ von der Zuweisung einer zentralen Stellung bei der Sprachbeschreibung bis hin zu einer praktisch völligen Negierung ihrer Selbständigkeit. In der traditionellen Sprachwissenschaft, die an Sprachen des fusionierenden Typs orientiert war, wurde die Morphologie (vgl. den deutschen Terminus Formenlehre) als Disziplin verstanden, die lediglich die Ausdrucksseite von Wortformen zu beschreiben hatte, welche zweifellos in diesen Sprachen eine Realität sind. Sowohl die Inhaltsseite der Wortformen als auch die Beziehungen zwischen diesen wurden dabei als Gegenstand der Syntax betrachtet (so wurde in der traditionellen Grammatik im Abschnitt “die Syntax des Verbums” nicht nur die Bildung von Nebensätzen, sondern auch die Bedeutung sämtlicher grammatischer Marker des Verbs behandelt). Der Strukturalismus ererbte in bedeutendem Maße eine solche Auffassung von Morphologie, allerdings bildete sich im Zusammenhang mit der Entwicklung der Technik der Beschreibung von allomorphischer Varianz und Alternationen (vgl. 2.2) eine Tendenz heraus, diese Problematik vollständig dem Geltungsbereich der Phonologie zu übertragen. Damit übernehmen die strukturalistische und die frühe generative “Phonologie” (wie z. B. im Modell von Chomsky & Halle 1968) faktisch den gesamten mit der Ausdrucksseite der Wortform verbundenen Problemkreis, wobei sie oftmals der Morphologie in ihrem traditionellen Verständnis nichts mehr übrig lassen. Ein Text wird lediglich auf der phonologischen und der syntaktischen Repräsentationsebene betrachtet. Im Rahmen des generativen Paradigmas setzte eine gewisse Wiederherstellung der Rechte der Morphologie nach dem Erscheinen des bekannten Artikels von Chomsky (1970) ein, in welchem Argumente für eine Abgrenzung von morphologisch nichtelemen-

32 Da aber bei weitem nicht alle Morphemverbindungen idiomatisch sind (selbst in fusionierenden Sprachen nicht), wurde der Vorschlag gemacht, verschiedene morphologische Erscheinungen unterschiedlich zu behandeln und sie in verschiedenen Komponenten des Sprachmodells unterzubringen, d. h. die nichtidiomatische Flexionsmorphologie wie bisher in der syntaktischen (oder phonologischen) Komponente zu beschreiben und die idiomatische Wortbildungsmorphologie in der lexikalischen Komponente des Modells. Das bekannteste Modell dieser Art ist das Modell einer “gespaltenen Morphologie” (split morphology; Anderson 1982; 1992), das auch eine modifizierte Variante des Word and Paradigm-Ansatzes bei der Formenbildung verwendet. Andersons Modell ist eines der wenigen formalen Modelle, in welchem der Abgrenzung der Flexions- von der Wortbildungsmorphologie eine prinzipielle theoretische Bedeutung beigemessen wird. Nach Auffassung Andersons sind Flexionsmarker solche, die “für die Syntax relevant sind”, das heißt: die am Ausdruck syntaktischer Beziehungen teilnehmen. Flexionsmarker sind infolgedessen regulär, Wortbildungsmarker dagegen irregulär, und ihre Bedeutung hängt in hohem Maße von der Bedeutung des Lexems ab, das sie modifizieren. Ungeachtet der Tatsache, daß das Modell Andersons einen unbedingten Fortschritt bedeutete (besonders im Hinblick auf die Erstellung eines formalen Modells des Paradigmas als eines besonderen sprachlichen Objekts), haben die von Anderson verwendeten Kriterien für die Abgrenzung von Wort- und Formenbildung keine universelle Bedeutung und sind nicht intuitiv einleuchtend. Tatsächlich ist es schwierig zu erklären, in welcher Weise die Marker solcher Kategorien wie des Numerus der Substantive oder des Verbalaspekts in demselben Sinne “relevant für die Syntax” sein sollen wie beispielsweise Kasusund Modusmarker. Andererseits wird die Vorstellung vom “irregulären” Charakter der Wortbildung nicht dem Material agglutinierender Sprachen gerecht, in denen das Anfügen vieler Wortbildungsmorpheme an den Stamm mit derselben (oder sogar größerer) Regularität vonstatten geht, wie das von Flexionsmorphemen. Darüber hinaus findet sich unter den Wortbildungsmarkern eine genügend große Zahl solcher, die unbestritten “relevant für die Syntax” sind, da sie die syntaktische Klasse des Derivats ändern (vgl. die


Bildung von Adverbien aus Adjektiven oder von deverbalen Substantiven mit der Bedeutung eines Nomen agentis). Weder extreme Varianten “syntagmatischer” noch extreme Varianten “paradigmatischer” Modelle geben also offensichtlich die ganze Kompliziertheit des realen Aufbaus jenes Komplexes von Erscheinungen wieder, der für gewöhnlich mit der Morphologie natürlicher Sprachen verbunden ist. In letzter Zeit haben daher einige um einen Kompromiß bemühte Ansätze Verbreitung gefunden, nach denen in einem formalen Modell der Zugriff auf morphologische Regeln nicht nur ein einziges Mal, sondern in verschiedenen Komponenten erfolgen kann, da diese Regeln unterschiedlichen Charakter haben: Man kann davon sprechen, daß es eine lexikalische Morphologie (irreguläre Wortbildung), eine syntaktische und postsyntaktische Morphologie gibt, ja in gewissem Sinne sogar eine phonologische Morphologie (Klitika, automatische Alternationen). Im ganzen sind diese Vorstellungen in der Theorie von der “modularen Organisation der Sprache” festgeschrieben, die für die zeitgenössische Etappe des Generativismus charakteristisch ist (s. Booij & van Marle 1986; Hammond & Noonan 1988 a; Spencer 1991: 423⫺459). Im Unterschied zu traditionellen und in bedeutendem Maße auch generativen “formalen” Morphologiekonzeptionen ist für moderne “funktionalistische” Untersuchungen eine der wichtigsten Aufgaben der Morphologie die Beschreibung der Inhaltsseite (affixaler) morphologischer Einheiten. Damit bildet sich ein neues Gebiet linguistischer Untersuchungen heraus, die in die Morphologie die grammatische Semantik integrieren. Ihr Gegenstand sind v. a. die grammatischen Kategorien der Sprachen der Welt. Die Grundlagen der grammatischen Semantik wurden ebenfalls von Linguisten strukturalistischer Ausprägung geschaffen (vgl. besonders Jakobson 1957 und Kuryłowicz 1964). Zeitgenössische Untersuchungen auf diesem Gebiet werden von der Warte der theoretischen Semantik (Lyons 1977; Wierzbicka 1988), der synchronen taxonometrischen Typologie (Dahl 1985; Mel’cˇuk 1994) und der diachronen Typologie (Lehmann 1995; Bybee 1985; Heine et al. 1991; Bybee et al. 1994) durchgeführt. In den Arbeiten der letzteren Ausrichtung wird Prozessen der Grammatikalisierung und Morphologisierung, also der Umwandlung nichtgrammatischer Elemente in grammatische und/oder nichtmorphologischer


33

in morphologische, besondere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet (vgl. Art. 145 und 146). Eine Bestandsaufnahme solcher Prozesse erlaubt eine adäquatere Deutung der Struktur grammatischer Systeme natürlicher Sprachen und der tiefen inneren Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ausdrucks- und Inhaltsseite von Wortformen. Dadurch erscheint auch die rigide strukturalistische Dichotomie von Synchronie und Diachronie überwunden und das Prinzip der arbiträren Beziehungen zwischen signifiant und signifie´ wesentlich präzisiert. Die polare Gegenüberstellung von Wort- und Formenbildung, die in Modellen der “gespaltenen Morphologie” üblich ist, entspricht ebenfalls nicht den genannten Konzeptionen, die auf dem graduellen Charakter dieser Opposition bestehen (vgl. besonders Bybee 1988).

und der Klitika für gewöhnlich zu den Aufgaben der Morphologie (hier sind die Interessen der Morphologie und der Syntax am engsten miteinander verknüpft). Der Unterschied zwischen verschiedenen Affixtypen bestimmt eine andere sehr wichtige Trennung ⫺ zwischen Flexions- und Wortbildungsmorphologie (vgl. Art. 38). Auf diesem Gebiet weisen die Anschauungen der zeitgenössischen Forscher wohl die geringste Übereinstimmung auf. Die einen ⫺ wie Halle (1973) oder Selkirk (1982) ⫺ leugnen überhaupt die theoretische Bedeutung dieser begrifflichen Trennung, andere ⫺ wie Dressler (1989) oder Bybee (1985; 1988) ⫺ nehmen den Unterschied zwischen Wort- und Formenbildung als kontinuierlich mit einigen wenigen Übergangsfällen an, wieder andere ⫺ wie Anderson (1982; 1992) oder Mel’cˇuk (1982; 1994) ⫺ bevorzugen es, eine scharfe Grenze zwischen Flexions- und Wortbildungsmorphologie zu ziehen. Im Rahmen von Theorien, die einen solchen Unterschied akzeptieren, wird der flexivische Status eines Affixes üblicherweise entweder mit seiner Regularität und Produktivität oder mit seiner Prädestinierung für den Ausdruck syntaktischer Beziehungen oder (nach Jakobson 1959) mit seinem obligatorischen Charakter verbunden (in dem Sinne, daß jeder Flexionsmarker zu einer Reihe sich gegenseitig ausschließender Elemente gehört, von denen eines immer bei einer Wortform aus einer bestimmten Klasse ausgedrückt ist). Gerade die letztere Eigenschaft erklärt am besten die Tatsache, daß sich flektivische Bedeutungen im Gegensatz zu allen anderen in grammatischen Kategorien vereinigen, deren formaler Ausdruck in Flexionsparadigmen realisiert wird. In den verschiedenen Sprachen unterscheidet sich der Umfang der Flexionselemente und der Grad ihrer Gegenüberstellung zu den Wurzeln. In flektierenden Sprachen (“morphemlosen” und “paradigmatischen”) ist diese Grenze schärfer als in agglutinierenden und analytischen Sprachen (“wortformlosen” und “syntagmatischen”).

4.

Die innere Struktur der Morphologie

Wenn der Gegenstand der Morphologie Wortformen und ihre bedeutungstragenden Elemente sind, so wird die innere Struktur der Morphologie durch die Klassifikation dieser Elemente bestimmt. Die wichtigste dieser Trennungen ist die zwischen Wurzel- und affixalen Elementen, die sich, da sie in der Mehrzahl der Fälle intuitiv einleuchtet, nur schwer einer Formalisierung unterwirft. Versuche, den Unterschied zwischen Wurzel und Affix mit Hilfe semantischer, phonologischer, distributiver und anderer Kriterien zu begründen, haben keine universelle Gültigkeit und können leicht falsifiziert werden, obwohl in einzelnen Sprachen die Anwendung dieser Kriterien annehmbare Resultate zu liefern vermag. So kann z. B. die Wurzel im allgemeinen nicht als “ungebundenes Morphem” definiert werden, da in vielen Sprachen Wurzelmorpheme nicht isoliert auftreten können, sondern obligatorisch von wenigstens einem affixalen Element begleitet werden. Es gelingt auch nicht, universal gültige semantische Unterschiede zwischen Wurzel- und Nichtwurzelelementen festzustellen etc. (vgl. Art. 27). Gegenstand der Morphologie sind in größerem Maße Bedeutung und Eigenschaften affixaler Marker, während Bedeutung und Eigenschaften von Wurzelmorphemen traditionell durch die Lexikologie beschrieben werden. Dennoch gehört auch, wie aus dem oben Gesagten folgt, die Beschreibung der Komposition (speziell der Inkorporierung)

5.

Zitierte Literatur

Anderson, Steven R. (1982), “Where’s Morphology?”. Linguistic Inquiry 13.4, 571⫺612 Anderson, Steven R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press

34


Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (1988), “Morphology in the Generative Paradigm”. In: Hammond & Noonan (Hrsg.), 1⫺19

Hjelmslev, Louis (1971), Prole´gome`nes a` une theórie du langage. Paris: Minuit Hockett, Charles (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231 [Nachdruck in: Joos, Martin (41966, Hrsg.), Readings in Linguistics, Bd. I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 386⫺400] Jakobson, Roman (1948), “Russian Conjugation”. Word 4, 155⫺167 [Nachdruck in: Jakobson (1971), 119⫺129] Jakobson, Roman (1957), Shifters, Verbal Categories and the Russian Verb. Harvard [Nachdruck in: Jakobson (1971), 130⫺147] Jakobson, Roman (1959), “Boas’ View on Grammatical Meaning”. American Anthropologist, 61.2, 139⫺145 [Nachdruck in: Jakobson (1971), 489⫺ 496] Jakobson, Roman (1971), Selected Writings, Bd. II. The Hague usw.: Mouton Kiparsky, Paul (1982), Explanation in Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1964), The Inflexional Categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Winter Lehmann, Christian (21995), Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Unterschleissheim, Newcastle: LINCOM Europa (LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 1) Lieber, Rochelle (1981), The Organization of the Lexicon. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club Lyons, John (1977), Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Martinet, Andre´ (1970), Ele´ments de la linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Colin Matthews, Peter H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics: A System of Formal Notions for Theoretical Morphology. München: Fink Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1994), Cours de morphologie geńe´rale, Bd. I. Montreál: Les Presses de l’Universite´ de Montreál/CNRS Selkirk, Elizabeth (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Smirnickij, Aleksandr I. (1955), Morfologija anglijskogo jazyka [Morphology of English]. Moscow: MGU Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory: An Introduction to Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell Wierzbicka, Anna (1988), The Semantics of Grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins

Heine, Bernd & Claudi, Ulrike & Hünnemeyer, Friederike (1991), Grammaticalization: A Conceptual Framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Vladimir A. Plungian, Moskau (Rußland) Übersetzung: Robert Hammel, Göttingen (Deutschland)

Bloomfield, Leonard (1939), “Menomini Morphophonemics”. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8, 105⫺115 Booij, Geert E. & Marle, Jaap van (1986), “Modular Approaches to Morphology: Introduction”. Linguistics 24, 487⫺491 Bulygina, Tat’jana V. (1977), Problemy teorii morfologicˇeskich modelej [Issues in the Theory of Morphological Models]. Moscow: Nauka Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: Benjamins Bybee, Joan L. (1988), “Morphology and Lexical Organization”. In: Hammond & Noonan (Hrsg.), 119⫺141 Bybee, Joan L. & Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William (1994), The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London: Croom Helm Chomsky, Noam (1970), “Remarks on Nominalization”. In: Jacobs, Roderick A. & Rosenbaum, Peter S. (Hrsg.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar. Waltham/MA: Ginn, 181⫺221 [Nachdruck in: Chomsky, Noam (1972), Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar. The Hague: Mouton, 11⫺61] Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row Corbett, Greville G. (1987), “The Morphology/ Syntax Interface”. Language 63, 299⫺345 Dahl, Östen (1985), Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria & Williams, Edwin (1987), On the Definition of Word. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989), “Prototypical Differences between Inflection and Derivation”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42.1, 3⫺11 Halle, Morris (1973), “Prolegomena to a Theory of Word-formation”. Linguistic Inquiry 4, 3⫺16 Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (1988, Hrsg.), Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics. San Diego: Academic Press

II. Geschichte der morphologischen Forschung I: von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert History of morphological research I: From antiquity to the 19th century 4. The Ancient Near East 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Background Genres of texts and formal devices used Areas of morphology considered Parts of speech and grammatical categories Theoretical concepts Technical terminology Reflection of pedagogical aims in theoretical notions and formal devices used 8. Influence from the structures of the languages on the theoretical framework 9. Ancient Egypt 10. References

1.

Background

1.1. Outline chronology of the Ancient Near East c. 2500 BC Shuruppag (in southern Mesopotamia) c. 2300 BC Ebla (in western Syria) c. 2100⫺1700 BC Old Babylonian Period in southern Mesopotamia 1600⫺1100 BC New Kingdom in Egypt c. 1450⫺1400 BC Amarna Period 1307⫺1070 BC Ramesside Period in Egypt before 1200 BC Hattusas (in central Anatolia) c. 1200 BC Ugarit (on the coast of Syria) c. 800⫺612 BC Neo-Assyrian Empire (in northern Mesopotamia) c. 1000⫺500 BC Neo-Babylonian Period (in southern Mesopotamia) from 302 BC Ptolemaic (Hellenistic) Period in Egypt 1.2. Syro-Mesopotamia: description of the languages involved Study of morphology in the Ancient Near East principally concerned two languages, both native to ancient Mesopotamia (modern

Iraq): as target language, Sumerian, an agglutinative, partially ergative, language isolate, first attested in writing in c. 3400 BC and probably extinct by 1800 BC, but surviving as a classical language until the 1st century BC; and, as the receptor language, Akkadian, forming on its own the East branch of the Semitic languages, attested in writing from c. 2500 BC to the first century AD (Black 1989; 1991; Reiner 1994; Civil 1994). The form of Sumerian studied in the majority of the texts was that called Emegi (‘normal dialect’). One vocabulary collects together forms in both Emegi and Emesal (the women’s language of Sumerian; see Landsberger et al. 1956; Schretter 1990; Black 1992). The forms of Akkadian used are the dialect called Old Bablyonian and (in texts of the first millennium BC) the literary dialect Standard Babylonian. In the very early monoglot Sumerian verbal paradigms from Ebla in western Syria, the language is an earlier form of Sumerian, but the students were native speakers of Eblan; the students of the earliest paradigms, from Shuruppag, may have been speakers of Old Akkadian. Sumerian-Akkadian lexical (but not grammatical) texts copied at Hattusas in central Anatolia were amplified with a translation into Hittite in a third column; a few Sumerian-Akkadian ‘grammatical vocabularies’ (see 2 below) were copied at Hattusas also. A group of ‘grammatical vocabularies’ from Ugarit on the Syrian coast, dating from c. 1200 BC, were re-edited there to incorporate some words characteristic of western peripheral dialects of Akkadian. Kassite, which is an isolated language about which little is known, and which was used by a ruling dynasty in Babylonia during the second half of the second millennium BC,

36

II. Geschichte der morphologischen Forschung I: von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert

is represented by a Kassite-Akkadian vocabulary, mentioned below. All the above texts are preserved on clay tablets in cuneiform writing (a mixed syllabic and logographic script, with additional determinative signs). 1.3. Cultural situation and motivation for morphological studies For southern Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period ⫺ a culture where Sumerian as a vernacular was dying out and where scribal training and higher culture were bilingual in Sumerian and Akkadian ⫺ it is easy enough to ascribe motives to the linguistic studies of scribes whose mother tongue was Akkadian. In the first place, the literate few sought access to traditional, older texts, in practice those written in Sumerian, representing their cultural heritage. First-millennium BC Sumerian literary manuscripts often include an interlinear translation into Akkadian. Elements of Sumerian writing are also (as logograms) an essential element of the writing of Akkadian, especially in more technical language, so that some knowledge of Sumerian was also necessary for all advanced scribes. For these practical reasons, they needed to study the dying (and, in the later stages of the tradition, dead) language. It is not unreasonable also to hypothesize an element of intellectual curiosity, evidenced perhaps in the creation of non-idiomatic forms generated by the complexity of paradigms. While interpreters for living foreign languages were clearly needed also, there is no evidence that the teaching of these languages led to any scientific linguistic study. 1.4. Intellectual context The study of morphology should be seen in the broader context of Mesopotamian intellectual endeavour. Other disciplines such as lexical studies, literary commentaries, mathematics and, to some extent, astronomy also relied on or employed the list format (see 2) as a formal device. Consequently they share with Mesopotamian morphological studies the absence of explicit discussion, appearing to restrict themselves to observation or collection of information, without reflection. They are not systematically ‘descriptive’ in the modern sense, tending always to the encyclopedic amassing of data. However, Mesopotamian grammatical studies, like their mathematics (and unlike their lexical studies), are paradigmatic in strategy as well as ency-

clopedic, i.e. data are presented because from them the behaviour of other data can be predicted. There is no real basis to argue for a major theoretical (as opposed to formal) development from paradigmatic to analytic linguistics during the millennium from c. 1600 BC to c. 600 BC; analytic linguistics can be hypothesized already for the 17th century BC, since the principles underlying the ‘grammatical analysis’ texts, which are preserved only from the first millennium BC, are already implicit in the paradigms of the Old Babylonian Period, even though the latter present only complete grammatical complexes. Some evidence of morphological study exists also in texts outside the strictly grammatical sphere, for instance where nominal affixes or single syllabic elements of Sumerian verbal complexes are listed alongside syllabic values of graphemes, in thematically organised lists of the elements of the cuneiform writing system. It is clear that (now unrecoverable) oral explanation played an important role in the tradition of Mesopotamian linguistics, as in other elements of their intellectual culture. In Late Babylonian commentaries of the first millennium BC, such oral tradition is occasionally recorded as ‘… as they say’ or ‘… is said thereof’.

2.

Genres of texts and formal devices used

All Mesopotamian grammatical material is preserved in the form of lists of equivalences set out in two (very occasionally three) parallel columns, with Sumerian (the target language) in the left-hand and Akkadian in the right-hand column. However, the very earliest texts including brief verbal paradigms, from Shuruppag and Ebla, are one-column lists in Old Sumerian only. The bicolumnar lists are effectively tabular, read both across and down. Three genres of morphological analysis texts are preserved. These are (a) the ‘grammatical vocabulary’, a list usually of what in Akkadian are pronominal, prepositional and adverbial phrasal expressions arranged in paradigmatic groups in which one or more elements are systematically varied; (b) the ‘verbal paradigm’, a list of multiple forms of a given verb or verbs arranged

37

4. The Ancient Near East

according to various grammatically determined patterns; and (c) the ‘grammatical analysis’, a presentation in analytic form of the morphs which appear in the verbal paradigms and grammatical vocabularies. Mention should also be made of the extensive literature of lexical vocabularies (an estimated 50,000 entries are preserved), recording Sumerian-Akkadian equivalences and organised thematically (e.g. in categories such as objects made of wood; birds; fishes; human occupations; parts of the body). These also include a short Kassite-Akkadian vocabulary (cf. also Jacobsen 1974). The most characteristic formal devices used are paradigms, in which complex structural arrangement is crucial. Through manipulation of the order of presentation up to fifteen variables are conveyed. In the verbal paradigms, the indicative forms are always listed in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd person singular, with non-indicative forms demarcated from them by being listed in the reverse order 2nd, 1st, 3rd person singular. Non-indicative is identified elsewhere by the technical term sˇushurtu ‘reversed’, which describes the physical arrangement of the paradigms. Pronominal complements are added in the order 1st, 2nd, 3rd person singular, which is the order generally observed for pronominal elements (both nominal and verbal) in the analysis texts. Tab. 4.1 is a passage extracted from a paradigm of 318 forms using the Sumerian verbal bases nen and du, Akkadian ala¯kum ‘to go’ (from Landsberger et al. 1956: 97; a third column with Eng. translations has been added), listing non-indicative (imperative and optative) forms in the order 2rd, 1st, 3rd, and indicative forms in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd person singular.

3.

Areas of morphology considered

Mesopotamian grammatical study (cf. also Cavigneaux 1989) is almost exclusively limited to word inflection, and within that to verbal morphology. There is also limited attention to nominal and pronominal morphology, and to the morphology of adverbial phrases. Word formation was apparently hardly studied at all, apart from occasional documentation of the use of the Sumerian prefixes which form abstract nouns (nam-, nig-). However, the first-millennium lexical text known as Nabnı¯tu does exhibit some awareness of the relationship between Akkadian (not Sumerian!) nominal forms and their associated verbal roots. The object of Mesopotamian morphological study is a form of Sumerian which was current in the Old Babylonian Period when the majority of the texts were composed, and which was effectively frozen thereafter, since Sumerian became extinct as a vernacular (although Akkadian continued to develop); however, the very early paradigms from Shuruppag and Ebla date from the Old Sumerian phase of the language. The only evidence for an awareness of the diachronic development of language is to be found in the extensive lexical vocabulary murgu ⫽ imruˆ ⫽ ballu, formally a commentary on a SumerianAkkadian vocabulary which had its origins in the Old Babylonian Period. Composed probably in the first half of the first millennium BC, it adds a third column to the original Sumerian-Akkadian equivalences, giving more modern Akkadian equivalents. Clearly the original Akkadian (dating from about a millennium earlier) had become opaque in many places. Palaeographic lists of cuneiform signs were also compiled which sought to correlate ancient sign-forms with those of the first millennium BC.

Sumerian

Akkadian

Eng. translation

nenbanea gabanenen habanenen annedu annedun annedun

atlaksˇunu¯sˇi luttalaksˇunu¯sˇi littalaksˇunu¯sˇi illaksˇunu¯sˇi allaksˇunu¯sˇi tallaksˇunu¯sˇi

‘go (imperative) away to them!’ ‘let me go away to them’ ‘let him go away to them’ ‘he goes to them’ ‘I go to them’ ‘you go to them’

Tab. 4.1: Excerpt from a Sumerian-Akkadian verbal paradigm

38

4.


Parts of speech and grammatical categories

Evidence of recognition of different parts of speech is found only insofar as different genres of text typically deal with different parts. Thus the paradigms are restricted exclusively to finite verbal forms. ‘Grammatical vocabularies’ typically deal with prepositional and adverbial phrases. The majority of (lexical) vocabularies list nominals, sometimes including Sumerian verbal bases (typically equated with Akkadian verbal infinitives). Of the grammatical terms, that for ‘suffix’ applies equally to nominal and verbal suffixes. Among the grammatical categories recognised are case, number, ‘tense’ (conventionally so rendered), mood and causativity. A major binary opposition in the Sumerian verb is characterised by (in construction A) use of standard verbal base and (in construction B) use in some verbs of an alternative or reduplicated base; and (in construction A) marking of ergative in the slot before the base and (in construction B) marking of ergative in suffix position. However, these two sets of variables are not precisely coordinated. In the paradigms, construction A is equated in indicative forms with Akkadian preterite and construction B with Akkadian present-future; in non-indicative forms the situation is more complex. A major discussion still continues as to whether the grammatical terms in the Akkadian columns (respectively hamtøu, lit. ‘quick’ and maruˆ, lit. ‘slow’), refer to the Sumerian constructions or are simply the Akkadian for ‘preterite’ and ‘present-future’. A result of this has been the practice by many scholars of using the terms hamtøu and maruˆ to designate the Sumerian constructions in English, as an alternative to the terminology of tense, aspect or Aktionsart.

5.

Theoretical concepts

The theoretical concepts known include phrase, and the free forms word and verbal base, as well as bound forms such as affixes (prefix/infix/suffix). For some of these there is an explicit terminology (prefix/infix/suffix; singular/pluralic [verbal bases]; hamtøu ‘quick’/ maruˆ ‘slow’; see 4). Some concepts are identified explicitly by being contrasted in the arrangement (e.g. indicative/non-indicative in the verbal paradigms), others implicitly by

content (e.g. verbal/nominal, separated in different text genres). In more detail, the following categories are known: (a) nominals (a1) case and number suffixes (nouns, adjectives) (a2) case and number forms (pronominals) (a3) circumfixed adverbial relaters (used with any nominal) (b) verbals (b1) prefixes (four ranks; in Sumerian every finite verbal form must have a prefix; prefixes indicate modality, status, definiteness, intentionality and illocutionary force), (b2) ‘infixes’, i.e. following prefixes and preceding the verbal base (probably five ranks; infixes, which typically mark local, adverbial and pronominal rection, cannot stand in initial position), (b3) base, (b4) suffixes (three ranks). The native terms ‘empty’ and ‘full’, used of verbal affixes, convey a concept not unlike ‘zero form’. They both refer to two verbal affixes, deletable in certain circumstances, which in their ‘full’ forms are: (a) the 3rd person singular verbal infix -n-, (b) the 1st/2nd person singular verbal suffix -en (with variant forms -an, -in, -un). Because of the syllabic nature of cuneiform writing, which means that affixes consisting of a consonant only must always be written with a sign which includes the vowel preceding or following them, these affixes are, in their ‘full’ forms, always written with the syllabic graphemes *an+ *en+ *in+ or *un+. The corresponding ‘empty’ forms are: (a) -aπ-, -eπ-, -iπ-, -uπ-, representing the zero form of the infix preceded by any vowel, and (b) -aπ, -eπ, -iπ, -uπ, representing the form of the suffix with final consonant -n deleted and vowel -e- either present, or deleted in favour of or assimilated to a preceding vowel. It can be seen that this approaches the notion of morphological ‘zero’, although it is inescapably bound up with graphemic considerations. In the lists a structural principle is observed whereby entries are assumed to be

39


‘carried down’ where blanks occur in one column, i.e. to apply successively to all forms in the opposite column until ‘cancelled’ by a new entry. However, sometimes it is necessary in advance to be familiar with the structure of the paradigm in order to fill in the blanks, e.g. an Akkadian 2nd person singular imperative with 1st singular pronominal complement (e.g. ‘come to me’ or ‘reach me’) followed by two blanks must be completed, in some paradigms, with respectively a 1st and 3rd person singular optative each with 2nd person singular pronominal complements. Forms thrown up by the structure of the paradigms are sometimes demonstrably impossible on semantic grounds but nevertheless serve to demonstrate the analysis of certain sequences of morphs.

6.

Technical terminology

So far about two dozen technical terms have been identified. These are a characteristic development of the analytic grammatical texts preserved from the first millennium BC. The terms for ‘prefix’, ‘infix’ and ‘suffix’ derive from a metaphorical designation of the beginning and end of an utterance as the ‘top’ and ‘bottom‘, reflecting a similar mathematical usage, equivalent (in mathematical terms) to ‘to the left of’ and ‘to the right of’ a numeric expression. The following are examples of the terms (literal translations of the Akkadian are given, followed by their usage): eluˆ ‘upper’: verbal prefix; or bound form occurring at the beginning of a nominal syntagm; qabluˆ or eluˆ-qabluˆ ‘middle’/‘upper-middle’: verbal ‘infix’ (designating the five ranks of non-initial affixes standing immediately before the verbal base, i.e. infixed, but towards the front of the verbal complex); *sˇapluˆ ‘lower’: nominal/verbal suffix; rı¯qu ‘empty’; maluˆ ‘full’ (see 5); sˇushurtu ‘reversed’: non-indicative verbal form; gamartu ‘completed’: Sumerian verbal affix ba-/ -ma- (separative with verbs of motion); ria¯tum: Sumerian verbal affix ma-/mu-/-m-: Akkadian ‘ventive’ (movement towards the speaker); muˆ: participle (?) (many Akkadian participles begin with mu-); luˆ: Sumerian form equated with Akkadian verbal forms with particle lu (asseverative or optative) or prefix lu- (optative); sˇua¯ti ‘him’: non-causative verbal form; sˇua¯ti sˇua¯ti ‘him him’: causative; eterrubu ‘to occur (grammatically)’, lit. ‘to enter regularly’: iterative form; sˇa isˇte¯n ‘of one’: singular (verbal base); sˇa ma¯du¯ti ‘of many’: pluralic (verbal base); hamtøu ‘quick’; maruˆ ‘slow’.

Occasional instances are found of the use of utterances as metalinguistic indicators, e.g. sˇua¯ti sˇua¯ti, ‘him him’ to refer to a causative verbal form (which typically has two accusative objects), contrasted with sˇua¯ti ‘him’, i.e. non-causative; also muˆ and luˆ. There are no explicit generalised statements on the distribution or usage of grammatical elements, except perhaps for the remark in one text, TA ⫽ ana ina KI.TA sˇa kı¯ma A ¯ıtennerubu ‘the [normally ablative] suffix -ta can be translated by Akkadian ana ‘to’ or ina ‘in’ when it occurs in its locative sense’. (Cf. also Auroux 1989, ed.)

7.

Reflection of pedagogical aims in theoretical notions and formal devices used

Can the concepts used be attributed to pedagogical considerations? As far as the overall presentation of material is concerned, Akkadian is the dominant determinant, reflecting the pedagogical motivation inasmuch as the texts are arranged from the point of view of the speaker of Akkadian and learner of Sumerian. For example, three Sumerian nonindicative forms are selected (from many modal forms) and in the paradigms set against Akkadian 1st and 3rd person optatives and 2nd person imperative, neatly creating, as it were, the three persons of a single mood, which conveniently fits the explicit morphology of Akkadian. Within such categories, it is often Sumerian which determines the arrangement, probably because of the greater number of its morphs. Because of the paradigmatic presentation, forms and functions are treated together, except where they are explicitly disambiguated by technical terms. The need for technical terms arises partly from the need to disambiguate identically written syllables (the cuneiform script being essentially a syllabic writing system). As there is no way of indicating positional considerations in cuneiform writing ⫺ whether a lemma ‘mu’ refers to the prefix mu-, the infix -mu- or the suffix -mu ⫺ terms are created to distinguish them in the analysis texts in which individual morphs are listed. The inability of the syllabic writing system to notate morphs consisting of less than a syllable (i.e. consisting of a single consonant) means that the morph must be listed in each of the syllabographic contexts in which it

40


might appear. Thus the suffix -n must be listed as *an+/*in+/*en+/*un+ every time it occurs. Similarly, written *ba+ might refer to two identical verbal prefixes distinguished by function, and the term gamartu was created to identify the ‘separative’ ba- as opposed to the ‘passive’ ba-. The pedagogical aims also resulted in a lack of completeness in the description and identification of features and concepts, since only those were labelled which it was necessary to disambiguate for practical purposes.

8.

Influence from the structures of the languages on the theoretical framework

Sumerian is an agglutinative, ergative language isolate completely different in structure from the receptor language Akkadian, a typical Semitic language. The agglutinative structure of Sumerian lends itself well to what is called here grammatical analysis, i.e. sequential analysis of extended chains into their constituent morphs. Paradigmatic analysis, on the other hand, is hampered by the divergence between the structures of the two languages, leading to the need to create non-idiomatic forms in one or the other language in order to complete the paradigms. The large number of Sumerian verbal morphs generates a potentially much greater number of forms than exist in the Akkadian verbal system. Sometimes separate Sumerian forms are given the same Akkadian translation because the nuance of difference could not be captured. In contrast, Akkadian has a regular and productive causative system within its verbal structure, including passive, reflexive and iterative causatives. Sumerian has no regular formalised way of expressing causativity. While it can use locative rection to mark the causee, it does not possess the range of affixes necessary to systematise this type of expression throughout all possible ramifications. Consequently the paradigms are filled out with numerous certainly unidiomatic forms to correspond to the Akkadian structures.

9.

Ancient Egypt

Mention should also be made of morphological study in ancient Egypt, where it was always monolingual (cf. Reiner 1994; Johnson 1994). A few examples of verbal paradigms

from the New Kingdom are preserved, including one (dating from the Ramesside Period) which lists verbal auxiliary subject pronouns in the order 1. sg. ⫺ 3. masc. sg. ⫺ 2. masc. sg. ⫺ 1. pl. ⫺ 3. pl. (current) ⫺ 3. pl. (archaic) ⫺ 2. fem. sg. […]. Without appropriate infinitives, these are grammatically incomplete forms, which may indicate a simple level of abstraction. Its date (after the Amarna Period, when a western dialect of Akkadian written in Mesopotamian cuneiform was used as an international lingua franca for documents including state letters written from the Egyptian court) does not rule out the possibility of influence from the Mesopotamian tradition as practised in Syria. Much later, in the Ptolemaic (Hellenistic) Period, there are texts with verbal paradigms and complete phrases in Demotic, also in a standardised order 1. sg. ⫺ 2. masc. sg. ⫺ 3. masc. sg. ⫺ 3. fem. sg. ⫺ 3. pl. ⫺ 1. pl. ⫺ 2. pl., as well as word lists some of which are grouped by their initial letter (‘alphabetically’, although this is not necessarily due to Greek influence).

10. References Auroux, Sylvain (1989, ed.), Histoire des ideés linguistiques, Vol. I: La naissance des me´talangages en Orient et en Occident. Lie`ge, Bruxelles: Mardaga Black, Jeremy (1989), “The Babylonian Grammatical Tradition: The First Grammars of Sumerian”. Transactions of the Philological Society 87, 75⫺99 Black, Jeremy (21991), Sumerian Grammar in Babylonian Theory. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico (Studia Pohl Series maior 12) [11984] Black, Jeremy (1992), Review of: Schretter (1990). Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 87, 382⫺385 Cavigneaux, Antoine (1989), “L’ećriture et la re´flexion linguistique en Me´sopotamie”. In: Auroux (ed.), 99⫺118 Civil, Miguel (1994), “Sumerian”. In: Lepschy (ed.), 76⫺87 Civil, Miguel & Gurney, Oliver & Kennedy, Douglas A. (1986), Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon, Supplementary Series, Vol. I. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico Jacobsen, Thorkild (1974), “Very Ancient Linguistics: Babylonian Grammatical Texts”. In: Hymes, Dell (ed.), Studies in the History of Linguistics: Traditions and Paradigms. Bloomington/IN: Indiana Univ. Press, 41⫺62

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5. Old Indic grammar Johnson, Janet H. (1994), “Ancient Egyptian Linguistics”. In: Lepschy (ed.), 63–76 Landsberger, Benno & Hallock, Richard T. & Jacobsen, Thorkild & Falkenstein, Adam (1956), Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon, Vol. IV. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico Lepschy, Giulio (1994, ed.), History of Linguistics, Vol. I: The Eastern Traditions of Linguistics. London, New York: Longman [orig. 1990: Storia della Linguistica, Vol. I. Bologna: Il Mulino]

Reiner, Erica (1994), “Akkadian”. In: Lepschy (ed.), 87–96 Schretter, M[anfred] K. (1990), Emesal-Studien: Sprach- und literaturgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur sogenannten Frauensprache des Sumerischen. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft 69)

Jeremy Black, Oxford (Great Britain)

5. Old Indic grammar 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction General principles Background P¾‫ڲ‬ini Other grammarians Influence of Indian grammarians References

In this article the scheme of transliteration that is standard among Sanskritists has been used. The approximate IPA equivalents (shown after colons) are as follows: a : [Ř], ¾ : [༭], i : [i], è : [്], u : [u], Ĩ: [Ĩ], ‫ ۆ‬: [ŘrŘ] (modern pronunciation is usually [ri] in the north-central part of India), ࿺ : ŘlŘ (modern pronunciation is usually [lri], [li] in the northcentral part of India), e : [e], ai : [Řy]/[༭y], o : [o], au : [Řw]/[༭w], k : [k], kh : [kh], g : [g], gh : [gh], ‫ ڰ‬: [Ĉ], c : [c], ch : [ch], j : [ጆ], jh : [ጆh], ñ : [ಚ], ۘ : [၈], ṭh : [၈h], ḍ : [၉], ḍh : [၉h], ṇ : [ฃ], t : [t], th : [th], d : [d], dh : [dh], n : [n], p : [p], ph : [ph], b : [b], bh : [bh], m : [m], y : [j], r : [r]/[ဂ] (some ancient phonetic texts describe this as alveolar, others as retroflex), l : [l], v : [v], ś : [‫]ێ‬, ṣ : [ಆ], (modern pronunciation generally does not distinguish between the palatal and retroflex spirants; the usual pronunciation of both closely approximates [ಆ]), s : [s], h : [โ], ḥ : [h] (ancient phonetic texts describe this sound, called visarjanīya, which replaces -r or -s, as voiceless and produced in the throat or at the point of production of the preceding vowel; in modern pronunciations, it can be voiced and is generally followed by an echo vowel with the same features as the vowel that precedes), ṁ : a nasal offglide (called anusvāra) following a vowel, e. g., aṁ = [Ř/], this accords with what ancient phonetic texts say (modern realizations of ‫ ڬ‬vary according to phonological contexts and languages; they include a nasalized bilabial [ጇ], [Ĉ], a nasal homorganic with a following consonant, and nasalization of a preceding vowel). – Metalinguistic markers attached to items in P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s system to show that such items belong to certain classes or are subject to or condi-

tion particular operations are shown in bold face; e. g., kvip is the affix v with the markers k, i, and p. All markers are unconditionally deleted.

1.

Introduction

India has what is acknowledged to be the richest grammatical tradition in the ancient world. Vedic texts show evidence of grammatical thought, and the analyzed versions of the Vedas reflect an analysis based on discernible principles (see 3.2). A high point of ancient Indian grammar is P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī (ca. 5th century BC), which for centuries held the attention of some of India’s greatest thinkers. The methods observed in the Aṣṭādhyāyī held sway, so that later grammarians, both of Sanskrit and of Middle Indic languages, couched their descriptions in generally P¾‫ڲ‬inian ways. The commentatorial traditions remained active for a long time; one of the greatest P¾ninèyas, N¾geĘabhaۘۘa, lived in the late 17th to early 18th centuries of the current era, and commentatorial works continue to be produced even now. In the works of Indian grammarians, one finds a sophistication and awareness of vital issues concerning methods of grammatical description and general theoretical issues about language that is hard to match elsewhere, to this day. For a conspectus of major grammars dealing with Sanskrit, see Belvalkar (1915), on other histories and bibliographies of the subject see Cardona (1976: 139–141). Cardona (1976) deals with research done up to 1975 and Cardona (1989) considers some more recent work in the field. On grammarians of Prakrits, see

42


Nitti-Dolci (1938) and Banerjee (1977). A survey of more philosophical work done by Indian grammarians is provided in Coward & Raja (1990).

2.

General principles

A basic tenet of Indian grammarians, explicitly set down by Bhart‫ۆ‬hari (ca. 4th century AD) but implicitly held earlier also, is that the true unit of communication is the utterance (vākya), and that smaller units are recognized for the sake of description. Indian grammarians also agree in couching their descriptions as derivational systems in which words (pada) are syntactically related to each other and formed through introducing affixes (pratyaya) to bases (prakṛti ‘original stuff’). Four word classes are generally recognized: nominal forms (nāman), verb forms (ākhyata), preverbs (upasarga), and particles (nipāta). Bases are of two general types: verbal (dhātu ‘root’) and nominal (prātipadika); and both of these are either primitive or derived. Derived verbal bases are either deverbative or denominative: causatives, desideratives, and intensives such as kāri- ‘have ... do, make ...’, cikırṣa- ‘wish to do, to make’, cekrīya- ‘do, make intently, repeatedly’ – all derived from the base ḳr – are deverbative; denominative verbs such as putrīya- ‘wish a son, treat as a son’ or vṛṣāya- ‘act like a bull’ are derived by adding affixes to nominal forms. Derived nominals also are deverbative or denominative. The former include participles such as kṛ-ta- ‘done, made’, ga-ta‘gone’, agent nouns like kar-tṛ- ‘one who does, makes, agent’, and infinitives like kartum ‘to do, make’. The latter are either compounds (samāsa) such as rāja-puruṣa- ‘king’s servant’ or are derived from nominal forms through the addition of affixes called taddhitaj; aupagava- ‘offspring, descendant of Upagu’, tatas ‘from that, thence’, and tatra ‘in that ..., there‘ are examples of this type. Although units comparable to what Western linguists call morphemes are recognized, there is no strict demarcation such that morphology could not presuppose syntax. Indian grammarians recognize that some morphological derivations depend on syntax.

3. 3.1

Background

Preservation of sacred texts and Sanskrit Sanskrit speakers were aware from earliest known times not only of their identity as a people who referred to themselves as ārya

but also of their language as a vehicle of culture that set them apart from non-½ryas they encountered in the subcontinent. The ½ryas used this language in ritual contexts and this was the ritually pure (saṁskṛta) language in which the sacred texts of their culture were composed, a language also used in other elevated contexts. In order to perform their rites efficaciously, the ½ryas had to recite hymns of sacred works faultlessly. At the same time, from early on the ½ryas spoke vernaculars in their everyday life. Accordingly, texts concerning phonetics (śikṣā) were composed, giving instruction in the pronunciation required to recite the Vedic texts properly. Sikṣā and grammar (vyākaraṇa) are ancillaries associated with Vedic texts. There can be no doubt that the preservation of and proper ritual application of these texts played a major role in prompting the attention Indian scholars paid to language. The execution of rites accompanied by the recitation of appropriate texts resulted in the acquisition of merit. The same property was attributed to the correct use of Sanskrit: this too produced merit. P¾ninèyas not only supply evidence for this situation but also bring out the relative status of vernaculars and Sanskrit. In the first of his comments (called vārttika) on P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s work, K¾ty¾yana says: It is given that the relation between speech units and meanings is established and perennial (siddhe śabdārthasambandhe) and that according to usage in the everyday world the use of a speech element is prompted by the need to express a meaning (lokato’ rthaprayukte śabdaprayoge); this being so, the grammar serves to establish a restriction intended to procure merit (śāstreṇa dharmaniyamaḥ; Mahābhāṣya I.6.16, 8.3). That is, to obtain merit, one should use proper Sanskrit forms like gauḥ ‘cow (nom. sg.)’ instead of vernacular forms like gāvī. Now, as the use of correct Sanskrit speech in accordance with what a grammar like P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s describes leads to merit, so should the use of vernacular forms result in demerit. If, then, one used vernaculars instead of Sanskrit in everyday situations, one would be accruing demerit constantly, an obviously undesireable situation. Patañjali emphasizes that this is not the case. Demerit results from improper usage in a ritual context. He illustrates this with the parallel of learned men referred to as yarvāṇas tarvāṇas because they said this instead of the Sanskritic yad vā nas tad vā nas. Although these sages did indeed use such forms, however, they did not use improper speech forms

43

5. Old Indic grammar

in the course of rituals (Mahābhāsya I.11.10– 14; see Cardona 1988: 637–639, 1997: 549– 550). Thus, grammar was viewed as a vehicle for preserving the language of a Sanskritic élite (śiṣṭa), characterized by certain features of behavior and whose speech was to be imitated. In this sense, grammar in India had a prescriptive aim. Nevertheless, P¾‫ڲ‬inian grammarians accept that the immediate purpose of a work like P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī is to account for correct speech forms. In this context, a grammar describes usage that is given. And in this context, grammarians concerned themselves with the formal aspects of grammars. Moreover, the very same techniques that were developed to describe Sanskrit were used to describe Middle Indic vernaculars. 3.2

Pre-P¾‫ڲ‬inian analysis and rules of derivation

Also closely linked to the preservation of Vedic hymns are the analyzed texts (padapāṭha) associated with continuously recited texts (saṁhitāpāṭha). In general, a padap¾ۘha is recited with breaks between constituents which show phonological properties appropriate to word boundaries. For example, the padap¾ۘha corresponding to Ṛgveda 1.1.1: agním īe puróhitaỹ yajñásya devám ṛtvíjam / hótāraṁ ratnadhtamam is: agním ⏐ īe ⏐ puráḥ-hitam ⏐ yajñásya devám ⏐ ṛtvíjam ⏐ hótāram ⏐ ratna-dhtamam, and the analyzed text for Ṛgveda 2.18.4b:  catúrbhir  ṣaḍbhír hūyámānaḥ is:  ⏐ catúḥ-bhiḥ ⏐  ⏐ ṣaṭ-bhíḥ ⏐ hūyámānaḥ. In the sa‫ڬ‬hit¾p¾ۘha, words appear in forms reflecting morphophonemic rules; e. g., puróhitaỹ, hótāraṁ with nasalized y and -ṁ instead of -m before r-, and ṣaḍbhír with -r before the voiced segment h-. The analyzed text has hótāram and ṣaḍ-bhíḥ, with -m and -ḥ, which occur before pause. There are pauses not only between syntactically separate words such as hótāram, ṣaḍbhíḥ and hūyámānaḥ but also between members of compounds (puráḥ-hitam) and between certain endings, such as bhiḥ, and preceding stems, as in ṣaḍ-bhíḥ. Padap¾ۘhas presuppose a principled analysis of strings into constituents. In accordance with the fact that constituents are separated essentially on the basis of word-boundary phonological features, syntactic words such as ṣaḍbhíḥ are divided; ṣaḍ- has -ḍ instead of -ṣ (as in ṣaṣṭi- ‘sixty’), a variant appropriate to word-final position before a voiced element. In addition, the analysis of terms like

gó-mat- ‘rich in cattle’ and of compounds also reflects a knowledge of derivational procedures. No word is split, however, into more than two constituents. In polymorphemic items the place at which a split is recognized reflects grammatical hierarchy. Thus, pra-j ‘creature, progeny’, praj-vat ‘rich in progeny’, praj-patiḥ ‘Praj¾pati (master of creatures)’ and prajpati-gṛhītayā ‘seized by Praj¾pati (instr. sg. fem.)’ are divided as shown. The padap¾ۘha analysis also reflects an awareness of other grammatical relations, including syntactic constructions. The Rgveda padap¾tha has vṛṣa-yáte corresponding to vṛṣāyáte ‘acts like a bull’. This recognizes that the verb in question is a denominative in which the affix -ya- follows a stem (vṛṣan-) whose final consonant is dropped in the nominative singular (vrṣā). Corresponding to ratnadhtamam in the sa‫ڬ‬hit¾p¾tha of Ṛgveda 1.1.1, the padap¾ۘha has ratna-dhtamam, with a break between ratna- ‘treasure’ and dhtamam ‘who best creates’, instead of ratnadh-tamam, with the usual break before the superlative affix. This is best explained as reflecting a relation between ratnadhtamaand a corresponding syntagma in which the intensive dhéṣṭha- ‘who best creates’ is construed with an accusative of rátna-. Positing such divided texts in association with continuously recited texts recognizes that the two are related systematically. In fact, there are corpora of rules – in treatises called prātiśākhya – which serve to derive sa‫ڬ‬hit¾p¾ۘhas from padap¾ۘha through phonological operations. These rules are of the type (1) a → b / ... An original element a is said to change to b, a modification (vikāra) of a, in a context involving a following segment.

4.

P¾‫ڲ‬ini

4.1. Background ė¾kalya, the author of the analyzed text for the Ṛgveda, was a predecessor of P¾‫ڲ‬ini, who refers to him. P¾‫ڲ‬ini assumes the analysis of utterances into constituent words and of words into bases and elements that occur with bases. He operates with atomic units, without demonstrating how they were abstracted. P¾‫ڲ‬inèyas – students of P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s work – like K¾ty¾yana (ca. 3rd century BC) and Patañjali (mid 2nd century BC) set forth the

44


procedures for such abstraction. These involve substitutions in contexts to arrive at meaningful units based on reasoning from the presence and absence of entities and meanings. Two conditions are considered: (2) (a) If A occurs, B occurs. (b) If A is absent, B is absent. If both hold, then A is considered the cause of B. Accordingly, if (2a, b) hold with respect to a given speech element or set of speech elements and the understanding of a meaning, the meaning in question is attributed to the speech unit or set. For example, given i-tas ‘they two are going’, i-thas ‘you two are going’, at-tas ‘... are eating’, at-thas, it is possible to abstract the verbal bases i, ad (3rd pl. ad-anti) and the endings tas, thas. The meanings ‘go’ and ‘eat’ are attributed to the respective bases, and the meaning ‘agent (kartṛ)’ is attributed to a set of verb endings including tas and thas. Through such analysis the following major units were abstracted: words (pada), not only as syntactic units with verbal and nominal endings but also as phonological units; verbal bases (roots), nominal bases, and affixes (see 2). The reasoning in question led to recognizing not only elements considered signifiers (vācaka) of particular meanings (artha) but also elements said to be cosignifiers (dyotaka) of meanings in that they do not themselves signify these meanings but accompany signifiers whose meanings they serve to bring out (dyotayati ‘illuminates’). For example, a verb ending such as ti is considered to signify an agent; it does so by itself in a form like at-ti (← ad-ti) ‘eats’, as-ti ‘is’, which consist only of this ending and different verbal bases. A form like pac-a-ti ‘cooks’, on the other hand, contains not only a verbal base (also found in pac-a-tas [3rd du. pres.], pac-a-si [2nd sg. pres.], etc.) and an ending but also a third element. It is not proper to conclude that the -a- of pac-a-ti itself signifies agent, since this meaning is understood without such an affix in forms like atti, asti. On the other hand, a form like pakti equivalent to a 3rd person singular present like asti is not used, so that some meaningful status has to be granted to the affix in question: it is considered to cosignify agent together with endings like ti when these occur with verbal bases of particular classes. The same principles of analysis led to recognizing elements – comparable to empty morphs – that are absolutely redundant in that they neither signify nor cosignify any

meaning. For example, avika- has the same meaning as avi- ‘sheep’ (e. g., nom. sg. avi-s). Since avi- has to be segregated as a signifying element, avi-ka- is appropriately divided as shown. On the other hand, it is not possible to attribute to the ka of this item any meaning such as that of putra-ka- ‘little child, poor child’ (cf. putra- ‘son’). Moreover, this analysis entails zero as a “place holder”. That is, Indian grammarians recognized that meanings ascribable to particular units could be found expressed in the absence of such units. For example, the verb forms apacat ‘cooked (3rd. sg. impfct.)’ and ahan ‘killed’ correspond to the present forms pacati, hanti. Accordingly, an ending is introduced after han and then dropped: han-t → ... ahan. The agent noun han-tr- ‘slayer’ contains the verbal vase han, found also in forms like han-ti ‘kills’, and the agent affix tṛ. The compound vṛtra-han- ‘one who has slain Vṛtra’ also refers to an agent of killing, but this has merely the verb -han, without any overt affix. The meaning ‘agent’ here is ascribed to an affix (in P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s system, kvip: affix v with metalinguistic markers k, i, p) which is introduced (Aṣṭādhyāyī 3.2.87: brahmabhrūṇavṛtreṣu kvip) and then dropped (6.1.67: ver apṛktasya): -han-v (→ -han-ø) has the structure of han-tṛ. The requirements of a derivational system led P¾‫ڲ‬ini to posit other abstract elements. In particular, he operates with ten abstract elements that consist of the sound l with appended markers, L-affixes such as laṭ. These are associated with particular meanings and are also replaced by endings and participial affixes (see 4.2.1 and Cardona 1988: 173– 181, 554–579; 1997: 148–154, 475–498). It is noteworthy that P¾‫ڲ‬inian commentators know of systems where instead of positing such L-affixes, grammarians operated directly with endings and referred to these by means of terms such as bhavantī (‘present’). There is also evidence that pre-P¾‫ڲ‬inian grammarians classified compounds on the basis of their meanings alone, so that, compounds like upāgni- ‘near the fire’ and rājapuruṣa- ‘king’s servant’ were respectively assigned to the compound classes called avyayībhāva and tatpuruṣa – which Westerners call adverbial and dependent compounds – because their primary meanings were those of the first and second components (see Cardona 1976: 212–214). Similarly, it is probable that the terms parasmaipada and ātmanepada, which P¾‫ڲ‬ini uses as class names for sets of verb endings (see (7)), were used by

45


pre-P¾‫ڲ‬inian grammarians because the verb forms with such endings respectively could be used of actions the results of which were intended for someone other than the agent (parasmai: dat. sg. of para- ‘someone else’) and for the agent (ātmane: dat. sg. of ātman- ‘self’). In contrast with such systems, P¾‫ڲ‬ini represents a step towards formalism with a strict delineation between forms and the meanings with which these are associated. P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s system also involves formal relations among operations and rules – called sūtra – which provide for these. For example, there is a general rule of semivowel replacement which accounts for y v r l instead of i- u- ṛ-  before vowels; e. g., dadhi atra → dadhy atra ‘yogurt here (there is yogurt here)’ has dadhy instead of dadhi. There is a more particular rule providing for -iy and -uv to replace i- and uvowels which are the final sounds of particular stems before vowel-initial affixes, as in kṣiy-a-ti ‘dwells (3rd sg. pres.)’ and āp-nuvanti ‘they reach, obtain (3rd pl. pres.)’, derived from kṣi-a-ti, āp-nu-anti. The domain of the specific operation is included in that of the more general related operation, whose application it blocks within its domain. As can be seen, this is similar to what is now called the elsewhere convention. In addition, P¾‫ڲ‬ini operates with a bracketing principle. A form like (((kṣi-)a-)ti) is bracketed as shown, and operations conditioned by inner elements take precedence over operations conditioned by outer elements. On such principles, see Cardona (1988: 469–498; 1997: xvii–xxiii, 401–427).

Starting with semantics, affixes are added to bases under meaning and cooccurrence conditions. In this manner, utterances such as (3) devadatta odanam pacati ‘Devadatta is cooking rice.’ (4) devadattenaudanaḥ pacyate ‘Rice is being cooked by Devadatta.’ are derived from initial abstract strings like (5) ([devadatta-] s1) ([odana-] am2) ([pac-] laۘ) (6) ([devadatta-] ā3) ([odana-] s1) ([pac-] laۘ) through a series of steps, including a stage at which one has ([odana-] am1) (5ࡀ) ([devadatta-] s1) ACC.SG Devadatta NOM.SG rice ([pac-] ti) cook 3.SG.ACT (6ࡀ) ([devadatta-] ā3) ([odana-] s1) NOM.SG Devadatta INSTR.SG rice ([pac-] te) cook 3.SG.MEDPASS Such strings are made up of related units that consist of nominal and verbal elements (surrounded by square brackets) and their affixes, including verb endings like te and members of triplets of nominal endings (see (8)). P¾‫ڲ‬ini posits eighteen basic verb endings divided into two major groups – called parasmaipada and ātmanepada – each of which consists of three triplets: (7) 3rd pers. 2nd pers. 1st pers.

4.2. P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s system 3rd pers. 2nd pers. 1st pers.

4.2.1. General P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s aim is more general than that of an author of a padap¾ۘha (see 3.2). He accounts for utterances of a language in general, not merely for a particular text. In accordance with his predecessors, P¾‫ڲ‬ini describes Sanskrit by means of a derivational system, from a speaker’s point of view. On P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s derivational system, see most recently Sharma (1987: 165–211), Cardona (1988: 159–468; 1997: 136–400). In what follows, rules of the Aṣṭādhyāyī (abbreviated ‘A’) are cited in parentheses, without showing elements understood to recur from other rules and without translation (see Katre 1987; Cardona 1988, 1997; Sharma 1990, 1995, for translations and paraphrases).

Parasmaipada sg. du. tas tip thas sip vas mip ½tmanepada ta ātām thās athām iṭ vahi

pl. jhi tha mas jha dhvam mahiṅ

He also recognizes twenty-one basic nominal endings: (8) 1. nom. 2. acc. 3. instr. 4. dat. 5. abl. 6. gen. 7. loc.

sg. su am ṭā ṅe ṅasi ṅas ṅi

du. au auṭ bhyām bhyām bhyām os os

pl. jas śas bhis bhyas bhyas ām sup

As shown, these are divided into seven triplets (trika). Accordingly, the endings s, am, ā (5)–(6) appear with subscripts showing the triplets to which these belong.

46


In general, affixes have forms which are found in actual speech; for example, -s (nom. sg.), -am (acc. sg.), and -ā (instr. sg.) occur in forms like devadattas ‘Devadatta’ – followed by a voiceless dental stop, as in devadattas tatra ‘Devadatta is there’ – vāc-am ‘voice, speech’, vāc-ā. As noted earlier, P¾‫ڲ‬ini also operates with abstract affixes. For example, laṭ is one of ten L-affixes, which are introduced after verbal bases if an agent or an object is to be signifed (A 3.4.69: laḥ karmaṇi ca bhāve cākarmakebhyaḥ) and under conditions of time reference and modality. laṭ in (5)–(6) is introduced on condition that the action in question is referred to the present, is currently taking place (A 3.2.123: vartamāne laṭ); in (5), the L-affix signifies an unspecified agent, in (6) an unspecified object. The L-affixes in question are thus coreferential (samānādhikaraṇa) with nominal bases: with devadatta- in (5) and odana- ‘rice’ in (6). All Laffixes are subject to replacement, by verb endings and participial affixes. Nominal endings also are coreferential with nominals: in (5) -am has been introduced on condition that an unspecified object is to be signified, so that it is coreferential with odana-, which refers to the particular object being cooked, and in (4) -ā has been introduced on condition that an unspecified agent is to be signified, so that it is coreferential with devadatta-.

To illustrate further, let us consider how he accounts for case forms of vāc- ‘speech, voice’, deva- ‘god’, and the present indicative active and middle of kṛ ‘do, make’, pac ‘cook, bake.’ In accordance with P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s system, case forms are labeled as follows: 1. nominative, la. vocative, 2. accusative, 3. instrumental, 4. dative, 5. ablative, 6. genitive, 7. locative. For details concerning the underlying forms P¾‫ڲ‬ini posits, see Cardona (1988: 525–628; 1997: 449–542).

(9) Sg. 1–1a. vāk, 2. vācam, 3. vācā, 4. vāce, 5–6. vācas, 7. vāci; Du. 1–2. vācau, 3–5. vāgbhyām, 6–7. vācos; Pl. 1–2. vācas, 3. vāghbis, 4–5. vāgbhyas, 6. vācām, 7. vākṣu (10) Sg. 1. devas, la. deva, 2. devam, 3. devena, 4. devāya, 5. devāt, 6. devasya, 7. deve; Du. 1–2. devau, 3–5. devābhyām, 6–7. devayos; Pl. 1–1a. devās, 2. devān, 3. devais, 4–5. devebhyas, 6. devānām, 7. deveṣu (11) 3rd pers. 2nd pers. 1st pers.

(12)

3rd pers. 2nd pers. 1st pers.

4.2.2. Derivation from underlying forms Padas, bases and affixes are subject to additional affixation, to substitution – including deletion – and to augmenting. (5)–(6) are the initial strings from which are derived the final utterances (3)–(4). In deriving devadattena from devadatta-ā, two replacements are carried out. First, the ending -ā is replaced by -ina following a stem in -a, then -e- replaces -a- and the following -i- : devadatta-ā → devadatta-ina → devadattena (see (18)); devadattena odanaḥ → devadattenaudanaḥ. Instead of operating with two allomorphs ¾ and ina of equal status, P¾‫ڲ‬ini operates with a basic element ¾, subject to replacement in given contexts. P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s procedure of positing single basic elements and accounting for variants through such operations in justified by his derivational procedure, in which final utterances are derived from posited initial strings such as (5)–(6). Accordingly, P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s is what has been called an item-and-process system.

3rd pers. 2nd pers. 1st pers. 3rd pers. 2nd pers. 1st pers.

Active sg. du. karoti kurutas karoṣi kuruthas karomi kurvas Middle kurute kurvāte kuruṣe kurvāthe kurve kurvahe Active sg. du. pacati pacatas pacasi pacathas pacāmi pacāvas Middle pacate pacete pacase pacethe pace pacāvahe

pl. kurvanti kurutha kurmas kurvate kurudhve kurmahe pl. pacanti pacatha pacāmas pacante pacadhve pacāmahe

On the basis of sets like (9), a group of basic nominal endings is abstracted, that consists of seven triplets (see (8)). A distinct triplet is not set up for the vocative: endings of the first triplet are introduced on condition that a nominal is used in addressing someone (see also (17)). Endings are introduced under meaning conditions: if a given meaning is to be signified or cosignified. In accordance with this system, P¾‫ڲ‬ini refers to the triplets simply by number: first (prathamā), second (divitīyā), third (tṛtrīyā), fourth (caturthī), fifth (pañcamī), sixth (ṣaṣṭhī), seventh (saptamī). This is different from the practice –


well known from Graeco-Roman grammars and those indebted to them – of selecting a particular function as typical and labelling an ending accordingly (casus nominativus, casus dandi and so on). Moreover, the P¾‫ڲ‬inian system requires operating with separate endings even where the units in question are homophonous. The basic endings in question are introduced after nominal bases of all sorts, so that P¾‫ڲ‬ini operates with the following underlying forms: (13) Sg. 1–1a. vāc-s, 2. vāc-am, 3. vāc-ā, 4. vāc-e, 5–6. vāc-as, 7. vāc-i; Du. 1–2. vāc-au, 3–5. vāc-bhyām, 6–7. vāc-os; Pl. 1–2. vāc-as, 3. vāc-bhis, 4–5. vācbhyas, 6. vāc-ām, 7. vāc-su (14) Sg. 1–1a. deva-s, 2. deva-am, 3. deva-ā, 4. deva-e, 5–6. deva-as, 7. deva-i; Du. 1–2. deva-au, 3–5. deva-bhyām, 6–7. deva-os; Pl. 1–2. deva-as, 3. deva-bhis, 4–5. deva-bhyas, 6. deva-ām, 7. deva-su Some underlying forms are identical with possible forms of actual usage, so that they require no replacement. Substitution rules apply to account for other forms. For example: (15) vāc-s → vāc → vāg → vāk: After a consonant, su is deleted (A 6.1.68: halṅyābbhyo dīrghāt sutisi apṛktaṁ hal); velars replace word-final palatals (A 8.2.30: coḥ kuḥ); voiced unaspirated stops replace word-final nonnasal stops and spirants (A 8.2.39: jhalāṁ jaśo’nte); before a pause, such a voiced stop is optionally replaced by a voiceless one (A 8.4.56: vāvasāne). The vocative vāk is derived similarly. On the other hand, a special rule is required to account for a vocative like deva; see (17). (16) vāc-bhyām → vāgbhyām, vāc-bhis → vāgbhis, vāc-bhyas → vāgbhyas: A word boundary is recognized between stems and consonant-initial endings other than su (cf. 3.2), so that substitutions applicable to word-final consonants apply (see (15)). (17) deva-s → deva: The ending su used as a vocative (sambuddhi) is dropped if it follows a short vowel as well as e, o (A 6.1.69: eṅhrasvāt sambuddheḥ). (18) deva-ā → deva-ina: After stems in -a, the endings ṭā, ṅasi, and ṅas are respectively replaced by ina, āt, and sya (A 7.1.12: ṭāṅasiṅasām inātsyāḥ). A phonological rule lets a vowel of the set called guṇa (a e o, in this instance e) replace

47 an a-vowel and a following vowel (A 6.1.87: ād guṇaḥ): deva-ina → devena. The same rule applies to derive the locative singular: deva-i → deve. The forms in (9)–(10) are derived from kr-l and pac-l, with the agentive L-affix laṭ. This is subject to replacement by finite endings (see 4.2.1), which are divided into two major groups: parasmaipada and ¾tmanepada endings; see (7). These basic endings are subject to operations that depend on the L-affixes from which they derive. For example: (19) In ¾tmanepada endings from an L-affix marked with ṭ the segment beginning with the last vowel is replaced by e, but se replaces thās (A 3.4.79–80: ṭita ātmanepadānām ṭer e, thāsaḥ se): ta → te, jha → jhe, ātām → āte, thās → se, āthām → āthe, dhvam → dhve, vahi → vahe, mahi → mahe. (20) In general, ant- substitutes for jh- of an ending, but at- replaces jh- in ¾tmanepada endings except after stems in -a (A 7.1.3, 5: jho’ntaḥ, ātmanepadeṣv anataḥ): jhi → anti, jha → jhe → antelate. Verb affixes of the class called sārvadhātuka – which includes endings in most finite forms – condition the introduction of other affixes. In general, if the affix in question signifies an agent, śap is introduced (A 3.1.68: kartari śap), but after a verb of a particular group, including kṛ, the affix u is introduced under the same conditions (A 3.1.79: tanādikṛñbhya uḥ). In this way, P¾‫ڲ‬ini provides for complexes that consist of verb bases followed by affixes and endings, as in (21)– (22): (21) Act. 3rd sg. kṛ-u-ti, du. kṛ-u-tas, pl. kṛ-uanti; 2nd sg. kṛ-u-si, du. kṛ-u-thas, pl. kṛ-u-tha; 1st sg. kṛ-u-mi, du. kṛ-u-vas, pl. kṛ-u-mas Mid. 3rd sg. kṛ-u-te, du. kṛ-u-āte, pl. kṛ-u-ante; 2nd sg. kṛ-u-se, du. kṛ-u-āthe, pl. kṛ-u-dhve; 1st sg. kṛ-u-e, du. kṛ-uvahe, pl. kṛ-u-mahe (22) Act. pac-a-ti, pac-a-tas, pac-a-anti; paca-si, pac-a-thas, pac-a-tha; pac-a-mi, pac-a-vas, pac-a-mas Mid. pac-a-te, pac-a-āte, pac-a-ante; pac-a-se, pac-a-āthe, pac-a-dhve; pac-ae, pac-a-vahe, pac-a-mahe Again, substitution rules apply to derive the final forms: (23) Stem-final vowels i, u, ṛ undergo substitution by e o a (this last automatically followed by r) before verb affixes, unless the affix is given a particular marker

48


(A 7.3.84: sārvadhātukārdhadhātukayoḥ); accordingly, kṛ-u → kar-u-; kar-u-ti → karoti, kar-u-si → kar-o-si → karoṣi, karu-mi → karomi. Endings not marked with p are treated as marked with n (A 1.2.4: sārvadhātukam apit), to show that they do not condition this substitution. (24) kar-u-tas → kurutas, kar-u-thas → kuruthas: -a- of the stem kar-u- is replaced by -u- if an appropriately marked s¾rvadh¾tuka affix follows (A 6.4.110: ata ut sārvadhātuke); similarly: kṛ-u-anti → kar-u-anti → kur-u-anti, kṛ-u-te → ... kurute. A semivowel replacement rule (6.1.77: iko yaṇ aci) applies to replace -u- with -v- before a vowel: kur-u-anti → kurvanti. (25) kur-u-vas → kurvas, kur-u-mas → kurmas: the affix -u- following kṛ is obligatorily deleted before an ending that begins with v or m (A 6.4.108: nityam karoteḥ). (26) pac-a-anti → pacanti, pac-a-ante → pacante: a and a following guna vowel (a e o) within a word are both replaced by the latter (A 6.1.97: ato guṇe): similarly: pac-a-e → pace. (27) pac-a-mi → pacāmi, pac-a-vas → pacāvas, pac-a-mas → pacāmas, pac-a-vahe → pacāvahe, pac-a-mahe → pacāmahe: stemfinal -a is replaced by the corresponding long vowel before a s¾rvadh¾tuka affix that begins with one of a set of sounds, including m, v (7.3.101: ato dīrgho yañi). (28) pac-a-āte → pac-a-iyte, pac-a-āthe → pac-a-iythe: The endings in question are marked with ṅ (see (23)), so that their initial ¾ is replaced by iy after a stem in -a (A 7.3.81: āto ṅitaḥ). This sets up sequences subject to two phonological rules: guna substitution (see (18)) and the deletion of y before a consonant other than y (A 6.1.66: lopo vyor vali): pac-a-iy-te → pac-a-ite → pacete. P¾‫ڲ‬ini is consistent in his practice of operating with basic underlying elements subject to operations. As an extreme example of this procedure, consider how P¾‫ڲ‬ini accounts for the personal pronoun forms given in (29)– (30). (29) Sg. 1. tvam, 2. tvām, 3. tvayā, 4. tubhyam, 5. tvat, 6. tava, 7. tvayi; Du. 1–2. yuvām, 3–5. yuvābhyām, 6–7. yuvayos; Pl. 1. yūyam, 2. yuṣmān, 3. yuṣmābhis, 4. yuṣmabhyam, 5. yuṣmat, 6. yuṣmākam, 7. yuṣmāsu

(30) Sg. 1. aham, 2. mām, 3. mayā, 4. mahyam, 5. mat, 6. mama, 7. mayi; Du. 1–2. āvām, 3–5. āvābhyām, 6–7. āvayos; Pl. 1. vayam, 2. asmān, 3. asmābhis, 4. asmabhyam, 5. asmat, 6. asmākam, 7. asmāsu The underlying bases for the pronouns are yuṣmad-, asmad-, and all the forms of (29)– (30) are derived from these with the nominal endings given in (7). Some of the endings undergo substitutions after the pronouns, and the stems yuṣmad-, asmad- are subject to replacements before endings; see Cardona (1988: 368–371, 379–380; 1997: 314–315, 323–324) for details. Some forms have orthotonic and enclitic alternants: 2: sg. tvā mā, du. vām nau, pl. vas nas; 4, 6: sg. te me, du. vām nau, pl. vas mas. To account for these, P¾‫ڲ‬ini has a series of substitutions for whole padas consisting of the pronominal bases and endings, provided such a pada follows another pada (A 8.1.16– 17: padasya, padāt). Each replacement lacks a high-pitched vowel (A 8.1.18: anudāttam sarvam apādādau). The substitutions in question apply to yusmad- and asmad- with endings of the sixth, fourth and second triplets (Cardona 1988: 386–388; 1997: 329–330). 4.2.3 Morphology and syntax Neither P¾‫ڲ‬ini nor any other ancient Indian grammarian treats morphology and syntax as unrelated domains. What is traditionally called inflectional morphology is fully integrated with syntactic procedures involved in setting up strings of the type (5)–(6) (see 4.2.1). P¾‫ڲ‬ini does not describe any paradigm of either verbal or nominal forms and separately consider how these are used in utterances. The endings of verb forms like pacati and nominal case forms like odanam, devadattena are introduced under conditions which serve to account for utterances and the relations among forms with such endings are taken into account from the very beginning of any derivation. A great part of derivational morphology also is integrated with syntactic procedures. As (3)–(4) are related utterances, so also are (31) indro vṛtram ahan ‘Indra slew V‫ۆ‬tra. ’ (← indra-s1 v‫ۆ‬tra-am2 han-la‫)ڰ‬ (32) indro vṛtrasya hantā ‘Indra (is) the slayer of V‫ۆ‬tra.’ (← indra-s1 v‫ۆ‬tra-as6 han-t‫ۆ‬-s1) In the P¾‫ڲ‬inian system, the genitive ending of vṛtra-as (→ v‫ۆ‬tra-sya) is introduced to sig-

49


nify an object (karman) and the occurrence of this ending is determined by the fact that the nominal in question is syntactically linked to a derivate han-tṛ-, with the agentive affix tṛ (tṛc). In (33) indro dātā vasūni ‘Indra gives treasure.’ (← indra-s1 d¾-t‫ۆ‬-s1 vasu-i2) on the other hand, the derivate dā-tṛ- (root accented d-tṛ- as opposed to oxytone hant) governs the accusative vasūni ([acc. pl. nt.] ← vasu-i). In P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s system, a rule provides that genitive endings are not introduced after nominals to signify objects if these are linked with particular agentive derivates, including those with the affix tṛ (tṛn) of d-tṛ. Moreover, major derivates are formed on the basis of syntactic strings. Consider (34) rājñaḥ puruṣo nagaraṁ gacchati (← r¾jan-as6 puru‫ێ‬a-s1 nagara-am2 gamlaͶ) (35) r ā j a p u r u ṣ o n a g a r a ṁ g a c c h a t i (← r¾japuru‫ێ‬a-s1 nagara-am2 gam-laͶ) Both sentences mean ‘The servant of the king is going to the city.’ They differ in that (35) contains a form of the compound rājapuruṣa‘servant of the king’ and (34) has the analytic sequence rājñaḥ puruṣaḥ, consisting of the genitive singular rājñaḥ (rājan- ‘king’) and the nominative singular puruṣaḥ (puruṣa ‘man, servant’). In view of such alternation, P¾‫ڲ‬ini derives the compound by allowing a sequence

meaning of a lexical item used in an alternative syntagma. For example, the affix -a of (37) has the meaning of a term such as apatya- ‘descendant, offspring’. A form of aupagava- can alternate with a string including such a term; e. g., aupagavaḥ (nom. sg.) = upagor apatyam ‘descendant of Upagu’, in which upagor (gen. sg.) and apatyam (nom. sg.) respectively derive from upagu-as and apatya-s. Derived verbal bases also presuppose syntactic strings. Consider, for example, the verb putrīya- ‘wish for a son’. A P¾‫ڲ‬inian rule (A 3.1.8: supa ātmanaḥ kyac) provides for introducing the affix kyac after a term that terminates in a nominal ending (supaḥ) referring to an object of desiring, the result being a derived verb meaning ‘wish something for oneself.’ The affix is introduced after the complex putra-am, with the second-triplet ending am signifying an object. The derivate {putra-am-ya} thus gotten is a verbal base, any ending in which is deleted: putra-am-ya → putra-ya-, whence putrīya- (3rd sg. pres. indic. putrīyati), with substitution of -ī for the -a of putra. It is clear that in P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s derivational system, aspects of morphology depend on syntax. The derivation of compounds, derivates with taddhita affixes, and denominative verbs illustrates this point, which is also illustrated by how P¾‫ڲ‬ini accounts for enclitic pronouns like mā (see 4.2.2).

(36) {([r¾jan-]as) ([puru‫ێ‬a-]s)}

5.

optionally to be bracketed as a new unit, labelled samāsa ‘compound’. Any compound is a derived nominal base, and a rule provides for omitting endings in included within nominal and verbal bases (A 2.4.71: supo dhātuprātipadikayoḥ). Accordingly, the endings of (36) are dropped: ([r¾jan-]as) ([puru‫ێ‬a-]s) → {r¾jan-puru‫ێ‬a-}. By a convention established in the grammar, rājan- in rājan-puruṣa- thus derived is still treated as a word (pada), so that its -n is dropped, just as the -n of the base rājan- is dropped in the nominative singular rājā (← rajan-s), which is also a word. A derivate like aupagava- ‘descendant of Upagu’ is comparably derived from a sequence that includes a nominal ending:

5.1. Sanskrit grammars

(37) {(([upagu-]as6)-a)} In P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s system, a syntactic item such as upagu-as6 is optionally followed by an affix (of the set called taddhita) which has the

Other grammarians

Many grammarians after P¾‫ڲ‬ini also composed grammars of Sanskrit for various purposes. One of these, Candragomin, is traditionally said to have revived the study of grammar after it had fallen on hard times. The methods of later grammarians are generally in harmony with P¾‫ڲ‬ini, although they do not agree in all details. For example, Panini and most others operate with a verb base as ‘be’ (as in 3rd sg. pres. asti), the vowel of which is dropped in order to account for forms like stas ‘they two are (3rd du.)’ and santi ‘they are (3rd pl.)’. Commentators mention that some grammarians operated with a base s, to which augments were added in deriving forms like asti. One interesting feature with respect to which later grammarians differ from P¾‫ڲ‬ini concerns abstract affixes. As shown, P¾‫ڲ‬ini operates with ten L-affixes, which are replaced by verb endings and par-

50


ticipial affixes. Some grammarians do not posit abstract L-affixes. Instead, they operate directly with sets of endings. Moreover, they refer to these sets by names which are related to the semantics associated with the endings. For example, in the system of Hemacandra (late 11th to 12th century), the set of endings tiv tas anti, siv thas tha, miv vas mas; te āte ante, se āthe dhve, e vahe mahe is called vartamānā, just as traditional Western grammars speak of present endings. This procedure antedates Hemacandra (see Cardona 1988: 576–579; 1997: 496–498). We have here an instance of post-P¾‫ڲ‬inian grammarians reverting to a methodology that P¾‫ڲ‬ini himself had surpassed. 5.2. Middle Indic grammars Indian scholars also produced grammars describing Middle Indic vernaculars, Prakrits (Skt. prākṛta). One noteworthy feature of these is that they assume Sanskrit forms as sources and derive Middle Indic forms from them through substitution rules, the closest analog in ancient and mediaeval India to historical linguistics. As an illustration of how these grammarians proceed, consider how an early grammar describing a major literary Prakrit, the Prākṛtaprakāśa, accounts for the forms in (38), comparable to the Sanskrit forms of (10). (References given in parentheses are to chapter and rule of the Prākṛtaprakāśa [Upadhy¾ya 1972].) (38) Sg. 1. devo, 1a. deva, 2. devaṁ, 3. deveṇa, 5. devā/devāo/devāu/devāhi, 6. devassa, 7. deve/devammi; Pl. 1–1a. devā, 2. devā/ deve, 3. devehiṁ, 5. devāhiṁto/devāsuṁto, 6. devāṇa, 7. devesu These are derived from the underlying forms (39) Sg. 1–1a. deva-s, 2. deva-am, 3. deva-ā, 5–6. deva-as, 7. deva-i; Pl. 1–2. devaas, 3. deva-bhis, 5. deva-bhyas, 6. devaām, 7. deva-su Both the endings and the stem-vowel are subject to substitution. For example: (40) After a stem in -a, su → o (5.1: ata ot soḥ), jas/śas → Ø (5.2: jaśśasor lopaḥ). (41) The stem-vowel -a undergoes the following substitutions before particular endings; for example, -a → -ā / – jas/ ṅasi/ām (5.11: jasṅasyāṁsu dīrghaḥ): deva-as → deva → devā, deva-as → devao/u/hi → devāo devāu devāhi, deva-ām → deva-ṇa → devāṇa.

Moreover, in Prakrits plural endings occur instead of dual endings (5.109: dvivacanasya bahuvacanam) and the genitive occurs instead of the dative except for dative endings used in expressing a purpose (5.110–111: caturthyāḥ ṣaṣṭhī, kvacin na tādarthye). As shown, to account for the forms in (38), the Pr¾k‫ۆ‬taprak¾sa has operations apply to elements in underlying complexes of a base and endings identical with those that P¾‫ڲ‬ini posits. Other grammarians proceed in essentially the same manner. A different procedure is adopted to account for Prakrit pronoun forms comparable to those in (29)–(30). For example, the nominative singular forms taṁ, tumaṁ are described as substitutes for the entire pada consisting of the pronominal base yuṣmad and the ending s (5.71–2: padasya, yuṣmadas taṁ tumaṁ). This is comparable to P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s way of deriving enclitic tvā and so on.

6.

Influence of Indian grammarians

6.1. Influence within India In India, grammar was without any doubt the earliest learned pursuit in which formal relations among entities were investigated and described in terms of rules, and it remained the acknowledged queen of the sciences. The status that grammar held is evident from the influence it exerted on other areas of Indian learning. P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī in particular achieved preeminent status. As concerns morphology and syntax in particular, it is noteworthy that ritual exegetes (mīmāṁsaka) and logicians (naiyāyika) of particular schools adopted P¾‫ڲ‬inian rules but reinterpreted them in accordance with their own views. Consider (42) devadattaḥ pacati ‘Devadatta is cooking.’ (cf. (3)) In P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s scheme, the verb ending ti signifies an agent with respect to the action denoted by the verb pac. In accordance with this, P¾‫ڲ‬inèyas consider the principal meaning of such a sentence to be the action (kriyā) that is brought to accomplishment by direct participants (kāraka). According to a certain group of logicians, on the other hand, a sentence like (42) is considered to predicate of Devadatta that he is qualified by the conscious effort (kṛti) that leads to cooking (pākānukūlakṛtimān). In this scheme, the ending ti is considered to signify conscious effort, not an unspecified agent, and agents are in-


telligent beings capable of such effort. A school of ritualists holds that a sentence like (43) jyotiṣṭomena svargakāmo yajeta ‘One who wishes for heaven should perform the Jyoti‫ۘێ‬oma.’ enjoins one who wishes to attain heaven (svargakāma) to bring this about through performing the Jyotiṣṭoma rite. In this scheme, the verb ending ta is considered to signify an activity (vyāpāra), namely exerting oneself in such a way as to bring about a result (bhāvanā ‘causing to be’). Although the logician and the ritual exegete are not primarily interested in grammatical analysis per se, they do accept verbal transmission (āgama, śabda) as one of the valid means of acquiring and transmitting knowledge. And in this connection, they interact with grammarians, principally with P¾‫ڲ‬ini and his successors, so that they present and defend their views along with arguments against the views of such grammarians. (See Cardona 1976: 230–232 for additional literature.) 6.2.

Influence outside India

As is well known, the discovery of Sanskrit and its grammars served as a major stimulus to Indo-European studies in Europe. It is fair to say, nevertheless, that the methodology of P¾‫ڲ‬ini and other Indian grammarians has not had deep effect on the study of grammar in the West. To be sure, terms like guṇa, cṛddhi, samprasāraṇa parasmaipada, ātmanepada have gained currency, and the descriptions of vowel gradation for Indo-European could be said to owe something to Indian concepts. Still, there is no deep influence. Earlier, Indian models had some influence in studies of languages of areas where Indian culture and religions extended, as in Tibet. Here too, however, one does not see a deep penetration of Indian grammarians’ views – certainly not of P¾‫ڲ‬ini’s (Miller 1976: 120).

7.

References

Abhyankar, Kahinatha Vasudev (1962–1972), The Vyākaraṇa-Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, ed. by F. Kielhorn, 3rd ed., rev. and furnished with additional readings, references and select critical notes. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

51 Bannerjee, Satya Ranjan (1977), The Eastern School of Prakrit Grammarians. Calcutta: Vidyasagar Pustak Mandir Belvalkar, Shripad Krishna (1915), An Account of the Different Existing Systems of Sanskrit Grammar. Poona: the author Cardona, George (1976), Pāṇini, a Survey of Research. The Hague: Mouton (Trends in Linguistics, State of the Art Reports 6) [reprinted 1980, 1997: Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass] Cardona, George (1988), Pāṇini: His Work and Its Traditions, Vol. I: General Introduction and Background. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Cardona, George (1989), “P¾‫ڲ‬inian Studies”. In: Jha, V. N. (ed.), New Horizons of Research in Indology. Pune: University of Poona, 49–84 Cardona, George (1997), Pāṇini: His Work and Its Tradition, Vol. I: General Introduction and Background [second edition, revised and enlarged]. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Cardona, George (1999), Recent Research in Pāṇinian Studies. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Coward, Harold G. & Raja, K. Kunjunni (1990), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: The Philosophy of the Grammarians. Princeton; NJ: Princeton University Press Katre, Sumitra Mangesh (1987), Astādhyāyī of Pāṇini. Austin; TX: University of Texas Press Mahābhāṣya = Abhyankar (1962–72) Miller, Roy Andrew (1976), Studies in the Grammatical Tradition in Tibet. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Studies in the History of Language Sciences 6) Nitti-Dolci, Luigia (1938), Les grammairiens prakrits. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve Prākṛtaprakāśa = Up¾dhy¾ya (1972) Sharma, Rama Nath (1987), The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, Vol. I: Introduction to the Aṣṭādhyāyī as a Grammatical Device. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Sharma, Rama Nath (1990), The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, Vol. II: English Translation of Adhyāya One with Sanskrit Text, Transliteration, Word-boundary, Anuvrtti, Vrtti, Explanatory Notes, Derivational History of Examples, and Indices. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Sharma, Rama Nath (1995), The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, Vol. III: English Translation of Adhyāya Two and Three with Sanskrit Text, Transliteration, Word-boundary, Anuvrtti, Vrtti, Explanatory Notes, Derivational History of Examples, and Indices. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Up¾dhy¾ya, Baladeva (1972), Prākṛtaprakāśa of Vararuci with the Sañjīvani, Subodhinī, Manoramā and Prākṛtamañjarī Commentaries and Hindi Translation. Varanasi: Varanaseya Sanskrit Vishvavidyalaya (Sarasvatèbhavana-Grantham¾l¾ 102)

George Cardona, Philadelphia (U. S. A.)

52


6. Classical Antiquity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Classical Antiqutiy: Greece The Byzantine age (330⫺1453) The Latin world Conclusion References

1.

Introduction

This article is intended to give an account of the origin and development of morphology in the classical world of Ancient Greece and Rome. After this general introduction (1) the article comprises five sections: Greece (2), the Byzantine Empire (3), Rome (4), Conclusion (5), and bibliographical references (6). The article is serially organized in this way for clarity and ease of reference, but it must be borne in mind that the three central sections do not relate a chronological sequence. Certainly morphology, like the rest of linguistics as we know it today, was first conceived and initially developed by the Ancient Greeks, and practised in Rome under Greek teachers and followed Greek concepts. But from the second century BC Greek and Latin scholars were working simultaneously, maintaining contact with each other’s writings, until the separation of the Greek Eastern Empire and the Latin Western Empire that began in the fourth century AD. In the Middle Ages the western Latin tradition developed on somewhat different lines to the Greek eastern tradition, but significant contacts were renewed between them towards the end of the Middle Ages, and especially after the fall of Byzantium, Constantinople, to the Turks in 1453. The western tradition in the Middle Ages is covered in Art. 8; the continuation of the Greek tradition in Byzantine times is the subject of section 3 of the present article. Morphology concerns itself with grammatically and semantically significant differences in word forms and word structures, such as are found in all European languages and in most languages in the world. The relationship of morphology to other levels of language description, principally phonology and syntax has been, and is, a matter of debate and controversy. This is discussed in various books on the subject, for example Matthews (1974); cf. also Art. 34, 35. However, there is no doubt about the central place of morphology in the linguistics

of the world of European Antiquity, although, interestingly, the classical Greek equivalent of English morphology, *morphologia, is not recorded in any Greek writings known today.

2.

Classical Antiquity: Greece

Linguistic studies in western Antiquity should be surveyed in the varying contexts of their times and circumstances. Very broadly, Antiquity covers the creation and flowering of Greek civilization in mainland Greece and the subsequent Roman rule in the high period of their Empire over western Europe south of the Rhine and the Danube, North Africa, and the Near East. In this period, lasting some thousand years, achievements in literature, art, science, and of moral, political, and general philosophy, reached standards never attained before and seldom equalled since. The modern world is almost wholly in their debt, and in the words of one historian, “We Europeans are the children of Hellas” (Fisher 1936: 1). If the Greeks were innovative, intellectual and artistic, the Romans were practical, disciplined and efficient. It was their relatively beneficent rule from around 100 BC to 200 AD that permitted and encouraged the consolidation and diffusion of Greek achievements over the whole Mediterranean and Near-Eastern world, the Greek-speaking East, and the Latin-speaking West. These two centuries included the period, roughly from 100 to 200 AD, which Gibbon, writing at the end of the eighteenth century, declared was the time when “the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous” (Gibbon 1776 [1960: 1]). Not only chronologically, but more important, theoretically, we should consider the Greek creative achievement in linguistic studies first, and then the successful and vitally important translation and transmission of Greek doctrine by the Latin grammarians. Although the Greek and Latin linguistic scholars overlapped from the second century BC, the Greeks were in general the teachers and the Latins the pupils and followers. Horace’s assertion “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit”, (‘captive Greece took captive her rude captor’) was never better exemplified than in the field of linguistic studies.


In Greece linguistic investigations had two sources. Firstly, a philosophical interest in the nature and uses of language, and secondly at a later period the requirement to teach Greek and Greek literature among speakers of other languages and to maintain standards of correctness in the much wider diffusion of the Greek-speaking community after the Macedonian conquest of the Near and Middle East in the fourth century BC. Among philosophers the pre-Socratics (about whom less is known than about their successors), Socrates himself, Plato, his disciple and expositor, Aristotle, and the Stoics all examined the nature and the structure of language, with almost exclusive reference to the Greek language. Early links had been recognized between the different tense inflections and actual temporal relationships. A contemporary comedian, Aristophanes, makes fun of Socrates for discussing formal noun gender in relation to sex differences with his pupils (Nubes, 658⫺699). Such a jibe would not have been appreciated if such interests were not, in fact, part of the informal teaching of Socrates. He, as is well known, wrote nothing, but Plato records a dialogue, the Cratylus, in which various linguistic questions are discussed, though not primarily on problems of grammar. Elsewhere, however, Plato makes a first step in sentence analysis by distinguishing onoma, ‘name’, from what is said about it, rhe¯ma (e.g. Cratylus 399 B, 425 A; Sophistes 262 A⫺ 263 D). This primary division was taken further in several of his works by Aristotle, who introduces a third component of sentence structure, sundesmos ‘binder’, a loosely knit set of what might today be called function words, including conjunctions, prepositions, and personal pronouns (Rhetorica 3.5, 3.12; see also Art. 71). Greek, as is well known, was, like Latin, a highly inflected language, in which grammatical relations were in the main signalled by morphological differences in word forms, and the sequential ordering of words themselves in sentences and clauses was mainly a matter of style and emphasis. Not surprisingly, therefore, after the first Platonic division of the sentence into its two components, subsequent grammatical analysis concentrated on the different forms of words. In this Aristotle was the originator of morphological description. He made use of the ordinary language word pto¯sis ‘fall’ (as in pto¯sis Iliou ‘the fall of Troy’), to designate all the various

53 morphological differences in word forms having grammatical or semantic distinctiveness. The reason for his choice of this word is obscure, but for practical purposes it is not of prime importance. What matters is that for several generations of investigators morphology held the key to grammatical studies (Aristotle, De interpretatione 2⫺3; Topica 1.15, 5.7). In considering the development of Greek grammatical theory, grammatical analyses of Greek, and ultimately the writing of Greek grammar books, it is important historically to remember that the Greeks had to devise a technical metalanguage of grammar from its beginnings. There were no grammars of the language in existence, nor of any other language known to them. All they could do was to take words from ordinary object language and forge them into technical usage. The Latin grammarians had an easier task, that of translating these Greek terms into Latin; Greek pto¯sis became Latin casus, and hence English case. It must be understood that the Greek grammarians’ morphological analyses were “word and paradigm” (Hockett 1954: 210), not based on the modern concept of the morpheme. Throughout Antiquity, and for many years beyond, morphology was envisaged as the formal modification of a presumed primary or basic word form, for example, the nominative singular of nouns. The Stoic replacement of Aristotle’s pto¯sis by klisis ‘bending’ (Latin declinatio, English declension) brought out this conception more explicitly. Words were distinguished by their “endings”, not as individual suffixes, but as ways of formally ending the word; the expressions like “verbs ending in -mi” and “nouns ending in -os” are typical. The word used technically in this context was the verb le¯go¯, which otherwise just meant ‘end, cease’, for example le¯go¯ eridos ‘cease from strife’. The fact that grammatical differences in Greek word forms very largely concerned morphemic substitutions following the root form (wholly so in nouns) made this mode of description clear enough. Notably such derivational prefixes as were found in words like sunteino ‘draw together’, and metoikos ‘resident foreigner’, were referred to as “composite”, just because the prefixes could be formally matched with independent prepositions. This could lead to such mistaken analyses as Priscian’s identification of in- ‘negative’ with the preposition in ‘in’ (Keil 1859: 9⫺12), despite the homo-

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phonous invisus ‘unseen’ and invisus ‘looked at askance’. In fact, the nearest conception to the modern bound morpheme comes in the analysis of some compound words as being formed from “incomplete roots”, e.g. philanthro¯pos ‘benevolent’ (phil- ‘love’ ⫹ anthro¯pos ‘man’). The Stoics made considerable advances and developments in grammatical theory as a whole and particularly in morphology. Their introduction of klisis for morphological variation in general followed from their identification of pto¯sis in roughly its subsequent and modern meaning of ‘nominal case’, morphological differences in nominal words carrying grammatical distinctions. It was the Stoics who made pto¯sis the fundamentum divisionis between nominal and verbal words and gave rise to a long period of theorizing about case meanings that persisted through Greek and Latin grammatical work, culminating in the late Byzantine grammarian Maximus Planudes’s approach to a localist theory of case (Maximus Planudes 1828: 121⫺123). To the Stoics also we owe the distinction between the nominative and the oblique cases. For them the nominative was the “upright” (orthe¯ or eutheia) case, because it represented the subject or actor in relation to a verb, while the genitive, dative, and accusative cases were “oblique” (‘sideways’, plagiai), because they represented the designation of the noun in a specific relation to the action or process designated by the (transitive) verb. The vocative was included in the case paradigm later on morphological grounds. Its relations with the rest of the sentence were syntactically and semantically different, and later Byzantine grammarians queried its status as a case in the proper sense of the term (e.g. Hilgard 1889: 111.1). Stoic inflectional theory led them to expand the system of three sentence components left by Aristotle. Noun and verb were now firmly distinguished by case and by tense respectively. Additionally, the Aristotelian class of binders was separated into two, those that were inflected for case, the personal pronouns and the (Greek) definite article, and those that were not, prepositions and conjuctions. What had been in Plato’s analysis sentence components, of any length, had now emerged as classes of words, morphologically distinguished. But the original term meros logou ‘part of a sentence’ persisted and was subsequently translated into Latin as pars ora-

tionis. But oratio had two principal meanings, ‘sentence’, corresponding to the Greek logos and ‘spoken utterance, speech’, giving rise to the subsequent traditional term part of speech. Stoic philosophy continued through the Greek and Roman world until after the recognition of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire (fourth century AD), when pagan philosophy in general was disfavoured. But later in the western Middle Ages Aristotelianism was revived with the view of many Catholic theologians, in particular St. Thomas Aquinas, that in Aristotle’s teaching there was nothing irreconcilable with revealed Christian doctrine. What distinguished Stoic philosophy from Aristotelian was that the Stoics explicitly treated grammar as a part of dialectic and a vital key to the study of the human mind. This is made clear in the sentence “Most people are agreed that it is proper to begin the study of dialectic from that part of it that deals with speech” (Diogenes Leartius 7.55). In consequence, for the first time in Greece, so far as is known, grammar was assigned specific treatises with the Stoic bibliography, rather than mere mentions in more general logical, metaphysical, and literary writings, as was the case with Aristotle. Most unfortunately none of these books survive; they are known through book lists appended to such accounts of Stoic philosophers as appear in the encyclopaedic Lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius (c. third century AD). Titles such as the following appear in these lists (Diogenes Laertius 7.192): On nominatives and oblique cases, On singular and plural forms, On the arrangement of sentences, and many others. Because of the loss of the primary sources, it is not easy to reconstruct the Stoic theory, or theories, of language, though an articulated theory covering phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics does appear to have been presented (cf. von Arnim 1905⫺1924: 206a; Mates 1953; Long 1971; Frede 1978; Versteegh 1980; Dinneen 1985; Brekle 1985: 44⫺67). Stoic linguistics contributed significantly to the linguistic thinking in Antiquity, but it is clear that it did not constitute the main body of traditional Greek and Latin grammar contained in the didactic syllabus of later Greek and Latin grammatical education. The Stoics continued the treatment of grammar and of linguistics as a whole within


philosophy. Their aims were in line with much of our contemporary thought about language as a key to unlock some of the secrets of the human brain. In a sense therefore they were primarily concerned with syntax and morphology from the viewpoint of “the philosopher, not that of the literary critic” (cf. von Arnim 1909⫺1924: 206a). So far we have been considering one of the sources of Greek grammar, the intellectual and philosophical interest in language as a human capability and activity. This is well expressed in the dictum “The ancient Greeks had the gift of wondering at things that other people take for granted” (Bloomfield 1935: 4). Stoic philosophical interest in language and in grammatical theory went on into the Christian era, but more or less contemporaneously with the early Stoics a political change in the eastern Mediterranean and in Asia Minor was steadily transforming the linguistic situation and bringing with it profound consequences in grammatical studies. These events flowed from the Macedonian conquest of the Greek world, the East, and much of the Levant; and their incorporation into the Macedonian empire under Alexander and his successors was effectively completed by the end of the fourth century BC. Two centuries later this whole area was taken into the Roman Empire and administered from Rome, though the linguistic situation was not significantly altered by this later transference of power. Alexander and his successors believed, or outwardly affected the belief, that their conquests and consequent power were justified by their bringing Greek civilization and Greek culture to the former Persian Empire and to Egypt, superior to anything these people had known hitherto. As in the case of Latin in the western Roman Empire, Greek became the public language of educated life, the language of administration, and the language of social advancement. The Greek that was spread over this whole vast area was a kind of non-dialectal form of the language derived from classical Athenian (Attic) Greek and for obvious reasons designated the koine¯ (dialektos) ‘the common (dialect)’. It may be easily read and compared with classical Greek in the Greek “New Testament”. All this created a new and a quite different factor in grammatical studies. Hitherto grammar teaching had been concerned with the education and enlightenment of speakers of Greek. After the Macedonian conquests

55 Greek as a foreign language for the first time became a subject of great importance and required staff and resources for the teaching of Greek grammar and Greek literature at all levels. Hence the term Hellenistic (‘making Greek’) is often used of the last three centuries before the Christian era. Schools, academies, and universities were established, often under the patronage of the Macedonian rulers, with scholars and libraries funded by state finances. One such place was Alexandria, named after its founder, Alexander, where something like a modern university and university library was renowned throughout the Greek world. The establishment of authentic texts of the Homeric poems, something that had long been pursued in Greece itself, was now a major concern of the Alexandrian school, as Homer came to be regarded as Greek literature par excellence and was widely studied. All this activity required a new conception of grammar, and especially of morphology. It was no longer part of a philosophical and scholarly investigation of the Greek language by speakers of Greek as a matter of intellectual interest. Teachers and pupils now needed explicit grammar books which would set out the morphology of the language in a comprehensive form that could be dictated to listeners and learned by heart. The best known and first surviving such grammar book, the Techne¯ grammatike¯ ‘Science of grammar’, was a brief and concise summary of the orthographic phonetics of the language (“the pronunciation of the letters”), followed by a list of the now eight word classes with their definitions and their inflectional and derivational categories, and their subclasses (proper noun, etc.), all exemplified. In modern print this little book numbers about fifteen pages. It became the basis for the teaching of morphology throughout the Greek world and the later Byzantine Greek world as well, being the basis for later syntactic studies of the language, as, for example, the voluminous works of Apollonius Dyscolus (c. 200 AD). There is some uncertainty about the text as we have it. It was ascribed to Dionysius Thrax, a teacher who lived and worked around 100 BC. He was a pupil of the famous Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus, a renowned Homeric critic and himself a grammarian. Indeed it may well be that the system of morphology set out in the Techne¯ was itself first formulated by Aristarchus. For various

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reasons, cited both in Byzantine times and in modern studies, it is difficult to accept all the text as we have it as genuinely Dionysius’s work, and what we have may be the last of several subsequent “editions”, attributed to Dionysius and maintaining his conception and exposition of Greek morphology, with various changes in the course of years, the final version being perhaps established by the fourth century AD. Ultimately the theory and method originally employed by Dionysius, along with the later additions and alterations, were accepted as definitive by the Byzantine grammarians, especially in regard to the eight word classes. There is a reference to “Dionysius who taught us the eight parts of speech” (Hilgard 1901: 128.28⫺29). The Latin scholar Terentius Varro (first century BC) was clearly aware of an earlier version, and its mode of presenting and describing the grammar of Greek has now been attested in some grammatical papyri from the early Christian era in Egypt (cf. Wouters 1975; Robins 1997: 37⫺38). The details of the controversy over the text of the Techne¯ do not concern this article, but the first section of the book is of considerable importance and it is certainly the genuine work of Dionysius Thrax, because it is cited under his name by a writer of the second century AD (Sextus, Adversus grammaticos § 57, 72, 250), and his initial definition of the term grammar is quoted in an almost word for word translation by the later contemporary Latin writer Varro (Funaioli 1907: 265). In the initial section of the Techne¯ grammatike¯ Dionysius lays down in some detail the context of grammatical studies, and this context includes the prime objective of grammatical studies as a propaedeutic to the critical appreciation of classical literature. The central component of grammar is morphology, the establishment of the formal regularities of the language (the “analogies”). The word, conformably with all grammar writing in Antiquity, is the basic unit, the minimal segment of syntactic structure; but nothing further is said in this little book about syntax. The Techne¯ recognizes eight word classes, and these soon became standard (though not unique): noun, verb, participle, pronoun, and definite article, all inflected, and preposition, adverb, and conjunction, all uninflected. This system will be seen as a further articulation of the Stoic system, and Stoic terminology, especially case as the formal criterion

of nominal words, is apparent in the definitions of the classes and their subdivisions. Morphology and morphological categories (parepomena, accidentia ‘accidents’) are the keys to the definitions of the inflected classes, along with a subsequent semantic gloss. Typical are the definitions of the noun and the verb: “Noun, a case-inflected class of words, signifying a concrete or an abstract entity”; “verb, a word not inflected for case, but inflected for tense, person, and number, signifying an action or an experience”. The status of participles, which in Greek constituted richer morphological paradigms than in Latin (and in modern European languages), was entirely the consequence of their “participating” in both the nominal category of case and the verbal category of tense; the Greek term metoche¯ ‘participle’ came from the verb metechein ‘share’. The grammar set out in the Techne¯ is orientated towards the reader or hearer; there is no mention of the mental or philosophical status of the faculty of speech, and the definition of the subject is entirely clear. This caused some resentment among those concerned with linguistic studies, and the lines of the resultant controversy are preserved in the Byzantine commentaries (e.g. Hilgard 1901: 166.25⫺167.4). There was no objection, in fact there was general agreement, as regards the primarily literary objectives of grammatical study. What was found unacceptable was the alleged down-grading of the subject. Dionysius defined the techne¯ grammatike¯ ‘science of grammar’ as empeiria ‘practical knowledge’ of the usage of poets and prose writers (Uhlig 1883: 5.2⫺3). The distinction between techne¯ as a principled explanatory science and empeiria ‘successful practice from long experience’ had been long established in Greek thought (cf. Plato, Gorgias 465 a). The contrast was between the two conceptions of grammar, and therefore of morphology: the account of what the speaker knows and has in him whereby he is a fluent speaker, and a careful record of the forms used by accepted authors, their systematic presentation for students of the language, and the compiling of grammar books for this purpose, i.e. grammar for the hearer and the reader. Such rivalry over scientific prestige is perhaps inevitable, but the real contrast is not one of relative merit, but concerns the purposes intended and served and the choice of methods appropriate to each. In modern times there is a similar contrast between grammar as an


investigation of the processes and faculties of the human brain, and as the systematic compilation and classification of the data. Analogy, regularity, was the key to the description of morphology as presented in the Techne¯, and this requires some comment. In Greece an early and persisting debate characterized the initial phase of grammatical thinking. Greek morphology is full of exceptions or irregularities in noun case forms and verb tense forms. Grammarians seized on the regularity (analogia), of paradigmatically associated forms and of grammatical forms and their meanings, such as plural forms denoting more than one object. In contrast, others would point out the inevitable exceptions (ano¯maliai) in the paradigms, such as Ze¯nos as the genitive of Zeus and the formal plural Athe¯nai to designate the single city of Athens (whatever may have been its historical origin). It must be kept in mind that this sort of discussion took place before any grammar of Greek had been written and could be consulted. Essentially, the discussion was part of the process of creating a descriptive grammar of the language. By the time of Dionysius the analogists had sufficiently demonstrated that morphological regularities and “analogous” paradigms of forms could be established, with the admission that exceptions must be recognized and accepted when justified by literary usage. In the descriptive morphology of Greek and in the intended interest of the teaching of Greek, later on efforts were made to set out the full paradigmatic possibilities of verbs. In this the transitive verb tupto¯ ‘beat, strike’ was chosen and in a famous publication all the rules and subrules that could give rise to well formed words within the whole verbal system were together applied to this one verb, producing a immense array of possible forms, regardless of the fact that only a subset of such formations were actually attested in use by the classical authors. The resultant list may nonetheless have been of use in showing very clearly the total potentiality of Greek verb morphology, illustrated from a single verb root. The author of this work was Theodosius, a fourth century Alexandrian scholar. His Kanones ‘Rules’, as his work was called, was the subject of much commentary and explanation on the part of Byzantine grammarians (Hilgard 1889; 1894). Verb forms in Greek, as in other highly inflected languages, expressed in their mor-

57 phology many of the temporal, modal, and aspectual distinctions that are carried in many modern European languages by verbal phrases making use of auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and the like. In fact, the morphological structure of the Greek verb could indicate within a single word form the categories of tense, person, number, voice, and mood. Plato had identified nouns and nominal phrases as logical subjects of declarative sentences, and verbs and verbal phrases as their predicates. Aristotle had further identified the category of time as a distinctive semantic feature of verbs. But it was the Stoics who demonstrated a unique insight in showing that time reference alone did not account for the semantic content of the tense inflections of the Greek verb (cf. Hilgard 1901: 250.26⫺ 251.25; Versteegh 1980), and though they did not use the term explicitly, they showed how the aspectual distinction between completeat-the-time-spoken-of and incomplete-orcontinuing was a separate dimension. Some indication of this may be seen in comparing gegrapha ‘I have written’ with egraphon ‘I was writing’, where the distinction lies between an activity completed at the present time or time of speaking and one that was still going on during that time of reference. Likewise the pluperfect egegraphein ‘I had written’ refers to activity already completed before a past time of reference. Traces of Stoic doctrine are apparent in the Techne¯ and in the grammar books that followed it, especially in the terminology used. The names of the tenses used by all the Greek grammarians show the effects of Stoic thinking. The names of the four tenses that make reference to time past are paratatikos ‘continuing’ (Latin imperfectum ‘incomplete’), parakeimenos ‘lying before us’ (Latin perfectum ‘completed’), hupersuntelikon ‘beyond completion’ (Latin plusquamperfectum ‘pluperfect’), and aoriston ‘(indeterminate) past’ (a tense not formally distinguished in Latin). But the Techne¯ and subsequent grammars tended to ignore or to misrepresent the Stoic insights into this part of the semantics of the Greek verb. Their scheme was to group all these four tenses, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and aorist (unmarked past), together as representing only subdivisions of past time, glossed and further specified by adverbs of time, such as arti ‘lately’, palai ‘a long time ago’, and propalai ‘a very long time ago’, which are strictly irrelevant. Consider the

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English sentences Northern Europe has been temperate since the last Ice Age (an era long past) and Just after he had spoken he fell down dead. A Greek example of the pluperfect properly used of the very near past is seen in Homer’s Iliad (5: 660⫺661), where two sequential events occur almost simultaneously: Tle¯polemos d’ara me¯ron aristeron enchei makro¯i beble¯kein, aichme¯ de diessuto maimaio¯sa ‘Tlepolemos had hit (pluperfect) his left thigh with a long lance, and its tip ran through him (past aorist) with alacrity’.

3.

The Byzantine age (330⫺1453)

Reference has been made already in several places to Byzantine grammarians. In fact, so far as linguistic scholarship is concerned, no sharp break can be seen while the Greek parts of the Roman Empire became the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine age may be said to start in 330, with the official refounding of Byzantium as Constantinople, Constantine’s City, or “the New Rome”. The division of the old unitary Empire into two halves had already been effective since the end of the third century AD, and with the collapse of the Western Empire in 450 Byzantium took on the role of preserving and continuing the civilization and scholarship that it inherited. Scholars tended to congregate in Constantinople rather than in Alexandria, and linguistic scholars were deeply concerned with the preservation of standards of correctness in the face of dialectal changes among speakers and among some writers of Greek, accompanying its movement towards what ultimately became Modern Greek. It is no part of this article to follow the political fortunes and misfortunes of the Eastern Empire up to 1453, when Constantinople fell to the invading Turks, but the context of linguistic studies clearly affected the work done by linguistic scholars. Didactic requirements were paramount. A contemporary historian of the twelfth century writes of a school where together Greek speakers improve their knowledge of the classical language, Latins learn Greek, and barbarians are introduced to the language and the culture of the Greeks (cl. Reifferscheid 1884: 293). Naturally the bulk of the grammar books were written in Greek about Greek. One major exception was Priscian, whose massive Institutiones grammaticae was written about

500. It was designed to serve the needs of those who (vainly) intended that Constantine’s City, as the “New Rome”, should be at least in the upper levels of society a Latin speaking city. Priscian’s Latin grammar was, in fact, more successful and became historically more important in the western Middle Ages in the teaching of Latin and in the development of a distinctive theoretical grammar (see Art. 8). Priscian expressly commits himself to following his Greek masters and predecessors as far as he possibly can (for his work on Latin cf. 4). As a writer of Latin grammar for a largely Greek speaking class of pupils, he is liberal with morphological and syntactic examples from both languages, and there is some evidence that certain Byzantine Greek grammarians used his work directly as their source of existing grammatical scholarship. In Byzantine studies of morphology the Techne¯ ascribed to Dionysius Thrax, which had reached its present and accepted version by the fourth century, was the source and the authority for further writing. Extensive commentaries on it by scholiasts of several generations are extant, occupying very many more pages than the origianal booklet itself (cf. Hilgard 1901). Subsequent independent writings on morphology comprised elaborations and explications of what the Techne¯ had set out so succinctly, and rules for the formation of the paradigms of regularly inflected words. At least two Byzantine grammarians, Charax (sixth century) and Choeroboscus (c. 800) wrote extensive commentaries on the Kanones of Theodosius (cf. Bühler & Theodoridis 1976; Kaster 1988: 394 f.). Charax’s commentary is known today through the excerpts from it of the ninth century Sophronius. On Theodosius’ maximal paradigms Choeroboscus admits that a few of his well formed examples are not actually found in use, e.g. ethe¯n ‘I placed’ and edo¯n ‘I gave’ as singular aorist forms of the -mi verbs tithe¯mi and dido¯mi (Hilgard 1894: 345.27⫺28, 31⫺ 32); and even Theodosius himself had to admit, almost reproachfully, that the¯ko¯ as an aorist subjunctive of tithe¯mi “ought to have existed but was not used” (Hilgard 1889: 96.6: edei men ean the¯ko¯, all’arrhe¯ton emeinen). The formal analysis of Greek morphology was left as it had been set down by the classical grammarians, but it was amplified with additional examples and reduced where possible to rules, with the choice of basic forms


being governed by greatest economy in the statement of the rules. Several books that set out Greek morphology were in great part expressed in question and answer terms, most notably in Manuel Chrysoloras’s Ero¯te¯mata ‘Questions’, which was one of the most important grammars in use in the Italian phase of the Renaissance revival of Greek studies. Generally speaking, contact was lost, as far as Byzantine Greek scholarship was concerned, with the Latin west during much of the Middle Ages; for late mediaeval developments in philosophical grammar based on the Latin grammar of Priscian cf. Art. 8. As was their wont, and almost their intention, the Latins made very few innovations in the methodology of grammar writing, though, of course, they had to take into account the six-case paradigm of Latin as compared with the five cases of Greek. But there was one Latin innovation which escaped Greek morphology until the beginning of the end of the Middle Ages, when diplomatic and scholarly relations were becoming more frequent and intense. Since the time of Varro (first century BC) Latin nouns had been grouped into declensions, subclasses of nouns that exhibited similar endings in their case paradigms. In Greece the verbs had been grouped into suzugiai ‘conjugations’ on the basis of inflectional similarities since the Techne¯ (Uhlig 1883: 53⫺59): six in -o¯ (the so-called barytone verbs), depending on the sets of consonants appearing as root finals in their present tense forms, including one set with root-final vowels, e.g. grapho¯ ‘write’, nemo¯ ‘distribute’, hippeuo¯ ‘ride’, as some of their other tense forms depended on this formal feature; three sets of “contracted” (perispo¯menon), verbs such as no(e`)o¯ ‘think’, bo(a)o¯ ‘shout’, and chrus(o)o¯ ‘make golden’; and four sets of verbs ending in -mi in the first person singular active indicative forms: e.g. tithe¯mi ‘place’, histe¯mi ‘set up’, dido¯mi ‘give’, and pe¯gnumi ‘fix’. Theodosius and his Byzantine commentators used these conjugational sets of verbs in the same way, but in the nominal paradigms Theodosius lists nouns in order simply according to their nominative singulars, thus putting kochleas, kochleou ‘snail’ next to Aias, Aiantos ‘Ajax’ (Hilgard 1889: 3.1, 4.19). However, towards the end of the Byzantine age, Chrysoloras and Theodorus of Gaza, while continuing to use klisis ‘inflection’ as a general term, also apply it specifically to the

59 taxonomy of nouns in declensions, five in number. This must have been a back translation of the five Latin declinationes. This subclassification of Latin nouns goes back as far as Varro (cf. De lingua Latina 8.62), and the five declensions as used in current teaching of Latin have been stable since Priscian’s grammar, but among the later Greek grammarians there are considerable differences in their assignment of particular sets of nouns to their five kliseis, or declensions. It is an ideé reçue that Byzantine linguistic scholarship exhibited no originality whatsoever. This is scarcely fair. In their analysis of prepositional meanings and of the meanings of the oblique cases in relation to verbs and to prepositions a good amount of precise semantic distinctiveness was worked out, even if in some respects their attempted explanation of these distinctions was rather fanciful. The most original of all the Byzantine grammarians was Maximus Planudes (c. 1260⫺ 1310), who has been justifiably credited with a formulation of the localist theory of case meanings as this came to be known in the nineteenth century, wherein the meanings of the three Greek oblique cases are referred back first to the three locative relations, towards, in or at, and away from, and their three temporal counterparts, future, present, and past (cf. Wüllner 1827; Bopp 1833: 136; Hjelmslev 1935: 12; Murru 1979). It would appear that a localist conception of case meanings had been already growing in the Byzantine age, and an earlier version is found in the sixth century Syncellus (Donnet 1982: 438). Maximus Planudes also came nearer than any other grammarian outside the former Stoic school in accommodating the statement the meanings of the Greek tenses in their aspectual as well as their temporal dimension. There was also important work on syntax, and a number of treatises on syntax appeared throughout the Byzantine period. All this, however, though of credit to Byzantine scholarship, falls outside the scope of this article. (An assessment of the Byzantine grammarians may be seen in Robins 1993.) The Techne¯ has already been cited as the morphological starting point for Byzantine grammar in general. Its reputation and influence were not confined to the Greek world; it was translated into Armenian (cf. Adontz 1962) some time after the end of the fifth century, and into Syriac (cf. Merx 1889). It has been claimed either directly or indirectly as a

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factor in the development of Arabic grammatical studies after the expansion of Arab power in the first millennium (cf. Versteegh 1977). The Techne¯, though of modest size, has, in the form known today, been of exemplary importance in the further development of Greek grammar in later Antiquity and then in the Byzantine Empire, and consequently in the revival of Greek scholarship in the western Renaissance (cf. Law & Sluiter 1995, eds.).

4.

The Latin world

Greek linguistics was influential in the development of linguistic thought in Rome from the second century B.C. Of course, such work continued contemporaneously and cooperatively until the separation of the Greeks and the Latins at the end of Antiquity, the Latins for the most part, but not entirely, following the models set down by the Greeks. It was a Stoic emissary Crates who first introduced the study of grammar into Rome, and Stoic influence is clearly to be seen in the work of Varro (first century BC) in his linguistic observations in his major work De lingua latina. Varro did not write a grammar of Latin, but he was responsible for the first treatise in Latin on the Latin language. He was a polymath, enjoying the reputation of having written in his lifetime more books (1) incomplete complete

past discebam ‘I was learning’ didiceram ‘I had learned’

This arrangement will be seen, as was pointed out by Varro, not only to satisfy the actual meanings to the tense inflections, but to accord with the morphology of the word forms, in that one root, disc-, occurs with the incomplete aspect, and the other didic-, with the complete aspect. This is equally true of the passive tense inflections. In one sense the Latin verbal system favoured this analysis to a greater extent than the Greek system. The Latin future perfect didicero ‘I shall have learned’ was in regular use with all verbs, whereas the corresponding forms in Greek were confined to the middle voice and not greatly used (e.g. lelusomai ‘I shall have released for myself’). But Latin

than most people had read in theirs. His De lingua latina, only part of which is extant today, is a general investigation into the origin and nature of language as such and of Latin in particular, with as much of its earlier history as could be gathered from texts available to him. In his study of Latin morphology Varro is important in a number of respects: his (Stoic inspired) analysis of the Latin tense system, his discussion of the Latin case system as contrasted with the Greek one, his identification of word classes for Latin, and his treatment of word form variation (declinatio). In all of these topics one must remember the context of his writing. He knew Greek and like most educated Romans he greatly admired Greek scholarship; though influenced by Stoic doctrine, he almost certainly had an early version of the Techne¯ available to him (cf. 2). While he was engaged on his research and writing there were no other linguistic works on Latin published, nor, so far as is known, in preparation. In his analysis of the tense system of Latin verbs Varro’s insights enabled him to exploit the two-dimensional distinction of tense and aspect that the Stoics had made for the Greek verb. In some respects the morphology and semantics of the Latin verb can be shown to be more systematic than is the case in Greek. From his text one can set out a diagram of the Latin tenses in the following form (De lingua latina 9.96⫺97, 10.48): present disco ‘I am learning’ didici ‘I have learned’

future discam ‘I shall learn’ didicero ‘I shall have learned’

syncretized the unmarked past (aorist) and the perfect tense, didici meaning both ‘I learned’ and ‘I have learned’, which were formally distinguished in Greek. Varro appears to have ignored this syncretism, though it was duly noted by the later Priscian in his long and comprehensive Latin grammar (Keil 1855: 15.23⫺416.20). Along with this difference in the morphology of its tenses, Latin differed from Greek by having six morphologically distinct noun case forms in the singular, against the Greek five. The extra case is now known as the ablative, from its use to designate motion from a place (e.g. discessit ab urbe ‘he went away from the city’); Varro simply noticed it as the


“sixth” or the “Latin” case, specifying some of its functions (de lingua latina 8.16; 10.62). In a rather different set of word classes Varro followed the Greek practice of identifying morphologically the various inflected words, and he made the same basic distinction of case-inflected nouns and tense-inflected verbs, but from a different point of view. As we have said, he was not a teacher of Latin, nor was he writing a grammar of Latin. He was, however, greatly interested in the history of the language and he saw inflectional variations as one of the means by which the limited vocabulary of a primitive language could be expanded to express more differences of meaning. Like Greek, Latin had invariant words and inflected words; these Varro distinguished as sterile ‘sterile’ and fecundum ‘productive’. It was this latter set that interested him; exploiting the primary distinction of case and tense he set up four classes of productive words in Latin: (2) ⫹case ⫺tense (noun), lector ‘reader’ ⫺case ⫹tense (verb), lego ‘read’ ⫹case ⫹tense (participle), legens ‘reading’ ⫺case ⫺tense (adverb), lecte ‘choicely’ He included the class of adverbs to take account of paradigms like lecte ‘choicely’, lectius ‘more choicely’, lectissime ‘most, very choicely’. Invariant adverbs like mox ‘soon’ interested him less. Basing his classification on the two primary morphological categories of case and tense, Varro goes on to show how each of the four classes has its own sentential function: The noun names, the verb makes statements, the participle joins (i.e. embeds a clause within a matrix clause), and the adverb supports (the verb with which it is endocentrically linked); it is unable to function independently (De lingua latina 6.36, 8.9⫺10; 8.44, 10.17). Varro’s classification is, as far as one can tell, original with him. It is much more insightful than the traditional subsequent Latin classification, which followed as closely as possible the classification set out in the Techne¯. But what is no less significant is that it is based on prior Greek grammatical categories and that, as in Greece, morphological form was the primary definiens, with syntax and semantics following the classes so defined. Varro was not, and scarcely could have been, a historical linguist in the modern

61 sense. In so far as he was able through earlier written evidence he took note of certain fairly recent phonetic and semantic changes, such as bellum ‘war’ from duellum and the earlier meaning of hostis ‘enemy’ as no more than ‘stranger’ (kindred with German Gast, English guest, etc., of which, of course, he could not have been aware). Neither the theory of linguistic change and lexical correspondences, nor the evidence and the techniques evolved during the nineteenth century were available or indeed conceivable. Man’s age in the mortal world was short; a few centuries ago men went back to gods or heroes or to divine origin. The problem facing linguistic scholars like Varro was to explain reasonably the way in which assumed thin and undeveloped languages could transform themselves to match the much greater requirements of civilization. This was the question that lay behind his distinction between sterile and productive words, but he went further, in both lexical and inflectional morphology. Noting that animals and birds of use and interest to men had separate forms for males and females of the species (equus ‘stallion’, equa ‘mare’), whereas no such formal distinction was maintained for useless creatures (corvus ‘raven’, masculine; aquila ‘eagle’, feminine), he drew attention to social change and concomitant lexical change (De lingua latina 9.56): in recent times fashionable Roman ladies had taken to keeping and breeding doves as decorative house pets; the earlier single word columba, feminine, which had done duty for both sexes, was restricted to female doves, with a new masculine form columbus to designate male doves. It was the morphological changes in words, declinatio, that bore the main burden of language development. From original or from earlier words further words could be and had been created. This creation took two forms, and here Varro gave us an insight into the morphology of Latin (as of Greek and many other languages) that was lacking in the treatment of klisis and declinatio by Greek grammarians and by subsequent Latin grammarians, until it was reformulated on different criteria in the later Middle Ages (see Art. 8). This distinction falls in very largely with the modern distinction of synchronic derivation (Wortbildung) and inflection. Taking words like Roma ‘Rome’, Romanus ‘Roman’, equus ‘horse’, equites ‘horseman’, and equitatus ‘cavalry’, he noted that such

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derived words could be created almost at will, and that considerable variation was found between words of similar form and meaning: thus we have Thebai, Thebanus ‘Theban’, but Athenai, Athenaeus or Atheniensis ‘Athenian’, sus ‘pig’, suile ‘pigsty’, ovis ‘sheep’, ovile ‘sheepfold’, but bos ‘ox’, bubile ‘ox stall’; Varro declares that the form bovile is ill formed, though, typically, it was used by some others (cf. Keil 1857: 104.28), and there is no attested single word formed from canis ‘dog’ to refer to a dog kennel. Such derivational forms, which have to be learned lexically and are subject to much irregularity and even personal variation, he named declinatio voluntaria ‘formation at will’ (we may notice similar examples in English: hot, heat, but cold, coldness; an inhabitant of London is called a Londoner, but an inhabitant of a neighbouring town Croydon, would be called (if by any derivative noun) a Croydonian; and linguists differ in their preferences between grammaticalness and grammaticality). On the other hand, once such words have been accepted, there is no problem about their inflections; these follow “naturally”, and were called declinatio naturalis by Varro. Given Atheniensis we have no doubt that its plural will be Athenienses and that the plural of suile will be suilia, and that those who accept bovile will “naturally” accept bovilia. The same, of course, applies to English Londoner, Londoners, and to Croydonian, Croydonians. The Latin data and the theory behind them are discussed by Varro (De lingua latina 8.21, 8.54, 9.35, 10.16). Varro was very well read and well educated, and he was probably the most original Latin mind devoted to grammatical studies. But he wrote no grammar of the language; like his Stoic models his concern was the genesis and the operation of language in the brains and mouths of speakers of Latin. The Latin grammarians, the writers of Latin grammar books, are less interesting intellectually, but historically they are of the greatest significance. Didymus, a writer of the later first century BC, encapsulated the accepted view of Latin grammar, not merely that Greek grammatical terms and categories were applicable to Latin (as Varro had demonstrated), but that the two languages were essentially the same in grammatical typology and format. Didymus appears to have been a voluminous writer of the Alexandrian school. According to a reference to him by Priscian (Keil

1855: 445.14⫺16; 1859: 408.6⫺8), Latin had every grammatical entity and feature that Greek had, and their word classes and grammatical patterns were the same. Of course this was not true in every detail, as Priscian himself went on to point out and exemplify; but broadly, as compared with a language such as Hebrew, this statement was justified, and it gave just the sanction required for the Latins to follow, in linguistics, their regular cultural reliance on the Greeks in matters of the intellect. The first known author of an Ars grammatica, a didactic grammar of Latin was Remmius Palaemon, who worked in the first century AD. He is known for one innovation, the recognition of the interjection as a separate world class; in Greek grammars it had been and continued to be just one subclass of adverbs. The interjection was distinguished by him on the ground that it had no statable meaning other than the expression of emotion (Keil 1857: 238.23⫺25). Though this was a taxonomic innovation, in a more catholic sense it was conservative, in that it kept the number of word classes to eight, in the absence of an article class in Latin. Palaemon was followed by a very considerable number of grammarians; those whose works survive are collectively known as “the late Latin grammarians”. They span the period of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. While their conception of Latin grammar remained broadly the same, their method of writing varied according to the perceived needs of students and of teachers. With the expansion of the Roman Empire to include all western Europe south of the Rhine-Danube frontier and some areas beyond it, and the split into a Western (Latin) Empire and an Eastern (Greek) Empire, three requirements in Latin grammar writing resulted, and the Christianizing of western Europe under the authority of the Pope in Rome simply intensified them. Firstly there was the duty placed upon teachers to present and preserve the standards of classical Latin “correctness” in the face of changes considered decadent or corrupt in the written and spoken language of the Latin speaking areas. Secondly, following the Germanic invasions and their absorption into the Christian community, Latin was the language of religious and civic usage for all persons claiming the status of being educated. For these there was the need to provide grammars not just to maintain classical


standards but to teach Latin ab initio as a foreign or second language. Thirdly, a variety of this requirement arose at first in the Eastern Empire, where, as has already been noted, there was an effort, that ultimately failed, to maintain Latin as the language of government and of senior administrators in a Greek speaking community. There was therefore a contrast between taxonomic grammar books written for pupils and their teachers whose native language was Latin, though probably not an approved variety, and grammar books that had to give the rules for morphological paradigms and lists of the forms in the paradigms themselves. As with Theodosius’s Kanones (see 3) the Latin term regulae referred both to the formation rules themselves and to the paradigms generated by these rules (cf. Law 1986 a; 1986 b). Much of this dual interest in the presentation of grammar belongs to the Middle Ages (cf. Art. 8) rather than to Antiquity, but we may compare the material given in Donatus’s short grammar Ars minor (fourth century; cf. Keil 1864: 355⫺366) and, though at much greater length, Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (c. 500; Keil 1855: 1⫺ 597; 1859: 1⫺377) with the systematically set out paradigms of inflected forms in the longer Ars maior (cf. Keil 1864: 367⫺402; Holtz 1981), and far more in Probus (late first century; cf. Keil 1864: 47⫺192), Phocas (fifth century; cf. Keil 1868: 410⫺439), and in the brief text of Priscian’s Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo (cf. Keil 1859: 443⫺ 456), which was so different in its extent and style to his Institutiones grammaticae. Donatus’s Ars minor was a typical textbook for pupils already knowing some Latin, written in question and answer form like some of the Kanones of Theodosius. Priscian’s Institutiones was clearly more of a teacher’s resource or reference grammar, being far too long to students’ use unaided. It was effectively set out, with both Greek and Latin examples, for reasons already given, and it presented virtually all that was known of Latin grammar in the mainline tradition of language teaching. After the Carolingian age it joined Donatus’s two grammars as a standard text in mediaeval schools. For didactic reasons during the early Middle Ages a different but related style of grammar writing came into being, grammatical commentaries on earlier grammars (cf. Law 1986 a: 368⫺375). Donatus and Priscian were particularly subject to this treatment, but for

63 opposite reasons: Donatus because he was too short for use by foreign learners of Latin, and Priscian because of his great length (see further Art. 8). These commentaries led to rather different historical developments; those on Donatus remained essentially teaching grammars, but Priscian’s commentators moved steadily in the direction of a philosophical explanation of Priscian’s purely descriptive grammar of Latin, flowering ultimately in the speculative grammars of the scholastic grammarians (the Modistae, cf. Art. 8). For all their differences in length and style, Donatus and Priscian both followed the Greek model of grammar set out in the Techne¯, with a few adaptions to take into account the differences between the two languages, for example in the separate recognition of the interjection as a part of speech in its own right, balancing the absence in Latin of a word corresponding to the Greek definite article. The Greek tradition included and continued to include the relative pronoun hos, he¯, ho ‘who, which’ within the class of articles as a “postposed article” (Uhlig 1983: 61.1⫺3); morphologically it was very similar to the definite “preposed” article, ho, he¯, to ‘the’. Priscian like most, but not all Latin grammarians, put it within the noun class (e.g. Keil 1855: 13⫺16; Probus regarded it as a pronoun: cf. Keil 1864: 133.18). Priscian was a clear example of the third type of Latin grammar writing, having the specific needs of Greek students in the forefront. As regards the Latinity of the Byzantine Empire he was serving a doomed cause. Justinian was among the last of the Latinspeaking Eastern Emperors (527⫺565), and by the eighth century it has been reckoned that Latin was all but extinct save in certain learned circles and in some diplomatic exchanges between the Eastern and Western Churches (cf. Runciman 1933: 232). Priscian did not explicitly define what he meant by grammar, but it is clear that he envisaged the subject in the same way as the Techne¯, as a propaedeutic to the critical appreciation of classical literature; there is a wealth of classical quotations as grammatical examples, and a minimum of philosophical theory building, despite the use made of his Institutiones by the later scholastic philosophical grammarians. In the works of the Late Latin Grammarians morphology came first, and most of them, after designating the word as the mini-

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mal unit of syntactic structure, as the Techne¯ had done, confined themselves to Latin morphology; Priscian added two final books on syntax to his Institutiones, but we know of no specific books directed at syntax, such as we see in Byzantine writings, before the later Middle Ages in the Latin West. Priscian’s Institutio de nomine has already been mentioned. His Partitiones confine themselves to morphological instruction (Keil 1859: 459⫺ 515); these were parsing analyses of the first lines of the twelve books of the Aeneid, to which were attached collections of grammatical details, in one way or another related to each of the words of the first lines (cf. Glück 1967). The Latin grammarians’ descriptive procedures followed their Greek counterparts in being framed in “word and paradigm” terms. Inflection was seen as the change of basic forms of words to give rise to the rest of the paradigms of forms. Like Greek, Latin inflectional and derivational morphology was primarily a matter of suffixation, and the words used to decribe it were simply translations from the Greek terms. Greek le¯go¯ ‘end’ was translated into Latin desinere, and Greek parepomena ‘grammatical categories’ became Latin accidentia, English accidence. The effect of all this manifest in the standard teaching of Latin and Greek grammar in modern Europe. To illustrate this modelling of Latin grammar on Greek we may compare the definitions of noun and verb given by Donatus (Keil 1864: 373.2⫺3, 381.14⫺15) with those already seen in the Techne¯ (see 2): “nomen est pars orationis cum casu corpus aut rem proprie communiterve significans, proprie ut Roma Tiberus, communiter ut urbs flumen” (‘a noun is a part of speech inflected for case and signifying a body or a thing either individually or commonly, individually as in Rome or the Tiber, commonly as in city or river’); “verbum, pars orationis cum tempore et persona sine casus aut agere aliquid aut pati aut neutrum significans” (‘a verb is a part of speech inflected for tense and person but not for case and signifying doing something or experiencing something or neither of these’) ⫺ the three subclasses of verb are active transitive, passive, and intransitive. It will be seen how closely these definitions copy those given in the Techne¯. The centrality of morphology in determining grammatical description is illustrated in Priscian’s comment on a suggestion of Quin-

tilian (Institutio oratoria 1.4.2⫺3, 1.4.26) that seven cases might be posited for Latin nouns, since the main functions of the ablative ‘movement from’ and instrumentality or agency, were so far apart in their meanings. Priscian rejects this idea as creating an irrelevant (supervacuum) case, because at no point in the nominal case paradigms is a formal distinction made between the expression of these two meanings (Keil 1855: 190.14⫺16). This did not, however, prevent him from distinguishing a Latin optative mood separate from the subjunctive mood, depending on whether the forms now referred to as subjunctive were used with or without a subordinating conjunction: cum faciam ‘when I make’ is subjunctive, but faciam ‘would that I made’ is optative (Keil 1855: 424.8⫺15). Nowhere is this distinction of mood maintained formally in Latin; presumably Priscian retains it to follow the Greek distinction of the two moods in such verb forms as (ean) nikais ‘(if) you win’ and niko¯ie¯s ‘may you win’, subjunctive and optative, respectively. The one book by a Latin grammarian intended to set out the typological differences between the two languages, Macrobius’s De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi ‘On the differences and similarities of the Greek and the Latin verb’, written about 400 AD (Keil 1868: 595⫺655), comprises little more than a display of the morphologically distinct categories in the verbs of the two languages.

5.

Conclusion

Morphology lay at the heart of ancient grammatical theory, and the Techne¯, whatever the authorship of the final text may have been, formed the terminological and categorial framework for morphology in Greek and in Latin grammatical studies. It was the Techne¯ that first set out the classification and the categories assumed and used by Donatus and Priscian in their morphology; it was the Techne¯ that provided the classes and categories that Apollonius used in his syntactic books, some three hundred years after the first version of the Techne¯. Apollonius declares that syntax follows from morphology in the order of grammatical description and analysis (Uhlig 1910: 1.2⫺2.2), and his words are echoed by Priscian in his last two books, when he turns from his extensive morphological exposition to an account of Latin syntax

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(Keil 1859: 107⫺402), and he too follows the same order in grammatical description; the morphological forms and rules must come first: “In supra dictis igitur de singulis vocibus dictionum, ut poscebat earum ratio, tractavimus; nunc autem dicemus de ordinatione earum” (‘in our previous books we have dealt with the individual forms of words, as our account of them required; and now we will treat their ordering in sentences’) (Keil 1859: 108.5⫺6). It has been pointed out that an independent syntax never established itself in the grammar of Antiquity, nor in Byzantium, nor in the West before the philosophical commentaries on Priscian (cf. Donnet 1967). Specifically syntactic elements like subject, complement, and dependency, did not appear; syntactic structure was built around the cases, nominative and oblique, and cases had been set up on the basis of morphological differences. The notion of syntactic government, or rection, that plays so great a part in scholastic grammar, was only tentatively indicated in Apollonius and Priscian, and with a variety of words pressed into service from object language. This is no reproach to the ancient grammarians and their Byzantine successors in the Greek East. Much important and revealing work was done by them; from the Byzantines the western Renaissance recovered the Greek language and Greek literature, and from the grammarians of late Antiquity the pattern was set for the teaching of the classical languages in Europe for centuries. Donatus and Priscian have been called “the schoolmasters of Europe for a thousand years” (Waddell 1949: xxix). To ask when Antiquity ended and the Middle Ages began is to ask in vain; the passage from one era to another can be viewed from many different positions. But in linguistic studies Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae may be taken as the dividing line, or better as the bridge between the two ages. Priscian stands like Janus in his summation of the work of Antiquity and as the foundation of mediaeval Latin teaching and, later, of speculative grammar.

6.

References

6.1. Primary sources In the listing of primary sources, where there are more than one printed editions all of which carry the same section numbering or pagination only these figures are given.

Apollonius Dyscolus, De constructione [reprinted in: Uhlig (1910, ed.), 1⫺497; English transl. by Fred Householder, The Syntax of Apollonius Dyscolus. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1981] Aristophanes, Nubes Aristotle, De interpretatione Aristotle, Rhetorica Aristotle, Topica Arnim, Ioannes von (1905⫺1924, ed.), Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, Vol. II. Leipzig: Teubner Charax, see Sophronius Choeroboscus, Scholia in Kanones Theodosii [reprinted in: Hilgard (1889, ed.), 103⫺407; Hilgard (1894, ed.), 1⫺371] Chrysoloras, Manuel, Ero¯te¯mata [Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1512] Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum Dionysius Thrax, Tećhne¯ grammatike˘ [reprinted in: Uhlig (1883, ed.), 3⫺101] Donatus Ars grammatica [reprinted in: Keil (1864, ed.), 355⫺402] Donnet, Daniel (1982, ed.), Le traite´ de la construction de la phrase de Michel le Syncelle de Je´rusalem. Bruxelles: Institut Historique Belge de Rome (E´tudes de Philologie, d’Archeólogie et d’Histoire 22) Funaioli, Hyginus (1907, ed.), Grammaticorum Romanorum fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner Hilgard, Alfred (1889, ed.), Grammatici Graeci, Vol. IV.1. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Graeci. Hildesheim: Olms, 1965] Hilgard, Alfred (1894, ed.), Grammatici Graeci, Vol. IV.2. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Graeci. Hildesheim: Olms, 1965] Hilgard, Alfred (1901, ed.), Grammatici Graeci, Vol. I.3. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Graeci. Hildesheim: Olms, 1965] Keil, Heinrich (1855, ed.), Grammatici Latini, Vol. II. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Latini. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961] Keil, Heinrich (1857, ed.), Grammatici Latini, Vol. I. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Latini. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961] Keil, Heinrich (1859, ed.), Grammatici Latini, Vol. III. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Latini. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961] Keil, Heinrich (1864, ed.), Grammatici Latini, Vol. IV. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Latini. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961] Keil, Heinrich (1868, ed.), Grammatici Latini, Vol. V. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Latini. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961] Lallot, Jean (1989, ed.), La grammaire de Deńys le Thrace. Paris: Centre National de Recherche Scientifique

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Macrobius, De differentiis et societatibus Graeci Latinique verbi. In: Keil (1868, ed.), 595⫺655 Maximus Planudes, Dialogos de grammatica; De constructione [reprinted in: Bachmann, Ludwig (1828, ed.), Anecdota Graeca. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 3⫺101, 106⫺166] Merx, Adalbert (1889, ed.), Historia Artis Grammaticae apud Syros. Leipzig: Brockhaus (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 9.2) Pecorella, Giovan B. (1962, ed.), Dionisio Trace Techne¯. Florence: Cappelli Phocas, Ars de nomine et verbi [reprinted in: Keil (1868, ed.), 410⫺439] Priscian(us), Institutiones grammaticae; Institutio de nomine et verbo [reprinted in: Keil (1855, ed.), 1⫺597; Keil (1859, ed.), 1⫺377; 443⫺456] Probus, Institutio artium [reprinted in: Keil (1864, ed.)] Quintilian, Institutio oratoria Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem grammaticam [reprinted in: Hilgard (1901, ed.), 1⫺586] Servius, Commentarius in Artem Donati [reprinted in: Keil (1864, ed.), 405⫺448] Sextus Empiricus, Adversus grammaticos Sophronius, Excerpta de Ioannis Characis commentariis in Theodosii Alexandrini Canones [reprinted in: Hilgard (1894, ed.), 375⫺434] Syncellus, see Donnet (1982) Theodorus Gazae, Grammaticae Eisagoges Biblia, Vol. IV [Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1525] Theodosius, Kanones [reprinted in: Hilgard (1889, ed.), 3⫺99] Uhlig, Gustav (1883, ed.), Grammatici Graeci, Vol. I.1. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Graeci, Hildesheim: Olms, 1965] Uhlig, Gustav (1910, ed.), Grammatici Graeci, Vol. II.2. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted in: Grammatici Graeci, Hildesheim: Olms, 1965] Varro, De Lingua Latina

6.2. Secondary references Adontz, Nicolaus (1962, ed.), Deńys le Thrace et les commentaires armeńiens. Louvain: Imprime´rie Orientaliste [translated from the Russian text of 1915] Bloomfield, Leonard (1935), Language. London: Allen and Unwin Bopp, Franz (1833), Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Lithauischen, Gotischen und Deutschen. Berlin: Dümmler Brekle, Herbert E. (1985), Einführung in die Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft. Tübingen: Narr Bühler W. & Theodorides, Chr. (1976), “Johannes von Damaskos, Terminus post quem für Choeroboscus”. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 69, 397⫺401

Dinneen, Francis P. (1985), “On the Stoic Contribution to Grammatical Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 12, 149⫺164 Donnet, Daniel (1967), “La place de la syntaxe dans les traite´s de grammaire grecque des origines au XIIe sie`cle”. Antiquite´ Classique 36, 22⫺46 Fisher, Herbert A. L. (1936), A History of Europe. London: Arnold Frede, Michael (1978), “Principles of Stoic Grammar”. In: Rist, John M. (ed.), The Stoics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 27⫺75 Gibbon, Edward (1960 [1776]), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. and abr. by D. M. Low. London: Chatto and Windus Glück, Manfred (1967), Priscianus Partitiones und ihre Stellung in der spätantiken Schule. Hildesheim: Olms Hjelmslev, Louis (1935), La cate´gorie des cas. Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget Hockett, Charles F. (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺234 Holtz, Louis (1981), Donat et la tradition de l’Enseignement Grammatical. Paris: Centre National pour la Recherche scientifique Kaster, Robert A. (1988), Guardians of Language: The Grammarians and Society in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press Law, Vivien A. (1986 a), “Late Latin Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages: A Typological History”. Historiographia linguistica 13, 363⫺380 [reprinted in: Tylor, D. (1987, ed.), The History of Linguistics in the Classical Period. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 191⫺206] Law, Vivien A. (1986 b), “Originality in the Medieval normative tradition”. In: Bynon, T. T. & Palmer, F. R. (1986, eds.), Studies in the History of Western Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 43⫺55 Law, Vivien A. & Sluiter, Ivoke (1995, eds.), Dionysius Thrax and the Techne¯ Grammatike¯. Münster: Nodus Publikationen Long, Antony A. (1971), Problems in Stoicism. London: Athlone Press Mates, Benson (1953), Stoic Logic. Berkeley: University of California Press Matthews, Peter H. (1974), Morphology: An Introduction to the Study of Word Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Murru, Furio (1979), “Sull’origine della teoria localistica di Massimo Planude”. L’Antiquite´ Classique 48, 82⫺97 Reifferscheid, Augustus (1884, ed.), Alexias Annae Comnenae. Leipzig: Teubner Robins, Robert H. (1993), The Byzantine grammarians: Their Place in History. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Robins, Robert H. (41997), A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman [11967]

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7. Traditional Arabic grammar Runciman, Sir Steven (1933), Byzantine Civilization. London: Arnold Sebeok, Thomas A. (1975, ed.), Historiography of Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton (Current Trends in Linguistics 13) Versteegh, Cornelis H. M. (1977), Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden: Brill Versteegh, Cornelis H. M. (1980), “The Stoic Verbal System”. Hermes 108, 338–355

Waddell, Helen (71949), The Wandering Scholars. London: Constable [11927] Wouters, Alphonse (1979), The Grammatical Papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt. Brussels: Royal Academy of Science Wüllner, Franz (1827), Die Bedeutung der sprachlichen Kasus und Modi. Münster: Coppenrath Robert H. Robins, London (Great Britain)

7. Traditional Arabic grammar 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

1.

Introduction The Arabic system of morphological description Upper and lower levels of analysis: word classes and morphophonology Relations between morphology and syntax Minimal morphological units Historical and cultural perspectives References

Introduction

Medieval Arabic grammatical treatises have such a high degree of systematization that it is tempting, when summarizing them for the modern audience, to reproduce them as faithfully as possible and with little further interpretation. On the other hand, because of their methodological affinities with modern linguistic practice – structure, class, substitution, marked and unmarked structures, etc. (cf. Owens 1988; 1993 for summary) – it is equally tempting to explain the Arabic tradition through parallels with modern linguistics. Here both approaches will be employed, beginning with a summary of what arf is, the closest Arabic term to morphology, and ending with a look at the extent to which key Arabic morphological concepts correspond to ideas in western linguistics. Relations between arf and other aspects of Arabic grammatical tradition will also be looked at, as well as relations to the Hebrew tradition. Orthographic conventions: Long vowels /ii/ and /uu/ are represented as sequences of short vowel + consonant (semivowels /y/ or /w/). Long /aa/ is here represented as a long vowel, though for reasons too complicated to be explained in this short article, in Arabic morphological theory long /aa/ generally is regarded as a consonant. In Arabic orthography the representation of short vowels came rela-

tively late, and they conventionally are not represented at all in most texts. ༉ = emphatic sound. Titles of books are left untranslated, as they only irregularly have a direct connection to the material they describe – the title of Sibawayhi’s alKitaab, literally ‘The Book’, for example, betrays little of its contents.

2.

The Arabic system of morphological description

The study of arf begins, so far as records go, with Sibawayhi’s al-Kitaab (see bibliography for dates of authors), and continues into the present. Volume 2 of Sibawayhi’s work, circa 480 pages, is devoted to the study of words. Thereafter all reference grammars (Zajjaji Jumal; Jurjani Muqtaid; Astarabadhi Shar, etc.) devoted a similar proportion to morphology, and a good number of works were devoted exclusively to morphology in general (Mumti; Shar al-Muluwkiy) or to particular morphological problems (Farra? Al-Muðakkar wa l-MuannaӨ). The most important morphologist was doubtlessly Ibn Jinni. He produced two masterly works, each over 800 pages long, on Arabic morphology, al-Munif and Sirr inaaat al-Iraab. The latter gave a phonetic description of Arabic phonemes and summarized the morphophonological processes they underwent. In addition, his Xaaai (cf. 6.2) relies heavily on examples from morphology. Arabic morphological theory has a strong formal bias, the basis of arf being the identification of root (al/jiðr), usually consonantal, and non-root or ‘added’ (zaaid) elements. The root consonants are represented by the template fེl (< faala ‘do, make’), the added consonants by their own form. For example, the verb taqsimu ‘you divide’ would

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have the canonical form tfl, where t- is a non-basic prefix, -qsm- the basic root (Muwjaz: 27). Short vowels generally do not have a status in the root/added dichotomy. However, in addition to the identification of root and non-root consonants, a total morphological form (wazn ‘measure’ or binaa ‘to build, construction, structure’) is recognized, and in this the short vowels are represented. The wazn of taqsimu, for example, would be represented as tafilu. The discrete morphemic value of short vowels, moreover, is sometimes recognized (see 2.3). In principle the distinction between root and non-root elements is intuitively obvious. qism ‘division’ consists of the basic root consonants relating to ‘dividing’ = qsm. In qassama ‘divide s. t.’ the root consonants are apparent, as well as the addition of a doubled medial /s/. qassama can therefore be divided into two parts, the basic root consonants qsm plus the added (zaaid) consonant represented in the medial gemination. 2.1. Basic and added consonants: distinguishing criteria Not all cases are as clear as this, however, and a number of methods were used to distinguish basic and added consonants (see e. g. Sarraj Muwjaz: 144; Ibn Jinni Munif: I.13–17 for typologies). Meaning is the most obvious criterion. In qassama the addition of the /s/ may correlate with a meaning difference vis a vis the basic form, causation or intensity. More generally, verbs of the form C1aC2C2aC3 with geminate C2 have a meaning of ‘intensification, transitivization’ (Sibawayhi Kitaab: II.247 f., Mubarrad Muqtaab: II.102 f., Ibn Jinni Xaaai: II.153 f. etc.). A number of correlations between form classes and meanings were developed, where the distinctive semantic feature of each class could be correlated with the presence of non-basic sounds. Meaning was only one criterion, however. One further one can be cited here. In the pair qasama ‘he divided’, qasaam ‘beauty’ (probably related through the notion of division, partition = features, distinctive feature) it is apparent that the root consonants are qsm. The long /aa/ (which in Arabic morphological theory counts as a consonant – see 1) in qasaam must therefore be non-basic. This means that qasaam has the canonical shape faaal, with the non-basic long “consonantal” vowel -aa- intercalated among the root consonants. There are other such nouns,

qaraar ‘sedentarism’, samaa ‘sky’, etc. Although it is clear that the -aa- is not part of the root, no discrete or class meaning can be associated with it. The -aa- nonetheless is considered non-basic by elimination, as it were, an element left over after the root consonants have been exhaustively identified. In all 10 different sounds were identified which could serve as non-root consonants (Zajjaji Jumal: 399; Ibn Jinni Munif: I.98, 153). 2.2. Derivation The distinction between root and non-root consonants serves as the basis for the classification of morphological forms. Arabic has a rich derivational system, forms falling into more or less general form classes: qasama ‘he divided’, qassama ‘he divided, he divided much’, taqassama ‘it was divided’, qism ‘division, department’, aqsaam ‘divisions’, qasaam ‘beauty’, maqsuwm ‘divided’ etc. Each of these forms is potentially paralleled by similar ones based on other roots. Like qasama template faala are kataba ‘he wrote’, rajaa ‘he returned’, and many other verbs, like taqassama template tafaala are taarrafa ‘behave’, tamaӨӨala ‘be represented’, like maqsuwm template mafuwl are maktuwb ‘written’, like aqsaam template afaal are awlaad ‘children’, and so on. The word arf literally means ‘divert, turn’. A related term is tariyf, literally ‘drainage, change, distribution’, in linguistic terminology ‘morphologization’, as it were. To speak of the tariyf of a root is to identify which of the hundred or so potential morphological patterns, both basic and derived, the root can be distributed into. As with derivational systems in general, no root realized the total possible range of morphological forms. arf or tariyf refers to the total range of morphological forms in their constituent basic and non-basic consonants, and also to the process by which the various forms are derived. In addition, a second term emerged to describe the actual derivation of one form from another, namely ishtiqaaq. Unlike tariyf, ishtiqaaq generally implies a directed derivational process. For instance, in ishtiqaaq a less basic form can be derived from a more basic one. Here, it should be noted, basic/less basic refers to a hierarchy of categories within lexical forms (wazn or binaa), not to the relation between root and nonroot consonants. Thus, Ibn ེU၁fur (Shar: I.53 f.) says that an adjective can be derived from a noun, but not vice versa, because an

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7. Traditional Arabic grammar

adjective is less basic (marked, see 6.2) relative to a noun. For many linguists there was no term to describe the formation of a lexical form from a consonantal root, for example, qasama ‘he divided’ from the root consonants qsm, though Ibn ེU၁fur (Mumti: I.31) did propose extending the term tariyf to mean ‘stem formation’, including the positioning of vowels. Rather, the operation of ishtiqaaq assumes as its input the various lexical stems. For example, one of the classic debates among the grammarians, whether a noun is derived from the verb or vice versa (Anbari Inaaf: 235 f.), assumes the fully-vocalized nominal/verbal stems. 2.3. Compounding One final aspect of arf pertains to compounding, tarkiyb. This is generally an unproductive process in Arabic, though it does occur enough to merit special attention. Compounding involves changing the status (ukm) of individual parts of the compound. From xamsata ‘five’ + ashara ‘ten’ is formed the compound xamsataashara ‘fifteen’, in which the first member of the compound xamsat ends invariably in -a, whereas as a free-standing word it varies for case (nominative/genitive/accusative).

3.

Upper and lower levels of analysis: word classes and morphophonology

Morphological elements were closely integrated into the overall grammatical theory, at both the syntactic and phonological interfaces. Syntax operated with three word classes, (a) nominals, including nouns, adjectives, demonstratives and other substantive elements, (b) verbs and (c) particles. Each of these classes was defined by a complex of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria (Owens 1989). Nouns, for instance, are words which take the definite article prefix al-, and can serve as agent and object, while verbs occur with the negative markers lam ‘negative past’, and lan ‘negative future’ and cannot be pronominalized (Sarraj Uuwl: I.36 f.). Further, sub-classes of nominals, verbs and particles were distinguished according to the general semantic, syntactic, and morphophonological categories used in the grammar as a whole – transitive vs. intransitive verbs, for instance, or verbs that undergo morphophonological changes because they contain a semivowel (weak verbs),

vs. those that do not (strong verbs). The question of the division between morphology and syntax will be taken up in 4. In Arabic theory arf includes both morphology and morphophonology. Nor is a distinction made between phonology and morphophonology, which is to say that no independent phonological level was postulated. Even phonetic description, though detailed (cf. Ibn Sina), was typically introduced only when morphophonological assimilation processes were treated (e. g. Sibawayhi Kitaab: II.452 and virtually all subsequent manuals; Ibn Jinni’s Sirr is exceptional). Morphophonological processes are a pervasive feature of Arabic, and they were described in exhaustive detial. Typically in a reference grammar up to a quarter of the morphology section was devoted to this topic, and in the manuals on morphology (e. g. Ibn ེU၁fur Mumti) more than half. For example, the root qwl ‘to say’ appears, inter alia, in the following shapes: (1) (a) qaala ‘he said’ (b) qul-tu ‘I said’ (c) yaquwlu ‘he says’ (d) yaqul ‘he say (jussive form)’ (e) qaail ‘having said’ (f) maqaala ‘article’ (g) qawl ‘saying’ Only in (1c) and (1g) does the medial w appear, and it was one goal of arf to systematically account for the differing surface forms of the root. For instance, in (1a) the underlying form qawala was assumed (cf. the canonical perfective verb form faala as in qasama ‘he divided’), and the following general rule postulated (2) aw’V → aa (qawala → qaala) This rule also applies in other contexts, e. g. finally as in daawa → daaa ‘he called’, in nouns, bawab → baab ‘door’, etc. Schematically, Arabic morphophonology can be represented as follows: (3) abstract underlying form ↓ via morphophonological rules surface form The rules themselves are of great complexity. There is too little space here to do anything but list the most important governing principles. A basic assumption is that an underlying (al) and surface form can (though need not) be different, provided a rule can be motivated explaining the difference (see e. g.

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(2)). The rules themselves are familiar phonological ones (inter alia, aðf ‘deletion’, idǥaam ‘assimilation’, qalb ‘deletion or assimilation of a semivowel‘, naql ‘metathesis’ (see Bohas & Guillaume 1984: 199 f.). However, the phonological contexts of the rules are subject to a number of constraints, many of them morphological in scope. The constraints include the following (for Mubarrad page references are to his Muqtaab; similar, often identical principles could be cited from other works on morphology). A rule can behave differently according to whether it applies: (a) to a noun, verb or particle (e. g. Mubarrad Muqtaab: I.108.11, 151, II.230), (b) initially, medially, or finally in a word (Mubarrad I.153, 188–9), (c) to a basic sound, or an added sound (Mubarrad II.249–56), (d) to one class of sound or another, some sounds being more susceptible to morphophonological processes than others (Mubarrad I.117, 209 f.), (e) next to one type of sound or another (Mubarrad Í 115, 138, 151, 153). In addition, the following notions were invoked in one place or another to explain a morphophonological change: (a) paradigmatic regularity (Mubarrad I.88), (b) avoidance of ambiguity (Mubarrad I.109, Ibn Jinni Munif: I.192), (c) compensation, one sound compensating for the loss of another (Mubarrad I.105), (d) a freezing principle, the operation of one rule precluding the operation of another otherwise relevant one (Ibn Jinni Munif: II.25,26), (e) frequency of use (Sibawaihi Kitaab: II.47, Ibn Jinni Munif: I.61, 63). In one context or another the Arabic grammarians appeal to these principles to explain the appearance of a particular form. The most detailed treatment is found in Ibn Jinni’s Munif, most of its 880 pages devoted to morphophonological problems. The Arabic grammarians developed a powerful explanatory apparatus which, looked at in terms of individual principles, is highly plausible (i. e. looked at in terms of modern morphophonological theory). To what extent the Arabic grammarians had an internally coherent theory is a problem that has not yet been addressed by modern scholars (cf. Versteegh 1989).

4.

Relations between morphology and syntax

In its internal dimensions arf covered all aspects of morphological analysis. An explicit (definitional) recognition of arf, however, came relatively late in the history of Arabic grammar, long after its methods and procedures had been fixed. It was Ibn Jinni who first made explicit the division between morphology (arf/tariyf) and syntax (naw): “Morphology [tariyf] deals with the fixed form of words [kalim], while syntax [naw] studies words in their different contexts.” (Ibn Jinni Munif: I.4)

As Ibn Jinni’s quote makes clear, the word is the level of morphological analysis. What, however, is understood by the notion of word? Two approaches to this problem can be sketched here. The first is to follow the implicit logic of Ibn Jinni’s definition to seek for the limits of word; the second is to look for explicit definitions of word. Both of these treatments will be followed in turn. In Ibn Jinni’s quote above, the unit word (kalima) is defined relative to the levels of grammatical analysis it partakes of, syntax and morphology. A word’s syntactic relevance lies expecially in the fact that a noun’s differing case endings signal its syntactic status (Owens 1988: § 2), as in the following example, where nominative signals the grammatical agent and accusative the object. (4) raaa zayd-u-n saw Zayd-NOM-INDEF ‘Zayd saw the man’.

al-rajul-a DEF-man-ACC

A word’s morphological relevance relates to the range of derivational processes definable relative to the word, as was illustrated above. The word, in Ibn Jinni’s characterization of syntax and morphology, thus plays a mediating role between the two levels, belonging exclusively to neither of them. In the logic of this characterization, those aspects of a word’s structure which relate to syntax do not belong to morphology, as indeed is the case in Arabic theory (Fleisch 1960: 1248). In particular, case markers (e. g. -u, -a in (4)) are controlled by word external governors (in (4), by the verb), so that these are treated in sections on syntax, not morphology. One does not find in one place, in Arabic grammatical treatises, the exhaustive listing of all morphological attributes of, e. g. a noun, since case markers are syntactic exponents.

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Nonetheless, this neat bifurcated conceptualization of word runs into problems of two types. First, there are phonological phenomena which refer to the notion of “end of word”, where the end can be either a case marking (a syntactic element) or an invariable vowel, such as occurs on the perfect verb. For instance, there exists in Arabic an opposition between non-pausal (wal) and pausal (waqf) pronunciation of words (Sibawayhi Kitaab: II.302 f.; Sarraj Uuwl: II.367 f.; etc.) (5) Non-pausal forms (a) kataba ‘he wrote’ (b) rajul-un ‘man-NOM.INDEF’ Pausal forms (c) katab ‘he wrote’ (d) rajul ‘man(NOM.INDEF)’ In the pausal form, any final vowel, and the indefinite marker -n (see 6.1), are deleted. The rule applies regardless of the grammatical status of the final vowel, so in (5d) it is the case marker that is deleted in pausal position. What this phenomenon shows is that phonological rules have to refer to the notion of word as a morphological unity, which is not implied in Ibn Jinni’s characterization of the difference between morphology and syntax. A second problem concerns the status of elements with relations to both syntax and morphology, as in the following. (6) (a) ðahab-ta go:PERF-2.SG.MASC ‘you went’ (b) ta-ðhabu 2.SG.MASC-go:IMPF ‘you go’

anta you(SG.MASC) anta you(SG.MASC)

Both (6a) and (6b) are self-standing sentences, the subject (‘you’) being expressed in the verb. In Arabic theory the sentences have very different analyses: the suffix for ‘you’ -ta in (6a) has, effectively, the status of an independent nominal subject and is treated under the general topic of pronouns (e. g.) Ibn Yaེish Shar al-Mufaal: III.86). The prefix ta-, on the other hand, is treated as a marker of second person, but not as a pronoun in its own right, and the form of this and other imperfective verbs are treated within the domain of morphology (Zajjaji Jumal: 404). Within the context of Ibn Jinni’s characterization of the relation between morphology

and syntax there are then questions raised as to which level certain elements would belong to, and the suspicion in some instances is that inconsistencies would emerge.

5.

Minimal morphological units

One way, then, to understand the domain of morphology in Arabic theory is to ask to which range of phenomena it applies, even if in some instances answers are not completely clear-cut. A second method is to look for defined morphological units. Here there is only one relevant unit, namely kalima. Zamaxshari (Mufaal: 6), Astarabadhi (Sharħ: I.24) and others define kalima as a correspondence between sound (laf) and meaning (manaa), contrasts being explicitly drawn between sequences of sounds (laf), and sequences of sounds which have a meaning (kalima, e. g. Ibn Faris aaħibi: 87). The question remains, however, what sort of unit a kalima, soundmeaning correspondence, is (cf. Levin 1987 for general discussion). In some cases the domain of a kalima is clear, corresponding to a morpheme. Ibn Yaེish (Sharħ al-Mufaal: I.19), for example, explains that the combination definite article + nominal, al-rajulu ‘DEF-man’ consists of ‘two kalima’, i. e. two morphemes. Ibn Yaེish goes on to define an upper and lower limit to kalima: the final /l/ in rajulu would not be one because it has no meaning. If, on the other hand, a person were to be named ‘alrajulu’, al- would no longer be a kalima, because it would have lost its discrete meaning. This example is reminiscent of the definition of a morpheme as “[...] a recurrent (meaningful) form which cannot in turn be analyzed into smaller recurrent (meaningful) forms” (Bloomfield 1926: 27). While this interpretation of kalima works in many cases, it does not work in all. First of all, one frequently finds kalima as ‘orthographic word’ (e. g. Zajjaji Iyaa: 5). This use of kalima was rarely, if at all, given explicit recognition in the definitions of the Arabic grammarians, even if it was implicitly assumed in much of the discussion (see e. g. Ibn Jinni’s quote above in 4). More interesting is a problem addressed directly by Astarabadhi (Sharħ: I.5) in a passage which shows very clearly that Arabic grammarians were dealing with abstract categories which are defined or redefined against the data to be described. “The perfect verb, like araba ‘he hit’, is similar [to bi-morphemic words like al-rajulu] because it also

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is a word whose consonantal sounds [rb] signify the action while the overall pattern added to this, including consonants and short vowels or lack of short vowels placed in a particular pattern constitute a compound word consisting of two parts, each with its own meaning. Similarly [...] examples like rijaal ‘men’ [...] because [...] there is something which signifies [...] plural [= -aa ...] However, it would not be correct to call these kalima in the way we did above. The reason for this is obvious: we say a word is composed (murakkab) of two kalima when one follows another sequentially, each with its own discrete meaning, whereas in the case under discussion both parts are heard and understood together.” (I:5–6, transl. J. O.)

The term kalima for Astarabadhi can apply only to segmentally continuous morphemes. The implication of Astarabadhi’s analysis is that two types of morphemic analysis need recognition, one defined in terms of discrete morphemes, kalima, the other in terms of overall patterns, with multiple meanings represented in one and the same phonological sequence. This multivalent morphemic analysis can be compared with the different models of morphemic description developed in the 1950’s, the “Word and Paradigm” and the “Item and arrangement” (cf. Matthews 1993: 21 f.). It shows that the theoretical basis of morphological description was strongly influenced by the structure of Arabic itself, different aspects of the language suggesting employment of different descriptive techniques.

6.

Historical and cultural perspectives

In the remainder of this summary three questions will briefly be addressed: the internal development of Arabic morphological theory, the relevance of morphology to other aspects of Arabic linguistics, and relations to the Hebrew tradition. 6.1. Sibawayhi vs. later grammarians There were two fundamental motivating factors behind the establishment of the Arabic tradition. One was religious. Classical Arabic, as the language of the Quran, had to be learned by all Muslims. The other was practical. Arabic, as the language of a new ruling elite in the Middle East and North Africa, had to be propagated as the language of administration. These two orientations are evident in the two earliest detailed works on the Arabic language, the religious in Farra’s (d. 824) Maaaniy l-Quraan, ‘Meaning of the Qurเan’ (Owens 1990: § 6–8), the practi-

cal in Sibawayhi’s ‘al-Kitaab’, ‘The Book’. Because of its comprehensive nature, it was the latter which was most suitable to the growing need to produce pedagogically orientated grammars, and it serves directly or indirectly as the basis of later grammatical theory and description. Nonetheless, there were differences between Sibawayhi and later descriptions, probably more in syntax than in morphology. The main one was the way the material was organized, later grammars having a more pedagogically concise presentation, as will presently be seen. It should be noted, in this context, that Arabic grammars were concerned almost exclusively with the form of Arabic used between c. 500–800, i. e. with Classical Arabic, and that their basis was rigidly synchronic, describing an unalterable language. In Arabic nouns are generally inflected as nominative -u, accusative -a and genitive -i and take the indefinite -n marker, rajul-u-n ‘man-NOM-INDEFINITE’. Such nouns are said to be munarif, fully declinable. Others, however, do not take indefinite -n, and do not have distinct genitive and accusative forms, akbar-a ‘bigger(DEF)-ACC’, ‘bigger (DEF)-GEN’. These nouns are termed ayr munarif, partially declinable. Sibawayhi summarizes this latter class in great detail (Kitaab: II.1–52), the various sub-classes of partially declined nouns being distinguished first formally – nouns that resemble verbs, nouns with the feminine suffix -aa, with the feminine suffix -aa, etc., then notionally (e. g. loan words, place, tribal names), then derivationally (adl, compounds). In his description particular use is made of analogy (qiyaas). A basic analogy, for instance, is that whatever resembles a verb is not fully inflected because verbs lack the indefinite -n and lack genitive case. akbara, for instance, formally resembles the verb asana ‘act well’ in its CVCCVC structure, and this resemblance is said to account for the lack of full inflection in nominals of this type (see (8)). Throughout Sibawayhi’s exposé the presence or lack of full inflection in individual forms is explained by their resemblance to other forms which are/are not fully inflected. Over a century later Sarraj accounts for the same facts more concisely (Uuwl: II.79 f.). He begins by identifying nine marked features: formal resemblance to verbs, adjective, feminine, definiteness, irreg-

73


ular derivation, plurality, loan word, compound, the suffix -aan. The presence in a nominal of the marked features are said to cause the lack of full inflection (see Zajjaj: Maa Yanarif: 5, for earlier and slightly different formulation). After outlining the general conditions under which a word is not fully inflected, Sarraj discusses each of the nine instances in detail. Nonetheless, this treatment is not without problems. Names of cities, for example, are often not fully inflected (e. g. makkatu ‘Mecca’), yet they are not accounted for by the nine marked characteristics. Sarraj is forced to add a rather long appendix to his summary of partially, inflected nominals, dealing with nominals which are not accounted for by the other rules. Thus while Sarraj’s generalization accounts for the majority of cases, it is not general enough to account for all, and for some sub-classes he must resort to Sibawayhi’s method of listing the cases one by one. Sibawayhi’s basic principle of organization is a list of cases arranged first formally, then notionally, as summarized above. Significantly, however, he begins with a basic case (resemblance to verb prevents full inflection), thus introducing a causal dimension for the lack of full inflection. This causal dimension is not always clear, however, in Sibawayhi’s class-by-class presentation. Sarraj, on the other hand, effectively takes the crucial identifying features of Sibawayhi’s sub-classes, identifies these characteristics as marked ones, and generalizes a causal dimension: the presence of these features prevents full inflection. Sarraj uses principles implicit in Sibawayhi’s account to order the data on partial inflection. Sarraj’s treatment serves two purposes. It presents a more theoretically compact account of partial verb inflection than Sibawayhi’s, and it does so in a pedagogically convenient way, ordering a rather disparate array of facts into one ordered set. 6.2. The uuwl, explanatory principles The differences between Sibawayhi and later grammarians in their morphological analysis, both the general framework and the detailed analysis, were not great. Differences between Sarraj and grammarians after him were even smaller and the treatment of morphology in both the general grammatical manuals like those of Zajjaji (Jumal), Jurjani, Zamaxhari, and Ibn Yaེish (Shark), and the specialized works on morphology, like Ibn ེUfur’s

(Mumtt) and Ibn Yaེish’s (Shar al-Muluwki) differed mainly in the detail in which they described the data. Morphology did, however, come to play a crucial role in other aspects of grammatical theory, most especially in the theory of the uuwl, ‘origins, causes, principles’ (sg. al). The search for a basic set of uuwl is common to a number of Islamic disciplines, among them theology and jurisprudence. Their explicit application to language is found first in the 10th century. Sarraj distinguished two goals of linguistic descriptions, one an account of the grammatical facts, phrased in terms of grammatical categories, the other an explanation for why the facts are as they are (Uuwl: I.35). This second task found its most sophisticated demonstration in Ibn Jinni’s Xaaai, though other authors contributed to it as well (e. g, Zajjaji’s Iyaa; SuyuĤi’s Iqtiraa). Morphology provided one of the richest sources of data. The principle behind the uuwl in linguistic theory is simple. It is assumed that certain grammatical forms and structures are basic and regular ones (al, pl. uuwl). For example, in the following sets, the first member is the basic one, SG/PL, M/F, N/ADJ, N/VERB, native word/loanword. If there are structures which deviate from them (called far ‘branch, secondary’, pl. furuw), a reason (illa) is sought to explain the deviation from the norm. The basic assumptions invite comparison with markedness theory of modern grammar (cf. Art. 29). The 12th century linguist Al-Anbari (Luma: 93) summarized the procedure schematically. → far illa basic state for a reason is not basic

(7) al

Rephrasing the facts of partially inflected nouns (cf. 6.1) in the schema of (7), one would have: (8) al – illa → nominal has resemblance 3 cases, takes to verb indefinite -n

far partially inflected nominal loses a nominal feature *akbar-a-n cf. asana akbar-a

Nominals are basically fully inflected; some are not because of their formal resemblance to verbs. Note that the starred form is logically postulated and does not constitute a distinct grammatical level.

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Through the uuwl theory, Arabic grammarians explained a vast array of linguistic features, with varying degrees of plausibility, which were irregular according to the logic of the grammatical theory they worked with. They also used the dichotomization of linguistic categories into al/far to organize the presentation of their material. In Ibn ེUfur’s Mumti, for example, the basic morphological patterns are presented first, in the order: nouns – verbs (note, unmarked category first). Then the non-basic sounds (zaaid) are discussed, and finally the morphophonological rules. 6.3. Relations to other traditions The relations of Arabic grammatical theory to other traditions remain at one and the same time an under-researched, yet controversial domain. Some authors downplay the influence of Greek grammar on the Arabic tradition (e. g. Weiß 1910; Carter 1972), while others demonstrate that some influence was present (e. g. Rundgren 1976; Versteegh 1977). The situation for morphology is essentially like that for syntax. Versteegh’s application of the notion voie diffuse is relevant. This explains outside influences on Arabic thinking not through the translation of Greek or Syriac words into Arabic – this came too late to decisively influence the grammatical tradition (Weiß 1910) – but through a practical pedagogical tradition long in place in the regions conquered by the Arabs. In these terms the suggestion that the system of explaining morphophonological changes – one of the bases of arf (cf. (1)–(2) above) – was influenced by the Greek notion of declension (klisis; see Art. 6) has a good deal of plausibility, as do other suggestions along this line (cf. Versteegh 1977: 24, 64). In the other direction, Arabic influence on the Hebraic tradition was decisive (Hirshfeld 1926: 7; Bacher 1895: 23), most importantly, perhaps, in suggesting to the early 10th century grammarians Ben Asher and Saེadya the adoption of the root principle in morphological analysis (Bacher 1895: 25, 35, 48). In this context it may be observed that the reliance on Arabic models contributed to a comparative philological perspective, particularly Ibn Qureish (c. 1000; Bacher 1895: 66), quite lacking in the Arabic tradition. The Hebrew tradition was not without its innovations in other ways. Bacher (1895: 52) suggests, for instance, that Saེadya set out verb paradigms in tabular form, a practice not used (so far as

I know) in the Arabic tradition. Arabic influence on the medieval European tradition unfortunately remains an unresearched field.

7.

References

7.1. Primary literature (cf. Owens 1990 for transcription conventions; year of death of Arabic linguists in square brackets; the definite article al- and Ibn ‘son’ are ignored for purposes of alphabetical ordering.) Ibn al-เAnbari, Abu l-Barakat [1187], Kitaab l-Inaaf fiy Masaa il l-Xilaaf bayna l-Nawiyyiyna lBariyyiyna wa l-Kuwfiyyiyna, Vol. 1–2, ed. by M. ེAbd al-Ħamid. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr n. d. Ibn al-เAnbari, Abu l-Barakat, Al-Iraab fiy Jadal l-Iraab wa Luma l-Adilla fiy Uuwl ilNaw, ed. by Saེid al-Afghani. Beirut: Dar alFikr 1971 Al-Astarabadhi, Raቩi l-Din [1286], Shar Kitaab l-Kaafiya, Vol. 1–2. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ེIlmiyya n. d. Ibn Faris, Ahmad [1004], al-aaibi fiy Fiqh alLua, ed. by A၂mad Saqr. Cairo: Maktabat ེIsa Bab al-ãalabi n. d. Al-Farraเ, Abu Zakariyya [822], Maaaniy lQuraan, Vol. 1–3, ed. by ེAli l-Najjar & A. Yusuf Najati. Beirut: ེAlam al-Kutub 1983 Al-Farraเ, Abu Zakariyya, Kitaab al-Muðakkar wa l-MuannaӨ, ed. by Ramaቩan al-Tawwab. Cairo: Dar al-Turath 1975 Ibn Jinni, Abu l-Fath [1002], Al-Xaaai, Vol. 1–3, ed. by Mo၂ammad ེAli l-Najjar. Cairo 1952–56 [reprinted in Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ེArabi, n. d.] Ibn Jinni, Abu l-Fath, Al-Munif, Vol. 1–3, ed. by Ibrahim Mu၁tafa & เA၂mad เAmin. Cairo: เIdarat เI၂yaเ al-Turath al-Qadim 1954 Ibn Jinni, Abu l-Fath, Sirr inaaat al-Iraab, Vol. 1–2, ed. by ãasan Hindawi. Damascus: Dar al-Qalam 1985 Jurjani, ེAbd al-Qahir [1078], Al-Muqtaid fiy Shar al-Iyaa, Vol. 1–2, ed. by K. B. Murjan. Baghdad: Ministry of Culture and Information 1982 Al-Mubarrad, Ibn Yazid [898], al-Muqtaab, ed. by M. ེAbd al-Xaliq ེUቩayma. Beirut: ེAlam al-Kutub n. d. Ibn al-Sarraj, Abu Bakr [928], Al-Uuwl fiy lNaw, Vol. 1–3, ed. by ེAbd al-Husayn al-Fatli. Beirut: Muเassasat al-Risala 1985 Ibn al-Sarraj, Abu Bakr Al-Muwjaz fi l-Naw, ed. by Mustafa el-Chouémi & Salim Damerdji. Beirut: Muเassasat Badran 1965 Sibawayhi, Ibn ེUthman [793], Al-Kitaab, Vol. 1–2, ed. by Hartwig Derenbourg. Hildesheim/New York: Olms 1970

7. Traditional Arabic grammar Ibn Sina, Abdallah [1036], Asbaab ĦuduwӨ l-Ħuruwf, ed. by Mohammad l-ģayyan & Yi၂ya ེAlam. Damascus: Majmaེ al-Lugha l-ེArabiyya bi Dimashq 1983 SuyuĤi, Jalal al-Din [1505], Kitaab al-Iqtiraa, ed. by A၂mad Qasim. Cairo: Maktabat al-Saེada 1976 Suyuti, Jalal al-Din, Ham al-Hawaami Shar Jam al-Jawaami, ed. by Mohammad al-Naེsani. Beirut: Dar al-Maེrifa n. d. Ibn ེU၁fur (al-เAshbili) [1270], Al-Mumti fiy l-Tariyf, Vol. 1–2, ed. by Mohammad ེAbd al-ãamid. Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ེArabi 1955 Ibn ེUsfur (al-เAshbili), Sharħ Jumal al-Zajjaajiy, Vol. 1–2, ed. by Abu l-Janah. Baghdad: Wizarat al-เAwqaf, 1980 Ibn Yaེish, Ibn ེAli [1245], Shar l-Muluwkiy, ed. by Fahd Fawih. Aleppo: Maktabat al-ེarabi 1973 Ibn Yaེish, Ibn ེAli, Sharħ al-Mufaal, Vol. 1–10. Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbi and Beirut: ེAlam al-Kutub n. d. Zajjaji, Ibn เIs၂aq [923], Maa Yanarif wa maa laa Yanarif. Cairo: Lajnat เI၂yaེ al-Turath al-เIslami 1970 Zajjaji, Abu l-Qasim [945], Al-Jumal fiy l-Naw, ed. by ེAli l-ãamad. Irbid: Dar al-เAmal and Beirut: Muเassasat al-Risaala 1984 Zajjaji, Abu l-Qasim, Al-Iyaa fiy ེIlal al-Naw, ed. by Mazin al-Mubararak. Beirut: Dar al-Nafaเis 1979 Zamaxshari, Abu l-Qasim [1154], Al-Mufaal fiy lIlm al-Arabi. Beirut: Dar al-Jil, n. d.

7.2. Secondary literature Bacher, Wilhelm (1895), Die Anfänge der hebräischen Grammatik. Leipzig: Brockhaus [reprinted in: Bacher, Wilhelm (1974), Die Anfänge der hebräischen Grammatik and Die hebräische Sprachwissenschaft vom 10. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert. Amsterdam: Benjamins] Bloomfield, Leonard (1926), “A Set of Postulates for the Study of Language”. Language 2, 153–164 Bohas, Georges & Guillaume, Jean-Patrick (1984), Etudes des théories des grammairiens arabes. Damascus: Institut Français de Damas

75 Carter, Michael (1972), “Les origines de la grammaire Arabe”. Revue des Etudes Islamiques 40, 69–97 Fleisch, Henri (1960), “เIེraab”. In: Lewis, B. & Ménage, V. L. & Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Leiden: Brill, 1248–1250 Hirshfeld, H. (1926), Literary History of Hebrew Grammarians and Lexicographers. London: Oxford University Press Levin, Aryeh (1987), “The Views of the Arab Grammarians on the Classification and Syntactic Function of Prepositions”. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10, 342–367 Matthews, Peter H. (21993), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [11974] Owens, Jonathan (1988), The Foundations of Grammar: An Introduction to Medieval Arabic Grammatical Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 45) Owens, Jonathan (1989), “The Syntactic Basis of Arabic Word Classification”. Arabica 36, 211– 234 Owens, Jonathan (1990), Early Arabic Grammatical Theory: Heterogeneity and Standardization. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 53) Owens, Jonathan (1993), “The Arabic Syntactic Tradition”. In: Jacobs, Joachim & Sternfeld, Wolfgang & Vennemann, Theo & von Stechow, Arnim (eds.), Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 208–215 Rundgren, Frithiof (1976), “Über den griechischen Einfluß auf die arabische Nationalgrammatik”. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 2, 119–144 Versteegh, Kees (1977), Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden: Brill Versteegh, Kees (1989), “‘Early’ and ‘Late’ Grammarians in the Arabic Tradition: The Morphophonology of the Hollow Verb”. Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 20, 9–22 Weiß, Joseph (1910), “Die arabische Nationalgrammatik und die Lateiner”. Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft 64, 349–396

Jonathan Owens, Bayreuth (Germany)

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8. The Middle Ages 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Language study in the Middle Ages Analytical concepts and terminology Word classes and their properties Morphology in medieval European vernacular grammars References

1.

Language study in the Middle Ages

The arrival of Christianity in western Europe brought with it quite new pedagogical challenges. Whereas in eastern Europe the adoption of Christianity involved no major linguistic changes for the literate population, since the Byzantine policy was to translate essential texts into the language of the newlyconverted peoples, the Church of Rome insisted on the retention of Latin. Everything vital for the life of the Church ⫺ the liturgy, hymns and prayers, the Bible, works of exegesis and moral instruction ⫺ all had to be studied in Latin. As long as Roman Christianity was confined to Latin-speaking parts of the Empire this posed no special difficulties. Once it penetrated north of the Alps into areas connected tenuously or not at all with the Roman cultural sphere ⫺ Ireland, England, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland and Hungary ⫺ a new problem emerged. These non-Latin-speaking peoples were obliged to undertake the teaching of a language with whose speakers they had little contact, to children who in most of these regions were not literate even in their native tongue. This challenge was not one which could be satisfied by sustained effort over a few generations, as was the case with the labour of translation in the Greek East; instead, each generation had to undergo the hard discipline of language study afresh, from the time of the conversion up until the Reformation. Paradoxically, the kind of analysis required to teach a heavily-inflected language like Latin to non-native-speakers was not something which medieval westerners found congenial. In a widely-quoted passage St Augustine likened the form of a word to the body and its meaning to the soul, and medieval Christian attitudes to the body ⫺ disparagement and loathing for the “tomb” or “prison” of the soul ⫺ were reflected in longstanding reluctance to engage in the thoroughgoing empirical study of the more physi-

cal side of speech. Had the Church not insisted upon the use of Latin, it is unlikely that morphology would have developed even to the limited extent that it did during the western Middle Ages. A further essential condition for the emergence of an analytical approach to morphology was the transition from a primarily aural/oral mode of study to a predominantly visual one, a change for which there is evidence in manuscript material of the eighth and ninth centuries. 1.1. The context of morphological study Morphology was studied within the framework of grammar, the first and foremost of the Seven Liberal Arts, which provided, in theory if not always in practice, the core of the curriculum in the monastic schools of the first half of the Middle Ages. Monasteries such as Reichenau, Lorsch, Corbie, Fleury and Bobbio possessed large collections of grammars, both ancient and medieval. The content of the discipline of grammar varied through time and from one centre to another. At times its goal was the appreciation of ancient texts, or more frequently the accurate interpretation of the Bible; but its widespread definition as “the art of speaking and writing correctly” indicates its usual scope, and often it seems to have been synonymous with elementary language teaching. Such grammars of Latin as have come down to us from the early Middle Ages fall into two groups: descriptive grammars setting out a comprehensive account of the forms of Latin, and commentaries upon the grammars of late Antiquity. Although the goal of the descriptive grammars was in most cases to serve as a guide to the type of Latin used by the Church ⫺ notably Jerome’s Vulgate translation of the Bible, dating from the fourth century, and other ecclesiastical writings of the same era ⫺ they were based on the grammars of the fourth and fifth centuries, which took as their model the language of classical authors, principally Vergil, Terence, Cicero and Sallust. Consequently, medieval grammars are often ambivalent as to which variety of Latin they are attempting to teach. Nonetheless, although a more methodologically explicit writer like Boniface, writing before 716, systematically tells his readers whether a given form is to be found in the writings of


the “ecclesiastical dogmatists” or is limited to earlier usage, no medieval grammarian attempted to compile a historical grammar of Latin. Their works present a purely synchronic account of the language as they found it described in earlier sources, with archaic, classical and ecclesiastical forms side by side. During the twelfth century, with the growing importance of urban centres, cathedral schools such as those at Salisbury, Chartres and Notre Dame became major centres of learning alongside the monastic schools, and at the end of the century the first universities began to emerge ⫺ Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna. The formerly integrated curriculum in which the Seven Liberal Arts led to close study of the Bible was divided between the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Theology with consequent specialisation. Indeed, the widespread interest in newlytranslated works by Aristotle and commentaries upon them by Muslim scholars such as Averroes and Avicenna led to a crisis as it came to appear that Christianity was in danger of being swamped by far from Christian ideas. The painstaking work of the Scholastic philosophers as they gradually digested the new teaching gave rise to a synthesis of Aristotelianism and Christianity. Grammar too was penetrated by the new ideas, and a new approach emerged, speculative (or theoretical) grammar, parallel to the old grammatica positiva (practical grammar). Speculative grammar reached its best-known development at the hands of the modistae, a group of scholars active at the university of Paris in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. 1.2. The structure of Latin morphological doctrine The works of the Late Latin grammarians (cf. Art. 6) provided a framework which at first was followed very closely. Donatus’s Ars minor and Ars maior offered a model which, whatever its shortcomings, possessed the merit of being systematic and easy to follow. Thus, a grammar based on the Ars minor typically consisted of eight chapters, one for each of the parts of speech, in a standard sequence. A grammar based on the longer Ars maior consisted of three books: one dealing with units below the level of the word, one on the parts of speech, and one on style ⫺ barbarisms, solecisms, tropes and so forth. Within each chapter the structure again

77 tended to conform to Donatus’s: definition of the part of speech, list of its properties, discussion of each property with examples, miscellaneous remarks and exceptions. From the twelfth century on, a four-part division based on the four linguistic levels recognised became widespread: orthography (based on the minimal unit littera [phoneme/grapheme]); prosody (based on the syllable), etymology (not in the modern sense, but rather the study of the eight word classes, including morphology); and syntax (based on the complete utterance). Form sat uneasily within Donatus’s grammar, and indeed within the ancient grammar in general, on account of the semantic preoccupations of ancient grammarians. Because the Greek or Roman teacher could take native-speaker competence for granted, there was no need to provide an exhaustive description of inflectional morphology, a fact vividly demonstrated both in the Te´khne¯ ascribed to Dionysius Thrax and in Donatus’s Ars minor. This latter work offers paradigms of three of the five Latin noun declensions, and one verb paradigm only. Only in Latin grammars compiled for use in the Greek East, notably those by Phocas, Eutyches and Priscian, was there a serious attempt to describe some aspects of Latin morphology. It was from these fifth- and sixth-century grammars that early medieval scholars derived their terminological and conceptual repertoire of morphological notions. They worked with the traditional list of eight parts of speech, usually listed in Donatus’s order: noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, participle, conjunction, preposition, interjection. Although some authors made passing reference to disagreement in Antiquity over the number of the parts of speech, no early medieval grammarian attempted to deviate from the standard list. Each of these word classes was usually defined at the head of the relevant chapter in terms borrowed from Antiquity, and reflecting the same mix of formal, functional and semantic criteria. The properties were then listed and discussed. Although most of these properties were morphologically relevant (qualitas [i.e. the proper/common distinction], comparison, gender, number, figura [i.e. compounding], case, mood, conjugation, tense, person), their association with a particular set of morphemes was rarely singled out, as is also the case with their ancient models (cf. Art. 6).

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Where early medieval grammarians differed significantly from their predecessors was in their attempt to achieve a comprehensive and systematic, but not overwhelming, description of Latin inflectional morphology. Their chief tool was the paradigm (cf. Art. 62), accompanied by often lengthy lists of examples. This seemingly straightforward device brought its own problems, largely ones of selection. How many paradigms were necessary to ensure comprehensiveness? What criteria should be used in the choice of types for exemplification? Over a period of about two centuries, from somewhere around 600 to around 850, we can observe a process of lively experimentation at work. The grammarian Asporius (Asperius, Asper), active around 600, is a particularly interesting case. Taking Donatus’s Ars minor as his basis, he began to copy it out, “converting” it to Christianity as he went along by substituting examples from ecclesiastical vocabulary for Donatus’s pagan ones: Roma Tiberis becomes Hierusalem Iordanis Sion, doctus ‘learned’ becomes sanctus ‘holy’, and the examples of the genders ⫺ magister ‘teacher’, musa ‘muse’, scamnum ‘bench’ ⫺ become iustus ‘just’, ecclesia ‘church’, ieiunium ‘a fast’. On arriving at Donatus’s paradigms Asporius realised that more extensive revision was required. Donatus had declined one model noun of each of the five genders ⫺ magister (masc.), musa (fem.), scamnum (neut.), sacerdos ‘priest(ess)’ (common of two genders), felix ‘happy’ (common of three genders). These five words between them represent three of the five Latin noun declensions, the first (musa), second (magister, scamnum) and third (sacerdos, felix). Donatus nowhere declines a fourth- or fifth-declension noun, let alone irregular or anomalous types. On reaching the end of his generous list of neuter nouns in -um (110 examples!) Asporius added paradigms of several more neuter types, thereby covering neuters of the second, third and fourth declensions. Paradigms of nouns of various genders follow, including cultus ‘worship’ (fourth declension) and facies ‘face’ (fifth declension). In this way Asporius achieves reasonably complete coverage, although in a haphazard fashion. His metalanguage is revealing: the paradigms are introduced with the formula “item nomen neutrum quod in r litteram desinit” (‘similarly a neuter noun ending in the letter r’); terms such as ordo and declinatio ‘inflectional class,

declension’, are conspicuous by their absence, and his working method makes it plain that this fundamental concept was unknown to him. Lacking in Donatus’s grammars, it is however a central notion in the works of Priscian (ca. 500), notably the Institutiones grammaticae and the Institutio de nomine, pronomine et verbo. This latter work, a brief text which succinctly sets out a framework for the morphological description of Latin (but supplies only a few of the details), was widely studied north of the Alps in the seventh and eighth centuries. In the opening paragraph Priscian sets out a basis for the classification of the declensions: “All the nouns which Latin eloquence employs are inflected according to five declensions which are ordered according to the sequence of the vowels which form the genitive […]. The nominative of the first declension has two final letters [litterae terminales], -a and -s, and three terminations [terminationes], -a, -as and -e¯s […]. Nouns ending in -a, whether Greek or Latin, masculine, feminine or common in gender, belong to the first declension.” (Priscian 1860: 443)

This summarises the morphological features with which early medieval teachers were to work, as we shall see below. It also offered a coherent and systematic basis for the discussion of declension, the most problematic area of Latin morphology. In most seventh- and eighth-century grammars declension is made the basis of classification. Within each declension, however, there was still considerable scope for variation in the classification of subtypes. This process is seen at work most clearly in the little texts known as Declinationes nominum, which consist entirely of paradigms and examples, with almost no running text to constrain the adventurous teacher. No two versions are the same: virtually every teacher-scribe experimented with the order of the paradigms. Similarly, the authors of the Insular elementary grammars, works modelled on Donatus’s grammars supplemented with a paradigm section based (directly or indirectly) on Priscian’s Institutio de nomine, allowed themselves considerable latitude in the ordering of paradigms. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon writer Tatwine (†734) divides up nouns of each declension by termination, each of which is then subdivided by gender. The anonymous Ars Ambianensis also adopts termination as the primary ordering criterion within each declension, but within that organises according to language


of origin (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) and the proper/common distinction as well as gender. Such a system tended to overgenerate very heavily, for each subtype was given its own paradigm and list of examples (when not curtailed by weary scribes). Thus, the first declension is exemplified by five paradigms in the Declinationes nominum, and Tatwine recognises some twenty distinct types. Boniface, writing before 716, on the other hand, gives just one paradigm of each declension. By the central Middle Ages the situation had stabilised somewhat. Commentators on Donatus such as Murethach, Sedulius Scottus and Remigius gave no paradigms, assuming that they would already have been mastered from the Ars minor or from collections of paradigms jotted on flyleaves or blank half-pages in manuscripts containing grammars. From some as yet uncertain date ⫺ early in the eleventh century? ⫺ interpolated versions of the Ars minor expanded to include a full set of noun paradigms and (usually) a comprehensive set of verb paradigms were in widespread circulation. They often included a description of the endings characteristic of each declension set out along similar lines to information found in Priscian’s Institutio de nomine, as in this passage: “The genitive [singular] of the fourth declension ends in -u¯s, e.g. hic senatus, huius senatus, the dative in -ui, e.g. huic senatui, the accusative in -um, e.g. hunc senatum, the vocative is similar to the nominative, e.g. o senatus, and the ablative ends in -u¯, e.g. ab hoc senatu.” (Priscian 1860: 448)

A versified version of this doctrine was presented by Alexander of Villa Dei in his popular Doctrinale (1199), and was later incorporated into the vernacular grammars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (cf. 2.1.1; 4.1.2). This together with substitution rules (cf. 2.1.2) constituted the core of the later medieval scholar’s working knowledge of morphological analysis.

2.

Analytical concepts and terminology

The morphological units in use in the early Middle Ages were the same as those known to late Antiquity, and are neatly summarised by Murethach (after 844): “Philosophi […] ita de littera sentiunt, quod uolumen diuiditur in sententias, sententiae in uersus, uersus in partes, partes in syllabas, syllabae in lit-

79 teras.” (‘Philosophers say of the letter/speechsound that a book is divided into sentences, the sentences into verses, the verses into words, the words into syllables, and the syllables into letters/ speech-sounds’; Murethach 1977: 7)

Words, syllables and letters/speech-sounds (littera includes both) were the principal units used in morphological analysis. The perceived parallelism of these units, already pointed out by Priscian, was reasserted throughout the Middle Ages. The anonymous thirteenthcentury grammar probably written by a member of Robert Grosseteste’s circle, for example, said of case: “It is the chief function of this property to coordinate one word with another in a sentence, even as the letter/speech-sound may be arranged in a syllable according to its value, and the syllable according to its value, and the syllable in the word according to the number of its letters.” (Anonymous 1976: 41)

Several terms for ‘word’ were available. Dictio denotes ‘word’ as a semantic and formal unit. Vox ‘voice, vocal utterance’ denotes a word-form. Interestingly, the aural/oral aspect of ‘word’ implied by this term is echoed by the frequent use in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages of sonus ‘sound’ in contexts where it is clearly equivalent to ‘wordform’. From about the middle of the ninth century sonus was replaced by superficies ‘surface, appearance’ and litteratura ‘graphemic form’, reflecting a growing awareness of the written nature of grammatical studies. Verbum ‘word’ denotes the word as a semantic unit; however, it was seldom used in this sense in grammars, largely in order to avoid confusion with its far commoner sense of ‘verb’. ‘Word’ as a syntactic unit was pars orationis ‘part of the utterance’ or simply pars or oratio. As pars orationis increasingly came to mean ‘word class’ (cf. Art. 71) rather than ‘syntactic unit’; the need for a term with the latter sense gave rise, in the later Middle Ages, to the new term constructibile. The structure of grammatical descriptions meant that morphological processes were generally described in relation to a specific word class rather than with reference to words in general. Morphological units below the level of the word were with one or two exceptions not recognised. Throughout the Middle Ages there is no terminology corresponding to ‘root’, ‘stem’, ‘affix’, ‘marker’, ‘morpheme’

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and so forth. These elements are abstractions which presuppose a “building-blocks” mentality, one which views the world as made up out of readily identifiable discrete minimal units ⫺ atoms, cells, particles. The medieval mind was inclined to work in the opposite direction, to break the whole into ever smaller parts, as is apparent from the quotation from Murethach above. Because attention was focussed upon the whole, its essential nature remained uppermost in their minds. In the case of the word, the importance attached to its semantic aspect precluded recognition of subsemantic units other than those inherited from Antiquity, which were phonological rather than morphological in nature ⫺ the syllable and the littera. Certain terms corresponding roughly to ‘bound morph’ (cf. 2.2.2) constitute a partial exception to what has been said above; they represent a transitional phase on the path to the high degree of abstraction which characterises modern analysis. 2.1. Latin inflectional morphology Although nothing corresponding to ‘suffix’ was in use, the word terminatio is widely found. At first sight equivalent to ‘termination’ or ‘ending’, terminatio is in fact defined in the anonymous Ars Bernensis (eighth or early ninth century) as the final syllable: “What is the difference between a final letter [terminalis] and an ending [terminatio] in nouns ending in -a? We know that a final letter is a single letter, whether a vowel or a consonant, whereas an ending is either a vowel in isolation or a vowel with a consonant. This is therefore the difference between the final letter and the ending in nouns ending in -a: when your attention is focussed on the sound value, i.e. on the syllable, it is an ending; when [it is focussed on] the written form, i.e. whether the end of the word ends in a vowel or a consonant, then it is a final letter.” (Ars Bernensis 91, 27⫺35)

The equation of terminatio with final syllable corresponds to scribal usage in many eighthand ninth-century manuscripts. For instance, the paradigm of third-declension nouns is given in this form in one early-ninth-century manuscript: “hoc onus, huius oneris, ri, nus, nus, re, et pluraliter onera, rum, bus, ra, ra, bus”. The modern form of this paradigm would be onus, oneris, oneri, onus, onus, onere; onera, onerum, oneribus, onera, onera, oneribus. In each case the endings are identified with the final syllable, even when incompatible stems result: o-nus, one-ri, oneri-

bus. This results from the absence of the notion of ‘stem’. The word is perceived as a whole, one region of which is briefly the focus of attention, namely the final segment. Attention is never focussed upon the rest of the word without the ending, and for this reason there is no need for a notion of root. In practice inconsistent segmentation ⫺ carried out as a time- and parchment-saving device ⫺ seems to have caused no difficulties. (Interestingly, although the distinction made by the late antique grammarian Eutyches between finalitas ‘final syllable’, and indicium finalitatis ‘vowel preceding the final syllable’, corresponding to the thematic vowel of traditional modern analysis, was commented upon in the ninth century by Sedulius Scottus, it was not taken up by medieval grammarians.) The absence of the concepts stem, root and suffix resulted in a kind of morphological analysis which strikes us as inefficient and strangely blind to what now seems obvious. The way in which Smaragdus (ca. 810) handles verbs is a case in point. This is how he describes the imperfect tense: “The imperfect tense […] is recognised from only five patterns, i.e. in abam, in ebam, in ibam, in iebam, and in uebam. In abam: amabam clamabam laudabam […]. In ebam: docebam sedebam iacebam ludebam currebam […]. In ibam: praeibam circumibam […]. In iebam: audiebam aperiebam ueniebam […]. In uebam: arguebam fluebam confluebam […].” (Smaragdus 1986: 139)

Because he identifies the endings characteristic of the tense as abam, ebam, ibam, iebam, uebam, he lumps together two morphologically distinct conjugations (the second and third, both ending in -ebam), while on the other hand granting independent status to verbs in -uebam (third conjugation). Nevertheless, from the point of view of the student seeking to recognise the imperfect tense this rule will be as effective as a more economical one instructing us to look for the suffix -bam or the infix -ba-. 2.1.1. Paradigms and tables Such analytical recognition rules played a relatively minor part in grammatical pedagogy at this date; paradigms were the principal tool, as tends to be the case when the semantic aspect of the word is uppermost. During the seventh and eighth centuries paradigms were normally set out in running text and ab-


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breviated where possible. Visually, they were not distinguished at all from the surrounding text. This mode of presentation implies a type of study which relied on aural/oral communication, whether of a scholar reading the text aloud to himself or of a teacher reading to a class. In the course of the eighth century the first tentative experiments with a more visually-oriented method of presentation began. Some are remarkably successful, like the tables of verbs in the copy of the Ars Bonifacii in the Vatican Library, Pal. Lat. 1746, an early-ninth-century manuscript from Lorsch. Active and passive are set out in parallel, each with its own heading, and the scribe consistently reverts to running text for all material not connected with the paradigms.

Fig. 8.2: Participle paradigm in Amiens, Bibl. Mun. 426

Fig. 8.1: Verb paradigm in Vat. Pal. Lat. 1746

A quite different picture is presented by the copy of the Ars Ambianensis in Amiens, Bibliothe`que Municipale 426, copied at Corbie in the first half of the ninth century. In the noun chapter the lists of examples are in columns, but the paradigms are in running text. The explanatory text interspersed amidst the examples is squeezed into the columns a couple of words at a time. In the verb chapter more extensive use (but no better controlled) is made of column format: paradigms, lists, and associated text are all squeezed into columns. Nor does a form necessarily occupy a line in its own right. For example, the plural of the present participle is set out thus. By the end of the first conjugation the scribe had grasped ⫺ more or less ⫺ how col-

umn format was meant to work. But such an example vividly displays the difficulty which early medieval teacher-scribes experienced in making the transition from aural to visual presentation. This transition appears to have been completed by the eleventh century, as can be seen from this table of Latin noun endings from an eleventh-century manuscript:

Fig. 8.3: Table of noun endings from Oxford, St John’s College 17

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Implicit in this table is the notion of stem, for the endings are segmented off in a way which leaves a consistent stem throughout the paradigm. It is noteworthy too that the compiler of the table begins with the genitive singular rather than with the traditional nominative, for, as a fifteenth-century commentator on the Ars minor explained, the nominative is an unreliable guide to Latin inflection “for because of the multitude of its terminations it is highly irregular” (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 341/537, f. 170vb). The consistent segmentation of this table is characteristic of Latin inflectional morphology from the eleventh century on. The practice passed into the vernacular tradition by way of the late medieval vernacular translations and adaptions of interpolated versions of the Ars minor, as in this example from a mid-fifteenth-century English grammar: “Qwerby knowyst Ìe fourt declenson? For Ìe nominatyf, genityf and vocatyf singuler endyn in -vs; Ìe datyf in -vi; Ìe accusatyf in -vm; and Ìe ablatyf in -v; Ìe nominatyf, Ìe accusatyf and Ìe vocatyf plurer in -vs; Ìe genityf in -vum; Ìe datyf and Ìe ablatyf in -bus.” (Thomson 1984: 19, 134⫺138)

Some of these grammars incorporated a full set of paradigms into their text; more commonly paradigms were copied out separately. 2.1.2. Substitution rules Inflectional morphology was from late Antiquity onwards occasionally described in a manner more akin to the Item-and-Process model. By applying a series of substitution rules the student could convert one form into another. The anonymous grammar Magnus quae vox, preserved in a tenth-century manuscript, demonstrates this method: “Lego ‘I am reading’ is not derived, that is, it is a first-person form. The second person is formed by changing the o into is: legis; and by changing the s into t, legit [is formed]. In the plural legimus is formed by interposing mu in the second-person form; by interposing ti, legitis; and by changing the o of the first person legunt results. In the imperfect of the same mood the i [of legis] is changed to e and the s is dropped and bam is added: legebam. Changing the m to s: legebas; changing the s to t: legebat […].” (Magnus quae vox: f. 174v)

The complete word, lego, is the startingpoint. It is “transformed” into each successive form by the operation of certain processes described by Donatus: adiectio, detractio, inmutatio, transmutatio. These processes may affect a letter only or a syllable. Thus,

although these rules may at first glance resemble school grammar formulae like “to form the present tense, drop the ending of the infinitive and add the personal endings to the stem”, they are conceptually very far removed. The units of analysis implied by the procedure are those of word, syllable and letter; the concepts of stem and personal ending ⫺ even terminatio ⫺ are absent. 2.2. Latin derivational morphology Although Varro had made a clear distinction between inflectional and derivational morphology (cf. Art. 6), Late Latin grammarians did not introduce it into their grammars, but instead dealt with derivational morphology in an ad hoc manner under many different headings. Priscian was the only exception: in his Institutiones grammaticae he included species, the property of being primitive or derived, as a feature of each relevant part of speech. Because the Institutiones grammaticae was not widely studied until well into the ninth century, however, grammarians of the early and central Middle Ages for the most part worked with Donatus’s far less consistent treatment. Thus, the compounding of nouns was classified as one of the properties of the noun, figura, while the four derivational states of the verb were viewed as a property of the verb, forma. Consequently, forms that we regard as distinct lexemes were occasionally slotted into inflectional paradigms. For example, Boniface, writing before 716, includes the appellatio, e.g. laudatio ‘praise’, and the nomen verbiale, e.g. laudator ‘one who praises’, in his verb paradigms. The ambivalence over the phenomena at work in derivational morphology is revealed at many points. One of the most telling ⫺ and it is by no means unique ⫺ is the account by the late-ninth-century grammarian Remigius of Auxerre of the ways in which adverbs may be derived from nouns: “One should know that adverbs come from nouns in three ways: in form and meaning, in form and not in meaning, and in meaning and not in form. In both meaning and form, e.g. ter ‘thrice’ from tres ‘three’, quater ‘four times’ from quattuor ‘four’; in form and not in meaning, e.g. modo ‘now’ from the noun modus i.e. ‘measure’, and modo is an adverb of time; in meaning and not in form, e.g. semel ‘once’ from unus ‘one’, bis ‘twice’ from duo ‘two’.” (Remigius 1902: 62)

As is plain from this example and countless others, medieval scholars thought of derivation as much in terms of meaning as of form.


A discipline of morphology divorced from semantics was alien to their mentality. During the later Middle Ages derivational morphology was studied, after a fashion, under the heading of derivatio, and dictionaries based on this principle were compiled by such writers as Papias, Hugutio of Pisa and Osbern of Gloucester. This example, from the Elementarium of Papias (ca. 1050) is typical: “Amo -as -at. From it come amator amatrix amatio amarius -a -um amasius -sii amabilis -bilior -bilissimus amabiliter amus -i amor -ris. Amicus is compounded from it, and from amicus come amicitia and amicor -aris. Other compounds include adamo -as adamans -tis adamantinus -a -um and deamo deamas and redamo -as. Amo -as, and from it the defective verbs amasco and amaturio.” (Papias 1977⫺1978: 222)

While some authorities agreed that the entire vocabulary of Latin could be traced back to a mere twenty-four nomina primitiva using such derivational procedures, most were more generous. Not all lexicographers adopted the derivatio principle, which was analogous to the method adopted by medieval lexicographers of the Semitic languages. By the end of the Middle Ages derivatio had largely fallen out of favour as a lexicographical ordering criterion. 2.2.1. The formae of the verb Verbal derivational morphology posed commentators a particular problem. Donatus identified four derivational formations (formae) and listed them in the order perfecta, e.g. lego ‘I am reading’; meditativa, e.g. lecturio ‘I intend to read’; frequentativa, e.g. lectito ‘I read again and again’; inchoativa, e.g. calesco ‘I become hot’. Priscian, on the other hand, working in terms of species primitiva et derivativa ‘primitive and derivative form’, grouped together all derivational formations under this heading (including forms such as sorbillo ‘I sip often’, patrisso ‘I take after my father’) and not just the four named by Donatus. (An anonymous commentary on the Ars minor in a fifteenth-century manuscript attempts to reconcile Donatus’s and Priscian’s divergent lists by claiming that Priscian’s additions were irregular. In what sense Donatus’s could be claimed to be more regular than Priscian’s is not explained.) Early medieval commentators had access only to Donatus’s account, and so did not have to face the problem of reconciling the two. Their sources, late antique commentators, insisted that the distinction was one of mean-

83 ing, and reordered the list to correspond to extra-linguistic reality: first we plan to do something (meditativa), then we begin it (inchoativa), then we complete it (perfecta), and finally we repeat it (frequentativa). Medieval scholars asked why it was that Donatus’s order did not correspond to that of experience. Smaragdus (ca. 810), ever morphologically conscious and conversant with Priscian’s teaching, applies the primitivum-derivativum distinction, pointing out that the perfecta forma is the primitivum from which the other forms are derived. But this kind of reasoning did not find immediate favour. A generation later Sedulius, and later still Remigius of Auxerre, invoked a biblical parallel instead: “Note that Donatus imitated nature, for nature began with perfected things. Donatus in the same way did well to start from the perfect form. God, after all, created everything in a perfected state: when he made man, he created him full-grown (perfectum) at the age of thirty, not a boy. Similarly, he created trees, not fruit, and birds, not eggs. Bearing all this in mind, Donatus always started from perfected things.” (Remigius 1902: 47⫺48)

By the thirteenth century Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae had long been incorporated into the curriculum, and Priscian’s form-based explanation was generally accepted. Nonetheless, the new intellectual currents brought different points of view to bear upon familiar phenomena. John of Garland, for instance, in his Clavis compendii (written by 1234), assigned each type to one of the four Aristotelian causes. An unknown grammarian in the circle of Robert Grosseteste saw the formae in terms of the three basic elements of all actions: ability, knowledge and will. The modistic grammarian Martin of Dacia, writing before 1288, identified Donatus’s formae with Priscian’s species, and explained: “The mode of signifying which makes form [species] is the mode of signifying the thing as it is or is understood to be subject to the prior or posterior mode of being, or as it is imposed under the primitive or derivative mode of being, which is the same. Hence, species is divided into primitive and derivative as if they were opposites, as living beings are divided into rational and irrational […]. Just as the different types of living beings make up various species, so the different types of species, primitive and derivative, constitute the various species.“ (Martin of Dacia 1961: 33⫺34)

2.2.2. Bound morphs Bound morphs posed a different sort of problem. In words such as produco both elements retained their full “uncorrupt” form

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and each was known to exist as a lexeme in its own right. In retineo and amplector the situation was different: re- and amare bound morphs. The solution inherited by early medieval grammarians was to regard all such affixes as prepositions, and hence to divide prepositions into two classes: those which are followed by appropriately inflecting word classes (casus) and those which are followed by a word lacking the appropriate inflection (loquella). A preposition used in this latter context was called a praepositio loquellaris. In the absence of a term corresponding to ‘bound morph’ a circumlocution had to be resorted to, as in this passage from Tatwine’s grammar (before 734): “Some [verbs] are composite forms, as it were, in which the full form of one element cannot be found, e.g. impleo, impero, repleo, expleo. In these words in, re and ex are prepositions, but pleo and pero, the simple forms, are not attested.” (Tatwine 1968: 61)

John of Genoa (1286) resorted to an image from the natural world: “Just as when natural things are combined, some lose their nature [corrumpuntur], like flour and water in bread-making, while others remain whole, like the foundation, roof and walls in the construction of a house, so too it happens in grammatical elements that compounding sometimes take place from whole elements, sometimes from corrupt [our ‘bound’] ones.”

The modist Martin of Dacia, writing before 1288, argued that the praepositiones inseparabiles, as he called them, were not true prepositions because they lacked their own mode of signifying, the defining mark of a word class. Consequently their status was that of a syllabica adiectio ‘syllabic addition’ such as -met ‘-self’. This term had been described by John of Genoa, following Priscian, as altering the species (primitive/derivative) but not the figura ‘compositional status’; that is, a syllabic addition had no semantic content of its own. Although John restricted it to wordfinal position, Martin worked with a more flexible concept which foreshadows the modern ‘bound morph’.

3.

Word classes and their properties

3.1. Word classes Medieval grammarians retained unchanged the eight parts of speech of Antiquity ⫺ nomen, pronomen, verbum, adverbium, participium, coniunctio, praepositio, interiectio in

Donatus’s order, nomen, verbum, participium, pronomen, praepositio, adverbium, interiectio, coniunctio in Priscian’s. No scholar attempted to argue that the number of classes should be altered; the number eight was regarded as immutable, and was indeed justified by invoking biblical parallels (Smaragdus, ca. 810). The instinct of medieval scholars was to accomodate discrepant phenomena within the existing structure rather than to start tinkering with the structure itself. The adjective continued to be regarded as a class of noun (nomen adiectivum), although in the later Middle Ages it was given increasing autonomy, often being contrasted with the substantive (nomen substantivum). The careful distinction between adiectivum voce ‘adjective in form’ and adiectivum significatione ‘adjective in meaning’ drawn by Petrus Helias around 1150 (Rosier 1992) gave rise to extensive discussion among thirteenth-century semanticists, paving the way for the early modern recognition of the adjective as an independent word class. Similarly, the article, given the status of a part of speech by the Greeks, was treated as a type of pronoun, pronomen articulare. 3.2.

Properties of the word classes

3.2.1. Properties of the noun and pronoun The properties (accidentia) of the word classes were inherited from Antiquity. Those of the noun and pronoun were six in number. Qualitas denoted the distinction between proper and common nouns. Conparatio ‘comparison’ was included here both because of the adjective’s status as a type of noun and because of the lack of a distinction between inflectional and derivational morphology. Genus ‘gender’ (cf. 3.2.2) included not only the masculine, feminine and neuter, but also common of two genders, e.g. sacerdos ‘priest’ or ‘priestess’, common of three genders, e.g. felix ‘happy’ ⫺ according to our analysis an adjective ⫺ and epicene or promiscuous, e.g. corvus ‘crow’, masculine regardless of the sex of the bird in question. Numerus ‘number’ gave rise to reflections upon nouns which were grammatically singular but plural in meaning, such as populus ‘people’, sinodus ‘synod’, and the reverse, like scalae ‘ladder’. Figura denoted the property of being simple, e.g. territus, compound, e.g. perterritus, or doubly compound, e.g. inperterritus. In late antique works and sources of the early and central Middle Ages case was defined in


purely formal terms: “a change of final syllable” (Consentius), “inflection of nouns […] which takes place principally in final position” (Priscian). Twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources distinguished between casus vocalis and casus realis, a distinction developed by the modistae within the theoretical framework of medieval syntax. Guilhem Molinier was to elaborate this still further in his description of medieval Occitan (cf. 4.2.2). 3.2.2. Gender The medieval way of conceptualising gender differs radically from our own. Whereas according to our traditional analysis sacerdos ‘priest, priestess’ is considered to be either masculine or feminine, depending upon the sex of the referent, the ancient and medieval analysis perceived such a noun as simultaneously masculine and feminine; in other words, common gender was regarded as inhering in the word itself and not as contingent upon the referent. How gender was to be recognised was a major practical question for medieval scholars, who had no dictionaries that might provide such information. An anonymous grammar in a tenth-century manuscript summarises the possibilities thus: “How many ways are there of identifying noun gender? Four: by nature, from the article, from the ending, and from authors’ usage. By nature: vir ‘man’, mulier ‘woman’; by the article: masculine hic, feminine haec, neuter hoc; by the ending: masculine -us, feminine -a, neuter -um (in most cases); from authors’ usage: fustis ‘cudgel’, paries ‘wall’, and so on.” (Paris, Bibliothe`que Nationale, lat. 7570, f. 75r)

Explaining on what basis gender had been assigned in the first place was (and is) a perennial puzzle. Why, for example, were the three Latin words for ‘stone’ of different genders? John of Genoa, who explored possible realworld correlations with grammatical gender at some length in his Catholicon (1286), used etymology to guide him to what he saw as a real-world explanation: “Lapis (m.) is, as it were, laedens pedem ‘injuring the foot’, and in this respect it imitates the male, for the male is more prone to cause injury than the female and for this reason it is masculine in gender; petra (f.) is, as it were, pedibus trita ‘trodden upon by the feet’, and in this way apparently suffers, and for this reason is feminine in gender; saxum (n.) was so called from sauciendo ‘wounding’, i.e. ‘standing fast’ [sic!] for because of its size it stands fast and is immoveable, and in this it differs from the masculine and feminine sex, and is therefore appropriately neuter in gender.”

85 His modist contemporaries worked within the same basic explanatory framework, but phrased their explanations in terms of active and passive modes of signifying: active for the masculine, passive for the feminine, negation of both for the neuter, and so on. Martin of Dacia, writing before 1288, accounts for the masculine gender of lapis as justified by its traditional etymology per similitudinem agentis ‘through its similarity to an active agent’, and likewise petra is feminine because it has the proprietas patientis ‘the quality of something that undergoes action’. 3.2.3. Properties of the verb The verb had seven properties. Genus (or significatio) corresponds roughly to ‘voice’ ⫺ activum, passivum, neutrum (basically intransitive verbs, defined as being those which cannot take the -r of the passive), deponens, commune (those which are passive in form but may be followed by the accusative with active meaning, e.g. consulor fratrem, or by the ablative with passive meaning, e.g. consulor a fratre). Qualitas, literally ‘quality’, denotes the property of being finite, including the indicative, imperative, optative and conjunctive (⫽ subjunctive) moods, or of being infinit(iv)e. Tempus ‘tense’, numerus ‘number’, and persona ‘person’ require no comment. Around 900 Remigius of Auxerre remarks on the inseparability of tense and person in the verb, pointing out that if person is absent, the verb becomes a participle, while if tense is absent, it becomes a noun. As for coniugatio, only three conjugations were initially recognised, using the vowel of the ending of the second person singular present indicative active as the distinguishing criterion, but by the eighth century the third (i) conjugation was routinely being divided into a short i and a long i conjugation. Significatio was used in two senses: as a property of the adverb and interjection it denoted ‘meaning’ (included as a property here only!), whereas as a property of the verb it denoted ‘voice’. The conjunction had two properties not shared with any other part of speech: potestas, which denoted the categories copulative, disjunctive, expletive (our ‘concessive’), causal and rational; and ordo, relating to the position of the conjunction in the sentence. The compartmentalisation of the medieval grammar meant that in the early and central Middle Ages each part of speech was discussed in isolation with infrequent reference to the others. Consequently most grammari-

86


ans felt no need to comment upon the apparently contradictory senses in which terms such as qualitas, genus and commune were used. One noteworthy exception is Sedulius Scottus, who in the middle of the ninth century distinguished carefully between various uses of qualitas: “The difference between qualitas in the noun, in the pronoun and in the verb is as follows. The qualitas of nouns is a semantic marker [significatiua notitio] by which proper and common nouns are distinguished from one another. The qualitas of pronouns is a semantic recognition device [significatiua agnitio] by which finite pronouns are separated from infinite ones. The qualitas of verbs is a semantic concept in the mind [significatiua mentis conceptio] by which moods and [derivational] forms are recognised as distinct.” (Sedulius Scottus 1977: 36, 53⫺59)

Later medieval grammarians ⫺ Thomas of Erfurt for one ⫺ tended to be more aware of categories which overlapped word-class boundaries, and frequently commented on them.

4.

Morphology in medieval European vernacular grammars

The term “medieval vernacular grammars” covers three distinct genres: grammars of a vernacular in the vernacular, e.g. the Old Irish Auraicept na nEćes or the Occitan Leys d’amors; grammars in the vernacular which teach grammatical concepts largely divorced from the forms of a particular language, notably the Old Icelandic Third and Fourth Grammatical Treatises (which, since they contain no material relevant to morphology, will not be considered here); and grammars of Latin in the vernacular, such as Ælfric’s Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglice or the majority of the Middle English and Old French grammatical treatises. Only grammars of the first type will show us medieval teachers grappling with morphological phenomena independently of the Latin language and of the concepts developed within the Latin tradition (to a greater or lesser extent). The interest of the other two types lies in their attempts to create a vernacular terminology for those morphological concepts used in their Latin sources, and in the occasional remarks they make on differences between Latin and the vernacular.

4.1. Vernacular-medium grammars focussing upon Latin or Greek By far the majority of grammars in the medieval vernaculars are modelled closely upon Latin or Greek originals, and the problems are largely ones of translation, whether of technical terms or of notions. Three examples will suffice. 4.1.1. Ælfric’s Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglice Ælfric’s grammar, written around 1000, is an Old English adaptation of an abbreviated version of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae. Since its intended audience is “ignorant children, not greybeards”, considerable care is given to exemplifying the function of the cases by means of phrases or short sentences which provide a context, e.g. hic homo equitat ‘Ìes man rit’, huius hominis equus ‘Îises mannes hors’. Each declension and conjugation is exemplified by means of a complete paradigm, most of which are translated into Old English. The purpose of the translation is to provide a guide to the meaning of the Latin, and not, as is sometimes assumed, to set out a parallel description of Old English. The verb paradigms posed a particular challenge, for Old English possessed only two synthetic tenses, ic lufige ‘I love’ and ic lufode ‘I loved’. Although periphrastic tenses such as ic hæbbe gelufod ‘I have loved’ and ic hæfde gelufod ‘I had loved’ had already emerged (and are used by Ælfric himself in other contexts), Ælfric instead employed adverbs to render the distinction between the Latin tenses: ic lufode fulfremedlice ‘I loved perfectly (pf.)’, ic lufode gefyrn ‘I loved long ago (plpf.)’. Explicit comparisons between the morphological characteristics of the two languages are few, limited to the commonplace remarks that the eight parts of speech of Latin are also to be found in English; that the genders of Latin and Old English nouns do not always correspond; and that the impersonal mood is rare in both languages. Particular attention is given to the possessive adjective (meus etc.), for it posed special problems to speakers of Old English, in which agreement takes place only with the possessor and not, as in Latin, with the thing possessed. Of his technical terms, a number are used independently of their Latin translations and can therefore be assumed to have been in common use (Williams 1958; Law 1987: 62⫺63): nama ‘name’, word ‘verb’, dæl ‘part of speech’, cynn ‘gender’, had ‘person’, getel


‘number’, tid ‘tense’, anfeald ‘singular’, menigfeald ‘plural’, geendung ‘ending’, getacnung ‘meaning’, declinung ‘declension’. Others are found only in conjunction with the Latin terms of which they are literal renderings, indicating that their status is tantamount to that of a gloss on the Latin term rather than an integral part of Old English vocabulary. This applies, for instance, to gelimplice Îing ‘accidens’, unfulfremed forÎgewiten ‘praeteritum imperfectum’, betwuxaworpennyss ‘interjection’. 4.1.2. Late medieval vernacular grammars of Latin The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English grammars, like their Old French counterparts (Heinimann 1963; Städtler 1988), follow their Latin models fairly closely, taking over the Latin technical terminology as loanwords (e.g. nown, verbe, gendyr, nowmbyr, person, but note the native tyme ‘tense’) and adding nothing to the existing stock of morphological notions. They draw heavily (much more so than French grammars) upon the vernacular to clarify Latin forms and grammatical concepts. Thus the conjunctive (subjunctive) mood is explained in this way: “How knos Ìu Ìe coniunctiue mod? For he ioynus ij resons togedyr in on mater; and by Ìes viij Englysch wordys ‘yf’, ‘but’, ‘wen’, ‘wosumevyr’, ‘thagh’, ‘tyl’ or ‘aftyr’ or ‘euyr’ wyll serve to Ìe coniunctyue mode.” (Thomson 1984: 4 f.)

Such a rule helps the pupil to identify which English verb forms should be rendered by a Latin subjunctive. Thus too: “How know ye a participill off Ìe presentens? For his Englissh endith in ‘-yng’, as ‘louyng’, and his Laten shall ende in -ens or in -ans, as legens, amans.” (Thomson 1984: 48)

Such recognition rules served naturally as the prelude to the analysis of English in its own right; but the next step, to identify the English forms which were to be translated as a Latin subjunctive as an English subjunctive, was not taken until the sixteenth century. 4.1.3. The Old Georgian Discourse on articles The energetic eleventh- and twelfth-century Georgian translators of Greek patristic texts occasionally remarked on differences between their language and Greek (Sardzˇveladze 1983), in particular on the absence of grammatical gender in Georgian (Ephrem

87 Mcire went so far as to attempt to create distinct feminine forms for Georgian). The only extant medieval Georgian grammatical treatise, Sit’quaj artrontatws ‘Discourse on articles’, takes up another contrastive point, the question of the nature of the Greek definite article, which has no Georgian counterpart. The anonymous author explains that Greek nouns are divided into three genders, but that any one noun can belong only to one gender, and lists the forms of the article. The terminology is for the most part calqued upon the standard Greek terms, but a couple deserve comment: the correct translation of Gk. aitiatike˘ as mizezobiti ‘causal, accusative’ (cf. the Latin mistranslation accusativus); drek’a ‘bend, curve, case’, for ptoˆsis ‘falling, case’, suggesting either confusion with Gk. ptu´sso¯ ‘bend, crook, curve’, or influence of Latin (in)flexio; and sˇua ‘middle, neuter’ for Gk. oude´teron ‘neither, neuter’, which some Georgian glossators render araromeli ‘neither’, a solution also adopted by the Armenian translator of the Te´khne¯ attributed to Dionysius Thrax. In Old Church Slavonic, too, srednee ‘middle’ was adopted for ‘neuter’ (Worth 1983: 14), reflecting alternative Greek terminology. 4.2. Vernacular-medium grammars of a vernacular Such grammars are relatively few, but their independence of Latin, often explicitly stated (indeed vaunted) is striking. Since they each raise specific problems, three of the betterknown ones will be discussed. 4.2.1. The Old Irish Auraicept na nEćes This Old Irish grammar has relatively little on morphology in its earliest portions, which are thought to date from the seventh century. It does, however, discuss gender. It lists the seven ‘distinctions’: distinction of meaning in [one] person, e.g. ‘I see’; distinction of meaning of person, e.g. ‘I myself’; distinction of person in the active, e.g. ‘I have made’; distinction of person in the passive, e.g. ‘I am loved’; distinction of difference in differentiating, e.g. ‘good, better, truly better’; distinction of magnitude in magnifying, e.g. ‘big, bigger, truly bigger’; distinction of diminution in diminishing, e.g. ‘small, smaller, truly smaller’. The paradigms are remarkable for their inclusion of a vast number of forms inspired by the usual citation form of the Latin ablative, ab hoc magistro ‘from the teacher’, i.e. preposition plus noun written as a single

88


word (in accordance with early medieval scribal practice); each of these newly created cases is given its own name. The bardic grammars of the later Middle Ages adopted a tripartite word class system, which has been compared to that of Japanese: ainm, substantial in form with substantial meaning, including many elements which would be assigned by traditional grammarians to the noun, pronoun and adverb classes; pearsa, substantial in form but insubstantial in meaning, including traditional abstract nouns, verbs and adjectives; iairmbeárla, insubstantial in form and meaning, including particles and the ´ Cuı´v 1965; Adams 1970; Ahlquist copula (O 1979/1980), but for the most part concentrated on providing a standard for the use of poets. A treatise on noun declension classifies nouns into a much wider range of types than ´ Cuı´v 1956; 1973). are recognised today (O Irish vernacular grammarians were considerably less dependent upon Latin models than their Welsh counterparts (Matonis 1981). 4.2.2. The medieval Occitan Leys d’amors This grammar of Occitan, compiled by Guilhem Molinier for the use of troubadors, reached its final form in 1356. It offers the longest and most detailed description of a medieval vernacular to survive. The author insists on the independence of romans from Latin, declaring that only the usage of romans can be definitive for that language, nonetheless, the concepts and terminology of Latin provide the starting-point. Case was an ever-problematic area for grammarians of the Romance languages. Molinier worked with a functional-semantic notion rather than a purely morphological one. He defined case as follows: “Case is variation or change in a word ⫺ a noun, pronoun or participle ⫺ by means of the article, the word-form itself, or its mode of signifying” (Molinier 1842: 102f.). The article was frequently defined as a case marker in grammars of Occitan and French (e.g. Barton’s, see 4.2.3 below) in view of the severely reduced inflectional case system in both languages. The maniera de significar ‘mode of signifying’ (a term imported from speculative grammar) denoted the function of the word in the sentence. Earlier in the work (1842: 10) Molinier had invoked word order as a means of distinguishing nominative from accusative. He expressly notes the lack of distinct declensions as a point of contrast with Latin (1842: 110f.).

The article is discussed at length. Two types are identified: common and proper, corresponding to common and proper nouns. Because Molinier discusses the forms of the common (our ‘definite’) article case by case without trying to set up a single paradigm he presents a wide range of forms. The masculine ablative articles, for example, include per, ab, am, ablo, amlo, en, enlo, siquel, and lo. Molinier is thus working in a manner not dissimilar to that of the Middle English grammarians (4.1.2 above): any form which would be rendered by a Latin ablative is here identified as being a romans ablative. He also provides a list of contexts in which the article is not used, which would have been particularly helpful to the non-native speakers to whom the grammar was in part addressed. The proper article is the title En ‘Mr’, Na ‘Mrs’. Molinier’s insistence upon the independence of romans from Latin got him into trouble more than once. Having rejected the idea that romans might have distinct declensions on the grounds that most cases do not change their endings and that the genitive and dative cases are not distinguished by their endings, he sets upone regular inflectional pattern: -s (sg.), - (pl.), and is then obliged to handle common types like dona donas as exceptions. His refusal to recognise distinct conjugations leads him into a similar impasse. He identifies only three voices ⫺ active, passive and neuter ⫺ and even goes so far as to say that in fact the passive, considered purely from the point of view of form, is absent too, for it is composed of the verb to be or to have with a participle, but since this is the case in Latin too one should continue to recognise it. A large number of rules on the sequence of tenses and moods are given. 4.2.3. John Barton’s Donait françois John Barton’s French grammar was written for the English early in the fifteenth century. It deals in some detail with French morphology. The substrate of French-medium exposition of Latin grammar is visible in the identification of cases by their signes, le, du, au. Barton warns his readers against using a verb in the wrong person “si come font les sottez gens” and against substituting one gender or mood or tense for another. His use of the widely current definition of ‘inflection’ led him into trouble, however: “Quelle chose est decliner? Tenier le comencement du mot et changer le fyn. Baillez moy exemple! Si


89

come ay, as, a, avons, avez, ont et aussi des aultres.” (Städtler 1988: 132)

Irish Grammatical Tracts (1916⫺1955), ed. by Osborn Bergin [supplement to E´riu 8⫺10, 14, 17]

The longest discussion is lavished upon the inflection of pronouns, a major source of trouble for non-native speakers. French verbs are slotted into the Latin system.

Jagic´, V. (1896), Codex Slovenicus rerum grammaticarum. Berlin [reprinted 1968, Munich: Fink]

5.

5.1. Primary Texts

John of Genoa [⫽ Joannes Balbus] (1971), Catholicon. Westmead: Gregg International [reprint of 1460 ed.]

Adontz, Nicolas (1970), Denys de Thrace et les commentateurs armeńiens. Louvain: Imprimerie Orientaliste [orig. Russian, 1915]

Magnus quae vox, unprinted grammar quoted from Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14737, ff. 157v⫺183v

Ælfric (1966), Grammatik und Glossar, ed. by Julius Zupitza. Berlin: Weidmann [reprint of 1880 ed.] Auraicept na nEćes (1917), ed. and transl. by George Calder. Edinburgh: John Grant [Canonical portion ed. and transl. by Anders Ahlqvist (1983), The Early Irish Linguist: An Edition of the Canonical Part of the Auraicept na nEćes. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 73)]

Martin of Dacia (1961), De modis significandi, ed. by Henricus Roos. In: Martini de Dacia Opera. Hauniae: Gad, 3⫺118

References

Alexander of Villa Dei (1893), Das Doctrinale des Alexander de Villa-Dei, ed. by Dietrich Reichling. Berlin: Hofmann Anonymous (1976), “Tractatus de grammatica”: Eine fälschlich Robert Grosseteste zugeschriebene spekulative Grammatik, ed. by Karl Reichl. Munich: Schöningh Anonymous (1990), Discourse on Articles: An Old Georgian Grammatical Treatise, ed. by Mzekala A. Shanidze. Tbilisi: Tbilisi University Press Ars Ambianensis, unedited grammar quoted from Amiens, Bibliothe`que Municipale, MS 426, ff. 48r⫺ 71v Ars Bernensis (1870), ed. by Hermann Hagen. In: Grammatici Latini, Vol. VIII. Leipzig: Teubner, 62⫺142 [reprinted 1961/1981, Hildesheim: Olms] Asporius (1870), Ars Asperi grammatici, ed. by Hermann Hagen. In: Grammatici Latini, Vol. VIII. Leipzig: Teubner, 39⫺61 [reprinted 1961/1981, Hildesheim: Olms] Boniface (1980), Bonifatii (Vynfreth) Ars grammatica, ed. by George John Gebauer and Bengt Löfstedt. Turnhout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 133B) Declinationes nominum, unedited grammar quoted from Paris: Bibliothe`que Nationale, lat. 13025, ff. 40r⫺42v Donatus (1981), Ars minor and Ars maior, ed. by Louis Holtz, Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical. Paris: CNRS Eutyches (1868), Ars de verbo, ed. by Heinrich Keil. In: Grammatici Latini, Vol. V. Leipzig: Teubner, 447⫺489 [reprinted 1961/1981, Hildesheim: Olms]

John of Garland [⫽ Johannes de Garlandia], Clavis compendii, unprinted grammar quoted from Cambridge: Gonville and Caius College MS 136/ 76, pp. 163⫺227

Molinier, Guilhem (1842), Las Leys d’amors, tersa pars, ed. M. Gatien-Arnoult. Toulouse: Paya Murethach (1977), In Donati Artem maiorem, ed. by Louis Holtz. Turnhout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 40) Papias (1977⫺1978), Elementarium, ed. by V. de Angelis. Milan: Cisalpino-Goliardica Priscian (1855, 1859), Institutiones grammaticae, ed. by Martin Hertz. Grammatici Latini, Vol. II⫺ III. Leipzig: Teubner [reprinted 1961/1981, Hildesheim: Olms] Priscian (1860), Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo, ed. by Heinrich Keil. In: Grammatici Latini, Vol. III. Leipzig: Teubner, 443⫺456 [reprinted 1961/1981, Hildesheim: Olms] Remigius (1902), In artem Donati minorem commentum, ed. by W. Fox. Leipzig: Teubner Rosier, I[re`ne] (1992), “L’adjectif dans la tradition latine: la grammaire me´die´vale. Textes choisis et traduits”. Archives et Documents 2nd series 6, 23⫺39 Sedulius Scottus (1977), In Donati Artem minorem, ed. by Bengt Löfstedt. Turnhout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 40C), 1⫺54 Smaragdus (1986), Liber in partibus Donati, ed. B[engt] Löfstedt, L[ouis] Holtz, A[dele] Kibre. Turnhout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 68) Städtler, Thomas (1988), Zu den Anfängen der französischen Grammatiksprache: Textausgaben und Wortschatzstudien. Tübingen: Niemeyer Tatwine (1968), Ars Tatuini, ed. by Maria De Marco. Turnhout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 133) Thomas of Erfurt (1972), Grammatica Speculativa of Thomas of Erfurt, ed. and transl. G[eoffrey] L. Bursill-Hall. London: Longman Thomson, David (1984), An Edition of the Middle English Grammatical Texts. New York: Garland

90


Williams, G. J. & Jones, E. J. (1934), Gramadegau’r Penceirddiad. Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru [contains editions of medieval Welsh grammars]

5.2. Secondary Works Adams, G. B[rendan] (1970), “Grammatical Analysis and Terminology in the Irish Bardic Schools”. Folia Linguistica 4, 157⫺166 Ahlqvist, Anders (1979/1980), “The Three Parts of Speech of Bardic Grammar”. Studia Celtica 14/ 15, 11⫺17 Heinimann, S. (1963), “Zur Geschichte der grammatischen Terminologie im Mittelalter”. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 79, 23⫺37 Law, Vivien (1987), “Anglo-Saxon England: Aelfric’s Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglice”. Histoire E´piste´mologie Langage 9, 47⫺71 Matonis, A[nn] T. E. (1981), “The Welsh Bardic Grammars and the Western Grammatical Tradition”. Modern Philology 79, 121⫺145 ´ Cuı´v, Brian (1956), “Grammatical Analysis and O the Declension of the Noun in Irish”. Celtica 3, 86⫺125

´ Cuı´v, Brian (1965), “Linguistic Terminology in O the Mediaeval Irish Bardic Tracts”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1965, 141⫺164 ´ Cuı´v, Brian (1973), “The Linguistic Training of O the Mediaeval Irish Poet”. Celtica 10, 114⫺140 Pa`roli, Teresa (1968), “Indice della terminologia grammaticale di Aelfric”. Annali dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli sez. linguistica 8, 113⫺138 Rosier, Ire`ne (1992), “Quelques aspects de la diversite´ des discussions me´die´vales sur l’adjectif”. Histoire E´piste´mologie Langage 14, 75⫺100 Sardzˇveladze, Z. A. (1983), “U istokov gruzinskoj lingvisticˇeskoj mysli”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 113⫺121 Thurot, Ch[arles] (1868), Extraits de divers manuscrits latins pour servir a` l’histoire des doctrines grammaticales au moyen aˆge. Paris [reprinted 1964, Frankfurt/M: Minerva] Williams, Edna R. (1958), “Ælfric’s Grammatical Terminology”. Publications of the Modern Languages Association 73, 453⫺462 Worth, Dean S. (1983), The Origins of Russian Grammar. Columbus/OH: Slavica

Vivien Law, Cambridge (Great Britain)

9. Von der Renaissance bis ca. 1800 Redaktioneller Hinweis: Aus terminlich-technischen Gründen erscheint Art. 9 nicht. Der an dieser Stelle vorgesehene Artikel sollte die theoretischen und deskriptiven Abhandlungen zur Morphologie im Zeitraum von der Renaissance bis ca. 1800 berücksichtigen; insbesondere wären die folgenden Themen behandelt worden: ⫺ die morphologische Analyse im Rahmen der Universalen Grammatik in verschiedenen europäischen Ländern; ⫺ die Abfassung von Grammatiken der europäischen Sprachen in der jeweiligen Volkssprache (einschließlich nationaler Unterschiede in der Terminologie und Begrifflichkeit sowie Abweichungen vom lateinischen Modell, z. B. bezüglich des Kasus- oder des Tempussystems); ⫺ die morphologische Beschreibung von nicht-europäischen Sprachen im Zeitalter des Kolonialismus.

9. From the Renaissance to ca. 1800 Editorial note: Article 9 had to be left out due to time-related and technical constraints. This article was supposed to consider the theoretical and descriptive approaches to morphology from the Renaissance to ca. 1800, with particular reference to the following topics: ⫺ morphological analysis in the framework of Universal grammar in different European countries; ⫺ grammars of European languages in the vernaculars (including national differences in terms or concepts and deviations from the Latin model, e. g. as regards case and tense systems); ⫺ morphological descriptions of non-European languages in the colonial age.

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10. Das 19. Jahrhundert

10. Das 19. Jahrhundert 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

1.

Einleitung Voraussetzungen: Erfassung sprachlicher Daten im 18. und 19. Jh. Sprachwissenschaftliche Forschungen bis zum Beginn des 19. Jhs. Die Ausbreitung und Institutionalisierung von Sprachwissenschaft im 19. Jh. Morphologische Forschungen im 19. Jh. Zitierte Literatur

Einleitung

Über die Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und ihrer Teildisziplinen gibt es reichhaltige Literatur (zum 19. Jh. s. besonders: MorpurgoDavies 1998; Schmitter 1996; Arens 2 1969; Robins 1973; Sebeok 1975; alle mit weiteren Literaturangaben). Eine Einschränkung auf ausgewählte Teilgebiete der Morphologie in diesem Beitrag erscheint sinnvoll. Im folgenden soll der Schwerpunkt auf Morphophonologie und vor allem Sprachtypologie gelegt werden, weil (a) sich im 19. Jh. in der Forschung neue Ansätze gerade dieser Themen herausgebildet haben (weniger Neues gibt es z. B. in der Wortbildung; dazu Brekle 1975) und (b) gerade die Sprachtypologie eine sehr lebendige und aktuelle Forschungsrichtung ist, die auch im 19. Jh. lebhaft diskutiert wurde und in erster Linie als morphologische Typologie bzw. Sprachklassifikation verstanden wurde (Meier 1996: 459 f.). Ausdrücklich muß gesagt werden, daß im 19. Jh. die heutigen linguistischen Disziplinen “Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft” einerseits und “Historische und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaften” andererseits nicht leicht zu trennen sind. Eine Geschichte der morphologischen Forschungen im 19. Jh. ist fast immer eine Geschichte der historisch-vergleichenden und der allgemein-typologischen Sprachbetrachtung (Robins 1973: 4). Die Begriffe ‘Morphologie’ und ‘Morphem’ verdanken wir ebenfalls dem 19. Jh. (s. Art. 46). ‘Morphologie’ wurde aus der Biologie (Salmon 1974: 333 und Art. 2) in die Sprachwissenschaft eingeführt von August Schleicher (Schleicher 1859; erste Verwendung aber bei Max Müller im Jahre 1854, s. Morpurgo-Davies 1998: 221 Fn. 19), der eine Annäherung der Sprachwissenschaften an die

empirischen und exakten Naturwissenschaften anstrebte (s. 5.8). ‘Morphem’ wurde geprägt von Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (ab 1880; Definition des Begriffs in Baudouin de Courtenay [1895] 1972: 153) nach dem Vorbild von ‘Phonem’ (dies zuerst bei Ferdinand de Saussure 1879). Einen kurzgefaßten, guten Überblick über die Prinzipien und Methoden der historischen Morphologie, die in der morphologischen Forschung des 19. Jhs. einen weiten Raum einnimmt, bietet Werner anhand des Deutschen (s. Werner 1984: 535 ff.).

2.

Voraussetzungen: Erfassung sprachlicher Daten im 18. und 19. Jh.

In der Epoche der großen geographischen Entdeckungsfahrten und der Kolonialisierung fremder Länder wurden Europäer und Amerikaner mit Völkern und Sprachen bekannt, die zunächst nur sporadisch in einzelnen Grammatiken erfaßt und beschrieben wurden. Das Projekt der Zarin Kartharina II. zur Erstellung eines universalen Wörterbuchs führte erstmals zu einer groß angelegten Feldforschung, bei der 12 Zahlen und 273 andere Wörter in 200 Sprachen Europas und Asiens abgefragt und aufgelistet wurden. Es wurde von Peter Simon Pallas 1787–9 in St. Petersburg veröffentlicht (Haarmann 1979). 1790–1 erschien eine erweiterte, vierbändige Fassung, die zusätzlich 30 afrikanische und 23 amerikanische Sprachen brachte. Weitere ähnliche Werke folgten: Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro stellte in den letzten 5 Bänden seiner 21-bändigen Idea dell’Universo (1778–1787) sein Wissen über Sprachen zusammen (Tovar 1986). Johann Christoph Adelungs Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde mit dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in bey nahe fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarten wurde nach seinem Tod (1806) von J. S. Vater fortgeführt und veröffentlicht (1806–1817). Adriano Balbi darf wohl als der Erste gelten, der Sprachen aller Kontinente zusammengestellt hat (Balbi 1826). Unter anderem bietet er eine Liste von allerdings nur 26 Wörtern in allen von ihm aufgenommenen Sprachen. Eine Reihe von Untersuchungen und Grammatiken aus dem 18. und 19. Jh., die hier nicht im einzelnen genannt werden können, tragen zu

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einer guten Kenntnis verschiedener Sprachen bei und bilden die Grundlage weiterer Untersuchungen (Morpurgo-Davies 1998: 37–58 mit weiteren Literaturangaben; s. 5.7).

3.

Sprachwissenschaftliche Forschungen bis zum Beginn des 19. Jhs.

3.1. Rationalistische und empiristische Grammatik Ab dem Mittelalter taucht die Frage nach sprachlichen Universalien auf. Die scholastischen Grammatiker versuchten, eine Antwort darauf zu finden, ob ihr grammatisches System universal anwendbar sei. Roger Bacon hielt die Grammatik aller Sprachen in ihrer Substanz für dieselbe, offensichtliche Unterschiede seien nur akzidentiell, da die Dinge überall dieselben seien und der menschliche Geist für alle Menschen gleich (“rationalistische”, “philosophische” oder “universalistische” Sprachbetrachtung, dazu Dominicy 1996; Naumann 1996; Schreyer 1996; Arens 2 1969: 80–154). In der Renaissance beobachten wir einen eher empirischen und datenorientierten Zugang zu Sprache und Sprachen (“empiristische”, “beobachtende” oder “partikularistische” Sprachbetrachtung). Durch das Bekanntwerden des Chinesischen wird vereinzelt schon im 16. und 17. Jh. die allgemeingültige Anwendbarkeit der antiken grammatischen Kategorien auf solche Sprachen in Frage gestellt (Robins 1973: 18 f., 21 f.). Rationalistischer Zugang einerseits und empiristischer Zugang zur Sprache andererseits begegnen uns durch die Jahrhunderte bis heute. Ein wichtiger Vertreter des Rationalismus war John Horne Tooke Ende des 18. Jhs.: Sprache ist Gedanke; ihre Elemente sind Nomina und Verben, die nur die Bezeichnungen für Ideen sind, alle anderen sprachlichen Elemente sind aus ihnen durch “Abkürzung” entstanden. Seine sprachwissenschaftlichen und sehr gewagten etymologischen Thesen werden von John Fearn widerlegt (Brekle 1985). 3.2. Vergleichende und genetische Grammatik, Sprachklassifikation Schon seit dem Mittelalter wurden Versuche unternommen, Sprachen in Gruppen zusammenzufassen. Die Bezeichnungen “Sprachfamilie”, “Muttersprache”, “Tochtersprache”, “Sprachverwandtschaft” werden teilweise schon vor dem 19. Jh. verwendet (Metcalf

1974: 236). Um zu einer genetischen Klassifikation von Sprachen und Sprachfamilien zu kommen, mußte man sich mit dem Bau der Sprachen und ihrem Wortschatz befassen. Schon Gabriel Girard unterschied (1747) “langues transpositives”, “langues analogues” und “langues mixtes” oder “amphilogiques”. Bei “langues transpositives” ist die Wortstellung willkürlich, es gibt Flexion. Bei den “langues analogues” erscheinen die Wörter nach ihrer logischen oder natürlichen Abfolge, weil diesen Sprachen die Eindeutigkeit der Beziehungen durch Flexion fehlt. Die “langues mixtes” (unter die Girard z. B. auch Griechisch und Deutsch zählt) sind flektierend, doch gibt es auch Charakteristika der “langues analogues”, z. B. den Artikel. Eine ähnliche Einteilung hat Adam Smith (1761), indem er “compounded languages” – mit mehr oder weniger freier Wortstellung, Flexion – und “original languages” – mit fester Wortstellung, ohne Flexion, dafür mit analytischen Konstruktionen, etwa Hilfsverb + Partizip – unterscheidet (Meier 1996: 465 ff.). All diesen typologischen Einteilungen ist gemeinsam, daß sie zwei (evtl. drei) Typen von Sprachen unterscheiden und daß Flexion als Hauptargument für die Klassifikation verwendet wird. Auffallend ist, daß die Sprachklassifikation gleichzeitig eine Wertung der Sprachen enthält: Flektierende Sprachen gelten als hochstehend, isolierende Sprachen als primitiv. Diese Wertung ist – ausdrücklich oder auch nur latent vorhanden – auch bei so namhaften Forschern wie Humboldt, Schleicher oder Steinthal anzutreffen (z. B. vergleicht Steinthal 21858: 330 die hinterindischen Sprachen, z. B. Thai, in ihrer Komplexität mit Zoophyten). Einige Untersuchungsprinzipien finden sich schon in älterer Zeit, z. B. bei Martin Fogel (1634–1675), der seine Theorie der Verwandtschaft der finno-ugrischen Sprachen (er zählte allerdings auch das Lettische dazu) nicht nur auf lexikalischen, sondern auch auf strukturellen Vergleichen aufbaute (Stehr 1957: 7–23). Samuel Gyarmathi in seiner 1799 publizierten Affinitas linguae hungaricae cum linguis fennicae originis grammatice demonstrata überzeugt durch systematische Untersuchung von lexikalischen und grammatischen Formen (Endungen, Affixe, Wortarten etc.); die Verwandtschaft der finnougrischen Sprachen beweist er hauptsächlich durch strukturalistischen Vergleich (Gulya 1974: 266 ff.). Die am wenigsten wichtigen Kriterien für Sprachverwandtschaft seien le-

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xikalische Entsprechungen (Gyarmathi 1799: XIII). Letztendlich jedoch galt den meisten Forschern auch im 18. Jh. als wesentlicher Vergleichspunkt der Wortschatz: Wenn einige Sprachen Wörter mit ähnlicher Bedeutung und ähnlicher Form hatten, dann konnten sie als verwandt eingestuft werden. Erst im Laufe der Zeit setzte sich die Erkenntnis durch, daß lexikalische Ähnlichkeiten durch Bedeutungswandel, Lautmalerei oder Entlehnungen zustandekommen konnten. Um dies zu umgehen, versuchte man, einen typischen, wenig entlehnungs- oder bedeutungswandelanfälligen “Grundwortschatz” zu erstellen, der als Grundlage für Wortlisten verwendet wurde (z. B. bei Balbi, dazu Metcalf 1974: 246 ff.). Auch Sir William Jones klammerte bei lexikalischen Vergleichen Wörter aus dem kulturellen, politischen, sozialen oder landwirtschaftlichen Bereich aus, da diese der Entlehnung sehr anfällig seien. Neben der Entdeckung, daß phonetische Entsprechungen (“literae cognatae”) und ihre Gesetzmäßigkeiten bei sprachhistorischen Untersuchungen berücksichtigt werden müssen, breitete sich am Ende des 18. Jhs. zunehmend die Erkenntnis aus, daß der Sprachbau (also die Syntax) und die Grammatik (d. i. die Wortbildung und Formenlehre) für die Annahme einer Sprachverwandtschaft untersucht werden müssen (Droixhe 1978: 72 f.). Über die Gewichtung der Bereiche Syntax und Grammatik herrschte Uneinigkeit. So hielt man eine Sprache mit einer anderen verwandt aufgrund ähnlicher Wortstellung. Andererseits verglich man aber auch einzelne Wortformen, Affixe, Wortarten usw. miteinander oder versuchte, Sprachen nach dem Grad der Komplexität ihres Verbalparadigmas zu unterscheiden (Swiggers 1993).

4.

Die Ausbreitung und Institutionalisierung der Sprachwissenschaft im 19. Jh.

4.1. Die Ausbreitung der Sprachwissenschaft Die Abkehr von der universalgrammatischen, philosophischen Sprachbetrachtung hin zur datenorientierten Sprachbetrachtung vollzieht sich Anfang des 19. Jhs. Einen wesentlichen Anstoß dafür bildete das zunehmende Interesse am Sanskrit (s. Art. 5). Durch Missionare und Kaufleute wurde das Sanskrit schon im 16. Jh. Europas gelehrten Kreisen bekannt. Aber erst durch Sir William Jones

erlangte es die Verbreitung, die schließlich den Erfolg des Sanskrit in Europa auslöste. Zwischen dem Ende des 18. Jhs. und dem Beginn des 19. Jhs. erschienen einige Grammatiken des Sanskrit sowie englische Übersetzungen einiger indischer Texte (z. B. Śakuntalā 1789, Hitopadeṣa 1787, Bhagavadgītā 1785), die später auch in andere Sprachen (deutsch, französisch) übertragen wurden. Die bekannte Äußerung Sir William Jones’ über die Verwandtschaft des Sanskrit mit Griechisch, Latein, Persisch, Gotisch und Keltisch (1786; Arens 21969: 147; MorpurgoDavies 1998: 65) führte zu einem stark ansteigenden Interesse an vergleichender Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachwissenschaft schlechthin. Nicht zu unterschätzen ist auch der Einfluß, den die sehr formalistischen indischen Sanskrit-Grammatiker (v. a. P¾‫ڲ‬ini) im Bereich sprachlicher Beobachtungen und deskriptiver Methoden in der Phonetik und anderen Zweigen der Sprachwissenschaft auf die europäischen Wissenschaftler ausübten (der Begriff des Null-Morphems war wohl schon P¾‫ڲ‬ini bekannt: Allen 1955; s. auch Art. 5). 4.2. Die Institutionalisierung der Sprachwissenschaft Erst ab dem Anfang des 19. Jhs. wurde Sprachwissenschaft als eigenes Fach nach und nach an den Universitäten zuerst in Deutschland, dann in weiteren europäischen Ländern und Amerika eingerichtet. Häufig wurden ursprünglich orientalistische oder Sanskrit-Lehrstühle im Laufe der Zeit zu Professuren für Sprachwissenschaft umgewidmet. Der erste Lehrstuhl war der Franz Bopps (“Orientalische Literatur und allgemeine Sprachkunde”, ab 1821) an der heutigen Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Am Ende des 19. Jhs. hatten fast alle deutschen Universitäten einen Lehrstuhl für Sprachwissenschaft bzw. Indogermanistik. Andere europäische Länder folgten dieser Entwicklung etwas langsamer (erster Lehrstuhl in England 1828, Frankreich 1832, Italien 1861; dazu Morpurgo-Davies 1998: 7 ff., 154 ff.). Die Benennungen waren vielfältig: “Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft”, “Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft”, “Grammaire Comparée”, “Anthropologie Linguistique”, “Linguistique générale et histoire”, “Comparative Philology”, “Filologia indogermanica” usw. Obwohl in einigen wenigen Fällen Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft als eigenes Fach gelehrt wurde, wurden Sprachwissenschaft und ihre

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Theorie hauptsächlich an den Historisch-vergleichenden Lehrstühlen mitunterrichtet. Die Institutionalisierung und damit einhergehend die staatliche Unterstützung gewährleisteten im übrigen erst die zügige systematische und wissenschaftliche Forschung in den diversen linguistischen Disziplinen gegenüber den auf der Initiative und dem Interesse Einzelner gegründeten Forschungen der vergangenen Jahrhunderte.

5.

Morphologische Forschungen im 19. Jh.

5.1. Friedrich von Schlegel Als einflußreiches Werk darf Friedrich von Schlegels Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808) gelten. Durch die Lektüre von Sir William Jones’ Ausführungen über die Verwandtschaft des Sanskrit mit einigen europäischen Sprachen angeregt, beschäftigte sich Schlegel mit diesen Fragen und kommt in seinem ersten Kapitel über Sprache und Sprachen zu dem Schluß, daß Sanskrit vor allem mit Persisch, Griechisch, Latein und germanischen Sprachen, aber auch (entfernter) mit Armenisch, Slawisch und Keltisch verwandt sei. Schlegel ist der Erste, der Sanskrit als die Muttersprache ansieht, von der die genannten Sprachen abstammen (eine Ansicht, die sich bis in die Mitte des 19. Jhs. halten konnte). Er beweist seine Schlußfolgerungen durch Vergleiche im Wortschatz, aber vor allem durch Vergleiche der Morphologie (“Formenlehre”) und des Satzbaus (1808: 28). Weil flektierende Sprachen auch ihm (1808: 63) als höherwertig galten (s. 3.2), mußte Sanskrit wegen seiner komplexeren und reguläreren Flexion gegenüber dem Griechischen und Lateinischen, noch viel mehr aber gegenüber dem Keltischen, Germanischen, Slawischen und Armenischen als überlegen beurteilt werden. Diese anderen, minderen Sprachen zeigen einen Verfall der sprachlichen Komplexität. Die Untersuchungen führten Schlegel zu einer Einteilung in zwei grundlegende Sprachtypen: Der eine zeichnet sich durch Flexion aus – im Verlaufe der Sprachgeschichte konnte sich dieser Typ durch Verfall in Richtung auf den zweiten Sprachtyp entwickeln, war allerdings wegen der historischen Grundlage immer noch höherwertig –, der andere markiert grammatische Beziehungen durch Wortstellung oder zusätzliche Partikeln – durch Agglutinierung

konnte dieser wiederum eine dem flektierenden Sprachtyp ähnliche, aber nicht so vollkommene Sprache ergeben (1808: 63). 5.2. August Wilhelm Schlegel August Wilhelm Schlegel in Observations sur la langue et la littérature provençales ([1818] 1846–47, II: 158 ff.) ersetzt die übliche Zweiteilung durch eine Einteilung in drei Sprachtypen: “langues sans aucune structure grammaticale”, affigierende Sprachen und flektierende Sprachen. Letztere können sich von synthetischen zu analytischen Sprachen entwickeln. Echte Flexionselemente haben keine eigene (d. h. lexikalische) Bedeutung. 5.3. Wilhelm von Humboldt Von Wilhelm von Humboldts umfangreichem Werk wurde einiges erst postum veröffentlicht, so die berühmte “Einleitung über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechtes” (1836) zu Über die Kawi Sprache auf der Insel Java (1836–39). Humboldt beschäftigte sich neben den indogermanischen Sprachen mit so verschiedenen Sprachen wie Baskisch, nordund südamerikanischen Sprachen, indonesischen und polynesischen Sprachen, Chinesisch (einiges davon ist leider unpubliziert geblieben, s. dazu Mueller-Vollmer 1993). 1827 erschien die erste detaillierte typologische Arbeit “Über den Dualis”, die die Verwendung und die Funktion des Duals in den Sprachen der Welt untersucht. Sie beginnt mit einem Überblick über die verschiedenen Typen des Duals und den Sprachgruppen, in denen ein Dual überhaupt vorkommt, wobei die indonesischen Sprachen ausführlich behandelt werden (Plank 1989). In den 20er und 30er Jahren des 19. Jhs. beschäftigte sich Humboldt vor allem mit dem Studium der Sprachtypen und ihren Verschiedenheiten und Gemeinsamkeiten. Die typologische Klassifikation in drei Sprachtypen wird häufig Humboldt zugeschrieben, obwohl sie schon von A. W. von Schlegel verwendet wird (s. 5.2). Aber Humboldt selbst schwankte zwischen der Dreiteilung und einer Vierteilung unter Hinzufügung des inkorporierenden Sprachtyps, dem er die Sprachen Amerikas zurechnet (1836: 114, 124 f., 151–165, 272). Zwar übernimmt auch Humboldt die Vorstellung, daß flektierende Sprachen vollkommener seien als isolierende, aber er rechnet mit einem immer wiederkehrenden Zyklus der Ab-


und Zunahme ihrer Struktur (eine Annahme, die sich auch bei von der Gabelentz findet, s. 5.11) – bisher war die Veränderung immer eingleisig entweder in Richtung auf einen sprachlichen Verfall oder in Richtung auf sprachliche Vollkommenheit. Humboldt erstellte für sich selbst ein Arbeitsprogramm: Man brauche (a) Einzelgrammatiken aller bekannten Sprachen (auch, wo möglich, aller früheren Sprachstufen), (b) Einzeluntersuchungen aller sprachlichen Kategorien (z. B. das Verb) in allen Sprachen. Erst dann könne man daran denken, eine Klassifizierung der Sprachen der Welt zu erstellen und Sprachfamilien einzuteilen (1903–36, IV: 10 f.). Humboldt sah auch klar die Gefahren, wenn man sich mit einer fremden Sprache beschäftigte: Man müsse sich davor hüten, sozusagen automatisch die in der eigenen Sprache vorhandenen Kategorien zu übertragen. Dies ließe sich bewerkstelligen, indem man jede Sprache in ihren Eigenheiten sorgfältig studiere, ihre Elemente segmentiere und somit zu einer klaren Vorstellung über Funktionen der spracheigenen Elemente und Formen gelange (1903–36, IV: 288–9). In seiner Darstellung der KawiSprache (1836–39, II: 86 ff.) zeigt Humboldt, daß die Wortstämme dieser javanesischen Sprache ursprünglich nominal waren und Verben durch Präfigierung entstehen konnten. Diese Präfixe sind aber teilweise durch Lautveränderungen verschwunden und hinterließen oftmals nur typische morphophonemische Varianten, die dazu führten, daß man (fälschlicherweise) das Nomen vom Verb abgeleitet dachte und nicht umgekehrt. Auch hier zeigt sich die unterschiedliche Betrachtungsweise: Synchronisch und rein deskriptiv mag eine solche Aussage gerechtfertigt sein, um dem Benutzer einer Grammatik Regeln an die Hand zu geben, mit denen er fähig ist, eine Sprache zu lernen. Nach Humboldts Anschauung und Interessenlage mußte man aber darüber hinausgehen und nach der ursprünglichen und wirklichen Bedeutung grammatischer Formen und ihrer Verbindung mit anderen sprachlichen Elementen fragen oder eben, woher solche Formen stammten (also ein eher diachronischer Zugang). Dabei verwendet Humboldt sowohl interne Rekonstruktion (die morphophonemischen Regeln lassen sich nur verstehen, wenn das Verb vom Nomen abgeleitet ist und nicht umgekehrt) als auch die historisch-vergleichende, also ex-

95 terne Rekonstruktion, indem er mit dem Javanischen verwandte Sprachen und aus dem Sanskrit entlehnte Nomina, deren ursprüngliche Lautform man genau kennt, heranzieht. Diese zeigen deutlich, daß die Nomina ihre ursprüngliche Form beibehalten, die Verben aber lautlichen Veränderungen unterworfen waren. 5.4. Rasmus Rask Rasmus Rasks wichtigste Publikationen zur Sprachwissenschaft sind präzise, knappe Grammatiken diverser moderner und alter Sprachen, z. B. 1811 Altnordisch; 1817 Angelsächsisch; 1824 Spanisch; 1825 Friesisch; 1827 Italienisch; 1839 Dänisch (seine Muttersprache); 1832 Lappisch, Englisch; ferner grammatische Kurzbeschreibungen afrikanischer Sprachen (dazu Gipper & Schmitter 1979: 28–32). Seine Grammatiken sind vorwiegend deskriptiv: Nach einer Darstellung von Schreibung und Phonologie folgen Kapitel über Morphologie, Wortbildung und Syntax. Auch bei ihm findet sich die im 19. Jh. fast überall anzutreffende Einstellung, daß man eine Sprache nur dann richtig und vollständig verstehen könne, wenn man auch ihre früheren Sprachstufen kenne, da man nur so manche Erscheinungen einer Sprache erklären könne (z. B. in Rask: 1811, Vorwort). Nach Hjelmslev (1966), der auch Rasks Schriften herausgab (Rask 1932–37), soll Rask nicht als Begründer der vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft, sondern tatsächlich eher als Begründer der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft und des Strukturalismus gelten, da sein Hauptinteresse in der empirischen allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft und der Typologie gelegen habe (dazu aber Schmitter 1982: 137 ff.). Trotzdem darf Rask aber doch als einer der Begründer der vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft gelten; unter anderem ist ihm das Prinzip der heute so genannten “forma difficilior” zu verdanken (Rask 1818 am Beispiel der griechischen Komparative mit Suffix -iōn gegenüber denen mit Suffix -teros; Morpurgo-Davies 1998: 128). 5.5. Franz Bopp In Franz Bopps Arbeiten zeigt sich der Trend zu einer “technisierten”, “mathematisierten” bzw. “positivistischen” Sprachwissenschaft. In dem 1816 erschienenen Buch Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache wird die These der Sprachverwandtschaft der indogermanischen Sprachen als Vorausset-

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zung genommen und eine detaillierte vergleichende und allgemeine Analyse der verbalen Morphologie erstellt. “Unter Zeitwort oder Verbum im engsten Sinne ist derjenige Redetheil zu verstehen, welcher die Verbindung eines Gegenstandes mit einer Eigenschaft, und deren Verhältnisse zu einander ausdrückt. Das Verbum, nach dieser Bestimmung, hat für sich gar keine reelle Bedeutung, sondern ist blos das grammatische Band zwischen Subjekt und Prädikat, [...]. Es giebt unter diesem Begriffe nur ein einziges Verbum, nämlich das sogenannte Verbum abstractum, Seyn, esse.” (Bopp 1816: 2)

Diese Ansicht findet sich übrigens schon in der Grammaire de Port-Royal (Dominicy 1996: 13 f.). Bopp verband diese Behauptung mit dem Versuch, die formalen Reflexe einer solchen Kopula in der flexivischen Morphologie der Zeitformen anderer Verben wiederzufinden. Er deutet lat. potest als pot- ‘fähig’, -es- ‘ist’ und -t ‘er’, und sieht den Ursprung des indogermanischen Verbalsystems in einer Zusammentückung (d. i.: Agglutination) von bedeutungstragenden Wurzeln mit selbständigen Elementen (z. B. Formen der Kopula, Pronomina), die dann die grammatische Form anzeigen. Ähnlich erklärt er auch die Herkunft des germanischen schwachen Präteritums aus der Verbindung einer Wurzel mit dem Verbum tun: got. sokidedun “ohngefähr wie, wenn man im Deutschen sagte: suchethaten” (1816: 151). In seiner Vergleichenden Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen, Gothischen und Deutschen (1833–52) beabsichtigt Bopp anhand der genannten Sprachen eine allgemeine Beschreibung des Organismus “Sprache”. Hauptteil ist eine morphologische Untersuchung in üblicher Reihenfolge: Nomina und ihre Kasus; Komparation; Pronomina; Verben; Wortbildung. Jedes Morphem jeder Sprache wird einer gründlichen Analyse unterzogen. Der erste Schritt dazu ist die morphologische Segmentation (“Zergliederung”), bei der die Wurzel von Affixen, Endungen usw. getrennt wird. Dies geschieht pro Einzelsprache und Zeitstufe der jeweiligen Sprache, also zuerst rein synchronisch. Erst dann erfolgt der nächste Schritt zur Vergleichung und diachronischen Erklärung der (synchron herausgelösten) Morpheme als entweder ererbt (alt) oder einzelsprachlich geneuert. Ein Problem liegt allerdings teilweise in Bopps Versuchen, Morpheme zu identifizieren: Das “Augment”, das im Griechischen und im Altindischen zur Markierung von Vergangenheit verwendet wird, ist im Indischen lautlich identisch mit dem negierenden

“a privativum”, z. B. a-bharam ‘ich trug’ (zu bhar- ‘tragen’) und a-jñāta ‘unbekannt’ (zu jñā- ‘wissen’). Er schließt aus diesem Befund, daß das Präteritum als “Nicht-Präsens” verstanden wurde, auch wenn er den semantischen Wandel von ‘nicht-tragen’ zu ‘trug’ nicht erklären kann. Der Unterschied zwischen beiden Morphemen, der sich im Griechischen deutlich zeigt (“Augment”: e-; “a privativum”: a-), bleibt unberücksichtigt. Auch wenn einige Thesen (v. a. die Agglutinierungsthese und seine teilweise erzwungenen Morphemidentifizierungen) von späteren Wissenschaftlern abgelehnt werden, wird doch Bopps gründliche Segmentierung von Morphemen als methodische Grundlage allgemein akzeptiert. 5.6. Jacob Grimm Jacob Grimms Arbeiten, obwohl in der Germanistik angesiedelt, hatten einen nicht zu unterschätzenden Einfluß auf die Methodik seiner Zeitgenossen. Vor allem wurde Grimm bekannt für seine strenge Durchführung von Lautgesetzen (u. a. demonstrierte er die Regelmäßigkeit der germanischen Lautverschiebung: “Grimm’s law”) und für seine Abgrenzung von “Umlaut” als rein umgebungsbedingtem Lautwandel (z. B. ahd. wari zu nhd. wäre) gegenüber dem “Ablaut” als einer morphophonologischen Erscheinung (z. B. bei den starken Verben, ahd. Präsens niman ‘nehm:PRS.INF’ gegenüber Präteritum nam ‘nehm:PRÄT.3SG’, wo der Vokalwechsel direkte Auswirkungen auf die Bedeutung hat) – obwohl schon Bopp den Ablaut als “organisch” und funktionsunterscheidend erkannte (Bopp 1833–1852: 108 ff.). 5.7. Grammatische Beschreibung von Einzelsprachen Die Einteilung von Sprachen in genetisch verwandte Sprachfamilien wird nun allgemein als richtig akzeptiert. Die synchronische Erforschung der indogermanischen Einzelsprachen und ihre historisch-diachronische Zusammenfassung in eine Sprachfamilie war methodisches Vorbild für die Erforschung anderer Sprachfamilien, z. B. der finnougrischen, semitischen usw. Infolge des Bedarfs an Beschreibungen weiterer Sprachen entstanden in dieser Zeit viele Grammatiken von Einzelsprachen: Bantusprachen vor allem von W. H. I. Bleek (1862–69); Altaische Sprachen von W. Schott (1849) und M. A. Castrén (1850); Dravidische Sprachen von R. Caldwell (1856); Chinesisch und Tibetisch von R. Lepsius (1861); die Sprachen


Melanesiens von Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz (1861–1873). Diese Zeit darf auch als eine Blütezeit der Feldforschung betrachtet werden. Hier beginnen sich die Wege der historisch orientierten Grammatiken von den Wegen der synchron-deskriptiven Grammatiken zu scheiden. Bei Sprachen mit literarischer Tradition (z. B. indogermanischen, semitischen, chinesischen, finno-ugrischen Sprachen) wird weiterhin sehr viel Gewicht auf eine historisch-diachronische Erklärung von sprachlichen Fakten gelegt, und zwar nicht nur bei den “typischen” Indogermanisten wie Bopp u. a., sondern auch bei eher allgemein-sprachwissenschaftlich orientierten Forschern. Durch die Bemühungen um eine einheitliche Schreibweise fremder Sprachen und ihrer Laute (Abercrombie 1981; Gessinger 1994), die schließlich in einem (immer wieder modifizierten) allgemeinen internationalen phonetischen Alphabet mündeten, hatte man nun die adäquaten Mittel, Sprachen phonetisch richtig wiederzugeben, was die Qualität der Grammatiken deutlich verbesserte. 5.8. August Schleicher August Schleicher gebührt die Idee von der Rekonstruierbarkeit von Ursprachen, ferner das Modell von Sprach-Stammbäumen und die nachdrückliche Forderung nach regelmäßigen Lautgesetzen. Die Rekonstruktion vergangener Sprachstufen fordert natürlich eine genaue Kenntnis der lautlichen Entwicklung; daher nimmt bei Schleichers Compendium (1861–1862) die Beschreibung der Phonologie weiten Platz ein. Er darf hier aber nicht fehlen, da er versuchte, bei der Beschreibung der Formenlehre eine abstrahierte Formelsprache zu verwenden (Schleicher 1859). Sein Ziel ist, eine angemessene Basis für die Beschreibung und typologische Klassifikation von Sprachen zu finden (dazu Bynon 1986). Alle Sprachen unterscheiden zwischen Elementen mit (lexikalischer) Bedeutung (z. B. sagen, rot) und Beziehungselementen (Relationen, z. B. Objekt, Plural), jede Untersuchung müsse also zwischen diesen beiden verschiedenen Typen unterscheiden (Schleicher 1859: 1). Die sprachlichen Elemente werden bei Schleicher mit einem Symbol angezeigt: A, B = Wurzeln mit (lexikalischer) Bedeutung, z. B. sag-, da aber z. B. im Chinesischen eine andere Betonung derselben Wurzel eine neue Bedeutung gibt, werden diese gleichlautenden Wurzeln genauer mit A 1, A 2 usw. umschrieben (z. B. haò ‘gut’: A1; hào ‘lieben’: A2);

97 Aࡀ, Bࡀ = “lose antretende, die beziehung umschreibende hilfswurzeln” (mit eigener lexikalischer Bedeutung); a, b = stammbildende Elemente; Ȭ, ȭ = flexivische Elemente; AA = Wurzel mit Ablaut, z. B. gab (Beneš 1958: 112 f.). Die Formel AAaȬ gilt also für eine thematische Verbalform (Wurzel mit evtl. Ablaut, stammbildendem Formans und Personalendung) oder eine nominale Form (Wurzel mit evtl. Ablaut, stammbildendem Formans und Kasus/Numerus-Endung); AAȬ für eine athematische Verbalform; AAa kommt nur ausnahmsweise im Imperativ oder Vokativ vor. Der chinesische Sprachtypus z. B. läßt sich in seiner morphologischen Form als A + Aࡀ oder Aࡀ + A beschreiben. Mit dieser formelhaften Darstellung – die im übrigen oft belächelt wurde, z. B. von Steinthal (Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft I: 435) – rückt Schleicher die Sprachwissenschaft in die Nähe der empirischen und exakten Naturwissenschaften. In Die Unterscheidung von Nomen und Verbum in der lautlichen Form (1865) versucht er zu zeigen, daß eine solche Unterscheidung zwischen Nomen und Verb typologisch selten ist und nur in indogermanischen Sprachen existiere (s. Percival 1969). “Es frägt sich nämlich, ob die lautliche form, ob die morphologische beschaffenheit für das innere wesen der sprache, für die funktion massgebend ist oder nicht. [...] Mit andern worten: deckt sich funktion und laut, inhalt und form in der sprache, oder gibt es funktionen ohne lautlichen ausdruck?” (Schleicher 1865: 501)

Schleicher fragt sich weiter nach der angemessenen Beschreibung grammatischer Kategorien: Soll man Sprachen, die phonologisch (und morphologisch) nicht zwischen Verben und Nomina unterscheiden, denn überhaupt einen solchen Unterschied zubilligen? Oder anders: Gibt es in der Inhaltsseite grammatische Kategorien bzw. Beziehungen, die auf der Ausdrucksseite keine konkrete Form haben? Diese Frage wird von Schleicher verneint: “Nach meiner überzeugung ist dies nicht der fall. [...] Die lautliche form der sprache ist der körper, die erscheinung der funktion, des inhaltes der sprache. Beide kommen nicht voneinander getrennt vor. [...] Wir haben kein recht, funktionen da vorauszusetzen, wo keine lautform ihr vorhandensein anzeigt.” (Schleicher 1865: 501)

98


Schleicher folgt somit Humboldt und stellt die traditionelle Grammatikbetrachtung mit ihrer für alle Sprachen geltenden, bisher kaum angefochtenen Unterteilung in Nomina, Pronomina, Verben usw. ausdrücklich in Frage. 5.9. Heymann Steinthal Heymann Steinthal (s. Bumann 1965) gilt als Kritiker der rein historischen Methode (s. Morpurgo-Davies 1998: 191; 201 ff.). Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte liegen eher auf der Beschreibung “exotischer” Sprachen und der Sprachtypologie und -psychologie als auf der detaillierten (historischen) Phonologie und Morphologie. Sprache dürfe nicht losgelöst von ihren Sprechern betrachtet werden, sondern man müsse auch psychologische Eigenheiten ihrer Sprecher berücksichtigen (“Volksgeist”), die die Wiedergabe von Vorstellungen in konkreter Sprache beeinflussen. Seine genauen Untersuchungen zu verschiedenen Sprachen unter Einbeziehung ihrer Idiomatik bieten eine Fülle wertvoller sprachlicher Erkenntnisse und auch eine gute Einführung in die Denkweise verschiedener Völker. Ein Wort ist die phonetische Wiedergabe einer Vorstellung, aber ein ganzer Satz ist wesentlich komplizierter als die bloße Aneinanderreihung von Wörtern; in der Syntax (und nicht in der Morphologie) zeigt sich die Verschiedenheit der Völker und ihrer Sprachen (Steinthal 1871: 419). 5.10. Sprachklassifikation Es blieb aber trotz aller Einzelerkenntnisse immer noch das Problem, wie man in die Menge sprachlicher Fakten eine vernünftige Ordnung bekommen könne. Sprachen wurden eingeteilt nach ihrer genetischen Verwandtschaft oder nach strukturellen bzw. typologischen Kriterien. Man erkannte, daß genetische Verwandtschaft vor allem an etymologischer Verwandtschaft (im Wortschatz und der Morphologie) und gesetzmäßigen Lautentsprechungen zu erproben, strukturelle Ähnlichkeit hingegen eher mit morphologischen oder syntaktischen Kriterien festzustellen sei. Die morphologische Klassifizierung ist von diesen sicherlich die bekannteste und auch am leichtesten nachvollziehbare. Whitney ließ im übrigen nur diese als wirklich sinnvoll gelten (1867: 360 ff.). Die übliche (Humboldt, Schleicher, Max Müller 1862: 287 ff.) dreiteilige Typologie unterscheidet zwischen isolierenden Sprachen wie etwa dem Chinesischen

(alle Formen haben auch eine lexikalische Bedeutung, also nur – nach Schleichers Formelsprache – A + Aࡀ, B + Bࡀ), zusammenfügenden oder agglutinierenden Sprachen wie dem Türkischen (sprachliche Elemente werden ohne morphophonologische Verknüpfung aneinandergefügt, also AaȬ), und flektierenden Sprachen, in denen die bedeutungstragenden Wurzeln und die grammatischen Elemente enge Verbindungen eingehen, die sich in morphophonologischen Alternationen zeigen können, also AAaȬ. Humboldt (s. 5.3) fügte – allerdings nicht regelmäßig – noch die inkorporierenden oder polysynthetischen Sprachen hinzu, obwohl man diese auch unter die agglutinierenden Sprachen rechnen konnte. Meist herrscht die Ansicht vor, daß alle Sprachen ursprünglich isolierend gewesen seien, da dies der einfachste Typus sei. Im “Verlaufe der Sprachentwicklung” (schon diese Wortwahl zeigt den zugrunde liegenden Darwinismus) seien die agglutinierenden Sprachen daraus entstanden, danach die flektierenden (s. Bopp, 5.5). Humboldt (s. 5.3) vermutet ein immerwährendes Auf und Ab im Leben der Sprachen. Alle diese Veränderungen werden aber in prähistorischer Zeit angesiedelt und nicht an bekannten Sprachstufen belegt: Steinthal (1860: 277) z. B. vermutet, daß das Sanskrit um 4000 oder 5000 vor Chr. eine dem Chinesischen Sprachtyp ähnliche Vorstufe gehabt haben könne. Noch 1870 konstatierte Baudouin de Courtenay (1972: 65), daß morphologisch verschiedene Sprachen nicht genetisch verwandt sein könnten. Später änderte er seine Meinung. Sprachen könnten im Verlaufe ihrer Entwicklung ihre morphologische Struktur sehr wohl ändern (1972: 137 f.), und er reihte das Englische, obwohl eine indogermanische Sprache, in die Gruppe der isolierenden Sprachen wie das Chinesische ein (1910: 53). Max Müller konstatierte, daß “there is hardly any language which is not at the same time isolating, combinatory (d. i. agglutinierend) and inflectional“ (1868–75, IV: 121). Die Frage, ob genetisch verwandte Sprachen strukturell verschiedenen Sprachtypen angehören konnten, wird also erst in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jhs. positiv beantwortet (Morpurgo-Davies 1998: 217 ff.). Die Vertreter der psychologischen Klassifizierung, v. a. Steinthal, lehnen allgemeingültige grammatische (d. h. in der Regel die aus der traditionellen antiken Grammatik stammenden) Kategorien ab. Humboldts Versuch herauszufinden, wie Sprachen die verschiede-


nen grammatischen Formen ausdrückten, ist für Steinthal ein Fehler in sich (1860: 104 ff.), weil dadurch diesen Kategorien ein absoluter Wert zugestanden wird, den sie jedoch nicht haben (doch auch Humboldt war sich ja dieser Gefahr bewußt, s. 5.3). Steinthal fordert, daß jede Sprache nach ihren eigenen Kategorien beschrieben werde, da jeder individuelle “Volksgeist” für die sprachlichen Ausdrucksformen bzw. die “innere Sprachform” verantwortlich sei. Wenn dies geschehen sei, könne man sich anhand von Vorhandensein oder Fehlen bestimmter grammatischer Kategorien an die Arbeit der Klassifizierung der Sprachen der Welt machen. Im Vordergrund steht bei ihm aber die Einteilung nach Konstruktionsmöglichkeiten von z. B. Prädikation, Apposition u. dgl. (1860: 318). Isolierende (Steinthal: “nebensetzende”) Sprachen (Schleichersche morphologische Form A, bzw. A + Aࡀ) sind in der sprachlichen Form nicht eindeutig. Berg + hoch kann eben bedeuten: der Berg ist hoch oder der hohe Berg (1860: 325); es besteht also kein ausdrucksseitiger Unterschied zwischen Prädikation und Attribution, weder in der Wortstellung noch in der Verwendung von relationalen Elementen (Steinthal: “formlose” Sprachen). In agglutinierenden (Schleicher: AaȬ) und flektierenden (Steinthal: “abwandelnden”) Sprachen (AAaȬ), die ausdrucksseitig grammatische Beziehungen (“Formen”, z. B. Kasus) ausdrückten und zwischen Verb und Nomen unterschieden, könnten solche Relationen eindeutig bestimmt werden (1860: 325). Es gibt nach Steinthal also zwei Einteilungskriterien: einerseits das A: Fehlen (bei “formlosen Sprachen”) oder B: Vorhandensein von ausdrucksseitigen formalen Elementen wie Kasus-, Numeruszeichen (bei “Formsprachen”), andererseits die Unterscheidung von 1: “nebensetzenden” oder 2: “abwandelnden” Sprachen. Diese werden noch genauer untergliedert: “abwandelnde, formlose” Sprachen in Typ a: Reduplikation, Präfixe; Typ b: Suffixe; Typ c: Einverleibung, und “abwandelnde Formsprachen” in Typ a: lose Anfügung grammatischer Elemente; Typ b: Ablaut vorhanden; Typ c: echte Suffixe.

99 Diese Kriterien lassen sich miteinander kombinieren, so daß Steinthal zu acht Hauptklassen kommt: A1: hinterindische Sprachen; A2a: polynesische Sprachen; A2b: ural-altaische Sprachen; A2c: amerikanische Sprachen; B1: Chinesisch; B2a: (Alt-) Ägyptisch; B2b: Semitisch; B2c: Sanskritisch (= Indogermanisch) (Arens 21969: 242 ff.; Steinthal 1860: 327). 5.11. Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz wird in den meisten sprachwissenschaftshistorischen Arbeiten eher am Rande erwähnt. Der von Humboldt vermutete Zyklus einer Zuund Abnahme der Vollkommenheit des Sprachorganismus (s. 5.3) wird auch von von der Gabelentz vertreten (zuerst 11891, dann 2 1901: 255–258). Sprachen müssen aus sich selbst heraus, also aus ihrer “inneren Form” verstanden werden (21901: 83 f.). Auch von der Gabelentz kritisiert wie Steinthal die rein phonologisch-morphologische Betrachtung von Sprache: “Eine Grammatik ohne Syntax ist, streng genommen, ein Unding, jedenfalls nur etwas halbes; denn sie sagt der Sprache gerade auf dem Punkte Ade, wo die Sprache als lebendige Rede in’s Leben treten will.” (von der Gabelentz 21901: 84)

Der Gegensatz zwischen “langue” und “parole” begegnet schon bei von der Gabelentz, der zwischen Einzelsprache als dem “System, dessen sämmtliche Theile organisch zusammenhängen und zusammenwirken”, und Rede unterscheidet (21901: 481). Die Forderung einer Sprachwissenschaft, die Wort- und Satzbau und das Vorhandensein oder Fehlen bestimmter grammatischer Kategorien gleichermaßen untersucht, wird “Typologie” genannt (“dürfte man ein ungeborenes Kind taufen, ich würde den Namen Typologie wählen”, 21901: 481). Bei seiner Darstellung von Einzelsprachen und ihrem synthetischen System (zu den Begriffen “analytisch” und “synthetisch” s. von der Gabelentz 21901: 85 f.) beobachtet von der Gabelentz auch den ergativischen Bau mancher Sprachen im Kontrast zu Sprachen mit Nominativ/Akkusativ-System: “Es giebt ja auch Sprachen, die [...] geradezu einen Casus Activus und einen Neutro-Passivus haben.

100


[...] Auch das Baskische unterscheidet zwischen activem und nicht activem Subjecte; das Suffix des Ersteren, -k, bezeichnet auch den Urheber eines passiven Verbums.” (von der Gabelentz 21901: 102)

5.12. Die Junggrammatiker Zu diesem Kreis gehörten (s. Einhauser 1989): Karl Brugmann, Hermann Osthoff, Berthold Delbrück, Hermann Paul, Eduard Sievers, Wilhelm Braune, Karl Verner, J. H. Hübschmann, und evtl. Ferdinand de Saussure, der allerdings ein Stück jünger war. Was verbindet diese Wissenschaftler so stark miteinander? Sie waren davon überzeugt, daß (a) Lautgesetze ausnahmslos seien und (b) Lautgesetze nur durch Analogien (im weitesten Sinne) durchbrochen werden könnten. Brugmanns Artikel (1876) über die Existenz sonantischer Nasale im rekonstruierten Indogermanischen erregte die Gemüter, da es gegen die bisherigen Rekonstruktionen verstieß und zu einem anderen Stammbaum der Ausgliederung der indogermanischen Sprachen führte. Außerdem wurde durch die fast mathematisch anmutende Methodik (ausnahmslose und “berechenbare” Lautgesetze, davon abhängig auch die historische Morphologie) die bisher geleistete Arbeit in diesem Gebiet in Frage gestellt. Die bisher übliche Wertung verschiedener Sprachtypen (isolierend = primitiv; flektierend = hochstehend) wurde von ihnen aufgegeben. Entgegen der landläufigen Meinung werteten die Junggrammatiker moderne und alte Sprachen gleich (zwei Hauptvertreter der strukturalistischen Linguistik, Leonard Bloomfield und de Saussure, waren als Schüler der Junggrammatiker in diesem Sinne ausgebildet worden und standen der historisch-vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft auch durchaus wohlwollend gegenüber; Robins 1973: 57). In Brugmanns fünfbändigem Grundriß (1886–1893) wird eine detaillierte Analyse der Phonologie und Morphologie der indogermanischen Sprachen samt des rekonstruierten Urindogermanischen gegeben. Wichtige Impulse setzten die Junggrammatiker auf dem Gebiet der Phonologie, Morphologie und der Morphophonologie; vor allem ist die genaue Ausarbeitung des Ablaut-Systems der indogermanischen Sprachen und des Urindogermanischen zu nennen, die Ferdinand de Saussure 1879 (s. 5.13) veröffentlichte. Analogie als Grund für morphologische Veränderungen wurde von den Jung-

grammatikern neben lautgesetzlichen Veränderungen als zweite Ursache für lautlichen und morphologischen Wandel angesehen. Paul (1880) ging von der Assoziationsfähigkeit der Sprecher aus, die nach vorgegebenen “Proportionen” neue Flexionsformen schaffen konnten. Flexionsmorpheme breiteten sich aus; z. B. wird der ahd. Plural kint zu Singular kint nach Vorbild von rint – rinder zu kinder umgestaltet und somit eine eindeutige Pluralmarkierung erzielt. Jedoch konnte analogischem Wandel keine Gesetzmäßigkeit nachgewiesen werden: der alte Plural von engl. cliff ist clives, wie knives zu knife. Warum aber wird der Singular cliff nicht umgestaltet nach dem Vorbild von knive : knives zu clive oder clife, sondern der Plural zu cliffs (s. Hoenigswald 1978; Anttila 1977; Art. 18)? 5.13. Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussures bekannte Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (1879) ist eine Untersuchung des morphophonologischen Ablautsystems des Urindogermanischen. Außerdem wird hierin die Basis für die heute sogenannte Laryngaltheorie gelegt: die “coefficients sonantiques” A und O werden von de Saussure aus morphologischen Gründen postuliert, auch wenn sie in keiner Sprache bezeugt sind. Altindische Formen wie yu-na-kti ‘er/sie schirrt an’ (na-Infix als regelmäßiges Wortbildungsmorphem zwischen zweitem und dritten Radikal der Wurzel yug/yuj-; Endung -ti) mit Partizip Perfekt Passiv yuk-ta‘angeschirrt’, śṇoti (aus älterem ś-ṇa-u-ti) ‘er hört’ mit Partizip śruta- ‘gehört, berühmt’ gegenüber puṇāti ‘er reinigt’ mit Partizip putā- ‘gereinigt’ führten ihn zu der Frage, wo hier der dritte Radikal geblieben sei. Aus morphologisch-systematischen Gründen argumentierte er, daß hier ein Laut (“A”) mit dem vorhergehenden Vokal verschmolzen sei, aber ursprünglich vorhanden gewesen sei. Dadurch bekommt er ein morphologisch eindeutiges System in die rekonstruierten Formen: yu-ne-k-ti : yuk-to- wie >I-ne-u-ti : >Iuto- und wie pu-ne-A-ti : puA-to-. 5.14. Die Herkunft von Flexion und Wurzeln Die Frage nach der Herkunft von Flexion blieb aber bestehen. Hatte Bopp prinzipiell recht, daß Flexion aus Agglutination und diese aus Nebeneinandersetzen von selbständigen Wortformen hervorging? Brugmann, der als repräsentativ für die Junggrammati-


ker gelten kann, hat diese Thesen zurückgewiesen, weil (a) die phonologische Entwicklung nicht nachvollziehbar sei, (b) die semantische Entwicklung dieser “Nebeneinandersetzungen” nicht erklärbar sei und (c) alle modernen Sprachen verschiedene Möglichkeiten morphologischer Markierung zeigten und daher auch die indogermanischen Sprachen so verfahren haben sollten (dazu Delbrück 1880: 100). Der Begriff der Wurzel war auch ein Streitpunkt, über den die Junggrammatiker versuchten, Klarheit zu gewinnen. Man dachte bisher, daß Wurzeln in agglutinierenden oder flektierenden Sprachen ursprünglich selbständige Wörter gewesen seien (z. B. Max Müller 1868–75, IV: 126; so auch noch Delbrück 1880: 73 ff.). Brugmann erst sprach den Wurzeln den Status selbständiger Wörter ab, sie seien vielmehr etymologische bzw. morphologische Einheiten, die man durch Segmentation gewinnen kann, und daher nur sprachwissenschaftliche Konstrukte (Brugmann & Delbrück 1897–1916: I, I, 32 ff.; II.5.). Dies führte zu einer “abstrakten” Betrachtung und Systematisierung von Morphemen. Die junggrammatische Tradition hat im Bereich der Morphologie viele neue Einzeluntersuchungen und Forschungsbeiträge geliefert. Ende des 19. Jhs. und im 20. Jh. haben vor allem synchronische, semantisch-funktionale Überlegungen zu einer Ausarbeitung der Morphologie als sprachwissenschaftlicher Disziplin beigetragen.

6.

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Abercrombie David (1981), “Extending the Roman Alphabet: Some Orthographic Experiments of the Past Four Centuries”. In: Asher, R. E. & Henderson, E. J. A. (Hrsg.), Towards a History of Phonetics: Papers contributed in Honour of David Abercrombie. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 206–224 Adelung, Johann Christoph (1806–1817), Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde mit dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in bey nahe fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarten (fortgesetzt und bearbeitet von J. S. Vater), Bd. 1–4. Berlin: Vossische Buchhandlung Allen, W. Sidney (1955), “Zero and Panini”. Indian linguistics 16, 106–113 Anttila, Raimo (1977), Analogy: A Basic Bibliography. The Hague/Amsterdam: J. Benjamins

101 Arens, Hans (21969), Sprachwissenschaft. Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Freiburg/München: Alber Balbi, Adriano (1826), Atlas ethnografique du globe ou classification des peuples anciens et modernes d’après leur langues. Paris: Rey et Gravier Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1910), “Klassification der Sprachen”. IF Anzeiger 26, 51–58 Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1972), A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology: The Beginnings of Structural Linguistics, transl. and ed. with an introduction by Edward Stankiewicz. Indiana, Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press Beneš, Brigit (1958), Wilhelm von Humboldt, Jacob Grimm, August Schleicher: Ein Vergleich ihrer Sprachauffassungen. Winterthur: Keller Bleek, W. H. I. (1862–1869), A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, Bd. 1–2. London: Trübner & Co. Bopp, Franz (1816), Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache, hrsg. von K. J. Windischmann. Frankfurt/M.: Andreae [Nachdruck 1975, Hildesheim: Olms] Bopp, Franz (1833–52), Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen, Gothischen und Deutschen. Abtheilungen 1–6. Berlin: Dümmler Brekle, Herbert E. (1975), “Zur Stellung der Wortbildung in der Grammatik”. In: Helmut Rix (Hrsg.), Flexion und Wortbildung: Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 26–39 Brekle, Herbert E. (1985), Einführung in die Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Brugmann, Karl (1876), “Nasalis sonans in der indogermanischen Grundsprache”. Studien zur griechischen und lateinischen Grammatik 9, 285–338 Brugmann, Karl (1886–1893), Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen, Bd. 1–5. Strassburg/London: Trübner Brugmann, Karl & Delbrück, Berthold (1897– 1916), Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen, Bd. 1–9. Strassburg: Trübner Bumann, Waltraud (1965), Die Sprachtheorie Heymann Steinthals: dargestellt im Zusammenhang mit seiner Theorie der Geisteswissenschaft. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain Bynon, Theodora (1986), “August Schleicher: Indo-Europeanist and General Linguist”. In: Bynon, Th. & Palmer, F. R. (Hrsg.), Studies in the History of Western Linguistics in Honour of R. H. Robins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 129–49

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Caldwell, Robert (1856), A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages. London: Harrison Castrén, M. Alexander (1850), De affixis personalibus linguarum altaicarum. Helsingfors: Litteris Frenckellianis Delbrück, Berthold (1880), Einleitung in das Sprachstudium. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel [61919] Dominicy, Marc (1996), “La grammaire générale et la survie dans les traditions de langues romanes: Une esquisse méthodologique”. In: Schmitter (Hrsg.), 3–23 Droixhe, Daniel (1978), La linguistique et l’appel de l’histoire (1600–1800). Genf: Droz Droixhe, Daniel & Grell, C. (1993, Hrsg.), La linguistique entre mythe et histoire: Actes des journées d’étude organisées les 4 et 5 juin à la Sorbonne en l’honneur de Hans Aarsleff. Münster: Nodus Einhauser, Eveline (1989), Die Junggrammatiker: Ein Problem für die Sprachwissenschaftsgeschichtsschreibung. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier Gabelentz, Hans Georg Conon von der (1861– 1873), “Die melanesischen Sprachen nach ihrem grammatischen Bau und ihrer Verwandtschaft unter sich und mit den malaiisch-polynesischen Sprachen untersucht”. Abh. der Königl. Sächs. Akad. der Wiss., Phil.-Hist. Classe 3: 1861, 1–266; 7: 1873, 1–186 Gabelentz, Hans Georg Conon von der (21901), Die Sprachwissenschaft, ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse. Leipzig: Tauchnitz [zweite, vermehrte und verb. Aufl. der ersten Ausg. 1891] Gessinger Joachim (1994), Auge & Ohr: Studien zur Erforschung der Sprache am Menschen 1709–1850. Berlin: De Gruyter Gipper, Helmut & Schmitter, Peter (1979), Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachphilosophie im Zeitalter der Romantik: Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie der Linguistik. Tübingen: Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 121) Girard, Gabriel Abbé (1747), Les vrais principes de la langue francoise ou La parole reduite en méthode, conformément aux Lois de l’Usage, en seize discours. Paris [Neue Ausgabe von P. Swiggers (1982), Genf/Paris: Droz] Gulya, János (1974), “Some Eighteenth Century Antecedents of Nineteenth Century Linguistics: The Discovery of Finno-Ugrian”. In: Hymes (Hrsg.), 258–276 Gyarmathi, Samual (1799), Affinitas linguae Hungaricae cum linguis fennicae originis grammatice demonstrata nec non vocabularia dialectorum tataricum et slavicarum cum hungarica comparata. Göttingen [Evangelische Übersetzung mit Einleitung und Kommentar von Victor E. Henzeli (1983), Amsterdam: J. Benjamins (Amsterdam Classics in Linguistics 15)]

Haarmann, Harald (1979, Hrsg.), Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Beiträge zur Erforschung indogermanischer, finno-ugrischer und kaukasischer Sprachen bei Pallas (Kommentare zu Peter Simon Pallas, Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa, 2) Hamburg: Buske Hjelmslev, Louis (1966), “Commentaires sur la vie et l’œuvre de Rasmus Rask”. In: Sebeok (Hrsg.), I, 179–99 Hoenigswald, Henry M. (1978), “The annus mirabilis 1876 and Posterity”. TPhS, 17–35 Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1836–39), Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java nebst einer Einleitung über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts, Bd. 1–3. Berlin: Dümmler Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1903–1936), Gesammelte Schriften, im Auftrag der Königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wiss., hrsg. v. A. Lietzmann et al., Bd. 1–17. Berlin [Nachdruck 1968, Berlin: De Gruyter] Hymes, Dell (1974, Hrsg.), Studies in the History of Linguistics: Traditions and Paradigms. Indiana, Bloomington: Indiana University Press Lepsius, Richard (1861), “Über die Umschrift und Lautverhältnisse einiger hinterasiatischer Sprachen, namentlich der Chinesischen und der Tibetischen”. Abh. d. Königl. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin 1860, 449–496 Metcalf, G. J. (1974), “The Indo-European Hypothesis in the 16th and 17th Centuries”. In: Hymes (Hrsg.), 233–257 Meier, Georg F. (1996), “Sprachtypologie vor W. V. Humboldt”. In: Schmitter (Hrsg.), 459–477 Morpurgo Davies, Anna (1998), Nineteenth-Century Linguistics. London: Longman (History of Linguistics, ed. by Giulio Lepschy, 4) Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt (1993), Wilhelm von Humboldts Sprachwissenschaft: Ein kommentiertes Verzeichnis des sprachwissenschaftlichen Nachlasses. Paderborn: Schöningh Müller, Max (1862), Lectures on the Science of Language Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts Müller, Max (1868–75), Chips from a German Workshop, Bd. 1–4. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Naumann, Bernd (1996), “Die Tradition der Philosophischen Grammatik in Deutschland”. In: Schmitter (Hrsg.), 24–43 Paul, Hermann (1880), Principien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle/Saale: Niemeyer [51920] Percival, W. K. (1969), “Nineteenth Century Origins of Twentieth Century Structuralism”. Papers from the 5th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 5, 416–420

10. Das 19. Jahrhundert Percival, W. K. (1974), “Humboldt’s Description of the Javanese verb”. In: Hymes (Hrsg.), 380–389 Plank, Frans (1989), “On Humboldt On the Dual”. In: Corrigan, R. & Eckman, F. & Noonan, M. (Hrsg.), Linguistic Categorization. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 61), 293–333 Rask, Rasmus K. (1932–37), Ausgewählte Abhandlungen, hrsg. v. Louis Hjelmslev, mit einer Einleitung v. Holger Pedersen, Bd. 1–3. Kopenhagen: Munksgaard Robins, Robert H. (1973), Ideen- und Problemgeschichte der Sprachwissenschaft. Frankfurt/M: Athenäum Salmon P. B. (1974), “The Beginnings of Morphology: Linguistic Botanizing in the 18. Century”. Historiographia Linguistica 1, 313–339 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1879), Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes. Leipzig: Teubner Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (1846–1847), “Observations sur la langue et la littérature provencale”. In: Eduard Bocking (Hrsg.), August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. 1–12. Leipzig: Weidmann, Bd. II: 158 ff. Schlegel, Friedrich von (1808), Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Heidelberg [Neue Ausgabe 1975) in: Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. München/Wien: Schöningh/Thomas, Bd. VIII: 105–433] Schleicher, August (1859), “Zur Morphologie der Sprache”. Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences de St-Pétersbourg I, 1–38 Schleicher, August (1861–1), Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar: Böhlau Schleicher, August (1865), “Die Unterscheidung von Nomen und Verbum in der lautlichen Form”. Abh. der phil.-hist. Classe der Königl. Sächs. Akad. der Wiss. 4, 495–587 Schmitter, Peter (1982), Untersuchungen zur Historiographie der Linguistik: Struktur – Methodik – theoretische Fundierung. Tübingen: Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 181) Schmitter, Peter (1996, Hrsg.), Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit II: Von der Grammaire de Port-Royal (1660) zur Konstitution moderner linguistischer Disziplinen. Tübingen: Narr Schott, Wilhelm (1849), Über das Altaische oder Finnisch-Tatarische Sprachengeschlecht. Berlin: Reimer

103 Schreyer, Rüdiger (1996), “Die Tradition der Philosophischen Grammatik in England”. In: Schmitter (Hrsg.), 44–93 Sebeok, Thomas A. (1966, Hrsg.), Portraits of Linguists: A Biographical Source Book for the History of Western Linguistics, 1746–1963, Bd. 1–2. Indiana, Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press Sebeok, Thomas A. (1975, Hrsg.), Current Trends in Linguistics, 13: Historiography of Linguistics, Bd. 1–2. The Hague/Paris: Mouton Smith, Adam (1761), “A Dissertation on the Origin of Languages, or Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages and the Different Genius of Original and Compounded Languages”. In: The Philological Miscellany (London) 440– 479; Nachdruck einer 1812 erschienenen, von D. Stewart besorgten Ausgabe von The Theory of Moral Sentiments (London), hrsg. v. G. Narr. Tübingen: Narr 1970 Stehr, A. (1957), Die Anfänge der finnisch-ugrischen Sprachvergleichung, 1669–1771. unpubl. Diss. Göttingen Steinthal, Heymann (21858), Der Ursprung der Sprache im Zusammenhange mit den letzten Fragen alles Wissens: Eine Darstellung, Kritik und Fortentwicklung der vorzüglichsten Ansichten [2., umgearb. u. erw. Aufl.]. Berlin: Dümmler Steinthal, Heymann (1860), Charakteristik der hauptsächlichsten Typen des Sprachbaues. Berlin: Dümmler Steinthal, Heymann (1871), Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (Abriß der Sprachwissenschaft. 1. Teil: Die Sprache im allgemeinen). Berlin: Dümmler [21881] Swiggers, Pierre (1993), “L’étude comparative des langues vers 1830: Humboldt, Du Ponceau, Klaproth et le baron de Mérian”. In: Droixhe & Grell (Hrsg.), 275–295 Tovar, Antonio (1986), El lingüista espanol Lorenzo Hervás: Estudio y selección de obras básicas. Madrid: Alcobendas Werner, Otmar (1984), “Prinzipien und Methoden historischer Morphologie”. In: Besch, Werner & Reichmann, Oskar & Sonderegger, Stefan (Hrsg.), Sprachgeschichte: Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung. Berlin: De Gruyter, 535–545 Whitney, William Dwight (1867), Language and the Study of Language: Twelve Lectures on the Principles of Linguistic Science. New York [dt. Übersetzung (1874) v. Julius Jolly, München: Ackermann]

Sabine Ziegler, Würzburg (Deutschland)

III. Geschichte der morphologischen Forschung II: Forschungstraditionen im 20. Jahrhundert History of morphological research II: Research traditions in the 20th century 11. Schulgrammatik als Modell linguistischer Beschreibung 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Allgemeines Wechselwirkung Tendenzen der deutschen Schulgrammatik im 20. Jahrhundert Ludwig Sütterlin Hans Glinz Fazit Zitierte Literatur

1.

Allgemeines

Während die “wissenschaftliche” Grammatik des 19. Jahrhunderts historische Laut- und Formenlehre ist, entwickelt die Schulgrammatik zuerst eine tragfähige Satzlehre. Deren Entwicklung ist in den Einzelheiten rekonstruiert bei Forsgren (1985; 1991). Um 1900 findet man in der deutschen Schulgrammatik neben Resten der Beckerschen und der Heyseschen Richtung (vgl. Vesper 1980; Erlinger et al. 1989) vorwiegend Mischgrammatiken. Sie verbinden die satz- und syntaxzentrierten Ansätze der ersten Jahrhunderthälfte mit der seit etwa 1850 langsam auch in die Gymnasien einsickernden historischen Laut- und Formenlehre. Mit dieser letzteren tut sich die Schule freilich notorisch schwer, weil sie weder didaktisiert und methodisiert noch mit anerkannten schulischen Lernzielen ohne weiteres verbunden werden kann. Anschließen läßt sie sich bestenfalls an allgemeinnationalistische Lernziele, die nach den allgemeinen Bildungszielen der Reformzeit, als die Muttersprache mit den alten Sprachen um den “höheren Bildungswert” konkurrierte, in der zweiten Jahrhunderthälfte nach vorn drängen (vgl. für einen Überblick Bahner & Neumann 1985; Erlinger & Knobloch 1991). Den Diskussionsstand um 1870 kann man etwa bei Wilmanns (1869) nachlesen, der für einen vorsichtigen, am Verständnis der klassi-

schen Literatur orientierten Unterricht in der Grammatik der Gegenwartssprache eintritt, aber gotisch und althochdeutsch für das Gymnasium ablehnt. Es ist nur auf den ersten Blick paradox, daß die historische Laut- und Formenlehre gerade in den Jahren, da ihre wissenschaftliche Vorherrschaft definitiv zu Ende ging, mit aller Macht in die Schulen drängte. Noch gegen Ende des 1. Weltkriegs werden sprachhistorische Kenntnisse verbindlich in den Prüfungsordnungen für Lehrer verankert (vgl. Hermann 1923). Wie weit freilich die Wortführer der junggrammatischen Bewegung von den Bedürfnissen der Schule entfernt waren, das läßt sich an Delbrück (1920) ablesen. Das Buch wirbt mit dem Titel: “Grundlagen der neuhochdeutschen Satzlehre: Ein Schulbuch für Lehrer”, aber es enthält durchaus keine Satzlehre im schulisch üblichen Sinne, sondern einen syntaktisch eingefärbten Auszug aus der historischen Formenlehre. Wie Delbrück es mit aller Kraft vermeidet, im Kapitel zu den “Grundbestandteilen des Satzes” über Subjekt, Prädikat, Objekt etc. zu reden, ist beinahe heiter. Stattdessen handelt er von der “Zusammensetzung des Verbums mit sein und haben” und von der “mehrfachen Form des Adjektivs”. Das Buch ist ein letzter verzweifelter Versuch, das an den Schulen zurückzudrängen, was auch außerhalb derselben schon beinahe selbstverständlich geworden war: eine synchronische Satzsyntax. Die “wissenschaftliche” Grammatik des 19. Jahrhunderts hatte ihre Laut- und Formenlehre ausschließlich und durchaus unkritisch auf der Basis der antiken Wortartenlehre betrieben. Ihr galt die Schulgrammatik des Zeitraums insgesamt (nicht nur die Bekkersche Satzgliedlehre, vgl. Becker 1827) für

11. Schulgrammatik als Modell linguistischer Beschreibung

unwissenschaftlich, schon darum, weil das Interesse der Schulgrammatiker auf Satzlehre, Systembildung, synchrone Deskription und deskriptiven Fortschritt gerichtet war, und nicht auf historisch-philologische Detailarbeit. Mit der allein konnte aber Reputation im Wissenschaftsbetrieb erworben werden. Daraus folgt, daß es begrifflich-deskriptiven und theoretischen Fortschritt in den Kategorien der grammatischen Beschreibung bei den “wissenschaftlichen” Grammatikern des 19. Jahrhunderts kaum gibt, sehr wohl aber bei den Schulgrammatikern, gegen die sich die historisch-vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft fast völlig abgeschottet hatte. Auffällig ist die kontinuierliche Theorieentwicklung besonders im Bereich der Wortarten und Satzglieder (vgl. Forsgren 1985; 1991; Knobloch 1988; Erlinger et al. 1989; vgl. auch Art. 70 und 71). Mit der Spaltung von wissenschaftlicher Grammatik und Schulgrammatik zu Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts geraten beide Zweige in eine mißliche Lage. Die Schulgrammatik möchte auch streng wissenschaftlich sein, wird aber als solche nicht anerkannt, und die wissenschaftliche Grammatik muß sich nach “höheren”, oft auch phantastischen Legitimationen für ihr Tun umschauen, weil sie zwar reputierlich ist, aber eigentlich keinen erkennbaren gesellschaftlichen Zweck hat. Prekär wird dieses Problem freilich erst gegen Ende der junggrammatischen Periode, da der Historismus so dürr und positivistisch geworden ist, daß z. B. ein “nationaler” bzw. “kultureller” Anschluß kaum noch möglich ist und die Vertreter der Richtung sich bisweilen “Lautschieber” schimpfen lassen müssen. Obwohl also die Theorie- und Beschreibungsdebatten der Schulgrammatiker außerhalb ihres Umkreises nicht rezipiert worden sind, hat sich einiges doch stillschweigend durchgesetzt. Daß selbst Heyman Steinthal, der maßloseste aller Beckerkritiker, von “Objekten” und “Attributen” spricht (bzw. von den so bezeichneten Verhältnissen) deutet an, warum: Bei der Beschreibung exotischer Sprachen (Steinthal z. B. hat über die Mande-Sprachen publiziert) versagt die formbezogene Begrifflichkeit der lateinisch-griechischen Tradition, während die funktionsbezogene Sprache der schulgrammatischen Syntax allein Vergleich und Verständnis erlaubt. Pur konnte sich der Konservatismus in der Kategorienlehre (für den Delbrück oben ein Beispiel gibt) daher allein in der Indogermanistik halten. Wer etwa Gabelentz (1891) mit seiner reichen sinologi-

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schen Erfahrung aufschlägt, der sieht rasch, daß diesem die syntaktischen Funktionsbegriffe der Schulgrammatik ganz unentbehrlich sind, sowohl die der verbozentrischen, auf syntaktischer Spezifizierung der Wortarten beruhende Tradition (Herling, Götzinger, Kern) als auch die Satzgliedlehre der Beckerschen Richtung. Und als Wundt in seiner psychologischen Satzlehre 1900 die Beckersche Analyse zeitgemäß psychologisch einkleidet, da wird gerade diese, ein halbes Jahrhundert “unwissenschaftlich” geschimpfte Satzlehre der eigentliche Renner. Gegen Ende des Jahrhunderts sind also einige Errungenschaften der Schulgrammatik in anonymisierter und psychologisierter Form zu fraglosen Beständen des linguistischen Diskurses geworden, obwohl die offizielle Abneigung gegen die Schulgrammatik anhält (zur Psychologisierung der Satzgliedlehre vgl. Elffers-van Ketel 1991). Manches andere ist wiedergekehrt oder neu gefunden geworden in der synchronen Sprachwissenschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts: die Stemma-Darstellung des Satzes, die operationalen Methoden der Satzanalyse, die Syntax auf der Basis einer Fügungstheorie der Wortarten und der Versuch, den synkretischen Charakter der tradierten Kategorien zu entmischen. Und damit zurück zu den “Mischgrammatiken” der Jahrhundertwende, in denen sich die Annäherung von Schulgrammatik und “wissenschaftlicher” Grammatik in den Schulen andeutet. Man sollte sich nicht darüber täuschen, daß diese Annäherung überwiegend in der Form öder und fauler Kompromisse vonstatten ging, die keinen auf Dauer befriedigen konnten: Dem sprachhistorischen Auszug haftete notwendig das Stigma des Zufälligen an, und mit den Resten der methodisch-systematischen Satzsyntax ließ er sich kaum sinnvoll verbinden. Als Beispiel mag Lyon (1904) dienen. Otto Lyon war ein einflußreicher Mann. Er hat Heyses Grammatik für die Schule bearbeitet und Beckers Stilbuch ebenfalls. In seiner (offenbar recht verbreiteten) Grammatik geht es drunter und drüber: Nach Subjekt und Prädikat folgen die Satzarten, dann ein Auszug aus der Kasuslehre (Subjektskasus) und ein Stück vom Attribut. Am umfangreichsten sind die Deklinations- und Konjugationstabellen, und der gerade 15 Seiten lange Anhang über die Geschichte des Deutschen bringt ein winziges Stückchen Lautlehre, je ein paar Worte über althochdeutsch, mittelhochdeutsch und die barocke Kanzleisprache. Kurz: ein jämmerliches Machwerk.

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Erst die deutliche und konsequente Wendung zur Grammatik der Gegenwartssprache, verbunden mit einem erneuerten Interesse an systematischen Darstellungsformen, ändert die Lage. Die besten Werke dieses Umschwungs (Blatz 1895/96; Sütterlin 1900) geben ihren Schwerpunkt schon im Titel zu erkennen und ordnen den (bei Sütterlin stark reduzierten) historischen Teil der beschreibenden Systematik deutlich unter. Welche Anforderungen an Aufbau und Darstellung einer Syntax gestellt werden müssen (und daß keine Grammatik ihnen genügt), macht Ries (1894) deutlich, und es ist gewiß auch kein Zufall, daß die Protagonisten dieser Wende Außenseiter waren, weder der schulgrammatischen noch der historisch-vergleichenden Seite ganz zuzuordnen (Sütterlin z. B. lehrte an der Heidelberger Universität, an einem Mädchengymnasium und in der Lehrerausbildung; Ries war Schullehrer, aber mit wissenschaftlichen Ambitionen, was ja durchaus nicht selten war).

2.

Wechselwirkung

Es gibt Berge von Literatur über den Einfluß der “wissenschaftlichen” Grammatik auf die Schulgrammatik (Wilmanns 1869; Jolly 1874; Hermann 1923, um nur ein paar ältere Titel zu nennen). Die “Wissenschaft” adelt den Schulmann, während umgekehrt (wenigstens reputativ) die schulische Tradition den Wissenschaftlern wie Blei an den Füßen hängt. Über den zweifellos sehr nachhaltigen Einfluß der schulischen und der traditionellen Begriffsbildung (die keineswegs so klar in gut und böse zu trennen sind, wie Friend 1976 das zu glauben scheint) auf die linguistische Theorie gibt es nur sehr wenig Arbeiten. Das ist auch naheliegend. Denn häufig handelt es sich um anonymisierte, unauffällige, gleichermaßen unbewußt und selbstverständlich gewordene Bestände, deren Veränderung sehr langsam vor sich geht und deren Wirkung kaum zu beobachten ist. Das schulgrammatische Wissen beherrscht zuerst (kraft seiner engen Verbindung mit der Basisterminologie von Wort, Satz, den Wortarten und Satzgliedern) die Erkennungsprozeduren für elementare sprachliche Einheiten. Theoretische Neuerungen setzten dagegen meist bei der explanativen Einbettung und Ausgestaltung der Traditionsbegriffe ein. Aber auch die “modernste” Linguistik identifiziert einen Satz, ein Verb oder ein Substantiv ganz ebenso, wie es die Tradition immer

getan hat. Die schulgrammatische Herrschaft über die und vermittels der Terminologie wirkt ausgesprochen konservativ. Jeder theoretische oder deskriptive Fortschritt, der sich im Rahmen der überlieferten Terminologie hält, hat alsbald wieder deren synkretische Rekognitionsprozeduren an den Füßen und fällt leicht ganz in die Schulgrammatik zurück. Jede theoretische oder deskriptive Neuerung, die mit neuen Termini einhergeht, hat es mit der internationalen Verbreitung und der hohen Resistenz der schulgrammatischen (und der damit sich teilweise deckenden traditionellen) Terminologie zu tun. Wer sich von der schulgrammatischen “Kirche” entfernt, bleibt Ketzer oder Esoteriker. Die Schule als notorisch konservative Institution verbürgt die Dauer der Schulgrammatik. Neben dieser weitgehend “stummen” Wirkung schulgrammatischer Bestände auf die Linguistik gibt es aber auch noch andere, besser zu beobachtende Wirkungen. Oft sind es gerade schulgrammatische Motive wie Übersichtlichkeit, Systematik, Methodisierbarkeit, die auch fachwissenschaftlich erwünschte Ergebnisse zeitigen. So ist ja beinahe der gesamte grammatische Traditionsbestand, trotz aller logisch-erkenntnistheoretischer Weiterungen, mit denen er von Anfang an befrachtet war (und von Zeit zu Zeit wieder befrachtet wird; z. B. von den modistae des späten Mittelalters, von den rationalistischen Universalgrammatikern des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, von den generativen Grammatikern der Gegenwart) im wesentlichen als eine Unterrichtstradition entstanden und befestigt worden. Das Bestimmen der partes orationis, der Flexionsformen, Paradigmen und sekundären Kategorien, bildet über Jahrhunderte den Kern dieser Praxis, bei der Erlernung der alten Sprachen wie auch im muttersprachlichen Unterricht. Es handelt sich um ein geschlossenes Lehr- und Lernsystem, das zwischen einer “richtigen Beschreibung” der Sprache und ihrer “erfolgreichen Vermittlung” nicht unterscheidet. Das System ist mit diversen Erklärungsansprüchen vereinbar und hat deren beständigen Wandel fast ohne Schaden überstanden: Ob man im System der Wortarten und Satzglieder das Denken, den Aufbau der Wirklichkeit, ein sprachliches Weltbild oder unseren Vorstellungsverlauf gespiegelt sieht, ist offenbar gar nicht weiter von Belang. Es handelt sich nur um ideologische Girlanden, die das System von Zeit zu Zeit neu legitimieren, wenn es nicht mehr selbstverständlich ist. Immer wieder sind es die synkretischen, aber er-


fahrungsnahen Begriffsbildungen der Schulgrammatik, die einmal von den Formen, dann wieder von den dargestellten Sachen und schließlich von beiden zusammen ausgehen und sich kraft ihres Synkretismus in der Lernpraxis bewähren, aber den strengeren Sinn der linguistischen Theoriebildung zum Widerspruch reizen. Was ist nicht alles geschrieben worden mit dem Motiv, die grammatischen Traditionsbegriffe zu verbessern oder zu erneuern! Umgekehrt erweisen sich aber die strengeren Konzeptualisierungen der Linguisten für den Lerner oft als nutzlos, unzugänglich und erfahrungsfern. Dieser Widerspruch macht sich von Zeit zu selbst als Bedürfnis nach Ausgleich beider Seiten bemerkbar. In einigen der einflußreichsten Theorien des 20. Jahrhunderts verbinden sich Unterrichtserfahrungen und -bedürfnisse mit klaren Kriterien und strenger Systematik (Sütterlin, Tesnie`re, Fries, Glinz). Neben dem blind-anonymen Fortwirken der schulgrammatischen Traditionen in den elementaren Rekognitionsprozeduren, dem Fortwirken als Anreiz und Folie für Gegenentwürfe und Verbesserungen, gibt es also auch das positive schulgrammatische Bedürfnis nach erfahrungsnaher Begrifflichkeit und lehrbarer Systematik. Es hat freilich immer Konjunktur, die Unzulänglichkeiten der schulgrammatischen Begriffe und Theorien zu beklagen. Zu erklären bleibt aber der schier unglaubliche Erfolg dieser Konzeptualisierungen, ohne die auch ihre schärfsten Kritiker nicht recht bestehen können. Natürlich gibt der Erfolg einer Theorie nicht recht, aber der Umstand, daß wir ohne die Traditionsbegriffe kaum über natürliche Sprachen sprechen können, nährt die Vermutung, daß der Unklarheit im Detail eine Adäquatheit im Ganzen entsprechen und daß es sich eher um Überschüsse und produktive Unklarheiten handeln könnte. Ein prototypischer Fall produktiver Unklarheit ist das traditionelle Wortartensystem (vgl. Art. 70). Mit seinem Schwanken zwischen Lexem und Wortform als Bezugsgröße, zwischen grammatisch-semantischen, morphologischen und syntaktischen Einteilungskriterien hat es die wissenschaftliche Grammatik immer wieder gereizt: zu neuen, kriterienreinen Einteilungen auf der einen, zu alternativen Begriffsexplikationen auf der anderen Seite. Beides ist wohl zu unterscheiden, auch wenn es meistens nicht unterschieden wird: Die tradierte Einteilung kann (in vielen Hinsichten) unangemessen sein und durch eine angemessenere ersetzt werden, unange-

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messen kann aber auch unser begriffliches Verständnis von dem sein, was in den tradierten Kategorien steckt. Vielleicht lösen die einfach ein anderes Problem als das, das wir heute mit unserer Theorielage durch die Einteilung der Wortarten lösen wollen. Dafür spricht einiges, nicht allein die Tatsache, daß die klassifikatorische Praxis primär auf Redeteile ging, d.h. sie bezog sich auf Wortformen im laufenden Text, nicht primär auf den Lexembestand, und mußte diese erschöpfend beschreiben, ohne daß ihr eine entwickelte Satzlehre, Morphologie oder Topologie der Wortformen zur Seite gestanden hätte. Die Wortartenlehre war der Angelpunkt aller grammatischen Fragen, und darum war sie aus Notwendigkeit synkretisch, nicht wegen einer defizitären Theorie. Eine andere, sprachpsychologisch ebenso interessante Frage ist, ob nicht der Synkretismus der Traditionsbegriffe auch darum Vorzüge hat, weil er den Synkretismus in der psychischen Organisation der Verfügung über natürliche Sprachen angemessener widerspiegelt als kriterienreine Begriffe. Das darf natürlich keine Lizenz für unklare Begriffe in der wissenschaftlichen Beschreibung und Erklärung sein. Auch über “unscharf” organisierte Gegenstände lassen sich präzise Begriffe bilden. Aber möglicherweise fehlt uns einfach die reflexive Ebene der Theoriebildung, von der aus wir den sachlichen Gehalt und die “Zweckmäßigkeit” synkretischer Verfügungsbegriffe würdigen können. Daß sie nur einfach “falsch” sind, ist jedenfalls unwahrscheinlich.

3.

Tendenzen der deutschen Schulgrammatik im 20. Jahrhundert

Die Satzlehre ist und bleibt das Merkzeichen schulgrammatischer Neuerungen. Mit der Beckerschen Satzlehre beginnt die eigenständige Entwicklung der Schulgrammatik im 19. Jahrhundert. Nachhaltige Reformen betreffen (neben dem Einsickern der Sprachgeschichte) den schulspezifischen Gegenstand, die Satzlehre. So z. B. Kerns (1888) radikale Abkehr von der logischen Tradition der Becker-Schule und seine Hinwendung zum verbum finitum als dem satzkonstitutiven Element: “Das finite Verbum ist keine Wortart, wie Substantiv und Adjektiv, auch kein Satzteil, wie Subjektswort und Objekt, sondern es ist der Satzkeim, die Satzwurzel, ohne welche der Baum des Satzes gar nicht bestehen kann.” (Kern 1888: 5f.)

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Noch einmal schafft Sütterlin (1900) eine neue Lage, indem er versucht, die traditionelle Stoffzuweisung und -anordnung der Syntax (Satzlehre nämlich und/oder Verwendung der Wortarten und Wortformen) nach Ries’ (1894) radikaler Kritik zu revidieren (Syntax ⫽ Lehre von der Form und Bedeutung aller Wortverbindungen bis hin zum Satzgefüge). Das schafft stärkere Autonomie gegenüber den Wechselfällen der einzelsprachlichen Morphologie, an denen die historisch-vergleichende Syntax haftet. Den Schritt zu den einzelsprachlichen Besonderheiten des deutschen Satzes tut dann (freilich nach langem, weniger wirkungsmächtigem Vorlauf im 19. Jahrhundert) Drach (1937). Mit ihm kommen die topologischen Eigenheiten des deutschen Satzes, kommen Satzklammer, Vorfeld, Mitte und Nachfeld, kommen die Satzbaupläne in den Unterricht. Auch er führt noch den Spruch im Munde, mit dem Revisionen der muttersprachlichen Schulgrammatik fast immer flankiert werden: Die muttersprachliche Grammatik müsse sich endlich vom Vorbild der lateinischen lösen und den Eigenheiten des Deutschen Rechnung tragen. Drach war nicht unbedingt ein Parteigänger der Sprachinhaltsforschung (und schon gar nicht ihrer nationalistischen Entgleisungen), gleichwohl hat diese Richtung seine Satzanalyse aufgenommen und in das eigene “muttersprachliche Weltbild” integriert. Nach den Mischgrammatiken des Jahrhundertbeginns drängt die national getönte Sprachinhaltsforschung in die Schulen, kann sich dort während der Nazizeit fest etablieren und behält einen beachtlichen Einfluß im (westlichen) Nachkriegsdeutschland, bis dann in den 60er Jahren sprunghaft und nachholend die Rezeption der modernen strukturalistischen Linguistik einsetzt. Im Werk von Hans Glinz bleibt eine strukturalistisch modernisierte Sprachinhaltsforschung auch weiterhin wirksam, während die überhastig adaptierten formalisierten Syntaxmodelle ebenso rasch wieder aus den Schulbüchern verschwunden sind, wie sie zunächst darin aufgetaucht waren (aus dem Wust der diesbezüglichen Literatur ragt Eisenberg 1976 hervor). Eine durchaus andere Geschichte hat die Morphologie als Thema der Schulgrammatik. Da gilt es zu berücksichtigen, daß die Verabschiedung der Deklinations- und Konjugationstabellen, die nach dem lateinischgriechischen Vorbild einen wesentlichen Teil des muttersprachlichen Unterrichts bildeten,

gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts einen der ersten Emanzipationsschritte des Deutschunterrichts bildete. Gerade der Teil der Grammatik, den die Schule abstößt (die “materielle” Formenlehre), wird wissenschaftlich zentral. Die Sprachlehre von Heynatz (1803) etwa, die vor Adelung eine der verbreitetsten war, bestand noch ganz überwiegend aus Formen und Paradigmen, die ganz wie eine fremde Sprache zu lernen waren (während die Syntax auf wenigen Seiten Platz fand). Von diesem Teil der Formenlehre blieb an den Schulen lediglich die Arbeit an Regionalismen (Karl Philipp Moritz hat z. B. den Berlinern eine Abhandlung über mir und mich, Dativ und Akkusativ geschrieben), während sich als bevorzugter morphologischer Gegenstand (neben der Syntax) die Wortbildung an den Schulen etablierte. Damit hat es folgende Bewandtnis: Die Wortbildung war ein gemeinsamer, alle gleichermaßen faszinierender Gegenstand für die historische Grammatik, für die spekultativphilosophische und für die pädagogische. Die Wortführer der Bildungsreform (Bernhardi, Schleiermacher, Humboldt) maßen ihr einen außerordentlich hohen Bildungswert bei, die romantisch-nationalistischen Schwärmer wollten alte Wortbildungen (oft auch vermeintlich alte) wiederbeleben, und die Spekulation sah den gesamten Bestand des Lexikons aus wenigen Urwurzeln durch Ableitung, Zusammensetzung und Lautwandel entstanden. Der pädagogische Gedankengang dabei ist ungefähr der folgende: Das System der Wortarten ist, insofern es ein notwendiges System bildet, Darstellung des Verstandes und der Imagination. Die Derivation hingegen, die Überführung der Wörter von einer Wortart in die andere, steht der notwendigen Auffassung als Freiheit der Darstellung gegenüber. Sie erlaubt es, die einfachen Einheiten des Verstandes und der Imagination zu überschreiten, hin zu Phantasie, Spekulation, Irrtum und tieferer Erkenntnis. Bernhardi formuliert das so: “Bis jezt konnte nehmlich die Sprache sich nie ganz von der sinnlichen Natur, der Anschauung, aus der sie entsprang, losreissen; was ihr in dieser als Substanz erschien, mußte sie auch so aufstellen; was sich als Accidenz zeigte, mußte sie auch so darstellen. Allein durch Ableitung und Verwandelung des einen in das andere, ist, so bald die Vernunft diese Verwandlung als Bedürfniß fordert, aller Zusammenhang der Sprache mit der Sinnlichkeit abgebrochen; und die Sprache kann unabhängig von allen Gegebenen, dies der Vorstellung gemäß, welche die Vernunft sich davon erwirbt, darstellen.” (Bernhardi 1801 I: 302f.)


Das durchlaufende Interesse der deutschen Schulgrammatiken an der Ableitungs- und Derivationsmorphologie im 19. Jahrhundert wird von äußerst spekulativen Ansichten über den Erkenntnis- und Erziehungswert der Wortbildung gespeist. Das nüchterne Interesse an der Derivationsmorphologie muß sich aus dieser Motivkonstellation erst lösen und gleichsam säkularisiert werden. Auch in den Sprachlehren der Elementarschulen taucht die Wortbildung als Mittel der Verstandesbildung auf, z. B. bei Diesterweg. Aber auch diese überschwängliche Auffassung der Wortbildung führt zurück auf nüchterne Quellen im 18. Jahrhundert. Heinrich Bauer verweist in seiner großen Vollständigen Grammatik der neuhochdeutschen Sprache, die freilich in Schulen kaum verwendet worden sein dürfte, weil sie viel zu umständlich, umfassend und durchaus nicht methodisiert ist, auf Lambert: “Da indessen unsre Sprache eine lebende ist, und zugleich eine wahrhaft vollkommne, insofern Lamberts Ausspruch sich nicht bestreiten läßt, daß jede Sprache desto vollkommner ist, je mehrere Möglichkeiten sie enthält, aus ihren Wurzeln (und Ableitungen) neue Wörter mit jeder beliebigen Bedeutung abzuleiten und zusammenzusetzen, so daß man aus der Structur der neuen Wörter ihre Bedeutung verstehen kann: so muß es erlaubt sein, nicht nur solche guten alten Wörter wieder hervorzusuchen, sondern auch, nach der Analogie der ältern, ganz neue zu bilden, und sie in Umlauf zu setzen.” (Bauer 1827 I: 271)

Hier denkt Bauer offenbar an den launigen Streit zwischen Jean Paul und Jacob Grimm über die Komposition. Es gilt jedenfalls für das 19. Jahrhundert: keine Schulgrammatik ohne ausführliche Wortbildung. Bei Becker sind dann die Theoreme schon spekulativ historisiert, d. h. er geht in seiner “organischen Wortbildung” davon aus, daß sich auch historisch der Wort- und Begriffsvorrat einer Sprache durch Derivations- und Kompositionsprozesse aus wenigen einfachen Urwurzeln herausgebildet hat. Die Schule interessiert sich bestenfalls für die (oft spekulative) Innenseite der Morphologie. Darin steckt aber auch schon eine Entwertung der manifesten Morphologie zugunsten spekulativer Begriffsverhältnisse, wie sie auch in der Beckerschen Satzsyntax beobachtet werden kann, obwohl deren Setzungen den funktionalen Synonymien (vgl. Forsgren 1991) des Deutschen weit besser entsprechen als die früheren Satzlehren. Beckers Theorie zentriert das, was Glinz später “Nomosyntax” nennt: die Innen- oder Bedeutungsseite

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der morphosyntaktischen Verhältnisse, während die historisch-vergleichenden Grammatiker im Umfeld der “Phonomorphie” verbleiben. Die Mischgrammatiken der Jahrhundertwende bringen eine partielle “Remorphologisierung” der Verhältnisse. Besonders reflektiert ist diese Tendenz bei Sütterlin (1900), wovon gleich mehr. Die Sprachinhaltsforschung der Weisgerber-Schule geht dann wieder mehr auf das Innere, und Glinzens Modernisierung besteht vor allem darin, daß er die intuitiv-spekulativen Erkenntnisse der Sprachinhaltsforschung auf eine solide operationale und morphosyntaktische Basis stellt. Was es an morphologisch relevanten schulgrammatischen Neuerungen im 20. Jahrhundert gegeben hat, läßt sich freilich nur exemplarisch darstellen. Ich habe Autoren gewählt, in deren Arbeit sich jeweils die Gesamtheit der linguistisch und schulpraktisch relevanten Strömungen spiegelt: für den Beginn des Jahrhunderts Ludwig Sütterlin (1863⫺1934) und für die Zeit nach 1950 Hans Glinz. Darin liegt eine ärgerliche Beschränkung auf die muttersprachliche Schulgrammatik des Deutschen. Entschuldigen läßt sich diese Beschränkung nicht von der Sache her, sondern allein durch die Unkenntnis des Autors. Zu ergänzen wäre für die angelsächsischen Länder der beträchtliche Einfluß der behavioristischen und kontextualistischen Schulen des Strukturalismus auf die pädagogische Grammatik. Die “Metaphysik” der Bloomfield-Schule war ja nicht mehr und nicht weniger als eine (simplistische) Lerntheorie. Notorisch ist die Bedeutung von Fries für einen effektiveren, an der Einübung generalisierbarer Muster orientierten Fremdsprachenunterricht (vgl. Helbig 1974). Damit ist dann die Verschiebung vom “Kennen” zum “Können” der Fremdsprachen vollständig. Denn im 19. Jahrhundert hatten ja die Neuphilologien im Banne der alten Sprachen begonnen und nach deren Vorbild auf philologische Kenntnisse viel größeren Wert gelegt als auf vollendete Sprechfertigkeit (vgl. Christmann 1976). Zu ergänzen wäre auch, namentlich für den französischsprachigen Raum, die Valenzgrammatik in der Tradition Tesnie`res, die freilich primär syntaktisch bleibt, obwohl auch sie wichtige Neuerungen in traditionell morphologische Domänen einführt (Reinterpretation des Wortartensystems, Translation etc.). Sütterlin habe ich gewählt, weil in seinen Schulgrammatiken die radikale Hinwendung

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zur Gegenwartssprache, das Interesse an syntaktischer Systematik (Ries) und eine Neubestimmung des Verhältnisses von formalen, morphosyntaktischen Klassen und “Bedeutungsklassen” wirksam ist. Für Glinz gilt ebenfalls, daß er die text- und korpusorientierten Analyseverfahren des Deskriptivismus mit den Traditionen der Sprachinhaltsforschung und dem “modernen” (namentlich generativen) Interesse an “Nomosyntax” und “Tiefenstrukturen” verbindet.

4.

Ludwig Sütterlin

Ludwig Sütterlin wird von den Historiographen der Zunft mit Ehren nicht eben überhäuft. Dabei hat er, anders als im schulgrammatischen Gewerbe weithin üblich, nicht einfach seine Vorgänger kompiliert, sondern ein eigenständiges, z. T. eigensinniges Buch verfaßt (Sütterlin 1900). Die deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart, bis 1923 in fünf Auflagen erschienen, liefert die Grundlage für die Sprachlehre (Sütterlin & Waag 1905, neun Auflagen bis 1930). 1924 kommt noch eine Neuhochdeutsche Grammatik dazu, die ich aber außer Acht lasse. Linguistisch sozialisiert im Geiste der Junggrammatiker war Sütterlin gleichwohl offen für alle theoretischen Neuerungen, in denen die junggrammatischen “Stoffhuber” (Bühler) nicht selten bloße Spekulationen zu sehen geneigt waren. Er adaptiert den Stoffund Darstellungsplan, den Ries (1894) für die Syntax vorschlägt und begründet, ganz gegen die herrschende Praxis, die sich gegen Ries sehr spröde verhielt. Er würdigt früh die Arbeiten von Noreen und Jespersen, und auf Wundts Sprachpsychologie reagiert er schon 1902 mit einem kleinen Büchlein, in dem sich mäßige Kritik und vorsichtige Anerkennung die Waage halten. Auf den ersten Blick scheint Sütterlins Deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart nicht anders aufgebaut zu sein als andere Grammatiken auch. Der Lautlehre folgt die Wortlehre, und dann steht, statt der zu erwartenden Satzlehre, eine “Wortgruppenlehre”, die mit den “offenen Gruppen” des Substantivs, des Adjektivs, des Verbs, des Adverbs beginnt (und damit eine eigenständige Phrasensyntax praktiziert, lange bevor das üblich wird) und dann zu den “geschlossenen Gruppen”, namentlich zum Satz übergeht. Doch ist das keineswegs die einzige ungewöhnliche Neuerung, mit der Sütterlin aufwartet. In allen Abteilungen der Wort- und der Wortgrup-

penlehre stehen jeweils morphologische (bzw. morphosyntaktische) Einteilungen neben Einteilungen nach der Bedeutung der Bildungen und Fügungen (zum Verhältnis von systematischer und schulischer Stoffabfolge bei Sütterlin vgl. jedoch Erlinger 1969). In der Wortlehre wird zunächst ganz allgemein zwischen Bedeutung, Form und Verwendung der Wörter im Satz unterschieden (Sütterlin 1900: 68). Alle Eigenschaften der Wörter werden bezogen auf ihre Funktion, Sätze zu bilden. Abgesehen von der reinen Reihung oder Nebeneinanderordnung (du und ich; Schüler, Studenten, Behinderte) gibt es in jeder Wortgruppe, unbeschadet der äußeren Form der Wörter, Abhängigkeit und Unterordnung (der kleine Knabe, König Wilhelm, sehr stark, Frankfurt am Main, Wein trinken; 1900: 70). Daraus folgt, daß Sütterlin die strukturbildenden Potenzen in der Verschiedenheit der Wortarten in praxi anerkennt (wie sie schon Kern 1888 vor ihm beschrieben hat), wenn er auch darüber kein weiteres Wort verliert bei der Aufzählung der Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten für die Verhältnisse der Wörter (Betonung, Wortstellung, Endungen, Formwörter). Nach der Verwendung im Satz scheidet Sütterlin dann noch Vollwörter und Formwörter (in der Sache ungefähr so, wie Becker Begriffswörter und Formwörter unterscheidet). Im allgemeinen Abschnitt über die Betonung der (zusammengesetzten) Wörter notiert er u. a., daß oft der Distinktor den Ton an sich zieht: Oster⬘sonntag, Oster⬘montag etc., aber ⬘Pfingstsonntag, ⬘Ostersonntag, ⬘Palmsonntag. Bei den Flexionsformen der Wörter unterscheidet Sütterlin deutlich zwischen Reihen von Veränderungen, die allein fügerelevant sind, ausschließlich syntaktische Funktionen haben (Kasus, Person) und solchen, die auch Bedeutungs- oder Begriffsunterschiede indizieren (Numerus, Tempus, Modus). Die letzteren will er eher als “verschiedene Wortbildungen” aufgefaßt wissen (1900: 76), konzediert aber, daß die Grenze schwer zu ziehen ist. Bühler (1934) unterscheidet später in seiner semiotischen Interpretation der grammatischen Morphologie ganz ähnlich zwischen (syntaktischen “Feldzeichen” und “formalisierten Symbolwerten” ohne eigentlichen Einfluß auf aktuelle syntaktische Feldbeziehungen im Satz oder in der Wortgruppe. Im Abschnitt über die Wortarten zieht Sütterlin die Konsequenzen aus Pauls Kritik an


der Inkonsequenz der hergebrachten Lehre. Statt einer Einteilung gibt er deren drei: (a) Nach der Formveränderlichkeit gibt es zwei große Klassen im Deutschen, deren erste (die formveränderlichen) wieder in zwei Unterklassen (deklinierbare und konjugierbare) zerfällt. Zu den deklinierbaren gehören gleichermaßen die Substantive, Adjektive, substantivische und adjektivische Pronomina. Die nominalen Flexionskategorien Genus, Kasus, Numerus werden ohne Ansehen ihrer distributiven und lautlichen Verschiedenheit als einheitsstiftend für diese Klasse angesehen. (b) Nach der Bedeutung gibt es ebenfalls zwei Großgruppen: Erscheinungsbezeichnungen und Beziehungsbezeichnungen. In die erste Gruppe rechnet Sütterlin nicht nur die traditionellen Substantive, sondern auch Adjektive und Verben als Bezeichnungen “dauernder” bzw. “vorübergehender” Eigenschaften. Zu den Beziehungsbezeichnungen rechnet er Quantoren, Deutewörter, Adverbien, Präpositionen. Die substantivischen Pronomina gelten als zu beiden Klassen gehörig: sie sind Verhältnisbezeichnungen und allgemeine Dingbezeichnungen. Das pseudosemantische an dieser Einteilung ist leicht zu erkennen. Sie ist mit allen Problemen behaftet, die in der Opposition “autosemantisch” vs. “synsemantisch” stecken, wenn man sie auf den Lexemvorrat einer Sprache anwenden will und doch die Funktion der Lexeme in der verbundenen Rede im Auge hat. (c) Nach der Verwendung im Satz unterscheidet Sütterlin schließlich zwischen satzbildenden und satzgliedbildenden “Vollwörtern” auf der einen, “Formwörtern” auf der anderen Seite. Diese Einteilung ist in der Sache (nicht in der Terminologie) von Kern (1888) genommen, der ja auch eine konsequent satzsyntaktische, am Fügewert der Wörter orientierte Wortartenlehre vorlegen möchte. An den Beispielen, die Sütterlin für seine syntaktischen Klassen gibt, wird deutlich, daß er (natürlicherweise) nach der aktuellen satzsyntaktischen Funktion einteilt, nicht nach dem primären syntaktischen Wert des Lexems: als “Aussagewörter” tauchen finite Verbformen, aber auch prädikative Adjektive und Substantive auf. Die Folge der satzgliedbildenden Vollwörter erinnert gleichwohl sehr an Jespersens “Ränge” und hat auch deren Ungereimtheit, daß nämlich das (satzsyntaktische) Objekt zwischen dem dritten Rang (⫽ Beifügung zum Aussagewort) und dem ersten Rang (⫽ Gegensubjekt; vgl. Sütterlin 1900: 331f.) schwankt. Die Form-

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wörter zerfallen in beiordnende und unterordnende. Sütterlin lobt die Klarheit der Einteilung nach der Formveränderlichkeit, ist aber klug genug, sie als eine bloß scheinbare Klarheit zu erkennen: wohin soll man z. B. mit den Formen des Verbs, die wie Substantive oder Adjektive gebraucht werden (mit Partizipien, Infinitiven)? Trotz einer Fülle von Unklarheiten im Detail ist doch damit der Weg gebahnt zu einer Satz- und Wortgruppenlehre, die zwischen Bedeutung, Form und Funktion der beteiligten Ausdrücke deutlich zu unterscheiden weiß, ohne doch einer der Ebenen prima facie den Vorzug über die anderen einzuräumen. Im Wortbildungskapitel heißt es zunächst, daß alle Wörter ihrer Form nach einfache Stammwörter (Sütterlin berücksichtigt hier allein ganz ausdrücklich nur den synchronen Status, so daß auch diachronisch abgeleitete Stämme als “einfach” erscheinen), Ableitungen (Stamm ⫹ Prä- oder Suffix(e)) oder Zusammensetzungen sind (Sütterlin 1900: 86f.). In der Durchführung der substantivischen Wortbildung beginnt Sütterlin dann nicht mit den Suffixen, sondern mit den grammatischsemantischen Subklassen der Substantive (Konkreta, belebt vs. unbelebt, Abstrakta, Kollektiva etc.) und schließt an diese die Wortbildungen mit ihren Bedeutungsklassen an: Teils treten sie den ohnehin vorhandenen Nominalklassen bei (Abstrakta, Kollektiva etc.), teils bilden sie eigene, zusätzliche Klassen (Diminutiva, Motionen, Negationen, verschiedene Klassen der deverbativen Substantive etc.). Diese Darstellung und Anordnung der Wortbildung (die dann ganz ähnlich auch für die anderen Wortarten durchgeführt wird) hat überraschend viele Vorteile: Der (in vieler Hinsicht problematische) Riß zwischen einer prozessual gedachten Wortbildung und der “Gebildeheit” fertiger Wörter nach bestimmten grammatisch-semantischen Schemata entsteht gar nicht erst. Die einzelnen Prä- und Suffixe tauchen dann natürlich z. T. mehrfach in den Bedeutungsklassen der Substantive auf. Bei den Sammelnamen und Kollektiva etwa steht die kleine Gruppe der Bildungen auf -icht neben dem Muster Ge (e), den Kompositionselementen -werk und -zeug, ein paar Gruppen auf -ei, -ung, -tum, -schaft und alle zusammen mit den einfachen Kollektiva ohne derivative oder kompositionelle Wortstruktur. In der Darstellung der anderen Wortarten verfährt Sütterlin ähnlich: Einteilungen nach Form- und Bedeutungsklassen werden so ne-

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beneinander gegeben, daß zwischen Binnenklassifizierung der einzelnen Wortarten und einschlägiger Wortbildung ein fließender Übergang entsteht. Auch sonst werden die scharfen Grenzen zwischen Wortbildung und grammatischer Lexemklassifikation bei Sütterlin verwischt. So erwähnt der z. B. den Umstand, daß Durchsichtigkeit und relative Motivierung qua Beziehung auf stammverwandte Wörter nicht allein ein Problem von derivierten und komponierten Bildungen ist, sondern synchron ebenso die einfachen Stammwörter betrifft, deren Stämme vielfach in komplexen Bildungen vorkommen: Personenbezeichnungen wie Schmied oder Hirt(e) sind kraft ihrer Beziehung zu anderen Bildungen wie Schmiede, schmieden bzw. Herde durchsichtiger etwa als Tierbezeichnungen wie Bär, Hirsch, Wolf. Die formale Inhomogenität von Inhalten und Funktionen ist für Sütterlin eine Selbstverständlichkeit, die sofort ins Auge fällt, wenn man eine syntaktische Funktion oder ein Bedeutungsverhältnis konstant setzt. Aber sie ist kein Grund, die Ausdrucksseite als kontingent abzutun oder geringzuschätzen, wie es der schulgrammatischen Tradition bisweilen unterstellt wird und wie es ihr auch nahelag, des Interesses an den “gedanklichen” Verhältnissen wegen. Ob man die grammatische Darstellung sinnvollerweise mit der Form- oder mit der Bedeutungsgliederung des jeweiligen Bereiches beginnt, “wird im besonderen Falle oft von der ganzen Beschaffenheit des Stoffes abhängen” (Sütterlin 1900: 12). Deutlich wird schließlich an der ganzen Anlage des Buches, daß die traditionelle Formenlehre (und modern gesagt: die Morphologie) ein äußerst heterogenes Gebiet aus lexikalischen, grammatisch-semantischen und syntaktischen umfaßt und daß eine deutliche Grenze zwischen diesen Relevanzen nicht zu ziehen ist. Genau das hatte im übrigen der Schulmann John Ries (1894) seinen Kollegen von der “wissenschaftlichen” Grammatik mit sichtlich geringem Erfolg zu vermitteln versucht. Die großen Werke von Brugmann, Delbrück, Paul, und Behaghel zeigen wenig Neigung, auf Ries’ Vorschläge einzugehen. Nach der Wortbildung folgt die Wortbiegung (Flexion), die Sütterlin, wie bereits erwähnt, in zwei “verschiedene Zwecke” aufteilt: Plural und Genus bei Nomina, Tempus und Modus bei Verben geben “Färbungen des Grundbegriffs” (Sütterlin 1900: 139) und haben also eine unscharfe Grenze zur Wort-

bildung (wie auch die Steigerung der Adjektive). Ihre syntaktische Ausnutzung ist indirekt, qua Kongruenz. Kasus bei Substantiven und Personen bei Verben (letzteres mit einiger Reserve) geben die “eigentliche Beugung” im Dienste der syntaktischen Beziehungen. Die Schwierigkeiten, die Sütterlin mit der verbalen Kategorie Person hat, werden nicht ausgeführt. Möglicherweise schwebt ihm der Unterschied zwischen den teilweise “außensyntaktischen” Funktionen dieser Kategorie vor, im Unterschied zum syntaktischen “Innendienst” der Kasus (mit Ausnahme des lateinischen Vokativ, der ebenfalls “außensyntaktisch” ist). Nach dem Riesschen Plan gibt Sütterlin in der Flexion ebenfalls jeweils Formen und Bedeutungen der Bildungen (neben dem historischen Abriß), was zu gewissen Härten führt, weil man die rein syntaktischen “Bedeutungen” außerhalb der Fügung bloß als Potentiale beschreiben kann. Hier liegt ja der Keimpunkt für die Unübersichtlichkeit der formenbasierten Syntax, die syntaktische Phänomene immer nur von der jeweils einzelnen Form her, als deren Umgebung gleichsam, beschreiben kann und niemals als Gebilde eigenen Rechtes. Bei den Wortgruppen (soweit sie hierarchisch und nicht bloß nebengeordnet sind) geht Sütterlin ohne große Diskussion davon aus, daß die morphosyntaktisch abhängige, untergeordnete Größe inhaltlich die “bestimmende”, die morphosyntaktisch leitende Größe inhaltlich die “bestimmte” ist. Der Zusammenhang der Wortgruppe wird gestiftet durch äußere Mittel (Endungen, Formwörter, Stellung, Betonung) und durch innere Mittel. Zu diesen letzteren gehören namentlich unvollständige, nicht in sich geschlossene Bedeutungen, die der Verbindung mit anderen Wortformen “von sich aus” bedürfen. Was Sütterlin hier als Beispiele anführt, belegt, daß er nicht allein an die semantische Fügepotenz “relativer Begriffe” wie Kopf, Boden, Pfund, beginnen, an die von weitgehend “leeren” Begriffen, wie beschaffen, sich betragen denkt, sondern auch an oblique Kasusformen, an denominale Adjektive wie königlich, städtisch (Sütterlin 1900: 236). Über die letzteren notiert er: “Insofern sie mit einer Endung von einer Grundform abgeleitet sind, wird bei ihnen die Beziehung durch ein äußeres Mittel ausgedrückt; als fertige Einzelformen dagegen bezeichnen sie ihre Beziehung innerlich durch ihre Bedeutung.” (Sütterlin 1900: 236)

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Häufung der Beziehungsmittel ist charakteristisch, schreibt Sütterlin, doch an dieser für den Zusammenhang von Morphologie und Syntax so wichtigen Stelle ordnet er die Erscheinungen nicht weiter. Alles scheint vorbereitet für eine genuine syntaktische Theorie der Wortarten und -formen, die Flexion und syntaktische Derivation als die Mittel erkennt, mit deren Hilfe die syntaktischen Variablen der einzelnen Wortarten elaboriert und fallweise fixiert werden: vom Mitspieler implizierenden, satzkonstitutiven finiten Verb bis zu dem syntaktisch nichts Bestimmtes implizierenden, eben darum in allen syntaktischen Funktionen (außer der satzbildenden) heimischen Substantiv. Insgesamt werden die semantischen Beziehungen in der Wortgruppe des Substantivs geregelt durch die Bedeutung der verknüpften Ausdrücke, besonders durch die Bedeutung des leitenden Substantivs. Wenn dieses von sich aus ergänzungsbedürftig ist, dann verweist der zweite Ausdruck in der Regel auf diese Ergänzungsbedürftigkeit und füllt sie, wenn nicht, “entsteht eine endlose Mannigfaltigkeit der Beziehungen” (1900: 252). Was beim Verb qua Wortart vorgesehen ist: die Ergänzungsbedürftigkeit, das findet man in der Klasse der Substantive nur bei einem Teil der Mitglieder. Bei der Darstellung der Nominalgruppe gebraucht Sütterlin ganz selbstverständlich den Attributsbegriff, wie er aus der Becker-Tradition auf ihn gekommen ist. Für Details ist kein Raum. Erwähnt sei nur noch, weil charakteristisch für Sütterlins synchronische Denkweise, daß er auch bei den attributiven Genitiven alle diejenigen Typen zusammenordnet, bei denen der Nukleus (modern gesprochen) ergänzungsbedürftig ist, so daß traditionell so disparate Gruppen wie partitivus, objectivus, subjectivus, possessivus mit einem “Teil” als Nukleus (Fuß, Schneide, Ast, Blatt etc.), Definitionsgenitiv (der Fehler der Unwissenheit, das Laster der Trunksucht) Mitglieder einer großen Gruppe werden. In der Gruppe des Verbs kann Sütterlin dann im Grundsatz ähnlich verfahren, zwischen Ergänzungen und Veränderungen des Verbalbegriffs unterscheiden etc. Der Satz wird durch seinen “abgeschlossenen” Charakter nicht sehr überzeugend von den Wortgruppen unterschieden. Auf die Ungereimtheit, die darin liegt, daß er auch einwortige abgeschlossene Äußerungen zu den Sätzen rechnet, die dann aber nach dem Riesschen Konzept erst nach den Wortgruppen und als deren logische Fortsetzung auftau-

chen, hat Sütterlin später selbst hingewiesen (Sütterlin 1916: 16). Auch hat er in den späteren Auflagen die Anordnung verändert und die Syntax mit dem Satz angefangen. Mit Ries’ Konzeption ist aber der junggrammatische Satzbegriff, der ein psychologischer Äußerungsbegriff ist (ohne Rücksicht auf grammatische Gebildeeigenschaften), eben darum unvereinbar, wie Ries selbst später in seinem Satzbuch herausstellt (Ries 1931). Mit der klaren Trennung von Form, syntaktischer Funktion und Bedeutung, mit der präzisen funktionalen Analyse grammatischer Formen, mit der klaren Trennung von Synchronie und Diachronie, der doppelten Darbietung des Stoffes nach Form- und Bedeutungsklassen ist der Schulgrammatiker Sütterlin vielleicht näher als irgendeiner seiner “wissenschaftlichen” Kollegen an den Tendenzen der Sprachbeschreibung, die das 20. Jahrhundert prägen werden. Aber einmal mehr verhält es sich so, wie schon mit der schulgrammatischen Satzlehre des 19. Jahrhunderts: ihre Wirkungen sind stumm, umfassend und werden nicht auf Personen zugerechnet.

5.

Hans Glinz

Hans Glinz betritt die wissenschaftliche Bühne mit einer umfassenden Geschichte und Kritik der Lehre von den Satzgliedern in der deutschen Grammatik (Glinz 1947). Von dieser Arbeit an datiert das wiedererwachte Interesse an den Theorie- und Beschreibungstraditionen der Schulgrammatik im 19. Jahrhundert. Seit Engelien (1889), der sich auf die muttersprachlichen Grammatiken für den Volksschulunterricht konzentriert, und Jellinek (1913/14), der bei Adelung aufhört, war zu diesem Thema keine wesentliche Arbeit geschrieben worden. Zweifellos geht Glinz zu weit, wenn er in den Fußstapfen der älteren Becker-Kritik dessen schulgrammatische Satzlehre pauschal als “unwissenschaftlich” ablehnt (vgl. Forsgren 1985; 1991). Daß ihr die Resonanz in den “wissenschaftlichen” Grammatiken des 19. und des 20. Jahrhunderts versagt blieb, hat andere, kontingente Gründe: Eine historische Satzlehre scheint den Protagonisten damals weder machbar noch interessant, und mit Recht vernichtet die Kritik allein die philosophische Einkleidung der Beckerschen Satzlehre, nicht deren deskriptive Meriten. Klar ist jedoch von Anfang an Glinzs Anspruch: Ausgehend von der Satzlehre ist das

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Ziel eine wissenschaftliche Grammatik für die Schule. Denn Beckers Satzlehre, so Glinz, konnte sich nur an den Schulen halten, weil die Wissenschaft keine bessere Satzlehre liefern konnte (vgl. Helbig 1974: 219). Was Glinz (1952) als eigenen Entwurf einer Satzlehre vorlegt, ist schulisch erprobt und erhebt doch auch einen wissenschaftlichen Anspruch. Die innere Form des Deutschen stellt sich auf den Standpunkt des Strukturalismus, reklamiert präzise empirische Entdeckungsverfahren ⫺ und besetzt mit dem Titelstichwort innere Form zugleich geschickt das Terrain der neuhumboldtianischen Sprachinhaltsforschung. Der erfahrene Schulmann nutzt auch den Umstand, daß man mithilfe der “inhaltlichen” Begrifflichkeit und der textgebundenen Verfahren an die literaturwissenschaftliche Interpretationspraxis der Schulen anschließen kann, was angesichts der dürren und unbeliebten konventionellen Grammatik allemal ein Vorzug ist. In den Experimenten (Klangprobe, Umstellprobe, Ersatzprobe, Weglaßprobe) wird alles vorgängige Wissen über Satzgliederung eingeklammert. Statt der fatalen Doppelfrage: “Wie wird eine Form verwendet?” bzw. “Wie wird ein vorgegebener Inhalt/Funktion sprachlich ausgedrückt?” führt das System der Proben zunächst auf nicht weiter qualifizierte satzsyntaktische Schemapositionen. Im zweiten Schritt erprobt die Interpretation, ob sich diesen Positionen feste Inhalte oder Funktionen zuordnen lassen (Glinz 1953: 44⫺59). Damit ist die Fixierung von “Inhalten” auf den festen Grund von Experimenten und intersubjektiv nachprüfbaren Deutungen gestellt. So lautet zumindest der Anspruch. Die Experimente ihrerseits sind so angelegt, daß sie weder die Laut- und Formseite allein noch das Bezeichnete allein tangieren (zu den Grenzen der operationalen Methoden vgl. Brinker 1972), sondern den Zusammenhang beider in den bilateralen Zeicheneinheiten der Satzsyntax. Die Ergebnisse (darauf weist Helbig 1974: 223f. hin, Glinz notiert es aber auch selbst) ähneln in vielem den “structural meanings” der Fries-Schule, auch darin, daß sie im herkömmlichen System der grammatischen Beschreibung schwer unterzubringen sind: Nimmt man sie einfach als Strukturstellen eines analogiefähigen Schemas, so stehen sie einfach für sich und dulden eben darum keinerlei inhaltliche Festlegung. Nur durch (relative) Indifferenz gegen “inhaltliche” Füllung wird eine Schemaposition als solche erkennbar. Gibt man ihnen aber einen “Inhalt”, so wird die Sache entweder tautolo-

gisch oder falsch. Helbig (1974: 224) erläutert das am “Gleichsetzungssatz”, der durchaus als Name für das satzsyntaktische Schema NP[Nom] ⫺ sein ⫺ NP[Nom] taugt, das aber eben nicht nur und noch nicht einmal in erster Linie tatsächliche Gleichsetzungen transportiert, sondern auch ganz andere Sachverhältnisse. Glinz hat sich immer dagegen gewehrt, daß seine terminologischen Vorschläge als Deutungen oder Begriffe der Sache mißverstanden wurden (vgl. Glinz 1972: 10f.). Er versteht sie als bloße Hinweise ohne definitorischen Sinn. Auf der anderen Seite haben ihm solche vermeintlichen “Inhalte” (Dativ als “Zuwendgröße” etc.) bei den Sprachinhaltsforschern Freunde gemacht, denn diesen ist die schwärmerische Überhöhung prosaischer Schemata und Positionen im Satz zu “wirkenden Inhalten” ja nicht ganz fremd. Doch werfen wir zunächst einen Blick auf das Ebenenmodell, das Glinz für die Sprachanalyse generell und für die Satzanalyse vorschlägt: Die mittlere oder “funktionierende” Schicht besteht aus der Morphosyntax und ihren Schemata und aus dem Morpholexikon. Sie gibt eine Art von Oberflächengrammatik, in der auch die lexikalischen Einheiten (nach der Seite ihres Systemwertes, nicht nach ihrem gemeinten Sinn) spezifiziert sind. Davon unterschieden ist zur Oberfläche der Rede hin die Ebene der Phonomorphie. Auf dieser geht es etwa darum, mithilfe welcher Lautsignale die funktionierenden Einheiten und Strukturen (z. B. Genitiv, Plural etc.) angezeigt werden. Mit der Phonomorphie und ihren Wandlungen befaßt sich in erster Linie die historische Grammatik, die aber natürlich auch nicht umhin kann, ihren lautlichen Stoff funktionierenden Einheiten zuzuordnen. Nach der anderen oder “tiefen” Seite geltender (im Unterschied zu funktionierenden) Inhalte und Strukturen ist von der Morphosphäre die Nomosphäre unterschieden (vgl. etwa Glinz 1968 für eine kurze Darstellung). Hier geht es um die Definition und Auffindung der Werte, mit denen die Einheiten und Schemata der Morphosphäre in die Satz- und Textbildung eingehen (Nomosyntax und Nomolexikon). Glinz vergleicht seine Nomosphäre oft mit der Tiefenstruktur der frühen generativen Grammatik, mit der sie in der Tat einige Ähnlichkeit hat. Von dieser Ebene der geltenden Einheiten und Strukturen unterscheidet Glinz das jeweils ad hoc Gemeinte als nicht direkt zur Sprache gehörig. Damit vermeidet er jedenfalls die implizite Gleichsetzung von Seman-

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tik, Tiefenstruktur und potentiell gleichem Gemeinten, die das Verhältnis der generativen Grammatik zur Semantik so lange problematisch gestaltet hat (vgl. Ungeheuer 1969; Coseriu 1975). Die Nomosphäre versteht Glinz als Ziel der Theorie- und Begriffsbildung, den Ausgangspunkt bilden die experimentell geprüften Regularitäten der Morphosphäre. Die Verschiedenheit der Sprachen besteht keineswegs allein in den Morphostrukturen, sie erstreckt sich auch auf die Nomosphäre. Man kann jedoch das gleiche Gemeinte mit allen Sprachen erreichen (Problem des Übersetzens). Hier sind wir aber auch schon an dem Punkt, wo Glinz nicht ganz unschuldig ist an den Mißverständnissen, die seine terminologischen Neuprägungen hervorgerufen haben: Sie sind als Bezeichnungen für Einheiten der Nomosphäre aufgefaßt worden, lassen sich aber nur als Namen für Einheiten der Morphosphäre rechtfertigen ⫺ und für die gibt es weitgehend extensionsgleiche traditionelle Bezeichnungen. Daß die traditionelle Grammatik jedoch Morphostruktur und Nomostruktur “an vielen Stellen durcheinandermengte” (Glinz 1972: 12), ist sicher richtig. Glinz will also zunächst eine reine Beschreibung der Morphosyntax, um sich dann auf dieser Grundlage der Nomosyntax zuzuwenden. Das ist ein genuin strukturalistisches Motiv ⫺ und es ist ganz das gleiche Motiv, das auch Sütterlin bewegte: die klare Auftrennung der syntaktischen und morphologischen Traditionsbegriffe in distinkte Ebenen mit einer je eigenen Binnenordnung. Man darf sich getrost darüber wundern, daß es 1900 und 1950 von Schulmännern gegen die herrschende “wissenschaftliche” Grammatik geltend gemacht werden mußte. Die herrschende “wissenschaftliche” Richtung, das ist im Falle von Glinz die Sprachinhaltsforschung, die er behutsam modernisieren wollte, die aber dann durch die rasche Rezeption der radikaleren und nüchterneren strukturalistischen Richtungen einfach weggeschwemmt wurde. Was 1952 vielleicht zu radikal schien, das war 1965 nicht mehr radikal genug, zumal sich Glinz in der Zwischenzeit nicht von der Weisgerberschule weg-, sondern auf sie hinbewegt hatte. Dennoch hat Glinz auch seine eigene “Modernisierungsfähigkeit” unter Beweis gestellt in der Folgezeit. Er hat sein Schichtenmodell mehrfach modifiziert und textlinguistische Motive aufgenommen (vgl. Glinz 1973). Insgesamt steht er für einen Strukturalismus, der erkannt hat, daß Phonologie, Morphologie,

Syntax, Semantik als (relativ) autonome Teilsysteme nicht das letzte Wort sein können und daß die Teilsysteme natürlicher Sprachen zusammengenommen, eben wegen der unbegrenzten Darstellungsaufgaben der Sprachen, kein schlüssig durchkonstruiertes Gesamtsystem mit klarer Konturierung gegen das “Nichtsprachliche” ergeben. Überhaupt ist ja das strukturalistische Axiom vom Systemcharakter der sprachlichen Mittel auf allen Ebenen nicht einfach eine Tatsachenfeststellung; weit mehr wirkt es als ein mächtiges Motiv der Modellbildung für all die Ebenen, die sich partiell oder ganz als Systeme darstellen lassen. Es ist ja kein Zufall, daß diese Möglichkeit auf dem Weg von der Phonologie zur Semantik spürbar abnimmt.

6.

Fazit

Im 19. Jahrhundert war es allein die Schulgrammatik, die das Interesse an synchroner Deskription, grammatischer Theorie, Erprobung und Verbesserung des grammatischen Kategoriensystems aufrecht erhielt (Vesper 1980; Forsgren 1985; Naumann 1986; Erlinger et al. 1989). Aus der Perspektive des 20. Jahrhunderts erscheint die Schulgrammatik in gewissem Sinne als Wegbereiter. Im 20. Jahrhundert verliert sie jedoch die weitgehend eigenständige Tradition der Theoriebildung und wird mit ihren Interessen und Motiven im günstigen Falle zum Korrektiv der “wissenschaftlichen” Grammatik. Vielfach verhält sie sich aber auch einfach selegierend und adaptierend gegenüber den zahlreichen “Angeboten” der wissenschaftlichen Grammatik. Es ist vor allem die zunehmende Verwissenschaftlichung des schulischen Anspruchs, die hochentwickelte Synthesen aus traditioneller Grammatik, psychologischer Lerntheorie, linguistischen Modellen und methodischen Erwägungen erzwingt. Aus dem Zeitalter der Junggrammatiker hat sich beinahe nichts in den Schulgrammatiken der jüngeren Zeit gehalten (vgl. Erlinger 1969). Der junggrammatische Faktenpositivismus bietet keinen Anhalt für Methodisierung, die Laut- und Formengeschichte blieb insgesamt ein Intermezzo an den Schulen. Die Sprachinhaltsforschung (mit ihrer stark nationalisierten Völkerpsychologie) bleibt eine deutsche Sonderentwicklung, deren Spuren sich an den Schulen erstaunlich lange halten. Für Strukturalisten der strengeren Provenienz sind die Arbeiten von Weisgerber und

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Brinkmann (in geringerem Maße auch die von Porzig und Trier) wenig systematisch und spekulativ überhöht. Dennoch sind zahlreiche Detailbeobachtungen aus den Arbeiten der Genannten immer wieder zum Anlaß für genauere Untersuchungen geworden. Dem Schlagwort von der “inneren Form” des Deutschen, die es aufzufinden gelte, entspricht keine strenge Methode, und als Methode reüssierte der Strukturalismus. Die “innere Form” suggeriert zwar den Zusammenhang aller strukturellen Ebenen und Details in einer imaginären Instanz (der “inneren Form” eben), aber diese Instanz bleibt anregend und dunkel. Das ist sie seit Humboldt immer gewesen. Die Rückwirkung der (im engeren Sinne) strukturalistischen Schulen auf die pädagogische Grammatik sind im wesentlichen auf zwei Bereiche beschränkt: die operationalen Analysen, die Glinz für die Schule adaptiert hat (mit einflußreichem Pendant im USamerikanischen Deskriptivismus) und die behavioristisch inspirierten Trainingsverfahren (pattern drill) im Fremdsprachenunterricht. Der Einfluß der generativen Grammatik (in ihrer ersten Phase) auf die Schulen ist eine Episode geblieben, für die es (wissenschafts-) soziologische, aber kaum fachliche Ursachen gibt.

7.

Zitierte Literatur

Bahner, Werner & Neumann, Werner (1985, Hrsg.), Sprachwissenschaftliche Germanistik, ihre Herausbildung und Begründung. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag Bauer, Heinrich (1827⫺1832), Vollständige Grammatik der neuhochdeutschen Sprache, Bd. 1⫺5. Berlin: Reimer [Nachdruck: 21967, Berlin: de Gruyter] Becker, Karl Ferdinand (1824), Die deutsche Wortbildung oder die organische Entwicklung der deutschen Sprache in der Ableitung. Frankfurt/M.: Hermannsche Buchhandlung [Nachdruck: 1990, Hildesheim: Olms] Becker, Karl Ferdinand (1827), Organism der Sprache, als Einleitung zur deutschen Grammatik. Frankfurt/M.: Kettembeil [21841] Bernhardi, A. F. (1801⫺1803), Sprachlehre, Bd. 1⫺2. Berlin: Frölich [Nachdruck: 1973, Hildesheim, New York: Olms] Blatz, Friedrich (1895⫺96), Neuhochdeutsche Grammatik, mit Berücksichtigung der historischen Entwicklung der deutschen Sprache, Bd. 1⫺2. Karlsruhe: Lang

Brinker, Klaus (1972), Konstituentenstrukturgrammatik und operationale Satzgliedanalyse. Frankfurt/ M.: Athenäum Bühler, Karl (1934), Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Fischer [Nachdruck: 1965, Stuttgart: Fischer] Christmann, Hans Helmut (1976), “Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachlehre: Zu ihrem Verhältnis im 18., 19. und 20. Jahrhundert”. Die neueren Sprachen 75, 423⫺437 Coseriu, Eugenio (1975), Leistungen und Grenzen der transformationellen Grammatik. Tübingen: Narr Delbrück, Berthold (1920), Grundlagen der neuhochdeutschen Satzlehre: Ein Schulbuch für Lehrer. Berlin: de Gruyter Drach, Erich (1937), Grundgedanken der deutschen Satzlehre. Frankfurt/M.: Diesterweg Engelien, August (21889), “Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Grammatik sowie der Methodik des grammatischen Unterrichts”. In: Kehr, C. (Hrsg.), Geschichte der Methodik des Volksschulunterrichts, Bd. I. Gotha: Thienemanns Hofbuchhandlung, 252⫺417 Eisenberg, Peter (1976), “Wissenschaftliche Grammatik in der Sprachlehre”. Das Argument 95, 9⫺23 Elffers-van Ketel, Els (1991), The Historiography of Grammatical Concepts: 19th and 20th-Century Changes in the Subject-Predicate Conception and the Problem of Their Historical Reconstruction. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi Erlinger, Hans Dieter (1969), Sprachwissenschaft und Schulgrammatik: Strukturen und Ergebnisse von 1900 bis zur Gegenwart. Düsseldorf: Schwann Erlinger, Hans Dieter & Knobloch, Clemens & Meyer, Hartmut (1989), Satzlehre ⫺ Denkschulung ⫺ Nationalsprache: Deutsche Schulgrammatik zwischen 1800 und 1850. Münster: Nodus Erlinger, Hans Dieter & Knobloch, Clemens (1991), Muttersprachlicher Unterricht im 19. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zu seiner Genese und Institutionalisierung. Tübingen: Niemeyer ˚ ke (1985), Die deutsche SatzgliedForsgren, Kjell-A lehre 1780 bis 1830. Göteborg: Göteborg University Press (Göteborger germanistische Forschungen 29) ˚ ke (1991), Satz, Satzarten, SatzForsgren, Kjell-A glieder: Zur Gestaltung der deutschen traditionellen Grammatik von Karl Ferdinand Becker bis Konrad Duden 1830⫺1880. Münster: Nodus Friend, Jewell A. (21976), Traditional Grammar: A Short Summary. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press Gabelentz, Georg von der (1891), Die Sprachwissenschaft, ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse. Leipzig: Weigel Nachfolger Glinz, Hans (1947), Geschichte und Kritik der Lehre von den Satzgliedern in der deutschen Grammatik. Diss., Bern

12. Historical-comparative grammar Glinz, Hans (1952), Die innere Form des Deutschen: Eine neue deutsche Grammatik. Bern, München: Francke [21961] Glinz, Hans (1968), “Sprachwissenschaftliche Voraussetzungen für die Arbeit des Didaktikers und Pädagogen”. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik Beiheft 7, 189⫺212 Glinz, Hans (71972), Der deutsche Satz: Wortarten und Satzglieder wissenschaftlich gefaßt und dichterisch gedeutet. Düsseldorf: Schwann Glinz, Hans (1973), Textanalyse und Verstehenstheorie, Bd. I. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum Helbig, Gerhard (1974), Geschichte der neueren Sprachwissenschaft. Reinbek: Rowohlt [11970, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut] Hermann, Eduard (1923), Die Sprachwissenschaft in der Schule. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Heynatz, Johann Friedrich (51803), Deutsche Sprachlehre zum Gebrauch der Schulen. Berlin: Mylius [11770] Jellinek, Max Hermann (1913⫺14), Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Grammatik von den Anfängen bis auf Adelung, Bd. 1⫺2. Heidelberg: Winter Jolly, Julius (1874), Schulgrammatik und Sprachwissenschaft: Studien über die Neugestaltung des grammatischen Unterrichts nach den Ergebnissen und der Methode der vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft. München: Ackermann Kern, Franz (21888), Die deutsche Satzlehre: Eine Untersuchung ihrer Grundlagen. Berlin: Nicolai [11883]

117 Knobloch, Clemens (1988), “Wortarten und Satzglieder in der deutschen Grammatik zwischen Adelung und Becker”. In: Knobloch, Clemens, Sprache als Technik der Rede: Beiträge zu einer Linguistik des Sprechens. Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 89⫺130 Lyon, Otto (41904), Deutsche Grammatik und Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. Leipzig: Göschen Naumann, Bernd (1986), Grammatik der deutschen Sprache zwischen 1781 und 1856. Berlin: Schmidt Ries, John (1894), Was ist Syntax? Ein kritischer Versuch. Marburg [Nachdruck: 1967, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft] Ries, John (1931), Was ist ein Satz? Prag: Taussig & Taussig Sütterlin, Ludwig (1900), Die deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart. Leipzig: Voigtländer [21907, 31910, 4 1918, 51923] Sütterlin, Ludwig & Waag, Albert (1905), Deutsche Sprachlehre für höhere Lehranstalten. Leipzig: Engelmann [9 Aufl. bis 1930] Sütterlin, Ludwig (1916), Die neuere Sprachwissenschaft und der deutsche Unterricht. Berlin: Mittler Ungeheuer, Gerold (1969), “Paraphrase und syntaktische Tiefenstruktur”. Folia Linguistica 3, 178⫺27 Vesper, Wilhelm (1980), Deutsche Schulgrammatik im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer Wilmanns, Wilhelm (1869), “Die deutsche Grammatik, Teil 2: Die grammatische Behandlung der deutschen Sprache auf dem Gymnasium”. Zeitschrift für das Gymnasialwesen 23, 801⫺827

Clemens Knobloch, Siegen (Deutschland)

12. Historical-comparative grammar 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Introduction Reconstruction Doublets of two kinds Methodological innovations: suppletion and syncretism Substantive work Strictures Heritage Structuralism, Generative Grammar, etc. References

1.

Introduction

Among the many deep insights of nineteenthcentury ‘historical-comparative’ linguistics a few stand out in particular: (a) the commitment to a uniformitarianism which recognizes no properties and pro-

cesses for past stages of language other than those which are observable in the present; (b) the understanding of the role of contrast, and of loss of contrast as a criterion of innovation, descent, and family relationship; and (c) an appreciation of the double articulation of language into sound structure on the one hand, and morphemics (that is, vocabulary, semantics, syntax, and indeed morphology) on the other. Generally these virtues were more visible in the execution than in theoretical formulation; hence the constant need to scrutinize the former before judging the latter.

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2.


Reconstruction

It was seen that sound-correspondences which recur in pairs of words taken from two ‘related’ languages may be projected back into the shared past where they function as phonological entities of the common ancestor language ⫺ an operation known as reconstruction by the ‘comparative’ method (in the technically restricted sense of that term). In roughly the same syllabic environment ⫺ in other words: in ‘contrast’ with one another ⫺ an English /d/ answers a German /d/ in Bruder ‘brother’, weder ‘whether (> neither …)’ etc., but a German /t/ in Mutter ‘mother’, Wetter ‘weather’ etc. ‘Sound-changes’ ⫺ i.e. replacements along a line of descent such that they can be stated in purely phonological terms without recourse to morph boundaries ⫺ can merge phonemes but cannot split them (except insofar as some mergers will entail a concurrent split) as this would violate the ‘regularity’ principle implied in their definition. It is therefore agreed that the common (‘West-Germanic’) ancestor of English and German was in this detail like German, having some kind of distinction which in English was merged out of existence. If of two languages thus ‘compared’ one is found never to merge a contrast it is itself the ancestor, or earlier stage, of the other. Predictably, its texts will belong to an earlier period in time than those of its descendant. If Latin and Italian, or Old English and Modern English, were matched in this way, Latin and Old English would turn out to be, or nearly to be, the respective ancestors.

3.

Doublets of two kinds

However, beyond the obvious requirement that they be taken from words that have identical or relatable meanings from language to language, sound-correspondences need an additional control: to enter into the calculus just sketched, they must be specified by their very recurrence and by nothing else. The two West Germanic dentals are a case in point, since Bruder and weder, Mutter and Wetter are semantically, i.e., morphemically unrelated (the homonymy, in some forms of modern English, between whether and weather being accidental). Likewise, the substitutions of /r/ for Old English /hr/ as in hring ‘ring’, as well as for /r/ and for /wr/ [cp. wring] being phonologically statable, are all three true ‘sound-changes’ and thus consti-

tute, in the end, a threefold merger. At the other, equally pure extreme, (wash)ed for the older (wash)en, say (which changed its meaning) for the archaic queath (cp. quoth), uncle (a loanword from French which replaced the older and now obsolete eme) have no recurrent phonological relationship with the forms they replace. Other examples, however, occupy an intermediate position: in the history of English /f/ > /f/ recurs in hoofs, oafs, and wharfs, /rs/ > /ss/ in bass (the fish) and ass ‘buttocks’. These replacements do contrast with /f/ > /v/ (wives) and /rs/ > /rs/ (worse). But there are also doublets like wharfs/ wharves and ass/arse, with both replacements existing side by side; their presence leads us to classify, by extension, oafs as an analogic generalization (inasmuch as wharfs and wharves differ in the same way as allomorphs do: wife and wive- [in wive-s]), and bass as the result of a multiplicity of channels of transmission ⫺ that is, as a dialect borrowing in either one of two directions (inasmuch as ass and arse differ in a way not duplicated in any pairs of allomorphs). But for these doublets there would be a temptation to reconstruct two different ancestral consonantal entities to account for hoofs against wives, or for bass against coarse, along the lines of brother/ Bruder vs. weather/Wetter or hring vs. wring (see Hoenigswald 1983). This supplements a state of affairs marked by a curiously restricted historical-comparative view of morphology which prevailed at the turn of the twentieth century and which still persists by and large because it has a foundation of sorts. It is fair to say that the practitioners’ interest had been riveted on reconstruction. Since this made ‘sound-change’ paramount, it was natural, when it came to morphemics, to concentrate on those processes which, precisely because they have a background of sound-change in their own prehistory, carry certain phonological properties as well and therefore need delimitation. They were the exchanges of alternating (‘morphophonemic’) allomorphs also known as analogic change (see also Art. 147); and the competition between channels of transmission ⫺ that is, dialect borrowing in whichever direction. With luck, and in principle, both are accessible through the analysis of doublets. Whatever is true of the latter, the first, analogic change, has been a major topic in morphology since the ‘irregularities’ dear to school grammar. Even some modern textbooks on historical linguistics treat little else

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12. Historical-comparative grammar

under the head of ‘morphological change’. They will point out, as an interesting typological consequence, isolating languages ‘without a morphology’ are unpromising candidates for the comparative method ⫺ not because the power of the latter is mysteriously restricted to other structural types but because they fail to offer the kind of evidence which makes for interesting results. Aside from those processes in which phonological matters are involved in one way or another, the retrieval of morphological structures by something resembling the comparative method or by an extension of the comparative method is not possible. ‘Reconstruction’ of morphemes and their morphs, and of the semantic and syntactic constructs they form is not the triangulation and inference that characterizes the comparative method. It is much closer to ‘comparison’ in the common-sense acceptation of this term where the collection of data and their examination for similarities and differences is the aim.

4.

Methodological innovations: suppletion and syncretism

Not unlike the discovery of doublets to determine the multiplicity of channels of transmission which serves to give bass and barse their proper place in the comparative procedure (see 2), a second formal relation was found which has the specious appearance of a ‘comparative’ procedure functioning on the morphemic level. It consists in suppletion (cf. Art. 52), that is in the kind of allomorphic diversification where co-allomorphs are not characterized by recurrent phonemic differences or morphophonemes (as they are in loaf, loav-; wolf, wolv-; shelf, shelv- etc.) but are unique (go, wen-), and exclusively identified by their morphemically complementary distribution. In general, while recurrent morphophonemes allow the internal reconstruction of sound changes (/f/ > /v/), suppletive allomorphs are sometimes due to syncretism or the merging of semantic categories that have a morphologically defined place in paradigms (see Art. 66). Thus, the number of Indo-European cases was reduced in some descendant languages. In simplified formulation, what happened is that some case endings which had been in contrast survived but developed a complementary distribution conditioned by the stem classes (‘declensions’) to which they were added. Thus, the locative

merged with the dative into the Greek ‘dative’ and with the ablative into the Latin ‘ablative’ (the confusing use of the same labels for entities differing in time, language, and function should not deceive anyone). Greek ‘datives’ had former locative endings in some declensions and former dative endings in others, while Latin ‘ablatives’ had earlier locative endings in some declensions and earlier ablative endings in others. This makes for an algorithm of morphemic reconstruction superficially reminiscent of the application of the comparative method to the phonological reconstruction of morph shapes (see 2): the Latin/Greek correspondences examined here for complementarity are, as it were, ‘Ablative’/‘Dative’ and ‘Dative’/‘Dative’. Since they occur in contrasting surroundings, they testify to two separate cases, their distinctness preserved in Latin whereas Greek has merged it. Semantic discrimination between different ‘datives’ which survive in traditional Greek case syntax are needed to clinch the argument, since not all suppletive allomorphy has by any means a background of syncretism. Aside from its function as a requirement for reconstruction, this link between inflectional morphology and syntactic semantics has, however, not been adequately explored. Of these phenomena, doublets pointing either to analogical replacement or to borrowing, and suppletivity ties to syncretism, the latter is more strictly ‘morphological’ in the sense that it concerns paradigms more directly. Both build on anomalies which remain precarious because they are far from being universally present in paradigms. Neither one may be said to rival, however remotely, the power and penetration of the comparative method as it operates in phonology. The socalled ‘comparative method’ (which is really a phonology-based technique to tell innovation from retention) infers, whereas morphemic ‘comparison’, in keeping with ordinary usage, essentially collects and classifies.

5.

Substantive work

Doublets (of two kinds) and syncretistic suppletion are new concepts only insofar as they are newly discussed ⫺ a gain, perhaps, but not at all an indication that their execution had to await their formulation. True progress, refinement, and even invention happen as substantive work is done and as the habits

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that such work generates become second nature. Only then systematization follows, necessary as it is both in itself and as a source of guidance through the phenomena.

6.

Strictures

Here two warnings must be sounded. First, as more and more languages from all over the world have become known, the very concept of morphology has begun to look typologically parochial. In contrast to the truly universal characteristic of double articulation, morphology is not as sharply set off from syntax (and semantics) as is phonology from everything outside phonology, including syntax (and semantics). To some observers its traditional claim to autonomy smacks of simple glottocentrism. Secondly, almost all morphological concerns have suffered from a fatal flaw in their phonological underpinnings, synchronic as well as diachronic: stress morphemes (like those of English) and intonations, and their morphological attributes have practically gone unexplored though they are known to constitute the very nucleus of speech utterance. The inkhorn habit of ignoring everything not visible on the written page even when its role is paramount has assuredly cast a pall over the entire linguistic enterprise, historical-comparative morphology not excluded.

7.

Heritage

These and other uncertainties have not been able to interfere with the active and productive (if unevenly balanced) pursuit of substantive work. We shall therefore proceed with a selective survey of such historicalcomparative studies of systematic standing and dimensions as deal specifically with derivational or inflectional morphology, as these terms are still commonly understood. Where theoretical issues of any depth have come to the fore we shall not hesitate to digress and to attempt to sketch them briefly. Characteristically, the twentieth century opened with Ferdinand Sommer’s Latin Phonology and Morphology of 1902 (second edition of 1913/14, accompanied by a small volume of Critical Notes). The work could not have been more instructive: it is traditional in attitude but materially critical and independent. There is an expository advantage in

the presentation: linguistic history, even where it is in fact reconstructed rather than observed, is presented as narrative (‘A went to B’) and not as inference (‘we conclude from the data that A went to B’). To be sure, the data are supplied, and with the greatest mastery at that; but the reasoning remains hidden, at least as long as no polemical necessity pushes author and reader toward methodology. Once introduced to the Formenlehre (morphology) part, we are struck by the absence of stem-formation. A brief and unavoidable, hence impatient, introductory disquisition refers to derivation and inflection but does not systematically discuss the distinction. Compounds (not, to be sure, very important in Latin) are not even mentioned. Thus, except for tradition-sanctioned oddities like adjective gradation, gender, and nonfinite verb forms, for the derivational aspects of the stems that underlie the various ‘declensions’ and ‘conjugations’, and for histories where derivations have changed their status and turned into something like inflections (e.g. collectives and neuters plural), the field of morphology remains limited to an enumeration of inflectional paradigms for nouns, pronouns, and verbs, and the ‘comparative’ and even more the ‘internal’ reconstruction of the inflectional suffixes the lucidity of which forces like syncretism and conditioned sound-change had obscured. Not surprisingly, there are constant cross-references to the phonological section. To stay with Latin (an area both abundantly documented and representative), Sommer’s work was followed by others, among which Ernout’s Historical Morphology of Latin (31974) and Kent’s Forms of Latin (1946), both entirely devoted to morphology. It is significant that the latter, while adhering to the pattern just described in even more outspoken form, notes that the “stem formation of nouns and adjectives has been excluded; this topic would have occupied more space than can be […] apportioned to it, and has already been treated in admirable detail by Manu Leumann […]”. In fact, Leumann’s role in this century was crucial. To do justice to it it is necessary to take a giant step back in history and consider the influence of the Indian grammarians. Known only to the Sanskritists among nineteenth century linguists, and not appreciated by all, their approach to morphology involved no slight to stem-formation; on the contrary, its consistency, explicitness, and


completeness left nothing to be desired as concerns derivation as well as inflection (and allomorphy in both). While historical-comparative linguists made it their business to interpret the synchronically conceived Indian grammar from a quite different point of view ⫺ namely the historical-comparative one ⫺ there was no uncertainty about the extent and the limits of coverage as there was in the European tradition. While the details of scholarly history are not clear, it was, therefore, probably no accident that Albert Debrunner, the author of the thousand-page volume of Jacob Wackernagel’s Sanskrit Grammar which dealt with derivational noun suffixation (Debrunner 1954; Wackernagel’s own treatment of noun composition had appeared in 1905; of noun inflection [with A. Debrunner] in 1929⫺1930) was the very scholar who had published a book on Greek Word Formation (which included a treatment of compounds) in 1917. The brief preface to that work well expresses the author’s sense of mission at an interesting juncture in the history of research. In 1933 Pierre Chantraine’s rich Noun formation in Ancient Greek including compounds) followed, and there were at that time other works in the same, semi-taxonomic vein, such as Kluge’s Formation of Noun Stems in the Old Germanic Dialects (1926). The originality of Leumann and his school (notably E. Risch, see 8) lay in their thoroughly historical view of the ‘mechanics’ (so called by Leumann in the title of a famous article, Leumann 1927) of linguistic change as it can be studied with particular profit in semantics and in word-formation (perhaps because of the particular aspect which the productivity of neologisms assumes in languages that are built like the more anciently attested forms of Indo-European).

8.

Structuralism, Generative Grammar etc.

Some of the more recent activity has had a twofold aspect. There has been (1) great activity of the kind that justifies itself by the quality and coherence of its results but shuns methodological discussion. New grammars have either offered instructive restatement in the light of shifted interests or opened up entirely new fields as data have increased spectacularly and a wealth of hitherto unknown or untreated evidence is now accessible. At

121 the same time, principles (2) have by no means been neglected. In the earlier part of the century, theoretical disquisitions had a definitely ‘structuralist’ cast ⫺ something that is not surprising if it is realized that the structuralist temper was little more than the consequence of the shift of research interest away from diachronic and toward synchronic thinking, and that diachronic linguistics had always had a distinct, if hidden ‘structuralist’ foundation which needed only spelling out. The disavowal of the structuralist orthodoxy in more recent years has been more drastic, however. It is not easy to characterize the nature of the current debate. Except for what is latent in the transformational and generative tradition inaugurated by Zellig S. Harris and Noam A. Chomsky, emphasis has, for instance, been rather remote from the question of what phenomena are likely to represent special cases of other, wider phenomena, their relationship often being disguised by a merely qualitative and insufficiently severe approach. It is, therefore, difficult to justify the preference accorded to certain topics but withheld from others. A few of the favored ones in this eclectic accumulation have indeed had a marked bearing on morphology. The recognition of language universals and of typological identities has relied heavily on morphological criteria, with the possibility of recognizing universals of morphological history never far away. ‘Analogy’, a strongly morphological concept with ramifications in diachronic phonology and semantics, has had the attention first of Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1949) and Witold Manćzak (1958), and then of Paul Kiparsky (1971), K.-H. Best (1973), and of Raimo Anttila (1977) ⫺ not so much in terms of a taxonomy of allomorph exchanges, the essence of ‘analogic change’, as rather with an eye on predictability. (As always and everywhere, it should be kept in mind that comprehensive textbooks and handbooks like Sturtevant 1947; Bloomfield 1933; Lehmann 1973; Anttila 1972; Bynon 1977; Hock 1986 and 1996; and Szemereńyi 1989 have made their often weighty, if sometimes controversial contributions). Those scholars championing superfamilies of languages (Nostratic, Amerind, etc.) ⫺ Joseph H. Greenberg (especially Greenberg 1987) and others ⫺ have also consistently operated with arguments from morphological typology, partly in order to make up for the limitations inherent in the phonologically based comparative method at

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the traditional center of the creation of filiations. More recently, ‘grammaticalization’ has attracted interest (cf. also Art. 145). This concept has its roots in Antoine Meillet’s early 20th-century informal but acute observation on the typical provenience of (bound) morphemes with grammatical meanings from morphs with lexically full-fledged semantics. On the substantive side, mid-century opens with Benveniste (1948) ⫺ ostensibly the sequel to Benveniste (1935) ⫺, Kuryłowicz (1964) and Watkins (1969) which mark the new departure whereby the Anatolian discoveries and much else that was new became boldly and authoritatively synthesized (see also Adrados 1963). An important event took place in 1975 as the papers read at the 5. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, devoted to inflection and word-formation were published (Rix 1975, ed.). Jarceva (1977, ed.) acquainted an incompletely informed scholarly community with Soviet scholarship. In 1978, Gernot Schmidt’s work on stem formation and inflection of the indoEuropean personal pronouns appeared, a monograph conspicuous for its methodological concerns, and in 1979 Wolfram Euler explored Indoiranian-Greek isoglosses in the domain of noun derivation. Perhaps this is the place to mention with the emphasis it deserves the section on Wortlehre in the second volume of the Bibliography of Uralian Linguistics, edited by Wolfgang Schlachter and Gerhard Ganschow (1979⫺). Norbert Oettinger devoted a signal effort to the Stem formation of the Hittite verb (Oettinger 1979). Gert Klingenschmitt’s work on the Old Armenian verb (Klingenschmitt 1982) is a contribution to Indo-European verb morphology. Hans von Kamptz had his earlier dissertation on personal names in Homer published in 1982; this is a work which belongs with Ernst Risch’s book on word formation of the Homeric language which had appeared in 1973 in a greatly revised second edition (Risch 21974 [11937]). Lipka & Günther (1981, eds.) is a useful collection of articles which extends from 1896 to 1970. In 1982 J. Haudry presented his ideas on the prehistory of Indo-European noun inflection. Wolfgang U. Wurzel wrote on inflectional morphology and naturalness in 1984, and the year 1985 saw the publication of Joan Bybee’s Morphology ⫺ with Peter H. Matthews’s Morphology of 1974, all works of high (if indirect) relevance for the historical concept of producti-

vity (see also Art. 33). Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology (Dressler et al. 1987) contains four articles by Wolfgang U. Dressler, Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl, and Wolfgang U. Wurzel, with considerable emphasis on inflection and markedness (especially under Mayerthaler’s hands) and their diachrony. Among the monographs ⫺ regrettably few in number ⫺ Roger D. Woodard’s study, entitled On Interpreting Morphological Change the Greek Reflexive Pronoun of 1990 stands out. A major achievement is Y. Duhoux’s work on the Ancient Greek verb (Duhoux 1992) which aims to combine synchronic and diachronic description. Rolf Bergmann’s reverse morphological dictionary of Old High German (1991) is an intriguing undertaking following an innovative plan. Wolfram Euler deals with the intersection of mood and tense in his book on modal aorist formations and their relics in the old European languages (Euler 1992). The articles assembled in Language Typology 1988, subtitled Typological Models in Reconstruction (Lehmann & Hewitt 1991, eds.) touch the problem of reconstruction of morphology more than once.

9.

References

Adrados, Francisco Rodriguez (1963), Evolucioń y estructura del verbo indoeuropeo. Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija Anttila, Raimo (1972), An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. New York: Macmillan; Toronto: Coller-Macmillan Anttila, Raimo (1977), Analogy. The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton (State-of-the-Art Reports 10) Benveniste, E´mile (1935), Origines de la formation des noms en indo-europeén. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve Benveniste, E´mile (1948), Noms d’agent et noms d’action en indo-europeén. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve Bergmann, Rolf (1991), Rückläufiges morphologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen: Auf der Grundlage des “Althochdeutschen Wörterbuchs” von Rudolf Schützeichel. Tübingen: Niemeyer Best, K[arl]-H[einz] (1973), Probleme der Analogieforschung. München: Hueber (Commentationes Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae 6) Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9)


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Bynon, Theodora (1977), Historical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Kamptz, Hans von (1982), Homerische Personennamen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Chantraine, Pierre (1933), Formation des noms en grec ancien. Paris: Champion

Kent, Roland G. (1946), The Forms of Latin. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America

Debrunner, Albert (1917), Griechische Wortbildungslehre. Heidelberg: Winter

Kiparsky, Paul (1971), “Historical Linguistics”. In: Dingwall, William O. (ed.), A Survey of Linguistic Science. College Park: University of Maryland Linguistics Program, 576⫺649

Debrunner, Albert (1954), Die Nominalsuffixe. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht [In: Jacob Wackernagel (ed.), Altindische Grammatik, Vol. II.2] Debrunner, Albert & Wackernagel, Jacob (1929⫺ 1930), Nominalflexion ⫺ Zahlwort ⫺ Pronomen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht [In: Jacob Wackernagel (ed.), Altindische Grammatik, Vol. III] Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Mayerthaler, Willi & Panagl, Oswald & Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1987), Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam, New York: Benjamins (Studies in Language, Companion Series 10) Duhoux, Yves (1992), Le verbe grec ancien: E´le´ments de morphologie et de syntaxe historiques: Louvain-La-Neuve: Peeters (Bibliothe`que des Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain 61) Ernout, Alfred (31974), Morphologie historique du latin. Paris: Klincksieck [11914] Euler, Wolfram (1979), Indoiranisch-griechische Gemeinsamkeiten der Nominalbildung und deren indogermanische Grundlagen. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 30) Euler, Wolfram (1992), Modale Aoristbildungen und ihre Relikte in den alteuropäischen Sprachen. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck (Vorträge und Kleinere Schriften 55) Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987), Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press Haudry, Jean (1982), Pre´histoire de la flexion nominale indo-europeénne. Lyon: Institut d’e´tudes indoeuropeénnes de l’universite´ Jean Moulin [Lyon III] Hock, Hans Henrich (1986), Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 34) Hock, Hans Henrich & Joseph, Brian (1996), Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 33) Hoenigswald, Henry M. (1983), “Doublets”. In: Agard, F. et al. (ed.), Essays in Honor of Charles F. Hockett. Leiden: Brill (Cornell Linguistic Contributions 4), 167⫺171 Jarceva, Viktoria N. (1977, ed.), Istorikotipologicˇeskaja morfologija germanskich jazykov: Kategoria glagola. Moskva: Nauka

Klingenschmitt, Gert (1982), Das altarmenische Verbum. Wiesbaden: Reichert Kluge, Friedrich (1926), Nominale Stammbildungslehre der altgermanischen Dialekte, bearbeitet von L. Sütterlin und Ernst Ochs. Halle: Francke Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1949), “La nature des proce`s dits ‘analogiques’”. Acta Linguistica 5, 15⫺37 [reprinted in: Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1960), Esquisses linguistiques. Wrocław, Krako´w: Zaklad Narodowy Imienia Ossolin´skich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk [⫽ Prace Je˛zykoznawcze 19], 66⫺86] Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1964), The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Winter Lehmann, Winfred P. (21973), Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. New York etc.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston [11966] Lehmann, Winfred P. & Hewitt, Helen-Jo Jakusz (1991, eds.), Language Typology 1968: Typological Models in Reconstruction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Leumann, Manu (1927), “Zum Mechanismus des Bedeutungswandels”. Indogermanische Forschungen 14, 105⫺118 [reprinted in (1959) Kleine Schriften. Zürich, Stuttgart: Artemis, 286⫺295] Leumann, Manu (1977), Lateinische Laut- und Formenlehre [reprint of the 5th ed., 1926⫺1928]. München: Beck Lipka, Leonhard & Günther, Hartmut (1981, eds.), Wortbildung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Wege der Forschung 564) Manćzak, Witold (1958), “Tendences geńe´rales des changements analogiques”. Lingua 7, 298⫺325, 387⫺420 Matthews, Peter H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press Oettinger, Norbert (1979), Stammbildung des hethitischen Verbums. Nürnberg: Hans-Carl Verlag (Erlanger Beiträge zur Sprach- und Kunstwissenschaft 64) Risch, Ernst (21974), Wortbildung der homerischen Sprache. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter [11937] Rix, Helmut (1975, ed.), Flexion und Wortbildung: Akten der 5. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden: Reichert Schlachter, Wolfgang & Ganschow, Gerhard, (1979⫺, eds.), “Wortlehre”. In: Bibliographie der uralischen Sprachwissenschaft, Vol. II. München: Fink

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Schmidt, Gernot (1978), Stammbildung und Flexion der indogermanischen Personalpronomina. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Sommer, Ferdinand (1902), Handbuch der lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre. Heidelberg: Winter [2nd ed. (1913/14) accompanied by Kritische Erläuterungen (1977), Vol. I, ed. by Raimund Pfister; 4th rev. ed.] Sturtevant, Edgar H. (1947), An Introduction to Linguistic Science. New Haven: Yale Szemereńyi, Oswald (31989), Einführung in die Sprachwissenschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Wackernagel, Jacob (1905), Einleitung zur Wortlehre: Nominalkomposition. Göttingen: Van-

denhoeck & Ruprecht [In: Wackernagel, Jacob (21957, ed.), Altindische Grammatik, Vol. II.1] Watkins, Calvert (1969), Geschichte der indogermanischen Verbalflexion. Heidelberg: Winter (Indogermanische Grammatik III,1) Woodard, Roger D. (1990), On Interpreting Morphological Change: the Greek Reflexive Pronoun. Amsterdam: Gieben Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: AkademieVerlag (Studia Grammatica 21)

Henry M. Hoenigswald, Swarthmore/PA (U.S.A.)

13. Überblick: die europäische Tradition Redaktioneller Hinweis: Aus terminlich-technischen Gründen erscheint Art. 13 nicht. Dieser Artikel war als Einführung zu den Art. 14⫺18 vorgesehen. Er sollte einen Abriß der europäischen Abhandlungen zur Morphologie im 20. Jh. bieten, einschließlich des Einflusses der europäischen Ideen in den USA, z. B. durch das Werk von Roman Jakobson. Behandelt werden sollten die allgemeinen Tendenzen der morphologischen Studien in verschiedenen Regionen Europas, parallele Entwicklungen und Einflüsse zwischen den verschiedenen Regionen und Denkschulen, sowie deren politischer Hintergrund (z. B. die Entstehung neuer Nationalstaaten) und kultureller Kontext (z. B. die Rolle der Akademien, Universitäten, intellektuellen Kreise usw.). Die in Art. 14 (Osteuropa), 15 (Frankreich und Schweiz), 16 (Skandinavien), 17 (Großbritannien), 18 (Deutschland), und 19 (Niederlande) nicht behandelten Regionen Europas sollten in Art. 13 ausführlicher berücksichtigt werden, z. B. die Mittelmeerländer.

13. Survey: the European tradition Editorial note: Article 13 had to be left out due to time-related and technical constraints. This article was supposed to serve as an introduction to Art. 14⫺18, providing an overall picture of 20th century European work in morphology, as well as an outline of the influence of European ideas in the USA (e. g. Roman Jakobson’s work). Topics to be considered included general tendencies in morphological studies in different areas, and parallel developments and influences between the various regions and schools of thought. In addition, a sketch of the political background (e. g. the emergence of new nation states) and the cultural context (e. g. the role of academies, universities, learned societies etc.) of these approaches was supposed to be included. The regions not covered in Art. 14 (East Europe), 15 (France and Switzerland), 16 (Scandinavia), 17 (Britain), 18 (Germany), and 19 (The Netherlands) were supposed to be considered in Art. 13 in greater detail, e. g. the Mediterranean countries.

14. Osteuropa

125

14. Osteuropa 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Einleitung Rußland und Sowjetunion Prager Schule Polen Weiterführende Literaturhinweise Zitierte Literatur

1.

Einleitung

Gegenstand der vorliegenden Darstellung sind wichtige Etappen, Personen, Werke und Schulen, die für die Entwicklung der Morphologie in Osteuropa in den letzten einhundert Jahren bestimmend gewesen sind. Es versteht sich, daß im Rahmen eines begrenzten Überblickes kein Versuch unternommen werden kann, irgendeine Art von Vollständigkeit zu erreichen. Weder können alle Beiträge mit allgemeineren Ausführungen zur Morphologie behandelt werden, noch können alle Länder Osteuropas gleichermaßen berücksichtigt werden. Eine weitere Einschränkung ist spezifischer Natur: von Autoren, die aus dem Ostblock in den Westen emigriert sind und ihre Tätigkeit in Europa oder Amerika fortgesetzt haben, werden die in der Emigration erschienenen Werke in dem vorliegenden Artikel nicht behandelt, um das geographische Ordnungsprinzip nicht zu unterlaufen. ⫺ Die Namen russischer Autoren wurden im vorliegenden Artikel bei der ersten Nennung mit einem Betonungszeichen versehen.

2.

Rußland und Sowjetunion

Den Beginn der russischen Grammatikschreibung markiert traditionell Michail Lomono´sovs Reußische Grammatik von 1755. Für diese Zeit ist noch die Orientierung an dem grammatischen Modell der antiken Sprachen charakteristisch, einem Vorbild, das nur langsam zugunsten einer der Gegenwartssprache enger angepaßten Beschreibung überwunden wird (zu einem wichtigen Teilgebiet vgl. Biedermann 1978). Die erste große historische Grammatik des Russischen wird von Fe¨dor Buslaév (1858) verfaßt. Ihm gebührt das Verdienst, die Grenze zwischen Morphologie ⫺ mit Formenbildung und Wortbildung ⫺ und Syntax ⫺ mit Bedeutung und Gebrauch der Wortformen ⫺ genauer gezogen zu haben als bislang üblich. Die Kategorien der Grammatik identifiziert er freilich noch mit Katego-

rien der Logik, besonders im Bereich der Syntax. Die Tradition der ausdrucksorientierten Sprachwissenschaft setzt N. P. Nekra´sov (1865) fort, den Van Schooneveld (1963: 25) einen “Vorläufer der Prager Schule” nennt. Seine Behandlung der Flexionsformen zeigt, daß es ihm darum geht, Korrelationen zwischen Ausdruck und Inhalt herzustellen: Sind die Ausdrucksmittel verschieden, so signalisieren sie das Vorliegen einer anderen Bedeutung. Fälle wie die komplementäre Distribution von Allomorphen werden eher intuitiv gehandhabt und noch nicht expliziert. Allen Wörtern werden in dieser Analyse gleich viele grammatische Bedeutungen zugeschrieben, auch wenn sich jeweils ein Teil homophoner Endungen bedient. Für eine zweite, stärker semantisch orientierte Richtung steht vor allem A. A. Potebnja´ (1874⫺1941), der auch als der eigentliche Vertreter des sprachwissenschaftlichen Psychologismus in Rußland gilt. Da er von dem aktuellen Gebrauch der Wortformen in Texten ausgeht, sieht er sich außerstande, überhaupt ein einheitliches Formensystem für alle Wörter zu postulieren: Wörter haben danach ⫺ je nach Deklinationsklasse ⫺ eine verschiedene Zahl von Kasus. Potebnja hat auf die Entwicklung der russischen Sprachwissenschaft einen großen Einfluß gehabt, mit seiner Zeichentheorie unter anderem auf die russischen Formalisten und Theoretiker der Poetischen Sprache Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. In methodischer Hinsicht ist mit dieser Richtung im Bereich der Morphologie aber kein Fortschritt verknüpft. Die erste Strömung, die als Schule bezeichnet werden darf, die auch über die Grenzen des Landes hinaus wirkte, entstand am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts durch das Wirken von Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (russ. Ivan Aleksandrovicˇ Bodue˙n de Kurtene˙), eines gebürtigen Polen, der nacheinander in Kazan’, Jur’ev (Tartu), Krakau und Petersburg lehrte, bevor er nach der Oktoberrevolution für seine letzten Lebensjahre nach Polen (Warschau) zurückkehrte. Baudouin gilt als Begründer der sog. “Kazaner Schule”, die in der Petersburger (Leningrader) Schule ihre Fortsetzung fand. Baudouin prägte 1881 den Begriff Morphem als Abstraktion von Stamm und Affix. Die Sprache betrachtete er ⫺ in deutlicher Kritik an junggrammatischen An-

126


sätzen ⫺ als psychosoziale Erscheinung und entwickelte eine erste Vorstellung davon, daß sie ein System von Relationen darstelle und Synchronie und Diachronie zu trennen seien (ohne diese Termini schon benutzt zu haben). Bekannt geworden ist er vornehmlich mit seinen Arbeiten auf dem Gebiet der morphonologischen Alternationen, den sog. “beweglichen Elementen” des Morphems, einem für die slawischen Sprachen besonders charakteristischen Bereich. Mit seinen Auffassungen hat er die Grundlage für die spätere Ausarbeitung der Morphonologie in der Prager Schule gelegt, deren Vertreter ja bekanntlich z. T. aus Petersburg stammten. Die Frage, wie man Alternationen behandelt, hat natürlich einen ummittelbaren Bezug zur morphologischen Ebene: Alternationen sind ja nichts anderes als eine Systematisierung des Verhältnisses von Allomorphen zueinander, eben von einem anderen Gesichtspunkt aus. Bis heute unterscheiden sich die phonologischen Schulen in Rußland in diesem Punkte: die Leningrader Schule notiert Morphe lautnah, woraus sich auf morphonologischer Ebene automatisch die Existenz von Alternationen ergibt; die Moskauer phonologische Schule notiert Morphe abstrakter und behandelt damit die Alternationen als subphonematische Erscheinungen (eine wichtige neuere Arbeit ist z. B. der Aufsatz von Gvo´zdev (1960). Der vielleicht bekannteste Schüler Baudouins ist L. V. Sˇcˇerba, der in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Petersburg wirkte. Seine Interessen lagen primär in der Phonologie (er ist der Gründer der Leningrader Phonologischen Schule) und in der Lexikologie, auch wenn seine Arbeit zu den Wortarten (Sˇcˇe´rba 1928) als Klassiker gilt ⫺ ein Ruf, den sie bei genauerer Betrachtung nicht verdient; verfaßt wurde sie in ausdrücklicher Auseinandersetzung mit der Moskauer Formalen Schule. Morphologisch interessiert war hingegen V. A. Bogoro´dickij, ein Kazaner Schüler Baudouins. Er zeigte u. a. die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten auf, wie sich die Morphemgrenzen in einem Wort durch Analogien, Umdeutungen und Vereinfachungen im Laufe der Zeit verändern können (vgl. Bogorodickij 1901). Diesen Prozeß nannte er pererazlozˇenie ‘Umgliederung’. Die Morphologie stand jedoch in der Kazaner Schule nicht wirklich im Vordergrund des Interesses, und wenn, dann wurde sie eher historisch betrieben. Zu einer bedeutenden methodenorientierten Weiterentwicklung der Morphologie kommt es in dieser Schule

nicht, auch wenn N. V. Krusˇe´vskij, einer der Schüler Baudouins in Kazan’, die de Saussuresche Einteilung in paradigmatische und syntagmatische Relationen vorwegnimmt. Gleichzeitig mit Baudouin bildete sich in Moskau durch das Wirken des berühmten Indogermanisten F. F. Fortuna´tov die sog. Moskauer oder Formale Schule der Linguistik heraus. Sie war, wie ihr Name schon andeutet, viel stärker an der Ausdrucksseite der Sprache und entsprechenden Methoden ihrer Analyse interessiert (und darf nicht mit der Moskauer Phonologischen Schule verwechselt werden). Mit dieser Position richtete sie sich ausdrücklich gegen den Psychologismus der damaligen Junggrammatiker. Fortunatov, der bei einem längeren Auslandsaufenthalt in Deutschland, England und Frankreich gewesen war, entwickelte in seinen Vorlesungen, u. a. zur historisch-vergleichenden und indogermanischen Sprachwissenschaft (die z. T. erst viel später, 1956, erstmals im Druck erschienen) wesentliche Vorstellungen und Methoden der Sprachwissenschaft weiter. Die Grammatik einer Sprache gliedert sich nach Fortunatov in “Morphologie (oder Etymologie) und Syntax” (Fortunatov 1956: 192). Den Morphembegriff selbst benutzt er noch nicht. Er unterscheidet einen beschreibenden von einem historischen Zugang zur Sprache (d. h. Synchronie und Diachronie), sieht die Sprache als ein System, kennt den Zeichenbegriff, trennt Wortformen in Stamm und Affixe (Fortunatov 1956: 140), spricht hinsichtlich der Stämme von abgeleiteten und nichtabgeleiteten, entwickelt den Begriff des Nullmorphems (Fortunatov 1956: 146), erkennt analytische Wortformen als “deskriptive Formen” eines Wortes an (Fortunatov 1956: 179) und führt die Unterscheidung von Formenbildung und Wortbildung ein (Fortunatov 1956: 155), wenn auch noch nicht mit der gleichen Grenzziehung wie heute ⫺ den Plural der Substantive z. B. zählt er wegen seiner nominativen Bedeutung zur Wortbildung. Wörter werden auf der Grundlage ihrer Ausdrucksmittel in grammatische Klassen eingeteilt und die Kategorien der Grammatik ausdrücklich gegen logische Kategorien abgesetzt. Eine “Form” zu haben, bedeutet bei Fortunatov u. a., daß ein Wort grammatische Kategorien ausdrückt, seine Ausdrucksseite also segmentierbar ist in einem Stamm und in Affixe. Wenn er Wörter “formal” klassifiziert, dann ist dies eine Klassifikation auf der Grundlage der jeweils ausgedrückten gram-

14. Osteuropa

matischen Kategorien. Erst in der z. T. weniger wohlmeinenden Sekundärliteratur ist Fortunatovs Vorgehen in einem negativen Sinne als “formalistisch” abqualifiziert worden, was sie in Wirklichkeit nicht ist (zu einer kritischen Betrachtung der Moskauer Schule vgl. jedoch Gasparov 1970, zu seinem eigenen Ansatz Gasparov 1975). Auf Fortunatovs Vorlesung zur Vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft von 1891/92 geht seine bekannte Wortdefinition zurück: „Jeder Sprachlaut, der in der Sprache eine Bedeutung hat, die von anderen Lauten, die Wörter sind, abgegrenzt ist, ist (auch) ein Wort” (Fortunatov 1956: 132). Dies scheint zunächst etwas unklar formuliert, doch das erläuternde Beispiel ist die russ. Konjunktion a ‘aber, und’, bevor Fortunatov zu längeren Wörtern übergeht. Bei ihnen weist er als Kriterium darauf hin, daß sie nicht oder nur unter Verlust ihrer Bedeutungen zerlegbar seien (Fortunatov 1956: 132). Die wesentlichen Elemente der üblichen Morphemdefinitionen sind hier bereits erkennbar, ebenso der Gedanke des Kontrastes mit anderen, gleichartigen Elementen des Systems. Zu den Schülern Fortunatovs gehörten u. a. A. A. Sˇaćhmatov, D. N. Usˇako´v, N. N. Durnovo´, A. M. Pesˇko´vskij, M. N. Petersoń, G. O. Vinoku´r u. a. ⫺ diese Schule dominierte die russische Sprachwissenschaft in den 20er Jahren eindeutig, wobei die Spannbreite der Interessen auch die Syntax und die Lexikologie mit einschloß. Mit ihren Ideen wirkte sie auf die Prager Schule, auf die Kopenhagener Schule und auf Vertreter des amerikanischen Strukturalismus (z. B. in der Person Roman Jakobsons). In der Zeit des Stalinismus wurden die Vertreter der Moskauer formalen Schule regelrecht verfolgt ⫺ “Formalist” zu sein, war zu einem gefährlichen Etikett und Schimpfwort geworden. Erst nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg konnte diese Schule wiederaufleben, und die Blüte der russischen Morphologie in den 60er Jahren geht eben auf diese Fortunatovsche Schule zurück. Die Zeit des Marrismus (nach ihrem Hauptproponenten, N. Ja. Marr, einem Kaukasiologen) brachte für die morphologische Forschung keinen Fortschritt. Van Schooneveld charakterisiert die sowjetische Linguistik, und namentlich die Morphologie unter und direkt nach Stalin, als “junggrammatisch”, wobei er darunter die Auffassung versteht, daß sich das System einer Sprache in seiner Entwicklungsgeschichte zeige, wohingegen sie keine Methodik liefere,

127 eine Sprache synchron stringent zu analysieren. Van Schooneveld (1963: 23) spricht von einer “fortschreitenden Entprovinzialisierung” und charakterisiert gerade die Morphologie als eine “relativ unbewegliche” Disziplin (Van Schooneveld 1963: 22). V. V. Vinogra´dov und N. S. Pospe¨lov (vgl. Pospelov 1955) sind dabei die wichtigsten Vertreter dieser Zeit, wobei auf Vinogradov auch die Grundpositionen der offiziösen Akademiegrammatik der fünfziger Jahre zurückgehen. Mit seiner zweibändigen Darstellung des Russischen von 1938 und nachfolgenden Werken nutzte er den Freiraum, den die Unterdrückung der Formalen Schule bot, um schon unter Stalin seinen Aufstieg zum wichtigsten sowjetischen Sprachwissenschaftler der folgenden Jahrzehnte zu beginnen. In der umfangreichen Monographie Vinogradovs zum grammatischen Bau des Russischen (Vinogradov 1947) kommt die Morphologie im Inhaltsverzeichnis nicht einmal als Begriff vor, und zum Status dieser Disziplin äußert sich der Verfasser distanziert: “Die Lage der Morphologie als Wissenschaft vom Bau und der Bildung der Wörter ist also unsicher” (Vinogradov 1947: 4) ⫺ dies deshalb, weil die Abgrenzung zu syntaktischen Phänomenen und zur Lexikologie andererseits unklar sei. De Saussure wird immerhin rezipiert, wenn auch meist mit kritischen Äußerungen zu bestimmten Problemen, vor allem aber wird des öfteren Humboldt zur Stützung der eigenen Position herangezogen. Fortunatov hingegen wirft er seine “wohlbekannte Einseitigkeit” vor (Vinogradov 1947: 32). Grundeinheiten der Beschreibung sind für Vinogradov das Wort und der Satz (Vinogradov 1947: 7), auch wenn er sich außerstande sieht, Merkmale anzugeben, die für alle Wörter zuträfen (Vinogradov 1947: 10), weder morphologische, etwa die “Ganzheit des Wortes” ⫺ vgl. Nom. nikto ‘niemand’, jedoch Gen. ni u kogo ‘bei niemandem’, wörtlich ‘nicht bei jemandem’ ⫺ noch syntaktische, z. B. Satzglied sein zu können. Die nominative Funktion ist für ihn die Grundfunktion des Wortes (Vinogradov 1947: 12), das als “System von Formen und Bedeutungen” verstanden wird. “Form” ist bei Vinogradov aber nicht die Ausdrucksseite als solche, sondern meint Affixe und deren Abfolge innerhalb des Wortes, Alternationen, innere Flexion, Akzent, Ton, Nullmorpheme, sogar die Wortfolge (vgl. Vinogradov 1947: 32). Daraus folgt die Festlegung: “Wörter, die eine Form haben, sind grammatisch […]. Alle üb-

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rigen Wörter, die keine Form haben, sind nichtgrammatisch” (Vinogradov 1947: 31). Es ist offensichtlich, daß mit diesem weiten Verständnis von Form sehr disparate Phänomene unter einen Hut gebracht werden sollen, die vielleicht doch besser getrennt beschrieben (und benannt) würden. Die Grundfrage, ob Morphologie Formenbildung und Wortbildung umfasse, ist auch einige Jahre später noch Gegenstand ausführlicher Diskussion (Vinogradov 1952, Hrsg.). Interessanterweise engt Vinogradov die Formenbildung nicht auf die Verwendung der Endungen ein, sondern läßt auch Präfixe und Suffixe gelten ⫺ damit gehören dann die Aspektbildung und die Steigerungsformen der Adjektive im Russischen eindeutig zur Formenbildung (vgl. Vinogradov 1952: 110), während sie früher zur Wortbildung gerechnet wurden. Als Aufgabe der Morphologie bestimmt er “die Untersuchung der Regeln, Typen und Normen der Formenbildung im System der gegebenen Sprache” (Vinogradov 1952: 111). Charakteristisch für Vinogradov ist u. a. seine Beschäftigung mit den Wortarten, die er “lexikalisch-grammatische Kategorien von Wörtern” nennt, die über eine nebulöse “Gesamtbedeutung” verfügten (vgl. Vinogradov 1952, Hrsg.: 39), bei den Substantiven z. B. predmetnost’ ‘Gegenständlichkeit’. Diese Pseudo-Definition der Wortarten hat sich in der russischen Linguistik z. T. bis heute gehalten. Sie hat zur Folge, daß es in den entsprechenden Darstellungen weiterhin keine einheitliche Klassifikationsgrundlage, z. B. aufgrund morphologischer Merkmale, wie den jeweils vertretenen grammatischen Kategorien gibt, sondern mal dieses, mal jenes Kriterium verwendet wird (maskuline Substantive lassen sich z. B. morphologisch bestimmen, morphologisch inhomogen sind aber die nur semantisch zusammengehaltenen Zahlwörter, Präpositionen und Konjunktionen sind nur syntaktisch und semantisch zu bestimmen usw.). Auf Vinogradov geht die “Entdeckung” einer neuen Wortart des Russischen, nämlich der sog. kategorija sostojanija ‘Zustandskategorie’ zurück, in der bestimmte Wortformen, die in gleicher Funktion als gebundenes Prädikat auftreten, versammelt werden. Dazu gehören etwa mozˇno ‘es ist möglich, man darf [das und das tun]’, stydno ‘es ist schändlich [das und das zu tun]’ und ähnliche. Die Vinogradovsche Schule kann ohne Zweifel als etwas hausbacken und anti-for-

mal(istisch) charakterisiert werden, als Fortsetzer der vorstrukturalistischen, traditionellen Sprachwissenschaft, ohne sonderliches Interesse an Methoden, heuristischen Problemen oder klaren Definitionen. Charakteristischerweise findet man bei Vinogradov immer wieder Zitate von Klassikern der russischen Literatur, auch bei synchronen Argumenten schwenkt der Blick sofort immer wieder ab auf die Sprachgeschichte. In der Periode des “Tauwetters” kam es nach Stalin auch in der sowjetischen Sprachwissenschaft zu einem großen Umbruch, zu einer Neubestimmung der eigenen Position. Die Diskussion drehte sich ⫺ mit heftigem Pro und Contra ⫺ in der sog. “Strukturalismus-Debatte” um die Möglichkeit, die Ansätze des amerikanischen deskriptivistischen Strukturalismus, und damit Grundpositionen des Klassenfeindes, in die sowjetische Sprachwissenschaft übernehmen zu können. Diese Auseinandersetzung wurde vorwiegend in Form von Artikeln in der Zeitschrift Voprosy jazykoznanija [Fragen der Sprachwissenschaft] geführt, dem Zentralorgan der sowjetischen Sprachwissenschaft. Von den vielen Beiträgen sei hier nur auf A. A. Reforma´tskij (1957) verwiesen. Die Debatte endete mit einem pragmatischen Koexistenzmodell ⫺ in Rußland konnte wieder ohne Gefahr strukturalistisch (und später generativ) gearbeitet werden, aber natürlich wurde niemand verpflichtet, sich dieser Richtung anzuschließen. Nunmehr konnten folglich auch die Ideen und Ansätze der formalen Schule Fortunatovs wieder aufgegriffen werden ⫺ 1956 erschienen grundlegende Werke Fortunatovs erstmals im Druck. Zum Teil spricht man in diesem Zusammenhang auch von einer “Neuen Moskauer Schule”, deren wichtigster Vertreter Reformatskij (vgl. Reformatskij 1955; 1979) ist, P. S. Kuzneco´v ein weiteres bekanntes Mitglied, jedoch zunächst mit vorwiegend historischem Interesse (Kuznecov 1953; 1957; 1961; 1964). Reformatskijs Einführung in die Sprachwissenschaft wird auch heute noch mit Gewinn benutzt, zumal die späteren Auflagen dem Stand der linguistischen Diskussion immer wieder angepaßt wurden. Unbedingt richtig ist Van Schoonevelds Feststellung, daß nach der Neubestimmung der eigenen Position in den 50er Jahren erst mit den 60er Jahren russische Arbeiten erschienen sind, die internationale Bedeutung hatten und zur Entwicklung der Linguistik insgesamt beigetragen haben.

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Zu den Autoren, die mit ihren Beiträgen den Aufschwung der 60er Jahre vorbereitet haben, gehört u. a. A. S. Smirnıćkij, der früh Fortunatovs Gedankengut wieder aufgegriffen hat. Zu seinen Leistungen gehört es, konsequent zwischen Wort (slovo) und Wortform (slovoforma) zu unterscheiden als der abstrakten Einheit des Lexikons und den konkreten Vorkommen im Text. Bei der Bestimmung des Wortes legt er auf seine Abgrenzbarkeit (vydelimost’), Ganzheitlichkeit (cel’nost’) und Geformtheit (oformlennost’) Wert ⫺ im Unterschied zu gebundenen Morphemen und zu Wortverbindungen, die über diese Merkmale nicht verfügten. Phonetische und semantische Kriterien zur Bestimmung eines Wortes gelten ihm hingegen als nicht hinreichend (Smirnickij 1952: 189f.; vgl. auch 1955; 1956). Ein weiterer erwähnenswerter Beitrag ist derjenige von V. M. Zˇirmuńskij (1961), der sich mit der Bestimmung der Wortgrenzen beschäftigt, wobei er von der bekannten Schwierigkeit ausgeht, “das Wort” linguistisch zu definieren. Zˇirmunskij, der sich in der Tradition der Leningrader Schule Sˇcˇerbas sieht, formuliert folgende Arbeitshypothese: “Das Wort ist die kürzeste, nach ihrer Bedeutung und Form selbständige Einheit der Sprache” (Zˇirmunskij 1961: 4). Mit diesen beiden Kriterien will der das Wort einerseits gegen Wortverbindungen wie Krasnaja armija ‘Rote Armee’ abgrenzen, andererseits gegen Morpheme, für das “Minimum an formaler Selbständigkeit” (Zˇirmunskij 1961: 4), nämlich die Absonderbarkeit (vydeljaemost’), nicht gelte. Die Abgegrenztheit (otdel’nost’) und Ganzheitlichkeit (cel’nost’) des Wortes unterscheide es ebenfalls von Morphemen: Morpheme, Suffixe beispielsweise, können ja, etwa bei der Wortbildung, zwischen andere Morpheme gesetzt werden, Wörter nicht zwischen andere Wörter. Die trennbaren Präfixe des Deutschen, vgl. stehe auf, bleiben aber auch nach diesen Kriterien ein Grenzphänomen (Zˇirmunskij 1961: 6). Grundlegend ist für ihn freilich die semantische Einheit des Wortes, während die phonetische und morphologische Einheit des Wortes sprachabhängig als weitere Kriterien hinzukommen können (Zˇirmunskij 1961: 21). Analog zu den Segmentierungsproblemen von dt. Brombeere, engl. cranberry usw. ist auch in Rußland eine Auseinandersetzung um die Frage entstanden, ob und wie man derartige Wörter segmentieren dürfe. Diese Diskussion ist als “Schweinefleisch-Streit”

129 (spor o buzˇenine) bekanntgeworden (buzˇenina ‘Schweinefleisch’ ist eines der betreffenden Wörter). Einige Autoren sprechen in diesem Zusammenhang von “defekten Segmentierungen”, nennen die gebundenen unikalen Morpheme “Quasi-Morpheme” usw. Zu einigen Definitionsproblemen vgl. Ma´slov (1961). Mit der Übertragung phonologischer Deskriptionsmethoden auf die Morphologie hat sich A. V. Isacˇenko (1961; 1963) beschäftigt. Er ist von Herkunft und Ansatz eigentlich dem Umfeld der Prager Schule zuzurechnen, tritt mit den genannten Arbeiten zum Zeitpunkt ihres Erscheinens aber innerhalb der russischen sprachwissenschaftlichen Diskussion auf, weshalb sie auch an dieser Stelle erwähnt seien. Insbesondere geht es Isacˇenko um den Gegensatz merkmalhaft/merkmallos bzw. stark/schwach, den er auf die Analyse der Bedeutungen grammatischer Kategorien überträgt. So gilt ihm der Plural gegenüber dem Singular, das Präteritum gegenüber dem Präsens und der vollendete Aspekt gegenüber dem unvollendeten jeweils als merkmalhaft, weil mit diesen Bedeutungen positiv etwas ausgedrückt werde, während die unmarkierten Formen die entsprechenden Beziehungen einfach nur “unausgedrückt” ließen, also nicht etwa das Gegenteil behaupteten. Mit diesem Ansatz greift er Gedanken von Jakobson aus den 30Jahren wieder auf. Isacˇenkos Ausführungen provozieren und polarisieren bewußt. Unbestritten aber ist sein Verdienst, für selbstverständlich gehaltene Dinge infrage zu stellen und diffizile Beispiele aus dem Russischen zu finden, mit denen jede Beschreibung in irgendeiner Form zurechtkommen muß. Von dem großen Interesse an der Morphologie, das die 60er Jahre zweifellos geprägt hat, zeugen u. a. auch die Sammelbände Zˇirmunskij & Sunik (1963, Hrsg.) und Serebrennikov & Sunik (1965, Hrsg.), in denen einige klassische Arbeiten abgedruckt sind. Die häufigsten Themen, die an immer wieder anderen Sprachen diskutiert werden, sind dabei die Probleme der Bestimmung des Wortes und die Analyse agglutinierender Sprachen. Auf dem Gebiet der morphologischen Begriffsbildung und Theorie hat vor allem I. A. Mel’cˇu´k Bahnbrechendes geleistet, in der Stringenz seines morphologischen Beschreibungsansatzes sind die Arbeiten A. A. Zaliznja´ks zum Russischen zu einem paradigmatischen Vorbild geworden, an das bislang keine andere Arbeit heranreicht. Beide stehen

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in der Tradition, die über Reformatskij bis zu Fortunatov zurückreicht. Mel’cˇuk hat sich in zahlreichen Arbeiten damit beschäftigt, wichtige Bereiche der Morphologie begrifflich sauber zu konstruieren (vgl. Mel’cˇuk 1961; 1974; 1975; 1977; 1978). (Die nach seiner Emigration nach Kanada im Westen erschienenen Arbeiten gehören definitionsgemäß nicht mehr zum Gegenstand unserer Übersicht.) Von zentraler Bedeutung ist dabei sein Versuch, grammatische Kategorien zu definieren, denn eine genaue Definition dieses Bereiches schafft ja die Grundlage für die gesamte grammatische Beschreibung einer Sprache. Zwei logisch unabhängige Begriffspaare schaffen bei ihm die grundlegenden Klärungen. (a) Nach der Richtung ihres Verweises unterscheidet Mel’cˇuk (vgl. Mel’cˇuk 1963: 36f.) lexikalische und syntaktische Bedeutungskomponenten: syntaktische Bedeutungen verweisen ausschließlich auf andere Elemente der Rede im Sinne einer Decodierungssteuerung (vgl. Mel’cˇuk 1974: 97f.), lexikalische auch auf Objekte oder Sachverhalte außerhalb der Sprache. Andere Autoren nennen dieses Begriffspaar “nominative” und “syntaktische” Bedeutungen (Zaliznjak), eindeutiger wäre es, sie “syntaktische” und “nichtsyntaktische” Bedeutungen zu nennen. (b) Nach ihrem Status in der Grammatik unterscheidet Mel’cˇuk grammatische und nichtgrammatische Bedeutungen. Grammatische Bedeutungen sind diejenigen, die obligatorisch ausgedrückt werden müssen ⫺ hiermit greift Mel’cˇuk auf Gedankengut von Reformatskij zurück (vgl. Reformatskij 1947: 101). Wichtig ist dabei der relationale Bezug: grammatische Bedeutungen sind obligatorisch für eine bestimmte Wortart einer gegebenen Sprache, nicht in irgendeinem absoluten Sinne. Eine von den vier denkbaren Merkmalskombinationen, nämlich die nichtgrammatisch-nichtsyntaktische Bedeutung, wird oft auch “lexikalische” Bedeutung genannt (weshalb es besser ist, diesen Terminus hierfür zu reservieren). Auf dieser Grundlage lassen sich nunmehr grammatische Kategorien definieren: “Let us call a set of mutually exclusive (alternative) meanings a category. Then the category (‘mi’) will be grammatical in language L for the class K of linguistic elements if it meets simultaneously the three following requirements: 1/ Every element of K is always accompanied by an exponent of some ‘mi’. This takes care of the obligatory nature of (‘mi’).

2/ Class K is large enough ⫺ or, at least, it consists of very abstract and important words which can be described as ‘structural words’. This concerns universality, ‘over-allness’ of grammatical meanings. 3/ All ‘mi’ have standard, i.e. sufficiently regular, means of expression. This requirement reflects the ‘regularity’ of grammar.” (Mel’cˇuk 1974: 98 f.)

Diese Definition enthält zwar noch einigen Interpretationsspielraum, insbesondere bei den Bedingungen 2 und 3, und Details können noch weiter präzisiert werden, aber dies sind keine prinzipiellen Fragen mehr. Wichtig ist, daß grammatische Kategorien im Sinne dieser Definition nicht identisch mit Kategorien der Grammatik sind, unter denen alles mögliche verstanden werden kann. Auch bei allen typologischen Untersuchungen ist zu bedenken, daß grammatische Kategorien eben einzelsprachlich definiert sind und nicht vorschnell als universell reklamiert werden dürfen. Zudem müssen sich gleich benannte grammatische Kategorien zweier Sprachen weder von ihrem Inhalt noch von ihrer Struktur her decken. Mit seinen späteren Arbeiten hat Mel’cˇuk sein Ziel eines präzisen Begriffsapparats für die Morphologie konsequent weiter verfolgt. Sein Beitrag zum Verständnis des Suppletivismus (Mel’cˇuk 1972) wird an anderer Stelle dieses Handbuches behandelt, so daß an dieser Stelle ein entsprechender Verweis genügt (vgl. Art. 52). Sowohl in theoretischer wie in praktischer Hinsicht hat Zaliznjak die Methoden der Morphologie nachhaltig weiterentwickelt. Sowohl in verschiedenen Aufsätzen (Zaliznjak 1964b) wie in einer Monographie (Zaliznjak 1967) wird ⫺ vor der eigentlichen Beschreibung des Russischen ⫺ das grundlegende heuristische Problem behandelt, wie man Wortformen eine bestimmte grammatische Bedeutung zuschreiben kann. Zaliznjak verwendet dazu ein strenges, objektives Kriterium: Alle Wortformen, die in einen gegebenen diagnostischen Kontext, d. h. ein bestimmtes syntaktisches Schema passen, gehören zu einer Klasse. Bei einem solchen Vorgehen wäre es z. B. konsequent, die traditionelle Kategorie des Genus und die neue Kategorie der Belebtheit im Russischen zu sieben “Kongruenzklassen” zusammenzufassen. Bei der Segmentation in Stamm und Endungen sowie bei allen übrigen morphologischen Operationen gilt, daß Zaliznjaks Vorgehen von algorithmischer Präzision ist: Seine Sprachbeschreibung würde sich bei entsprechender Umformulierung ohne weiteres für die automatische Sprachverarbeitung eignen.

14. Osteuropa

Als weitere Besonderheit seines Ansatzes kann gelten, daß sich Zaliznjak ausdrücklich mit der Frage beschäftigt hat, wie man die verschiedenen Flexionsklassen, deren Bestand an Endungen (im Russischen) jeweils anders ist, eigentlich miteinander vergleichen kann, welches also das tertium comparationis ist. Zaliznjak setzt dazu ein “Etalon” an, ein ideales Muster mit maximalem Formenbestand und Formendifferenziertheit, mit dem dann alle konkret auftretenden Paradigmen verglichen werden können, etwa defektive Paradigmen, Singularia und Pluralia tantum, Wortformvarianten, überdifferenzierte Paradigmen usw. Mit seinem Grammatischen Wörterbuch des Russischen hat Zaliznjak (1977) Maßstäbe in der morphologischen Deskription gesetzt. Dieser neuartige Typus eines Wörterbuches ist in seinem Hauptteil ein rückläufiges Wörterbuch, bei dem zu jedem Eintrag nur einige grammatische Kürzel angegeben sind. Diese Kürzel verweisen, sofern sie nicht selbsterklärend sind, wie z. B. die Hinweise auf die Wortartzugehörigkeit, auf den Grammatikteil des Wörterbuches, der die ersten 140 Seiten umfaßt. Mit diesen beiden Komponenten ist die Grundlage für eine algorithmische Beschreibung der Flexionsmorphologie des Russischen gelegt, denn der Grammatikteil ist als Instruktion an den Nutzer formuliert, wie er bei einem beliebigen gegebenen Wort nach den angegebenen Kürzeln sämtliche Wortformen dieses Lexems bilden kann. Dabei werden sowohl die Flexionsendungen wie die morphonologischen Alternationen wie die Akzentparadigmen vollständig und eindeutig beschrieben. Die ungeheure Leistung dieses Wörterbuches, das etwa 100 000 Lexeme berücksichtigt, ist im slawischen Raum bisher nicht wieder erreicht. In den 60er Jahren hat sich ⫺ ebenfalls unter maßgeblicher Beteiligung Zaliznjaks ⫺ die sog. “Morphologische Akzentologiekonzeption” entwickelt, die sich in der Folgezeit zum Beschreibungsstandard in Lehr- und Handbüchern und den Akademiegrammatiken des Russischen durchsetzen konnte. In dieser Konzeption geht es darum, den Flexionsakzent zu beschreiben, der ja dann ein Problem darstellt, wenn der Akzent generell frei und dazu beweglich ist, wie dies eben im Russischen der Fall ist. Wie sich zeigen läßt, bieten die morphologischen Komponenten Stamm und Endung die besten Bezugspunkte, um die Wortposition des Akzentes zu bestimmen; er ruht entweder auf diesem oder auf jenem Bestandteil. Vergleicht man dann

131 die Wortformen eines gegebenen Paradigmas hinsichtlich der Akzentposition, so ergibt sich aus diesem Ansatz rein deduktiv die Existenz dreier Grundmuster: feste Stammbetonung, feste Endungsbetonung und die Wechselbetonung (die theoretisch alle möglichen konkreten Ausprägungen annehmen kann). Zusätzlich zur morphologischen Position des Akzentes erweist es sich gelegentlich als nötig, auch auf die Silbenebene als sekundäres Merkmal zurückzugreifen, und zwar dann, wenn sich der Akzent innerhalb des Stammes von einer Silbe auf eine andere verlagert, vgl. etwa o´zero-o ‘See-nom.sg’, oze¨r-a ‘Seenom.pl’. Auf Zaliznjak (1964 a) geht der Begriff der “bedingten Betonung” zurück, die aus zwei Gründen eingeführt wird, erstens, um die Zahl der Akzentmuster zu reduzieren, zweitens, um bei der Beschreibung der Akzentmuster von konkreten Morphen zu abstrahieren. Eine bedingte Betonung kann immer dann vorliegen, wenn der Gegensatz zwischen Stamm- und Endungsbetonung aufgehoben ist, weil eine der beiden Komponenten unsilbisch ist. Wandert z. B. bei Nullendung der Akzent (im Vergleich mit den anderen Formen des Paradigmas) auf den Stamm, so kann dem Wort dennoch bedingt eine Endungsbetonung zugeschrieben werden, wenn es ein entsprechendes Muster unter anderen morphologischen Bedingungen gibt. Vgl. etwa russ. koń-i, kon-e´j, kon-ja´m ‘Pferde’ (Nom., Gen. und Dat. Pl.), wo Stamm und Endung silbisch sind, mit gu´b-y, gub-Ø, gub-a´m ‘Lippen’ (Nom., Gen. und Dat. Pl.), wo im Genitiv eine Nullendung vorliegt. Unter Zuhilfenahme des Begriffes der bedingten Betonung wird beiden Lexeme das gleiche Akzentmuster zugeschrieben, da die Abweichung im Genitiv gub automatisch, allomorphisch, bedingt ist. Dieser morphologische Ansatz bei der Beschreibung des Flexionsakzentes hat sich für die Russistik als sehr fruchtbar erwiesen und ist in die Lehrbücher eingegangen; an anderen Sprachen ist sie noch nicht erprobt worden. Mit ihrem Russischen Morphemwörterbuch haben die Autoren Kuzneco´va & Efre´mova (1986) erstmals eine vollständige morphologische Beschreibung einer slawischen Sprache vorgelegt. Dieses umfangreiche Lexikon stellt den russischen Wortschatz nach insgesamt 5000 Wurzeln, Präfixen und Suffixen getrennt dar. Im Hauptteil enthält das Wörterbuch die Wurzeln des Russischen in allomorphischer Gestalt, wobei zu jeder Wurzel die Lexeme genannt werden, in denen

132


sie auftritt. Mit anderen Worten: hier ist exemplarisch die strukturalistische Forderung nach einer Inventarisierung aller Spracheinheiten der grundlegenden Ebenen erfüllt. Alle Lexeme werden vollständig linear in Morphe zerlegt. In der ausführlichen Einleitung wird die Segmentierung in Morphe(me) ausdrücklich gegen eine Wortbildungsanalyse abgegrenzt. Zu einem etwas früheren Ansatz vgl. Oliverius (1976). Einen besonderen Interessens- und Arbeitsschwerpunkt stellt für russische Sprachwissenschaftler in den 60er und 70er Jahren die Erarbeitung eines Begriffs- und Methodeninventars für die Wortbildungsanalyse dar, nachdem sich diese in der Diskussion seit den 20er Jahren immer mehr als eigene Disziplin etabliert hatte. Als grundlegende Arbeit sei etwa Lopa´tin (1977) genannt. Auf russische Linguisten (namentlich A. M. Sucho´tin und M. V. Pano´v) geht dabei offenbar der Begriff Interfix zurück, der die terminologische Reihe von Präfix, Suffix und Postfix um ein weiteres Element ergänzen soll (vgl. Ze´mskaja 1964). Dieser Begriff ist jedoch umstritten, da die fraglichen Elemente nicht über den üblicherweise geforderten Zeichencharakter verfügen ⫺ gemeint sind damit nämlich u. a. die Elemente, die in der deutschen Grammatik schlicht “Bindevokal” heißen, desweiteren suffixähnliche Elemente, die bei der Wortbildung auftauchen, ohne phonologisch bedingt zu sein, ohne aber auch eine spezielle Bedeutung zu besitzen (“Verbindungsmorpheme” heißen sie bei Trubetzkoy). Als Beispiele mögen vodopad ‘Wasserfall’ (erste Wurzel vod- ‘Wasser’, Bindevokal -o-, zweite Wurzel -pad ‘Fall’) und vuz-ovsk-ij ‘Hochschul-’ dienen ⫺ bei letzterem ist das Segment -ov- aus euphonischen Gründen hinzugefügt, ohne selbst eine Bedeutung zu tragen (-sk- ist das Adjektivsuffix, -ij die Endung des Nom. Sg. Mask.). Andere Autoren sprechen hier auch von “leeren” Segmenten oder “Struktemen”. N. I. Sˇańskij (1968) hat in die Wortbildungsanalyse mehrere neue Begriffe eingeführt, bzw. sie systematisiert. Ausführlich behandelt er die uslozˇnenie (‘Komplexitätssteigerung’), d.i. die Verwandlung eines vorher nicht produktiven Stammes in einen produktiven, umgekehrt dazu die oprosˇcˇenie (‘Vereinfachung’), die diffuzija (‘Diffusion’), d.i. die wechselseitige Durchdringung von Morphemen und anderes mehr. Alle diese Phänomene, die man auch unter dem Rubrum ReAnalyse zusammenfassen kann, bekommt

man freilich vor allem bei einer diachronen Betrachtung in den Blick. In Leningrad hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten unter A. V. Bonda´rko eine “funktionale Grammatik” etabliert (vgl. Bondarko 1976), z. T. auch als “grammatische Semantik” bezeichnet. Sie betrachtet Sprache ähnlich wie die Prager Schule danach, welche Funktion sprachliche Mittel für das eigentliche kommunikative Ziel, nämlich die Übertragung einer bestimmten Information haben. Diesem eigentlich vielversprechenden Ansatz zum Trotz bieten die konkreten Analysen in morphologischer Hinsicht wenig Neues und hinterlassen insofern einen unbefriedigenden Eindruck. Ebenfalls in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten um A. A. Cholodo´vicˇ (vgl. Cholodovicˇ (1969, Hrsg.); Cholodovicˇ 1979) und V. S. Chrako´vskij (vgl. Chrakovskij (1978, Hrsg.; 1992) eine Gruppe von Forschern entstanden, die sich vor allem mit typologischen Untersuchungen zu bestimmten grammatischen Kategorien hervorgetan haben. Neu ist an diesen Arbeiten vor allem die Untersuchungsperspektive, indem ausgehend von semantischen Größen (z. B. Kausativ, Resultativ, Iterativ, Imperativ) danach gefragt wird, welche Ausdrucksmittel eine gegebene Sprache besitzt, um den betreffenden Inhalt zu transportieren. Auf diese Weise lassen sich grammatische Kategorien bzw. Bedeutungen in einen größeren Kontent einbetten, denn gewöhnlich stehen den Sprechern einer Sprache außer grammatischen Mitteln (z. B. Tempus des Verbs) ja auch noch lexikalische Mittel (wie Temporaladverbien) oder syntaktische Mittel zur Verfügung. Zu einer guten Darstellung der Leningrader Typologieschule vgl. Hansen (1994). Weitere, insgesamt eher periphere Ansätze in der morphologischen Forschung bedienen sich mathematischer Methoden, entweder mengentheoretisch-logischer oder statistischer. In bezug auf den ersten Bereich ist in erster Linie an Arbeiten von A. V. Gla´dkij zu denken (Gladkij 1969; 1973), der sich mit der Definition von Kasus und Genus bei den Substantiven beschäftigt hat. Er definiert diese grammatische Kategorien als bestimmte minimale nichtleere Umgebungsmengen. Über das Arbeiten mit Kongruenzklassen hat dieser Ansatz eine gewisse Verwandtschaft zu Arbeiten von Zaliznjak (1964 a; 1964 b; 1967) und zu den Arbeiten von I. I. Re´vzin (1960; 1977). Die Entwicklung sprachstatistischer Verfahren, die in Rußland eine lange Tradition ha-

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ben, wurde nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg zusätzlich durch das aufkommende Interesse an der automatischen Sprachverarbeitung, insbesondere der automatischen Übersetzung, gefördert. In den 60er Jahren entwickelte die Leningrader Gruppe um N. D. Andreév spezielle algorithmische Methoden, mit denen die Flexionsmorphologie einer Sprache modelliert werden sollte, wobei Textkorpora als Ausgangsmaterial dienen (vgl. auch Nikolaéva 1962). Diese recht komplexen Methoden, die sich nur auf die Regelmäßigkeiten der Ausdrucksebene (z. B. auf Übergangswahrscheinlichkeiten auf der Ebene von Graphemen und Graphemfolgen) stützen, können hier nicht im einzelnen referiert werden. Es möge der Hinweis genügen, daß mit diesen Methoden, die auf eine ganze Reihe von Sprachen angewendet wurden (vgl. Andreev 1965, Hrsg.), die “normale” Segmentierung eines Wortes in Morpheme in der Regel bestätigt wird (Andreev 1967: 8), weil sich die Flexionsendungen sehr schnell als immer wiederkehrende Sequenzen erkennen lassen. Auch die Flexionstypen einzelner Test-Sprachen wurden mit diesem Algorithmus ermittelt (Russisch, Englisch). Rückblickend läßt sich feststellen, daß in den 60er Jahren die Morphologie in Rußland eine Blütezeit erlebte: Ihre wichtigsten theoretischen Beiträge stammen aus dieser Zeit, und in dieser Zeit dominierte sie auch die linguistische Diskussion insgesamt. Auf dieser Grundlage aufbauend, konnten in den 70er Jahren wegweisende deskriptive Arbeiten veröffentlicht werden ⫺ die Zeit war reif für morphologisch orientierte Lexika und zusammenfassende, resümierende Darstellungen (vgl. etwa Achmańova 1966; Buly´gina 1977; Kubrja´kova 1974). Nachdem das Arsenal an Analysemethoden und Deskriptionsbegriffen für die Ausdrucksseite nun mehr oder weniger als gegeben betrachtet werden kann, scheint sich die Diskussion in jüngster Zeit mehr auf die semantischen Aspekte der Morphologie verlagert zu haben.

3.

Prager Schule

Die Prager Schule hat sich der Morphologie nicht in gleicher Weise wie der Phonologie und der Morphonologie gewidmet, was man u. a. aus der Tatsache ersehen kann, daß Vachek (1964, Hrsg.) die Phonologie der Prager Schule auf 39 Seiten darstellt, sich für Morphonologie und Morphologie zusammen je-

133 doch mit neun Seiten begnügt. Der Abschnitt “Morphologie” in seiner Auswahlbibliographie (Vachek 1966: 173f.) verzeichnet in erster Linie einzelsprachliche Studien und Beschreibungen, in denen es vorwiegend um ausgewählte Probleme der Flexion in einigen slawischen Sprachen (Tschechisch, Slowakisch, Russisch) geht. Dennoch gibt es selbstverständlich auch einige Beiträge allgemeinerer Natur, die hier berücksichtigt werden sollen. V. Skalicˇkas Büchlein Zur ungarischen Grammatik (Skalicˇka 1935) trägt einen Titel, der über den wahren Inhalt nicht gut Auskunft gibt, denn es beinhaltet über weite Strecken allgemeine Überlegungen zum Stand der Typologie und zu Gegenstand und Grundeinheiten der Grammatik, insbesondere zur fraglichen Rolle des Morphems. Diese Passagen sind unter dem Titel “Morphem und Sema” später separat abgedruckt worden (vgl. Skalicˇka 1964). Skalicˇka problematisiert in seiner Abhandlung die Verwendung des Morphems als Grundeinheit der Grammatik, wenn es nach Baudouin als kleinste, nicht weiter in morphologische Einheiten zerlegbare Einheit definiert werde: “Für die Grammatik kann das Morphem als unteilbares Ganzes nicht gelten” (Skalicˇka 1935: 13). Als Beispiel dienen ihm Formenpaare wie foot⫺feet, tooth⫺ teeth, die auf der Inhaltsebene zwei Komponenten aufwiesen (lexikalische Bedeutung und Numerus), die jedoch auf der Ausdrucksseite nicht weiter linear segmentiert seien. Die Elemente der Inhaltsseite nennt Skalicˇka Sema (Pl. Semen) und sagt: “Das Sema ist meistens, doch nicht immer, durch eine ununterbrochene Phonemreihe charakterisiert, d. h. es ist gewöhnlich das, was man als ‘Morphem’ bezeichnet” (Skalicˇka 1935: 13). Das Morphem im klassischen Verständnis wäre danach nur ein Spezialfall aus einer größeren Menge von Möglichkeiten, wie sich Inhalts- und Ausdrucksseite zueinander verhalten können. Semen dürfen jedoch nicht als bloßes Konzept mißverstanden werden: “Jedoch kein Sema kann ohne seine Form existieren. Es ist mit immer demselben formalen Ausdruck oder mit mehreren, nach bestimmten Regeln wechselnden Ausdrücken verbunden” (Skalicˇka 1935: 5). Ferner zeigt Skalicˇka an slawischen Beispielen, daß ⫺ wegen der vielfältigen Konsonantenalternationen im Stammauslaut ⫺ der zu erwartende Kasus und Numerus oft schon am Stamm zu “erkennen” (Skalicˇka 1935: 14) seien, die Morphemgrenze also auch hierbei überschritten werde. Nach der Zahl

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der ausgedrückten grammatischen Bedeutungen spricht der Autor von “einsematischen” bzw. “zweisematischen Morphemen” (Skalicˇka 1935: 14), was u. a. den in agglutinierenden bzw. flektierenden Sprachen üblichen Endungen entspricht. Am Beispiel des Ungarischen demonstriert er ferner die Schwierigkeit, Nullmorpheme eindeutig zu bestimmen. ⫺ Skalicˇkas terminologische Beschränkung von Morphem auf die Ausdrucksseite und die Verwendung von Sem für die Inhaltsseite hat sich nicht allgemein durchgesetzt; für letztere findet man häufiger die Bezeichnung Grammeme. Zu den Klassikern gehört auch R. Jakobsons Aufsatz zu den Kasus (Jakobson 1936), in dem er den funktionalen Ansatz der Prager Schule auf die Untersuchung dieser grammatischen Kategorie anwendet, bei der die Analyse der nichtsyntaktischen Bedeutungsanteile ja besonders schwierig ist. B. Trnka (1932) versucht in seinem Aufsatz, das Spektrum der morphologischen Untersuchungsansätze von der vom Wort geprägten üblichen Ausgangsbasis auf die Satzperspektive zu erweitern. Immer wenn formale Sprachmittel eine morphologische Funktion ausdrücken, spricht er von “morphologischen Exponenten”. Was dabei als morphologisch zu verstehen ist, faßt er getreu seiner Zielsetzung weit auf, denn sein erstes Beispiel betrifft die Wortstellung im Englischen (die erkennen lasse, welches Wort z. B. ein direktes Objekt sei), während andere, stärker flektierende Sprachen dies nicht über die Wortstellung ausdrückten (sondern diese für andere Zwecke, z. B. stilistische Unterschiede, ausnützten). Zu den möglichen morphologischen Exponenten rechnet er konsequent neben den synthetischen Morphemen außerdem phonologische Mittel (Umlaut), analytische Mittel (Wortstellung, Hilfswörter, Kongruenz) und komplexe Wörter. Er betont, daß ein einzelnes alternierendes Glied für sich betrachtet keinen morphologischen Wert besitze, sondern erst die gesamte Alternationsreihe diesen Wert gewinne. Auch wenn er diesen Begriff hier nicht nennt, ist dabei natürlich an die Morphonologie der Prager Schule zu denken. Nach den für die betreffenden Sprachen typischen morphologischen Exponenten klassifiziert Trnka sie als analytische oder isolierende Sprachen (Chinesisch), alternierende Sprachen (Semitisch), synthetische Sprachen ohne Alternationen (Bantu, Ural-Altaisch) und Sprachen mit

kombinierten morphologischen Exponenten (indogermanische Sprachen). Zur weiteren Entwicklung der morphologischen Sprachklassifikation (die in die quantitative Typologie einmündet) vgl. Art. 117. Auf diesem Gebiet ⫺ das heute im übrigen nicht mehr einer geographisch bestimmbaren Schule zugeordnet werden kann ⫺liegt sicher der nachhaltigste Einfluß der Prager Schule im Bereich der Morphologie. Von den jüngeren Mitgliedern bzw. Nachfahren der Prager Schule hat sich v. a. Isacˇenko mit morphologischen Problemen beschäftigt ⫺ er wurde schon oben (s. 2) in anderem Zusammenhang behandelt.

4.

Polen

Mit einem gewissen Recht kann natürlich Baudouin de Courtenay (s. 2) auch der Geschichte der polnischen Sprachwissenschaft zugerechnet werden. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wurde er unter Rußland behandelt, da er lange in Rußland gelehrt hat und eine der wichtigen Schulen der russischen Sprachwissenschaft auf ihn zurückgeht. Manchmal wird Baudouin auch als Wegbereiter einer “Warschauer Schule” der Sprachwissenschaft bezeichnet, zu der H. Ułaszyn und St. Szober als wichtigste Mitglieder gezählt werden. Ułaszyn wiederum hat ja auch Verbindungen zur Prager Schule, in deren Publikationen er seinen bekannten Artikel zum Morphonem veröffentlicht hat. Von den neueren Beiträgen polnischer Sprachwissenschaftler seien an dieser Stelle die Arbeiten von T. Milewski erwähnt, die Fragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft und Typologie gewidmet sind. Milewski (1972; 1973) baut sein Sprachmodell von unten her, d. h. von den Phonemen her, schichtweise auf, wobei jedoch die Morphemebene in der Reihe phonologisches System-semantisches System-syntaktisches System-stilistisches System fehlt. Morpheme werden (als bedeutungstragende Einheiten) beim semantischen Subsystem behandelt und folgendermaßen bestimmt: “We will define the morpheme as the smallest set of alternating series (morphonemes) possessing a distinct constant function in language communication; the alternating forms of the morpheme will be called its variants.” (Milewski 1973: 64)

Mit dieser Definition versucht er den speziellen slawischen Verhältnissen gerecht zu werden, die durch eine große Zahl konsonanti-

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scher wie vokalischer Stammalternationen gekennzeichnet sind. An anderer Stelle heißt es: “As we see, the morpheme is characterized, not by phonemes, for they may change, but by an alternating series, or morphonemes.” (Milewski 1973: 63)

Ob es wirklich notwendig ist, von derart wenig phonematischer Konstanz bei Morphen auszugehen, mag bezweifelt werden, denn der Unterschied zwischen Allomorphen und suppletiven Elementen ist ja gerade so definiert, daß bei Allomorphen bestimmte Phonemfolgen gleich bleiben. Auf Morphemen aufbauend, werden Wörter definiert, und zwar als Einheiten der Syntax: “A syntactic member is a set of morphemes which, as a whole, function as the sign for a certain phenomenon, at the same time defining its own position within the sentence […]. A syntactic member is a word when it is delimited by means of certain generally applied delimiting signals.” (Milewski 1973: 64)

Auch diese Definition kann nicht unbesehen übernommen werden, denn als Wörter gelten nach Milewski nur Einheiten, die in Stamm und Endung gegliedert werden können. Präpositionen, Konjunktionen und Partikel nennt er hingegen ausdrücklich “free morphemes which are neither independent words nor parts of other words” (Milewski 1973: 65). Denkt man an Mel’cˇuks Begriffsklärung zu grammatischen und nichtgrammatischen, syntaktischen und nichtsyntaktischen Bedeutungen, so reserviert Milewski den Wortbegriff für Elemente mit nichtgrammatischer, nichtsyntaktischer Bedeutung ⫺ unserer Meinung nach eine unnötige Einengung.

5.

Weiterführende Literaturhinweise

Über die Geschichte der linguistischen, nicht nur der morphologischen Forschung in Rußland bzw. in Osteuropa informieren mehrere Quellen in der einen oder anderen Weise; einige sollen hier kurz genannt werden. Die Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft in Rußland stellt Bere¨zin (1975; 1976) dar, der jedoch kein Anhänger der Moskauer oder Formalen Schule ist. Über die erste Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts informiert Smirno´v (1971). Etliche ausgewählte biographische Hinweise findet man bei Fı´lin (Filin 1979, Hrsg.), die linguistischen Gegenstände werden bei Karau´lov (1997, Hrsg.) ausführlicher dargestellt. Ein bibliographisches Lexikon ostslawischer

Sprachwissenschaftler hat Bulacho´v (1976) vorgelegt. Wichtige Schulen, Personen und die Zeit des Marrismus werden von BrucheSchulz (1984) behandelt. Ein großes russischsprachiges linguistisches Lexikon ⫺ und auch das einzige seiner Art ⫺ ist Ja´rceva Hrsg. (1990). Die slavische linguistische Terminologie listet Jedlicˇka (1977⫺1979, Hrsg.) mit englischen, französischen und deutschen Äquivalenten auf; die Herausbildung der älteren russischen grammatischen Terminologie behandelt Biedermann (1978). Geschichte, aktuelle Tendenzen und landesspezifische Besonderheiten der linguistischen Forschung Osteuropas behandelt Sebeok (Sebeok 1963, Hrsg.), einen Teilaspekt der Linguistik Papp (1966).

6.

Zitierte Literatur

Achmanova, Ol’ga S. (1966), Fonologija, morfonologija, morfologija. Moskva: Izd. Mosk. un-ta. [engl. Übers. (1971), Phonology, Morphonology, Morphology. The Hague: Mouton] Andreev, Nikolaj D. (1965, Hrsg.), Statistiko-kombinatornoe modelirovanie jazykov [Statistisch-kombinatorische Modellierung von Sprachen]. Moskva, Leningrad: Nauka Andreev, Nikolaj D. (1967), Statistiko-kombinatornye metody v teoreticˇeskom i prikladnom jazykovedenii [Statistisch-kombinatorische Methoden in der theoretischen und angewandten Sprachwissenschaft]. Leningrad: Nauka Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1974⫺76), Dzieła wybrane, Bd. 1⫺2 [Ausgewählte Werke]. Warszawa: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe Berezin, Fedor M. (1975), Istorija lingvisticˇeskich ucˇenij. Moskva: Vyssˇaja sˇkola [dt. Übers. (1980), Geschichte der sprachwissenschaftlichen Theorien. Übers. und hrsg. v. Hans Zikmund. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut] Berezin, Fedor M. (1976), Russkoe jazykoznanie konca XIX-nacˇala XX veka [Die russische Sprachwissenschaft am Ende des 19. und zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts]. Moskva: Nauka Biedermann, Johann (1978), “Zur Entwicklung der russischen grammatischen Terminologie (Wortarten und Kategorien)”. Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 40.1, 77⫺128 Bogorodickij, Vasilij A. (1901), Ocˇerki po jazykovedeniju i russkomu jazyku [Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft und zum Russischen]. Kazan’: Izd. un-ta. [41939 Moskva] Bondarko, Aleksandr V. (1976), Teorija morfologicˇeskich kategorij [Theorie der morphologischen Kategorien]. Leningrad: Nauka Bruche-Schulz, Gisela (1984), Russische Sprachwissenschaft: Wissenschaft im historisch-politischen

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Prozeß des vorsowjetischen und sowjetischen Rußland. Tübingen: Narr (Linguistische Arbeiten 151) Bulachov, Michail G. (1976), Vostocˇnoslavjanskie jazykovedy: Biobibliograficˇeskij slovar’, Bd. I [Ostslawische Sprachwissenschaftler: Ein biobliographisches Wörterbuch]. Minsk: BGU Bulygina, Tat’jana V. (1977), Problemy teorii morfologicˇeskich modelej [Probleme der Theorie morphologischer Modelle]. Moskva: Nauka

Hansen, Björn (1994), Typologie: Ein Forschungsbericht für Slavisten. München: Sagner (Specimina Philologiae Slavicae 103) Isacˇenko, Aleksandr V. (1961), “O grammaticˇeskom znacˇenii” [Zur grammatischen Bedeutung]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 28⫺43 Isacˇenko, Aleksandr V. (1963), “Binarnost’, privativnye oppozicii i grammaticˇeskie znacˇenija” [Binarität, privative Oppositionen und grammatische Bedeutungen]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 2, 39⫺56

Buslaev, Fedor I. (1858), Opyt istoricˇeskoj grammatiki russkogo jazyka [Versuch einer historischen Grammatik der russischen Sprache]. Moskva: Gos. ucˇ.-ped. izd. Min. prosvesˇcˇenija RSFSR

Jakobson, Roman (1936), “Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre”. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 6, 240⫺288

Cholodovicˇ, Aleksandr A. (1969, Hrsg.), Tipologija kauzativnych konstrukcij: Morfologicˇeskij kauzativ [Typologie kausativer Konstruktionen: Der morphologische Kausativ]. Leningrad: Nauka

Jarceva, Viktoria N. (1990, Hrsg.), Lingvisticˇeskij e˙nciklopedicˇeskij slovar’ [Linguistisches enyklopädisches Wörterbuch]. Moskva: Sovetskaja E˙nciklopedija

Cholodovicˇ, Aleksandr A. (1979), Problemy grammaticˇeskoj teorii [Probleme einer Theorie der Grammatik]. Leningrad: Nauka Chrakovskij, Viktor S. (1978, Hrsg.), Problemy teorii grammaticˇeskogo zaloga [Probleme einer Theorie der grammatischen Diathese]. Leningrad: Nauka

Jedlicˇka, Alois (1977⫺79, Hrsg.), Slovnı´k slovanske´ lingvisticke´ terminologie. Dictionary of Slavonic Linguistics Terminology, Bd. 1⫺2. Praha: Academia Karaulov, Jurij N. (1997, Hrsg.), Russkij jazyk: E˙nciklopedija [Die Russische Sprache: Enzyklopädie], 2., überarb. und erg. Aufl. Moskva: Bol’sˇaja Rossijskaja E˙nciklopedija

Chrakovskij, Viktor S. (1992, Hrsg.), Tipologija imperativnych konstrukcij [Typologie der Imperativkonstruktionen]. St. Petersburg: Nauka Filin, Fedot P. (1979, Hrsg.), Russkij jazyk: E˙nciklopedija [Die Russische Sprache: Enzyklopädie]. Moskva: Sovetskaja E˙nciklopedija

Krusˇevskij, Nikolaj V. [Kruszewski, Nikołaj] (1883), Ocˇerk nauki o jazyke [Abriß der Wissenschaft von der Sprache]. [Nachdruck in: Kruszewski, Nikołaj (1995), Writings in General Linguistics, hrsg. mit e. Einl. v. Konrad Koerner. Amsterdam: Benjamins]

Fortunatov, Filipp F. (1956⫺57), Izbrannye trudy, Bd. 1⫺2 [Ausgewählte Werke]. Moskva: Gos. ucˇ.ped. izd. Min. prosvesˇcˇenija RSFSR

Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1974), Osnovy morfologicˇeskogo analiza [Grundlagen der morphologischen Analyse]. Moskva: Nauka

Gasparov, Boris M. (1970), “Lingvisticˇeskaja koncepcija Moskovskoj sˇkoly i problema strukturnogo opisanija jazyka” [Die linguistische Konzeption der Moskauer Schule und das Problem der strukturellen Sprachbeschreibung]. In: Trudy po russkoj i slavjanskoj filologii 16, Serija lingvisticˇeskaja. Tartu: o. V., 173⫺207

Kuznecov, Petr S. (1953), Istoricˇeskaja grammatika russkogo jazyka: Morfologija [Historische Grammatik des Russischen: Morphologie]. Moskva: Gos. un-t.

Gasparov, Boris M. (1975), “Principy postroenija morfologicˇeskoj klassifikacii slov” [Prinzipien der Konstruktion morphologischer Wortklassifikationen]. In: Trudy po russkoj i slavjanskoj filologii 23, Serija lingvisticˇeskaja. Tartu: o. V., 64⫺93

Kuznecov, Petr S. (1961), O principach izucˇenija grammatiki [Zu den Prinzipien grammatischer Untersuchungen]. Moskva: Izd. Mosk. un-ta.

Gladkij, Aleksandr V. (1969), “K opredeleniju ponjatija padezˇa i roda susˇcˇestvitel’nogo” [Zur Definition des Kasus- und des Genusbegriffs beim Substantiv]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 2, 110⫺123 Gladkij, Aleksandr V. (1973), “Popytka formal’nogo opredelenija ponjatija padezˇa i roda susˇcˇestvitel’nogo” [Versuch der formalen Definition des Kasus- und des Genusbegriffs beim Substantiv]. In: Zaliznjak, Andrej A. (Hrsg.), Problemy grammaticˇeskogo modelirovanija. Moskva: Nauka, 24⫺53 Gvozdev, Aleksandr N. (1960), “O zvukovom sostave morfem” [Über den Lautbestand der Morpheme]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 3, 28⫺41

Kuznecov, Petr S. (1957), Ocˇerki istoricˇeskoj morfologii russkogo jazyka [Studien zur historischen Morphologie des Russischen]. Moskva: Nauka

Kuznecov, Petr S. (1964), “Opyt formal’nogo opredelenija slova” [Versuch einer formalen WortDefinition]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 5, 75⫺77 Kuznecova, Ariadna I. & Efremova, Tat’jana F. (1986), Slovar’ morfem russkogo jazyka: Okolo 52 000 slov [Morphemwörterbuch des Russischen: ca. 52 000 Wörter]. Moskva: Russkij jazyk Lomonosov, Michail V. (1755), Rossijskaja grammatika [Reußische Grammatik]. Moskva: Imperatorska Akad. Nauk. Lopatin, Vladimir V. (1977), Russkaja slovoobrazovatel’naja morfemika: Problemy i principy opisanija [Derivationsmorphemik des Russischen: Probleme und Analyseprinzipien]. Moskva: Nauka

14. Osteuropa Maslov, Jurij S. (1961), “O nekotorych raschozˇdenijach v ponimanii termina ‘morfema’ ” [Über einige Differenzen im Verständnis des Terminus Morphem]. Ucˇenye zapiski LGU, No. 301, serija filol. nauk, vyp. 60, Leningrad, 140⫺152 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1961), “O nekotorych tipach znacˇenij”. In: Achmanova, O. S. & Mel’cˇuk, I. A. & Paducˇeva, E. V. & Frumkina, R. M.: O tocˇnych metodach issledovanija jazyka. Moskva: Izd. un-ta., 33⫺39 [engl. Übers. (1963)] Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1963), “Several Types of Linguistic Meanings”. In: Akhmanova, O. S. & Mel’cˇuk, I. A. & Paducˇeva, E. V. & Frumkina, R. M.: Exact Methods in Linguistic Research. Berkeley, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 36⫺43 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1972), “O suppletivizme” [Über den Suppletivismus]. In: Grigor’ev, Viktor P. (Hrsg.), Problemy strukturnoj lingvistiki 1971, Moskva: Nauka, 396⫺438 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1974), “Grammatical Meanings in Interlinguas for Automatic Translation and the Concept of Grammatical Meaning”. In: Rozencvejg, Viktor Ju. (Hrsg.), Machine Translation and Applied Linguistics, Bd. I, Frankfurt/M.: Athenaion, 95⫺113 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1975), “Opyt razrabotki fragmenta sistemy ponjatij i terminov dlja morfologii (k formalizacii jazyka lingvistiki)” [Versuch der Erarbeitung eines Fragments eines Systems von Begriffen und Termini für die Morphologie]. Semiotika i informatika 6, 5⫺50 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1977), “Le cas”. Revue des E´tudes Slaves 50, 5⫺36 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1978), “K postroeniju sistemy ponjatij dlja morfologii” [Zum Aufbau eines Begriffssystems für die Morphologie]. In: Birnbaum, Henrik (Hrsg.), Studia linguistica Alexandro Vasilii filio Issatschenko a collegis amicisque oblata, Lisse: de Ridder, 267⫺287 Milewski, Tadeusz (1972), Je˛zykoznawstwo [Sprachwissenschaft]. Warszawa: PWN Milewski, Tadeusz (1973), Introduction to the Study of Language. The Hague: Paris, Warszawa: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Didactica 7) Nekrasov, Nikolaj P. (1865), O znacˇenii form russkogo glagola [Zur Bedeutung der Formen des russischen Verbs]. St. Petersburg: Paul’son [Nachdruck (1984), Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR] Nikolaeva, Tat’jana M. (1962), “Opyt algoritmicˇeskoj morfologii russkogo jazyka” [Versuch einer algorithmischen Morphologie des Russischen]. In: Molosˇkaja, Tatjana N. (Hrsg.), Strukturno-tipologicˇeskie issledovanija. Moskva: Nauka, 25⫺45 Oliverius, Zdeneˇk F. (1976), Morfemy russkogo jazyka [Die Morpheme des Russischen]. Praha: Univ. Karlova´ Papp, Ferenc (1966), Mathematical Linguistics in the Soviet Union. The Hague: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Minor 40)

137 Pospelov, Nikolaj S. (1955), “Sootnosˇenie mezˇdu grammaticˇeskimi kategorijami i cˇastjami recˇi” [Das Verhältnis von grammatischen Kategorien und Wortarten]. In: Vinogradov, Viktor V. (Hrsg.), Voprosy grammaticˇeskogo stroja. Moskva: Nauka, AN SSSR, 74⫺91 Potebnja, Aleksandr A. (1874⫺1941), Iz zapisok po russkoj grammatike [Aus den Aufzeichnungen zur russischen Grammatik], Bd. 1⫺4, Moskva: Prosvesˇcˇenie Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1947), Vvedenie v jazykovedenie [Einführung in die Sprachwissenschaft]. Moskva: Prosvesˇcˇenie [41967; 51996] Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1955), “O sootnosˇenii fonetiki i grammatiki (morfologii)” [Zum Verhältnis von Phonetik und Grammatik (Morphologie]). In: Vinogradov, Viktor V. (Hrsg.), Voprosy grammaticˇeskogo stroja. Moskva: AN SSSR, 92⫺112 ˇ to takoe Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1957), “C strukturalizm?” [Was ist Strukturalismus?]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 6, 25⫺37 Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1979), Ocˇerki po fonologii, morfonologii i morfologii [Studien zur Phonologie, Morphonologie und Morphologie]. Moskva: Nauka Revzin, Isaak I. (1960), “O logicˇeskoj forme lingvisticˇeskich opredelenij (na primere opredelenija morfemy)” [Über die logische Form linguistischer Definitionen (am Beispiel der Morphem-Definition)]. In: Primenenie logiki v nauke i technike. Moskva: o. V., 140⫺148 Revzin, Isaak I. (1977), Sovremennaja strukturnaja lingvistika: Problemy i metody [Moderne strukturalistische Sprachwissenschaft: Probleme und Methoden]. Moskva: Nauka Sˇanskij, Nikolaj M. (1968), Ocˇerki po russkomu slovoobrazovaniju [Studien zur russischen Wortbildung]. Moskva: Gos. un-t. Sˇcˇerba, Lev V. (1928), “O cˇastjach recˇi v russkom jazyke” [Über die Wortarten im Russischen]. Russkaja recˇ’, Novaja serija 2, 5⫺27 Schooneveld, Cornelis H. van (1963), “Morphemics”. In: Sebeok (Hrsg.), 22⫺34 Sebeok, Thomas A. (1963, Hrsg.), Current Trends in Linguistics, Bd. I: Soviet and East European Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton [21980] Serebrennikov, Boris A. & Sunik, Orest P. (1965, Hrsg.), Morfologicˇeskaja tipologija i problema klassifikacii jazykov [Die morphologische Typologie und das Problem der Sprachklassifikation]. Moskva, Leningrad: Nauka Skalicˇka, Vladimir (1935), Zur ungarischen Grammatik. Praha: Filosoficˇka fakulta Univ. Karlova´ Skalicˇka, Vladimir (1964), “Morphem und Sema”. In: Vachek (Hrsg.), 320⫺328 Smirnickij, Aleksandr I. (1952), “K voprosu o slove (Problema ‘otdel’nosti slova’)” [Zum Problem des Wortes (Das Problem der “Abgegrenzt-

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heit des Wortes”)]. In: Aleksandrov, Georgij F. (Hrsg.) Voprosy teorii i istorii jazyka v svete trudov I. V. Stalina po jazykoznaniju. Moskva: AN SSSR, 182⫺203 Smirnickij, Aleksandr I. (1955), “Leksicˇeskoe i grammaticˇeskoe v slove” [Das Lexikalische und das Grammatische am Wort]. In: Vinogradov, Viktor V. (Hrsg.), Voprosy grammaticˇeskogo stroja. Moskva: AN SSSR, 11⫺53 Smirnickij, Aleksandr I. (1956), “Analiticˇeskie formy” [Analytische Formen]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 2, 41⫺52 Smirnov, S. (1971), “F. I. Buslaev i russkoe jazykoznanie pervoj poloviny XIX veka” [F. I. Buslaev und die russische Sprachwissenschaft der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts]. Trudy po russkoj i slavjanskoj filologii 20, Serija lingivisticˇeskaja. Tartu: o. V., 3⫺203 Trnka, Bohumil (1932), “Some Thoughts on Structural Morphology”. In: Charisteria Guil. Mathesio … oblata. Prag: Prazˇky´ linguisticky´ krouzˇek, 57⫺ 61 [Nachdruck in: Vachek (1964, Hrsg.), 329⫺334] Vachek, Josef (1964, Hrsg.), A Prague School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington, London: Indiana Univ. Press [21966] Vachek, Josef (1966), The Linguistic School of Prague: An Introduction to its Theory and Practice. Bloomington, London: Indiana Univ. Press Vinogradov, Viktor V. (1938), Sovremennyj russkij jazyk [Die moderne russische Sprache], Bd. 1⫺2. Moskva: Ucˇ.-ped. izd. Vinogradov, Viktor V. (1947), Russkij jazyk: Grammaticˇeskoe ucˇenie o slove [Die russische Sprache: Die grammatische Lehre vom Wort]. Moskva, Leningrad: Gos. ucˇ-ped. izd. Min. Prosv. RSFSR Vinogradov, Viktor V. (1952), “Slovoobrazovanie v ego otnosˇenii k grammatike russkogo i rodstvennych jazykov)” [Die Wortbildung in ihrem Verhältnis zu Grammatik und Lexikologie (am Beispiel

des Russischen und verwandter Sprachen)]. In: Aleksandrov, Georgij F. (Hrsg.), Voprosy teorii i istorii jazyka v svete trudov I. V. Stalina po jazykoznaniju. Moskva: AN SSSR, 99⫺152 Vinogradov, Viktor V. (1952, Hrsg.), Sovremennyi russkij jazyk: morfologija (Kurs lekcij) [Das heutige Russisch: Morphologie (Eine Vorlesungsreihe)]. Moskva: Izd. Mosk. un-ta. Zaliznjak, Andrej A. (1964 a), “ ‘Uslovnoe udarenie’ v russkom slovoizmenenii” [Die “bedingte Betonung” in der russischen Flexion]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 14⫺29 Zaliznjak, Andrej A. (1964 b), “K voprosu o grammaticˇeskich kategorijach roda i odusˇevlennosti v sovremennom russkom jazyke” [Zur Frage der Kategorien Genus und Belebtheit im modernen Russisch]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 4, 25⫺40 Zaliznjak, Andrej A. (1967), Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie [Die russische Nominalflexion]. Moskva: Nauka Zaliznjak, Andrej A. (1977), Grammaticˇeskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka: Slovoizmenenie [Grammatisches Wörterbuch der russischen Sprache: Formenbildung]. Moskva: Russkij jazyk [21980] Zemskaja, Elena A. (1964), “Interfiksacija v sovremennom russkom slovoobrazovanii” [Interfigierung in der Wortbildung des heutigen Russisch]. In: Mucˇnik, Iosif P. (Hrsg.), Razvitie grammatiki i leksiki sovremennogo russkogo jazyka. Moskva: Nauka, 36⫺62 Zˇirmunskij, Viktor M. (1961), “O granicach slova” [Über die Wortgrenzen]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 3, 4⫺21 Zˇirmunskij, Viktor M. & Sunik, Orest P. (1963, Hrsg.), Morfologicˇeskaja struktura slova v jazykach razlicˇnych tipov [Die morphologische Wortstruktur in Sprachen verschiedener Typen]. Moskva, Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR

Sebastian Kempgen, Bamberg (Deutschland)

15. France and Switzerland 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Historical morphology of Arse`ne Darmesteter Structuralist morphosyntax Transformationalist attempts Contemporary work References

1.

Introduction

In order to provide an overall view of research concerning morphology in the 20th century in French speaking countries, one

must mention the work of the 19th century French linguist, Arse`ne Darmesteter (1846⫺ 88). He published two books which still remain essential today: Traite´ de la formation des mots compose´s dans la langue française (1875) and De la creátion actuelle des mots nouveaux dans la langue française et des lois qui la re´gissent (1877). These works of historical morphology played a crucial part, since they were widely disseminated, on the one hand as an introduction to the Dictionnaire geńe´ral under the title of Traite´ de la for-

15. France and Switzerland

mation de la langue française (Darmesteter 1890), and on the other hand, through the lectures given by Darmesteter to the first young women trainee teachers at the Ećole Normale de Se`vres (1895). This masterly work set the pace for 20th century research which is marked by a series of revivals (e.g. Nyrop’s historical grammar; Nyrop 1936), apparent innovations (the transformationalist attempts of the 1970s) and current post-generativist inspired research, in particular D. Corbin’s monumental construction, in which she develops an overall theory of word formation in French (see 5). Indeed, it seems illusory to characterise a structuralist trend as such between Darmesteter and the defenders of transformationalist theses, as, in spite of Saussure’s sharp distinction between diachrony and synchrony, the historical preoccupations have remained. Apart from Pichon (1942) and Dubois (1962) who devoted a thesis to suffixation, linguists have only proposed peripheral modifications or selective discussions of the initial model. The actual name of the discipline seldom appears in specialised linguistic bibliographies, but this disappearance from the general cartography is not peculiar to French tradition. It arose from the various ways in which linguistic territories were divided up according to structuralist and generativist programmes. Inflectional morphology has been neglected in this presentation of works which focuses on derivational morphology, as this domain was initially circumscribed by Darmesteter, but also because the problems which then arose in defining the formal, categorial and semantic relations between two lexical items (base and derived or compound) seemed the most interesting from a theoretical point of view.

2.

Historical morphology of Arse`ne Darmesteter

The works of Darmesteter are directly related to those of the mid-century Romanists, Raynouard and Diez (cf. Diez 1836⫺44). They were original in choosing to study, not some event of “past life” of French, but rather contemporary language. “Does modern language renew its vocabulary […] to express new ideas, new facts and, if so, using which processes?” (Darmesteter 1877: 7). This manner of putting the question contradicts the classical thesis of a complete and closed

139 French language, and also disputes a finding of comparatists, which credits Germanic languages with the power of derivation, and above all of composition, definitely more so than is apparent in Romance languages. Darmesteter’s treatment of data and construction of concepts relies on two fundamental propositions, resulting from comparative grammar: (a) There are two origins of the French lexicon, the “French formation” (often incorrectly called “popular”; Darmesteter 1877: 38) and the “learned formation”; (b) composition in French is syntactic as it contains elements which are “already existing words”. The overall schematisation of the description follows from the former proposal, and appears in the organisation of the sections (“I. French formation”, “II. Latin and Greek learned formation”). From the second part one can infer the divisions, retraced back to Diez, which influenced the whole century: derivational morphology is reduced to proper derivation phenomena (suffixation) and improper derivation (unmarked categorial change). Prefixation, which is part of composition, builds series of words according to syntactical rules; one may distinguish between “real” and juxtaposed compounds, depending on whether the ellipsis has modified the initial syntactic sequences or not. 2.1. “French” and “learned” formations Having formulated phonetic laws, the linguist can and must then classify two subsets of the French lexicon: inherited words which result from phonetic oral change, and words initially borrowed from Latin in written form. Borrowed words are identifiable as they have not undergone phonetic change, but rather a straightforward, minimal “francisation” (corporalis > corporel, tangibilis > tangibile). The French formation is therefore a natural oral exercise. The “learned formation”, i.e. “all of those Latin words artificially reintroduced into the language” (Darmesteter 1877: 268) is an artificial phenomenon, resulting from the actions of clerks, who, through writing or translating techniques, directly imported various Latin forms or who constructed derived or compound forms based on francised Latin radicals and affixes (cauda > *caudalis > caudal). In fact, on the one hand, the modifications which result from established laws lead to disparate

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ones, since phonetic change operates indiscriminately on all of the sounds present in the same context, without taking into account the way in which words belong to a grammatical paradigm. Thus, the theme of the alteration of forms, the destruction of the grammatical bind and the loss of analysability arises. On the other hand, the artificial means of borrowing competes with the natural fact of “phonetic alteration”. For instance, the Latin words containing -atio (-ationem) led to French words with endings such as -aison (fauchaison, fenaison, pendaison). However, “this derivation is completely extinct. It disappeared in the face of the derivation -ation; a regrettable loss, like others resulting from the disastrous action of learned derivation” (Darmesteter 1877: 85). Therefore, at another level, the theme of alteration, destruction and loss. These analyses show that “the very alive energy of our language” is in part strongly due to artificial means, which do not belong to “the French of the origins”, even though one may perceive certain effects “almost at the genesis of our idiom” (Darmesteter 1877: 271). The vitality of the language has to pay the price of impurity. Historians specify that this double formation results in a “division of the language in two foreign idioms” and a split in the linguistic community under observation: “Vis-a`-vis the large French-speaking majority, a minute minority speaks a mix of Latin and French” (Darmesteter 1877: 269). In this context, linguistics is historical, and not evolutionary, since it is event-driven: any element is defined by its historical origin, which in itself provides the sole fixed identity. For this reason -ation is classified as a “Latin suffix”, even though the numerous borrowings of this sort were rendered analysable by the borrowing language itself, which then uses them for its “organic derivations”, i.e. for words directly derived from “French” words such as ae´r-ation, re´glement-ation. In French, the double opacification theme of ideal morphological transparency, which was supposedly Latin, owing, on the one hand, to the indiscriminate action of phonetic laws, and on the other hand, to the borrowing of forms that remain unfiltered through the sieve of the same laws, has been taken up again and again (Meillet 1938; Dauzat 1937; Marouzeau 1951).

2.2. Compound form words as elliptical syntactical sequences Since concrete forms such as chou-fleur, porte-feuille, and rendez-vous were initially brought together under their immediately observable nature as compound words, studying laws of French composition means “seeking […] the processes the language uses when it borrows already existing words to combine them in new creations” (Darmesteter 1875: 1). Within this preliminary formulation, the “already existing word” is a minimal element likely to be observed in a syntactic context, i.e. a “grammatical word” actualised in discourse, such as that indicated by the inflected form of rendez in rendez-vous, or the presence of the pronoun. Thus, whereas the ancient composition combines themes (bare radicals, divested of inflection), the Roman composition combines “words”, and therefore belongs to syntactic order. “The relation linking composition to syntax is too obvious for one to insist. A compound word is a shortened clause” (Darmesteter 1875: 4). It is thus by generalisation (according to certain types of examples) and by homogenisation (between “juxtaposed” compounds (or “mere combinations of terms reunited through usage”), and “true” elliptical compounds) that Darmesteter moves composition phenomena within the realm of syntactic order. The explanation of the inflected form in rendez-vous, also provides an analysis for compound words like porte-plume, for which Diez had already invented the category of “clause composition”. Instead of dividing the compound words into two subsets, one belonging to a morphological mode and the other to a syntactical mode, Darmesteter places the borderline elsewhere: somewhere between derivation, practically reduced to suffixation, and composition. Indeed, derivation introduces elements which are not (necessarily) “already existing words”: firstly, suffixes, deprived of autonomy, as they are, and secondly the base-element which can be identified as a theme, at least when the data allow this, i.e. when the base is verbal: the derived term gratt-oir is obtained by suffixation of -oir on the theme of the verb gratt-er, the adjective fais-able from the theme of the present participle fais-ant, etc. On the other hand, if composition is defined by the “already existing words” status of its elements, porte in porte-plume ‘penholder’ must then constitute a grammatical form specified by the verb porter. An impor-

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tant discussion arose on the matter (Darmesteter 1875: 146⫺206) concerning the 3rd person singular indicative present vs. an imperative form: if the lexical item *porte-plume should be interpreted as designating ‘[ce(lui) qui] porte [la] plume ([this(he) who/which] holds/carries [the] pen)’ or ‘[ce(lui) a` qui on dit:] “Porte [la] plume!” ([this(he) to whom one says:] “Hold [the] pen!”)’ (Darmesteter 1875: 146). If the amount of terms which Darmesteter inserts in brackets are any indication, then one may conclude that composition in Romance languages relies on ellipsis. The criterion of the “already existing word”, as long as it has an historical character, is used to define prefixed words as compounds: indeed, their initial element, the “particle”, is always identifiable either as a preposition (sur, sous, pour, en, avant) or as an adverb (arrie`re, bien, mal). This identity, established on the basis of similarity, is only possible in etymological terms (thus the French pre´- can only be connected to the Latin preposition prae). Nevertheless, through this historical procedure, all prefixes obtain the status of compounded word elements. Finally, this criterion brought about the “parasynthetic” notion for explaining complex words such as embarquer, or encablure. Since they are prefixed, then they are compound. However, neither *barquer nor *cablure is already an existing word; barque or caˆble alone hold this status; one thus acknowledges “the remarkable character of being the result of composition and derivation both influencing the same radical” (Darmesteter 1875: 79⫺85), which provides the status of derivational suffix for the infinitive desinence, e.g. embarquer (Darmesteter 1877: 115). The definition of formal and semantic identity of these primitive elements brought into play by suffixation, prefixation and composition is the crux of the issue. Darmesteter only has the traditional notions of sentence, word and theme at his disposal, the notion of theme being for ancient inflected languages. Word includes both lexeme and the “grammatical word” in this context, which means there is no theoretical demarcation between inflection and derivation. According to this disposition of data, “word formation” and “morphology” no longer coincide. Compounds are the product of syntax, either by clustering (“juxtaposed” compounds), or by ellipsis (“true compounds”, including prefixed terms).

3.

Structuralist morphosyntax

The iconoclastic Saussurian gesture consisted of “wiping the slate clean” in relation to past events in order to gain access to the viewpoint of speakers on language. Indeed, “the first striking aspect which appears when one studies language phenomena is that for the speaker their succession in time is non-existent: (s)he is confronted with a state. So, the linguist who wants to understand this state must wipe the slate clean in terms of what has produced the state and ignore diachrony. (S)he can only penetrate the consciousness of the speakers by suppressing the past. Intervening through history would only distort judgement” (Saussure 1916: 117). Grammar, as a “description of a complex and systematic object, making coexisting values coincide” (Saussure 1916: 185) can therefore only be synchronic. But the entire linguistic mechanism lies in the fact that language never ceases to interpret and divide up the units it analyses: “Everything that makes up a state of language must lead back to a theory of phrases and associations” (Saussure 1916: 188). Both of these combined processes of analysis make it possible, in a similar way, to “distinguish” and identify a formative element of a complex word or a constitutive element of a syntactic phrase. Thus: “linguistically, morphology has no real and autonomous object” (Saussure 1916: 186). “Any word which is not a simple and irreducible unit cannot be essentially differentiated from a member of a phrase, or from a syntactic fact; the organisation of sub-units which make it up follows the same fundamental principles as the formation of word groups” (Saussure 1916: 187). Morphology is indistinguishable from syntax. The denomination of morphosyntax follows from this (Pottier 1962; Pinchon 1986). Therefore, branching out from the two bifurcations introduced by Saussure, between language and speech, synchrony and diachrony, the entire properties of language were considered to be constituently unitary. And the unicity of procedures allowing one to distinguish and identify units of different levels also leads to the unification of units of a single level: since one extricates and identifies the suffix eux and the verbal base boıˆt(er) from the derived form boıˆteux by the same means, then one can base morphosyntax on a single type of unit, the morpheme, which subsumes the different types (affix, radical) which were differentiated in historical linguistics.

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According to this perspective Saussure attached little importance to new words and a great deal of importance to regularities which account for them. Indeed, “any creation must be preceded by any unconscious comparison of material deposited in the treasure chest of language where generating forms are arranged according to their syntagmatic and associative links. Thus a whole part of the phenomenon is achieved before one notices the new form appearing. […] A word which I improvise already exists potentially in language and its realisation in speech is an insignificant fact in comparison with the possibility of the form” (Saussure 1916: 228). Thus derived forms and compounds are analogical creations and the analogy is totally grammatical and synchronical. As is widely known, the Saussurian rupture was not immediately registered. Linguists of the 1920s, preoccupied with the analysis of constructed words, did not have equivalent access to works of the historian on the one hand, swarming with statements and concrete descriptions, and to those of the theorist of descriptive linguistics on the other hand, which only provided a few crucial examples. Historical linguistics defined the programme of normal science for half a century, as appeared in Meillet’s collection Linguistique historique et linguistique geńe´rale. One thus perceives the discussions, and detailed developments and extensions which define this mode of scientific work. For instance, Marouzeau (1952 a, b) disputes the identification of the former element appearing in compounds like porte-plume as an imperative form, and analyses it instead as a verbal theme, without using this contradictory result as an opportunity to revive the principle which turns compound words into elliptical sentential sequences. A more extensive debate concerns the exact question Darmesteter had proposed to answer: the vitality of language in its derivational formation. Amongst others, Meillet (1938), Pichon (1935; 1942), Dauzat (1937), Marouzeau (1951), argued in turn in favour of the lexical “enrichment” or “impoverishment” in French, confirming or disputing the inevitable role of the learned formation. The Saussurian “sharp distinctions” are evident in two debates: one concerning the delimitation or the unification of the two fields of morphology and syntax, which provoked a question in the 6th International Congress of Linguists in 1949 (cf. also Perrot 1953; Martinet 1969), and the other related

on the status of the word. If, in its identification procedures, morphology cannot be distinguished from syntax, then words no longer constitute a specific order of linguistic entities (Martinet 1966; 1967; 1969).

4.

Transformationalist attempts

On the scientific scene of the 1960s, models were abundant and coexisted: comparative grammar and historical linguistics, Martinet’s functionalist version of structuralism, Guillaumism, American distributionalism and generative transformational grammar. In certain works, the authors strove to relate two theoretical perspectives. For example, in a stimulating book, P. Guiraud tried to reconcile historical lexicology and structural lexicology, “as etymology is dependent on both these types of analysis, [although] they answer distinct and, in fact, opposing thought processes” (Guiraud 1970: 5). The works of Dubois (1967; 1969), Guilbert (1975), Peytard (1975) implement another conjunction, of concepts of creativity, competence, and tools for rule representation, including transformations, derived from generative grammar, and from a sociological perspective, the aim of establishing a causal relationship between language and society. The regularities which account for the meaning and form of constructed lexical items are not the main issue at stake in their research, as the lexicon cannot be isolated from the world it designates, nor the lexical rules from social functioning. The pivot of this construction which associates a sociological view of language (whose roots trace back to Cohen 1956 for a Marxist version, and to Meillet for the initial Durkheimian version) with a transformationalist toolkit, is the term neologism itself, which labels two concepts: if a new word is “formed”, it responds to a formal and semantic schema, which is available in the language and identifiable by its speakers. But a neologism is also an event, and in this way it summons the customary dimensions of historical reasoning: attested dates, chronology, causality and social agents. The syntactic base of compound words is not a novel idea in Europe (even if it was asserted by Benveniste 1974, and discussed by Wagner 1980: 103⫺122). The transformationalist analyses which were produced were parallel to Darmesteter’s, the transformation acting as an ellipsis. But there are two differences: the enterprise is not confined to compound words, but is extended to affixed


words. Transformation is a more constraining means than ellipsis. Thus, the fact that a transformation is not supposed to modify the meaning of the structure it applies to, leads one to postulate barely grammatical underlying sentences, e.g. Paul a la qualite´ fie`re > la fierte´ de Paul, la route a la qualite´ refaite > la re´fection de la route (Dubois 1969: 53). These transformationalists strictly applied the definition according to which only syntax is creative. Since facts of creativity are observed in the lexical domain, then this creativity must be of a syntactic nature. “Derivation [is] a step in a transformational process leading from base clauses to real sentences” (Dubois 1969: 50). Nevertheless this treatment supports various assertions of historical linguistics (the non-categorising nature of prefixes, the derivational status of infinitive endings, parasynthesis, etc.). Morphology has totally disappeared off the map, by fragmentation: categorial and semantic phenomena are attributed to the properties of sentences subjected to transformation, and the detail of the achievement of forms is due to morphophonological rules. The fact that morphology is absorbed by syntax is based on the dissociation between calculation of the meaning of complex lexical items and that of their form.

5.

Contemporary work

In a seminal text, Dell (1979) put forward the conditions for a general theory on derivational morphology, following his PhD dissertation (Dell 1970) and the Chomskyan lexicalist hypothesis. The definition of goals, the synchronic point of view, the identification of units as individualised “lexical items” by three sets of phonological, categorial and semantic features, the definition of “grouping” relations between lexical items as a predictable result of an operation verifying a triple relation, all clearly delimited the issue. Several contemporary works (Corbin 1987; Pleńat 1995; and also Fradin 1992; Kerleroux 1996) were inspired by this framework. This route has been explored by Danielle Corbin and the SILEX team and has led to important results both on the empirical and theoretical fronts. One now has access to detailed descriptions, based on extensive corpora (monographs based on the properties of the suffix -ier (D. Corbin & P. Corbin 1991), the suffix -et(te) (Dal 1997), the suffix -erie

143 (Temple 1996)), which test hypotheses of an overall model (Corbin 1987; 1991; 1992; 1997, and the presentation herein; Art. 120) and in turn help it evolve. Corbin’s work, at the end of this century, which stands out and challenges Darmesteter’s own work before the turn of the century, hinges on two fundamental proposals, belonging to the central methological core of the generative programme: (a) The aim of linguistics is to highlight regularities, related to lexical and other matters; (b) “Neither similarities and linguistic differences, nor regularities and irregularities constitute immediate data” (Corbin 1991: 25). The first point leads to the hypothesis which justifies this associative morphology, according to which the meaning of an affixed or compound word is constructed at the same time as the morphological structure, and compositionally in relation to it. “The grammatical representation should reflect this simultaneous construction of structure and meaning (Corbin 1991: 9). From the second point one can infer various distinctions, in relation to the aim of accounting for the distortions observed between immediate data and predictions of the hypothesis, which multiply and stratify the levels of analysis. “It is a question of accepting abstraction in this domain, as one does naturally elsewhere” (Corbin 1991: 10). Hence, the distinctions between attested and predictable meaning, observable and constructed form, and between superficial irregularities and partially predictable formal or semantic subregularities (Corbin 1987: 171⫺385), between differing resources of semantic calculation associated with rules (Corbin 1991), between the status of the semantic affix operator and the referential status of elements of the compound word (Corbin 1992). The extent of the empirical basis, the two aspects of associativity and stratification of the model, and thus the equivalent weight attributed to the semantic and the structural analyses form the means for “attempting to break away from the atheoretical traditional empiricism and from the theorising with inadequate empirical support of most generative models of the lexicon” (Corbin 1991: 24). In line with this, several studies conducted by Marc Pleńat, which are related to the “prosodic morphology” trend and, more re-

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cently, to Optimality Theory, have focused on the non-concatenative part of morphology, i.e. on the modes of formation which can be analysed as the association of phonic material of a base form with a prosodic schema. French includes the following distribution: only concatenative processes build lexical items, whereas the non-concatenative processes are only brought into play in order to build denominations of reduplicated hypocorisms (Pleńat 1984), secret languages (Pleńat 1985; 1991; 1995) and spoken acronyms (Pleńat 1993). A new phase consists of putting forward the hypothesis that those forms which are derived by concatenation, in particular by suffixation, are also subjected to major constraints, recalling prosodic schemas (Corbin & Pleńat 1992).

6.

References

Benveniste, Emile (1974), Proble`mes de linguistique geńe´rale, Vol. II, Paris: Gallimard Cohen, Marcel (1956), Pour une sociologie du langage. Paris: Albin-Michel Corbin, Danielle (1987), Morphologie de´rivationnelle et structuration du lexique, Vol. 1⫺2. Tübingen: Niemeyer Corbin, Danielle (1991), “La formation des mots: structure et interpre´tation”. Lexique 10, 7⫺30 Corbin, Danielle (1992), “Hypothe`ses sur les frontie`res de la composition nominale”. Cahiers de grammaire 17, 25⫺55 Corbin, Danielle (1999), La construction des unite´s lexicales en français: Introduction me´thodique a` la morphologie de´rivationnelle. Paris: Colin Corbin, Danielle & Corbin, Pierre (1991), “Un traitement unifie´ du suffixe -ier(e)”. Lexique 10, 61⫺146 Corbin, Danielle & Pleńat, Marc (1992), “Note sur l’haplologie des mots construits”. Langue française 96, 101⫺112 Dal, Georgette (1997), Grammaire du suffixe -et(te). Paris: Didier Erudition (Etudes de se´mantique lexicale) Darmesteter, Arse`ne (1875), Traite´ de la formation des mots compose´s dans la langue française. Paris: Vieweg [2nd ed. 1894, Paris: Champion] Darmesteter, Arse`ne (1877), De la creátion actuelle des mots nouveaux dans la langue française et des lois qui la re´gissent. Paris: Vieweg [reprint 1972, Gene`ve: Slatkine Reprints] Darmesteter, Arse`ne (1890), “Traite´ de la formation de la langue française”. In: Hatzfeld, A. & Darmesteter, A. & Thomas, A. (eds.), Dictionnaire geńe´ral de la langue française du commencement du XVII o sie`cle jusqu’a` nos jours. Paris: Delagrave, 1⫺300

Darmesteter, Arse`ne (1895), Cours de grammaire historique de la langue française, Vol. III: Formation des mots et vie des mots. Paris: Delagrave Dauzat, Albert (1937), “L’appauvrissement de la de´rivation en français: ses causes”. Le Français Moderne 4, 289⫺299 Dell, François (1970), Les re`gles phonologiques tardives et la morphologie de´rivationnelle du français. PhD dissertation Massachusets Institute of Technology Dell, François (1979), “La morphologie de´rivationnelle du français et l’organisation de la composante lexicale en grammaire geńe´rative”. Revue romane 24.2, 185⫺216 Diez, Friedrich (1836⫺44), Grammaire des langues romanes [French translation by de A. Brachet, G. Paris and A. Morel-Fatio]. Paris: Franck Dubois, Jean (1962), Etude sur la de´rivation suffixale en français moderne et contemporain. Paris: Larousse Dubois, Jean (1967), Grammaire structurale du français: le verbe. Paris: Larousse Dubois, Jean (1969), Grammaire structurale du français: la phrase et les transformations. Paris: Larousse Fradin, Bernard (1992), “Pourquoi la morphologie n’est pas configurationnelle”. In: Tasmowski, Liliane & Zribi-Hertz, Anne (eds.), Hommage a` Nicolas Ruwet. Ghent: Communication and Cognition, 229⫺243 Guilbert, Louis (1975), La creátivite´ lexicale. Paris: Larousse Guiraud, Pierre (1970), Structures e´tymologiques du lexique français. Paris: Larousse Kerleroux, Françoise (1996), La coupure invisible: Etudes de syntaxe et de morphologie. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion Marouzeau, Jules (1951), “Les de´ficiences de la de´rivation française”. Le Français Moderne 1, 1⫺8 Marouzeau, Jules (1952 a), “Compose´s a` the`me verbal”. Le Français moderne 2, 81⫺86 Marouzeau, Jules (1952 b), “The`mes verbaux en français”. Le Français moderne 2, 161⫺164 Martinet, Andre´ (1960), Ele´ments de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Colin Martinet, Andre´ (1966), “Le mot”. In: Proble`mes du langage. Paris: Gallimard, 39⫺53 Martinet, Andre´ (1967), “Syntagme et synthe`me”. La linguistique 2, 1⫺14 Martinet, Andre´ (1969), “Qu’est-ce que la morphologie?”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 26, 85⫺90 Meillet, Antoine (1938), “La notion de radical en français”. In: Meillet, Antoine, Linguistique historique et linguistique geńe´rale, Vol. II. Paris: Klincksieck, 123⫺127 Nyrop, Krystof (1936), Grammaire historique de la langue française. Paris: Picard

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16. Scandinavia Perrot, Jean (1953), “Morphologie, syntaxe, lexique: Contribution a` la discussion sur les divisions de la langue”. Confe´rences de l’institut de linguistique de l’universite´ de Paris 9, 33⫺74 Peytard, Jean (1975), Recherches sur la pre´fixation en français contemporain. Paris: Champion Pichon, Edouard (1935), “L’enrichissement lexical dans le français d’aujourd’hui”. Le Français moderne 3, 209⫺222 Pichon, Edouard (1942), L’enrichissement lexical dans le français d’aujourd’hui. Les principes de la suffixation en français. Paris: D’Artrey Pinchon, Jacqueline (1986), Morphosyntaxe du français. Paris: Hachette Universite´ Pleńat, Marc (1984), “Toto, Fanfa, Totor et meˆme Guiguitte sont des ANARs”. In: Dell, François & Hirst, Daniel & Vergnaud, Jean-Roger (eds.), Forme sonore du langage. Paris: Hermann, 161⫺ 182 Pleńat, Marc (1985), “Morphologie du largonji des loucherbems”. Langages 78, 73⫺122 Pleńat, Marc (1991), “Le javanais: concurrence et haplologie”. Langages 101, 95⫺117

Pleńat, Marc (1993), “Observations sur le mot minimal français”. In: Laks, Bernard & Pleńat, Marc (eds.), De natura sonorum. Paris: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 143⫺172 Pleńat, Marc (1995), “Une approche prosodique de la morphologie du verlan”. Lingua 95, 97⫺129 Pottier, Bernard (1962), Syste´matique des e´le´ments de relation: Etude de morphosyntaxe structurale romane. Paris: Klincksieck Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Payot Temple, Martine (1996), Le sens des mots construits: pour un traitement de´rivationnel associatif. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion Wagner, Robert-León (1980), Essais de linguistique française. Paris: Nathan

Françoise Kerleroux, Paris (France) Translation: Rachel Pankhurst, Montpellier (France)

16. Scandinavia 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Introduction Denmark Norway Sweden References

1.

Introduction

The three Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway, and Sweden form a linguistic area in which dialects and standard languages are mutually intelligible. The majority of morphological studies in the three countries consist of the morphological parts of descriptive analyses of various languages or dialects. In Norway and Sweden, morphological studies of Scandinavian languages and dialects have, with few exceptions, been without any explicit theoretical foundation until quite recently. Few linguists explicitly stated their theoretical and methodological framework or gave a precise definition of the metalanguage they used. In morphological studies from the past 40 years, one finds a certain influence from structuralism and generative theories. In Denmark, the descriptions of Danish show a greater awareness of their theoretical and methodological basis.

2.

Denmark

The famous Danish linguists of the 19th and early 20th century like Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787⫺1832), Karl Verner (1846⫺96), Vilhelm Thomsen (1842⫺1927), and Holger Pedersen (1867⫺1953) did not contribute much to morphology. They knew their wordand-paradigm method by heart and used it in an elegant and consistent way, but none of them were preoccupied with the study of the metalanguage and theoretical foundations of morphology. However, in his numerous short grammars of both Indo-European and nonIndo-European languages, Rask included a section on word formation treating both compounding and derivational morphology. He stressed the importance of this component of the language in a grammatical description, thereby creating a pattern to be followed in most subsequent studies of Scandinavian languages and dialects. The first Danish linguist of the 20th century who made a name in theoretical linguistics was Otto Jespersen (1860⫺1943). In spite of his important and influential contributions to many fields of modern linguistics (phonetics, syntax, applied linguistics, etc.), however,

146


Jespersen’s interest in morphology was marginal. The situation is quite different when we come to Viggo Brøndal (1887⫺1942). His main interest was the classification of word classes and morpheme classes (Bløndal 1928; 1940; 1943). In many respects, he worked within the same structuralist European tradition as Hjelmslev. There are more similarities between the two in their approach to morphology than probably either of them would have liked to admit. Brøndal’s point of departure was a semantic classification as he organized his division of word classes and morpheme classes by searching for their semantic correlates. The problems of morphological segmentation were unimportant to him. Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (1899⫺1965) is the leading theoretician in Scandinavian linguistics in this century with morphology as a central component in his works and in his glossematic theory. As early as in his studies on case grammar (Hjelmslev 1935⫺37), Hjelmslev takes up fundamental problems of morphology trying to establish a basic set of local semantic features to account for the structure of the case system in all human languages. Throughout all his glossematic works (cf. Hjelmslev 1959 and especially Hjelmslev 1938), he struggles with the idea of an exhaustive system for describing morphological oppositions. A terminology is established for dealing with all possible combinations of morphemes and their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. Grammatical morphemes, not stems and words, are the fundamental entities in Hjelmslev’s morphology. How the linguist arrives at these morphemes through morphological segmentation is never treated by Hjelmslev to any extent and was probably of no interest to him. The form of the language is given to the linguist a priori and Hjelmslev’s approach, which is sometimes more semantic than morphological, seeks to describe the parallelism between content and expression. Accordingly, morphological syncretism is a fundamental theoretical problem in his morphological theory. Hjelmslev’s morphological theory is very abstract and complicated, and based on an elaborate terminology which is usually not exemplified by any linguistic data. But while most of Hjelmslev’s theories were not applied in the description of natural languages by himself or others, his morphological theories had a certain vogue not only in some studies

of Danish dialects but especially in the works of the Norwegian linguists Vogt, Bergsland, and Flydal (cf. 3). Paul Diderichsen (1904⫺64) was well trained in philology through his studies of Old Danish texts. Although much more pedagogical and less dogmatic than Hjelmslev, the morphological part of his successful Danish grammar (Diderichsen 1946) and his illuminating study of morpheme categories in Danish (Diderichsen 1949) are based on an approach very close to Hjelmslev’s. The semantic aspects of grammatical morphemes and their syntagmatic and paradigmatic oppositions are central aspects of Diderichsen’s morphological analysis.

3.

Norway

When Ivar Aasen (1813⫺96) established a new Norwegian written language to replace Danish, morphology was a significant part of the identity of the new language. The phonological and syntactic differences between the two languages were not great and, besides the lexicon, morphology became the basic distinction between the two variants of Norwegian (riksma˚l, later bokma˚l, and landsma˚l, later nynorsk). For almost 150 years, discussion about language norms and language change in Norway has largely been a discussion about morphology, for example, the question of two vs. three genders, the tense inflection of verbs etc.; cf. examples (1) to (4) illustrating some aspects of Norwegian gender morphology: (1) Traditional riksma˚l common ma˚ne-n sol-en ‘moon-the’ ‘sun-the’ Pronominal form: den (2) Modern bokma˚l masculine feminine ma˚ne-n sol-a ‘moon-the’ ‘sun-the’ Pronominal form: den den (3) Traditional landsma˚l masculine feminine ma˚ne-n sol-i ‘moon-the’ ‘sun-the’ Pronominal form: han ho

neuter hus-et ‘house-the’ det neuter hus-et ‘house-the’ det neuter hus-et ‘house-the’ det

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16. Scandinavia

(4) Modern nynorsk masculine feminine ma˚ne-n sol-a ‘moon-the’ ‘sun-the’ Pronominal form: han ho

neuter hus-et ‘house-the’ det

The discussion, however, has been political and normative and it is indeed quite surprising how little theoretical interest it has created. Moreover, the methods used were mainly traditional neogrammarian and/or dialectological methods from the 19th century. Nevertheless, the nynorsk linguistic tradition has led to interesting morphological research due to the intensive collection of data on inflection, derivation and word compounding which was regarded as a necessary basis for language standardization; cf. Beito (1942; 1970) for some typical examples. Structuralism, or for that matter other modern linguistic methods, were not used to any extent in the study of Norwegian and Norwegian dialects until the 1960s. An exception is the Hjelmslev-influenced Leif Flydal (1904⫺83) who in a number of studies treated aspects of Norwegian morphology (Flydal 1954; 1989) and especially the correspondence between the gender system and the pronominal system in various dialects and sociolects of Norwegian (Flydal 1975). Curiously enough, none of Flydal’s works are included in the otherwise excellent collection of Norwegian morphological studies edited by Jahr and Lorentz (Jahr & Lorentz 1985, eds.). There has never been a Norwegian school of linguistics and we find a high degree of theoretical heterogeneity among Norwegian linguists in this century. The leading Norwegian linguist of the first part of this century, Alf Sommerfelt (1892⫺1965), had a very wide range of interests, but morphology was not one of them. It is significant that in the collection of his main articles (Sommerfelt 1962), there is not a single article on morphology. The few descriptive studies of non-IndoEuropean languages based on Hjelmslev’s theory were mostly carried out by Norwegian linguists, for example, Hans Vogt’s (1903⫺ 86) study of the case system in Ossetic (Vogt 1944) and Knut Bergsland’s (1914⫺98) description of the South-Sa´mi language of Røros (Bergsland 1946). Bergsland’s book is interesting because it is an attempt at a full-scale grammar and, ac-

cordingly, reveals both the weaknesses and the strengths of the theory. The main bulk of the grammar is devoted to morphology (both inflectional and derivational). The morphological description is based on systematic semantico-logical symmetrical patterns to be filled with linguistic data. While the description becomes very consistent, sometimes one has the feeling that the language is forced into a structure or pattern that does not fit. The effort at applying glossematics in descriptive studies was, however, soon abandoned in favour of an unorthodox version of American structuralism. This approach is prominent in the works of Bergsland and Vogt after (and in the case of Vogt also before) their glossematic period (cf. Vogt 1988). The theoretically most interesting and original Norwegian linguist in the field of morphology in this century was Carl Hjalmar Borgstrøm (1909⫺86), professor of comparative Indo-European philology at the University of Oslo. In a number of studies on ProtoIndo-European morphology (cf. Borgstrøm 1954 for a survey) he contributed significantly to the typology of comparative IndoEuropean morphology, and in his textbook in general linguistics (Borgstrøm 1958), which for a long time was also used in Denmark and Sweden, he describes a very strict method for morphological analysis based on a blend of American structuralism and glossematic ideas. In contrast to the Danish linguists, Borgstrøm was mainly preoccupied with morphological segmentation and identification, while semantics played a more marginal role. But although his book was for a long time compulsory reading for most Scandinavian linguists, his method for morphological analysis was not used to any extent by other Scandinavian linguists.

4.

Sweden

Today Sweden is probably the Scandinavian country with the most versatile and internationally most recognized linguistic milieu. A number of Swedish linguists have also throughout the past years made significant theoretical contributions to modern linguistics; however, thirty years ago the situation was quite different. With the exception of Alfred Noreen (1854⫺1925) and Bertil Malmberg (1913⫺95), there is hardly any Swedish linguist from the period 1860⫺1960 who has any international reputation in general lin-

148


guistics. Both in synchronic and diachronic linguistics, Swedish linguists were rather oldfashioned and kept to prestructuralist theories well into the 1960s. Volume 7 of Noreen’s monumental and unfinished grammar of Swedish (Noreen 1906) is a description of Swedish morphology which in terminology of theoretical presentation was far ahead of his time and in many respects very similar to European und American structuralism of the 30s and 40s. Noreen treats both inflection, derivation, and compounding, and bases his analysis of the morpheme (he is probably the first one to use this term in Scandinavia) instead of the word. To him a morpheme is a combination of expression (sound) and a semem (a basic semantic concept). Furthermore, he presented a classification of various types of morphemes (prefixes, suffixes, vowel alternation, toneme alternation, etc.) and established a typology of morphemes. Noreen discussed extensively the problems of morphemic identification while he was much less preoccupied with the problems of morphological segmentation. Noreen also stressed the importance of the paradigm in morphological description. Structuralism played a rather insignificant role in Sweden compared to Denmark and Norway, and it is not far from the truth (pace Malmberg) to say that structuralism and generative grammar arrived hand in hand in Sweden. And the theoretical revival of morphological studies of Swedish in the 1960s, which would later also stimulate similar studies in Norway, was based on a successful combination of structuralist and generative ideas. As the most influential of these works, some early studies on Swedish noun inflection by Ulf Teleman (1934⫺) should be mentioned (cf. Teleman 1965; 1969 a; 1969 b).

5.

References

Beito, Olav Toreson (1942), R-bøygning. Oslo: Aschehoug Beito, Olav Toreson (1970), Nynorsk grammatikk: Lyd- og ordlære. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget Bergsland, Knut (1946), Røros-lappisk grammatikk: Et forsøk pa˚ en strukturell spra˚kbeskrivelse. Oslo: Aschehoug (Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning, Serie B: Skrifter 43) Borgstrøm, Carl Hjalmar (1954), “Internal Reconstruction of Pre-Indo-European Word-Forms”. Word 10, 275⫺287 Borgstrøm, Carl Hjalmar (1958), Innføring i sprogvidenskap. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget

Brøndal, Viggo (1928), Ordklassene. Partes Orationes: Studier over de sproglige Kategorier. København: Gad Brøndal, Viggo (1940), Præpositionernes theori: Indledning til en rationel betydningslære. København: Munksgaard Brøndal, Viggo (1943), Essais de linguistique geńe´rale. Copenhague: Munksgaard Diderichsen, Paul (1946), Elementær Dansk grammatik. København: Gyldendal Diderichsen, Paul (1949), “Morpheme Categories in Modern Danish”. In: Recherches Structurales 1949: Interventions dans le de´bat glossematique, publieés a` l’occasion du cinquantenaire de M. Louis Hjelmslev. Copenhague: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 5), 134⫺155 Flydal, Leiv (1954), En spra˚klig analyse av norske boktitler 1952: Morfemer i reklamens tjeneste. Bergen: Grieg (Skrifter fra Norges Handelshøyskole, Spra˚klige avhandlinger 6) Flydal, Leiv (1975), “Un proble`me social: le conflit des genres en dano-norve´gien”. La Linguistique 11, 17⫺29 Flydal, Leiv (1989), Spra˚ket: Struktur og samfunn, Vol 1⫺2, ed. by Arne Halvorsen and Geirr Wiggen. Oslo: Novus (Oslo-studier i spra˚kvitenskap 5) Hjelmslev, Louis (1935⫺37) La cate´gorie des cas, Vol. 1⫺2. Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget Hjelmslev, Louis (1938), “Essai d’une theórie des morphe`mes”. Actes du IVe Congre`s international de linguistes 1936, Copenhague 140⫺151 [reprinted in: Hjelmslev (1959), 152⫺164] Hjelmslev, Louis (1959), Essais Linguistiques. Copenhague: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du cercle linguistique de Copenhague 12) Jahr, Ernst Ha˚kon & Lorentz, Ove (1985, eds.), Morfologi/Morphology. Oslo: Novus (Studies in Norwegian linguistics 3) Noreen, Adolf (1906), Va˚rt spra˚k: Ny svensk grammatik i utförlig framställning, Vol. VII: Formlära (Morfologi). Lund: Gleerups Sommerfelt, Alf (1962), Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects of Language. ’s-Gravenhage: Mouton (Janua Linguarum, Series Major 7) Teleman, Ulf (1965), “Svenskans genusmorfem”. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 80, 217⫺230 Teleman, Ulf (1969 a), Definita och indefinita attribut i nusvenskan. Lund: Studentliteratur (Lundastudier i nordisk spra˚kventenskap, Serie B 7) Teleman, Ulf (1969 b), “Böjningssuffixens form i nusvenskan.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 84, 163⫺208 Vogt, Hans (1944), “Le syste`me des cas en osse`te”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 4, 17⫺41 Vogt, Hans (1988), Linguistique caucasienne et armeńienne. Oslo: Norwegian University Press

Even Hovdhaugen, Oslo (Norway)

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17. Britain

17. Britain 1. 2. 3. 4.

Early linguistics in Britain The London School Conclusion References

1.

Early linguistics in Britain

Whereas in Germany morphology had figured prominently in the philological investigations of Indo-European in the nineteenth century, studies of morphology per se did not start in Britain till this century. What were the reasons for this tardiness? The answer is to be found in this quotation form Sweet which is cited approvingly by Firth (1957: 218): “Our tendency is not so much towards the antiquarian philology and text-criticism in which German scholars have done so much, as towards the observation of the phenomena of living languages […], the real strength and originality of English work lies […] in phonology and dialectology.”

So, the strength of British linguistics initially lay in synchronic phonetics that had a significant practical dimension. The reasons for this were varied. There was a need for linguists to grapple with innumerable unwritten languages which were found in Britain’s vast empire. It was for the purpose of the study of the languages and cultures of Britain’s Asian and African colonies that the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which soon became the first major national centre for the study of linguistics, was established in 1916. The languages of the colonies provided a challenge of devising descriptions, with an emphasis on developing practical orthographies. This challenge was believed to call for expertise in phonetics above all else. In fact, even before the days of Empire, in Britain there had been a long tradition of doing practical linguistics, with a strong phonetic bias. To illustrate, for centuries, orthoepists such as John Wallis (1616⫺1703) had studied and codified correct pronunciation for teaching purposes; for centuries, spelling reformers had campaigned for the reform of the English orthography to make it correspond more closely to pronunciation; in 1837, the spelling reformer and student of speech, Isaac Pitman had developed the practical tool of shorthand. Therefore it is not surprising that, given this historically strong bias towards the

sound system of language, when the modern linguistics era dawned, there was an almost exclusive orientation towards phonetics. The two major early British linguists, Henry Sweet (1845⫺1912) and his intellectual heir, Daniel Jones (1881⫺1967) were primarily phoneticians. They did not deal with morphological questions. Nor did they encourage their followers to do so.

2.

The London School

The first important scholar whose concerns extended beyond phonetics was John R. Firth who was the first Professor of General Linguistics in Britain. He was appointed to the linguistics chair at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1944. Until the early 1970s, virtually all British linguists were direct students of Firth at London Univerity, or were taught by former students of his who had posts at other British universities. Hence, Firthian linguistics is also referred to as the London School. The fact that the London school had its roots in the School of Oriental and African Studies was important for the development of the British linguistics. As mentioned already, its mission was (and remains) to study the languages and cultures of Asia and Africa. So, Firth and his students built up their theory not through armchair speculation about language or through the reanalysis of familiar European languages, but through encounter with unfamiliar data from numerous Asian and African languages. 2.1. Firthian morphology Firth’s own writings were concerned mainly with phonology and meaning (cf. Firth 1957; Lyons 1966). He did not have much to say about morphology. What makes his work morphologically interesting is that in his theory of phonology he introduced a number of notions which were taken up by his students which, as it turned out, led to genuine morphological insights. Two key concepts of Firthian phonology namely, phonematic units and prosodies had far reaching morphological implications. According to Firth, the phonologist should extract prosodies from phonological representations and consider their functioning sepa-

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rately from the rest of the phonological string. By prosodies he meant any aspects of phonological representations whose domain is greater than the phonematic unit, the latter being a label for segment-sized chunks, corresponding, very roughly, to individual consonants and vowels. Prosodies are not to be equated with the suprasegmentals of American phonemics which were limited to stress, tone, and length. The Firthian prosody could be any phonetic property (e.g. nasalization, palatalization, labialisation, voicing, pharyngealization etc.) that can be correlated with distinct articulatory gestures and extends over a number of phonematic units. In this regard, prosodic analysis can be viewed as a precursor to today’s multi-tiered autosegmental phonology which places such phonetic features on separate tiers of their own (cf. Goldsmith 1990). The morphological repercussions of this insight will be made clear in a moment. Another aspect of the theory that was important for morphology is the notion that linguistic systems, at all levels of structure, are polysystemic. Polysystemicity was an antidote to an overzealous quest for one all-encompassing analytical statement that covers all aspects of the phonological or grammatical structure of a language which creates the illusion of capturing generalizations even in situations where no generalizations exist. Polysystemicity would allow the linguist to set up a number of separate subsystems operating in different places in the grammar. No attempt was made to impose one overarching statement which covered the entire language. For instance, in phonology it was thought to be reasonable to assume that sounds could have different properties when they appeared in different grammatical contexts; different phonological patterns could be expected to occur in words belonging to different wordclasses, etc. (cf. Firth 1948: 123). Polysystemicity had the virtue of avoiding placing one’s analysis in a theoretical straitjacket. But it also had a downside. No principled criteria for recognising valid subsystems in a grammar were proposed. So, there was always a risk of allowing unconstrained proliferation of subsystems. I think that criticism could be laid at the door of Waterson (1956) whose study of Turkish nominals recognises not only a “y prosody” characterising palatalization, a “w prosody” characterising backness, an “o prosody” characterising labialization, but also an “H prosody”, a “p system”, an “f system”, a “k system”, an “s

prosody”, an “e prosody”, etc. Today the case for a polysystemic approach has been conceded by most current theories and the challenge of finding criteria to justify the recognition of a subsystem has been faced up to (see, for example, Inkelas et al. 1996). The London School has been criticised for not attempting to develop a coherent model of language (Langendoen 1968). They were concerned more with providing a pragmatic account of the facts of languages and less with the creation of a coherent, general theory of language. Being ad hoc was not seen as a fault as this quotation illustrates: “Moreover, in emphasizing the systemic nature of language, I do not propose an a priori system of general categories by means of which the facts of all languages may be stated.” (Firth 1948: 144)

Even at the level of notation a very low priority was given to consistency, which makes the task of reading the writings of the Firthians very challenging since often each writer uses their own do-it-yourself notation. (See also Firth 1948: 131.) As a consequence of this lack of interest in language universals, the London School was not vexed by issues of general theory which exercised contemporary American structuralists like Hockett (1954) who was concerted with the merits of alternative morphological models. In the London School the important thing was to describe each language on its own terms. If morphemes were useful for the description of aspects of certain languages, they could be used. But there was no presumption that a universal definition of morphological primes could and should be devised. While American linguists like Harris (1951), who were contemporaries of Firth, were keen to develop a concept of the morpheme as a basic unit of morphological structure in all languages, such a project held no attraction for the London School. Indeed, some in Britain were expressing doubts about the basic notions of morpheme theory such as the idea that morphemes were made up of allomorphs. Haas (1954) pointed out that there are cases where any attempt to match each morpheme with an allomorph is futile. For instance, in a word like lice there are two morphemes, but not two allomorphs. Whereas in American linguistics at that time the common assumption was that the relationship between morphemes and their allomorphs was one of composition, in British linguistics the relationship between phonological material and the grammatical/seman-

17. Britain

tic information that it represented was gradually seen as a relation of exponence or realisation rather than composition. In 2.2 we will explore this further. How did the Firthians start investigating morphology? As Palmer (1970: xiii) observes, since the polysystemic principle allowed the linguist to make different phonological statements for different grammatical elements, it was a natural extension of the theory to assign some prosodies a morphophonological value. Firth (1934) had already encouraged this. He had argued that “the phonetico-grammatical” study of language was of great importance and in Firth (1948) he showed how a phonological analysis of Cairo Colloquial Arabic could be carried out using a theory where, on the one hand, a prosody such as vowel length and phonematic units on the other, were matched with C and V syllable positions. The essentials of his analysis foreshadow the kind of prosodic analysis put forward years later by McCarthy (1979) in the generative framework. Among Firth’s followers, it was Robins (1953), in his paper on the nasalized verbal forms of Sundanese, who first presented a fairly detailed morphological analysis in the London School framework. His paper provided an alternative to morpheme-based approaches espoused on the other side of the Atlantic. He extracted nasalisation as a prosody which has an inflectional role as an exponent of verbalisation (e.g., pake ⬃ make ‘to use’, kirim ⬃ nirim ‘to send’). The domain of this prosody is the word. Once nasalisation has been initiated, it continues until it is blocked by a word boundary or a supralaryngeal consonant. Such data, in which grammatical signalling occurs at several places in a word, would defy theories like Item-and-arrangement which require words to be segmented into allomorphs each of which is attributed to a particular morpheme (see 2.2). But since exponence in Firthian linguistics is not subject to that requirement, such difficulties do not arise. Soon afterwards, Palmer (1955) appeared. This paper tackled the complex issues raised by the nonconcatenative morphology of Tigrinya, a Semitic language whose inflectional morphology often involves infixing and internal change in stems rather than linear affixation. Palmer argued that number in Tigrinya is marked using the prosodies of labiovelarity and laryngeality. These prosodies can

151 be scattered across the entire word. There are no unambiguously identifiable allomorphs with which certain morphological properties are uniquely associated. 2.2. Word and Paradigm morphology We have already mentioned doubts about the morpheme in British linguistics (cf. Haas 1954). We are now going to see how these doubts were translated into ideas that led to a research programme that offered an alternative to morpheme-based morphology. This programme was initiated by Robins (1959). Robins cites Hockett’s (1954) classic article “Two models of grammatical description” in which Hockett contracts two major approaches to morphological analysis that were common in the United States at the time, namely Item-and-Arrangement (IA) and Item-and-Process (IP). The former model assumed that the study of polymorphemic word structure is essentially the study of morphemes and their arrangements in words. As such, IA was ideal for the analysis of agglutinating languages like Turkish in which most words can be segmented, isolating each one of their constituent morphemes and matching them with their allomorphs in a one-to-one manner. Thus a word like iplerin ‘of the ropes’ can be segmented as ip ‘rope’, -in ‘genitive’ and -ler ‘plural’. By contrast, IP was better suited to the task of describing languages with a degree of morphophonemic alternation where derivational process statements convert items, in the shape of base forms, into surface forms. IP was the fledgling model in the early 1950s. It did not reach maturity till the advent of generative grammar some years later. For instance, in Yoruba, the progressive aspect morpheme can have the forms [m], [n] or [n] as in mba ‘is hiding’, nsun ‘is sleeping’ and ngun ‘is climbing’. If we posit one underspecified nasal consonant (symbolised here as /N/) that has no place of articulation as the base form of this morpheme, we can account for the various shapes that represent it in terms of a process of homorganic nasal assimilation. Our rule would say that /N/ becomes [m], [n] or [n], assimilating to the place of articulation of the stem consonant to which it is prefixed. Hockett, also makes a few passing remarks about a third approach to the study of wordstructure which is of much greater antiquity, with roots in the work of Greek and Roman grammarians, and underlying the European grammatical tradition that had existed until

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the 20th century. Hockett calls this model Word-and-Paradigm (WP). He points out that though long established, WP had never been explicitly articulated, nor had any one seen the need to justifying its existence. It is these two shortcomings that Robins (1959) sets out to remedy. If modern linguists had rejected traditional approaches to morphology, which were almost all couched in WP terms, for their lack of rigour and explicitness, Robins was going to show that this was not an inherent defect of WP that could not be removed. He also wanted to show that, for some languages, WP provides a more satisfactory framework for the analysis of word-structure than IA or IP. Robins points out that the crucial difference between WP on the one hand, and IA and IP on the other, is the pivotal role the former gives to the word as the basic unit of word structure as well as sentence structure, a role which is assigned to the morpheme in the latter two models. In IA with the spotlight on morphemes and their arrangement in words and sentences, and in IP with the spotlight on morphemes and the processes that they undergo be it in the formation of words or sentences, the distinction between morphology and syntax gets blurred. By contrast, WP retains a clear boundary between morphology and syntax: morphology studies the internal structure of words while syntax investigates the behaviour of words and word groups in the formation of phrases and sentences. Also important is the paradigm: words that undergo morphologically induced alternation are “grouped into paradigms for the statement of their morphological forms and the listing of their various syntactic functions” (Robins 1959: 127). Robins concedes that it was a weakness in traditional WP not to recognise the morpheme as a basic grammatical unit in some languages. He willingly finds a place for it in his revamped WP model, but he reverts to the traditional view that syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations should be stated in terms of the word as a whole rather than the morpheme. Like Haas, Robins was concerned that the American structuralist assumption that the morpheme was the only unit in terms of which all aspects of word-structure must be stated was leading linguists into a blind alley. For instance, in a morphological analysis of English plural nouns, the assumption that there were allomorphs that were linearly arranged, which corresponded to the root and the plural suffix morphemes in the case of

feet ⬃ foot or sheep ⬃ sheep⫹ø [⫹plural], could only be sustained by resorting to subterfuge by positing a replacive morph in the former and a zero morph in the latter (Robins 1959: 133f.). If, however, the word as a whole were seen as the exponent of both the noun stem and the notion of plurarity, the problem evaporated. Robins (1959) only presented a brief programmatic sketch of WP. The challenge of developing a fully-worked out model of the theory was taken up subsequently by Matthews (see Matthews 1965 a; 1965 b; 1972; 1974). If the word is to play a pivotal role, clarifying its nature is important. Matthews distinguishes between three different senses in which the term is used. The lexeme is the word in the sense of a vocabulary item. This is conventionally written in upper case letter. Thus in seeing, saw and seen are all forms of the lexeme see. A second sense of the term word is the grammatical word, i.e. the word as a grammatical unit, with specified morphosyntactic properties. In this sense we can distinguish between seeing, saw and seen as being respectively the progressive form, the past tense form and the past participle form of the verb see. A third sense in which the term word is used is the word-form i.e. a physical form made up of a sequence of letters or sounds. We can say that the word-form seen has three phonemes and four letters. The key unit for WP is the word in the sense of grammatical word. Morphologically associated words are grouped together into paradigms. Morphology tries to explain patterns found in different paradigms. Hockett (1954) criticises WP for being incapable of describing isolating languages like Chinese where words are morphologically simple and have no paradigms. Both Robins and Matthews readily admit that if words in a particular language do not belong to paradigms, WP is a less suitable model for their analysis than IA. However, since it is not claimed that WP is universally suitable, this would not be a source of embarrassment. What are the advantages of WP? By taking the word and not the morpheme as the basic morphological and grammatical unit, it enables the linguist to treat in a simple way cases where the same morphological form has a variety of values depending on the word of which it is a part. For instance, in English -er serves as both a comparative adjective marker (as in taller) and a deverbal noun formative (as in worker), its value in a

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specific case can only be ascertained by examining the entire word of which it is a part. In both IA and IP the morphological prime is the morpheme as we have already noted. It is supposed to be the minimal unit of both meaning and grammatical function. That is not the view in WP. Although some morphemes might mean on their own, the signalling unit that must always convey semantic contrasts is the word, not the morpheme. This avoids letting morphological analysis getting driven off course when notorious cases such as suppletion (as in be, am, is) or internal change (as in goose ⬃ geese) are encountered. Matthews has articulated, refined, and formalised WP. He has shown how it works, especially with respect to Latin inflection, and to a lesser extent with respect to derivation. Initially, Matthews’ writings had little impact. But with the passage of time their influence has grown, especially in America where WP inspired approaches to morphology have been refined further and applied to a wide range of languages from various language families. (See Anderson’s Extended Wordand-Paradigm model (Anderson 1982; 1992); Stump 1991; Beard 1988; 1995 among others.) What is Matthews’s WP like? It is pragmatic. While not dismissing the possibility of formulating a universal theory that accounts for the idiosyncracies of individual languages, he warns against half-baked universalist pretentions (Matthews 1972: 147⫺ 156). This echoes the writings of Firth who

placed a much higher premium on describing appropriately the facts of individual languages than on the discovery of putative universals. How does mature WP compare with morpheme based models? As seen, IA is concerned with the arrangement of items where the items are morphemes. IP is concerned with the processes that items (morphemes) undergo. By contrast, WP is concerned with words and the processes affecting them. As Hoeksema & Janda (1988) point out, there is a number of theoretical properties shared by IP and WP beyond the assumption that process statements are needed. In both theories, morphological rules may alter the form of a word in order to indicate its function. The starting point of both IP and WP is that morphemes are abstract entities which are mapped onto phonetic representations. The difference is that in IP the abstract morphemes are assumed to be strung out linearly while in WP they are all thrown in one bag and in their mapping onto phonetic representations of words no unscrambling into a linear sequence is necessarily envisaged. This insight is useful in describing inflecting languages like Latin where any attempt to find a one-to-one mapping of morphemes onto phonemes is bound to fail. This insight is especially valuable in cases of one-to-many exponence which baffle morpheme-based theories. Consider Fig. 17.1 (from Matthews 1972: 132) which shows two alternative unordered representations of Latin re:ksisti: ‘you have ruled’.

Grammatical Representation:

REG- + Perfective + 2nd

+ Singular

Phonological Representation:

re:k

ti

Grammatical Representation:

Phonological Representation:

+

is

REG- +

2nd

+

re:k

s

Fig. 17.1: Unordered representations of lat. re:ksisti:

+

+

s

+

+

Singular + Perfective

is

+

ti

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The essential idea is that the paradigm of each word is seen in an abstract sense as a matrix in which word-forms like re:ksisti: are matched with a lexeme and its associated morphosyntactic properties. We can illustrate, using Latin, how paradigms are central to an understanding of how inflection works: (a) One paradigm provides an analogy for others. Traditional pedagogical practice tells students that the paradigm for ama:re ‘to love’ is analogous to that of ambula:re ‘to walk’. (b) Forms may be related by rule. A form that corresponds to mone:bo: ‘I shall advise’ can be derived by replacing the future simple -bo: with -bam in the imperfect as in mone:bam ‘I was advising’. (c) Grammatical words belonging to the same lexeme may be derived step-wise by rule as shown in (1) below. (1) audi- audi:-v-(i:) audi:-v er-(o) ‘hear’ ‘I have heard’ ‘I shall have heard’ perfect future perfect Another important work in this tradition is Carstairs (1987). Carstairs’ main purpose is to determine the nature of constraints on allomorphy in inflectional morphology. Whereas the Saussurean theory of the linguistic sign predicts a one-to-one correlation between linguistic signs and signifiers, in inflectional morphology a one-to-many correlation is commonly found. On the one hand, one inflectional affix may have several values, e.g. in a verb like jumps, the suffix -s simultaneously marks third person, singular and present tense; on the other hand, the same grammatical information may be signalled by a variety of affixes, e.g. verbs belonging to different conjugations may have distinct markings for the same categories as in Latin where the first person singular subjunctive suffix is -em in amem, in the case of the verb ama:re ‘to love’, but -am in audiam, in the case of audi:re ‘to hear’. Carstairs poses this question: In inflectional morphology, is there unprincipled divergence from the principle of one-to-one matching of signifier and signified? He hypothesises that the exponents of the same morpheme are subject to certain constraints on allomorphic variation. He proposes the following four limitations on the deviation from one-to-one signifier-tosignified correlations: (a) One-to-many syntagmatic deviation where one inflectional category may be signalled

in several places in the same word as in Latin re:ksisti: (see Fig. 17.1; this is a case of what Matthews 1972 calls extended exponence); (b) one-to-many paradigmatic deviation: the same property may have diverse manifestations in different words (e.g., the English past tense is marked by /t/ in walked and by /d/ in moved); (c) many-to-one syntagmatic deviation: cases where several distinct morphemes have a single phonological manifestation. Matthews (1972) calls this cumulative exponence (e.g., the -s verbal inflection in English which simultaneously marks present tense, third person as well as singular number in walks); (d) many-to-one paradigmatic deviation: more than one inflectional property is signalled by an identical phonetic form (e.g., in English verbs, -ed marks both past tense and past participle). Carstairs points out that although all four possibilities are encountered, their distribution is skewed. There are dependencies such that the appearance of a given form in particular word may encourage or forestall the occurrence of certain other marking in another word. One of the principles that he proposes to account for this is the Systematic Homonymy Claim. This states that systematic homonymy must be either: cumulative, or if noncumulative, the realisation of the homonymous property is very likely to be the usual exponent of at least one of the properties in question, or at least one of the properties is less relevant than the homonymous ones. Another of Carstairs’ constraints which we will mention is the Inflectional Parsimony Principle. This states that where many inflectional exponents of the same morphosyntactic property are available, there is blocking: each form is restricted to selecting just one of these. So, if a language L has, say 4 conjugations and 4 affixes that mark the simple past tense, any given verb stem will be allowed to select just one of these affixes (Carstairs 1987: 31f.). This line of enquiry has improved our understanding of the nature of inflectional paradigms, a theme that is taken up from a somewhat different stance by another team of researchers. 2.3. Network morphology More recently, network morphology, another paradigm-driven model of morphology, has been put forward by a group of British lin-

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guists (Corbett & Fraser 1993; Fraser & Corbett 1994). The claim made by proponents of this theory is that it allows a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of paradigms than was hitherto available. This is because it facilitates the combination of the prosody, phonology and morphology strands that may play a role in a paradigm. It does so by using the basic connectionist principle that a language is a network of linguistic information. By network is meant an array of interconnected nodes. The connectivity of the network determines the nature of the information about a word belonging to a given paradigm that is accessible to a given node. The theory has been exemplified in Brown et al. (1996) using Russian. The paper shows the importance of various kinds of morphological paradigm information in determining stress placement in Russian. The paper includes a computer implementation of this model using the lexical knowledge representation language DATR. Ritchie et al. (1992) is an earlier contribution to computational morphology. This book gives an explicit formalisation of the main rules of word-formation that have been proposed for English. It amounts to a computational dictionary of a fragment of the English lexicon.

3.

Conclusion

In Britain, interest in morphology developed late because of the preoccupation with phonetics. Over the last 50 years, the study of morphology has gradually taken root and the influence of British morphologists has gradually grown in importance, especially in the last 15 years. Word-based rather than morpheme-based morphology has been the preferred approach. A number of strands run through the British approach to morphology during this period: a tendency to be pragmatic; a healthy scepticism about the idea that the morpheme is the only appropriate unit of morphological analysis; awareness of the danger of imposing a single model (like IA or IP) on languages with words whose structure is typologically very different; and above all, the recognition that a revitalised WP holds out many possibilities. Hockett’s challenge has been satisfactorily answered. It has been shown that WP can be formalised, can be made explicit and can account for the word structure of diverse

languages with very complex inflectional morphology. The hegemony on morphemebased theories has been broken. Today the word is back in fashion as a morphological prime. We should not overlook a number of morphology textbooks that have also contributed to the development of the discipline. Matthews (1974) has already been mentioned as a landmark publication on morphology in general and WP in particular. The first edition which was published in 1974 sought a rapprochement with Chomskyan linguistics and tried to show how WP could be positioned vis-a`-vis the Chomskyan paradigm. In the second edition, which appeared in 1991, no such reconciliation of WP with the Chomskyan mainstream is attempted. Bauer (1988) is a beginners introduction to morphology and Carstairs-McCarthy (1992) is a more advanced broad survey of not only British but also continental European and American theories of morphology of the last 25 years. Two other books which are squarely in the generativist camp are Spencer (1991) and Katamba (1993). Spencer’s book is a comprehensive presentation of the most significant morphological approaches within the generative paradigm. It is aimed at the advanced student. Katamba (1993) is also written within the same model but is aimed at a somewhat less advanced reader. As well, there are two books, Adams (1973) and Bauer (1988) whose focus is English morphology. The former is a study in English compounding while the latter is a wide-ranging discussion of issues in English as well as general morphological theory within a broadly Chomskyan framework.

4.

References

Adams, Valerie (1973), An Introduction to Modern English Word-formation. London: Longman Anderson, Stephen R. (1982), “Where is morphology?”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 571⫺612 Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bauer, Laurie (1983), English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univerity Press Beard, Robert (1988), “On the Separation of Derivation form Morphology: Toward a Lexeme-morpheme-based morphology”. Quaderni di Semantica 9, 3⫺59 Beard, Robert (1995), Lexeme-morpheme-base Morphology. Albany/NY: SUNY Press

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Langendoen, Donald Terence (1968), The London School of Linguistics. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press

A. K. & Robins, R. H. (eds.), In Memory of J. R. Firth. London: Longman Matthews, Peter H. (1965 a), “The Inflectional Component of a Word-and-paradigm Grammar”. Journal of Linguistics 1, 139⫺171 Matthews, Peter H. (1965 b), “Some Concepts in Word-and-paradigm Morphology”. Foundations of Language 1, 268⫺289 Matthews, Peter H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Matthews, Peter H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [1991] McCarthy, John J. (1979), Formal Problems in semitic Phonology and Morphology. Ph. D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [published 1982. New York, London: Garland Publishing] Palmer, Frank R. (1955), “The broken plurals of Tigrinya”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17, 548⫺566 [reprinted in: Palmer (1970, ed.), 132⫺151 Palmer, Frank R. (1970, ed.), Prosodic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press Palmer, Frank R. (1970), “Introduction”. In: Palmer (1970, ed.), ix⫺xvi Ritchie, Graeme D. & Black, A. & Russell, G. & Pulman, S. (1992), Computational Morphology: Practical Mechanisms for the English Lexicon. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Robins, Robert H. (1953), “The Phonology of the Nasalised Verb Forms in Sundanese”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 15, 138⫺145 [reprinted in: Palmer (1970, ed.), 104⫺111] Robins, Robert (1959), “In defence of WP”. Transactions of the Philological Society. 116⫺144 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Stump, Gregory T. (1991), “On the Theoretical Status of Position Class Restrictions on Inflectional Affixes”. Yearbook of Morphology 4, 211⫺241 Waterson, Natalie (1956), “Some Aspects of the Phonology of Nominal Forms of the Turkish Word”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 18, 578⫺591 [reprinted in: Palmer (1970, ed.), 174⫺187]

Lyons, John (1966), “Firth’s theory of ‘meaning’ ”. In: Bazell, C. E. & Catford, J. C. & Halliday, M.

Francis Katamba, Lancaster (Great Britain)

Brown, Dunstan & Corbett, Greville & Fraser, Normann & Hippisley, Andrew & Timbereake, Alan (1996), “Russian Noun Stress and Network Morphology”. Linguistics 34.1, 53⫺107 Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London: Croom Helm Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (1992), Current Morphology. London: Routledge Corbett, Greville & Fraser, Norman (1993), “Network Morphology: A DATR Account of Russian Inflectional Morphology”. Journal of Linguistics 29, 113⫺142 Firth, John R. (1934), “The Principles of Phonetic Notation in Descriptive Grammar”. Congre`s International des Sciences Anthropologiques et Ethnologiques [reprinted in Firth, J. R. (1957), 3⫺6] Firth, John R. (1948), “Sounds and prosodies”. Transactions of the Philological Society, 127⫺152 [reprinted in Firth (1957), 121⫺138] Firth, John R. (1957), Papers in Linguistics. 1934⫺1951. London etc.: Oxford University Press Fraser, Norman M. & Corbett, Greville G. (1994), “Gender, Animacy, and Declension Class Assignment: A Unified Account for Russian”. Yearbook of Morphology 7, 123⫺150 Goldsmith, John A. (1990), Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell Haas, W. (1954), “On Defining Linguistic Units”. Transactions of the Philological Society, 54⫺84 Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hoeksema, Jack & Janda, Richard D. (1988), “Implications of Process-Morphology for Categorial Grammar”. In: Oehrle, Richard T. & Bach, Emmon & Wheeler, Deindre (eds.), Categorial Grammars and Natural Language Structures. Dordrecht: Reidel, 199⫺247 Hockett, Charles F. (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231 Inkelas, S. & Orgun, O. & Zoll, C. (1996), “Exceptions and Static Phonological Patterns: Cophonologies vs. Prespecification”. Rutgers Optimality Archive Katamba, Francis (1993), Morphology. London: Macmillan

18. Germany

157

18. Germany 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The 19th century Jacob Grimm The Junggrammatiker The 20th century Generative approaches References

1.

The 19th century

The structure of words has been a favourite topic of linguistic research in the German speaking countries since the beginning of the scientific study of language. The history of morphological research is, therefore, the history of changing linguistic theories and methodological prerequisites. For a long period knowledge about words has been the main empirical fundament of statements about structure, history and relatedness of languages. Jacob Grimm, one of the outstanding German linguists in the beginning of the historical grammar period, dedicated two volumes with 1700 pages in his Deutsche Grammatik to morphological properties of German and related Germanic languages. In this article we can only sketch the most influential approaches to and works on morphology in the German speaking countries. The study of word formation will be given prominence in this survey. The presumably first extended description of derivatives and compounds in the German language is provided in the Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen Haupt Sprache by Schottelius, published in 1663 (Faust 1981). His analysis of compounds as constructions, consisting of a Haubt Glied (‘main constituent’) and a Beygefügtes (‘added constituent’) includes many observations on semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonetic properties of German compounds. In the 19th century two competing schools of linguistic research can be distinguised. One of them is based on the tradition of rationalist grammar that goes back to the corresponding philosophy of the 16th and 17th century and takes up ideas of the German idealistic philosophy. The works of Von Humboldt (1836), Richter (1923 [1820]), Becker (1824) and Schmitthenner (1826) must be mentioned here. In particular, the grammar of Becker played an important role in German school grammar. The second school is that of the historical grammar

which claimed to be the genuine scientific approach to the study of language. The main postulate of this school was: grammatical facts of a given language can only be explained if their historical roots and their evolution along several language stages have been discovered. The search for historical sources of linguistic forms led to an extended study and comparison of language stages and related languages. This is the reason why this approach is also called historical comparative grammar. Historical grammar introduced new standards for linguistic research, i.e. more precise empirical methods and criteria. Claims on the relatedness of Indo-Germanic languages and on stages in the development of a certain language are based on a huge amount of data, especially from phonetics and morphology. In order to realize the vastness of the work done by linguists of the 19th century, one has to keep in mind, that all these data had to be discovered first. Of course, historical grammar did not remain a monolithic block, and was changed considerably from Grimm at the beginning to Paul at the end of the period. While Grimm is strongly motivated by ideas of German romanticism, ⫺ the language of earlier times appeared as the true indicator of the Volksgeist of a nation ⫺ the exactness of the natural sciences became more and more the yardstick of linguistic research. This tendency reached its summit with the Junggrammatiker (‘Neo-grammarians’) who considered phonetic changes as sound laws, i.e. laws in a strict sense, and proposed the theoretically interesting concept of analogy for the description of linguistic regularities. In the beginning of this period word structure was compared with living organisms. Words grow out of a root, are branchings of roots which can be grasped by word formation devices. More or less expanded word families are the outspring of such processes of growth, patterns of word formation create stems to which inflectional suffixes can be added if that is required by the word class to which the stem belongs. Rules of word formation as well as inflectional endings are related to certain aspects of syntax. Therefore, the study of morphology has always been linked to the study of the corresponding syntactic properties. All detailed grammars, e.g.,

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the grammars of Grimm (1826), Dietz (1870), Brugmann (1889), Wilmanns (1896) and Paul (1880), draw a borderline between word formation and flexion, i.e. there is no common component of morphology. The separation of syntax and word formation on the one hand and compounding and derivation on the other hand is determined by the historical perspective of this period. It was in general supposed that certain syntactic constructions can be transformed into compounds by historical processes. Furthermore, the second constituent of compounds can become a suffix under appropriate circumstances. The transition from syntactic constructions to compounds as well as the transition of constituents of compounds to suffixes, however, is seen as a semantic and functional change. Thus, it is not tantamount to a structural reduction of compounds to syntactic constructions or of derivatives to compounds.

2.

Jacob Grimm

Grimm, the father of scientific research of word formation, made a distinction between Wortbildung durch innere Veränderung (‘word formation by internal change’) and Wortbildung durch äußere Veränderung (‘word formation by external change’). In Germanic languages, internal change comes about by Umlaut and by Ablaut, external change by enrichment of roots. Enrichment of roots takes place by derivation with suffixes and by compounding. Derivation in Grimms terminology is “die zwischen wurzel und flexion eingeschaltete, an sich selbst dunkele mehrung des worts, kraft welcher der begriff der wurzel weiter geleitet und bestimmt wird” (‘the, as such, dark enrichment of words, included between root and inflection, by which the concept of the root is transferred and determined’; Grimm 1826: II, 85). The enrichment of a word comes about by a suffix which as such is not meaning-bearing, but participates only in the meaning of the whole derived word. This seems to be the correct interpretation of “an sich dunkele mehrung des worts”. The concept associated with the root is modified by the derivation type in toto. One can understand the suffix as an indicator of the derivation type. The idea of Grimm and his followers is, that a linguistic form loses its status of a separate sign in the course of a process of change and becomes a suffix, i.e. an other category of linguistic forms.

As far as compounds are concerned, Grimm (1826: II, 86) states, that “zwei lebendige oder doch deutliche wurzeln” (‘two living or at least transparent roots’) are linked to each other. This analysis is the fundament of the distinction between derivation and compounding accepted by many linguists up to our times. Compounds are considered to be junctions of separate words while derivatives are modifications of words indicated by affixes (cf. Art. 37). In his analysis of compound words Grimm distinguished between genuine and non-genuine composition. Genuine composition has no syntactic construction as a predecessor. Thus the history of coinings like Weinrebe ‘vine’ and Weinbeere ‘grape’ cannot be related to any syntactic construction. This means that there are already compounds in the earliest stages of Indo-Germanic languages. Non-genuine compounds, on the other hand, have syntactic constructions as their genetic source. Examples are stundenlang ‘for hours’, hinunter ‘down under’, Vergißmeinnicht ‘forget-me-not’, Sauerkraut ‘id.’, and Kindergarten ‘infant school’.

3.

The Junggrammatiker

The main ideas of Grimm’s analysis of word structure have been adopted by the next generations of historical linguists. However, this analysis has been expanded and deepened considerably, especially in the work of linguists at the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century. Hermann Paul, the leading Junggrammatiker, gave an account of compounding and derivation which shows the progress made since Grimm (Paul 1880; 1920). In particular, there is a clear increase of knowledge about the evolution of genuine and non-genuine compounds. Paul agreed that genuine compounds are already present in Proto-Indo-European. He, furthermore, states that in the beginning there were only constructions of the form noun ⫹ noun, noun ⫹ adjective, stem ⫹ noun and stem ⫹ adjective. All other types of composition are later developments in the history of the Germanic languages. Non-genuine compounds, which are a favourite topic of historical research, were considered a typical outcome of the more recent history of Germanic languages. The genesis of this type of compounds is described as follows: a phrase, consisting among others of

18. Germany

a noun and a preposed genitive attribute freezes, i.e. undergoes semantic, morphological and phonetic changes. This process results in a new type of word formation, a new pattern of coining compounds. The genitive ending becomes opaque. Similarly, new types of compounds with adjectives as the first constituent arose from syntactic adjective ⫹ noun combinations. Compounds containing a verb stem as first constituent are not found earlier than in Old High German texts. They go back, it is assumed, to former nomina actionis, i.e. to verbal nouns which can be interpreted as verb stems, as in Raubvogel ‘bird of prey’ and Schlafzimmer ‘bed room’. Types of derivation are not listed according to the phonetic shape of suffixes, but according to semantic categories such as diminutives and feminine nouns, which shows Paul’s interest in semantics. The rule-governed character of word formation is involved in the concept of Proportionalanalogie (‘proportional analogy‘) which plays an important role in Paul’s linguistic theory. In the case of systematic phonetic changes he speaks of sound laws. Proportional analogies are represented as follows: (1) Wirt : Wirtin ⫽ Gatte : Gattin ⫽ Gast : X X ⫽ Gästin A more formal representation is: (2) A : A ⫹ suffixi ⫽ B : B ⫹ suffixi, ⫽ C : X If A, B, C … are nouns and suffixi is the suffix -in we can also write a generative rule like (3) N J N ⫹ in However, there is an important difference between the concept of proportional analogy and rewriting rules: proportional analogies are statements about relations between lexical entries, i.e. between words belonging to the lexicon of a language. They do not primarily predict new possible words, albeit they can be used as models for new coining. Proportional analogies have the advantage that different kinds of restrictions can be grasped. Paul shows, for example, that feminine nouns are first coined from nouns designating male human persons (Wirt : Wirtin ‘host ⫺ hostess’), later from nouns that function as both male animals and generic animal terms (Wolf : Wölfin ‘wolf ⫺ she-wolf’), and finally purely generic terms can form the base of a derivation with -in (Katze : Kätzin ‘cat ⫺ female cat’, Spatz : Spätzin ‘sparrow ⫺ female sparrow’).

159 As already pointed out, historical processes and models of new coining have to be kept apart. Historical processes lead to new types of complex words which can form the basis for analogically created words, i.e. historical changes can bring about new types of word formation patterns. This is true for compounds as well as for derivatives. Thus, an individual word like New High German Gottheit ‘deity’ has its particular history. The suffix -heit ‘-hood’ goes back to a Germanic stem which is Gothic haidus ‘property’. A possible genuine Gothic compound would be gudahaidus ‘deity’ which corresponds to the Old High German word gott(e)heit. There are many new coined derivatives in Old High German which can be analysed in analogy to gott(e)heit: biscopheit ‘episcopate’, magadheit ‘virginity’, deganheit ‘heroism’ among others. The evolution of suffixes is analysed by Paul along the following lines. In words entering frequently as second constituent into compounds a change of meaning may occur. This meaning then becomes more and more different from the meaning of the independent word. Semantic changes can be accompanied by phonetic diversification which finally leads to opaqueness of the relationship with the independent word. Inflectional suffixes may also have independent words as predecessors. The evolution of Latin verb forms in Romance languages gives evidence for this hypothesis. For instance, the Latin verb form amare habeo became French j’aimerai ‘I will love’. However, the structural and functional differences between derivation and inflection have never been neglected. All historical grammars contain two separate levels of morphological structure: inflection and word formation (cf. Art. 38). It remained an open question whether the notion of derivation should be applied to prefixation. Grimm held the view that derivation takes only place at the end of a word. Complex words such as Urlaub ‘holiday’, unreif ‘immature’ and entfliehen ‘to flee’ are called compounds. Although Behagel (1898), Wilmanns (1896) and Paul emphasize the similarities between prefixation and suffixation they nevertheless treat prefixed words as compounds. Historical grammarians have been predominantly occupied with the description of formal aspects of languages. The important role of a corresponding semantic description, however, has always been kept in mind, in

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particular the idea that semantic changes are the genuine source of genetic processes in morphology. Paul, for instance, was convinced that a proper analysis of derivational patterns has to include both the form and the contents of these patterns. Historical grammar has provided us with a reliable stock of data, in particular, with respect to morphology. All modern directions of research in German grammar make use of this heritage. A competent survey about word formation in historical grammar is given in Henzen (1947).

4.

The 20th century

Until the end of World War II, linguistic research in Germany and other German speaking countries was dominated by historical grammar. Structuralism in America and France as well as the Prague School had only a marginal influence on main stream linguistics in Germany. It seems to be a distinguishing feature of German linguistics that many linguists did not notice structuralism. After World War II, however, the structuralistic emphasis on synchronic description was partially accepted, for instance in Marchand (1969). After World War II, two trends can be distinguished. One is to lay more stress on formalized theories, the other is to deny the appropriateness of such formal theories, or to take at least a sceptic stand against them. In this survey we want to draw attention to some influential works on morphology that exemplify these trends. The main difference between these two trends seems to be, that formalist approaches presuppose more or less complex grammatical theories. This means, that the description of phenomena of a particular component of the grammar demands theoretical prerequisites that fit to the global theory of grammar. More traditional approaches, on the other hand, emphasize the collection of empirical data. The discussion of theoretical foundations is, as a rule, restricted to separate aspects or classes of data. This is the reason, why followers of this trend are open for specific questions and results of structuralist and generativist approaches. The more traditional trend is represented by works on word formation such as Fleischer (1969), Erben (1975) and Deutsche Wortbildung written by a team of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Mannheim) at the Uni-

versity of Innsbruck. Pioneers of the more structuralist and formalist movement are Marchand and linguists working in the framework of generative grammar at the Arbeitsstelle Strukturelle Grammatik of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin (GDR). In many respects, Fleischer (1969) continues the tradition of description of word formation in historical grammar, but at the same time, he is partially open for results of structuralist and generative linguistics. This work on German word formation is the most frequently used handbook in this field. Erben tried to supersede those descriptions that focus on the form side, and deal with derivation in terms of an alphabetic list of affixes (Erben 1975). Erben followed Paul and, in particular, Weisgerber (1964), who postulated four levels of linguistic description, among them a formbezogene Betrachtung (‘form-related description’) and a inhaltsbezogene Betrachtung (‘content-related description’). Erben gives examples of typical semantically motivated patterns of compounding, and proposes an analysis of derivation in terms of Funktionsstände ‘functional classes’. A Funktionsstand contains all means of word formation conveying the same meaning or function. Erben’s approach to word formation plays an important role in the Deutsche Wortbildung mentioned above. In particular, the semantic foundations of word formation have been studied in a detailed way. This work, consisting of five volumes, is the most detailed description of the morphological, phonetic, semantic and syntactic properties of German word formation. It also gives reliable information about the degree of productivity of each word formation pattern.

5.

Generative approaches

Already in the beginning of the sixties morphological studies in the framework of Chomsky’s first version of generative grammar were done by a group of young linguists at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin (GDR). Among the grammatical studies of this group works on the concept of the morpheme by Bierwisch (Bierwisch 1962), on inflection by Wurzel (Wurzel 1970), and on word formation by Motsch (Motsch 1962; 1970) should be mentioned here. A transformationalist analysis of word formation was given in Kürschner (1974). After Chomsky’s funda-

18. Germany

mental criticism of this transformationalist position, a variety of lexicalist analyses has been proposed, for instance, in Höhle (1982), Toman (1983), Olsen (1986), and Motsch (1988). Whereas Motsch defends an analysis in the framework proposed by Jackendoff (1975), Toman, Höhle and Olsen are followers of word syntax theories. A paradigmatic approach to word formation in which morphology is not seen as the syntax of morphemes, is defended in Becker (1990). Characteristic of these approaches is that the selection of the facts to be analysed is governed by theoretical questions such as: can complex words be analysed as reduced sentences or do they demand a separate rule component; which principles govern the inheritance of arguments observable in certain types of word formation? Influenced by generative grammar but founded on logical semantics are two important contributions to the description of compounds: Brekle (1970) and Fanselow (1981). Brekle proposed a detailed semantic description of compounds in terms of predicate calculus formulas. Fanselow enriched the discussion by analysing the semantic principles underlying the coining and interpretation of compounds. We finally want to draw the attention to an approach to morphology called Natural Morphology (cf. Art. 31). This approach was initiated by the Austrian linguists Mayerthaler and Dressler and by the German linguist Wurzel who started his scientific carreer in the framework of generative grammar (Mayerthaler 1981; Dressler 1987; Wurzel 1977; 1984). Natural morphology takes historical and comparative data into account and thus draws again attention to the results of historical grammar.

6.

References

Becker, Karl Ferdinand (1824), Deutsche Wortbildung, Abhandlungen des Frankfurter Gelehrtenvereins. Frankfurt/M.: Verlag der Hermannschen Buchhandlung

161 Brekle, Herbert E. (1970), Generative Satzsemantik und transformationelle Syntax im System der englischen Nominalkomposition. München: Fink Brugmann, Karl (1889), Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Straßburg: Trübner Dietz, Friedrich (1870), Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen. Bonn: Marvus Deutsche Wortbildung: Typen und Tendenzen in der Gegenwartssprache [1. Hauptteil: Kühnhold, Ingeburg & Wellmann, Hans (1973), Das Verb. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann; 2. Hauptteil: Wellmann, Hans (1975), Das Substantiv. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann; 3. Hauptteil: Kühnhold, Ingeburg & Putzer, Oskar & Wellmann, Hans (1978), Das Adjektiv. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann; 4. Hauptteil: Ortner, Lorelies & Müller-Bollhagen, Elgin & Ortner, Hanspeter & Willmann, Hans & Pümpel-Mader, Maria & Gärtner, Hildegard (1991), Substantivkomposita. Berlin: de Gruyter; 5. Hauptteil: Pümpel-Mader, Maria & Gassner-Koch, Elsbeth & Willmann, Hans & Ortner, Lorelies (1993), Adjektivkomposita und Partizipialbildungen. Berlin: de Gruyter] Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1987), “Word Formation as Part of Natural Morphology”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Mayerthaler, Willy & Panagl, Oswald & Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (eds.), Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 99⫺126 Erben, Johannes (1975), Einführung in die Wortbildungslehre. Berlin: Schmidt Fanselow, Gisbert (1981), Zur Syntax und Semantik der deutschen Nominalkomposition. Tübingen: Niemeyer Faust, Manfred (1981), “Schottelius’ Concept of Word Formation”. In: Trabant, Jürgen (ed.), Logos semantikos: Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie und der Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: de Gruyter, 359⫺ 370 Fleischer, Wolfgang (1969), Wortbildung der Deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut Grimm, Jacob (1826), Deutsche Grammatik. Göttingen Henzen, Walter (1947), Deutsche Wortbildung. Halle: Niemeyer

Becker, Thomas (1990), Analogie und morphologische Theorie. München: Fink

Höhle, Tilman (1982), “Über Komposition und Derivation: Zur Konstituentenstruktur von Wortbildungsprodukten”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 1, 76⫺112

Behaghel, Otto (1898), “Zur Lehre von der deutschen Wortbildung”. Wissenschaftliche Beihefte zur Zeitschrift des allgemeinen deutschen Sprachvereins 14f.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1836), Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Spachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts. Berlin: Dümmler

Bierwisch, Manfred (1962), Über den theoretischen Status des Morphems. Berlin/DDR: Akademieverlag (Studia Grammatica 2) 51⫺89

Jackendoff, Ray S. (1975), “Morphological and Semantic Regularities in the Lexikon”. Language 51, 639⫺671

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Kürschner, Wilfied (1974), Zur syntaktischen Beschreibung deutscher Nominalkomposita. Tübingen: Niemeyer

Olsen, Susan (1986), Wortbildung im Deutschen: Eine Einführung in die Theorie der Wortstruktur. Stuttgart: Kröner

Paul, Hermann (1920), Deutsche Grammatik. Halle: Niemeyer Richter, Jean Paul (1923 [1820]), “Über die deutschen Doppelwörter”. In: Berind, Eduard (ed.), Jean Pauls Sämtliche Werke. Berlin: Propyläenverlag, 169⫺264 [orig. 1820] Schmitthenner, F. (1826), Ursprachlehre [faksimile reprint 1976, Stuttgart: Frommann] Schottelius, Johann G. (1663), Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen HaubtSprache [reprint 1995, Tübingen: Niemeyer] Toman, Jindrich (1983), Wortsyntax. Tübingen: Niemeyer Weisgerber, Leo (1964), “Vierstufige Wortbildungslehre”. Muttersprache 74, 33⫺43 Wilmanns, Wilhelm (1896), Deutsche Grammatik. Straßburg: Trübner Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1970), Studien zur deutschen Lautstruktur. Berlin/DDR: Akademieverlag (Studia Grammatica 8) Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1977), “Zur Stellung der Morphologie im Sprachsystem”. Linguistische Studien des Zentralinstituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR 35, 86⫺130 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: Akademieverlag (Studia Grammatica 21)

Paul, Hermann (1880), Principien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle: Niemeyer

Wolfgang Motsch, Mannheim (Germany)

Marchand, Hans (21969), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation. München: Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung [11960] Mayerthaler, Willy (1981), Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion Motsch, Wolfgang (1962), Zur Stellung der ‘Wortbildung’ in einem formalen Sprachmodell. Berlin/ DDR: Akademieverlag (Studia Grammatica 1), 31⫺50 Motsch, Wolfgang (1970), “Analyse von Komposita mit zwei nominalen Elementen”. In: Bierwisch, Manfred & Heidolph Karl-Erich (eds.), Progress in Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton, 208⫺223 Motsch, Wolfgang (1988), “On Activity, Productivity and Analogy in Derivational Processes”. In: Motsch, Wolfgang (ed.), The Contribution of Word Structure Theories to the Study of Word Formation. (Linguistische Studien des Zentralinstituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR 179), 1⫺30

19. The Netherlands 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

From 1890 to the First World War The years until 1945 Structuralist approaches Generative approaches Functionalist approaches Surveys of the work of Dutch morphologists References

1.

From 1890 to the First World War

In the 19th century, the scientific study of Dutch had a predominantly diachronic orientation. It is only in the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal that one finds treatments of the contemporary morphology of Dutch, in the entries for the prefixes and suffixes. This dictionary has been set up in the historical-philological tradition of the Deutsches Wörterbuch of the Grimm brothers, and will be completed in 1998. After 1890, we find treatments of inflection and word formation of Dutch in one of

Den Hertog’s grammars of Dutch (Den Hertog 1897/98). In this work, the grammatical insights of German linguists such as Becker, Kern, Müller, Paul and Wundt are applied to Dutch. Den Hertog’s work was criticised by a number of contemporary Dutch linguists who published in the journal Taal en Letteren. Characteristic of the approach advocated by the linguists of Taal en Letteren is the analysis of the ablauting verbs of Dutch in Talen (1894). In his purely synchronic analysis, Talen distinguished eight classes based on the vowel of the past tense singular, whereas Den Hertog (1897: 173⫺178) still adhered to the traditional historical classification with seven classes. Van Wijk, who later became famous as a Slavicist and phonologist, felt affinity with the insights of the Taal en Letteren group. In the second printing of his De Nederlandsche Taal (1909) he added a chapter on word formation in which he discussed the productive

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19. The Netherlands

types of compounding, suffixation and prefixation of Dutch. He was the first Dutch morphologist to use productivity as a descriptive criterion of classification. This focus on productivity and “its role in morphological theory is a persistent and perhaps unique characteristic of Dutch morphology” (Booij 1990a: 43f.; cf. Al et al. 1981 and Schultink 1992: 193⫺196).

2.

The years until 1945

In the period 1914⫺1945 the study of Dutch morphology did not grow very much. In De Vries (1921/22) an impressive number of observations on the morphology of Dutch and its dialects can be found, but his observations and analyses have a rather unsystematic character. Yet, he sometimes discusses more general morphological mechanisms. A study of nominal compounding, with both historical and contemporary data, is Van Lessen (1928), which for decades functioned as a standard work with respect to Dutch compounds and synthetic compounds. Another book from this period that deserves being mentioned is Reichling’s dissertation Het Woord (Reichling 1935). Although this book is not a morphological study, his linguistic theory clearly influenced the work of a number of Dutch morphologists. Reichling stressed the autonomy of language, its significatory function and actional nature, and the inseparability of language and language use. Both the form and the meaning of a word are cognitive units. Reichling considered Bühler, Sapir, and Delacroix as his great examples. In this interbellum period, dialectgeography flourished, both in the Netherlands and in Flanders. Morphology also got some attention, in particular diminutive formation. Kloeke, who built his analysis on Wrede (1908), assumed that the diminutive suffix -tje of present-day Dutch is the result of palatalization of the suffix -kin, and spread from the province of North-Holland to a much larger area (Kloeke 1923). The Fleming Peé made a dialectical survey of the diminutives in all Dutch dialects, and argued also that the different forms of the diminutive suffix all derive from the suffix -kin (Peé 1936⫺1938). Attention to the allomorphy of the standard Dutch diminutive suffix, in particular the choice between -tje and -etje, was given by the Anglicist Kruisinga (1924: 120⫺124; 1938: 72⫺76). He argued that this choice is

determined by the stress pattern and the last segments of the base word. Kruisinga also published a comparative study of diminutives in English, German and Dutch, in which he analysed both their formal and their affective meaning aspects (Kruisinga 1942). After the First International Congress of Linguists held in The Hague in 1928, the influence of Prague structuralism became rather strong in the Netherlands, in particular in the field of phonology and morphonology. Van Wijk wrote an article in favour of the inflection-derivation distinction (Van Wijk 1934) based on Sapir (1921). A. W. de Groot (1939 a; 1939 b; 1939 c) presented his own essentially deductive approach to language, and gave a clear exposition of his view on the position of morphology in the language system, inspired by the work of the Prague structuralists.

3.

Structuralist approaches

In 1947 the Nederlandse Spraakkunst by De Vooys appeared. This often reprinted work, written in a mainly historicising, neogrammarian style, presented a 80 pages survey of what had been said so far about the morphology of Dutch, supplemented by the author’s own observations (De Vooys 1947). More innovating was the work of Royen (1947⫺54) and Van Haeringen (1949; 1962), originally both historical linguists who wrote their dissertations under the supervision of the famous Dutch Indo-Europeanist C. C. Uhlenbeck. Royen concentrated as far as morphology is concerned on nominal and pronominal inflection, and based himself on actual (written) language use (Royen 1947⫺ 1954). Although this work is a rich source of data, the author did not present a clear analysis of the underlying systematics of these inflectional phenomena, and did not relate his analyses to contemporary linguistic theories. Van Haeringen is also well known for his acute observations of both written and spoken language. More than Royen, he tried to classify his data, and to discover synchronic regularities, for instance in his study of Dutch pluralisation (Van Haeringen 1947), in which he argued that the choice between -s and -en as plural suffixes for nouns is determined by rhythm: -en after a stressed syllable, -s after an unstressed one. Royen and Van Haeringen cannot be considered real structuralists. Of the pre-war

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structuralist morphologists, it was only A. W. de Groot who remained active, and published in the journal Lingua, founded by him together with Reichling. De Groot’s leading idea was that each language has its own system of logically structured word classes. These word classes are distinguished on the basis of the meaning of the word stems. For De Groot, the study of word classes starts with the study of morphological valence, supplemented by the study of the syntactic valence of the words in which these stems occur. This is illustrated by the word class systems of Chinese, Latin, and Dutch (De Groot 1948). Later articles of this classicist (De Groot 1956 a; 1956 b) dealt with the Latin cases. De Groot also worked on an extensive structuralist grammar (including morphology) of Dutch, but this work was never finished due to his death in 1963. Within the structuralist tradition the Anglicist Cohen wrote an article on the diminutive suffix with its five allomorphs -tje, -etje, -je, -kje, and -pje (Cohen 1958). The structuralist and Slavicist Ebeling gave an analysis of the Dutch tense system in the spirit of Jakobson, in which both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis play a role (Ebeling 1962). Later, Ebeling published a theoretical monograph in which he “proposes semantic structures for which the ‘abstract processes’ of their formation and the corresponding part of the performance model are one and the same thing” (Ebeling 1978: 510). In this work, he also deals with morphology (Ebeling 1978: 413⫺491). Influential was the work of the linguist and Javanist E. M. Uhlenbeck (Uhlenbeck 1978). In 1953, he definitively parted with morphemic analyses a` la Harris: “The facts force us to the opinion that the morpheme, in contradistinction to the word, is not a linguistic unit. It is merely a moment in a word. The morpheme only has a meaning via a word. Reichling had already reached this conclusion almost twenty years ago.” (Uhlenbeck 1978: 43 [⫽ 1953: 326])

A consequence of this view is that “the object of an enquiry into word-classes is to determine 1o the correspondences existing between features of form and features of meaning, with or without differences in valence; 2o if there is no difference in phonemic form, the correspondences between phenomena of valence and features of meaning.” (Uhlenbeck 1978: 45⫺46 [⫽ 1953: 330])

With this Uhlenbeck distantiated himself from the meaning-based distinction of word classes of De Groot. “A third consideration […] follows from the fact that every language is always the result of a historical development and therefore always to some extent contains the remains of an earlier system, now no longer valid. This renders imperative a distinction between productive and non-productive proce´de´’s.” (Uhlenbeck 1978: 51 [⫽ 1953: 336])

A detailed study of Dutch morphology within the Uhlenbeckian framework of paradigmatic morphology is Schultink (1962), a dissertation written under the supervision of Uhlenbeck. The characteristics of his approach, in which the morpheme does not play a role, are the following. First, some words exhibit a clear correspondence between “moments” of form and “moments” of meaning. These correspondences can only be observed when there is a series of words with this type of form-meaning correspondence. It is only then that one may speak of complex words. Second, the notion of productivity plays a central role. This notion is defined as follows: “Productivity is the possibility for language users to form an in principle uncountable number of new words unintentionally, by means of a morphological process which is the basis of the form-meaning correspondence of some words they know” (Schultink 1961; 1962: 38). A third characteristic of Schultink’s morphology is that there is no principled distinction between inflection and derivation. Uhlenbeck’s ideas can not only be found in Schultink’s work, and that of Anceaux (e.g. Anceaux 1965), but also in a number of dissertations supervised by Uhlenbeck that contain detailed morphological descriptions of particular languages: Voorhoeve (1965), Hoff (1968), Mussies (1971), De Vries (1975), and in Adelaar (1977). The Schultinkian notion of productivity also forms the point of departure of more recent dissertations such as Van Marle (1985), Baayen (1989), and Van Santen (1992) that discuss the role of this notion in generative morphology. In the work of Van Marle, morphological creativity (wich includes productivity) plays a central role. Van Marle argued that new words are often created on the basis of paradigmatic relations between words, i.e. morphological networks of words with the same base. In this way, not only regular affixation

19. The Netherlands

can be captured, but also phenomena like analogical coining and affix substitution. The competition between synonymous affixes is another phenomenon that can be analysed straigthforwardly in the paradigmatic approach to morphology (Van Marle 1985; 1988; 1992). According to Van Marle (1985), the notion productivity only pertains to competence, not to performance. Van Santen, on the other hand, argued that “the idea of studying language without at the same time studying language as it is used is misdirected”. “[T]he principal task of the morphologist is taken to be the specification of the likelihood of the possible words of a language” (Van Santen 1992: 251). In Baayen (1989) it is investigated how a quantitative measure of productivity can be given. As a measure of the degree of productivity of a morphological rule, Baayen uses “the ratio of hapax legomena to the total number of occurrences of the words covered by this rule, which is an estimate of the probability of sampling new types, and as such a measure of the degree of productivity of a word formation rule” (Baayen 1989: 2). Sassen published morphological studies with a paradigmatic orientation, such as Sassen (1968; 1979; 1981). Van den Toorn wrote a number of descriptive contributions to Dutch morphology, in particular compounding and suffixation (Van den Toorn 1982 a; 1982 b, 1983 a; 1983 b). Link phonemes and related morphological problems are discussed in Mattens (1970; 1984; 1990). Descriptive contributions with a sociolinguistic or dialectgeographical dimension can be found in the work of the Flemish linguists Smedts and Taeldeman (Taeldeman 1980; 1985; Smedts 1972; 1979; 1986).

4.

Generative approaches

As is well known, morphology did not play an important role in the first years of generative grammar (cf. Art. 22). The first generative analyses of morphology, in particular the transformationalist analysis of compounds, were criticised as early as 1967 by Dik (1967). Positive, on the other hand, were the reactions in Van Katwijk (1965), in Staal (1966), and in two dissertations defended in the Netherlands by South-Africans, Botha (1968) and Wissing (1971). Botha published a methodologically oriented analysis of Afrikaans nominal compounding in the generative

165 framework, and concluded that the idea that the lexicon of a generative grammar can be equated with “the full set of irregularities of the language”, as Bloomfield would have it, requires modification (Botha 1968). Since Chomsky (1970), a paper that introduced the lexicalist hypothesis, the generative morphology of Dutch has had a lexicalist orientation. In Booij (1977), an attempt was made to integrate the insights of structuralist morphology into a model of generative grammar with a separate morphological component as advocated in Aronoff (1976). The main object of description of this dissertation is formed by the formal properties of complex words such as the order of affixes, and stress- and syllabification patterns in Dutch. Schultink (1980 a; 1980 b) too dealt with stress patterns and affix order. The dissertation of the Anglicist Meys (Meys 1975) has been written in the spirit of Gruber’s Generative Semantics. The allomorphy of the diminutive suffix discussed above has also been studied by generative linguists, in particular by Trommelen, who made use of metrical phonology in accounting for the distribution of the different allomorphs (Trommelen 1984). Alternative analyses were given in Van Zonneveld (1983) and Van der Hulst (1984). The formal properties of Dutch complex words have also been studied within a particular variant of generative morphology, the theory of Lexical Morphology, which assumes the possibility of level ordering, i.e. of ordering of strata in the morphological component of a grammar (cf. Kiparsky 1982; Van Beurden 1987; Paulissen & Zonneveld 1988; Trommelen & Zonneveld 1990; 1992). Arguments against the level ordering hypothesis have been given in Booij (1989). Since generative morphology is predominantly syntagmatically oriented, it will come as no surprise that the notion morphological head played a role in a number of analyses of Dutch morphology (Moortgart 1981; Muysken 1982; Trommelen & Zonneveld 1986; Hoeksema 1988; 1992). The treatment of conversion in generative morphology is the topic of Neeleman & Schipper (1993) and Don’s dissertation (Don 1993). Don argued for a theory of word formation in which the morphological structure of a word consists of a morphosyntactic and a morphophonological representation. His theory is a synthesis between a so-called separationist approach and more standard affix-

166


based theories. In the case of conversion, there is a morphosyntactic derivation without a corresponding morphophonological affix. Recently, a lot of attention has been given to the syntax-morphology interface, in particular in relation to the particle verbs (“samenkoppelingen”) which behave as lexical units but whose particles are nevertheless separated from the finite verb in main clauses (Booij 1990 b; Neeleman & Weerman 1993). The relation between syntax and morphology also played a role in the Dutch discussion on the proper analysis of synthetic compounds such as blauwogig ‘blue-eyed’. The analytical problem ist that ogig does not exist independently, so the issue is whether such complex words are derived from phrases such as blauw oog ‘blue eye’ (phrasal compounds), compounds of which the head is a possible but non-existing word, or morphological constructs sui generis in which two lexemes and an affix are combined. These issues are discussed in Meys (1980), Botha (1984), Hoeksema (1984), and in Van Santen (1992). Hoeksema’s analysis makes use of a categorial grammar framework and model-theoretical semantics. Finally, the interaction between syntax and semantics is also at stake in the discussion of inheritance phenomena (cf. Art. 83). In this discussion Dutch linguists played an important role (Moortgat 1981; 1985; Hoekstra & Van der Putten 1988; Booij 1992). In the context of Natural Language Processing Ten Hacken’s dissertation discusses the problem “How can it be determined whether an expression belongs to inflection, derivation, compounding or outside morphology?” (Ten Hacken 1994: 1; cf. also Art. 37).

5.

Functionalist approaches

The functionalist studies of Dik influenced the work of a number of Dutch linguists. The most detailed exposition of Dik’s ideas about morphology can be found in Dik (1989; 1992). Morphology is separated into two domains: predicate formation rules (⫽ derivation) and expression rules (⫽ inflection). Irregular complex forms are accounted for in the lexicon. Dik’s morphological ideas are amended and applied to Hungarian by his disciple C. de Groot (De Groot 1986; 1990). The term functionalist morphology is sometimes also taken to refer to morphology with

a strong focus on the semantic side of word formation, including compounding. In De Caluwe’s Ghentian dissertation the semantic framework used is that of cognitive grammar (De Caluwe 1991).

6.

Surveys of the work of Dutch morphologists

A survey of the morphological phenomena of Dutch is given in De Haas & Trommelen (1993). This Morfologisch Handboek van het Nederlands contains an extensive bibliography of detailed studies of Dutch morphology. Another source that may be used is de Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst (Geerts et al. 1984). Morphological handbooks for the related language Afrikaans are Kempen (21969) and Combrink (1990). Booij (1990 a) and Schultink (1994) are surveys of the history of Dutch morphology. Dutch introductions to the study of morphology are Van Santen (1984), Don et al. (1994), and Booij & Van Santen (1995). It will come as no surprise that morphology in The Netherlands also comprises the morphology of Frisian, its second official language (cf. Tiersma 1985: 47⫺101). The historical relations between The Netherlands and its former colonies, Indonesia and Surinam, led to morphological research of Dutch linguists, who were already mentioned above (E. M. Uhlenbeck, Anceaux, Voorhoeve, Hoff). For the same reason Belgian and South-African linguists contributed to the study of African languages, for instance the Belgian Meeussen.

7.

References

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Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Publications in Language Sciences 15) Trommelen, Mieke & Zonneveld, Wim (1986), “Dutch Morphology: Evidence for the Right-hand Head Rule”. Linguistic Inquiry 17, 147⫺169 Trommelen, Mieke & Zonneveld, Wim (1990), “Klemtoonaantrekking bestaat niet”. Spektator 19, 265⫺293 Trommelen, Mieke & Zonneveld, Wim (1992), “Schappelijke woorden”. De Nieuwe Taalgids 85, 112⫺143 Uhlenbeck, Eugenius M. (1953), “The Study of Word-classes in Javanese”. Lingua 3, 322⫺354 [reprinted in: Uhlenbeck (1978), 10⫺39] Uhlenbeck, Eugenius M. (1978), Studies in Javanese Morphology. The Hague: Nijhoff (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Translation Series 19) Voorhoeve, Clemens L. (1965), The Flamingo Bay Dialect of the Asmat Language. ’s-Gravenhage: Smits Vooys, Cornelis G. N. de (1947), Nederlandse spraakkunst. Groningen, Batavia: Wolters Vries, Jan W. de (1975), Lexicale morfologie van het werkwoord in modern Nederlands. Leiden: Universitaire Pers Vries, Wobbe de (1921/22), Iets over woordvorming. Groningen: De Waal (Verhandelingen behoorende

bij het programma van het gymnasium der gemeente Groningen voor de jaren 1920⫺1921 & 1921⫺1922) [2n.d. (1972), Iets over woordvorming: Opnieuw uitgegeven door Kruyskamp, Cornelis H. A. Zutphen: Thieme] Wijk, Nicolaas van (21909), De Nederlandsche taal: Handboek voor gymnasia en hoogere burgerscholen. Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink [11906] Wijk, Nicolaas van (1934), “Grammatika en woordvorming”. De Nieuwe Taalgids 28, 362⫺374 Wissing, Daniel P. (1971), Fonologie en morfologie van die simplekse selfstandige naamwoord in Afrikaans: ’n Transformasioneel-generatiewe beskrywing. Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (1882⫺1998). ’s-Gravenhage, Leiden: Nijhoff & Sijthoff (& Stemberg); ’s-Gravenhage: SDU Wrede, Ferdinand (1908), “Die Diminutiva im Deutschen”. In: Deutsche Dialektgeographie 1, 73⫺144 Zonneveld, Ronaldus M. van (1983), Affix-grammatika: Een onderzoek naar woordvorming in het Nederlands. Meppel: Krips

Henk Schultink, Bilthoven (The Netherlands) Translation: Geert Booij, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

20. American Structuralism 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Early American Structuralism Segmentation criteria Distributionalism Morphophonemic alternation Generative morphology References

1.

Introduction

American structuralist morphology in its early phases of development was closely modeled after its predecessor, the system of conventions for describing word formation now known as traditional grammar. Structuralist descriptive morphology changed over time and diversified in the work of the principal scholars and schools then active in the discipline. For most linguists, the descriptive treatment of meaning continued for decades essentially unchanged from the earlier approach, however, leading to increasing imbalance between traditional semantics and the

finer-grained structuralist treatments of form. The effort to compensate for the perceived difficulties of semantic description by substituting increasingly elaborate distributional criteria applied to forms in place of contrastive analysis of semantics was ultimately unsatisfactory. Morphology in the early model of generative grammar introduced by Chomsky (1957; 1965) rejected the distributionalist position, reviving in its place some elements of transitional systems established by Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield. The nature of morphological data and the imperatives of basic structural description regardless of the wider theoretical context have led to a rediscovery of some of the classic problems of morphology within later generative models and to a revival of interest in theories of morphology within generative grammar. This article presents the development of morphology in American structural linguistics in four phases: traditional grammar,

20. American Structuralism

early structuralist works, distributionalism, and generative grammar. The phases overlap in time, and diverse positions were taken on some key points within each. Leonard Bloomfield’s Language (1933) was a pivotal work, examined here at some length. It was widely and properly regarded from the time it appeared as the point of departure for all that followed, including generative treatments of morphology. The evolution of American structuralist morphology after 1933 will be sketched here against the unchanging background of the method of contrastive comparison of forms, and through the diversification of criteria for segmenting discourse by placing morphological boundaries in phonological representations, criteria for grouping phonologically different form segments together in the same morphological unit, and morphophonemics, the methods for specifying alternations or variations in the pronunciation of morphological elements. 1.1. Traditional grammar What was treated under morphology in structuralist descriptive linguistics had traditionally been called grammar, an account of word formation and inflection; traditional syntax focused on the sentence and the interrelations of the words that were its parts. Traditional grammar developed into its final form as a tool and a reflection of nineteenth century historical and comparative philology. Since the morphological systems at the focus of its attention, those of the ancient languages of Europe and India and their later descendants, all displayed notable patterns of root and stem compounding as well as numerous derivational and inflectional markers, the study of word structure had become a kind of syntax on a small scale, covering the use of lexical roots singly and in compounds, the assignment of words to major syntactic categories, shifts from one major category to another by means of derivational affixes, and relations of agreement or government marked by inflectional affixes. Syntax itself was an account of sentence formation presented in terms of these same categories, often quite briefly, with words as elements rather than as constructs. In organizing descriptive morphological statements within such a grammar, the convention was to present the most inclusive statements on each point first, and to group under each generalization its special cases and exceptions.

171 Traditional grammars often displayed examples as paradigms in which exemplary words were shown in all their forms, basic and inflected. The architecture of traditional grammar as well as much of its terminology, and in particular, its system of fundamental morphological and syntactic categories, have continued to stand in the background of western linguistics to this day. Another department of grammar in the traditional sense was concerned with the use of letters. Stipulating the written forms of words, and thus indirectly their pronunciation, was a part of grammar both etymologically and in practice. Words had base or citation forms, and in many instances, other variant spellings with environmentally determined differences. The conditioning elements for these spelling alternations might be letters or forms, and might be found either in the same word or in another nearby word. As the composition of words from roots and affixes produced certain sequences of letters, these sequences were subject to change, sometimes as instances of commonly recurring patterns, as in the canonical example of regular English plurals, third person possessives, and third person verb inflection. Sometimes the alternations were instead idiosyncratic, as in man, men. To the considerable extent that discussions of orthography in traditional grammars dealt with both orthography and pronunciation, they were comparable to structuralist treatments of alternation or morphophonemics, the account of variable phonological realizations of morphological units. In traditional grammar, then, the word was the element of syntactic constructions, it had a meaning, and was in almost every instance a set of one or more orthographic forms, each of which was partly like the others and partly different both in spelling and in grammatical function and distribution. The word was in all of these respects a prototype for the morpheme in structuralist linguistics. 1.2. Contrastive comparison Implicit in the familiar method of exposition of morphology by displaying and commenting on paradigmatic sets of forms is the notion of the linguistic sign (cf. Art. 23), with an aspect of content and an aspect of form, famously at the center of Saussure’s approach to general linguistics, but just as central to many others before and after him. Indeed, the method of contrastive compari-

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son of forms is at the foundation of all linguistic analysis, whether phonological, morphological, syntactic, or semantic. In all of these applications, a group of two or more forms displaying some feature or fraction common to all and some other elements unique to each, is used as a pretext and justification for analysis. Some of these sets of items have taken on a lasting identity within American linguistics: pin and bin; writer and rider; knife and knives; John is easy to please and John is eager to please. Contrastive comparison provides a warrant for analysis, but it does not determine the outcome. In particular, it does not determine how far the analysis should go. In Bloomfield’s Introduction (1914: 131⫺135), for instance, he discussed a number of sets of English words forming what he called phonetic-semantic classes. The intersecting sets of forms include flame, flare, flash, flimmer, flicker, and flimmer, glimmer, shimmer, simmer as well as flash, clash, crash, dash, gash, gnash, hash, etc. Another group of intersecting sets of forms listed just after these are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, etc., and thirteen, thirty, third, and three. As objects of description the two groups of intersecting classes are comparable, but on the former, of whose flwords he noted that “all of them express phenomena of fire with especial reference to its peculiar moving light” he added, “This class is of interest in the present connection, because it illustrates the emotional rather than perceptual value and the ill-defined rather than clearcut extent of many of these classes. For there can be no doubt that, in the feeling of many speakers, flicker again associates itself with such words as flutter, fly, and even, further, with flit, flip, flop, flap, and so on. All these words share the initial fland are more or less vaguely related in meaning; indeed the feeling for the semantic connection may vary in the same speaker under different circumstances. In short, the extent or the existence of a phonetic-semantic word class may be very doubtful, and could be determined with accuracy only for a given person at a given time, and here only if a full insight into his associative disposition at the moment were attainable.” (Bloomfield 1914: 133)

Note the sensitivity to evanescent details of semantic and phonetic relationships that Bloomfield showed here at age 27, before beginning to do field work, and also the style of the passage, which might easily be mistaken for one by Edward Sapir, even in its willingness to leave some issues undecided. These two sets of forms have received different treatment from most structuralist lin-

guists: the basis for segmenting the fl- in these forms as a morpheme has generally been perceived as inadequate or totally absent, but just as clearly, the root and affix elements of the number words call for segmentation (cf. Matthews 1992: 127). Bloomfield’s purpose was not to make such a distinction about the linguistic forms, however, but was instead to comment on the relative strength and clarity of their psychological associations. In the Introduction, Bloomfield not only treated the sets of fl- and number words alike, but did so by leaving all of the bound forms undisturbed in both sets, as portions of integral, unsegmented words, using what he then called their formative elements only as anchors for phonetic-semantic associations. Later, in Language (Bloomfield 1933: 244f.), he once again treated both types alike, but this time as made up of separate, bound morphemes, noting that there are “clearly-marked phonetic-semantic resemblances between elements which we view as different roots.” The point to be considered here is not the relative merit of any of these solutions, but rather the distinction between the familiar and analytically neutral operation of contrastive comparison of linguistic forms on the one hand, and on the other, the different systems of analytical criteria leading to distinct segmentations of the linguistic material organized by the comparisons.

2.

Early American Structuralism

What was the defining difference between the traditional and the structuralist approaches to morphology? What was “structural” about early structuralist morphology? The structuralist perspective is found not in the linguistic content of the gramamtical description, but in the nature and prominence given to the structural relationships among its elements and constructions. Between the traditional type of morphology expounded in Bloomfield (1914) and in Sapir (1921), and the works by both that followed in the 1930’s, there was a transition from the older view of the word as the fundamental and indissoluble element of syntactic constructions to the later American structuralist view of the morpheme as just such a primary unit. And the more elements there are to arrange, the more structural relations there are to describe. In an utterance, there will be at least as many morphemes as there are words. In most utter-


ances, there will be considerably more, and these more numerous elementary forms participate in a more complex web of relationships. As there are more morphological elements, so there are more constructions, that is, significant combinations of grammatical elements which themselves may be treated as elements of a higher order. This transition from word to morpheme brought a consequent increase in the depth and complexity of the model of grammatical structure, and influenced a shift of the focus of attention toward synchronic structural relations and away from traditional general or universal grammatical categories whose manifesting overt linguistic forms were traced through historical changes or compared across languages. These categories generally remained in the background, however. In several key publications appearing between 1911 and 1925 the notion of structure appeared first as a trait of languages as a whole, each one having a structure in much the same way a house or a machine does, as an aggregate of functionally and dimensionally organized parts. The terms configuration and pattern were often used in this sense, especially by Boas and Sapir (cf. especially Sapir 1921; 1925); system and form were used in closely related ways. Languages also came to be described more and more during this period as having structure in a modular sense, in which a subset of abstract functional and distributional relationships are manifested repeatedly by combinations of linguistic structures and elements. This second kind of structure, emphasizing hierarchical relationships, became more and more prominent in structuralist theory and description through the generalization of the phoneme idea to morphology, and at least in principle, to other kinds of linguistic form as well. To a limited extent Boas (1911), Bloomfield (1914), and, much more explicitly, Sapir (1921) deal with language structure in the first of these ways, especially in treating morphology. The perspective of Boas and Sapir is pointedly comparative and typological rather than evolutionary or historical (cf. Stocking 1974; Hymes & Fought 1981: 79⫺97). Bloomfield (1926; 1933) systematized structure in the second way for his newly structuralist grammar (shifting into it parts of the old morphology), but still dealt with phonology mainly in the first way, by mapping only the phonological distinctions and patterns with grammatical relevance. Matthews (1992; 1993) has pro-

173 vided a deeply insightful comparison of Bloomfield’s treatment of morphology in the period from 1914 to 1939, and its later recasting by the next generation of structuralists. In their hands, the modular and hierarchical type of structure came to be a focus in itself, as the notion of levels of structure and of analysis. 2.1. Boas, Sapir, and Bloomfield The linguistic work of Franz Boas (1858⫺ 1942) and of his brilliant student Edward Sapir (1884⫺1939) are closely linked. Boas’s academic training in Germany was in psychophysics; he had little contact with the neogrammarians and never formally studied philology (Stocking 1974). One of his papers, “On alternating sounds” (Boas 1889) must be regarded as an independent source of linguistic structuralism, owing little or nothing to European work of the same period, but exerting great influence through its author’s singular effectiveness as an organizer and disciplinary leader. The perspective laid out in this paper shaped his and his students’ work in linguistics and in anthropology for decades (Stocking 1968; Wells 1963). Leonard Bloomfield (1887⫺1949), who was Boas’s friend, though never his student, wrote of him in his deeply felt obituary notice (1943), “perhaps his greatest contribution to science was the development of descriptive language study”, adding in conclusion that he had “forged almost single-handed, the tools of phonetic and structural description”. These tools included the technique of systematic elicitation of paraphrases and alternations in transcribed texts as a foundation for the systematic application of contrastive comparison, with this in turn revealing the boundaries of formal elements in the text. Combining these ancillary materials with the original text allows the linguist to develop a focused corpus, to go beyond exploiting a static archive by extending it, filling gaps and actively exploring structural features as they appear. The resulting body of data can be profoundly revealing. Boas apparently held his students to high standards in practicing this kind of analysis both in class and in the field, and well beyond the days of their apprenticeship (Hymes & Fought 1981). Thus, although Boas’s descriptive statements did not emphasize explicit accounts of structural relations among minimal linguistic elements, and the associated theoretical generalizations, his method of analysis was nevertheless

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structuralist through and through, and its procedures have suffused the gathering and analysis of data in the field by American linguists from his day to ours. These three scholars, each in touch with the others, and each wielding great influence on the emerging discipline of structural linguistics, all advocated and practiced a relativistic approach to language data, but they made use of a standard category system as a starting point for defining the elements, categories, and structural relations required for the description of each language in its own terms. Although there can be a conflict between the use of a universal category system and the relativist theoretical stance, there is no necessary contradiction: the relationship was expected to be much the same as that between a universal system of phonetic categories, intended to be both comprehensive and standardized, and the phonological elements, categories, and relations established in describing the phonology of a particular language as it exploits some of the available articulatory resources in a pattern of its own. Nor is this parallel between phonological and grammatical structural description an accidental one. It is but one of many consequences of the deliberate generalization and projection of the phoneme idea into other aspects of language description that was just beginning to shape their publications and to constitute the structuralist view of language (cf. Matthews 1992: 152f.). The theoretical distinction between the universal grid of content categories (presented as a typology of grammatical concepts) and the equally general system of grammatical processes or methods of composing or modifying phonetic form, much of it also borrowed from traditional grammar, is made clearest in the central chapters (IV⫺VI) expounding the morphological underpinnings and the outline of Sapir’s revitalized language typology (1921). This typology attempts to show not just the relative complexity of word formation in one language versus another, but instead to show the different ways information content and organization is divided or joined and packaged for verbal transmission. Woven through these chapters is a sustained argument against prejudicial, evolutionary uses of grammar and typology. Sapir’s preferred target was the exalting of root vowel alternations found in Greek, Latin, German, and Sanskrit (inflec-

tion or ablaut) as a special mark of good breeding among languages: “A linguist that insists on talking about the Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high water mark of linguistic development is like the zoologist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race horse or the Jersey cow.” (Sapir 1921: 124)

2.2. Bloomfield (1926; 1933) Bloomfield continued to follow the traditional model of word formation in its main outlines, but he made a new division of the descriptive tasks between grammar and the lexicon. The model underlying these two publications is the same: it defines morphemes as minimum forms, and sets up hierarchies of elements and combinations of elements of form and of meaning, as well as parallel classifications of formal patterns of word and sentence formation. In the Postulates (Bloomfield 1926: 155⫺157) a simple morphological model is laid out in the following assumptions and definitions: “6. The vocal features common to same or partly same utterances are forms; the corresponding stimulus-reaction features are meanings. 7. Every utterance is made up wholly of forms. […] 9. A minimum form is a morpheme; its meaning a sememe. […] 11. A minimum free form is a word. […] 16. A minimum same of vocal feature is a phoneme or distinctive sound. […] 18. Every form is made up wholly of phonemes.”

Postulates 6, 9, and 18 make it clear that Bloomfield’s morpheme was defined as a string of phonemes, without alternations. This system was continued and elaborated in Language (1933) and remained in place as a foundation for another decade or more after that (cf. Harris (1942: 169): “[…] different sequences of phonemes constitute different morphemes […]”). Such an approach to morphology leads to many questions: there are sets of forms with the same or very similar meanings but partly different phonemic shapes. Linguists wish to group some of them together: how and when is this to be done? Bloomfield’s answer, substantially the same in 1926 and 1933, was ingenious but austere. The variants of the citation or base form of a morpheme (i.e., of its single shape in primary phonemes) were produced by combinations of elements of grammatical form, not of morphological form. Constructions with constructional meanings (Bloomfield 1926), later tagmemes with episememes


(Bloomfield 1933), were “recurring sames of order” and of meaning (“stimulus-reaction features”). Bloomfield (1926) then organized phonological alternations in morphemes as either phonetic (phonemically conditioned, i.e., phonotactic, such as voicing assimilation), automatic (such as the alternation of the forms of the English regular plural suffix, conditioned by the final consonant of the stem), or grammatical (conditioned in any other way). But since all of these alternations occur in constructions, all are treated as grammatical in nature rather than morphological. Moreover, since his examples include what would later be considered phonotactic constraints, patterned morphophonemic alternations of many kinds, including zero, and even suppletions, it is clear that the postulated restriction to a single phonological shape for the base form of a morpheme imposed few descriptive constraints. In practice, Bloomfield’s morpheme showed as much alternation in shape as Sapir’s, or as those of many later structuralists (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 210⫺22). His system does not gather the morphemes and their alternants together into one compartment of the grammar, however, but instead uses a single string of phonemes as a base form to represent the morpheme in the lexicon, and scatters the treatment of the alternations among the phonology, where phonotactic and automatic alternations were covered, and among the taxemes of selection, order, phonetic modification, modulation, and substitution, the counterparts in Bloomfield’s newly developed item and arrangement style of description to the processes or methods used in the traditional and Sapirian style as well as his own Introduction (Bloomfield 1914). At least in a general way, his organization of morphological and lexical material into descriptive statements was influenced strongly by the tradition of classical Indian grammar, with which Bloomfield was very familiar (Rogers 1987). His sketch of French morphology (Bloomfield 1945) is a conveniently short though incomplete example of the style applied to a familiar language. Bloomfield’s morphology is essentially a list of components of lexical items, each in citation form, ready for combinations and alternations governed by specific pattern statements related to grammatical constructions. Although the approach employs the same descriptive strategies as the older morphology, in which processes are applied to base forms

175 to yield derived forms (including morphophonemic alternants), Bloomfield’s grammatical model is presented in a rhetoric of sequential, additive, subtractive, and hierarchical arrangements. Thus, in Bloomfield (1926), the formatives in the construction of ox-en and the free forms of Richard saw John occur in what are equally constructions, that is, recurrent sames of order (cf. Matthews 1992: 139). Moreover, he uses devices borrowed directly from the Indian tradition, such as zero and certain markers or morphophonemic operators, which will be discussed below. Bloomfield’s linguistics was based on the analysis and description of overtly occurring meaningful forms. He summed up his method of analysis in a letter written in 1919 (cited in Hymes & Fought 1981: 109): “No preconceptions; find out which sound variations are distinctive (as to meaning) and then analyze morphology and syntax by putting together everything that is alike”. This extreme concision, compressing linguistic description into the last six delphic words, came soon after he had published his innovative study of Tagalog (Bloomfield 1917), a first but fully mature exercise in method. Bloomfield appealed directly and skillfully to similarities and differences of meaning as a practical necessity in morphology. This informal reliance on meaning distinctions was made all the more imperative by his conviction that a “scientific” linguistic semantics was impossibly difficult. His morphemes therefore were sets of similar forms whose phonological differences were instances of productive patterns and whose meanings were as close to identical as could be determined. Since his morpheme had a single base form from which its alternants were derived by specified taxemes embodying the alternation patterns, there was no visible grouping problem, nor were there complex distributional criteria to be satisfied. Despite the latitude in phonological relationships allowed by the use of taxemes of selection and phonetic modification, Bloomfield’s description was restrained, apparently more by convention than by explicit theoretical statement, within conservative functional and distributional limits that minimized the amount of variability within each morpheme. Suppletion, in which there is no phonetic similarity among the alternants, was carefully presented as an exceptional case, but which for overriding reasons of functional and semantic similarity and complementary distri-

176


bution running parallel to clear cases with strong formal similarity should nevertheless be handled as if the suppletive alternants were phonologically related. In Bloomfield’s very influential Menomini morphophonemics (1939), forms related by function and complementary distribution to a basic alternant, but phonologically different from each other in irregular ways, were called morpholexical alternants, a status intermediate between distinct morphemes and ordinary morpheme alternants. The strength of the requirement of formal similarity and distributional parallelism was largely implicit in the structure of these arguments allowing exceptions only under limited and special conditions. Apart from some differences of terminology, and of course the absence of transformational syntactic and phonological rules themselves, processes par excellence, in Bloomfield’s arrangement model, his treatment of morphology has the same overall architecture found in early generative grammar (e.g. Chomsky 1957), where the base forms of lexical items are acted upon by the grammar to produce both syntactic arrangements and morphophonemic adjustments, and a parallel hierarchy of semantic elements is left largely empty or uninterpreted (cf. Matthews 1992: 161).

3.

Segmentation criteria

3.1. Phonological boundaries The languages most commonly studied by European and American scholars in the last century already had well-established orthographies and abundant published text material with conventional word boundaries as well as dictionaries in which words were listed and defined. Word divisions in text were taken for granted; the only issue of segmentation in this linguistic milieu was the segmentation of words into smaller elements. Descriptions of Native American languages and of others not commonly written, on the other hand, were based on phonetically transcribed contemporary texts. Nothing about the segmentation of this material into phonological and morphological elements could safely be taken for granted. Explicit and general criteria for segmentation were therefore developed and incorporated into morphological procedures and theory. Over time, in part because of this difference in the character of primary data, European and Ameri-

can traditions of structuralist morphology developed in significantly different ways from the same traditional foundations. There are important issues of segmentation whose history and implications can only be mentioned here. Policies of segmentation of text into more or less word-sized strings of forms have a powerful effect on the immediate structural impression made by language material, and also on more deliberate typological judgments placing languages along a dimension called synthesis in the typology of the past century, brilliantly refurbished in Sapir (1921). They also exert major influences on the organization of descriptive grammars. When French is written and described conventionally, utterances like Il ne me l’a pas donne´ ‘He didn’t give it to me’ are much less likely to seem “polysynthetic” than if one hears and thinks of them as [ilnemelapadcne], even though the constraints on the selection and ordering of the preverbal elements are strong enough to bear comparison with those of Navaho, in which, incidentally, the verb roots also come last in the string. The shock produced by such gambits, whether they are seriously offered or not, is in part a relic of the grammatical tradition and evolutionary typological perspective of past centuries, still strong enough in our day to govern the reactions even of language professionals when “civilized languages” are handled like “primitive languages”. Certainly Boas and Sapir campaigned against these views as they prepared the scholarly audience of their day to understand their work on American languages and cultures (cf. Hymes & Fought 1981: 59⫺62). Sapir’s recasting of the old word-based typology into two analytical dimensions, synthesis and fusion, was a move in this campaign. Besides giving the typology more resolving power by adding a dimension, it allowed him to argue that the morphology of a given language usually occupied more than one zone in the typological system (Sapir 1921: Ch. VI). Harris (1951: 160⫺163) and Lounsbury (1953) discuss the application of contrastive comparison in texts. Text segments of arbitrary length are first isolated by eliciting (or retrieving) a comparable segment whose form and meaning are different from the first by some feature, and then further analyzed by repeating the process until no further segmentation is justified. In this way, a stock of elements and combinatory patterns accumu-


lates and the residue of unanalyzed material is depleted. Harris often presented the method with fairly long contexts for the focal elements. The method is most often presented with words or other short strings as the target, however. In its simplest morphological application, it involves four terms: (1) walked : walking reached : reaching in each term, there are two elements of form; these forms and their meanings covary. Moreover, the set can easily be extended by adding other rows and columns of words with covarying formal and semantic differences. There were debates on the propriety of segmenting forms when the set was defective because one pair of forms lacked an element, or when one form contained a unique element, so that no square could be constructed. The form which gave its name to this latter problem was cranberry. Although there are many other words containing the element berry, such as gooseberry, huckleberry, strawberry, and elderberry, there were no other words containing the cran element. Bloomfield (1933: 276) notes that this method of morphological segmentation is closely akin to the classical formulation of proportional analogy, ay:az::by:x. Pedersen (1931: 291) dates recognition of the parallel to 1868. Harris (1951: 178) added an identity convention to allow for the recognition as morphemes of elements like huckle, which can’t be placed within a matrix of two-part forms, but are instead left as residues after more widely distributed forms are accounted for. Harris adds that the fl-, gl- type of putative morpheme can also be segmented in this way, but is usually rejected by a test of distributional similarity to other forms. The fl- set comes up in textbooks and articles over the decades after Harris’s work, and figures again in Matthews (1992), where it is carefully connected with related issues of semantics and segmentation. The persistent use of this set of forms to mark an analytical threshold in almost eighty years of discussions on morphology suggests that the issues touching on the localization of meaning within complex forms, and beyond that, of the representation of meaning in general, were and are still unresolved. 3.2. The problem of meaning During the development of methods of analysis of linguistic form within American structuralism, little was done to approach the

177 study of meaning in the same ways. Instead, in Bloomfield’s system, a hierarchy of elements matching the form elements was established to hold meanings when they were someday worked out; these containers were however left empty. Since the number of these semantic container elements was equal to the form elements they matched, the “size” or capacity of each was also vaguely determined by the forms, to the extent that it was determined at all. Since little attention was given to these semantic units, the traditional terminology for grammatical categories was often used to label the various grammatical forms, or more precisely, traditional labels were used as if there were grammatical forms to correspond to them. In this way, lexical meaning was left for informal specification as a working expedient, and grammatical meaning was left in its traditional terms and categories. The Postulates contain a frequently cited version of Bloomfield’s rejection of the study of meaning by linguistic methods: “The morphemes of a language can thus be analyzed into a small number of meaningless phonemes. The sememes, on the other hand, which stand in one-to-one correspondence with the morphemes, cannot be further analyzed by linguistic methods. This is no doubt why linguists, confronted with the parallelism of form and meaning, choose form as the basis of classification.” (Bloomfield 1926: 157)

Bloomfield diverged most on this point from the Boas and Sapir models, which gave form and meaning an equal priority. The injunction to base classification on overt form rather than on more abstract foundations was not often accepted by others, and not always applied completely by Bloomfield. But the assumption that the meaning of each morpheme corresponds one-to-one with the morpheme, which stood not just unchallenged but almost unexamined for decades, still remains a source of serious difficulties in linguistic description. Yet few were as adept or as conscientious as Bloomfield in using similarities and differences of meaning in the analysis and description of form. At times the arrangement of examples is such as to bring the semantic relation to the very surface of the text. For example, here is a part of his discussion of derivation, dealing with forms like duke:duchess, and master:mistress: “Once we have established a construction of this kind, we may be able to set up a typical meaning

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and then, as in the case of inflection, to look for parallels. Our suffix -ess, for instance, has a definable linguistic meaning, not only because of the parallel character of all the sets like count:countess, lion:lioness, but also because English grammar, by the distinction of he:she recognizes the meaning of the -ess derivatives. Accordingly, we are able to decide, much as we are in the case of inflection, whether a given pair of forms, such as man:woman, does or does not show the same relation. This enables us to draw up supplementary statements, resembling our description of paradigms, which show the various formal aspects of some grammatically determined semantic unit. Thus, we find the sememe ‘female of such-and-such male’ expressed not only by the suffix -ess, but also by composition, as in elephant-cow, she-elephant, nanny-goat, and by suppletion, as in ram:ewe, boar:sow; some such pairs show inverse derivation, the male derived from the female, as goose:gander, duck:drake.” (Bloomfield 1933: 238)

Here his system make the data fit awkwardly, since the sememe matched with -ess must become an episememe when matched with grammatical forms, and what even he treats as a linguistic generalization about meaning is thus broken into separate parts. Not even an additional analytic step would have been needed to demonstrate a componential analysis of meaning comparable to the analysis of sound, and guided by the same principle of relevance in distinguishing between linguistic signs. What was needed but unaccountably missing was just a recognition of the opportunity suggested by this parallelism. But his insistence on leaving meaning itself outside linguistic analysis was not only damaging to his own work. Backed by Bloomfield’s great prestige and perhaps further strengthened by the convenience of its warrant for suspending the challenging structural analysis of meaning, this aspect of structuralist morphology has been the most durable of all. It was to be thirty years before the analysis of meaning by linguistic methods was shown to be approachable along these very lines, and was introduced into American structural linguistics (Conklin 1955; Goodenough 1956; Lounsbury 1956; 1964a; 1964b; Bendix 1966; Wallace & Atkins 1960; and especially Weinreich 1966). The innovation came first from linguistic anthropology in the form of componential (semantic) analysis and ethnoscience, whose line of development ran from Boas through Sapir and his students. By then, in the late 1950’s, the separation of (linguistic) anthropology and linguistics into different university departments, the

long absence of a leader comparable to Boas or Sapir, the relative decline in influence of linguistics among the four fields of anthropology, and the rise of formal syntax as the focus of attention in linguistics, all combined to deprive this innovation of much of its potential force, and to cut off an interesting reintegration of several strands of theory and practice. Instead, Bloomfield’s morpheme, a unit of form whose expression side is elegantly analyzed into distinctive phonological units and grammatically relevant category memberships but whose content side is a unitary and fixed but barely specified meaning, is still very much with us.

4.

Distributionalism

The ten years following 1933 were marked by a number of important papers on phonology by the younger American structuralists (e.g., Swadesh 1934; Twaddell 1935; Swadesh & Voegelin 1939; Bloch 1941; Hockett 1942; Harris 1944). In these and other papers, American structuralism consolidated an approach to phonology based on contrast or complementation in sets of linguistic signs distinguished by difference in form and meaning without regard to positive characterization of meanings. The importance of complementary distribution in phonology had been recognized since the formation of neogrammarian doctrine through its intimate connection with conditioned sound change. During this period, then, a treatment of phonology that emphasized distributional properties as well as phonetic substance came to be well understood, together with the handling of alternants (allophones). The nucleus of distributionalism was in the canonical morpheme of Bloomfield (1933) and Harris (1942), a unit with either a single, constant phonological shape in all environments or a set of phonemically similar alternants whose members are in complementary distribution with each other, and whose phonemic differences conform to and are conditioned by the combinatory pattern of the phonology of the language. That is to say, they are at least a loosely defined type of automatic alternation. Within the pattern of distribution established by these uncontroversial elements, other groupings of forms with similar meaning and morphologically conditioned alternations, some irregular and even suppletive, were then established. The development of distribu-


tionalism as a doctrine took the form of proposals for further relaxing the use of uncontroversial single-alternant morphemes and their distributions as models for the rest, thereby extending the allowable limits of variation in phonological form as a by-product of the relaxation of distributional limits. This relaxation also permitted the adjustment of distributional patterns overall. Usually these proposals featured analytical results viewed as desirable but unattainable under the old rules. Hockett and others remarked that Bloomfield’s system of taxemes and tagmemes was difficult to understand and use (Matthews 1992: 138). Bloomfield did not explain the procedures leading through contrastive analysis to this kind of description of grammatical form. At best he showed only selected outcomes as a model for more detailed treatments. Moreover, his Paninian style of presentation of lexical and grammatical forms scattered alternations through a complex web of statements from which it was difficult to extract intermediate stages of derivation. The same complaint was made about Pa¯nø ini’s original use of the technique, and also about the similarly complex representations embedded in the rule systems of generative phonology (Ferguson 1962). With little direct guidance from Bloomfield, the younger generation of descriptivists developed a family of closely related approaches to morphology based partly on Bloomfield’s terms and system, but more directly and explicitly on the model of the successful approaches to phonological structure found in the papers mentioned above. Beginning in the early 1940s, a series of papers on morphology appeared that defined a variety of structuralism in which morphology was the foundation of grammar, and distributional criteria played a central part. The papers were by Harris (1942; 1946; 1948), Bloch (1947), Hockett (1947; 1954), Nida (1948), and Lounsbury (1953). All of them, like the phonology papers already listed, were reprinted in Joos (1957, ed.), a collection that was often criticized for its omissions, partly because it was seen by so many from its first appearance as a semi-official statement of this theoretical tendency in the discipline. The basis for grouping morpheme alternants continued to change during this period of development, coming to be defined as identity or some specified degree of similarity not in phonological form but in meaning. However, be-

179 cause of the settled opinion shared by these scholars and Bloomfield that determinations of sameness or difference of meaning were too imprecise to be scientifically reliable, these grouping decisions were generally stated in distributional terms. It should be remembered in what follows that the goal of the distributionalist program was to replace imprecise semantic criteria in contrastive analysis with precise distributional criteria. A major transformation of theory began in 1957, of course, when Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures appeared, and became decisive in the mid 1960’s, by which time most students, junior faculty, and senior faculty in American linguistics programs in elite institutions had either been taught the generative perspective from the beginning or had converted to it. One group did remain partly outside the distributionalist group and mostly outside the transformationalist movement, however, and it was numerically larger through much of this period than the distributionalist group in the United States: the missionary organization known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics, led by Kenneth Pike (1958; 1967) and Robert Longacre (1960; 1964; 1965). Their eclectic doctrine, which Pike first worked out in the late 1940s, came to be known as tagmemics (cf. Art. 21); it developed in such a way as to integrate morphology very closely into a type of structuralist syntax strongly dominated by criterial patterning considerations and by string analysis (applied to morphemes and many levels of constructions labeled for grammatical function as well as form) rather than immediate constituent analysis. Its morphology, however, stayed close in most respects to the earliest type of structuralist distributionalism. 4.1. The denial of synonymy Bloch, Hockett, Harris, and a number of others accepted Bloomfield’s (1933: 145) proposition that “there are no actual synonyms” ⫺ that two distinct forms with exactly the same meaning would necessarily have exactly the same distribution: they would be mutually substitutable in all environments and actually distributed in this way in a suitably large corpus. They contended that there were no such forms. This proposition, and the contention that no such forms occur, form half of the foundation of distributionalism. If differences in the phonological shape of forms always correlate with differences in their mean-

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ings, and therefore in their distributions, then differences in the distribution of forms imply differences in their meanings, and tests of distribution may be substituted for considerations of meaning in analysis. Curiously, in view of its motivation and consequences, this proposition amounts to a denial of any nonsemantic influences on the distribution of forms. Distributional effects due to syntax, phonotactics, and the vagaries of lexical history are all set aside. This view, which later became known as distributionalism, dominated the scholarly side of American structuralism until it was effectively transformed into generative grammar. I must emphasize, based on personal knowledge, that the authors of these papers disagreed on many important points, had relatively little personal contact, and did not see themselves as forming a unified school of thought within linguistics. The distributionalist axioms were thought to support reliance on the analysis of differences of distribution, which was in principle a precise tool, in place of the analysis of differences of meaning, which was imprecise. In practice, however, distributionalists upheld these methods only in principle, relying for their actual analyses on meaning as a ‘shortcut’. There was a compelling reason for the disparity between theory and practice. To analyze exhaustively the distribution of more than a few items in a corpus of any size using the very laborious methods of concordance building then available was not often treated as a practical plan for a teaching scholar. Few corpora of spoken material of sufficient size for more than rudimentary distributional analysis of morphological or syntactic structure existed in any event, and most of those few were printed collections of Native American texts in phonetic transcription supplemented by grammatical sketches. So, then as now, most linguists drew examples from reference works, their own knowledge, and exchanges with others, and a few experimental tabulations. The methods of distributionalism called for the technology of electronic data processing, which did not then exist, and so this approach went into eclipse. When the electronic technology did reach the hands of linguists, distributional analysis soon began to appear again. It is evident that the allomorphs of a morpheme are different in phonological shape, and therefore must be, by these axioms, different in meaning, although their member-

ship in the same morpheme should guarantee their sameness of meaning. Reactions to this dilemma varied. For Bloomfield and for Nida, morphemes shared a common phonetic-semantic distinctiveness, that is, each was semantically different from all other morphemes. Most other linguists did not formally comment on this dilemma, nor on the implications of doublets like /ruf/ and /ruwf/ for ‘roof’. Characteristically, Nida (1948: 430f.) faced the issue squarely, and tried to resolve it. By means of his first three principles, he stipulates that allomorphs differing either not at all or only by automatic phonological alternations, and in complementary distribution with each other, will be assigned to the same morpheme, as did Bloomfield, Bloch, Harris, and Hockett. To resolve the more noticeable inconsistency of grouping other kinds of allomorphs together, he offered his principles 5 “The meaning of any form is definable in terms of the feature or features common to the situations in which the form occurs”, and 6 “Morpheme alternants whose distribution is not phonologically definable exhibit sub-morphemic differences of meaning”. That is to say, by principle 5, that differences of distribution involve occurrence in constructions with different grammatical meanings, and thus, the alternants have meaning differences conditioned by their environments alone, and, by principle 6, that a “sub-morphemic” level of difference in meaning is not enough to disqualify alternants from allomorph status. Finally, he falls back on the assumption itself: “It is often extremely hard to define the differences of meaning between allomorphs, since it depends solely on a difference of distribution. But our inability to correlate this difference with biosocial contrasts does not invalidate the principle (especially Principle 5, which underlies Principle 6), nor the basic assumption that we adopt as a premise for all descriptive analysis: that there are no actual synonyms.” (Nida 1948: 431)

Since the distributionalist program stands or falls on the denial of synonymy, it is especially interesting to consider the problem posed by free variation (cf. Art. 49). The notion is borrowed from phonology, where it was used to cover cases where perceptible articulatory differences, such as the aspirated release or unaspirated nonrelease of final voiceless stops in American English, were not correlated with semantic differences. Note that in its phonological application, free variation affects outcomes in particular environ-


ments across the board, as in the English example just mentioned, not only in certain lexical items. In its morphological application (Hockett 1947), the idea of free variation is more restricted. It covers allomorphs in free variation, that is, phonemically different forms occurring in the same environments. But this is a definition of synonyms. Lounsbury (1953: 573, note 2) declined to accept Hockett’s free variation option, citing the practical difficulty of recognizing synonyms. The denial of synonymy, if its implications had been accepted fully and consistently in morphological analysis, would have threatened many analytical decisions that were reached via the well-worn shortcut of informal reliance on judgments of meaning. Exceptions to the consistent application of the distributional difference test were proposed and adopted in various combinations apparently in order to secure descriptions with desired outcomes. Meanwhile, the distributional test was always available for use in rejecting undesirable groupings of elements. It can be argued with considerable justification that the practice of defining theoretical terms and analytical methods so as to reach desired outcomes was and is the ordinary method of theory development in linguistics. There is however an alternative method, favored by Bloomfield and also by Harris, which consists of defining a simple and internally consistent set of terms and procedures, and then accepting the outcome of the analysis, however different it may be from what has been done before. But if one principle, the distributionalist foundation of analysis, is held up as basic, but used less often than the so-called short-cut, there is reason to question the soundness of the foundation. There was informal discussion of the propriety of always using meaning as a short-cut (the clearest published statement is Hockett 1961: 46f.). There was also publication of critiques aimed at centrist compromise in morphological theory and practice. Nida’s work represents this centrist tendency at its best, and it was all the more effective for being expounded in distributionalist terms. The best evidence for the existence of a kind of double standard in distributionalism is circumstantial: it can be seen in the outcome of the analyses that were widely accepted or rejected. For example, in English, the pattern of alternation among (Èz, z, s) is found in the regular s-plural, the third person singular present -s of verbs, the reduced (and commonest) forms of be in the

181 third person singular present, and the possessive. All these morphemes are in complementary distribution and each has the same phonologically conditioned pattern of distribution of their alternants. Nida commented in this connection on Hockett’s dangerous reliance on complementary distribution: “Not only would it be possible to combine all the plural affixes of nouns in one morpheme (a step which we should all agree to), but one could say that these are in complementary distribution with the partly homophonous third-singular suffix of verbs. A single morpheme could then be set up with the meaning ‘number distinctiveness’ and with the additional distributional characteristic that if an alternant occurs after the noun it does not occur after the verb, and vice versa […]. By slight extensions it might be possible to construct a descriptive system by which practically all the features of concord, government and cross-reference could be treated on a submorphemic level. If this were done, we should only have succeeded in changing the meaning of the word ‘morpheme’ to apply to certain distributionally related forms.” (Nida 1948: 418)

Of course, throughout Nida’s article, and in the related literature of the time generally, the term morpheme was applied to “certain distributionally related forms”. The question was just which ones in any given case. Here, Nida takes for granted the acceptability of combining with the plural forms fitting this sibilant alternation pattern a large number of other suppletive formations, while rejecting even the possibility of combining any of the other sibilant suffixes with the plural. Not only do all of the inherited forms and their analogic progeny belong (mice, teeth, oxen, vaxen competing with vaxes), but presumably the borrowed foreign plurals as well: aquaria, alumni, indices competing with indexes, haiku, graffiti, rotini, and so on and on. Since these irregular forms, like all but the sibilant plurals, require the listing of the stem forms associated with each, nothing practical is gained by combining the alternants in a single morpheme rather than making a set of homonymous plural suffixes. There is only a doctrinal precept at stake, namely that every noun (except proper and mass nouns?) takes the (not a) plural suffix. Clearly, Nida’s morphemes are groupings based on meaning masquerading as distributionally defined units. Moreover, procedures outlined a few years later by Harris, which were not generally accepted, were intended to provide a distributional foundation for just the kind of

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analysis Nida viewed here as unthinkable. For instance, Harris (1951: 182f.) outlines an innovative treatment of the many prefixes of the Bantu concord system using just a few morphemes represented as discountinuous morphs, taking the fullest advantage of complementation in the syntagmatic dimension as well as the paradigmatic. Many similarly radical applications of distributionalism can be found in Harris’s work. He notes, for instance (Harris 1951: 189) that morphemes established by applying a criterion of meaning and those based on his distributional procedures will not necessarily coincide, and that the semantic variability of distributionally identified morphemes may be noticeable. He recommended adjusting preliminary results achieved by the use of meaning short-cuts by the use of distributional techniques, instead of the prevailing tendency in the opposite direction. I suggest that it was in part because his distributionalism was so uncompromising and far-reaching that the methods he developed after the 1942 paper were not more influential. 4.2. Pattern properties as criteria The other foundation of distributionalism is its use of notions of patterning. The distributions of two main types of elements are crucially involved. One is the distribution of overt morphological elements; the other is the distribution of grammatical forms, especially of form classes, viewed as covert morphological elements. In describing the distribution of elements, reference may be made to the absolute distribution of a form, that is, to the sum of the environments where it occurs. This is what Bloomfield meant by the selection of a form. Element distribution is however most often discussed as the relative distribution of two or more forms. Complementary distribution, such that neither element occurs in any environments where the other occurs, is but one of four types of relative distribution possible for any two linguistic elements. In the other three types there are environments shared by the two elements. These types are coincident distribution (both elements occur in exactly the same environments), overlapping distribution (both occur in some environments, and each has environments of its own), and including distribution (both occur in some environments, and just one has environments of its own). In general, two linguistic forms in complementary distribution may different in sound and meaning,

and thus be different linguistic signs, but so long as they are in complementary distribution, they do not lend themselves to direct contrastive comparison. Complementary distribution owes its central role in the development of American linguistics to this property. It offers a warrant for combining elements so distributed as alternants of a unit on a higher level. It was never used as the sole criterion for such grouping decisions, however. There was either an additional requirement of similarity or identity of substance (phonetic similarity in phonology, and phonemic similarity in morphology) or of some other identity criterion, such as meaning or some formal parallelism. This parallelism is in effect a second type or layer of distribution, a more abstract pattern of parallelism among the absolute distributions of classes of elements. In an obvious way, this parallelism or pattern, such as it may be, arises naturally and directly from the combination of the absolute distributions of the elements established, assigned to classes, and otherwise described in the grammar. Viewed in this way, a form, established by other criteria, such as similarity of form and meaning, simply has a distribution, and any parallelisms with the distributions of other forms are a consequence of the body of analytical decisions made. Another approach is to maximize (or conceivably, to minimize) the parallelism by making decison with reference to the distributional pattern. To some extent, accepting patterning as a guide to analytical decisions was a widespread practice. Bloomfield’s grouping standard, taken up by Harris, using the distribution of members of a form class having but a single alternant as a model for the range allowed for groups of alternants, is a conservative example of criterial patterning. What sets distributionalism apart from other approaches before it is the degree of commitment of its advocates to adjusting the distributions of elements so as to maximize the parallelism and regularity of the abstract pattern, and the methods used to reach this goal. It should be noted in passing that distributionalists differed considerably in their choice of means and in how far they would go in pursuing their goals. But all had certain practices in common, revealed by the choices of exemplary problems in their writings, and the solutions they advocated. 4.3. Portmanteaux and zeros Lounsbury (1953: 380) organized the issues in the background of segmentation into four policy options, stated according to the map-


ping of phonemes to morphemes within a model of morphemes having phonemic strings as alternants. The principle of total accountability, as Hockett (1947: 332) called it, was generally accepted. It stipulates that all phonemic material in the data must be accounted for in relation to the morphological elements in the same data. Following his wording closely, the options are as follows: (a) every phoneme belongs to an allomorph of one and only one morpheme; (b) every phoneme belongs to an allomorph of at least one morpheme; (c) every phoneme belongs to an allomorph of not more than one morpheme; (d) every phoneme belongs to an allomorph of zero or one or more than one morpheme All four options allow for agglutinative sequential morphs; this is the only kind allowed by the first. The last option combines the possibilites of the other three. The second option (but not the first) allows for coincident, including, or overlapping morphs, that is, for the sharing of particular phonemes by two or more allomorphs, as in the often proposed analysis of French au /o/ as {a´} ⫹ {le} mentioned below. The third option (but not the first or second) allows for what were variously called empty morphs, links, or morphemically irrelevant material. Lounsbury (1953: 380) presents as a feature of the first policy the option of using zero: “Segmentation is carried as far as possible, and such morphemes (present in meaning) as have not been accounted for in the resulting segments are said to be represented by zero allomorphs”. Since allomorphs are strings of phonemes, one possible interpretation of this passage is that there is a token of a zero phoneme in the relevant position. This is an unlikely interpretation of most such passages, however, including this one, since phonemes in most descriptive work were defined as having phonetic features. It was this definite and constant phonetic substance, partially lacking in particular process formulations of affix replacement, deletion, or substitution, that was often cited as the advantage of item and arrangement morphology. One could and should deal instead in arrangements of observables, that is, of phonemes composing allomorphs. The semantics of zero in descriptive linguistics is nevertheless unclear, both in general and in most specific sources. Its use as anything but a pho-

183 neme is definitely unconnected with the policies distinguished by Lounsbury, in any event, since these have to do with mapping phonemes. At best, Lounsbury shows that it is not in conflict with them. Morphemes whose identifying and defining characteristic is the occurrence, in some sense, of an inflectional category, such as first person singular or present indicative, must however be mapped somehow onto the string of phonemes which manifest an utterance. We can see the uses made of the descriptive devices whose interrelations Lounsbury later clarified. Spanish /amo/ and French /im/, in standard distributionalist analyses, both manifest these grammatical features. But how? Answers differed in important ways. Bloomfield (1945: 10), not a distributionalist, treated the comparable French form /don/ as being present (not indicative!) or subjunctive (not present subjunctive). Its number-person ending, marked grammatically as S1, is morphologically zero, that is, nothing at all, not even /0/ or {0}. His analysis is parsimonious, built directly on the overt forms, and includes no abstract elements except those represented somewhere in the system by overt forms. His use of zero is apparently the classic use found in Sanskrit grammar, namely replacement by nothing (cf. Art. 5). The P2 form, /done/, formally parallel to the Spanish /am-o/, is segmented as /don-e/. For Hockett (1947: 338), however, the Spanish form was am-o and the /o/ was what he called a portmanteau morph, which belonged to two morphemes at once, {present indicative} and {first person singular}, in parallel to such other forms as /amas/, in which is segmentation was /am-a-s/, with the two suffixes {present indicative} and {second person singular}. Infinitive forms, represented in this set by /amar/, do not seem to have this structure, since the infinitive is neither a tense nor a mode in traditional grammar. Hockett treats the form as /am-a-r/, with the -/r/ as the infinitive morpheme and the -/a/ suffix defined as an empty morph. Bloomfield also introduced something apparently like this device, without comment or explanation, in his French description (Bloomfield 1945: 10): “Before these two endings, imperfect, subjunctive, and conditional have [-i-]: [vu donie´] vous donniez”. Hockett wrote, “this treatment, combined with the empty-morph interpretation of conjugation vowels, reduces all finite Spanish verb forms to a uniform structure: stem ⫹ tense-mode morpheme ⫹ person-

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number morpheme” (Hockett 1947: 338). Although Nida was sympathetic to the leveling of distribution thus achieved, he was concerned about other aspects of the solution: “In handling inflexional endings like the -o in Spanish amo ‘I love’, Hockett [1947: 338] says that this is a morph which belongs to two morphemes: a tense-mode morpheme and a person-number morpheme. In this instance, however, he does not provide any overt form for the separate morphemes. Only the morph has overt form; the morphemes are merely structural parallelisms as indicated by such related paradigmatic forms as ama´bamos ‘we loved’ and amareís ‘you (pl.) will love’, in which the tense-mode morpheme precedes the person-number morpheme. In the instance of French au ‘to the’ occurring in place of the analogically demonstrable but non-occurring a` le, there is more basis for speaking of a single morph belonging to two morphemes, since these morphemes may be identified as occurring elsewhere in the language. But in this case of Spanish -o, Hockett’s morphemes are only statements of sequence evidenced at other points in the paradigmatic series; there are no overt forms to which this particular morph may be referred.” (Nida 1948: 417f.)

The outcome of a number of such distributional levelings was of course a more regular pattern of distribution, in both senses of regularity: more widespread and more homogeneous distributions of forms. Parallelism in the distribution of morphemes in the same form class was an important desideratum for all of the structuralists. It was a key component of the notion of pattern, of structure itself. For Harris in particular, however, the regularization of distributions was an explicit goal with a very high theoretical priority. In Harris’ view, grammar in general could profitably be regarded as a set of restrictions on distribution, of prohibitions of co-occurrence, a mirror image of the more common view of grammar as a set of statements of allowable combinations. To reduce the number and scope of these distributional prohibitions (by homogenizing and broadening the distribution of a consequently smaller number of distinct elements) was to simplify grammar (Wells 1963: 43). Harris’ presentation emphasized analytical (not discovery) procedures, unlike Bloomfield’s concise presentation of criteria for good solutions illustrated with some examples, but not accompanied by much procedural guidance. Far-reaching changes in Bloomfield’s model were foreshadowed by the simplification of the types of grammatical forms allowed to just one: order, whether se-

quential, simultaneous, or overlapping. With the disappearance of Bloomfield’s taxemes of phonetic modification, the morpheme alternant, as a string of phonemes, moved out of grammar and back into the lexicon. Since portmanteau and zero solutions of these pattern-related problems are equivalent, some explanation is needed for the overwhelming preference for zero solutions displayed in the period. Wells (1963: 41) was undoubtedly right to associate this preference with the preference for concatenative or sequential order (instead of simultaneous, subtractive, and other possibilities still offered in Harris 1942). 4.4. Element distributions as criteria Concern with explicit demonstrations that grouping and distributional standards had been met in a particular descriptive work, or that the standards advocated in a theoretical work would result in acceptable descriptions, was not a prominent feature of Bloomfield’s writings. His descriptive works were extremely concise, made up mostly of listings of lexical and grammatical elements arranged in form classes. Forms, including grammatical forms, were kept in the foreground throughout. Bloomfield’s account of French morphology (Bloomfield 1945), though only meant as a sketch offered in somewhat exasperated response to Trager (1944), is typical of this style: it is only 6 pages in length, compared with 12 for Trager’s first paper and the 29 pages of Trager (1955) on the same topic. It was rather in the morphological writings of younger linguists using the distributionalist version of the “item and arrangement” style of morphological description that segmentation, grouping, and distributional concerns came to the fore. Publications reflecting this second major phase of development began to appear in the 1940’s. Zellig Harris (1942) began the relaxation of the substantive constraints of Bloomfield’s morphology in his paper on morpheme alternants. He introduced the criterion of complementary distribution among alternants with the same meaning as a basis for establishing morpheme units whose morpheme alternants were in complementary distribution. In this way he hoped to solve the problem of synonymy, since synonyms occur in the same environments. Harris understood well the system he was proposing to alter. Aggressive, repeated use of the criterion of complementary distribution could and eventually did radi-


cally extend the notion of the morpheme. But Harris stipulated a range restriction on the newly defined alternating morpheme: alternants could only be grouped if the resulting unit had a combined distribution equal to that of some morpheme with a single shape. He also provided for an expanded notion of “phoneme sequence” (now characterizing his morpheme alternant) to include not only the normal, additive sequences of phonemes but also zero sequence (“the addition of no phoneme”), negative sequence (“the dropping of a phoneme”), and phonemic component sequence (“the addition of a physiological feature of phonemes”). In this way, the taxemes Bloomfield used were translated into a single arrangement type stipulated to be sequential order. Harris’ relatively modest revision, really little more than an explication of Bloomfield’s position, was offered deferentially: “A morpheme unit is thus a group of one or more alternants which have the same meaning and complementary distribution. To make these units more similar to our present morphemes, and more serviceable for grammatical structure, we now add a further condition: In units consisting of more than one alternant, the total distribution of all the alternants (i.e. the combined range of environments in which each of them occurs) must equal the range of environments in which some unit with but a single alternant occurs.” (Harris 1942: 171)

Harris’s position should be seen as a translation of Bloomfield’s analytical standards into the idiom of distributionalism. The importance of the range restriction, based as it is on the occurrence of an overt form with a single alternant, cannot be overemphasized. It limits analytical initiatives in just the way Nida (1948) suggested in his critique of Hockett (1947) as quoted above. Hockett (1947) relaxed the range restriction in two ways: first, he allowed for grouping alternants whose resulting range was not equal to some unique alternant, that is, it allowed establishing morphemes with groups of alternants whose joint distribution was matched either by a morpheme with a single alternant or by another one with a group of alternants. Nida (1948) pointed out the possibility this opened up of bootstrapping whole classes of complex morphemes into existence using any one as the required model for all of the others. Second, Hockett also proposed replacing complementation with a criterion of noncontrastive distribution, that is, any combination of complementary distribution and free variation, thus allowing for the oc-

185 currence of phonologically distinct alternants in the same environments, provided they were free variants, and thus, semantically identical. This step brought with it the difficult problem of distinguishing between homonymous and synonymous forms in those portions of the distribution of a morpheme where more than one phonemically distinct alternant was to be found. For instance, in Bloch’s distributionalist treatment of English verb inflection (1947), he treated -/n/ and -/d/ suffixes as alternants of the same {participle} morpheme (his suffix 3), and consequently, the same in meaning. Suffix 3 had three groups of allomorphs: the first consisted of /ed/ after apical stop or /d/ after voiced sounds other than apical stops, or /t/ after voiceless sounds; the second was made up of /n/ after a syllabic and /en/ after a nonsyllabic, and the third was /0/, that is, zero. Each of the three necessary lists would include lift, live, and pass; show and fall; and put, respectively. Note that although there is phonological complementation among the environments within the first two groups, that among the three groups, there is no phonological pattern of conditioning. Instead, a list of verb bases must be established to account for the distribution of each group of alternants. Nevertheless, these two suffix alternants, though different in form and occurring in forms different in connotations of elegance (for Bloch and Nida a kind of meaning difference), are nevertheless assigned to the same morpheme. The reasons for this are distributional: in the participle occurrences of most verbs, there is either just one suffix form occupying the total range, or two suffix forms in free variation, such as burned and burnt, because they are not different in meaning. Bloch established one participle suffix morpheme rather than two with a difference of meaning between them. Since he did consider that shown and showed, because they occurred in the same environments with different shapes, could not be synonyms, the difference of meaning had to be located in the verb base, thus leading to the establishment of show1 and show2. Nida (1948) did object to this aspect of Bloch’s analysis, however, noting that it attributed a difference of meaning to formally identical items and ignored an overt difference of form between two items distributed in the same pattern as the meaning difference (the two suffix elements). It is worth noting that Nida’s argument convinced Bloch, who taught the whole

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discussion in his classes thereafter, quoting the relevant passages. As Hockett later realized, in a “morphology” based on semantic identity and noncontrastive distribution, morphemes in practice as well as in theory are not composed of but only partly attested by phonological representations. Consider these two sentences from Hockett (1961: 51f.), which he offered as an extreme, perhaps even frivolous example of what was allowed in such a system: (2) (a) A troop of boy scouts found the body. (b) The body was found by a troop of boy scouts. He noted that they might be related as follows, with {passive} as the second immediate constituent in the second sentence: (3) {A} {troop} {of} {boy} {scout}{s} {find}{d} {the} {body} {A} {troop} {of} {boy} {scout}{s} {find}{d} {the} {body} {passive} That is, the {passive} morpheme could just as well be given, as its realization, the rearrangement of grammatical forms then known as the passive transformation. This represents, as it was meant to, the apogee of morphophonemic complexity. The shift from primarily formal criteria for grouping to semantic criteria alone brought about greater diversity among the phonological shapes of the alternants grouped within a single morphological unit. What had begun as a single, constant basic phonological shape in every occurrence of a morpheme, either manifested unchanged or altered in specific, productive ways, became instead an increasingly diverse collection of different phonological shapes requiring more and more elaborate (and less and less elegant) techniques to deal with the increasingly complex and eventually quite arbitrary phonological relationships among the alternants of these newly redefined morphemes.

5.

Morphophonemic alternation

Morphophonemics is the account of alternation or variation in the phonological shapes of morphological elements. In the descriptive works of Boas and his students, alternations were often stated much as if they were sound changes in the historical development of the language being described. Indeed, some of them undoubtedly were. The more regular

patterns of alternation were grouped together; sometimes these were called euphonic laws, following a still older practice. In the favored process-based model of description of the time, there was no clear and consistent separation between phonetic and phonemic representations of pronunciation differences, and no hesitation in using a metaphor of change or substitution in building derived forms from combinations of basic forms and processes. The Boas-Sapir tradition distinguished between a patent and non-patent layer of phonology (Swadesh & Voegelin 1939), or as we would now say, an underlying and a surface level. This distinction was made in order to overcome descriptive difficulties in segmentation by creating what Lounsbury (1953) was to call a “fictitious agglutinating analog” of the language being described, and to segment that instead of the phomemic strings themselves. The analog of the actual language was related to it by rules of interpretation of the pseudo-phonemic symbols making up its forms. This method was especially convenient for dealing with indeterminacies of segmentation arising from fusion and for overlaying frequent automatic alternations with symbols yielding consistent representations of the sets of morpheme alternants. Bloomfield’s later textbook treatment of 1933, which called for distributing information about alternants through the grammar as the content of meaningless taxemes which combined to form meaningful tagmemes was apparently not applied in any actual descriptions. Instead, Bloomfield himself followed his older descriptive practice, which particularly resembled the classical Paninian tradition in its handling of morphophonemic alternation (cf. Bloomfield 1945), and the distributionalists developed a system modeled on phonemics in which the morphological elements were sets of one or more allomorphs or morpheme alternants, phoneme sequences which in turn combined sequentially to form constructions. Morphophonemics in this system was described wholly in terms of phonemes and morphological boundaries. Wells (1949), Harris (1951), Lounsbury (1953), and Hockett (1954; 1961) are the most general statements of the stock of methods recognized and used in structuralist morphophonemics. Harris (1942; 1951) provided for the gathering and classification of alternations, reduced to their minimal terms, in a section comparable in scope and function to the col-


lections of rules and processes in the older tradition. Thus, although one might list {knife} in the lexicon with /nayf/ and /nayv/ as its alternants, and {leaf} with its alternants /liyf/ and /liyv/, one might instead list only /nayf/ and /liyf/, and assign each to the /f/ ⬃ /v/ alternation class, or more generally, as an alternation of final voiceless and voiced consonants. Although it has often seemed to critics that the allomorph method of morphophonemics called for the repetitious listing of every alternant of every morpheme, thus repeating the same regular alternations over and over in the lexicon, this impression may stem from the demands of solving classroom workbook problems where there was no need or opportunity to build a realistic lexicon with a compact representation of the automatic alternations as envisaged by Harris and as practiced by others. Lounsbury’s theoretical statement introduced his descriptive treatment of the polysynthetic and fusional morphology of Oneida, a severe test of the conservative morphological descriptive model he chose. It is understandably focused on the question of segmentation, especially vexing in fusional languages. Wells (1949), on the other hand, is a lucid and well-illustrated treatment of automatic alternation, beginning with the early definition of it as conditioned by the phonemic environments of the alternating forms, and presenting a typology and explication of the phenomena. Because it too is cast in exclusively phonemic terms, it is a natural complement of Lounsbury’s work. Wells (1949) established a number of useful definitions and distinctions. First, he distinguished between phoneme sequences and partitioned phoneme sequences the latter including a symbol marking each morphological boundary. Thus, deyz and dey-z are the same phoneme sequence but are different partitioned phoneme sequence. Using this distinction, Wells then defined two types of automatic alternation, wide and narrow. His exposition is cast in terms of basic and derived or occurring sequences of phonemes. In wide automatic alternation, the basic partitioned phoneme sequence does not occur, although the corresponding phoneme sequence may; in narrow automatic alternation, neither the basic partitioned phoneme sequence nor the corresponding phoneme sequence occurs. In a typically elegant insight related to his exposition, Wells noted that the automatic morpheme alternants of a morpheme form a par-

187 adigm of their own, within the larger paradigmatic sets of forms the morpheme occurs in, since each member of the set of alternants has a portion in common with the others, which he called the (pars) communis, and each has a portion unique to itself, consisting of the part that manifests the automatic alternation or alternations. This is the (pars) propria of the alternant. In cases where the communis is absent, the alternation is suppletive. The two types of automatic alternation, as Wells was the first to show, are not equivalent in the predictions they imply about phonotactics, and these differences are crucial in the case of reciprocal or mutual conditioning of morphemes, as in the example of pat ⫹ tus ⫽ passus above. Under wide alternation, the existence of a form mitt- is not an exception, since there is no t ⫹ t partitioned phoneme sequence, but under the narrow condition, it is a falsifying exception. Finally, Wells distinguished between static and dynamic formulations of the alternations. In static automatic alternation, the alternation is stated in terms of the derived or surface alternants; in the dynamic formulation, the statement is in terms of the underlying representations. Thus, his Latin participial example is underlying pat ⫹ tus, derived pas ⫹ sus. In static terms, the alternation is stated as ‘s after s’ and ‘s before s’, or ‘s adjacent to s’. The dynamic statement is t ⫹ t ⫽ s ⫹ s. Although the dynamic formulation is appealing, especially nowadays, it is not any more powerful than the static one. The discussion in Wells (1949) on this choice overlaps in a confusing way with Hockett’s much better known paper of 1954 in which he compares the item and arrangement (IA) and item and process (IP) models of description, and mentions in passing the older word and paradigm (WP) model, which was in turn taken up by Matthews and powerfully advocated in the very sophisticated form given it in his textbooks (1972; 1974). Although Hockett’s paper has been cited as a defense of the item and arrangement model, he has insisted that he meant to show them to be equivalent in power and scope. Because processes are perceived as dynamic, it is tempting to associate the dynamic formulation of automatic alternations with an item and process style of description, and indeed, the old item and process style works did often resort to dynamic statements couched in terms of basic alternants. This is not a necessary association, however. Bloomfield’s

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treatments of automatic alternation are dynamic in Wells’s terms, but are styled in arrangement form (by way of taxemes, which form constructions, not rule chains). And as Wells pointed out in the 1949 paper, the formulation of automatic alternations is to be distinguished from the notations devised to represent them. There is, however, a strong tendency to assume that representations using morphophonemes necessarily represent dynamic statements, presumably because of their association with the older IP grammars in which they were mainly used. Once again, there is no necessary association of this nature. And again, it is Hockett (1961) who clarifies the relationship. His memorable aphorism makes the two types of description easy to understand and distinguish: an allomorph is a morpheme-sized string of phonemes; a morphophoneme is a phonemesized piece of a morpheme. Thus, in describing the sibilant plural and an irregular noun stem, a morphophonemic representation of this suffix as morphophonemically 兩Z兩 merely gives a name to an alternation pattern, in the same way that 兩nayF兩 does. In combination, the 兩F兩 and 兩Z兩 select each other’s appropriate alternants, but the selection is not necessarily viewed as a sequential process instead of a defined arrangement. Hockett decomposed the relation between morphemes and phonemes into two constituents, composition and representation. Phonemes compose allomorphs; allomorphs represent morphemes. Alternatively, morphophonemes compose morphemes; phonemes represent morphophonemes. The composition relation holds between elements on the same linguistic level (phonology or morphology); the representation relation holds between elements on different levels.

6.

Generative morphology

In the midst of this evolutionary branching of item and arrangement morphology, the advent of generative transformational syntax and phonology brought about a return to the architecture of Bloomfield’s morphology (cf. Matthews 1992: 164⫺169). In tracking some of the descriptive issues through this more recent period, I rely on the excellent treatment in Spencer (1991) for the organization of the issues; my role is merely to identify some of the reappearances of problems and their solutions that can be traced from an earlier time.

The lexicon in the early Chomskyan model was the repository of basic or underlying forms; phonological rules derived alternants appropriate to the morphological environments created by syntactic juxtapositions. These rules were ordered, though extrinsically, in a partially ordered relation, rather than descriptively, in a looser way as they were in Bloomfield’s system. For some years, lexical morphology received little fresh attention from theorists, while generative phonology confronted the tasks formerly divided between phonemics and morphophonemics. By the time of the Aspects model (Chomsky 1965), the role of the inflectional categories in descriptive and traditional grammar had been assumed by syntactic features whose pronunciation was generated by the phonological component, and grammatical constraints handled by the higher order constructions of descriptive syntax were taken over by subcategorization. Despite the drastic changes in implementation, much of the old category system was implemented once more with little change from the days of traditional and descriptive linguistics. Consequently, many of the theoretical and descriptive problems confronted then have had to be confronted again. Within the generative semantics movement, which substituted an underlying semantics for the syntactic deep structure of the evolving Standard Theory, the use of lexical decomposition echoed the analytical strategy of componential semantics in such proposals as deriving surface kill from a structure like cause ⫹ become ⫹ neg ⫹ live. In response, Chomsky (1970) introduced an argument for theoretical restrictions on transformational applications which in effect revived much of traditional derivational morphology by placing it outside syntax in the form of lexical redundancy rules. Jackendoff (1972) introduced the lexicalist hypothesis, whereby transformations operate only on syntactic structures, not on structures made up of parts of words. A stronger version excluded inflectional material from transformational analysis also. Further developments led in several directions, one of them toward the development of lexical functional grammar. Much of the argumentation brought to bear in these debates involved nominalizations, one of the early targets of transformational analysis (Lees 1960). The passive, another early focus in transformational theory, was also put forward for restatement in lexi-

189


cal rather than transformational terms, in a serious but doubtless unwitting sequel to Hockett’s jeu d’esprit mentioned above. In the wake of a short programmatic paper by Halle (1973), a number of fundamental morphological issues were taken up for discussion. In the developments that followed, one can see the texture of morphological data reasserting itself, and the gradual reappearance of old distinctions; many of the morphological descriptive devices worked out by past generations of linguists were rediscovered, reinvented, or simply reused. The levels idea, whose full exploitation Wells (1963) had characterized as a lost opportunity in descriptive linguistics, reappeared in the new context as the single extrinsic cyclical ordering of phonological rules of the Standard Theory was broken up into components, called levels and then strata, according to their effects on different groups of affixes and stems: inflections, compounds, and inner and outer derivational affixes (Allen 1978; Siegel 1979; Selkirk 1982). An important branching begins with Aronoff (1976), whose morphology is word based rather than stem based. Moreover, in its rejection of inflectional morphology from the lexical base, it further resembles Bloomfield’s approach, which treated inflection as properly a part of sentence structure. Aronoff revives the discussion of cranberry forms, contending that the cran element is meaningless. Other challenges to portions of the Standard Theory model were based on morphological and morphophonemic considerations. The extreme depth and abstractness of phonological derivations built into the standard theory led to one line of development beginning in this period known as Natural Generative Phonology (Hooper 1976), which contends among other things that all allomorphs of a morpheme must be surface forms. A different line of argument taken by Kiparsky (1968) led him to reject absolute neutralization, so that derivations of allomorphs from an underlying representation will not be opaque but rather can be recovered from surface forms. Like Goldsmith’s autosegmental approach to phonology (Goldsmith 1979), which acknowledges its conceptual similarity to Harris’s simultaneous components approach (Harris 1944), which deploys structural elements in simultaneous tiers rather than in a single layer, McCarthy (1982) applies a multitiered structural model to morphology.

Again, Harris had developed conceptually comparable techniques for dealing with discontinuous and interdigitating morphological elements (Harris 1951: 165; see Matthews 1992: 182) and also some interesting and still unexploited possibilities of what he called long components (Harris 1951: 295⫺324). Following a long established rhetorical practice, the version of structural morphology set up as the point of departure for new solutions by generative linguists appears to be a remarkably impoverished version of item and arrangement morphology that is helpless when confronted with any structures other than sequential agglutinative morphs (Spencer 1991: 178; Matthews 1992: 178). It is especially unfortunate that Harris’s compendium of distributionalist methods (Harris 1951) was in effect made taboo by Chomsky’s reaction against it and its author, since Harris developed and explained a number of mutually compatible and ingenious ways of handling complex morphological data. Spencer’s (1991) textbook lists among the open issues at that time virtually the full range of morphological phenomena attacked by descriptive linguistics, from compounding to inflection, the status of the word, zero elements, the architecture of a morphological component, and its interactions with phonology and syntax. It would be not only scholarly but useful for active researchers to look with more understanding and respect at the theories, not just the data, developed over two generations by the extraordinary figures who founded their discipline.

7.

References

Allen, Margaret (1978), Morphological Investigations. PhD. dissertation, University of Connecticut Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Bendix, Edward (1966), Componential Analysis of General Vocabulary: The Semantic Structure of a Set of Verbs in English, Hindi, and Japanese. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Bloch, Bernard (1941), “Phonemic Overlapping” American Speech 16, 278⫺84 [reprinted in Joos 1957, ed.] Bloch, Bernard (1947), “English Verb Inflection”. Language 23, 399⫺418 [reprinted in: Joos 1957, ed.] Bloomfield, Leonard (1914), Introduction to the Study of Language. New York: Holt Bloomfield, Leonard (1917), Tagalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis. Chicago: University of Illi-

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nois (University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 3, 2⫺4) Bloomfield, Leonard (1926), “A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language”. Language 2, 153⫺64 [reprinted in Joos 1957, ed.] Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Bloomfield, Leonard (1939), “Menomini Morphophonemics”. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8, 105⫺115 Bloomfield, Leonard (1943), “Franz Boas”. Language 19, 198 Bloomfield, Leonard (1945), “On Describing Inflection”. Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht 37, 4⫺5 Boas, Franz (1889), “On Alternating Sounds”. American Anthropologist 2, 47⫺53 Boas, Franz (1911), “Introduction”. Handbook of American Indian Languages. Washington/DC: Bureau of American Ethnology (Bulletin 40, Part 1), 1⫺83 Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton Chomsky, Noam (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Chomsky, Noam (1970), “Remarks on Nominalization”. In: Jacobs, Roderick & Rosenbaum, Peter (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar. Waltham/MA: Blaisdell, 184⫺221 Conklin, Harold (1955), “Hanunoo Color Categories”. South Western Journal of Anthropology 11, 339⫺344 Ferguson, Charles (1962), Review of Morris Halle, The Sound Pattern of Russian. Language 38, 284⫺294 Goldsmith, John (1979), Autosegmental Phonology. New York: Garland Goodenough, Ward (1956), “Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning”. Language 32, 195⫺216 Halle, Morris (1973), “Prolegomena to a Theory of Word Formation”. Linguistic Inquiry 4, 3⫺16 Harris, Zellig (1942), “Morpheme Alternants in Linguistic Analysis”. Language 18, 169⫺180 [reprinted in Joos 1957, ed.] Harris, Zellig (1944), “Simultaneous Components in Phonology”. Language 20, 181⫺205 [reprinted in Joos 1957, ed.] Harris, Zellig (1946), “From Morpheme to Utterance”. Language 22, 161⫺183 Harris, Zellig (1948), “Componential Analysis of a Hebrew Paradigm”. Language 24, 87⫺91 Harris, Zellig (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hockett, Charles (1942), “A System of Descriptive Phonology”. Language 18, 3⫺21 [reprinted in Joos 1957, ed.]

Hockett, Charles (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [reprinted in Joos 1957, ed.] Hockett, Charles (1954), “Two models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺233 [reprinted in Joos 1957, ed.] Hockett, Charles (1961), “Linguistic Elements and their Relations”. Language 37, 29⫺53 Hockett, Charles (1970, ed.) A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Bloomington, London: Indiana University Press Hooper, Joan B. (1976), Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press Hymes, Dell, & Fought, John (1981), American Structuralism. The Hague: Mouton (Janua Linguarum, Series Maior 102) Jackendoff, Ray (1972), Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics. Washington/DC: American Council of Learned Societies Kiparsky, Paul (1968), How Abstract is Phonology? Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club Lees, Robert (1960), The Grammar of English Nominalizations. The Hague: Mouton Longacre, Robert (1960), “String Constituent Analysis”. Language 36, 63⫺88 Longacre, Robert (1964), Grammar Discovery Procedures. The Hague: Mouton Longacre, Robert (1965), “Some Fundamental Insights of Tagmemics”. Language 41, 65⫺76 Lounsbury, Floyd (1953), “The Method of Descriptive Morphology”. Oneida Verb Morphology. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University [reprinted in: Joos 1957, ed., 11⫺24] Lounsbury, Floyd (1956), “A Semantic Analysis of Pawnee Kinship Usage”. Language 32, 158⫺164 Lounsbury, Floyd (1964a) “A Formal Account of the Crow- and Omaha-type Kinship Terminologies”. In: Goodenough, Ward (ed.), Explorations in Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 351⫺393 Lounsbury, Floyd (1964b), “The Structural Analysis of Kinship Semantics”. In: Lunt, Horace G. (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguistics, Cambridge/MA, 1962. The Hague: Mouton, 1073⫺1090 McCarthy, John (1982), Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology. New York: Garland Matthews, Peter (1972), Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Matthews, Peter (1974), Morphology: An Introduction to the Theory of Word-structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

21. Tagmemics Matthews, Peter (1992), “Bloomfield’s Morphology and its Successors”. Transactions of the Philological Society 90, 121⫺186 Matthews, Peter (1993), Grammatical Theory in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nida, Eugene (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441 [reprinted in: Joos 1957, ed.] Pedersen, Holger (1931), The Discovery of Language: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Press [21962] Pike, Kenneth (1958), “On Tagmemes Nee Gramemes”. International Journal of American Linguistics 24, 273⫺278 Pike, Kenneth (1967), Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. The Hague: Mouton [first issued Santa Ana/CA in 3 parts: 1954, 1955, 1960] Rogers, David (1987), “The Influence of Panini on Leonard Bloomfield”. In: Hall, Robert (ed.), Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on His Life and Work. Amsterdam: Benjamins 89⫺138 Sapir, Edward (1921), Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace Sapir, Edward (1925), “Sound Patterns in Language”. Language 1, 37⫺51 [reprinted in: Joos 1957, ed.] Selkirk, Elizabeth (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Siegel, Dorothy (1979), Topics in English Morphology. New York: Garland Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory: An Introduction to Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell

191 Stocking, George (1968), Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. New York: Free Press Stocking, George (1974), “The Boas Plan for the Study of American Indian Languages”. In: Dell Hymes (ed.), Studies in the History of Linguistics. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Press, 454⫺ 484 Swadesh, Morris (1934), “The Phomemic Principle”. Language 10, 117⫺125 Swadesh, Morris & Voegelin, Carl (1939), “A Problem in Phonological Alternation”. Language 15, 1⫺10 Trager, George (1944), “The Verb Morphology of Spoken French”. Language 20, 131⫺141 Trager, George (1955), “French Morphology: Verb Inflection”. Language 31, 511⫺529 Twaddell, W. Freeman (1935), On Defining the Phoneme. Baltimore: Waverley (Language monographs 16) Wallace, Anthony & Atkins, John (1960), “The Meaning of Kinship Terms”, American Anthropologist 62, 458⫺464 Weinreich, Uriel (1966), “On the Semantic Structure of Language”. In: Greenberg, Joseph (ed.), Universals of Language. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 114⫺171 Wells, Rulon (1949), “Automatic Alternation”. Language 25, 99⫺116 Wells, Rulon (1963), “Some Neglected Opportunities in Descriptive Linguistics”. Anthropological Linguistics 5, 38⫺49

John Fought, Phillips Ranch/CA (U.S.A.)

21. Tagmemics 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Introduction Definition History The morphophoneme Morphology-syntax division Morpheme formatives Bibliographical comments References

1.

Introduction

Although the traditional “post-Bloomfieldian” morpheme has in general, been adopted into its descriptions, tagmemics has made some significant changes in its definition and functions. When the theory was in

its early formative years, the place of the morpheme within its descriptive apparatus was unsteady (varying from being a unit on the lowest level of the lexical hierarchy to one on the lowest level of the grammatical hierarchy). Since then, however, it has been firmly escounced as a unit (indeed the only unit) of the lowest level of the grammatical hierarchy. The author of the theory early stated that units should be described as to their contrastive-identificational features, range of variation, and distribution in class, sequence and matrix (or field) (see [K.] Pike 21967). Most tagmemicists have followed this practice. Thus, in typical tagmemic descriptions,

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morphemes always have both form and function as obligatory components. Tagmemic theory as a whole was intended primarily to be of aid to the members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in their task of reducing many of the unwritten indigenous languages of the world to writing. Thus, the theory is especially useful for analysts wishing to analyze a language other than their own native one. The originator of the theory (Kenneth L. Pike) during its formative years, oscillated from a teaching and research position at the University of Michigan and numerous field assignments with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, thus bringing to the theory a unique double-input of theoretical study and practical fieldwork.

2.

Definition

A widely-accepted working definition of the tagmemic morpheme is “the lowest grammatical filler unit, with no grammatical parts within it” ( [Kenneth L.] Pike & [Evelyn G.] Pike 21982: 450). Since all filler units fill slots (i.e., have functions), this definition of the morpheme includes both form and function, in accord with the guidelines earlier proposed by Pike. It is this requirement that morphemes obligatorily carry a functional component that adds some clarity and order to morpheme definition. By definition, also, all units include various types of distributional restrictions ⫺ in addition to distribution in sequence (i.e., filling particular slots) ⫺ they are members of classes, and are also in fieldtype relationships with other similar units (for details of the latter components, see Pike & Pike 21982). Strings of phonemes which do not fill grammatical slots are not considered to be morphemes, but components (at times formatives; see 6) of morphemes. In addition, all texts will divide into morphemes, with nothing left over. (This restriction does not hold for larger units of grammar, however.)

3.

History

Because tagmemics has been so widely used in the analyses of many languages of the world (see, for example, [K.] Pike 1966; Brend 1970; 1972) the usefulness of this type of morpheme description has had wide testing and, indeed, it has been found to be extremely effective. Significant changes in the

description of morphology have not occurred within tagmemics for some time (though some additions have been made; see especially 6). Members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in their analyses of literally hundreds of unwritten indigenous languages have produced the majority of tagmemic descriptions. The major theoretical contributor to tagmemics, apart from Pike himself, has been Robert E. Longacre. For further details on the history of tagmemic theory see Waterhouse (1974).

4.

The morphophoneme

Because the morpheme is an indivisible unit of the grammatical hierarchy, and all units in the phonological hierarchy (not discussed here) must be phonologically defined (with grammatical concomitant features where appropriate), tagmemics does not posit any unit comparable to the traditional morphophoneme. (However, many morphological variants ⫺ i.e., allomorphs ⫺ will, of course, be described as being phonologically conditioned.) [K.] Pike early insisted that units in the three hierarchies (phonological, grammatical and lexical ⫺ later referential) are often conditioned by or determined by a hierarchy other than their own, and that one has not completed a tagmemic description until all relationships between the hierarchies have been stated. Thus, phonological variants of morphemes (i.e., phonologically-alternating allomorphs) are considered to be the result of an interlocking of the phonological and grammatical hierarchies. That is, allomorphs as a whole would be described as having phonological variants (even though such variation may take place only at a boundary or be limited to only one or two phonemes within the allomorph). In addition, units in the phonological hierarchy which are conditioned by position in grammatical units would be similarly described. That is, for example, two phonemes which occur predictably in particular grammatical environments would still be described as phonemes, and the grammatical predictability would be included in their description.

5.

Morphology⫺syntax division

In tagmemic descriptions, it has been the prevailing practice to consider function as having priority to form whenever there is not a

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21. Tagmemics

one-to-one correspondence between form and function. This makes it possible to analyze as one string all units which function (i.e., which are constituents) within one grammatical span, whether or not all are bound. This is especially useful where some constituents are bound and others are free. Both bound and free morphemes, for example, may be fillers of clause-level slots. For instance, subject pronouns may be bound to verbs, but morphemes functioning as objects may be free words, e.g. as in the Spanish clause Veo a Juan ‘I see Juan’ where the -o of veo is, in part, a marker of first-personsingular. Another similar example is the Mixteco clause (data from Pike & Pike 21982: 115) cisa’i-na ’bilu kwihin ‘will:hide-I white cat’ where the -na indicates first person singular, and functions as the subject of the sentence. A tagmemic analysis of this clause would be ⫹ Predicate: verb phrase ⫹ Subject: - pronoun ⫹ Object: noun phrase (i.e., a Predicate, filled by a verb phrase, followed by a subject filled by a bound pronoun, followed by an Object, filled by a noun phrase). Also, many languages have post-positions which function as constituents of the unit preceding them. Often such a unit is a noun phrase ⫺ not just a noun ⫺ to which a postposition is bound (that is, e.g., an adjective, plus a noun suffixed by a postposition). In this case, one would have an Axis, filled by a noun phrase, followed by a Relator filled by a bound postposition. Here again, function rather than form is primary in the description. These are but two of the many common language situations in which form and function do not coincide where tagmemics allows the analysis to include in one construction all units which are constituents of one span.

6.

Morpheme formatives

One further contribution by Kenneth Pike to morphemic discussion is his postulation of ‘morpheme formatives’ ⫺ e.g. the slof slip, slurp, slop. As previously mentioned, Pike decided (as Eugene Nida had previously) that such units were not morphemes. However, Pike went further by showing that such submorphemic components do indeed show pattern and system, ⫺ i.e., the sl- would be a morpheme formative ⫺ and he provided useful insights into their analysis and presentation, primarily via labelled matrices.

This analysis has also proved insightful in the description of so-called “portmanteau morphemes”. An interesting example of Pike’s analysis of this type of data is seen in the following display ⫺ in this case used for the analysis of complicated morphemes (from Pike & Pike 21982: 210): undergoer actor 2 2p 2,1 1p 1 3 3p 4

2

k k k k k

2p 2,1 1p 1

k k k k k

k k k

k k

k k

n n n

n n n

3

3p 4

k k k n n

k k k n n

k k k n n w w

w w

Fig. 21.1: Matrix analysis from Pike & Pike 21982

This Potawatomi display shows clearly the functions of the morphemes: [k] ‘second person is involved’, [n] ‘first person but no second person is involved; and [w] ‘only other ⫺ third and fourth ⫺ persons are involved’. All previous analyses of these data had indicated that no patterning was discernable and that only a listing of the meanings of each of these forms was possible. For other discussion of this type of matrix analysis see Pike & Pike (21982: 167⫺170, 209⫺211).

7.

Bibliographical comments

The most concise information on a tagmemic view of morphology is found in Pike & Pike (21982: Chapters 5, 8 and 9). That volume also gives an overall view of tagmemic grammar. (For a different view of grammar, utilizing, however, a good many tagmemic concepts, see Longacre 1964; 1983). Some publications utilizing Pike’s morpheme formative approach are Pike & Erickson (1964) (Potawatomi), Pike (1963) (Fore). A large number of studies on the grammars of indigenous languages have appeared. Many of the publications on those grammars include morphological analyses. Separate listings and bibliographical articles may be found in Pike (1966), Brend (1970; 1972), Brend & Pike (1976, eds.), Wares (1979), and Harris & Daly (1985). (Other listings of

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studies of languages in particular countries can be obtained from branches of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in those countries ⫺ addresses of which can be obtained from the Publications Office, S. I. L., 7500 West Camp Wisdom Road, Dallas/TX, 75236, U.S.A.). For tagmemic theory in general, see [K.] Pike (1967; 1982), Pike & Pike (1974; 2 1982; 1983), Brend & Pike (1976, eds.), a selection of Pike’s writings edited by Brend (Brend 1972, ed.), and Pike’s bibliography, Brend (1987).

8.

References

Brend, Ruth (1970), “Tagmemic Theory: An Annotated Bibliography”. Journal of English Linguistics 4, 7⫺45 Brend, Ruth (1972), “Tagmemic Theory: An Annotated Bibliography, Appendix 1”. Journal of English Linguistics 6, 1⫺16 Brend, Ruth (1972, ed.), Kenneth L. Pike: Selected Writings. The Hague, Paris: Mouton Brend, Ruth (1974, ed.), Advances in Tagmemics. Amsterdam, London: North-Holland; New York: Elsevier (North-Holland Linguistic Series 9) Brend, Ruth M. (1987), Kenneth Lee Pike: Bibliography. Bloomington/IN: Eurolingua Brend, Ruth M. & Pike, Kenneth L. (1976, eds.), Tagmemics, Vol. 1⫺2. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Trends in Linguistics 2) [Vol. I: Aspects of the Field; Vol. II: Theoretical Discussion] Harris, Maria De Boe & Daly, Margarita H. (1995), Bibliografıá del Instituto Lingüı´stico de Verano en Me´xico, 1935⫺1984. Mexico/D. F.: Instituto Lingüı´stico de Verano

Longacre, Robert E. (1964), Grammar Discovery Procedures: A Field Manual. The Hague: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Minor 33) Longacre, Robert E. (1983), The Grammar of Discourse. New York, London: Plenum Press Pike, Kenneth L. (1963), “Theoretical Implications of Matrix Permutation in Fore (New Guinea)”. Anthropological Linguistics 5.8, 1⫺23 Pike, Kenneth L. (1966), “A Guide to Publications Related to Tagmemic Theory”. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. III: Theoretical Foundations. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 365⫺394 Pike, Kenneth L. (1967), Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 24) [preliminary ed. in 3 parts 1954, 1955, 1960 Glendale/CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics] Pike, Kenneth L. & Erickson, Barbara (1964), “Conflated Field Structures in Potawatomi and in Arabic”. International Journal of American Linguistics 30, 201⫺212 Pike, Kenneth L. & Pike, Evelyn G. (1974), “Rules as Components of Tagmemes in the English Verb Phrase”. In: Brend, Ruth M. (ed.), 155⫺166 Pike, Kenneth L. & Pike, Evelyn G. (1982), Grammatical Analysis. Dallas/TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics (Publications in Linguistics 53) [11977; accompanied by changes and additions 1984] Pike, Kenneth L. & Pike, Evelyn G. (1983), Text and Tagmeme. Norwood/NJ: Ablex Wares, Alan C. (1979), Bibliography of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1935⫺1975. Dallas/TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics Waterhouse, Viola G. (1974), The History and Development of Tagmemics. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Critica 26)

Ruth M. Brend, Ann Arbor/MI (U.S.A.)

22. Generative grammar 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

The transformational period Other early work The lexicalist hypothesis Early lexicalist morphology Word formation in generative grammar Lexical integrity Inflection Item and arrangement morphology Montague and categorial morphology Affix ordering Morphosyntax Nonlinear morphology Morphology across disciplines References

1.

The transformational period

Noam Chomsky, the founder of Generative Grammar, was introduced to linguistics as a teenager through his assistance with the manuscript of Harris (1951). Generative Grammar must be therefore understood against the historical background of Harris’s work of that period. Most centrally for our purposes, Harris erased the traditional distinction between morphology and syntax. In Harris’s words: “The syntactic and morpho-

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22. Generative grammar

logical results are obtained by the same procedure, so that no distinction is drawn between them” (Harris 1960: 262). Generative Grammar up to 1965 adopted this view. For example, the famous phrase structure cum affix-hopping analysis of English verbs and auxiliaries (Chomsky 1957: 38⫺40) cuts dramatically across syntax and morphology. The analysis consists of four context-free rewrite rules, one context-sensitive rewrite rule, and two transformations. The context-free rewrite rules are given in (1) below: (1) (a) Verb J Aux ⫹ V (b) V J hit, take, walk, read, etc. (c) Aux J C(M) (have⫹en) (be⫹ing) (be⫹en) (d) M J will, can, may, shall, must C is spelled out context-sensitively as S (“the morpheme which is singular for verbs and plural for nouns” (Chomsky 1957: 29)) in the context of a third person singular subject, 0 (“the morpheme which is singular for nouns and plural for verbs” (Chomsky 1957: 29)) with other subjects, or past. This leaves the affix-hopping transformation, which is formulated as follows: (2) Let Af stand for any of the affixes past, S, 0, en, ing. Let v stand for any M or V or have or be (i.e., for any non-affix in the phrase Verb). Then: Af ⫹ v J v ⫹ Af#, where # is interpreted as word boundary. Finally, words are established by the insertion of word boundaries everywhere except between a v and a following Af. Thus, one system of rules is responsible for introducing and ordering both the auxiliary verbs and all the affixes (at least abstractly; the actual forms are provided by later morphophonemic rules), with no central distinction between morphology and syntax. Aside from Chomsky’s work on English verbs, the most celebrated of the early transformationalist treatments of morphology was that of Lees (1963), which is largely devoted to word-internal constructions. Although it is little read nowadays, this book was as popular in its time as Syntactic Structures: between 1963 and 1966 it went through four printings, the same number as Chomsky’s book in the same four years. The category of nominalizations that is treated in Lees includes all “noun-like versions of sentences” (Lees 1963: 54), from embedded clauses to compounds to nominal derivatives. All, words and phrases alike, are treated by means of transforma-

tions from kernel sentences, with little regard for the niceties of affixation. Lees quickly acknowledged (in the preface to the second printing) that his treatment of nominals suffered from “the inclusion of non-productive or only dubiously productive expression-types among the truly living” (Lees 1963: xxviii). Not acknowledged, but equally clear, was the fact that this early transformational work made no distinction between words and phrases. Several years later, these shortcomings were addressed, albeit programmatically, in the two works that represent the watershed between early and later Generative Grammar (Chomsky 1965 (henceforth Aspects); 1970). These works introduced into the theory the possibility that morphologically complex items, mostly words but also idioms, might sometimes be introduced into the syntax as wholes. Two factors lay behind this move. One was the desire to curb the power of transformations; the other was the recognition that word formation was not always as regular as syntax. Thus was born the lexicalist hypothesis (Chomsky 1970) that signalled the end of the transformational treatment of morphology and other lexical matters.

2.

Other early work

It is easy to believe that, aside from the last section of Aspects, no attention was paid to morphology in generative grammar until 1970. But not everyone was comfortable with the Harrisian erasure of the boundary between syntax and morphology. Especially in Europe, where American Structuralism had never had much influence, important work emerged in the 1960’s. Some of this work, such as Schultink (1961; 1962) and Marchand (1969) originated quite outside the generative school, but became influential during the lexicalist period, when their students (Kastovsky 1977; Booij 1977) showed how their results and ideas could be incorporated into a generative framework. A number of works on inflection (Kiefer 1970; Matthews 1972; Wurzel 1970) were more explicitly within the generative paradigm and received attention at the time of their publication. Other pioneering works that anticipated some of the most important ideas of lexicalist morphology, notably Zimmer (1964) and Botha (1968), unfortunately received much less attention. Even less attention was paid to those outsiders,

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again largely European, who ventured to criticize the transformational treatment of morphology (Dik 1967).

3.

The lexicalist hypothesis

Aspects is sometimes seen as the culminating work of the early period of generative grammar. In fact, the standard theory that is presented in Aspects put syntax on a new foundation that has not been changed much in the intervening twenty-five years. One of the hallmarks of the new theory was the separation of the rules introducing what Chomsky called lexical formatives (basically nouns, verbs and adjectives, what later came to be called major lexical categories) from the syntax. Previously, lexical formatives had been introduced by the same sorts of rewrite rules that were used for phrase structure. In Aspects, Chomsky abandoned the use of rewrite rules for lexical formatives. In their stead he proposed a lexicon, “an unordered list of all lexical formatives” or “a set of lexical entries, each lexical entry being a pair (D, C), where D is a phonological distinctive feature matrix ‘spelling’ a certain lexical formative and C is a collection of specified syntactic features (a complex symbol)” (Chomsky 1965: 84). Along with this lexicon came a general rule of lexical insertion, by means of which lexical formatives could be inserted into syntactic structures. This framework provided a place in grammatical theory for the idiosyncratic properties of lexical formatives, and thus hearkened back to Bloomfield’s ideas. Even the use of the term lexicon is strikingly Bloomfieldian, for in his major general work, Bloomfield used the term lexicon only in a technical theoretical sense (“The lexicon is really an appendix of the grammar, a list of basic irregularities” (Bloomfield 1933: 274). He used the term dictionary, by contrast, for actual dictionaries. Also reminiscent of Bloomfield was the treatment of the lexicon as a list of idiosyncracies. For Bloomfield, this follows by definition from the fact that the items in the lexicon were morphemes, which he defined as unanalyzeable. But Chomsky’s lexicon was meant to contain all lexical formatives and in the last section of the last chapter of this work, he allowed that “it may be necessary to extend the theory of the lexicon to permit some ‘internal computation’” (Chomsky 1965: 187). This is accompanied by a footnote to Lees and to Zimmer.

But Zimmer’s work was very different from Lees’s. Zimmer allowed and indeed argued for internal computation in the lexicon, while Lees did not make any distinction between lexical and syntactic structures. Chomsky did not follow up his conjecture about internally complex lexical formatives until it became politically necessary to use it in the war against Generative Semantics. In an article published in 1970, but written somewhat earlier, Chomsky set out to counter the exuberant use of transformations and phrase structure in representing the internal structure of individual lexemes that lay at the heart of Generative Semantics. He raised the possibility that, instead of using transformations for this purpose, one might “extend the base rules” (Chomsky 1970: 188) to accommodate certain morphologically complex words. He calls this extension of the base rules “the lexicalist position” as opposed to the “transformationalist position” that all complex constructions be treated by means of the “transformational apparatus”, as Lees and others, most recently the Generative Semanticists, had assumed, even for lexeme-internal phenomena. Chomsky emphasized that the choice between a lexicalist and a transformationalist analysis of a given phenomenon is an empirical question: “It is furthermore quite possible to imagine a compromise solution that adopts the lexicalist position for certain items and the transformational position for others” (Chomsky 1970: 188). Later in the same article, Chomsky adopted the term “the lexicalist hypothesis” for the idea that “a great many items appear in the lexicon with fixed selectional and strict subcategorization features, but with a choice as to the features associated with lexical categories noun, verb, adjective” (Chomsky 1970: 190). The bulk of the rest of the article is devoted to the analysis of two types of nominal constructions in English, which Chomsky calls derived nominal and gerundive nominal. The conclusion is that the lexicalist hypothesis is correct for derived nominal and the transformationalist hypothesis for gerundive nominal. The original lexicalist hypothesis is quite different from what we usually assume it to be. For example, Aronoff (1976: 5) says that Chomsky presented “a new theory of syntax, in which all of derivational morphology is isolated and removed from the syntax”. Chomsky did no such thing, but nonetheless, it is in formulations like these that the lexi-


calist hypothesis has come down to us. It is easy to see why this misinterpretation has met with greater favor than the original, for it is bold and decisive where the original was tentative and conditional. The formulation of the lexicalist hypothesis as applying to “a great many items” and being an empirical matter that might be decided differently in each case left theorists in the uncomfortable position of having no apparent general ground for distinguishing lexically from transformationally derived complex words. Aronoff’s misinterpretation, though, reconstructs the traditional distinction between syntax and word formation, and allows us to see it as a distinction of domains. Word formation operates within lexemes and provides morphologically complex members of the major lexical categories, just as Chomsky suggests, but it provides all of them, leaving us with a sharp theoretical distinction between lexical and syntactic constructs that Chomsky had not originally made. Chomsky’s original lexicalist hypothesis was never pursued. However, the absence of a good terminological distinction between lexemes and words soon led to two very different lexicalist hypotheses that differed over whether the claim of internal syntactic autonomy applies to lexemes (and is thus confined to word formation) or to morphological words (and therefore embraces all of morphology). The strong lexicalist hypothesis of Lapointe (1980) and others says that all grammatical words are syntactically inaccessible, and conversely that all morphology is totally divorced from syntactic structure, while the weak lexicalist hypothesis of Aronoff (1976) or Anderson (1982) says that lexemes are syntactic atoms, but that there are instances of syntactically sensitive morphology, that is to say morphology whose conditions extend beyond the lexeme’s domain, mainly inflectional morphology, whose role is the realization of grammatical words. Because this so-called weak hypothesis is in fact a hypothesis about syntactic domains rather than about morphology, it may be better to call it the lexemic domain hypothesis. It is also sometimes known as the lexical integrity hypothesis.

4.

Early lexicalist morphology

The first two influential works following the advent of lexicalist morphology are Halle (1973) and Jackendoff (1975). To them can

197 also be traced a fundamental distinction between morpheme-based and lexeme-based (or word-based) theories of morphology. Halle’s contribution was self-declaredly programmatic. His general theory of the morphology of a language incorporated the traditional structuralist list of morphemes (with each morpheme being a minimal sign in Bloomfieldian fashion) and a set of morphological rules (also called rules of word formation) for combining these morphemes into words. Halle does not discuss the nature of these rules in any detail, but those that he uses as examples are binary concatenative phrase structure rules of a simple sort (Halle calls the rules that he uses templates). Together, the list of morphemes and the rules define the set of potential words of a language. However, since many of these potential words are not used, Halle posited another list, which he called the dictionary, containing the set of actual words. This list was meant to account for the idiosyncrasy of words rather than morphemes (the major original motivation for the lexicalist hypothesis) and it was produced by means of a filter on the output of the word formation rules. Halle’s word formation rules encompassed both inflectional and derivational morphology and his dictionary listed all the members of any given lexeme’s paradigm. Jackendoff’s work is less centrally concerned with accounting for morphology than with “the partial relations and idiosyncrasy characteristic of the lexicon” (Jackendoff 1975: 639) that had preoccupied Chomsky in the last chapter of Aspects. He developed a system of redundancy rules, which together with fully specified entries for all lexical items, is used to account for the relations among theses entries. The same rules can also be used creatively to form new lexical items. Jackendoff separated morphological and semantic redundancy rules, but he stipulated that “a semantic relation between two words without a morphological relationship cannot be counted as redundancy” (Jackendoff 1975: 651), although a purely morphological relation is counted. His system is therefore essentially morphological. Furthermore, although Jackendoff never says as much, the framework that he adopts is word-based or lexeme-based: there is no list of morphemes, as there is in Halle’s framework. Instead, all morphology is accounted for in terms of rules relating one word to another. This conflict between morpheme-based and lexeme-based theories has haunted generative grammar

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ever since. At heart, it lies in whether one accepts the original structuralist postulation of the morpheme as the basic meaningful unit of language. A related issue that has remained contentious is whether Halle’s templates (or similar concatenations) are sufficient to deal with morphology or whether more powerful devices are needed. Those theorists who cling to the traditional morpheme by and large also adopt a traditional itemand-arrangement view of morphology (sometimes with concomitant arguments about the mathematical simplicity of item-and-arrangement grammars). Conversely, those who reject the traditional morpheme also allow less restricted types of morphological rules (though largely of the classic item-and-process sort).

5.

Word formation in generative grammar

Two dissertations written simultaneously under Halle’s direction in 1974 provided the ground for much subsequent work in generative morphology. Siegel (1974) laid the foundation for Lexical Phonology and Morphology and was generally more influential on work dealing with the interaction of morphology and phonology. Aronoff’s dissertation, revised as Aronoff (1976), dealt more directly with purely morphological matters. It was an explicit attempt to weld to the lexicalist hypothesis work on English word formation within the European tradition (especially Marchand (1969)). This work assumes not only the separation of morphology from syntax, but also an equally traditional division of morphology into word-formation (Wortbildungslehre) or derivation and inflection (Formenlehre) that was disregarded or discounted by post-Bloomfieldian American linguistics, including pre-lexicalist generative grammar (to this day, many generative linguists use the term word formation indiscriminately to cover both inflection and derivation). This latter division could be expressed within the new X-bar phrase structure notation of lexicalist syntax as that between structures within and above the X0 level. The general framework of Aronoff (1976) is word-based, like that of Jackendoff, but the emphasis is on the production of new words, rather than on redundancy among existing words, which is treated derivatively. Also, unlike Jackendoff, who adopted a word-based

framework without discussion, Aronoff devoted a great deal of attention to distinguishing word-based from morpheme-based theories and rejected the structuralist postulate that the morpheme was the minimal meaningful unit of language. In particular, he allowed for existing words (such as cranberry or understand) to be morphologically complex without being semantically compositional. The greater part of Aronoff (1976) is devoted to developing an explicit account of Word Formation Rules, which are treated as complex operations, forming one word from another on three separate dimensions: phonological form, syntax and semantics. Much space was devoted to analyses of specific phenomena, with the goal of determining just what sorts of phonological, syntactic and semantic information a Word Formation Rule could refer to and to specific mechanisms that had to be posited in order to accommodate the facts of English. The work thus provided a frame on which subsequent analyses could be constructed and it was followed by similar treatments of Word Formation Rules in other languages (e.g. Booij 1977 for Dutch and Scalise 1983 for Italian). It was also criticized for its shortcomings, the most telling of which was the author’s declared refusal to distinguish words from lexemes terminologically, with a resulting confusion (sometimes on the part of the author) about whether the term word-based should mean ‘lexeme-based’ or ‘word(-form) based’. On the phonological side, in addition to arguing for a transformational treatment of certain “exotic” phenomena (most notably reduplication), which was consonant with the processual view of morphology that he adopted, Aronoff proposed a separate set of morphophonemic rules, which he called adjustment rules and which were very similar in function to the readjustment rules of Chomsky & Halle (1968). These adjustment rules were criticized by some as undesirable consequences of the word-based approach and they have been less influential on subsequent work than the basic framework that Aronoff proposed. In seeking to integrate traditional ideas about the basic nature of word formation into the generative enterprise, Aronoff raised other non-formal issues that had been current in traditional discussions of morphology and word formation. Two of these, productivity and the interaction between coinages and items already listed in the lexicon (blocking), have become major topics in the generative literature. Pro-

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ductivity is discussed in Art. 33; blocking is covered in Art. 36 and 85. It is tempting to see generative work on morphology in the mid 1970’s as being divorced from syntax, given the obvious fact that this work was legitimized by the establishment of a distinction between the two. However, many important ideas from syntax played equally important roles in morphological research. The best example of this kind of interaction is probably the application of subjacency to morphological analysis. Subjacency was proposed by Chomsky early in the 1970’s as a condition on movements. It was later generalized to include most syntactic operations. Within morphology, Siegel (1978) and Allen (1978) proposed almost simultaneously a version of subjacency known as the adjacency condition, according to which interaction is only possible between structurally or cyclically adjacent elements. Siegel states the condition as follows: “No W[ord] F[ormation] R[ule] can involve X and Y, where X is an affix, unless Y is uniquely contained in the cycle adjacent to X.” (Siegel 1978: 190)

A nice example of this condition at work comes from Scalise (1984). Scalise points out that the Italian noun cenere ‘ashes’ is a mass noun and hence does not have a plural. However, the compound portacenere ‘ashtray’ is a count noun and hence can be pluralized as portaceneri ‘ashtrays’ because the adjacency condition assures that the mass noun status of cenere is invisible at the point where pluralization applies to the whole word. Note that structurally adjacent is not always equivalent to linearly adjacent. This can easily be seen in the case of a prefix that is sensitive to a suffix, or vice versa. Again, Scalise provides a good example: Italian negative prefixes are sensitive to certain suffixes; adjectives formed with the suffix -ito can be negated with either in- or dis-, but adjectives formed with the suffix -abile are never found with the prefix dis-. The prefix thus depends on the suffix, which is not linearly adjacent, but is structurally adjacent. More recently, there has been a general movement towards reintegrating morphology and other word-internal phenomena into syntax, especially Government and Binding syntax. The best known example of this movement is the work of Baker (1988) on incorporation. In addition, Lieber (1984) and Sproat (1988) have argued that independently motivated syntactic principles can ac-

count for the anaphoric island phenomena discovered by Postal (1969), without having to make reference to the fact that these anaphoric islands are inside lexemes, which had previously been accepted as the explanation of the phenomenon. This work is somewhat controversial, however, since it abandons one of the central ideas of many lexicalist theories of syntax and morphology, lexical integrity.

6.

Lexical integrity

The idea that word-internal and word-external phenomena are different, which is at the heart of the lexicalist hypothesis, may be termed lexical integrity. While lexical integrity permitted morphologists to integrate their work into generative grammar, it also permitted syntacticians to look at word-internal phenomena in new ways. In particular, it led to a number of theories of lexical grammar, which sought to treat by means of lexical rules word-internal phenomena that lay outside the purview to traditional treatments of word formation. Best known among these is Bresnan’s (1978) theory of lexical-functional grammar, which places in the lexical component along with word formation and compounding all phenomena that had previously been treated by means of structurepreserving transformations, including for example, all passives, causatives and the English dative alternation. On the morphological side of the coin, lexical integrity leads naturally to what Lapointe (1980) calls the generalized lexical hypothesis, also known as the strong lexical hypothesis, according to which all morphology, including inflection, is independent of the syntax and no syntactic rules are permitted to modify or even refer to the internal morphological structure of words. This hypothesis rules out, for example, the classic treatment of English auxiliaries, which, as we saw in 1, manipulates affixes in the syntax. Others, most notably Anderson, have adopted a position, sometimes known as the weak lexical hypothesis, according to which the strong lexicalist hypothesis must be relaxed precisely in the case of inflection, where syntax and morphology must be allowed to interact. Related to Anderson’s position is the idea that morphology in the very restricted sense of ‘the realization of forms’ is an entirely different enterprise from what the syntactician is engaged in, which is the arrangement of abstract categories. On this

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view, syntax accounts for the syntactic side of both word formation (in the narrow sense of that term, which restricts its scope to lexeme-internal matters) and inflection. What we call weak lexicalism merely draws a line in this abstract syntax at the lexeme, which is the traditional line between syntax and derivation. Morphology has nothing to do with this question, but is simply responsible for the realization of any abstract syntactic information that has a reflex in phonological form, both inflection (which is sensitive to supra-lexical categories) and derivation (the realization of lexeme-internal categories), as well as clitics, which are not normally included in morphology. This view is similar to that expressed in the important work of Beard (1976; 1981), which advocates a conceptual separation between affixation (which is morphology) and abstract lexical derivation, which is closer to syntax, while still distinguishing lexical from syntactic domains.

7.

Inflection

The most important work on inflectional morphology within generative grammar was Matthews (1972), which had antecedents in earlier work (Matthews 1965; 1967). Unfortunately, Matthews’s location in England, outside the geographical and social mainstream of the generative world, allowed his work to receive less attention than it deserved. Matthews’s formalized Word and Paradigm treatment of inflection was defended and elaborated by Anderson (1982; 1985; 1986), within a general approach to morphology similar to that of Aronoff. Anderson’s work incorporates a level of morphosyntactic representation, which is visible to both syntax and inflectional morphology. The morphosyntactic representation contains all the information necessary to allow the construction of correctly inflected forms of lexemes according to the position of the lexeme in a sentence. The actual means by which the inflected forms are constructed within such a framework, what Matthews calls morphological realization, has been the subject of a good deal of research in recent years (e.g. Zwicky 1986; [J.] Harris 1991). Matthews’s general approach also permitted the study within generative grammar of inflectional classes and paradigms as organizing alternative markers or exponents of morphosyntactic properties (cf. Art. 65). Here the work of Carstairs (1987) and Wurzel (1984; 1989) is especially important.

8.

Item and arrangement morphology

In explicitly arguing for processual wordbased theories of word-formation and inflection and arguing against the conventional conception of morphemes, Aronoff and Matthews broke with the morpheme-based itemand-arrangement treatments of morphology that had been standard in American linguistics since at least Harris’s time. Nonetheless, the morpheme-based item-and-arrangement framework remained attractive to many researchers, in part because it demanded less of a bifurcation between syntax and morphology, at least within syntactic frameworks that incorporated concatenative phrase structure rules, as Chomsky’s Aspects theory did. With the emphasis on phrase structure in syntax that grew out of Chomsky’s X-bar notation and flourished in the early 1980’s, a number of influential works appeared that proposed morpheme-based phrase-structural theories of morphology. The first work along these lines was done by Selkirk in 1978, although it was not published until after the others (Selkirk 1982; Lieber 1980; Williams 1981). Lieber (1980) was explicitly morpheme-based and similar in general outlook to Halle (1973). Lieber down-played the distinction between affixes and lexemic stems, or bound and free morphemes, treating the former as context-sensitive or subcategorized lexical elements. She similarly deemphasized the distinction between inflection and derivation and divorced compositional semantics from morphology. Perhaps the most influential of Lieber’s ideas was her treatment of feature percolation, the mechanism by which features of a constituent are passed on to its constitute. Lieber proposed a set of what she called feature percolation conventions for morphologically complex words, which pass information from constituents to constitutes. Most importantly, these “conventions” (they are really not meant to be conventions, but rather universally valid laws) assure that all the features of an affix percolate to the node immediately dominating it, while those of a stem percolate up just in case the property specified by a given feature does not conflict with a previously specified feature value. The latter accounts for instances (as for example with prefixation in English) where an affix is syncategorematic, so that the category of the derived word is that of the base lexeme: (e.g. preexistv , preconditionn, prenatala). It can also be invoked with inflectional affixes. Williams


added the idea that words, like phrases, have heads and that heads are dominant in percolation. Normally, an affix will be the head, but there are exceptions. Thus, in a compound, neither of whose immediate constituents is an affix (by definition), it is the head member that passes its category and other features up to the compound. Williams proposed further that the head of a word is always its righthand constituent and called this observation, which dates at least to Jespersen (1905), the Righthand Head Rule. This accounts for most English compounds, which are right-headed, as well as for most affixed words in English, since English suffixes normally determine the category of their derivative, but English prefixes, by contrast, are usually syncategorematic. Williams’s rule has been criticized on many grounds (Scalise 1989; Schultink 1989) and Williams himself has relaxed it (DiSciullo & Williams 1987), at least for inflection. There are many languages whose word-internal head is not always on the right. Especially in compounds, many languages have both right-headed and leftheaded types (e.g. Italian and Vietnamese). Nonetheless, the importance of the notion head for morphology, especially morphosyntax, can not be denied (Hoeksema 1989; Trommelen & Zonneveld 1986). Even in derivation, the idea that affixes are heads accounts, for example for morphological adjacency: an affix may be sensitive to the head of the word that it attaches to. On the other hand, in theories that are not so firmly grounded in phrase structure, where affixation at least can be profitably viewed as a kind of function or operation mathematically, the need to stipulate what is a head is less crucial: the fact that affixes are usually heads follows quite automatically from the nature of the functions. We will now look briefly at some of these theories.

9.

Montague and categorial morphology

The work of Richard Montague was a major new influence on syntactic and semantic theory in the 1970’s. Montague applied notions of mathematical logic to language, working within a tradition that had had sporadic contact with linguistics over the course of the twentieth century. As linguists became more interested in formal semantics, the two traditions inevitably drew closer together. This

201 melding of linguistics and logic that began with an interest in Montague’s work has come to be focussed, in morphology at least, on Categorial Grammar. The first work to deal with the internal structure of words from this general formal perspective was Dowty (1979), which dealt mostly with semantics, though it touched on morphology. Bach (1983) focussed directly on morphology. This work is especially concerned with developing a formal categorial system that can simultaneously account for the similarities and differences between what Bach calls word-grammar and phrase-grammar. He therefore focussed on inflectional morphology, especially the relation between the syntactic distribution and the morphological realization of morphosyntactic features. In an inflected language, on Bach’s account, each individual inflected form of a lexeme’s paradigm will be realized phonologically by a morphological operation on the lexeme that is defined by a set of morphosyntactic feature values rather than by single feature values. This is similar to what both Anderson and Matthews had said, but Bach shows how this can be done within a categorial framework. Work of this sort has been continued by Moortgat (1987). Hoeksema (1985) applies categorial grammar to productive word formation, within a linguistic framework similar to that of Aronoff (1976). He formalizes the notion of a lexical rule (of word formation) as a function or operation (or a combination of functions: morphophonological, categorial and semantic). The morphophonological operations that he is most concerned with are two-place rules of affixation (prefixation and suffixation) and compounding. Hoeksema also introduces a novel type of morphological rule, which he calls a head operation and which has proved to be very useful even outside a categorial framework. A head operation is said to have occurred when a morphological operation applies to the head of a construction rather than to the entire construction. For example, the plural of grandchild is grandchildren, a form that includes the (irregular) plural form of child, the head of the compound. Since the head is not structurally adjacent to the abstract plural feature, we would otherwise, within all theories of structural adjacency, expect the plural of grandchild to be *grandchilds. Hoeksema showed how viewing these cases as arising through a head operation was superior to other accounts of such “paradoxical” cases

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(Williams 1981; Lieber 1980), in which morphological relatedness was divorced from compositionality. However, head operations have subsequently proved useful in other case as well. For example, there are some wellknown examples of reduplication applying to the stem of a word, skipping over intervening material and these can readily be accounted for as head operations, provided that we view the stem as the morphological head of the word (Aronoff 1989). Still, the question of why head operations of this type arise remains open.

10. Affix ordering A topic that has engendered more interest than almost any other in generative morphology is affix ordering. It is especially intriguing in that it involves simultaneously the two articulations of language; this has also made progress especially difficult, since phonologically and syntactically motivated proposals often conflict, and what may be worse, these conflicts are often ignored by enthusiasts on one or the other side. Yet it is precisely in dealing with questions of this sort that the role of morphology, between syntax and phonology, becomes crucial. The question of affix ordering is simple, at least on its face: what determines the ordering of affixes? Bloomfield, in his treatment of morphology, made some very specific claims. He noted first the general fact that “in languages of complex morphology we can thus observe a ranking of constructions: a complex word can be described only as though the various compoundings, affixations, modifications, and so on, were added in a certain order to the basic form. … In languages of this type, then, we can distinguish several ranks of morphologic structure.” (Bloomfield 1933: 222)

In general, Bloomfield claimed, there is “an outer layer of inflectional constructions, and then an inner layer of constructions of wordformation” (Bloomfield 1933: 222). This claim has been accepted by almost everyone since (it constitutes Greenberg’s Universal 28 (Greenberg 1963: 93)) and it certainly fits the weak lexicalist hypothesis very well. Indeed, Anderson (1988 a) has argued that it follows from it as a theorem and takes this putative universal as evidence against strong lexicalism. In fact, there is some doubt as to whether this layering effect always holds;

Bloomfield, at least, probably did not mean his observation to apply strictly to the linear order of morphs, but rather to the abstract ordering that results from what he called “the principle of immediate constituents” (Bloomfield 1933: 221), what we would now call compositionality. Greenberg’s universal (which, he says, “appears plausible”) is therefore a claim about the correlation between phonological and syntactic structure (or first and second articulation). This claim, essentially a claim of isomorphism, lies at the heart of the discussion about affix ordering, and we will return to it shortly. First, however, we must discuss a separate claim, the affix ordering generalization, that is more purely phonological in origin, but that has become intertwined with the issue of isomorphism. The affix ordering generalization (so dubbed by Selkirk (1982)) is due to Siegel (1974). American linguists since Sapir (1925) had noticed the existence of two junctural types of affixes in English. These two types, sometimes called non-neutral and neutral because of their different interactions with stress, were institutionalized in Chomsky & Halle (1968) by means of distinct boundaries that they carried, the formative boundary ⫹ and the word boundary #. Siegel observed that formative boundary affixes (which she called Class I) did not appear outside word boundary affixes (which she called Class II) in a word and she developed a framework for expressing this observation within which affixes were grouped into what later became known as strata. Each affixal stratum had associated with it a set of phonological rules and these affix-cum-rule strata were linearly ordered. Within the earlier theory of Chomsky & Halle (1968), the complete morphological structure of a word was given prior to its phonological structure, although, as Aronoff (1976) and others had noted, the cyclical operation of the phonology outward from the lexical center of a word was determined by its morphological structure. Within Siegel’s new theory, by contrast, the morphology and the phonology were closely intertwined and the machinery that generated the two operated in lock step: each affixation would be followed by its accompanying block of phonological rules; first the affixes of stratum 1 would be adjoined to a base; these affixes would each be subjected to the phonological rule-block of that stratum; then the affixes of stratum 2


would be added, each followed by its block of phonological rules. This architecture was incorporated into the theory of lexical phonology and morphology as expounded by Kiparsky (1982) and Mohanan (1986), one of the most popular and influential phonological theories of the 1980’s, with various versions of the theory differing on the number of strata, from the minimum two of the classic version up to five strata, or in some versions, theoretically any number. Other morphological theories that build on the affix ordering generalization are those of Williams, Selkirk and Pesetsky (1985, but originally written in 1979). Selkirk constructed a context-free phrase structure grammar for affixation that incorporated Siegel’s generalization, so that the phrase-structure rules built a hierarchical structure, using the categories root and word, that reflected the order of the two categories of affixes. Both Williams and Pesetsky recognized the existence of counterexemples to the affix ordering generalization and developed theories to account for these examples. Similarly for Strauss (1982 a; 1982 b). Others, most notably Booij (1985) & Aronoff and Sridhar (1987) have argued that the affix ordering generalization is spurious, or at least accidental, not only for English, but for other languages as well. According to these authors, the counterexamples, cases where a Class I affix falls outside a Class II affix (e.g. compart#ment⫹al#iz⫹ation or govern#ment⫹al) are not to be explained away, but are rather evidence for the claim that the hierarchical morphosyntactic structure of words may differ from their prosodic structure. They therefore reject theories like those of Pesetsky, Williams and Selkirk that depend on the affix ordering generalization. Booij & Rubach (1984) show how the prosodic account can be incorporated into a theory of lexical phonology that rejects the ordering generalization. It is important to realize that, in separating prosodic from hierarchical morphosyntactic aspects of morphology, these authors abandoned the isomorphism between the two articulations that was assumed in earlier work. Thus, Aronoff and Sridhar claimed that the single syntactic lexeme compartmentalization consists of a sequence of three prosodic words: compart mental ization. Halle & Vergnaud (1987) argued instead for a return to a theory in which all morphology precedes the phonology, but which preserves the isomorphism while abandoning claims about affix ordering.

203 On the syntactic side, Baker proposed what he called the mirror principle, according to which “morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa)” (Baker 1985: 375). Baker derives this principle from a theory in which morphology and syntax are part of the same component of the grammar, the syntax. This type of theory, which has been very influential in generative syntactic circles in the last decade, is reminiscent of pre-lexicalist syntax, which similarly drew no line between morphology and syntax. The difference, though, is that the mirror claims not so much that syntax and morphology are the same, but rather that they operate in conjunction, in the same way that Siegel and followers clammed morphology and phonology operated. Together, the two give us a grand theory of syntax, morphology and phonology all marching in step. Baker excepts one type of morphology from the scope of his principle: non-affixational morphology. Others, however, were working on other fronts towards a reduction of these operations to affixation, work to which we will return in the next section. Baker’s principle, though was not unopposed. Grimshaw (1986) argued that the principle did not indeed follow from Baker’s theory of syntax. Instead, she argued that it followed from head theory, inasmuch as an affix could only trigger a particular morphosyntactic operation at that point in a derivation where it was indeed the head. This account allows affixation and syntax to act together without being part of the same component. Alternatively, one may say that the mirror principle follows directly from the principle of semantic compositionality, once we view the head as a functor. In other words, what modern morphologists are concerned with is to great extent what Bloomfield was concerned with: the relation between morphology and constituent structure. What the literature on affix order has shown is that the order of morphemes and their phonological interaction largely reflect constituent structure. But the recent literature has also shown that there are notable exceptions to this observation that still remain unexplained. Before leaving the question of affix order, one important work should be mentioned that falls somewhat outside the generative mainstream: Bybee (1985). In this book, the pragmatic notion of relevance is used to make

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universal predictions about the order of affixes. Bybee defines relevance as follows: “A meaning element is relevant to another meaning element if the semantic content of the first directly affects or modifies the semantic content of the second.” (Bybee 1985)

Based on this principle, she derives a hierarchy of inflectional categories for verbs and predicts the following order for the affixal expression of these categories, with the first being closest to the verb stem, because of relevance: valence, voice, aspect, tense, mood, agreement. Bybee tested these claims against a sample of 50 languages, selected for proper geographic and genetic distribution, with good results. Unfortunately, morphosyntacticians have paid scant attention to these findings, so it is not clear how the two observations about affix order mesh, one based on semantic compositionality, the other on pragmatic relevance.

11. Morphosyntax We may define morphosyntax as the intersection between morphology and syntax. Unfortunately, this definition depends on the prior definition of both syntax and morphology and since there is little agreement on the scope of the two, the definition of morphosyntax has never been clear. The result is that, though there has been a good deal of literature on morphosyntax within generative grammar, much of it has been at crosspurposes. Nonetheless, a few central issues have emerged in the literature. Most prominent is the treatment of syntactically independent but morphophonologically dependent items. Discussion of such items has been concentrated on clitics (cf. Art. 41) and incorporation, broadly defined (cf. Art. 88). Again, one’s view of where the boundary is between syntactic and lexical domains will color one’s definition of what is morphosyntax. For example, some view noun incorporation in Greenlandic Eskimo as syntactic (Sadock 1980; Baker 1988), while others regard it as lexical (Mithun 1984; Rosen 1989). At least one theory, that of autolexical syntax (Sadock 1985), has been developed explicitly to deal with mismatches between morphology and syntax. The basic idea behind autolexical syntax is that morphology and syntax are completely autonomous, but that there are principles governing pairings between mor-

phological and syntactic analyses of the same utterance. A similar view is expressed by Marantz (1988).

12. Nonlinear mophology An area in which there has been a great deal of activity and real progress is in the understanding of nonlinear morphological phenomena. Many of these phenomena are discussed in detail in other articles (Art. 53⫺61), however, the specific history of how these phenomena have been treated within generative grammar can best be understood only in reference to general developments in the field. For the most part, the classic generative view of morphology paralleled the classic treatment of syntax: a “deep” level on which elements are related to one another by means of hierarchically structured item-and-arrangement in such a way as to be amenable to semantic interpretation, accompanied by a fairly unrestricted transformational and morphophonemic apparatus. Lees is the classic work of this type, but the liberal use of highly restricted morphophonemic rules in Chomsky & Halle (1968) is rooted in the same aesthetic. There is a sense in all this work that item-and-arrangement is mathematically simpler than item-and-process and hence to be preferred, all else being equal. This is made quite explicit in Hockett’s original comparison of the two approaches (which is rooted in morphology) and in Chomsky (1957) (which is more syntactic in its emphasis), though in slightly different mathematical terms. In any case, the underlying representations of classic generative grammar, for both syntax and morphology, are in item-and-arrangement format. In the realm of morphology, item-and-arrangement works well for affixation, but it encounters difficulties in dealing with other types of morphological realization that are characterized quite naturally as operations in the mathematical sense of item-and-process morphology, as Hockett noted. Thus, the fact that the past tense of take is took, while it can be expressed only tortuously and counterintuitively in item-and-arrangement terms, is a simple operation in item-and-process terms. Generative phonology was committed to the Jakobsonian program of reducing the variance of linguistic forms. Together with the abolition of the phoneme, this committed


generative phonology to the acceptance of highly abstract underlying phonological representations (expressed, however, by means of concretely-based phonetic features). One advantage of such a system was its ability to handle certain phenomena that were otherwise not obviously amenable to an item-andarrangement account. For example, the wellknown stress shift between pairs of nouns and verbs in English (suspećtv vs. su´spectN) could be represented by means of the phonological transformational cycle, while the relation between take and took was handled by means of “a precyclic readjustment rule switching backness in certain lexical items in certain contexts” (Chomsky & Halle 1968: 209). Even Semitic verb morphology could be handled by means of judicious rule ordering within such a framework, as Chomsky had shown in his earliest work (Chomsky 1951). However, with the historical movement against phonological representations divergent from surface forms that peaked in the early 1970’s, devices such as these fell out of favor and the problem of integrating processes into an item-and-arrangement morphological framework resurfaced. Aronoff faced this problem head-on, and declared that certain base-dependent processes were “transformational”. He specifically pointed to four types of nonconcatenative morphological phenomena ⫺ reduplication, deletion, infixation, and conversion ⫺ as evidence that all morphological realizations (which he termed phonological operations) should be regarded formally as operations or processes, a category which subsumes both affixes with constant form and positions and nonconcatenative phenomena. He also suggested that the intercalative morphology of Semitic languages might be more appropriately treated within a process framework. He argued that the existence of nonconcatenative morphology gave prima facie support to an overall item-and-process approach to word formation and morphology that distinguishes affixes (which are introduced via phonological operations and may therefore have less than fully specified forms) from lexemic stems (which form the domain of the phonological operations and must therefore have forms of their own). Most generally, he viewed the existence of clearly nonconcatenative phonological operations as evidence for a bifurcation between lexemes and other formatives, what Beard (1987) has called a “lexeme/morpheme base morphology”. This bifurcation

205 between lexemic stems and what had traditionally been called formatives runs counter to the structural tradition of Baudouin de Courtenay, the inventor of the term morpheme, and Bloomfield, which lumped lexemes and formatives together under the single sign category morpheme. Thus, the itemand-process framework of Aronoff, as well as the related frameworks of Anderson, Beard and Matthews, stand in opposition not simply to item-and-arrangement morphology, but to all morpheme-based modern structural morphology. The challenge to provide an item-and-arrangement account of Semitic morphology was taken up by McCarthy (1981). McCarthy joined the traditional root-and-pattern analysis of Semitic verb morphology and Harris’s formal reconstruction of this analysis (1960: 302) in terms of long components to the machinery of autosegmental phonology. This combination allowed him to treat the intercalation of root and vocalism within a prosodic template as an autosegmental mapping or association. The Semitic roots and vocalisms, according to McCarthy, are fully specified morphemes, but their arrangement with respect to one another is three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional, as with typical concatenation. The prosodic templates are morphemes too, albeit not fully specified and semantically also somewhat difficult to pin down. McCarthy extends his prosodic model to reduplication, showing thus that a prosodic approach is able to handle a variety of phenomena that were previously thought to demand the use of morphological transformations or at least of mechanisms that lay beyond the reach of item-and-arrangement morphology. McCarthy’s treatment of reduplication was taken up and extended by Marantz (1982). Marantz’s technique is to assume, following Moravcsik (1978), that a reduplicative affix consists essentially of a CV skeleton. The actual form that the affix takes on in any particular instance is given by a mechanism that has two parts: first, a universal rule that copies the entire melody of the stem and second an autosegmental association of the skeleton of the reduplicative affix with as much of the copied melody as is necessary to fill the skeleton. In this manner, many difficult types of nonconcatenative morphological phenomena may be reduced to concatenation by the adoption of a more complex view of phono-

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logical representations. This program is not, however, without cost. For one, although it reduces nonconcatenative morphs to the status of affixes, these affixes are still phonologically different from the run-of-the-mill prefix or suffix in that they are largely unspecified. Reduplicated affixes consist partly or more often entirely of skeleta; in the case of complete reduplication, where an entire morphological word is repeated, it is not clear whether the reduplicative affix has any phonological form at all. Other “affixes” may be single floating features. The same can not be said of lexemes. There is thus still a difference in form between lexemes and formatives. The early work in prosodic morphology relied on templates consisting of strings of consonants and vowels or segmental slots. Most recently, McCarthy & Prince (1990) have developed a theory of prosodic morphology in which templates are represented in terms of purely prosodic units: syllable, mora, foot, etc. This framework has produced dramatic results in the analysis of a wide variety of recalcitrant nonconcatenative phenomena. Concomitantly, however, it sacrifices item-and-arrangement in favor of a system of morphophonological operations that draws on Hoeksema (1985). Empirically, McCarthy and Prince, as well as Broselow & McCarthy (1984) have discovered a number of phenomena that rely on prosodic specification of the morphological base. Internal reduplication, for example, turns out to be a case where the reduplicated affix is attached to a minimal prosodic word inside the morphological stem. In the case of Arabic broken noun plurals, on the other hand, the plural is formed from the singular by breaking off the first two moras of the singular, mapping this onto an iambic prosodic template, overwriting the vowel melody of this iamb, reattaching the residue of the singular, and finally overwriting its vowel melody. This sort of morphology goes far beyond item-and-arrangement. Whether a coherent alternative analysis of these phenomena can be developed within a strict item-and-arrangement framework remains to be seen.

13. Morphology across disciplines Generative morphology, like other aspects of generative linguistics, has benefitted from interdisciplinary work. Two such areas have

proven to be especially fruitful and hold greater promise for the future: psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. Most psycholinguistic work in morphology has focussed on two related issues: productivity and lexical storage. Psychologists have long been interested in word retrieval and storage, or the mental lexicon (Aitchison 1987). Morphologically informed psycholinguists have asked whether complex words are stored with their morphological structure or as unanalyzed wholes and whether some morphologically complex words are not stored at all, but are rather created as needed. Work using Serbo-Croatian (Lukatela et al. 1980; Feldman & Fowler 1987) supports the notion that inflected forms are at least stored as satellite entries to their lexemes and not independently. When, however, we distinguish high-frequency from low-frequency inflected forms (Stemberger & McWhinney 1988), it appears that the latter are not stored at all, but rather constructed as needed. Similar conclusions have been made for highly productive derived words (Anshen & Aronoff 1988). Among the theories devised to account for the difference between stored and constructed morphologically complex words, the most common type uses a horse-race model, in which the processes of searching for and building words operate simultaneously, but at different speeds, but both are sensitive to word frequency. The result is a race, in which the stored form will win if it is frequent enough. This psychological model also accounts for the historical fact that more frequent morphologically irregular forms are more persistent. Computational morphology falls into two distinct types. On the one hand, computation has been used as a tool in morphological analysis. Thus, rather than searching through dictionaries by hand for words in a certain morphological class, linguists with access to computerized dictionaries can do such counts and the accompanying statistical analysis automatically (Byrd et al. 1986). Similarly for corpus-based studies of morphological productivity (Baayen 1989). On the other hand, morphology is a necessary part of the computational analysis of almost any language. Early work in computational morphology mostly involved affix stripping, in which affixes were successively stripped off morphologically complex words, with the output of each stripping process checked against a lexicon until a match was found. For example, if


we submit the word realizational to such a system, it will first strip off the suffix -al and search its lexicon for realization. If it does not find this word, it will then strip off -ation, restore the ⬍e⬎ because of a spelling rule, and search for realize, which it will recognize. Stripping, however, is cumbersome. This entire procedure is the machine’s way of recognizing this word. In recent years, more success has been gained by means of finite-state methods. The best known treatment of finitestate morphology is the work of Koskonniemi (1983). One mark of the success of this technique is the fact that most subsequent work has not consisted of publications, but rather of actual implementations. Some linguists, though (Anderson 1988 b), have questioned whether finite-state morphology is applicable to a wider array of types of morphological systems.

14. References Aitchison, Jean (1987), Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. Oxford: Blackwell Allen, Margaret R. (1978), Morphological Investigations. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Connecticut Anderson, Stephen R. (1982), “Where’s Morphology ?”. Linguistic Inquiry, 13, 571⫺612 Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), “Inflectional Morphology”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 150⫺201 Anderson, Stephen R. (1986), “Disjunctive Order in Inflectional Morphology”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4, 1⫺32 Anderson, Stephen R. (1988 a), “Inflection”. In Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 23⫺43 Anderson, Stephen R. (1988 b), “Morphology as a Parsing Problem”. Linguistics 26, 521⫺544 Anshen, Frank & Aronoff, Mark (1988), “Producing Morphologically Complex Words”. Linguistics 26, 641⫺655 Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 1) Aronoff, Mark (1989), “Head Operations and Strata in Reduplication”. In Booij & van Marle (eds.), 1⫺15 Aronoff, Mark & Sridhar, S. N. (1987), “Morphological Levels in English and Kannada”. In: Gussmann, Edmund (ed.), Rules and the Lexicon. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 9⫺22

207 Baayen, Harald (1989), A Corpus-based Approach to Morphological Productivity. Ph. D. dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Bach, Emmon (1983), “On the Relationship between Word-grammar and Phrase-grammar”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1, 65⫺89 Baker, Mark (1985), “The Mirror Principle and Morphosyntactic Explanation”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 373⫺415 Baker, Mark C. (1988), Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Beard, Robert (1976), “A Semantically Based Model of a Generative Lexical Word Formation Rule for Russian”. Language 52, 108⫺120 Beard, Robert (1981), The Indo-European Lexicon: A Full Synchronic Theory. Amsterdam: North-Holland (North-Holland Linguistics Series 44) Beard, Robert (1987), “Morpheme Order in a Lexeme/Morpheme Based Morphology”. Lingua 72, 73⫺116 Bloomfield, Leonhard (1933), Language. New York: Holt Booij, Geert E. (1977), Dutch Morphology: A Study of Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Lisse: The Peter de Ridder Press; Dordrecht: Foris Booij, Geert E. (1985), “The Interaction of Phonology and Morphology in Prosodic Phonology”. In: Gussmann, Edmund (ed.), Phonomorphology: Studies in the Interaction of Phonology and Morphology. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 23⫺34 Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (1989, eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988, Dordrecht: Foris Booij, Geert E. & Rubach, Jerzy (1984), “Morphological and Prosodic Domains in Lexical Phonology”. Phonology Yearbook 1, 1⫺27 Botha, Rudolf P. (1968), The Function of the Lexicon in Transformational Generative Grammar. (Janua Linguarum, Series Maior 38), The Hague: Mouton Bresnan, Joan (1978), “A Realistic Transformational Grammar”. In: Halle, Morris & Bresnan, Joan & Miller, George (eds.), Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 1⫺59 Broselow, Ellen & McCarthy, John (1984), “A Theory of Internal Reduplication”. The Linguistic Review 3, 25⫺88 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Byrd, Roy J. & Klavans, Judith L. & Anshen, Frank & Aronoff, Mark (1986), “Computer Methods for Morphological Analysis”. Proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 120⫺127 Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London: Croom Helm

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Kastovsky, Dieter (1977), “Word-formation: or at the Crossroads of Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and the Lexicon”. Folia Linguistica 1, 1⫺33

Chomsky, Noam (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Chomsky, Noam (1970), “Remarks on Nominalization”. In: Jacobs, Roderick A. & Rosenbaum, Peter S. (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar. Waltham/MA: Ginn, 184⫺221 Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row Dik, Simon (1967), “Some Critical Remarks on the Treatment of Morphological Structure in Transformational Generative Grammar”. Lingua 18, 352⫺381 DiSciullo, Anna-Maria & Williams, Edwin S. (1987), On the Definition of Word. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Dowty, David (1979), Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel Feldman, L. B. & Fowler, C. A. (1987), “The Inflected Noun System in Serbo-Croatian: Lexical Representations of Morphological Structure”. Memory and Cognition 15, 1⫺12 Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Language. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 73⫺113 Grimshaw, Jane (1986), “A Morphosyntactic Explanation for the Mirror Principle”. Linguistic Inquiry 17, 745⫺749 Halle, Morris (1973), “Prolegomena to a Theory of Word Formation”. Linguistic Inquiry 4, 3⫺16 Halle, Morris & Vergnaud, Jean-Roger (1987), “Stress and the Cycle”. Linguistic Inquiry 18, 45⫺84 Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (1988, eds.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego etc.: Academic Press Harris, James W. (1991), “The Exponence of Gender in Spanish”. Linguistic Inquiry 22, 27⫺62 Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Harris, Zellig S. (1960), Structural Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hoeksema, Jacob (1985), Categorial Morphology. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Groningen Hoeksema, Jacob (1989), “Head-Types in Morphosyntax”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 123⫺137 Jackendoff, Ray (1975), “Morphological and Semantic Regularities in the Lexicon”. Language 51, 639⫺671

Kiefer, Ferenc (1970), Swedish Morphology. Stockholm: Scriptor Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “Lexical Morphology and Phonology”. In: Yang, I.-S. (ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Company, 3⫺91 Koskonniemi, Kimmo (1983), Two-level Morphology: A General Computational Model for Wordform Recognition and Production. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Helsinki Lapointe, Steven (1980), “A Lexical Analysis of the English Auxiliary Verb System”. In: Hoekstra, Teun & van der Hulst, Harry & Moortgat, Michael (eds.), Lexical Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris, 215⫺ 254 (Publications in Language Sciences 3) Lees, Robert B. (41966), The Grammar of English Nominalizations. The Hague: Mouton (Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics Publication 12) [11963] Lieber, Rochelle (1980), On the Organization of the Lexicon. Ph. D. dissertation, MIT Lieber, Rochelle (1984), “Grammatical Rules and Sublexical Elements”. Papers from the Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 187⫺199 Lukatela, G. & Gligorijevic, B. & Kostic, A. & Turvey M. T. (1980), “Representation of Inflected Nouns in the Internal Lexicon”. Memory and Cognition 8, 415⫺423 Marantz, Alec (1982), “Re Reduplication”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 435⫺482 Marantz, Alec (1988), “Clitics, Morphological Merger, and the Mapping to Phonological Structure”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 253⫺270 Marchand, Hans (1969), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation: A synchronic-diachronic approach. München: Beck Matthews, Peter H. (1965), “The Inflectional Component of a Word-and-Paradigm Grammar”. Journal of Linguistics 1, 139⫺171 Matthews, P[eter] H. (1967), “Latin”. Lingua 17, 163⫺181 Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Matthews, Peter H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [2nd rev. ed., 1991] McCarthy, John J. (1981), “A Prosodic Theory of Nonconcatenative Morphology”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 373⫺418 McCarthy, John & Prince, Alan (1990), “Foot and Word in Prosodic Morphology: The Arabic Broken

22. Generative grammar Plural”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 209⫺283 Mithun, Marianne (1984), “The Evolution of Noun Incorporation”. Language 60, 847⫺893 Mohanan, K. P. (1986), The Theory of Lexical Phonology. Dordrecht: Reidel Moortgat, Michael (1987), “Compositionality and the Syntax of Words”. In: Groenendijk, Jeroen & de Jongh, Dick & Stokhof, Martin (eds.), Foundations of Pragmatics and Lexical Semantics. Dordrecht: Foris, 41⫺62 Moravcsik, Edith (1978), “Reduplicative Constructions”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Human Language. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 294⫺334 Pesetsky, David (1985), “Morphology and Logical Form”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 193⫺246 Postal, Paul (1969), “Anaphoric Islands”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 5, 205⫺239 Rosen, Sarah Thomas (1989), “Two Types of Noun Incorporation: A Lexical Analysis”. Language 65, 294⫺317 Sadock, Jerrold M. (1980), “Noun Incorporation in Greenlandic; A Case of Syntactic Word Formation”. Language 56, 300⫺319 Sadock, Jerrold M. (1985), “Autolexical Syntax: A Proposal for the Treatment of Noun Incorporation and Similar Phenomena”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3, 379⫺439 Sapir, Edward (1925), “Sound Patterns in Language”. Language 1, 37⫺51 Scalise, Sergio (1983), Morfologia Lessicale. Padova: Clesp Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris (Studies in Generative Grammar 18) Scalise, Sergio (1989), “The Notion of ‘Head’ in Morphology”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 229⫺ 245 Schultink, Henk (1961), “Produktiviteit als een morfologisch fenomeen”. Forum der Letteren 2, 110⫺125 Schultink, Henk (1962), De morfologische valentie van het ongelede adjectief in modern Nederlands. Den Haag: Van Goor

209 Schultink, Henk (1989), “Morphological Heads: Evidence from Swahili”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 247⫺258 Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 7) Siegel, Dorothy L. (1974), Topics in English Morphology. Ph. D. dissertation, MIT Siegel, Dorothy L. (1978), “The Adjacency Constraint and the Theory of Morphology”. Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistics Society 8, 189⫺197 Sproat, Richard (1988), “On Anaphoric Islandhood”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 291⫺301 Stemberger, Joseph P. & MacWhinney, Brian (1988), “Are Inflected Forms Stored in the Lexicon ?” In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 101⫺116 Strauss, Steven L. (1982 a), Lexicalist Phonology of English and German. Dordrecht: Foris Strauss, Steven L. (1982 b), “On ‘Relatedness Paradoxes’ and Related Paradoxes”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 694⫺700 Trommelen, Mieke & Zonneveld, Wim (1986), “Dutch Morphology: Evidence for the Right-hand Head Rule”. Linguistic Inquiry 17, 147⫺169 Williams, Edwin S. (1981), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’ ”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1970), Studien zur deutschen Lautstruktur. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag (Studia Grammatica 8) Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag (Studia Grammatica 21) Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1989), Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness. Dordrecht: Kluwer Zimmer, Karl (1964), Affixal Negation in English and Other Languages: An Investigation of Restricted Productivity (Supplement to Word, Monograph 5). New York: Linguistic Circle Zwicky, Arnold (1986), “The General Case: Basic Form vs. Default Form”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 12, 305⫺314

Mark Aronoff, Stony Brook/NY (U.S.A.)

IV. Grundbegriffe Basic concepts 23. Linguistic sign 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Terminological introduction Sign models Types of signs A characterization of linguistic signs The linguistic sign as the central object in Saussure’s theory of linguistics Morphology and the linguistic sign References

1.

Terminological introduction

In order to facilitate the reading of this article a brief definition of some semiotic key terms used further on will be given at the outset: ⫺ signal: this term refers to the sign (linguistic or other) insofar as it is considered in its “triggering” function, i.e. as something which brings about a semiotic process, based on the relationship between a sign and what it stands for (in relation to a class of users); ⫺ sign vehicle: this term will be taken here to refer to the material object through which the semiotic process is mediated, i.e. the perceptible support of the semiotic process; ⫺ source: this term refers to the instance from which the semiotic process, defined as communication or transmission of a sign content, starts out; the semiotic process links the source to the “target” (or receiving instance); ⫺ signifier: the signifier (Fr. signifiant) is the expressive, externalized component or aspect of a linguistic sign, as opposed to the signified (Fr. signifie´), which is the meaning or content of the sign. The signifier can be vocal (phonic) or graphical. In Saussure’s terms the signifier is defined as the acoustic image which the participants in a semiotic situation have in mind, through its association with a stretch of

phonic substance, mainly insofar as this coincides with a word; ⫺ expression and content are used as general semiotic terms in order to distinguish between the external and the internal aspects of signs (or of the semiotic process). The external aspect corresponds to the form in which something is communicated, the internal aspect to what is communicated. In Hjelmslev’s theory expression and content are used as technical terms, referring to the phonetic or graphemic signifier and the mental signified; each of the two planes has, in Hjelmslev’s view, form and substance. The above concepts are of crucial importance to any theory of the linguistic sign.

2.

Sign models

The notion of linguistic sign cannot be dissociated from the hyperonymic term sign, the key-concept of the field of study designated by the terms semiotics (also semeiotics) or semiology (for encyclopedic surveys of the field, see Greimas & Courte´s 1982; Sebeok 1986, ed.; Nöth 1990). This field of study is a very comprehensive one since it subsumes all disciplines which deal with significant relationships, involving the reception of meaning conveyed by a source. Such reception ⫺ even when it is not faithful to the intended message ⫺ can be referred to as “communication”; communication is realized through signs of various types, such as gestures and other body movements, ritual performances, vocal emissions, objects used as “pointers” or as symbols, etc. The notion of sign can be taken to stand for the process of conveying signification (thus even including its reception), or it can stand for the sign vehicle and the meaning it has (or can have), or it can simply stand for the sign vehicle as such. For

23. Linguistic sign

instance, the notion of sign can be applied to smoke in three ways: (a) as referring to the processual relationship between smoke as a perceptible signal, the fire of which it is a sign, and the interpretation of (and reactions to) the signal perceived by semiotic subjects; (b) as referring to the relationship between smoke and its function of signaling fire (this function being the “meaning” of the smoke); (c) as referring to the smoke as the material (perceptible) object, to be described objectively as a vapor with a particular chemical composition. Even among semioticians there is no established consensus on how to use the term sign (for general discussions of the notion of sign, see Bally 1939; Buyssens 1943; Morris 1946; Eco 1973; Koch 1971). An adequate starting-point for arriving at a consensus would consist in the following distinctions: (a) Sign vehicle vs. the sign: the former is a constituent (and an essential condition) of the latter. E.g., the linguistic form of a word or an utterance is the sign vehicle; the sign is the relationship between form (of word/utterance) and its meaning, as well as the interpretation of this relationship. (b) Signal, as a physical entity, vs. sign, as the semiotic entity (i.e. the unit by which communication is realized): A map or maquette (in paper, in wood, etc.) is, taken on itself, a physical entity; it becomes a semiotic entity when it is interpreted as referring to something else (e.g. a landscape, a building, etc.). (c) Sign elements (or sign parcels) vs. signs as complete entities: This distinction is relevant for linguistics since it allows us to treat phones, graphetic elements, phonemes and graphemes as sign elements, as distinct from words and sentences as signs (see also 5). Signs function by establishing a relation, and semiotic theories differ in their analysis of this relation. The most simple model adopts a dyadic view: a sign stands for something in reality (or: a sign refers to something outside the sign itself). Dyadic models are often elliptical versions of more complex models (see 4 on Saussure’s sign theory). In case the sign is taken as that part of reality which manifests itself in the sign, we are in fact abandoning a relational interpretation: a monadic view of the sign (in which something

211 would be a sign of itself) would be a nonsemiotic approach of reality. Triadic views of the sign are extremely current: they involve a distinction between (a) the sign vehicle (the source), (b) its meaning (conventional) or its interpretation (more subjective), and (c) what it stands for in reality (object, or referent), or in some cases the class of objects it can stand for (reference range). Triadic models are extremely current in non-sophisticated forms of linguistics, and they probably correspond to a wide-spread insight that words stand for “something in the mind” (ideas, representations), and that these in turn refer to “something in the world”. This is, in fact, the general view outlined in Aristotle’s Perı´ herme¯neıás, in a passage which had a lasting influence on Western philosophy of language. “Spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of ⫺ affections of the soul ⫺ are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of ⫺ actual things ⫺ are also the same” (Peri Herme¯neias 16 a; transl. Ackrill 1963: 43).

Triadic models can easily be extended to tetradic models, and this in at least two ways: (a) Either one may split up the “mental representation” into a representation oriented towards the content of the sign-vehicle, and a representation oriented towards reality. This step was taken by the authors of the very influential PortRoyal Grammar and Logic (cf. Swiggers 1981 and Dominicy 1984). It has been applied to the linguistic sign by Hockett (1977: 82). (b) Or one may leave out mental representation, while at the same time introducing a distinction between form and substance in either of the two remaining components (see 5, concerning Hjelmslev’s views). Some authors have proposed a more complicated model, e.g. Heger (1972), who distinguishes between six stages: (a) phonic materiality; (b) the moneme; (c) the range of meaning; (d) the sememe (the meaning at stake); (e) the concept (which in his view is languageindependent); (f) reality (extralinguistic). For surveys of sign models and their history, see Eco (1973), Nattiez (1979), Deely (1982), Nöth (1990).

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IV. Grundbegriffe

If a sign can be defined as something which stands for something else (with respect to a class of sign interpreters) it is clearly (a) something relational, (b) something characterized by this relation to something else, to which reference is made. Both insights underlie the theory of signs as developed by Charles Sanders Peirce and by his followers. It should be observed, however, that such a general definition leaves open several problems, which all affect the status that has to be assigned to linguistic signs (see 3). In fact, the difficulty of defining the status of linguistic elements has its first manifestation in Aristotle’s writings: although in his Peri Herme¯neias 16 a he calls words “symbols” (su´mbola), he does not seem to include them under one of his two classes of signs in his Art of Rhetoric 1357 b (where signs are defined by their relation to a consequence). There Aristotle distinguishes between necessary signs (involving a necessary relationship between antecedent and consequent, i.e. a relation of strict implication), and a “weaker” type of signs (involving a possible causal relationship: i.e. a relation of suggested implication). The problems left open by the general definition of sign given above are the following: (a) Are sign-relationships “natural” events or are they artificial? (b) Is signification a relationship which presupposes an intention (of communicating/signifying)? (c) Are signs motivated in themselves or are they endowed with significance (and if the latter is the case, how did signs receive this significance)? These are questions which pose formidable challenges to the theory of semiotics as well as to the philosophy of language and to epistemology in general. Answers to these questions involve, apart from a comprehensive theory of sign systems and of sign interpretation, a wide-ranging reflection on the origin of (types of) signs and of sign use, and on the possible diversification of sign systems (see 4).

3.

Types of signs

There is no generally accepted typology of signs, neither among linguists nor among semioticians. However, a number of basic typological parameters can be mentioned; some of these have a history reaching back to Antiquity or to the Middle Ages (see Schaff

1960: 145⫺180; Lyons 1977; Nattiez 1979). A useful meta-typology of sign classifications can be found in Eco (1973: 37⫺77), who discusses the relevant criteria and dimensions for classification. These include, inter alia, the source and the channel of (sign-) communication (from what type of instance does the semiotic process start and through which medium is it realized?); the replicability of the signifier (is the signifier unique or can it be repeated?); the relative intentionality on the part of the speaker and the hearer (to what extent do speaker and hearer intend to communicate effectively?); the behavior of the receiver; the semiotic exclusiveness or non-exclusiveness of signs (are we dealing with objects which have only semiotic functions or with objects fulfilling various functions?); the relation between signifier, signified, and referent (the object referred to); the modality of sign production (e.g., the distinction between ostension, mental suggestion, imitation, etc.). Throughout the history of semiotics, attention has focused on a few classificatory dimensions, and these will be briefly discussed here. Signs can be classified according to the nature of the connection with what they stand for. The basic dichotomy here is that between natural signs and conventional signs: natural signs are those which occur, together with what they are an indication of (e.g. smoke indicating fire; fever indicating illness; red spots indicating measles) without (personal) intentionality being involved; conventional signs are signs which in virtue of an agreement (and thus involving an intention to signify) stand for something else (e.g. a flag indicating a territory; an arrow indicating a direction). This distinction corresponds, basically, to Cassirer’s (1957) division into signals (which are operators-in-the-world, i.e. indications which are identified by users as pointing to a fact/event in the external world) and symbols (which are functional designators, i.e. classes of signs which have the systematic function of referring to a content, which can be defined as an object of knowledge). This dichotomy is useful, although not sufficiently distinctive: some signs are both conventional and natural (e.g. onomatopoeia). Moreover, signs are only signs when they are recognized as such, and this recognition involves interpretation, and thus presupposes some kind of “initiation” in societal conventions. Signs can be classified according to their functioning (as signifiers of a particular signi-

213

23. Linguistic sign

fied). In such classifications, both production and reception of signs are usually taken into account. The most detailed classification proposed along these lines is that of Sebeok (1975), who posits six species of signs: ⫺ signals: sign tokens which mechanically or conventionally trigger some reaction on the part of the receiver; ⫺ symptoms: compulsive, automatic, nonarbitrary signs, involving a natural link between signifier and signified; ⫺ icons: signs characterized by a topological similarity between a signifier and its denotata; ⫺ indices: signs whose signifier is contiguous with its signified; ⫺ symbols: non-iconic or non-indexical signs, characterized by a conventional link between the signifier and the denotata, and having an intensional class as its designatum; ⫺ names: signs having an extensional class as their designatum. Signs can be classified in terms of their “content” for the interpreter. Given that we deal here with a semantic (and pragmatic) type of classification, one should not expect an exhaustive typology. Charles Morris’s typology of signs is based on a combination of pragmatic and semantic criteria: some of his sign types correspond to situations of use, whereas other refer to the signification of signs. We thus find pragmatic and semantic subtypes (all of a binary nature), such as plurisituational vs. unisituational signs, interpersonal vs. personal signs, reliable vs. unreliable signs, vague vs. precise signs, unambiguous vs. ambiguous signs, singular vs. general signs (Morris 1946). Signs can be classified according to their structure. Here signs are usually considered in relation to the larger code within which they function (cf. Mulder & Hervey 1972; 1980; Hervey 1982): e.g. the code of human language, the code of traffic signs, the code of odours, etc. Codes are (not exclusively) characterized by the structural properties that underlie them as semiotic systems: as a matter of fact, the code of traffic signs is characterized by the placement of specific objects (with specific shapes and colours) on public roads, but the code is not exclusively characterized by its structural properties (the placement of the signs can be above or on the side of the road).

Signs can be classified according to a combination of classificatory dimensions. The most elaborate classification here is that of Charles S. Peirce, who took a life-long interest in the study of signs, as can be seen from his collected works (1931⫺1958). Peirce started from a triadic classification of the sign correlates (“representamen” or sign vehicle, “object” or referent, “interpretant” ⫺ i.e. another sign which represents to an interpreter the relationship between the sign vehicle and its object; 1931⫺1958: § 2.228), combined with the categories of firstness (“being on itself”), secondness (“being relative to something else”), and thirdness (“being something, by mediation, for a third thing”). This classification can be exponentially increased through the integration of semantic and pragmatic dimensions; Peirce at one time postulated 59 049 classes of signs. Perhaps the best known distinction within Peirce’s comprehensive classification is that between iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs (1931⫺ 1958: § 2.275): iconic signs are those in which the representamen is linked to its object by virtue of physical or material similarity; indexical signs are signs in which a representamen is linked to its object by contiguity in space and/or time; symbolic signs are signs in which the representamen is linked to its object by virtue of a rule or convention. Linguistic signs are, in principle, always symbolic signs, although some of them can have outspoken iconic properties (e.g., onomatopoeic words) or indexical properties (e.g., deictic elements).

4.

A characterization of linguistic signs

Linguistic signs can be defined as: (a) conventional: they exist in virtue of a convention; (b) code-integrated: they belong to a particular natural language, defined by a phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic structure, in which the signs function according to sets of rules or conventions, and in which the signs occupy a specific position or value relative to each other. Code-integration and conventionality are historically linked: linguistic signs are elements of an orally transmitted system of communication between persons who, in terms of communicative behavior, belong to the social group which makes use of that system, and

214 whose functioning is dependent upon conventions proper to that language; (c) historically fluctuating: the various codes which human languages constitute are all subject to change through time; these changes affect, structurally, the rule system of the language, and they affect, both structurally and discretely, the material aspect and the content of the signs; (d) units of expression ⫹ content: signs involve a dimension of expression (or: vocal c.q. graphical manifestation), and a dimension of content, or communicative meaning. (For a survey of views on the nature of the linguistic sign up to 1954, see Spang-Hanssen 1954; for later contributions, see Fońagy 1956⫺1957 and Buyssens 1960; the views of Micla˘u 1970 are discussed below in 5; for an axiomatically based theory, see Mulder & Hervey 1972.) A more interesting perspective is provided by the characterization of linguistic signs in terms of distinctive properties which mark their status as expression ⫹ content-units. In general terms, linguistic signs can be defined, as to their content, as being (potentially) universal and multimodal (Hockett 1960): linguistic signs (can) cover the whole range of (human) experience, and can be used to refer to everything in the “outside” world; in addition, they cover the whole range of modalities, ranging from assertion, over command and questioning, to exclamation, exhortation, injunction, doubting, and all varieties of emotive and cognitive states. The combination of these two semantic (and pragmatic) properties does not occur in other types of semiotic systems (some of which are usually also called “languages” by analogy with human language). Linguistic signs are characterized by “double articulation” (Martinet 1949): they are units of form and meaning, and they can be segmented into smaller units which have form, but not meaning in themselves (while being meaning-distinctive). This distinction corresponds to the division of speech forms into morphemes (e.g. but, table, read, under, in English) and phonemes (e.g. /b/, /u/, /t/, etc.; the meaning-distinctiveness of, e.g., /b/ and /t/ in English appears from the opposition between lob, lot or cub, cut). This “double articulation” or “duality of patterning” (Hockett 1960) shows that language

IV. Grundbegriffe

is a system of subsystems (or systemic levels): units are defined with respect to each other on the level of the system; on each of the systemic levels there are different units, and analysis can be done from any higher level to its subordinate level. Thus, on the level of morphology, morphemes are the smallest, irreducible elements; however, they can be decomposed into phonemes (and morphophonemes). In the opposite direction, one can speak of synthesis: phonemes constitute morphemes, and morphemes constitute words, words combine into sentences, and sentences combine into texts. Some authors (e.g. Koch 1971) distinguish up to five levels of language “articulation”: the phoneme, the morpheme, the word, the sentence, the text. Given that the linguistic sign is generally defined as a language unit combining form and meaning, the delimitation between phonology and morphology corresponds to the distinction between the study of minimal units of form, and the study of minimal units of form and meaning, the latter type of units being decomposable into the purely formal units of the former type.

5.

The linguistic sign as the central object in Saussure’s theory of linguistics

Linguistics took a very long time before discovering its proper object: the linguistic sign. It was Ferdinand de Saussure who in his lectures on general linguistics at the University of Geneva (1906⫺7, 1908⫺9, 1910⫺11; published as Saussure 1916) made the linguistic sign (Fr. signe linguistique) the corner-stone of his theory of linguistics. (The most recent comprehensive study of Saussure’s sign theory is Holdcroft 1991.) Saussure’s aim was to provide for a solid foundation of (general) linguistics: “Mais je suis bien de´gouˆte´ de tout cela et de la difficulte´ qu’il y a en geńe´ral a` ećrire seulement dix lignes ayant le sens commun en matie`re de faits de langage. Preóccupe´ surtout depuis longtemps de la classification logique de ces faits, de la classification des points de vue sous lesquels nous les traitons, je vois de plus en plus a` la fois l’immensite´ du travail qu’il faudrait pour montrer au linguiste ce qu’il fait, en re´duisant chaque ope´ration a` sa cate´gorie pre´vue, et en meˆme temps l’assez grande varie´te´ de tout ce qu’on peut faire finalement en linguistique.” (Letter to Antoine Meillet, January 4, 1894)

23. Linguistic sign

In his attempt to define an autonomous study-object for linguistics ⫺ a discipline which had too long been subordinated to philosophy, history, anthropology or psychology, Saussure proceeded to answer three questions: What type of science is linguistics? What is its object? What are the manifestations of this object? Saussure’s answer to the first question is that linguistics belongs to the “theorematic” sciences, which include nomology, mathematics, physics and psychology. Psychology itself includes sociology, and this science, involving the study of the laws governing the life of conscious beings, has to deal with signs. In his classification of the sciences Adrien Naville ⫺ a Geneva colleague of Saussure ⫺ explicitly assigned linguistics to semiology: “La sociologie est la science des lois de la vie des eˆtres conscients ⫺ spećialement des hommes ⫺ en socie´te´. […] Une des plus apparentes [sc. conditions de cette science], c’est l’existence de signes par lesquels les eˆtres associe´s se font connaıˆtre les uns aux autres leurs sentiments, leurs penseés, leurs volonte´s. M. Ferdinand de Saussure insiste sur l’importance d’une science tre`s geńe´rale, qu’il appelle se´miologie et dont l’objet serait les lois de la creátion et de la transformation des signes et de leurs sens. La se´miologie est une partie essentielle de la sociologie. […] la science se´miologique la plus avanceé c’est la linguistique ou science des lois de la vie du langage […] La linguistique est, ou du moins tend a` devenir de plus en plus une science de lois; elle se distingue toujours plus nettement de l’histoire du langage et de la grammaire.” (Naville 1901: 103f.)

Saussure himself assigned linguistics to (the still to be developed science of) semiology, and he stresses that in this way linguistics is neither a historical nor a natural science, but a very specific semiological science, which crucially hinges on the temporal dimension. The answer to the second question follows then straightforwardly: the object of linguistics is the linguistic sign. Saussure’s central passages on the linguistic sign have been foundational for the establishing of an autonomous general linguistics: “Le signe linguistique unit non une chose et un nom, mais un concept et une image acoustique. Cette dernie`re n’est pas le son mate´riel, chose purement physique, mais l’empreinte psychique de ce son, la repre´sentation que nous en donne le te´moignage de nos sens; elle est sensorielle, et s’il nous arrive de l’appeler “mate´rielle”, c’est seulement dans ce sens, et par opposition a` l’autre terme de

215 l’association, le concept, geńe´ralement plus abstrait […]. Le signe linguistique est donc une entite´ psychique a` deux faces […]. Nous appelons signe la combinaison du concept et de l’image acoustique: mais dans l’usage courant ce terme de´signe geńe´ralement l’image acoustique seule, par exemple un mot (arbor, etc.). On oublie que si arbor est appele´ signe, ce n’est qu’en tant qu’il porte le concept “arbre”, de telle sorte que l’ideé de la partie sensorielle implique celle du total. L’ambiguı¨te´ disparaıˆtrait si l’on de´signait les trois notions ici en pre´sence par des noms qui s’appellent les uns les autres tout en s’opposant. Nous proposons de conserver le mot signe pour de´signer le total, et de remplacer concept et image acoustique respectivement par signifie´ et signifiant; ces derniers termes ont l’avantage de marquer l’opposition qui les se´pare soit entre eux, soit du total dont ils font partie. Quant a` signe, si nous nous en contentons, c’est que nous ne savons par quoi le remplacer, la langue usuelle n’en sugge´rant aucun autre.” (Saussure 1916: 100 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 149]).

From this passage it is clear that Saussure defines the linguistic sign as the combination of an acoustic image (Fr. signifiant; Engl. signifier) and a concept (Fr. signifie´; Engl. signified). The linguistic sign is the union of an acoustic image (the physico-psychical representation of the word as a vocal emission), and a concept (the objective content associated with the acoustic image). This dyadic sign model is in fact cut out from a tetradic one, since Saussure of course recognizes that signs have to be realized as oral (or written) sequences, and that interpretation takes place with reference to the real world. However, only the two fundamental components of the process of linguistic symbolization are considered to be constitutive of the sign. Linguistic signs function within languages, which are historical products based on transmitted sets of conventions. From this it follows that linguistic signs are characterized, in Saussure’s views, by two properties: (a) arbitrariness (Fr. arbitraire [du signe]); (b) differentiality or (respective) value (Fr. valeur). Arbitrariness is defined by Saussure as the unmotivated nature of the link between both components of the sign: “Le lien unissant le signifiant au signifie´ est arbitraire, ou encore, puisque nous entendons par signe le total re´sultant de l’association d’un signifiant a` un signifie´, nous pouvons dire plus simplement: le signe linguistique est arbitraire […]. Le mot arbitraire appelle aussi une remarque. Il ne doit pas donner l’ideé que le signifiant de´pend du libre choix du sujet parlant […] nous voulons dire qu’il est immotive´, c’est-a`-dire arbitraire par rapport au

216 signifie´, avec lequel il n’a aucune attache naturelle dans la reálite´” (Saussure 1916: 102, 103 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 152, 155]).

Arbitrariness is thus, at first sight, a negative property of the constitution of signs; it is, however, precisely because signs are conventional that they are arbitrary, and in fact arbitrary signs reflect the true nature of the semiological process, in that they refer to something outside themselves, and thus are minimally dyadic. (For the various interpretations given of Saussure’s concept of arbitraire du signe, see Engler 1962; 1964; for an epistemological assessment, see Swiggers 1984; on the link between arbitrariness and value, see Bally 1940; 1941; Buyssens 1940⫺41 and Gardiner 1944.) Value is another negatively defined property of signs, but it is the indispensable foundation for the distinction between signs, the construction of a system of signs, the functioning of signs, through combination, in communication. The notion of value, applied to the linguistic sign, implies (a) a non-identity relationship; (b) a relationship of comparability; (c) the possibility of mutual substitution; (d) the establishing, after substitution, of the respective degree of identity and difference. “Ainsi pour de´terminer ce que vaut une pie`ce de cinq francs, il faut savoir: 1⬚ qu’on peut l’ećhanger contre une quantite´ de´termineé d’une chose diffe´rente, par exemple du pain; 2⬚ qu’on peut la comparer avec une valeur similaire du meˆme syste`me, par exemple une pie`ce d’un franc, ou avec une monnaie d’un autre syste`me (une livre sterling, etc.). De meˆme un mot peut eˆtre ećhange´ contre quelque chose de dissemblable: une ideé; en outre, il peut eˆtre compare´ avec quelque chose de meˆme nature: un autre mot. Sa valeur n’est donc pas fixeé tant qu’on se borne a` constater qu’il peut-eˆtre “ećhange´” contre tel ou tel concept, c’est-a`-dire qu’il a telle ou telle signification; il faut encore le comparer avec les valeurs similaires, avec les autres mots qui lui sont opposables. Son contenu n’est vraiment de´termine´ que par le concours de ce qui existe en dehors de lui. Faisant partie d’un syste`me, il est reveˆtu, non seulement d’une signification, mais aussi et surtout d’une valeur, et c’est tout autre chose.” (Saussure 1916: 166 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 260]).

Whereas arbitrariness applies to the internal constitution of the sign, value operates within a language and is important in contrasting one language with another. Within a language, the principle applies to words (valuerelationships, or value-differentiations, ap-

IV. Grundbegriffe

pear from various types of semantic relations, such as near-synonymy, antonymy, hyperonymy, graduality, converse relation, etc.), and to grammatical forms (e.g. the value of a particular case in a case system or of affixes expressing temporal relationships, etc.). In the comparison of languages valuerelationships appear from the fact that languages do not divide the world (of contents) into strictly equivalent segments of forms (Saussure gives the example of mouton in French, where the word designates both the animal and the meat prepared from it, whereas English has sheep for the first and mutton for the second; another case is French louer for German mieten and vermieten). It is important to realize that the properties of arbitrariness and “valuedness” are the foundational conditions for the proper and efficient functioning of linguistic signs: they function on the basis of conventions, which link a signifier and a signified, and the function of each sign is defined by its value within the whole system of signs (and, eventually, of conventions). The two properties are closely tied up with two of Saussure’s dichotomies, viz. the distinction between langue and parole, and that between synchrony and diachrony. It is because language is conventional that signs are arbitrary, and a langue is precisely the result of the transmission, over generations, of this set of conventions as embodied in the system of arbitrary signs: as such, the linguistic sign can be said to be “immutable” (Fr. immuable). The existence of values underlies the parole, the in situ functioning of the linguistic system, in which signification can only be produced because values are being exploited. This is what characterizes the langue and its exploitation (parole) in synchrony. On the other hand, linguistic changes are devoid of signification, in Saussure’s view, and there can be no talk of values when we study a language in a diachronic perspective. Saussure also stressed another property of the linguistic sign which does not follow from the fact that languages are historically transmitted, viz. its linearity. “Le signifiant, e´tant de nature auditive, se de´roule dans le temps seul et a les caracte`res qu’il emprunte au temps: a) il repre´sente une e´tendue, et b) cette e´tendue est mesurable dans une seule dimension: c’est une ligne […] les signifiants acoustiques ne disposent que de la ligne du temps; leurs e´le´ments

23. Linguistic sign

217

se pre´sentent l’un apre`s l’autre; ils forment une chaıˆne.” (Saussure 1916: 105 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 157⫺158]).

(taken from the chapter “Rapports syntagmatiques et rapports associatifs”) is revealing in this respect:

This principle has been largely misunderstood as involving a reference to the succession of phonematic units (cf. Jakobson 1956; Martinet 1960). As a consequence, Saussure’s principle has been criticized because it conflicts with the existence of “simultaneous” components (e.g. tones, intonation), and the fact that phonemes consist of bundles of distinctive features. However, Saussure’s principle is about the organization of acoustic substance and simply refers to the fact that speech production occurs over time and that discourse is a sound stretch (or a wave) which extends over a linear axis (to be cut up into segments).

“Ainsi dans enseignement, enseigner, enseignons, etc., il y a un e´le´ment commun a` tous les termes, le radical; mais le mot enseignement peut se trouver implique´ dans une se´rie baseé sur un autre e´le´ment commun, le suffixe (cf. enseignement, armement, changement, etc.); l’association peut reposer aussi sur la seule analogie des signifie´s (enseignement, instruction, apprentissage, e´ducation, etc.), ou au contraire, sur la simple communaute´ des images acoustiques (par exemple enseignement et justement). Donc il y a tantoˆt communaute´ double du sens et de la forme, tantoˆt communaute´ de forme ou de sens seulement” (Saussure 1916: 179 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 287f.]).

6.

Morphology and the linguistic sign

At first sight, morphological analysis and the theory of morphology hardly appeal to the notion of linguistic sign (as shown by standard textbooks such as Nida 21949; Matthews 1974; Jensen 1990). This holds not only for morphological analysis as elaborated, from a historical-comparative and typological perspective, in the 19th century (with Schleicher 1859 as the ground-breaking work), but also for 20th-century morphological description, incorporating a “synchronic” approach. The history of synchronic morphological analysis (in the West) shows that the introduction of the linguistic sign as the basic unit of a language system was not coupled with a theory of morphology in European structuralism, and American structuralism coined an operational concept of the morpheme without making use of a theory of the sign. 6.1. Structuralism Saussure in his Cours de linguistique geńe´rale speaks of morphology only in relation to syntax (the two together constitute “grammar”); in his analysis of the linguistic sign Saussure mainly uses morphologically simple units as examples (e.g. arbor, bœuf, Ochse, homme, chien). Although Saussure was well aware of morphological segmentation (which he practised in his Indo-Europeanist work), there are only a few passages in the Cours in which morphological analysis is dealt with, but then one notes that in these passages the notion of sign is not at stake. The following passage

The most interesting passages in the Cours are those about the signe ze´ro (Saussure 1916: 123, 169, 260 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 192, 266, 420]; cf. Godel 1953 and Art. 45), a linguistic value (and here Saussure sometimes uses the term signe) which has no material expression. From the examples given it is clear that the linguistic zero sign is a morpheme here: Cz. gen. pl. zˇen ‘of (the) women’ (i.e. zˇen-ø, lexical morpheme zˇen ‘woman’ ⫹ ending -ø ‘genitive plural’); Gk. zeugnu ‘put in (sc. the horse)!’ (i.e. zeugnu-ø, lexical morpheme zeug ‘join’ ⫹ root-extensional suffix -nu ⫹ ending -ø for the imperative present singular), Fr. marche ‘go/walk!’ (i.e. marche-ø, lexical morpheme marche ‘go/walk’ ⫹ ending -ø for the imperative present singular). The zero sign is defined by Saussure as a sign whose (morphemic) value is defined by its contrast with other endings. (“Le geńitif pluriel tche`que zˇen n’est caracte´rise´ par aucun signe positif […] pourtant le groupe de formes zˇena : zˇen fonctionne aussi bien que zˇena ⫽ zˇenъ qui l’a preće´de´; c’est que la diffe´rence des signes est seule en jeu: zˇena ne vaut que parce qu’il est diffe´rent”, Saussure 1916: 169 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 266]). A zero element, the nonformally expressed realization of a content, is thus postulated on account of a contrast between a structural content A coupled with form (formal expression) and the same content coupled with the absence of form (formal expression) within a slot X. Zero is therefore always postulated on grounds of parallelism (otherwise one could set up a zero element everywhere, since one can always point to a contrast between any element and its absence). An example would be English

218 (I) put, identical for present and past tense, contrasted with e.g. look ⫺ looked, lead ⫺ led. The postulation of a zero element in this case raises, however, three problems: (a) Should the zero element in put (past tense), be set up as the absence of an affixation or as the absence of an internal change (or as both?); (b) Should the zero element be assigned the status of an allomorph or of a morpheme? The first option would require a complicated rule of allomorphy, the second would require a complicated representation of the morpheme (since it would no longer be slot-specific); (c) In how far can zero be said to be a linguistic sign (defined as the combination of a form and meaning): is it a null object with a meaning, or is it the absence of a signifier coupled with a meaning postulated on grounds of parallelism? (On the historical background of positing zero elements, see Allen 1955; for arguments in favor or against setting up zero morphemes, see Jakobson 1939; Bloch 1947 and Haas 1957; Meier 1961 offers a discussion of zero as a descriptive unit within linguistic analysis in general.) Whereas in the Cours the notion of linguistic sign is applied to both words and morphemes, without any clear differentiation and without any definition of the morphemic extension (or delimitation) of linguistic signs, the American structuralist tradition defines the morpheme, but eschews any association with the concept of linguistic sign. Edward Sapir (1921) makes use of the concept of symbol in his definition of language as “a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols” (1921: 7). This notion is, however, not used to ground a theory of morphology; in fact, although Sapir operates with the notion of form (“inner form”, “pure and simple formal elements”, “formless” etc.; cf. Swiggers 1994), he does not elaborate a theory of morphological analysis. His interest was in establishing morphological types of languages, and when he uses in that context the term symbolic (cf. Sapir 1921: 133f., 138⫺140) he is referring to internal changes of the radical element (cases like Engl. goose ⫺ geese, drink ⫺ drank). Leonard Bloomfield (1926) defines the morpheme as a minimum form, whose mean-

IV. Grundbegriffe

ing is a sememe; more precisely, the morpheme is defined by Bloomfield as a recurrent form which cannot in turn be analyzed into smaller forms. The classic Postulates (1926) do not contain any mention at all of the linguistic sign. In his Language (1933) ⫺ where the notion of language is no longer defined as a derivative notion within a section on historical linguistics (as in Bloomfield 1926) ⫺, Bloomfield focuses much more on language use. Language is defined here as a (complicated) signaling-system functioning within a speech community (1933: 281). In chapter 2 “The Use of Language” (1933: 21⫺41) Bloomfield describes this signaling, using the well-known story of Jack and Jill: Jack and Jill are walking down a line; Jill, who is hungry, sees an apple in a tree, and asks Jack to pick the apple and give it to her. She then eats the apple. This story is described by Bloomfield in terms of stimuli and reactions; the portions of the story involving the use (and comprehension) of speech are described as involving substitute stimuli and substitute reactions, viz. stimuli and reactions mediated by speech (1933: 25f.). Linguistics is the study of the coordination of speech signals with “certain meanings”. In conformity with his mechanistic approach (1933: 33), Bloomfield uses the term signal (and not sign) ⫺ or, for derivative types, mark. In his definition of the morpheme Bloomfield does not make reference to any signaling function (although linguistic forms are said to be “signals”, 1933: 158). The identification of morphemes is based on (partial) resemblance in form and meaning (but, as Bloomfield rightly notes, it is difficult to tell whether and when meanings are “the same”); it is moreover based on the (im)possibility of decomposing a form: the identification of morphemes starts from linguistic forms (the common part of any, two or more, complex forms). Morphemes, as linguistic signs, are defined by the minimal association of a phonic substance and a meaning, which does not (systematically) recur in other units. In Bloomfield’s definition of the morpheme, this negative criterion for identification is formulated as follows: “A linguistic form which bears no partial phoneticsemantic resemblance to any other form, is a simple form or morpheme. Thus, bird, play, dance, cran-, -y, -ing, are morphemes. Morphemes may show partial phonetic resemblances, as do, for instance, bird and burr, or even homonymy, as do

219

23. Linguistic sign pear, pair, pare, but this resemblance is purely phonetic and is not paralleled by the meanings.” (Bloomfield 1933: 161)

In the study of morphology, the analysis of form has precedence over the analysis of meaning; this automatically implies that the (Saussurean) concept of sign is hardly useful for morphological analysis. Bloomfield does not make use of the concept of sign (nor of signal) in his discussion of morphological segmentation, but on one occasion, in a general statement, he speaks of both signals and morphemes (although it appears from the passage that “signal” has a much wider extension than “morpheme”): “A workable system of signals, such as a language, can contain only a small number of signaling-units, but the things signaled about ⫺ in our case, the entire content of the practical world ⫺ may be infinitely varied. Accordingly, the signals (linguistic forms, with morphemes as the smallest signals) consist of different combinations of signaling-units (phonemes), and each such combination is arbitrarily assigned to some feature of the practical world (sememe). The signals can be analyzed, but not the things signaled about.” (Bloomfield 1933: 162)

Following Bloomfield’s lead Bloch & Trager (1942: 54) define the morpheme as a (free or bound) form which cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts, and the word as a minimum free form which cannot be divided entirely into smaller free forms. The discussion of meaningful constructions (i.e. the ways in which morphemes are combined to form complex words or compounds) does not mention the linguistic sign. The notion of sign, or more precisely symbol, is used only in the definition of language (1942: 5f.): language is defined as a system (not directly observable) of arbitrary (conventional) vocal symbols. Bloomfield’s morphological approach set the tone for later structuralist work in the United States: attention largely focused on the identification of morphemes, on the notation of morphemes, and on the distinction of various types of allomorphic variations. This can easily be seen in the standard structuralist textbook on morphology by Eugene A. Nida (21949), who starts out from Bloomfield’s definition and briefly comments on the negative formulation it contains: “It means that forms belonging to the same morpheme may not consist of identically the same phonemes and they may not have precisely equivalent meanings, but if these varying forms with corre-

spondingly different meanings still do not overlap on other sets of forms with their respective meanings, then they may be regarded as constituting a single morpheme.” (Nida 21949: 7)

The remainder of Nida’s work is mainly devoted to (a) principles which allow the linguist to isolate and to identify morphemes (cf. Nida 1948); (b) a classification into types of morphemes, in terms of their composition (segmental, suprasegmental or both), in terms of their distribution (bound vs. free; root vs. non-root; root vs. stem; nuclei vs. nonnuclei; nuclear vs. peripheral; same order vs. different order morphemes; mutually exclusive; mutually obligatory; obligatory vs. non obligatory; closing vs. nonclosing morphemes); (c) a discussion of structural classes (form classes; sequence classes; distribution classes). Nida’s work and subsequent handbooks (e.g. Gleason 1955; Hockett 1958) thus focus on morpheme identification and on the establishing of allomorphic variation in terms of phonic or structural conditioning. The morpheme is then defined in terms of conformity (in distribution/meaning) between the allomorphic shapes it assumes (Gleason 1955: 51⫺64), stretching over a minimally meaningful segment (Hockett 1958: 123⫺129). The relationship between morpheme structure and phonic realization constitutes the object, in structuralist models, of morphophonemics or morpho(pho)nology. (See Dressler 1985; on the notion of the morphophoneme, see Swiggers 1982.) 6.2.

Post-structuralist treatments of morphology

6.2.1. Main trends Post-structuralist work in morphology has mainly taken two directions: either it has tended to integrate morphology within phonology (as is the case for generative phonology and lexical phonology), while focusing on morpheme-structure constraints or on the derivational history of morphemic sequences; or it has moved toward the study of morphology as part of the larger study of language acquisition and language use. In the latter orientation the study of morphemes has been brought nearer to the concept of the sign, since the relation between meaning and

220 form had become prominent (see Bybee 1985); the integration of the user’s perspective has given way to “morphopragmatics” (see Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1987). Some linguists are inclined to treat morphology and syntax as a single level. (For presentations and surveys of recent models in morphology, see Scalise 1984; Hammond & Noonan 1987, eds.; Bauer 1988.) It is especially within “Natural Morphology” that the notion of sign has been rediscovered: natural morphology is interested in the build-up of morphemes from a functional point of view and appeals to Peirce’s theory of signs in order to state a number of (universal) principles, such as iconicity (cf. Swiggers 1993 and Art. 30), transparency, symmetry, parallelism (already stressed by Jakobson 1966), or (abductive) efficiency. (For introductions to Natural Morphology, see Mayerthaler 1981; Kilani-Schoch 1988; and Art. 31.) Natural Morphology integrates the study of morphology within a theory of language history, and of linguistic performance (acquisition; pathology). 6.2.2. The integration of the concepts sign and morpheme None of these models, however, provides an integrated theory of the linguistic sign and the morpheme as a unit. This is due to the fact that in the best case such models only hit upon the notion of sign at an advanced stage in their elaboration. Integration of the two concepts of sign and morpheme can only be successful if from the very outset the notion of sign is considered from the point of view of its descriptive usefulness and implementation on the level of morphology. Here two possible paths can be followed, and have indeed been explored, albeit in rather isolated attempts. One option consists in taking up Hjelmslev’s theory of the linguistic sign, as formulated in Hjelmslev (1943; 1954), rather than in Hjelmslev (1938; 1939), although precisely the latter two articles are specifically about morphology. (On morphology in Hjelmslev’s project of general linguistics, see Swiggers 1995.) In his glossematic theory (intended as a general semiotic project) Hjelmslev distinguishes between two planes: expression and content. Each of these planes has form and substance. There are then four strata: content-substance, content-form, expressionform, and expression-substance. The sign is

IV. Grundbegriffe

no longer defined as something standing for something else, but as a bilateral unit of content-form and expression-form; both dimensions are interdependent (or “solidary”). Substance is always formed, according to Hjelmslev: form is a necessary presupposition for substance. Given that the sign is defined as a formal unit, linguistics should focus, in Hjelmslev’s view, on the abstract formal system of functional relations; Hjelmslev elaborated a comprehensive frame for the study of these relations. The interesting application for linguistics lies in Hjelmslev’s distinction of components (or “figurae”) of the sign: the minimal constituents of expression-form are called “cenemes” (“empty elements”), and the corresponding ones of the content-form are called “pleremes” (in structural semantics these were later called “semes”). (In 1938 Hjelmslev spoke of “cenematemes” and “plerematemes”; in 1939 he still made a distinction between pleremes and morphemes: the latter are basically elements which “characterize” bases, and they are expressed by cenemic units.) Hjelmslev’s glossematics thus provides a grid for the study of morphemes as sign-units; however, Hjelmslev never offered an example of a more or less detailed morphological analysis along these lines. It was Micla˘u (1970) who took up Hjelmslev’s suggestions, combining them with Martinet’s functionalism and with some ideas of the Geneva school. He defines the morpheme as a “morphological sign”: “Nous appelons morphe`me l’ensemble de traits distinctifs de morphes ⫹ le trait se´mantique geńe´ral, exprime´s par les formants correspondants […]. Le morphe`me repre´sente donc le signe morphologique.” (Micla˘u 1970: 20)

Although Micla˘u’s study is mainly about classes of signifiers, discursive processes and about the motivation of signs (onomatopoeic words; interjections; semantically motivated words), one can reconstruct from his study a complex sign-model, involving the basic distinction between signified (Fr. signifie´) and signifier (Fr. signifiant). This distinction runs through four levels, the first of which is that of the mone`me, i.e. a minimal sign. All the other levels involve complex signs: the lexe`me, the morphe`me, and the syntaxe`me. On the signifier-side these all involve what Micla˘u calls (after Hjelmslev 1954) formants (“formatives”): lexical and grammatical building-blocks. The signified-side consists

23. Linguistic sign

of semantically distinctive pleremes and “morphs”. “Le signe dans la structure de la langue se pre´sente comme un e´le´ment constitutif. Il se place a` un certain point dans la hie´rarchie linguistique organiseé selon le principe de la stratification. Le signe apparaıˆt au niveau des unite´s significatives minimales ⫺ les mone`mes, puis au niveau des mots comme unite´s complexes lexico-grammaticales. Il faut distinguer donc entre signes e´le´mentaires et signes complexes […]. Le deuxie`me niveau ⫺ le mot ⫺ est constitue´ des e´le´ments du niveau infe´rieur (mone`mes), tant dans le signifie´ que dans le signifiant. Comme le niveau des mone`mes comprend deux se´ries bien distinctes d’unite´s (lexicales et grammaticales), c’est par la dialectique de leur rapport que le niveau du mot s’organise en trois sous-niveaux. Le premier de ces sous-niveaux ⫺ le lexe`me ⫺ repre´sente les signes les plus concrets, inde´pendants. C’est qu’il garde l’unite´ du ple´re`me et ne re´duit au statut de traits distinctifs que les morphes. Le deuxie`me sous-niveau ⫺ le morphe`me ⫺ est plus abstrait; il re´duit les ple´re`mes au comportement des traits distinctifs et les morphe`mes qu’il garde comme unite´s ne jouissent pas d’inde´pendance. Le troisie`me sous-niveau est encore plus abstrait, car il re´duit les deux se´ries ⫺ lexe`mes et morphe`mes ⫺ au statut de traits distinctifs.” (Micla˘u 1970: 13, 24; see also 22f., 46f., 56)

Micla˘u’s work is an attempt to reintegrate the notion of sign within the study of language levels. The view he adopts consists in using the notion of sign for both minimal units and complex ones. “Elementary signs” (Fr. signes e´le´mentaires) contain, on the signified-side, a plereme (roots and lexical affixes) or a morph (grammatical affixes); on the signifier-side they are a totality of phonemes and prosodemes. Among the complex signs, one level is reserved for the morphemes or morphological signs: these contain a signified, which is the collection of distinctive features of the morphs (e.g. lexical meaning of the stem ⫹ future ⫹ first person singular) and a general semantic feature (e.g. “verb-ness”), and a signifier, which includes the lexical formant and the grammatical formants. Rather than stressing the bilateral nature of the sign, Micla˘u points to the two semiotic components of the sign: “Dans le plan de l’existence psychique, le signe apparaıˆt comme une structure formeé de la reúnion des deux e´le´ments se´miotiques: le signifiant comme image acoustique et le substrat neurophysiologique de l’invariant psychique, qui comprend certains signaux codifie´s au niveau ce´re´bral. Le signe n’est donc pas a` proprement parler une unite´ bilate´rale, mais bien la reúnion de deux e´le´ments se´miotiques.” (Micla˘u 1970: 209)

221 Whereas the “Hjelmslevian” option tries to preserve the notion of sign as involving a signifier and a signified, the other alternative is to dissociate the levels of content and expression, and to pursue a separate analysis for the signified and the signifier. In such a view one can define morphology as the study of forms (in conformity with the etymology of the term), taking into account for morphological analysis only formal relationships, and not significata. The sign will then be narrowly defined as the signifier (signifiant). There is both a more specific and a more general advantage to this. The specific advantage is that such a position allows one not to uncritically accept the view that some signs would have no meaning at all (cf. Saussure 1916: 187 [critical edition with variants, 1968⫺1974: I, 299]: “S’il y a des e´le´ments formatifs transparents, comme -ier dans poir-ier, vis-a`-vis de ceris-ier, pomm-ier, etc., il en est d’autres dont la signification est trouble ou tout a` fait nulle”). The problem is resolved if one redefines the sign as the signifier, since it is clear that some signifiers will have no meaning at all (e.g. thematic vowels in IndoEuropean; stem extensions in Bantu languages). “Un e´le´ment formatif dont la signification est tout a` fait nulle ne saurait eˆtre un signe au sens saussurien. […] Il en re´sulte e´videmment qu’il est impossible de se re´fe´rer a` l’association d’un signifiant et d’un signifie´ pour de´finir soit le morphe`me, soit le mone`me, a` moins de diluer a` tel point la notion de ‘signifie´’ qu’elle n’a plus aucun rapport avec ce que Saussure avait en vue.” (Larochette 1969: 66f.)

The more general advantage is that in such a view morphemic signs can be assigned functions in a way parallel to the one in which phonemic units are assigned functions: there are “integrative” morphemes (e.g. stem-enlarging elements), “distinctive” morphemes (e.g. class markers), “demarcative” morphemes (marking, e.g. the boundaries of a compound), “redundant” morphemes (e.g. concord morphemes). This of course implies that, contrary to the Hjelmslevian point of view, there is no parallel analysis on the level of expression and on the level of content. The non-viability of such a parallel analysis has important consequences for the study of the compositionality of the linguistic sign (see Art. 82): composition of morphemes is not always, neither on the form side nor on the content side, equivalent to the sum of the constitutive morphemes (as is clearly shown by the case of idioms).

222 If one defines the sign as a formal element, i.e. as the signifier, one can dissociate it from the concept of “signified”, and refer to the content in terms of values” or “functions”: “Le morphe`me /er/ dans ils chante`rent marque a` la fois l’appartenance du signe a` la classe de valence virtuelle du verbe conjugue´ […] et l’appartenance du signe aux classes se´mantiques que les grammairiens appellent ‘indicatif’, ‘passe´ simple’, ‘troisie`me personne’, ‘pluriel’ […]. De`s lors, si l’on reconnaıˆt quatre ‘mone`mes’ dans /er/ parce que cette forme marque a` la fois l’indicatif, le passe´ simple, la troisie`me personne et le pluriel, on conside`re qu’il y a autant de mone`mes que de ‘valeurs’, mais non qu’il y a autant de ‘mone`mes’ que de signifie´s.” (Larochette 1969: 71)

As yet, there is no definitive sign-based theory of the morpheme, although currently various semiotic aspects of linguistic elements (including the morpheme) are being explored. It appears that linguistic models in morphology may focus on different properties of the linguistic sign: whereas structural morphology is interested in the patterning and distribution of signs as arbitrary combinations of forms and meanings, natural morphology studies cases of (partial) motivation of signs, thus identifying in linguistic signs both symbolic and iconic aspects, and weakening the distinction between the two levels of articulation (“double articulation”). The mutual integration of the concepts of “sign” and “morpheme” is not an easy task. It should be clear, however, that morphology, as the study of formal properties of the linguistic sign, must appeal to the concept of sign. The sign concept used, implicitly or explicitly, in morphology can be defined as follows (with reference to the sign models discussed above): the object of morphology is linguistic signs, i.e. signs taken to be vocal/graphical symbols with a (mental) content, the relationship between form (⫽ signifier) and meaning (⫽ signified) being arbitrary or conventional (with some cases of partial motivation), and historically fluctuating. Linguistic signs are studied in morphology as units of expression and content, which belong to a “code”, viz. the linguistic system of a natural language. A rigid articulation of the morpheme as a linguistic sign will require (a) a comprehensive theory of semantic distinctions on the signified-side (involving, e.g., the definition of “seme”, “sememe”, “classeme”, “virtueme”; cf. Heger 1972; Larochette 1967; Swiggers 1997);

IV. Grundbegriffe

(b) the application of the langue/parole dichotomy (enriched with the concept of norm as developed by Coseriu 1952) to a semiotically based theory of the morpheme, stressing the systemic, functional and (historically) conventional nature of morphemic units; (c) a reflection on what the “semiotic unity” is of morphemes comprising various (phonically or structurally conditioned) allomorphs, or alternating morphemes (Swiggers & Van den Eynde 1988); (d) an additional “sociolinguistic” component which studies the “use-in-context” of morphemic signs, i.e. their “connotative value(s)”: through the use of morphemic signs, information is also given about gender, social class, profession of the speaker (and of the hearer), about the relation of the speaker to the hearer, and about the context of communication. (For a comprehensive model of semiotic analysis of language in its social context, see Halliday 1978.) A sign-based theory of the morpheme should then do justice to all three dimensions of the sign process: the syntactic, the semantic and the pragmatic dimension.

7.

References

Ackrill, John L. (1963), Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione. Translated with Notes and Glossary. Oxford: Clarendon Allen, W. Sydney (1955), “Zero and Pa¯nø ini”. Indian Linguistics 16, 106⫺113 Bally, Charles (1939), “Qu’est-ce qu’un signe?”. Journal de Psychologie 36, 161⫺174 Bally, Charles (1940), “L’arbitraire du signe. Valeur et signification”. Le français moderne 8, 193⫺206 Bally, Charles (1941), “Sur la motivation des signes linguistiques”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 41.1, 75⫺88 Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Bloch, Bernard (1947), “English Verb-Inflection”. Language 23, 399⫺418 [reprinted in: Joos (ed.), 243⫺254] Bloch, Bernard & Trager, George L. (1942), Outline of Linguistic Analysis. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America Bloomfield, Leonard (1926), “A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language”. Language 2, 153⫺ 164 Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt

23. Linguistic sign

223

Buyssens, Eric (1940⫺41), “La nature du signe linguistique”. Acta Linguistica 2, 83⫺86

Hervey, Sańdor G. (1982), Semiotic Perspectives. London: Allen & Unwin.

Buyssens, Eric (1943), Les langages et le discours. Bruxelles: Office de la Publicite´

Hjelmslev, Louis (1938), “Essai d’une theórie des morphe`mes”. In: Actes du IVe Congre`s international de linguistes. Copenhague, 140⫺151 [reprinted in: Hjelmslev (21971), 161⫺173]

Buyssens, Eric (1960), “Le signe linguistique”. Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 38, 705⫺717 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: Benjamins Cassirer, Ernst (1957), The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 1⫺2. New Haven: Yale University Press Coseriu, Eugenio (1952), Sistema, norma y habla. Montevideo: Universidad de la Repu´blica Deely, John (1982), Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Dominicy, Marc (1984), La naissance de la grammaire moderne. Lie`ge: Mardaga Dressler, Wolfgang (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma Dressler, Wolfgang & Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1987), Elements of Morphopragmatics. Duisburg: LAUD Eco, Umberto (1973), Zeichen: Einführung in einen Begriff und seine Geschichte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Engler, Rudolf (1962), “Theórie et critique d’un principe saussurien: l’arbitraire du signe”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 19, 5⫺66 Engler, Rudolf (1964), “Comple´ments a` l’arbitraire”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 21, 25⫺32 Fońagy, Ivan (1956⫺57), “Über die Eigenart des sprachlichen Zeichens (Bemerkungen zu einer alten Streitfrage)”. Lingua 6, 67⫺88 Gardiner, Alan H. (1944), “De Saussure’s Analysis of the ‘signe linguistique’”. Acta Linguistica 4, 107⫺110 Gleason, Henry A. (1955), An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics. New York: Holt Godel, Robert (1953), “La question des signes ze´ro”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 11, 31⫺41 Greimas, Algirdas J. & Courte´s, Joseph (1982), Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Hjelmslev, Louis (1939), “La structure morphologique”. In: Ve Congre`s international des linguistes. Rapports. Bruges, 66⫺93 [reprinted in: Hjelmslev (21971), 122⫺147] Hjelmslev, Louis (1943), Omkring sprogteoriens Grundlaeggelse. København: Cercle linguistique de Copenhague [English transl.: Hjelmslev (1961)] Hjelmslev, Louis (1954), “La stratification du langage”. Word 10, 163⫺188 [reprinted in: Hjelmslev (21971), 44⫺76] Hjelmslev, Louis (1961), Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Translated by Francis J. Whitfield. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press Hjelmslev, Louis (21971), Essais linguistiques. Paris: E´d. de Minuit [11959, Copenhague: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag] Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Hockett, Charles F. (1960), “The Origin of Speech”. The Scientific American September 1960 [reprinted in: Wang, William S.-Y. (1982, ed.), Human Communication. Language and Its Psychobiological Bases. San Francisco: Freeman, 5⫺12] Hockett, Charles F. (1977), The View from Language. Athens: University of Georgia Press Holdcroft, David (1991), Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Jakobson, Roman (1939), “Signe ze´ro”. In: Me´langes Charles Bally. Gene`ve: Georg, 143⫺152 Jakobson, Roman (1956), “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances”. In: Jakobson, Roman & Halle, Morris (1956), Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton, 53⫺82 [reprinted in: Jakobson (1971), 239⫺259] Jakobson, Roman (1966), “Quest for the Essence of Language”. Diogenes 51, 21⫺37 [reprinted in: Jakobson (1971), 345⫺359] Jakobson, Roman (1971), Selected Writings, Vol. II. The Hague, Paris: Mouton

Haas, William (1957), “Zero in Linguistic Description”. In: Haas, William, Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Philological Society, 33⫺53

Jensen, John T. (1990), Morphology. Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins

Halliday, Michael A. K. (1978), Language as a Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. Baltimore: University Park Press

Joos, Martin (41966, ed.), Readings in Linguistics. Vol. I: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America 1925⫺56. Chicago: University of Chicago Press [11957]

Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (1988, eds.), Theoretical Morphology: Approaches to Modern Linguistics. San Diego: Academic Press Heger, Klaus (1972), Monem, Wort und Satz. Tübingen: Niemeyer

Kilani-Schoch, Marianne (1988), Introduction a` la morphologie naturelle. Bern: Lang Koch, Walter A. (1971), Varia Semiotica. Hildesheim: Olms

224 Larochette, Joe (1967), “La signification”. Linguistica Antverpiensia 1, 127⫺169 ` propos de la fonction Larochette, Joe (1969), “A des morphe`mes”. In: Me´langes de linguistique, de philologie et de me´thodologie de l’enseignement des langues anciennes offerts a` M. Rene´ Fohalle. Gembloux: Duculot, 65⫺72

IV. Grundbegriffe

Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace

bert Sechehaye avec la collaboration de Albert Riedlinger. Paris, Lausanne: Payot Saussure, Ferdinand de (1968⫺1974), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale. E´dition critique par Rudolf Engler, 1 vol. ⫹ 1 fasc. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris Schaff, Adam (1960), Wste˛p do Semantyki. Warszawa: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe [German transl., 1973: Einführung in die Semantik. Reinbek: Rowohlt] Schleicher, August (1859), Zur Morphologie der Sprache. St. Petersburg: Acade´mie des Sciences de St-Pe´tersbourg Sebeok, Thomas A. (1975), “Six Species of Signs: Some Propositions and Strictures”. Semiotica 13, 233⫺260 Sebeok, Thomas A. (1986, ed.), Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics, Vol. 1⫺3. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter Spang-Hanssen, Henning (1954), Recent Theories on the Nature of the Language Sign. Copenhagen: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag Swiggers, Pierre (1981), “La theórie du signe a` Port-Royal”. Semiotica 35, 267⫺285 Swiggers, Pierre (1982), “Le morphophone`me: sa place dans la description linguistique”. Linguistics in Belgium 5, 171⫺185 Swiggers, Pierre (1984), “L’arbitraire du signe linguistique”. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 85, 401⫺404 Swiggers, Pierre (1993), “Iconicite´: un coup d’œil historiographique et me´thodologique”. Faits de langues 1, 21⫺28 Swiggers, Pierre (1994), “‘Synchrony’ and ‘Diachrony’ in Sapir’s Language (1921)”. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 94, 313⫺322 Swiggers, Pierre (1995), “Le programme d’une linguistique geńe´rale chez Louis Hjelmslev”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 90.1, 53⫺83 Swiggers, Pierre (1997), “Histoire et historiographie de la se´mantique lexicale pre´structurale”. In: Hoinkes, Ulrich & Dietrich, Wolf (eds.), Kaleidoskop der lexikalischen Semantik. Tübingen: Narr, 159⫺171 Swiggers, Pierre & Van den Eynde, Karel (1988), “‘Allomorphes’ et ‘morphe`mes alternants’”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 73.1, 319⫺322 Zeichen und System der Sprache (1961⫺64), Veröffentlichung des 1. Internationalen Symposiums “Zeichen und System der Sprache” vom 28.9. bis 2.10. 1959 in Erfurt, Vol. 1⫺3, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag

Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale. Publie´ par Charles Bally et Al-

Pierre Swiggers, Louvain (Belgium)

Lyons, John (1977), Semantics, Vol. 1⫺2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Martinet, Andre´ (1949), “La double articulation du langage”. Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Copenhague 5, 30⫺37 Martinet, Andre´ (1960), E´le´ments de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Colin Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. An introduction to the Theory of Word-Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Mayerthaler, Willi (1981), Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion [English transl. 1986: Morphological Naturalness. Ann Arbor: Karoma] Meier, Georg Friedrich (1961), Das Zero-Problem in der Linguistik. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag Micla˘u, Paul (1970), Le signe linguistique. Paris: Klincksieck Morris, Charles W. (1946), Signs, Language, and Behavior. New York: Prentice Hall Mulder, Jan W. F. & Hervey, Sańdor G. (1972), Theory of the Linguistic Sign. The Hague: Mouton Mulder, Jan W. F. & Hervey, Sańdor G. (1980), The Strategy of Linguistics. Edinburgh: Scottish Academy Press Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1979), “Zum Problem der Zeichenklassifikation”. Zeitschrift für Semiotik 1, 389⫺399 Naville, Adrien (1901), Nouvelle classification des sciences. Paris: Alcan Nida, Eugene A. (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441 [reprinted in: Joos (ed.), 255⫺271] Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Nöth, Winfried (1990), Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press Peirce, Charles Sanders (1931⫺1958), Collected Papers, Vol. 1⫺8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press

225

24. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations

24. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Linguistic relatedness Syntagmatics vs. paradigmatics Paradigmatics / syntagmatics and typology Paradigmatic forces in morphology Concluding remarks References

1.

Introduction

The well-known distinction between the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axis of language is no doubt rooted in Saussure’s Cours de linguistique geńe´rale (de Saussure 1916). In the Cours a distinction is made between “syntagmatic relationships” and “associative relationships”, which later came to be known as paradigmatic relationships. Typical of the syntagmatic relationships is, that they are in force within “la chaine de la parole”. That is, syntagmatic relationships bear upon elements constituting a given linguistic configuration, i.e. they relate to elements in praesentia. In contrast to the syntagmatic relationships, the scope of the paradigmatic relationships is considerably less clear. As a matter of fact, given their characterization in the Cours, it is tempting to define the paradigmatic relationships in a negative way, i.e. as those relationships which do not relate to the linear character of language. According to the Cours, the paradigmatic axis of language bears upon elements in absentia, meaning that the paradigmatic relationships are considered to bring these elements together in “mnemonic series”. The above cannot but lead to the conclusion that the conceptual status of the syntagmatic relationships was relatively clear (which is not to say, of course, that the systematic properties of these relationships were clear as well). Syntagmatic relationships hold between the constituent elements of a given linguistic unit (word, phrase, sentence). In contrast to the syntagmatic axis of language, the nature of the paradigmatic axis was far less clear. In consequence of the fact that in the Cours the paradigmatic relationships lacked a general characterization, their conceptual status was not made clear at all. This may be connected to the fact that the paradigmatic axis seems to be less manifest than its syntagmatic counterpart (cf. 2). In addition, the paradigmatic relationships were characterized in psychological rather than in

linguistic terms: as we have seen, they were called “associative” while they were considered to bear upon “mnemonic series”. In a way, the rather unclear status of the paradigmatic relationships is quite surprising. There seems to be no doubt that the paradigmatic axis of language bears upon the phenomenon of “linguistic relatedness” (Van Marle 1992). In other words, paradigmatic relationships deal with the ways in which linguistic entities may be mutually connected, both formally and/or semantically (cf. 2). Evidently, there is no necessity to define this phenomenon in predominantly psychological terms, just as the syntagmatic relationships must not be exclusively defined in terms of e.g. speech production. That is, the paradigmatic axis of language, like its syntagmatic counterpart, can and must be characterized in purely linguistic terms.

2.

Linguistic relatedness

In addition to the little transparent way in which the paradigmatic axis of language was introduced in the Cours, the actual treatment of the paradigmatic relationships has caused confusion as well. In the Cours the paradigmatic axis of language is illustrated with the help of the ramifications of enseignement, compare Fig. 24.1. enseignement enseigner enseignons etc. etc. A

apprentisage éducation etc. etc. B

clément justement etc. etc. changement armement etc. etc. C

D

Fig. 24.1: Saussure’s illustration of paradigmatic relationships (cf. de Saussure 1916: 175)

This example makes clear that in Saussure’s view the paradigmatic relationships constitute a rather heterogeneous set. They may be based either on form alone (D), or exclusively on meaning (B). In addition, paradigmatic relationships may focus on a common base (essentially A), or a common morphological structure (reflected by an identical affix) as in C. The lack of homogeneity is striking, and this has certainly contributed to the fact that

226 the paradigmatic axis of language has often been neglected. Moreover, Saussure has also refrained from differentiating between the diverse types of relationships within one and the same kind of paradigmatic arrangement. For instance, it is evident that the relationship between enseignement and enseigner ⫺ a typical case of derivation ⫺ is fundamentally different from the one between enseigner and enseignons which belongs to inflection (cf. Art. 38). Yet, in the Cours both types of paradigmatic relationships can be found in A. The way in which the paradigmatic axis of language is presented in the Cours is no doubt directly connected with Saussure’s idea that this dimension of language is simply highly unstructured. This is also reflected by his remark that the members of an “associative family” are characterized neither by fixed number, nor by fixed order. On the basis of the above it is clear that the Cours does not contain a well-defined theory concerning the paradigmatic axis of language. Both conceptually and as regards elaboration, the treatment of the paradigmatic relationships is far from optimal, and it is by no means surprising that this part of the Cours has been strongly criticized (Wells 1948). However, it seems that it has not always been sufficiently appreciated that the paradigmatic relationships cover the field of linguistic relatedness and that, in consequence of its very nature, linguistic relatedness displays a heterogeneous character by definition. The fact is, that some relationships are much more intimate than others, in that they are rooted in more and/or other kinds of shared properties. The members of an inflectional paradigm (cf. Art. 62 and 65), for instance, share a number of properties by definition, whereas in the case of derivational forms ⫺ even if they have the same base ⫺ this is not so. Cf. (I/you) enjoy and (he/she) enjoys which, apart form their identical lexical meaning, share properties relating to (among other things) aspect, tense and number. Evidently, the common characteristics of e.g. enjoyable and enjoyment are much more marginal. In contrast to the paradigm members enjoy/enjoys, enjoyable and enjoyment do not even belong to the same word class. Consequently, one cannot close one’s eyes to the fact that the paradigmatic axis of language displays a more heterogeneous and a less transparently structured character than some, apparently, would like to have it. Crucial to the linguistic characterization of the phenomenon of linguistic relatedness is

IV. Grundbegriffe

the setting-up of different types of classes and categories on the basis of similarities and/or differences in behaviour (valency) and/or shared formal and semantic properties (Van Marle 1994). Put differently, a theory of linguistic relatedness should be based on the investigation of the way in which linguistic entities display similarities in their behaviour and/or in their direct formal and semantic characteristics.

3.

Syntagmatics versus paradigmatics

Remarkable about linguistic theories is, that in general they concentrate on either the syntagmatic or the paradigmatic axis of language. This practice may have different origins. First, it may well be that paradigmatic and syntagmatic forces are not equally important in each sub-domain of a language. For instance, as its name already suggests, in syntax syntagmatic forces seem to be much more prominent than their paradigmatic counterparts. This is not to say, of course, that in syntax paradigmatic forces are completely absent but they may be relatively marginal. The relationship between an active sentence and its passive counterpart, for instance, is paradigmatic in nature, but there can be no doubt that many syntactic phenomena display a predominantly syntagmatic character. Issues relating to word order, for instance, and phenomena such as government and binding are typically syntagmatic in nature. Second, in morphology one is faced with the problem that the relative importance attached to either the syntagmatic or the paradigmatic relationships is to a large extent determined by the fact whether it is the morpheme or the word that is considered the basic unit of language (cf. Art. 26). As soon as it is the morpheme that is chosen ⫺ as is the case in American Structuralism (cf. Art. 19) as well as in many morphological studies with a generative orientation ⫺ one can hardly avoid to primarily concentrate on syntagmatic issues, such as the slots that morphemes may occupy within a given template. In contrast to such morpheme-based approaches, in linguistic traditions in which the word is considered the basic unit, it is only natural to consider the paradigmatic axis to be of primary importance. In order to come to grips with the above, consider the following example. In a morpheme-based theory, a form such as girls is split up into

227


two morphemes (girl- and -s), and the theory aims at uncovering the distribution of both elements. In a word-based theory, however, the inclination to split up girls into smaller entities is little prominent at best (while in some theories it is even completely refrained from). In such a theory, morphology concentrates on the characterization of the relationship between the word girls and the word girl and the relationship between girls and other plural forms such as boys, cats etc. Within the realm of morphology, to put it differently, the value attached to paradigmatics or syntagmatics is to a large extent dependent on whether one opts for the word or for the morpheme as basic unit of morphological structure. Third, another element contributing to the fact that linguistic theories generally concentrate on either the paradigmatic or on the syntagmatic axis is the orientation of these theories themselves. In Prague Structuralism, for instance, focus was on phoneme systems, the internal structure of which was defined in terms of different kinds of oppositions, and note, by the way, that the concept of opposition is paradigmatic par excellence. Clearly, the extrapolation of these views to grammar leads to the setting-up of paradigmatically determined classes of grammatical entities. Evidently, this practice underlies the Prague School’s interest in case systems and tense/ aspect systems. Similarly, in generative grammar focus is still by and large on syntax. In this case, too, there is a strong tendency to extrapolate the mechanisms used in syntax to morphology. Evidently, this leads to a syntagmatic conception of word structure, because of the fact that in syntax the part played by syntagmatic relationships is so prominent. This does also explain why in generative grammar the trend is dominant to opt for morphological theories which have the morpheme as basic unit of word structure. The fact is, that only by adopting the morpheme as basic unit, morphology can be approached in a predominantly syntagmatic way. It is this approach which leads to monographs with titles such as The Syntax of Words or Syntax below Zero. It is important to see that the general orientation of a particular theory has all kinds of consequences in relation to the question what are considered to be the basic issues of morphological investigation. In theories with a paradigmatic orientation affix order, for example, is not a topic of special interest. In such theories, affix order is considered noth-

ing but the direct result of properties of the relevant derivational patterns and the way in which these patterns may interact. Similarly, in paradigmatically oriented theories the interaction between word structure and phonology is likewise considered not to be of prime importance either. The relevance, for instance, of the distinction between stressneutral versus stress-bearing (versus stressattracting) affixes is discussed in a syntagmatic theory much more naturally than in a paradigmatically oriented one. However, other topics are much more easily broached within theories with a paradigmatic orientation, which, as we have seen, often opt for the word as basic unit. The distinction between existing and ‘potential’ words, for instance, is hard to come to grips with within a theory with a syntagmatic, morpheme-based orientation. The same holds for the related topic of morphological productivity. The fact is, that in theories which focus on the internal syntagmatic structure of complex words, the question whether a given type of morpheme combination can be extended or not, is largely irrelevant.

4.

Paradigmatics / syntagmatics and typology

In general, the efficacy of paradigmatic forces is most prominent in relation to words, which means that these forces are most prominent in the lexicon and in morphology. Before going into the diverse manifestations of the paradigmatic axis in the two linguistic domains in question (cf. 5), one other point should be stressed. As is well-known, languages may belong to different types (cf. Art. 115). On the basis of the way their morphological systems are structured, languages are often characterized as isolating (e.g. Chinese), agglutinating (e.g. Turkish), or fusional/inflecting (e.g. Latin). In isolating languages words are ‘invariable’, i.e. such languages are without morphology. In agglutinating languages words typically consist of long sequences of affixes. A second characteristic of these languages is that their morphological systems come fairly close to the optimal situation according to which there is question of one-to-one correspondences between form and meaning. That is, in such languages every affix tends to be uniquely linked to a specific grammatical or semantic property and vice versa. In fusional languages, finally, words cannot readily be

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IV. Grundbegriffe

segmented at all, irrespective of the fact that in these languages words are ‘variable’. In Lyons (1968: 189) this is put into words as follows: “Generally speaking, Latin words cannot be segmented into morphs; rather, they can only be segmented into morphs at the price of arbitrariness, inconsistency and the proliferation of allomorphs.” In addition, in fusional languages grammatical ‘endings’ ⫺ if they can be isolated at all ⫺ express a whole series of grammatical information. In a Latin form such as puell-arum ‘girlgen.pl.f’, for instance, -arum expresses both gender, case and number. Moreover, if one wishes to isolate a suffix -us in e.g. domin-us ‘master-nom.sg.m’ and consider it the ending of the nominative singular of the second declension, one is faced with the problem that a form such as vir ‘man(nom.sg.m)’ has exactly the same status (also nominative, singular, second declension). In this case, however, these properties cannot be linked to any potential ending whatsoever. From these brief remarks on language types it follows that the relevance of the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic dimension of word structure may vary from language to language, depending on the type of language we are dealing with. In fusional languages ⫺ i.e. languages in which words can only be segmented with great difficulty ⫺ the syntagmatic dimension of morphological structure seems to be little developed by definition. Put differently, the more fusional a language is, the more it relies on paradigmatic relationships. Consider, for instance, the nominal paradigm in Scottish Gaelic (cf. Tab. 24.1). In the so-called first declension, nearly all grammatical distinctions are completely based on differences in both the vowels and the consonants that the words in question consist of (Calder 1923: 81): Sing. Nom. bard Gen. baìrd Dat. ba`rd Voc.

Plur. Dual baìrd (da`) bha`rd bha`rd (da`) bhaìrd baìrd, bardaibh (a) bhaìrd (a) bha`rda

Tab. 24.1: paradigm of bard ‘bard’ in Scottish Gaelic

Evidently, in a system such as the above syntagmatic relationships are of little help if one wishes to define the characteristic properties of the forms in question. In consequence of the fact that the paradigm of bard hardly in-

volves any endings, the forms in question simply lack an internal syntagmatic dimension on the morphological level. Put differently, in cases like these the morphological system depends on paradigmatic forces nearly completely. In contrast to this, in agglutinating languages the syntagmatic dimension of word structure is much more important. That is, the more agglutinating a language is, the more it relies on the syntagmatic axis of language. Some aspects of the internal systematics of the Turkish word make this clear. In the Turkish verb various sets of affixes may be combined. In forms such as ver-iyor-du-m (‘I gave, I was giving’), ver-iyor-mus¸-um (‘I am/was, as they say, giving’) and ver-iyor-sam (‘if I give’), we have to do with a verb stem (ver-), followed by a so-called base ending (-iyor), a so-called projection ending (-du, -mus¸ and -sa respectively), and a personal ending (-m, -um; 1.sg). Except third person plural, all persons follow this pattern, as can be deduced from the following paradigms in Tab. 24.2 (cf. Nauta 1973: 55f.): 1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg. 1. pl. 2. pl. 3. pl.

ver-iyor-du-m ver-iyor-du-n ver-iyor-du ver-iyor-du-k ver-iyor-du-nuz ver-iyor-lar-dı¨ (*ver-iyor-du-lar)

1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg. 1. pl. 2. pl. 3. pl.

ver-iyor-mus¸-um ver-iyor-mus¸-sun ver-iyor-mus¸ ver-iyor-mus¸-uz ver-iyor-mus¸-sunuz ver-iyor-lar-mı¨s¸ (*ver-iyor-mus¸-lar)

1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg. 1. pl. 2. pl. 3. pl.

ver-iyor-sa-m ver-iyor-sa-n ver-iyor-sa ver-iyor-sa-k ver-iyor-sa-nı¨z ver-iyor-lar-sa (*ver-iyor-sa-lar)

Tab. 24.2

Evidently, what is going on here is, that in the third person plural the order of the personal ending and the projection ending is inverted. In the third person plural the personal ending (-lar) directly follows after the base ending, whereas the projection ending (-dı¨,

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-mı¨s and -sa respectively) follows after the personal ending. Note that this pattern is repetitive in the sense that the other ‘base endings’ ⫺ -iyor is only one out of a class of eight ⫺ display exactly the same pattern: in all persons the personal ending follows after the projection ending, except for third person plural where the projection ending follows after the personal ending. To give just one example with the base ending -ir and with the projection ending -di (Tab. 24.3): 1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg. 1. pl. 2. pl. 3. pl.

ver-ir-di-m ver-ir-di-n ver-ir-di ver-ir-di-k ver-ir-di-niz ver-ir-ler-di (*ver-ir-di-ler)

Tab. 24.3

It is clear that we are faced here with a purely syntagmatic phenomenon. In the case of third person plural (-ler/-lar) the order of the projection ending and the personal ending is crucially different from all other persons, which means that both suffixes do not show up in their regular slots. Since the issue of affix order exclusively relates to the internal make-up of words ⫺ all suffixes in question, so to say, are elements in praesentia ⫺, the Turkish example illustrates nicely the independent nature of syntagmatic forces in an agglutinating language. Another indication of the dominant part played by syntagmatic forces in agglutinating languages can be found in Turkish as well. A well-known construction in Turkish is the so-called izafet group (izafet means ‘annexation’), in which the possessive suffix of the third person singular (-I after consonants, -sI after vowels) plays a crucial role. Consider e.g. hafta son-u ‘weekend’ (lit. ‘week endposs.3.sg’), sokak kapı¨-sı¨ ‘house-door’ (lit. ‘street door-poss.3.sg’) etc. Interesting about these constructions in this connection is the behaviour of the possessive suffix. This suffix is retained before case endings (sokak kapı¨sı¨n-da, lit. ‘street door-poss.3.sg-loc’), but in a number of other cases it is dropped. First, the possessive suffix is dropped before other possessive suffixes, just as this suffix is not repeated in the case a third person possessor is indicated. Cf. sokak-kapı¨-sı¨, ‘house door’ vs. sokak kapı¨-m ‘my house door’ (*sokak

kapı¨-sı¨-m), and hafta son-u ‘weekend’ vs. hafta son-u ‘his weekend’ (*hafta son-u-su). Second, the element in question also gives way to the suffixes -lI ‘(provided) with’ and -cI (suffix forming personal names). Cf. Gece ad-ı¨ ‘the name Night’ (name of a poem) vs. Gece ad-lı¨ ‘with the name Night’ (*Gece ad-ı¨lı¨ ), su yol-u ‘water-conduit’ vs. su yol-cu ‘man responsible for water conduits’ (*su yol-u-cu). What this latter example makes clear is that in an agglutinating language like Turkish, affixes have a fixed position within the word. If the position in question is already taken, the suffix which occupies this position must be replaced if a rival suffix is introduced by a later morphological operation. Evidently, this directly points to the relevance of the syntagmatic dimension of word structure: in cases such as the above affixes appear to be linked to specific positions within the word, which means that these positions are defined with respect to other entities within the word. As said, this implies that these positions are defined in a syntagmatic way. Note that this kind of observations can also be made with respect to non-agglutinating languages, which is to say that in the morphological system of non-agglutinating languages syntagmatic forces play a role, too. Consider the past participle in Dutch. Dutch verbs have past participles formed by a combination of the prefix ge- and an ending -t, -d or -en. As far as the prefix is concerned, the following rule is in force: the prefix ge- does not show up if the verb has a prefix itself. That is, prefix verbs such as be-hangen ‘to paper, to hang’, ont-wikkelen ‘to develop’ and ver-mageren ‘to lose weight’ and also ‘inseparable’ verbs (with main stress on the verb stem) such as door-lopen ‘to pass through’, om-vatten ‘to enclose, to contain’ and overheersen ‘to rule over’ have past participles without ge-. Compare the past participles in Tab. 24.4: behangen ontwikkeld vermagerd door-lopen om-vat over-heerst

(*ge-behangen) (*ge-ontwikkeld) (*ge-vermagerd) (*ge-doorlopen) (*ge-omvat) (*ge-overheerst)

Tab. 24.4

The above data make clear that, also in nonagglutinating languages like modern Dutch, regularities of a syntagmatic nature exist. In

230

IV. Grundbegriffe

the Dutch verb there is only one position for prefixes; if this position is taken, the prefix of the past participle is omitted. Just as syntagmatic forces appear to play a part in the morphological system of non-agglutinating languages, paradigmatic forces may be operative in agglutinating languages (cf. 5 for an example of the latter). To conclude, in discussing the relative importance of paradigmatic and syntagmatic forces in word structure it should be taken into account that this may to a large extent be determined by the kind of language that one studies.

5.

Paradigmatic forces in morphology

As was indicated above, the level at which paradigmatic relationships seem to be preeminently operative is that of the word, either simplex or complex. However different words may be structured in various languages, it is the word which seems to be the basic building block of the paradigmatic axis (although, as we have seen, the role of the paradigmatic relationships may be considerably less prominent in agglutinating languages). In this section some phenomena will be discussed in order to illustrate the prominence of paradigmatic relationships on the level of the word. 5.1. Rival morphological categories The relationship between rival morphological categories is often paradigmatically determined in the sense that the so-called general case is operative in all cases where the related special cases are not. In other words, the morphological domains of the special cases constitute the paradigmatic impediments to which the general case is subjected (Van Marle 1985; 1986). Consider the following example taken from Dutch. In modern Dutch there are two productive plural categories, the special case in -s and the general case in -en. The domain of the special case is constituted by nouns whose final syllable contains a schwa which may be followed by l, r, m or n. In addition, nouns that are nonnative often pluralize in -s, too. As said, the main reason why these words are not within the reach of the general case in -en is, that they constitute the domain of the rival special case in -s. In other words, the special case in -s constitutes a paradigmatically determined curtailment of the related general case in -en. The efficacy of the general case ⫺ which we

expect to be operative in all cases where the related special cases are not ⫺ can nicely be illustrated with the help of non-native abstract nouns in -isme ‘-ism’. Contrary to what we expect, in modern Dutch nouns in -isme do not pluralize in -s, irrespective of their non-native character and the fact that their final syllable contains a schwa. Automatically, then, they come within the reach of the general case, meaning that modern Dutch nouns in -isme systematically pluralize in -(e)n, notwithstanding the fact that their segmental make-up is that of nouns with a plural in -s and irrespective of the fact that they display a distinctly non-native character. Evidently, this example illustrates the paradigmatically determined character of the efficacy of special cases with respect to their related general case. The main reason why Dutch words in -isme pluralize in -en is that they ⫺ unexpectedly ⫺ do not form part of the domain of the special case in -s. In its turn, this sheds light on the issue why words may be outside the reach of the general case. In many cases this seems to be the mere outcome of the fact that they are part of the domain of a paradigmatically related rival special case (cf. Van Marle 1986 for further details). 5.2. Allomorphy Another phenomenon where paradigmatic forces play an important role is allomorphy. As was pointed out in Van Marle (1985), certain types of allomorphy are clearly paradigmatically determined. A classic example is the behaviour of the Dutch nouns which have an irregular plural in -eren (ei ‘egg’ -eieren ‘eggs’; kalf ‘calf’ ⫺ kalv-eren ‘calves’; rund ‘cow’ ⫺ rund-eren ‘cows, cattle’; etc.). These nouns may have an irregular, augmented stem: eier-, kalver-, runder- etc. These irregular stems show up in both compounding and derivation, cf. eier-koek ‘sponge cake’, kalverliefde ‘calf love’, runder-gehakt ‘minced beef’ etc., and kalver-achtig ‘like a calf, playful’ kalver-ig ‘silly’ etc., respectively. Similarly, the occurrence of the linking vowel -e in Dutch compounds is paradigmatically determined, too. Only words which have a plural in -en may have a linking vowel in -e, meaning that in compounds words with a plural in -s never show up with this linking element. Recently, the phenomenon of allomorphy has been taken up again by Aronoff (1994) and Booij (1997) in order to emphasize the independent ⫺ ‘autonomous’ ⫺ char-

231


acter of morphological structure. Particularly Booij (1997) emphasizes that many patterns of stem allomorphy display a paradigmatically determined character. A particularly striking example is constituted by the socalled toponymic derivations in Dutch, formations which also make clear that the phenomenon of paradigmatically determined allomorphy is not restricted to a handful of irregular forms. Cf. the following examples: (1) (a) Amerika Chili etc. (b) Monaco Israel etc.

Amerikaan Amerikaan-s Chileen Chileen-s Monegask Israel-iet

Monegask-isch Israe¨lit-isch

In example (1) the toponyms are listed in the first row, the inhabitatives in the second, and the toponymic adjectives in the third. The analysis presented by Booij (1997: 11⫺14) runs as follows. The toponymic adjectives in -s or -isch are derived from a stem allomorph of the related toponym which is formally identical to the corresponding inhabitative. Put differently, each toponym has a stem that can be predicted on the basis of the corresponding inhabitative (to which it is formally identical). Evidently, this implies that the stem allomorphy of Dutch toponyms is paradigmatically determined. 5.3. The inflectional paradigm Another phenomenon which can only be appreciated within a framework in which the paradigmatic dimension of morphological structure is taken into account, is that of the inflectional paradigm (cf. Art. 62). The theoretical status of inflectional paradigms has been rather unclear for a relatively long period, irrespective of its time-honoured position in the study of the classical languages. Recently, the theoretical status of the inflectional paradigm is taken up in, among others, Bybee (1985), Carstairs (1987) and Wurzel (1984). The ‘reality’ of the inflectional paradigm, however, has always been part and parcel of historical linguistics. The fact is, that in many cases the inflectional paradigm is the locus of certain types of analogical change (particularly levelling; hence its name paradigm levelling). (Cf. 5.5 for other types of paradigmatically determined morphological change.) An example is the following. The preterite of the (irregular) Dutch verb binden ‘to bind’ is bond (singular), bonden (plural). The iden-

tity of the stem vowel in the preterite is the result of paradigm levelling as there can be no doubt that in an earlier stage the singular had a. Note that there is no question of a general, phonological change of a into o. That is, the change in question is restricted to the preterite of a specific set of strong verbs. Consequently, the only correct characterization of the above change is that a new singular is formed on the basis of the plural (and that, subsequently, the old preterite with a was ousted by its newly coined counterpart with o). Crucial to this levelling process is, then, that its scope can only be determined in terms of the inflectional paradigm. 5.4. Morphological creativity Another phenomenon which stresses the relevance of paradigmatic relationships is morphological creativity. As has been stressed in, among others, Sassen (1981), Van Marle (1985) and Becker (1990), the coining of new words is by no means limited to the addition of affixes. New words may also be paradigmatically coined by means of affix subtraction and affix substitution. Particularly substitution patterns may be prominent in the synchronic process of coining new words. In Booij (1989) it is pointed out that Dutch verbal compounds such as in Tab. 24.5: stofzuigen beeldhouwen bloemlezen buikspreken dwarsdrijven

‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to

vacuum’ sculpture’ compose an anthology’ ventriloquize’ be obstructive’

Tab. 24.5

are ‘analogically’ coined on the basis of the related compounds in -er or -ing. Cf. respectively stofzuiger ‘vacuum cleaner’, beeldhouwer ‘sculptor’, bloemlezing ‘anthology’, buikspreker ‘ventriloquist’, and dwarsdrijver ‘obstructionist’. This analogical pattern is still reflected by their semantics: the meaning of e.g. bloemlezen reads ‘to compose a bloemlezing (anthology)’. In addition, Booij claims, only in this way can it be accounted for that the verbal compounds are weak (but note that these verbs cannot always readily be inflected). However this may be, the related simplex verbs, i.e. zuigen, houwen, lezen, spreken and drijven, are strong. Another prominent pattern of affix substitution is discussed in Van Marle (1985: 264⫺ 285). Modern Dutch has two categories of

232 deverbal personal names: the neutral one in -er and the one of female personal names in -ster. The intimate relationship between both categories is illustrated by the fact that quite some formations in -ster can only be considered ‘remodellings’ of their neutral counterparts in -er, as a verbal base is simply lacking. Consider e.g. betweet-ster, kwakzalf-ster and reizig-ster, the female counterparts of betweter ‘know-all’, kwakzalv-er ‘quack’ and reiziger ‘traveller’. Since there are no verbs betweten, kwakzalv-en or reizig-en, the only potential bases for betweet-ster, kwakzalf-ster and reizig-ster are their related neutral counterparts in -er. Evidently, the fact that renders the above examples of affix substitution a paradigmatic character is, that they involve relationships between related morphological categories. These relationships indicate the paradigmatically determined character of morphological systems. 5.5. Morphological change A field, finally, where paradigmatic forces are particularly prominent is that of morphological change. As a matter of fact, all types of change that somehow or other exhibit an ‘analogical’ character involve a paradigmatic dimension. This can briefly be illustrated with the help of three examples, illustrating the well-known phenomena of back formation, adaptation and reinterpretation. Examples illustrating back formation are English cherry (from older cheris), Afrikaans vark ‘pig’ (cf. Dutch varken) and American Dutch mool ‘mill’ (cf. Dutch molen). The final s of cheris and the final en of varken and molen came to be associated with the respective plural endings -s and -en. Evidently, the change in question involves the association of the final element/elements of originally simplex cheris, varken and molen with the plural ending. This association supposes a paradigmatic relationship based on ‘identity of form’. Words that have the form of a plural, are interpreted accordingly, i.e. they are considered plurals. In many respects, morphological adaptation is a similar process, on the understanding that morphological adaptation involves a paradigmatic mapping which is based on ‘identity of meaning’. In Hindi English pickpocket has become pickpocketer, while French dragon ‘dragoon’ has become dragonder in Dutch. What has happened in these cases is that original pickpocket and dragon have been assigned the formal characteristics that

IV. Grundbegriffe

are typical of words with a similar meaning. Many personal names in English end in -er, and so do many Dutch personal names (-der being a phonologically determined variant). That is, the adaptation of pickpocket and dragon involves a relationship with other personal names in the system. Again, this relationship is paradigmatic in nature: in the case of adaptation it is based on semantic identity, and not on formal identity as is the case with back formation. In Van Marle (1978) attention has been drawn to instances of morphological adaptation with a slightly different character. In modern Turkish, the passive may be formed by means of either -Il, -In or -n. The distribution of these three suffixes is as follows: (a) all verbs take -Il, except for those that end in l or in a vowel, (b) verbs ending in l take -In, while (c) verbs that are vowel-final opt for -n. In Lewis (1967: 150) it is noted that “Just as some verbs take a doubly causative suffix for no obvious reason, so some take a doubly passive suffix”. All double passives involve a combination of -n and -Il. Evidently, what happened is, that the forms in -n are adapted to the general case in -Il, which resulted in double passives with -n-Il. It hardly needs explanation that the adaptation in the direction of the general case is paradigmatically determined, too. Moreover, this example makes also clear that paradigmatic forces may also be operative in agglutinating languages (cf. 4), irrespective of the fact that in truly agglutinating languages word structure may largely be determined by syntagmatics. Reinterpretation, finally, is a phenomenon which may adopt various forms. In the following, focus will be on the type of reinterpretation that is known as suffix telescoping. The tendency exists to reinterpret derivatives involving complex affixation as derivatives of a one degree less complex character. Consider Dutch danseres ‘female dancer’, which is usually considered the derivative in -es of neutral danser ‘dancer’, which in its turn is a derivate in -er of the verb dans-en ‘to dance’. However, there are facts which suggest that there is a tendency to reinterpret danseres as directly derived from dans-en, meaning that original -er-es has been ‘telescoped’ into the new suffix -eres. One argument in favour of this reinterpretation is that there are newly coined words with -eres that cannot readily be considered to be derived from a related word in -er, an example being stripteas-eres

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‘female striptease dancer’ (mentioned in Sassen 1981). The paradigmatic dimension of this type of reinterpretation is clear. A word such as dans-er-es is linked to a new base ⫺ the verb dans-en ⫺, which involves the setting-up of a new paradigmatic relationship. In Koefoed & Van Marle (1980) this kind of phenomena were characterized as ‘short cuts’ in the morphological system, the essence of which is the creative, paradigmatically determined, ‘anchoring’ of complex words in the system.

6.

Concluding remarks

In many respects the relationship between the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axis of language is unclear. This is not only due to the fact that for a long time the nature of the paradigmatic relationships as such has been rather obscure. Another factor which has no doubt contributed to the unclear status of both dimensions of grammatical structure is that linguists have failed to appreciate that the respective prominence of the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic forces is at least in part typologically determined. As was pointed out, agglutinating languages depend on syntagmatic relationships much more heavily than fusional languages. In addition, the study of the relationship between both axes of language is seriously hindered by the fact that linguistic theories tend to focus either on the paradigmatic dimension of language or on the syntagmatic dimension. That is, theories which are intended to be universally relevant, may have relevance to a specific typological species only. There have always been linguists, of course, who were fully aware of the ‘reality’ and the importance of the paradigmatic relationships. Many students of language change, for instance, have taken a keen interest in the relationships between elements in absentia, since any kind of analogical change involves, somehow or other, a paradigmatic relationship by definition. However, in the mainstream of synchronically oriented theoretical linguistics this diachronic insight has often been overlooked. On the other hand, linguists who concentrated on the paradigmatic relationships often neglected the syntagmatic dimension of language. In present-day morphological theory the discussion concerning the relative importance of both axes of language largely concentrates

on the question whether morphology is ‘amorphous’ (Anderson 1992), i.e. whether the notion of morpheme should be considered the basic building block of word structure or not. As was pointed out above, those linguists who consider the morpheme to be the basic element of word structure, opt for a syntagmatic approach, whereas those linguists who are not inclined to assign the morpheme such a central position generally favour a paradigmatic approach. There can be no doubt that this debate concerning the amorphous character of word structure is a crucial issue, indeed. As will have become clear, however, this issue is only one aspect of a much wider field of investigation: the precise relationship between the two axes of grammatical structure and their interaction with the typological characteristics of the languages under consideration.

7.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself. Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press Becker, Thomas (1990), Analogie und morphologische Theorie. München: Fink Booij, Geert E. (1989), “Complex Verbs and the Theory of Level Ordering”. In: Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1989. Dordrecht: Foris, 21⫺30 Booij, Geert E. (1997), “Autonomous Morphology and Paradigmatic Relations”. In: Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1996. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1⫺19 Bybee, Joan (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: Benjamins Calder, George (1923), A Gaelic Grammar. Glasgow: Gairm [reprint 1972] Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London: Croom Helm Koefoed, G. A. T. & Marle, Jaap van (1980), “Humboldtiaanse taalveranderingen, morfologie en de creativiteit van taal”. Spektator 10, 111⫺147 Lewis, Geoffrey L. (1967), Turkish Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press Lyons, John (1968), Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Marle, Jaap van (1978), “Veranderingen in woordstructuur”. In: Koefoed, Geert A. T. & Marle, Jaap van (eds.), Aspecten van taalverandering. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 127⫺176

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Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Marle, Jaap van (1986), “The Domain Hypothesis: The Study of Rival Morphological Processes”. Linguistics 24, 601⫺627 Marle, Jaap van (1992), “De studie van de paradigmatiek: een poging tot reconstructie”. Forum der Letteren 33, 18⫺28 Marle, Jaap van (1994), “Paradigms”. In: Asher, R. E. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. VI. Oxford, etc.: Pergamon, 2927⫺2930 Nauta, A. H. (1973), Turks voor Nederlanders. Deventer: Kluwer

Sassen, A. (1981), “Morfologische produktiviteit in het licht van niet-additieve woordafleiding”. Forum der Letteren 22, 126⫺142 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Payot [critical edition by Tullio de Mauro 1976] Wells, Rulon S. (1948), “De Saussure’s System of Linguistics”. Word 3, 1⫺31 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag

Jaap van Marle, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

25. Variation und Invarianz 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Einleitung Die Varianten Die Invariante Konditionierung Funktion der Variation im Sprachsystem Variation zwischen Sprachsystemen Zitierte Literatur

1.

Einleitung

Sprachliche Einheiten werden dadurch identifiziert, daß sie mit Einheiten auf unterschiedlichen Analyseebenen korreliert werden. Die Korrelation zwischen Einheiten verschiedener Ebene ist unterschiedlicher Art je nach den Ebenen, die zueinander in Beziehung gesetzt werden. Einheiten können in einer Beziehung ‘x bezeichnet y’ stehen, was für die Korrelation der semiotischen Ebenen, nämlich Ausdrucks- vs. Inhaltsebene, gilt. Einheiten können weiterhin in einer Beziehung ‘x ist eine Abstraktion von y’ stehen; eine solche Beziehung besteht z. B. zwischen einem Phonem und den ihm auf der phonetischen Ebene entsprechenden Phonen. Außerdem können Einheiten in einer Beziehung ‘x beinhaltet y’ stehen, vgl. die Beziehung zwischen einem Syntagma und den in ihm beinhalteten Morphemen. In diesem Fall korrelieren einfache Einheiten der einen Ebene mit komplexen Einheiten der anderen Ebene, hier eine einfache syntaktische Einheit mit einer Anzahl morphologischer Einheiten. Wenn nun, wie bei der Signifikations- bzw. Abstraktionsbeziehung, einfache Einheiten unterschiedlicher Ebenen miteinander korrelie-

ren, bestehen zwischen ihnen zweierlei Relationen: ⫺ unterschiedliche Einheiten derselben Ebene korrelieren mit unterschiedlichen Einheiten einer anderen Ebene; eine derartige Relation wird als Opposition bezeichnet, ⫺ unterschiedliche Einheiten derselben Ebene korrelieren mit einer einzigen Einheit einer anderen Ebene; eine derartige Relation heißt Variation. Variation ist dann die Relation zwischen sprachlichen Einheiten, die auf einer Ebene der linguistischen Analyse unterschiedlich sind, während sie auf einer anderen Ebene der Analyse als eine einzelne Einheit betrachtet werden. Die Variation ist also eine methodologische Größe. Sie ergibt sich aus der Korrelation zwischen unterschiedlichen Ebenen der linguistischen Analyse. Dementsprechend bezieht sich der Begriff der Variation also auf: (a) eine Menge von unterschiedlichen Einheiten derselben Ebene, nämlich die Varianten (s. 2), wie z. B. die lateinischen Morphe /re¯k-/ (in /re¯k-s/ ‘Könignom.sg.m’) und /re¯g-/ (in /re¯g-is/ ‘Königgen.sg.m’). (b) eine Einheit auf einer anderen Ebene, mit der alle Varianten korrelieren, nämlich die Invariante (s. 3), wie z. B. das Morphem {reg-} in Bezug auf die Morphe /re¯k-/ und /re¯g-/. Die Invariante wird in Bezug auf die Varianten als zugrundeliegend (s. Art. 51) betrachtet, da das Vor-

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25. Variation und Invarianz

kommen unterschiedlicher Einheiten auf sie zurückgeführt wird. Die Varianten werden als Realisationen der Invariante (vgl. Bauer 1988: 251⫺252; Trubetzkoy 2 1958: 36) in dem Sinne, daß sie unterschiedliche Erscheinungen einer konstanten Größe auf einer gegebenen sprachlichen Ebene sind, konzipiert. (c) Bedingungen (s. 4) bzw. Regeln, die das Vorkommen der einen oder der anderen Variante steuern; im lateinischen Beispiel ist das Vorkommen des Morphs /re¯k-/ phonologisch begründet, da es in der Umgebung vor stimmlosen Konsonanten (z. B. /re¯k-s/, /re¯k-t-um/ u. a.) auftritt. Die Beziehung der Varianten zur Invariante muß von der Beziehung des token zum type unterschieden werden. Während Variation ein Beziehungstyp zwischen Einheiten einer sprachlichen Ebene in Bezug auf Einheiten einer anderen Ebene ist, wird mit dem Begriffspaar token vs. type das einzelne Vorkommen einer Einheit vs. die Abstraktion aus allen ihren Vorkommen bezeichnet. Jedes einzelne Vorkommen eines gegebenen Lautes desselben oder unterschiedlicher Sprecher ist z. B. ein token, d. h. eine einmalige Erscheinung des Lautes, die a priori nicht vollkommen identisch mit den anderen Vorkommen sein kann, während unter type die phonetische Einheit an sich, unabhängig von den Eigentümlichkeiten ihrer einzelnen Erscheinungen verstanden wird.

2.

Die Varianten

Varianten sind Einheiten derselben Ebene, die eine Einheit einer anderen Ebene realisieren. Wegen ihrer Austauschbarkeit werden sie auf den verschiedenen Beschreibungsebenen als Allo-Einheiten (aus dem Griechischen a´llo ‘andere’) bezeichnet und ihre Beziehung ⫺ zumindest auf den formalen Ebenen ⫺ als Alternation (s. Hockett 1958: 272; aus dem lateinischen alter ‘der eine von zweien’). Verschiedene Typen von Variation lassen sich hinsichtlich der Art der Varianten unterscheiden; diesbezüglich sind ihr Status (s. 2.1) und ihre Beziehung zueinander relevant (s. 2.2). 2.1. Status der Varianten Varianten sind Elemente oder Paradigmen derselben Ebene. Die partiellen Synonyme de´fendu, interdit und prohibe´ ‘verbiet:part: perf’ im Französischen sind Elemente, die an derselben Stelle im Text auftreten (1a⫺c),

ohne daß sich die Bedeutung des sprachlichen Ausdrucks ändert. (1) (a) L’alcool est de´fendu. (b) L’alcool est interdit. (c) L’alcool est prohibe´. ‘Alkohol ist untersagt’. Außerdem können Paradigmen miteinander variieren, wie dies z. B. für die Subklassen der freien vs. klitischen Formen der Personalpronomina im Neugriechischen gilt. In Tab. 25.1 sind die beiden Paradigmen abgebildet; die entsprechende Invariante ist das Paradigma der Personen (hier im Singular/Akkusativ): Signifikatum ‘1.sg:akk’ ‘2.sg:akk’ ‘3.sg:akk’

Freie Form emeńa eseńa aftoń

Klitische Form me se ton

Tab. 25.1: Personalpronomina im Neugriechischen

Varianten können Elemente aller sprachlichen Ebenen und darüber hinaus überhaupt aller Beschreibungsebenen der linguistischen Analyse sein. Die Allophone sind Varianten auf der phonetischen Ebene, die Allomorphe sind Varianten auf der morphologischen Ebene, die Alloseme sind Varianten auf der semantischen Ebene, die Allographen sind Varianten in einem Schriftsystem u. a. (s. 3). Die Beziehungen der Allo-Einheiten auf den verschiedenen Beschreibungsebenen sind parallel; d. h. es bestehen grundsätzlich dieselben Typen von Variation (s. Anderson 1992: 13⫺ 14; Hjelmslev 1968: 98f.; Mel’cˇuk 1982: 121⫺ 122). 2.2. Beziehung der Varianten Die Varianten stehen in paradigmatischer Beziehung. Ihre einzige inhärente Eigenschaft ist ihre Beziehung zur Invariante (s. 3). Alle anderen Eigenschaften, die die Beziehung der Varianten in verschiedenen Fällen kennzeichnen, sind aufhebbar, aber dennoch relevant, insofern sich durch sie verschiedene Typen von Variation unterscheiden lassen. Die wichtigsten dieser Eigenschaften sind die Austauschbarkeit der Varianten (s. 2.2.1), ihre Ähnlichkeit (s. 2.2.2), ihre Selbständigkeit (s. 2.2.3), die Regelmäßigkeit ihrer Bildung (s. 2.2.4), ihre Graduierbarkeit (s. 2.2.5) sowie ihre Symmetrie (s. 2.2.6). 2.2.1. Austauschbarkeit Einheiten sind austauschbar, wenn sie in derselben Position vorkommen können. Austauschbar sind nicht nur Varianten, sondern

236 auch und par excellence die Einheiten, die in Opposition stehen. Eigentümlichkeit der Varianten ist jedoch, daß sie ohne Änderung der zugrundeliegenden Repräsentation (s. Art. 51) austauschbar sind. Die Liquiden [r] und [l] in der holländischen Kreolsprache Berbice (Guyana) sind in manchen Umgebungen distinktiv, z. B. [ruku] ‘riechen’ vs. [luku] ‘Kiefer’; in diesem Fall repräsentieren sie unterschiedliche phonologische Einheiten, sie stehen zueinander in Opposition. In anderen Umgebungen sind beide Laute ohne Änderung der Wortbedeutung austauschbar, z. B. [rupu] ⬃ [lupu] ‘rufen’; in diesem Fall stehen sie in freier Variation mit einer gemeinsamen zugrundeliegenden Repräsentation /Lupu/ (s. Kouwenberg 1994: 285). Vollkommen austauschbar sind Varianten, die in freier Variation stehen (s. 4.2.1). Bei der bedingten Variation (s. 4.2.2) ist die Austauschbarkeit beschränkt. Wenn die Variation semantisch, pragmatisch oder außersystemisch bedingt ist (s. 4.2.3), ist der Austausch in derselben strukturellen Umgebung möglich, wie dies z. B. für die französischen Synonyme mort ‘Tod’ und camarde ‘Tod’ (literarische Bezeichnung des Todes) gilt. Allerdings sind nicht beide Varianten in allen kommunikativen Situationen oder sozialen Subsystemen des Französischen gleichfalls verwendbar. In dem Fall, daß die Variation strukturell bedingt ist, ergeben sich aus dem Austausch der Varianten ungrammatische Einheiten, z. B. *[ix] statt [iç] im Deutschen. 2.2.2. Ähnlichkeit Im Prinzip müssen zwei Varianten keine Ähnlichkeit aufweisen. In einigen Fällen wird jedoch die Entscheidung, ob Variation vorliegt, nach dem Grad der Ähnlichkeit der Varianten, d. h. nach der Schnittmenge ihrer distinktiven Merkmale, getroffen. In Fällen komplementärer Verteilung (s. 4.2.2) werden Laute, die niemals in derselben phonologischen Umgebung auftreten, als Varianten desselben Phonems bewertet, unter der Bedingung, daß sie „akustisch, bzw. artikulatorisch miteinander verwandt“ sind (Trubetzkoy 21958: 44). Nach dem Kriterium der Ähnlichkeit werden die deutschen Laute [ç] und [x] als Varianten desselben Phonems betrachtet, während andere Laute, wie z. B. [h] und [n], die gleichfalls im Deutschen niemals in der gleichen Umgebung vorkommen, jedoch keine phonetische Gemeinsamkeit aufweisen, als unterschiedliche Phoneme betrachtet werden. Auf der semantischen Ebene

IV. Grundbegriffe

ist die Unterscheidung zwischen Homonymie und Polysemie parallel. In beiden Fällen werden mehrere semantische Einheiten durch denselben Ausdruck bezeichnet. Aus synchroner Sicht werden sie nach dem Grad der Ähnlichkeit der semantischen Einheiten abgegrenzt. Diejenigen Einheiten, die über eine gewisse Menge von gemeinsamen distinktiven Merkmalen verfügen, wie Japanisch yama ‘Berg’ ⬃ ‘Höhepunkt’, werden als semantische Varianten desselben sprachlichen Zeichens (Polysemie) aufgefaßt, während semantische Einheiten, die als völlig unterschiedlich empfunden werden, wie Japanisch kaeru ‘Frosch’ und ‘wechseln’, als Signifikata unterschiedlicher Zeichen mit identischem Signifikans (Homonymie) analysiert werden. In der Morphologie wird die Ähnlichkeit der Varianten nicht im gleichen Sinne als Kriterium zur Identifizierung von Variation verwendet. So werden Suppletiva (s. Art. 52), die geringe oder gar keine Ähnlichkeit aufweisen, nicht als unterschiedliche Zeichen, sondern als morphologische Varianten desselben Zeichens aufgefaßt (s. Bloomfield 1933: 215; Nida 21976: 44; Mugdan 1986: 34; Art. 46). 2.2.3. Selbständigkeit Die Beziehung der Varianten ist selbständig, wenn ihre Variation nicht durch Gesetzmäßigkeiten des Sprachsystems vorgegeben ist. Ergibt sich die Variation aus allgemein gültigen Regeln, so ist sie nicht mehr selbständig, sondern automatisch (s. Hockett 1958: 279⫺ 280; Art. 47). Allomorphie kann z. B. durch die Anwendung phonologischer Regeln entstehen. Ein typischer Fall sind Allomorphe, die sich durch externe Sandhi ergeben, wie die durch Liaison entstehenden Allomorphe /li/ (in /li para˜ / ‘die Eltern’) ⬃ /liz/ (in /liz a˜ fa˜ / ‘die Kinder’) des bestimmten Artikels les im Französischen. 2.2.4. Regelmäßigkeit Die Beziehung der Varianten ist regelmäßig, wenn ihre Unterschiede durch eine bei einer Menge von Einheiten anwendbaren Regel voraussagbar sind. Regelmäßigkeit (s. Art. 32) ist ein gradueller Begriff; sie entspricht der Anzahl der Einheiten, die auf die gleiche Art und Weise variieren (s. Hockett 1958: 280⫺281). Vollkommen regelmäßig ist die automatische Variation. Bei der selbständigen Variation unterscheidet man verschiedene Grade von Regelmäßigkeit. Die spanischen Allomorphe duerm- (in duerm-o ‘schlaf-1.sg’) ⬃ dorm- (in dorm-ıá ‘schlaf-pr‰t/imp:1.sg’) variieren nach

237


einer bei einer Gruppe von spanischen Verben (vgl. absuelv- ⬃ absolv- ‘absolvier-’, oder muestr- ⬃ mostr- ‘zeig-’) anwendbaren Regel der Stammalternation. In diesem Sinne zeigen diese Allomorphe einen gewissen Grad an Regelmäßigkeit. Vollkommen unregelmäßig ist dagegen die suppletive Allomorphie (s. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 110; Mugdan 1986: 35); die Beziehung der Allomorphe des spanischen Verbs ir ‘gehen’ hat keine Entsprechungen in der spanischen Verbmorphologie: v- (in v-oy ‘geh-1.sg’) ⬃ i- (in i-ba ‘geh-pr‰t/imp:1.sg’) ⬃ fu- (in fu-i ‘geh-pr‰t/perf:1.sg’). 2.2.5. Graduierbarkeit Die Beziehung zwischen den Varianten ist graduell, wenn sie sich in einer Abfolge hinsichtlich eines gegebenen Parameters anordnen lassen. Varianten, die graduell aufeinander bezogen sind, befinden sich auf einem Kontinuum. Beispielsweise sind die Allophone [i] ⬃ [i] ⬃ [j] des lateinischen Phonems /i/ graduelle Varianten, da sie verschiedenen Positionen auf dem Kontinuum des Öffnungsgrades besetzen. Artikel, Numeralia und Adjektive, die als alternative Strategien in der Dimension der Determination im Deutschen betrachtet werden (s. Seiler 1985: 436⫺441), sind graduelle Varianten hinsichtlich ihrer stellungmäßigen Distanz vom Bezugsnomen: (2) die zwei roten Kugeln Adjektive werden dem Determinatum unmittelbar vorangestellt, Numeralia werden den Adjektiven vorangestellt, aber den Artikeln nachgestellt, und Artikel weisen die größte Entfernung zum Determinatum auf. 2.2.6. Symmetrie Bei der Beschreibung der Variation stellt sich die Frage, ob die Beziehung der Varianten asymmetrisch oder symmetrisch ist, d. h. ob sich eine der Varianten gegenüber der anderen als grundlegend identifizieren läßt oder nicht (s. Art. 50). Bei der asymmetrischen Variation wird eine Variante als Basisvariante und die anderen als sekundäre oder abgeleitete Varianten betrachtet (vgl. Bauer 1988: 15; Bloomfield 1933: 164; Hockett 1958: 281; Nida 21976: 45). Die Asymmetrie der Varianten hat sowohl diachrone als auch synchrone Aspekte. Aus diachroner Sicht ist eine Variante grundlegend, wenn die anderen als ihre Ableitungen aufgefaßt werden können. Im haitianischen Kreol ist von den Varianten /sˇeval/ ⬃

/sˇival/ ‘Pferd’ und /sˇemiz/ ⬃ /sˇimiz/ ‘Hemd’ die jeweils erste grundlegend, da sie dem Herkunftswort im Französischen am nächsten ist (s. Hall 1953: 23). Im Wardaman (Nordaustralien: Non-Pama Nyungan) gibt es eine Reihe Wortformvarianten, die durch die Alternation y ⬃ w unterschieden werden, z. B. yibiyan ⬃ yibiwan ‘Person’ oder yibiyi ⬃ yibiwi ‘Vater’. Die Formen mit y können als Fernassimilation zum Nominalklassenpräfix y- interpretiert werden, die über zwei Silben hinweg stattfindet. Da die Formen mit w nicht abgeleitet werden können, werden sie diachron gesehen als Basisformen aufgefaßt (s. Merlan 1994: 52). Synchron betrachtet ist eine Variante grundlegend, wenn ihr Vorkommen im Vergleich zu den anderen weniger bedingt ist. Bei den russischen Verben der ersten Konjugation werden Velare am Stammende vor e palatalisiert, vgl. mog-u´ ‘könn-1.sg’ ⬃ mo´zˇ-et ‘könn-3.sg’. Da die palatalisierten Varianten in ihrem Vorkommen beschränkt sind, werden die nicht palatalisierten als Basisformen angesehen. Ein weiteres Kriterium für die Identifikation der grundlegenden Variante in Fällen regelmäßiger Variation ist die Voraussagbarkeit. Durch die Anwendung einer Regel auf die grundlegende Variante kann man die abgeleitete Variante voraussagen, aber nicht vice versa. Bei den Varianten /re¯k-/ ⬃ /re¯g-/ im Lateinischen (s. 1) ist die Variante /re¯g-/ grundlegend, da es voraussagbar ist, daß das stimmhafte /g/ vor Stimmlosen assimiliert wird (vgl. /re¯k-s/, /re¯k-t-um/ u. a.). Umgekehrt ist es nicht möglich /re¯g-/ aus /re¯k-/ abzuleiten, da es im Lateinischen keine Regel für die Verstimmhaftung von /k/ vor Stimmhaften gibt (s. /re¯k-s/ ⬃ /re¯g-is/ aber /lu¯k-s/ ‘Licht-nom. sg.m/f’ ⬃ /lu¯k-is/ ‘Licht-gen.sg.m/f’). In mehreren Fällen werden keine Kriterien für das Herausragen der einen oder der anderen Variante als grundlegend erfüllt, wie z. B. bei den Deminutivsuffixen -chen und -lein im Deutschen. Dann ist die Variation symmetrisch.

3.

Die Invariante

Austauschbarkeit, Ähnlichkeit, Selbständigkeit, Regelmäßigkeit, Graduierbarkeit und Symmetrie sind zwar Eigenschaften, die für die Unterscheidung von Typen der Variation relevant sind, jedoch keine Kriterien für das Bestehen von Variation zwischen sprachli-

238

IV. Grundbegriffe

chen Einheiten. Die Invariante ist weiterhin nicht die Schnittmenge der Merkmale der Varianten. Erstens werden Einheiten mit kaum erkennbaren Gemeinsamkeiten wie die Suppletiva als Varianten aufgefaßt. Zweitens läßt sich die Variation nicht anhand der Gemeinsamkeiten der Einheiten voraussagen. Die Schnittmenge der Phone [›] und [h] ⫺ nämlich die Merkmale [frikativ] und [stimmlos] ⫺ sind nicht entscheidend für die Tatsache ihrer Variation im Japanischen, da auch Phone mit denselben gemeinsamen Merkmalen, wie [s] und [h] im Japanischen, in Opposition stehen können. Die Varianten werden dadurch identifiziert, daß sie dieselbe Einheit einer anderen Analyseebene realisieren. Dieses gemeinsame Korrelat der Varianten ist ihre Invariante. Die Invariante wird als X-em bezeichnet, z. B. Phonem, Morphem (s. Tab. 25.2), was eine Operation von Abstraktion auf Einheiten wie Phon, Morph u. a. angewandt andeutet (s. Iturrioz 1985; 1986; Mel’cˇuk 1982: 120⫺122). Demgegenüber werden die Varianten als Allo-X in dem Sinne, daß sie abwechselnd die Invariante realisieren, bezeichnet. Variante Allophon Allomorph Allolex Allosyntagma Allosem Allograph

Invariante Phonem Morphem Lexem Syntagmem Semem Graphem

Tab. 25.2: Varianten und Invariante

Varianten und Invariante sind Einheiten unterschiedlicher Ebenen. Je nach den korrelierten Ebenen unterscheiden sich zwei Typen von Beziehung zwischen Varianten und Invariante: die Invariante befindet sich entweder auf einer Ebene mit semiotischer Beziehung (s. 3.1) oder mit Abstraktionsbeziehung (s. 3.2) zur Ebene der Varianten. 3.1. Die semiotische Invariante Bei Ebenen, die zueinander in semiotischer Beziehung stehen, befinden sich die Varianten auf der einen und die Invariante auf der anderen Seite des semiotischen Zeichens. Wenn mehrere Signifikantia mit einem Signifikatum korrelieren, liegt Polymorphie vor. Synonyme wie die deutschen Wörter Samstag und Sonnabend bezeichnen dasselbe Signifikatum, in diesem Beispiel denselben Wochentag, und in diesem Sinne werden sie als

alternative Signifikantia des gleichen Signifikatums betrachtet. Allomorphe wie die Nominalsuffixe (-n ⬃ -s ⬃ -e u. a.) im Deutschen werden gleichfalls anhand ihres gemeinsamen Signifikatums als alternative Realisationen desselben Morphems {plural} betrachtet. Ein anderer Fall von Ausdrucksvariation in Bezug auf denselben Inhalt ist das Kontinuum von extremer Ellipse bis hin zur maximalen Explizitheit im Sinne von Jakobson (1973: 37⫺38). Wenn umgekehrt ein Signifikans für mehrere Signifikata steht, spricht man von Polysemie bzw. Polyfunktionalität, z. B. dt. Flügel in den Bedeutungen Körperteil eines Vogels bzw. Konzertklavier. Variation in Bezug auf eine semiotische Invariante weisen auch andere semiotische Systeme auf. Polymorphie besteht bei graphischen Zeichen z. B., wenn mehrere Schriftzeichen den gleichen Laut repräsentieren. In der arabischen Schrift werden die meisten Schriftzeichen durch vier graphische Varianten je nach ihrer Position im Wort (wortinitial, -intern, -final und isoliert) realisiert. Polyfunktionalität in graphischen Systemen besteht, wenn mehrere Laute durch dasselbe Schriftzeichen repräsentiert werden, z. B. steht das v im Deutschen für /f/ in von und für /v/ in Vulkan. 3.2. Die abstrakte Invariante Variation besteht weiterhin in Bezug auf Ebenen, die in Abstraktionsbeziehung stehen. Die abstraktere Ebene ergibt sich aus einer Auswahl von Einheiten der konkreteren Ebene anhand ebenenspezifischer Parameter. In diesem Fall ist die Invariante eine Einheit auf der abstrakteren Ebene und die Varianten sind Einheiten, die die Invariante auf der konkreteren Ebene realisieren. Phonologische Einheiten sind beispielsweise eine Abstraktion aus den phonetischen Einheiten eines Sprachsystems. Unterschiedliche Phone realisieren dieselbe phonologische Invariante, wenn sie im jeweiligen phonologischen System nicht distinktiv sind. Die Invariante der phonetischen Einheiten [p] ⬃ [ph] im Englischen ist beispielsweise die phonologische Einheit /p/. Da Aspiration kein distinktives Merkmal im Englischen ist, ist die Unterscheidung dieser phonetischen Einheiten auf der phonologischen Ebene nicht relevant, und sie lassen sich also auf eine abstrakte Einheit reduzieren. Das Lexem ist als Basiseinheit des Lexikons eine Abstraktion der Flexionsformen, die ein Wort aufweist. So werden die Wort-

239


formen nehme, nimmst, nahm, nimm usw. im Lexikon durch die abstrakte lexikalische Einheit nehmen repräsentiert. Die Invariante entspricht hier einer Klasse von lexikalischen Elementen, die über eine gemeinsame Eigenschaft verfügen, nämlich die Zugehörigkeit zu demselben Flexionsparadigma. Die Abstraktion aller syntaktischen Konstruktionen, die dieselbe syntaktische Relation einführen, wird von Mel’cˇuk (1982: 120⫺121)

als Syntagmen definiert. Das Syntagmem {Numeruskongruenz zwischen Subjekt und Prädikat} wird im attischen Dialekt des Griechischen mindestens durch die folgenden Allosyntagmen bzw. syntaktischen Konstruktionen realisiert: den prototypischen Fall der Übereinstimmung des Numerus bei Prädikat und Subjekt (s. 3 a), die constructio ad sensum mit Kollektiva (s. 3 b) und die attische Syntax (s. 3 c):

(3) (a) to` pse˘ phisma egeńeto def:nom.sg.n Beschluß:nom.sg.n werd:aor.3.sg ‘der Beschluß ist verabschiedet’ (Lys. 13.56) (b) he¯ po´lis heı´lonto def:nom.sg.f Stadt:nom.sg.f auswähl:aor.3.pl ‘die Stadt hat ausgewählt’ (Xen. Hell. 3.3.4) (c) kala` eˆ¯ n ta` spha´gia gut:nom.pl.n sein:pr‰t.3.sg def:nom.sg.n Opfer:nom.pl.n ‘die Opfer waren gut’ (Xen. Anab. 4.3.19) Alloseme sind unterschiedliche semantische Einheiten, die in verschiedenen Kontexten durch denselben sprachlichen Ausdruck bezeichnet werden. Ihre Abstraktion ist ein Semem oder laut Jakobson die “Gesamtbedeutung”. Nach Jakobson (1936) hat der russische Dativ die Gesamtbedeutung “peripherer Status und Involviertheit des Referenten in die Handlung”. Diese Gesamtbedeutung ist eine Abstraktion der unterschiedlichen Anwendungen des russischen Dativs, wie der Dativ des indirekten Objekts, der ethische Dativ, der Dativ des entfernten Objekts u. a., die als kontextuell bedingte Instantiierungen betrachtet werden. In abstrakteren Fällen können die semantischen Varianten Instanzen einer funktionalen Dimension sein. Beispielsweise wird das Affix -me in Huichol mit unterschiedlichen Funktionen wie ‘Attribution’ und ‘Adverbialisierung einer Proposition’ verwendet, die dennoch als in geordneter Abfolge stehende Instanzen des Kontinuums der Nominalisierung aufeinander bezogen sind (s. Iturrioz 1990). Die semantische Variation wird durch Abstraktion analysiert, insofern die Varianten als unterschiedliche Kontextualisierungen einer semantischen Einheit beschrieben werden. In Fällen von Polysemie, wie dt. Flügel (s. 3.1), die sich nicht auf den Kontext zurückführen lassen, werden die semantischen Varianten ihrer Forminvariante gegenübergestellt. In der Graphematik werden graphische Varianten als Allographe eines Graphems

aufgefaßt. Grapheme stehen in Abstraktionsbeziehung zu Allographen, z. B. *f+ zu f ⬃ F, während Laute in semiotischer Beziehung zu Graphemen stehen, z. B. /f/ zu *f+ ⬃ *v+ im Deutschen. Auf der Ebene des Sprachsystems stehen parole und langue zueinander in einer Beziehung von Abstraktion. Nach der Auffassung des Sprachsystems von de Saussure ist die langue das “mode`le collectif” bzw. die Zusammenfassung aller individuellen Sprachrealisationen (s. Saussure 1916: 38).

4.

Konditionierung

Die Konditionierung umfaßt die Bedingungen, die das Vorkommen der Varianten steuern. Es gibt verschiedene Typen von Bedingungen: eine Variante kann entweder obligatorisch, optional oder ausgeschlossen in einer Umgebung sein (s. 4.1). In Abhängigkeit von den Bedingungen werden die Varianten unterschiedlich verteilt, z. B. schließen sie einander aus oder variieren frei miteinander (s. 4.2). Entscheidend für die Unterscheidung von Typen der Variation ist die sprachliche Ebene, auf der sich die Bedingungen befinden bzw. die Variation konditioniert ist (s. 4.3). 4.1. Bedingungen Eine Bedingung kann das Vorkommen einer Variante erfordern, ermöglichen oder ausschließen. Im Mandarin (Chinesisch) gibt es zwei Varianten für den Ausdruck des indirekten Objekts, wenn es dem direkten Objekt

240

IV. Grundbegriffe

vorangestellt wird: entweder wird es mit dem Formativ geˇi ‘geben’ eingeführt, oder aber ohne offene Markierung. Verschiedene Verben stellen unterschiedliche Bedingungen für

die Markierung des indirekten Objekts durch geˇi (s. Li & Thomson 1981: 374). Verben wie daì ‘bringen’ jı` ‘schicken’ und xieˇ ‘schreiben’ erfordern geˇi:

(4) (a) ta¯ daì-le yi ba¯o tańg geˇi Zha¯ngsa¯n 3.sg bring-perf ein Beutel Süßigkeit dat Zhangsan ‘er/sie hat für Zhangsan einen Beutel Süßigkeiten gebracht’ (b) * ta¯ daì-le Zha¯ngsa¯n yi ba¯o tańg 3.sg bring-perf Zhangsan ein Beutel Süßigkeit (Li & Thomson 1981: 374) Verben wie huań ‘zurückgeben’, jia¯o ‘lehren’ und fu` ‘bezahlen’ ermöglichen die Markie-

rung mit geˇi, können jedoch auch ein unmarkiertes indirektes Objekt regieren:

(5) (a) ta¯ huań-le yi wa˘n roù geˇi nı˘ 3.sg zurückbring-perf ein Schlüssel Fleisch dat 2.sg ‘er/sie hat dir eine Schüssel Fleisch zurückgegeben’ (b) ta¯ huań-le nı˘ yi wa˘n roù 3.sg zurückbring-perf 2.sg ein Schüssel Fleisch ‘er/sie hat dir eine Schüssel Fleisch zurückgegeben’ (Li & Thomson 1981: 376) Verben wie gaósu ‘sagen’, we`n ‘fragen’, und qia˘ng ‘stehlen’ schließen geˇi aus: (6) (a) wo˘ we`n-le ta¯ jı˘-ge we`nti 1.sg frag-perf 3.sg verschieden-cl Problem ‘ich habe ihn zu verschiedenen Problemen befragt (⫽ ich habe ihm mehrere Fragen gestellt)’ (b) * wo˘ we`n-le jı˘-ge we`nti geˇi ta¯ 1.sg frag-perf verschieden-cl Problem dat 3.sg (Li & Thomson 1981: 378) 4.2. Verteilung der Varianten Hinsichtlich der Konditionierung unterscheiden sich verschiedene Typen von Variation. Wenn die Varianten nicht konditioniert sind und in allen möglichen Umgebungen in gleicher Verteilung stehen, spricht man von freier Variation (s. 4.2.1). Wenn die Varianten konditioniert sind, spricht man von bedingter Variation (s. 4.2.2), die sich weiter in verschiedene Subtypen nach der Art der Verteilung der Varianten unterteilen läßt. 4.2.1. Freie Variation Wenn zwei Einheiten vertauscht werden können und gleiche Verteilung aufweisen, wenn also keine Bedingungen das Vorkommen der einen oder der anderen steuern, so sind diese Einheiten freie oder fakultative Varianten (s. Art. 49). Sprachzeichen, die in freier Variation stehen, heißen synonym. Im Indonesischen sind z. B. die Synonyme bisa ‘können1’

und dapat ‘können2’ in allen Umgebungen austauschbar. In Abb. 25.1 ist die gleiche Verteilung beider Varianten abgebildet. Die Extension ihres Vorkommens dehnt sich über die gleiche Anzahl von Umgebungen aus. alle Umgebungen I I

bisa dapat

J J

Abb. 25.1: Gleiche Verteilung

In strukturalistischer Sicht wird von freier Variation in Bezug auf die Konditionierung innerhalb des Sprachsystems gesprochen. Freie Variation besteht z. B. zwischen Lauten, die genau in derselben Umgebung auftreten und miteinander vertauscht werden können, ohne einen Unterschied auf der semanti-

241


schen Ebene hervorzurufen (s. Trubetzkoy 2 1958: 42). Weiterhin unterscheidet Trubetzkoy zwischen allgemeingültigen und individuellen sowie zwischen stilistisch relevanten und irrelevanten fakultativen Varianten. Die Zunahme des Interesses an außersystemischen Faktoren, die den sprachlichen Ausdruck beeinflussen, hatte die Betrachtung der Variation nicht nur aus struktureller Sicht zur Folge. So ist in diesem Rahmen die freie Variation auf die Fälle beschränkt, wo keine inner- noch außersystemischen Bedingungen das Vorkommen der Varianten steuern. Wenn jegliche Konditionierung aus der Domäne der freien Variation ausgeschlossen werden muß, so bleiben als fakultative Varianten nur alternative Einheiten, die derselbe Sprecher in der gleichen kommunikativen Situation anwenden würde (Fluktuation, s. Clairis 1991; Art. 49; nach Hockett 1958 “sporadic alternation”; nach Labov 1969 “inherent variation”). In einer extremen Ausprägung dieser Tendenz, vertreten von Wolfram (1973), besteht gar keine freie Variation, und alle derartigen Fälle werden als “code-switching” zwischen ko-existierenden Subsystemen behandelt. Die Feststellung von fakultativen Varianten entstehe dadurch, daß es der Theorie an Kategorien mangele, die sie konditionieren würden (1973: 2). In der Tat ist die freie Variation sowie die Konditionierung immer bezüglich einer gegebenen sprachlichen Ebene zu verstehen. So sind die indonesischen Synonyme bisa und dapat bezüglich ihrer Bedeutung fakultative Varianten, aber bezüglich ihrer geographischen Distribution sind sie bedingt, da in Malaysia hauptsächlich dapat verwendet wird. Dort sind weiterhin beide Varianten auch pragmatisch bedingt, da bisa dort geradezu als unhöflich gilt. 4.2.2. Bedingte Variation Die bedingte Variation wird in weitere Unterarten je nach der Distribution der Varianten aufgeteilt. Die Beschreibung der Typen von Variation anhand mengentheoretischer Begriffe wie Inklusion, Überlappung u. a. stammt von Bloch (1948). Die 3 Person Singular wird im Deutschen mit dem Suffix -t im Präsens, aber mit dem Suffix -e im Präteritum kodiert. In diesem Beispiel ist das Vorkommen der Varianten derart bedingt, daß in der Umgebung, in der die eine vorkommt, die andere ausgeschlossen ist und vice versa (s. Abb. 25.2); die Varianten stehen also in komplementärer Vertei-

lung und werden kombinatorische Varianten genannt. Präsens

Präteritum

-t

I

-e

J I

J

Abb. 25.2. Komplementäre Verteilung

Die anderen Unterarten, nämlich die inklusive und die überlappende Verteilung, sind eigentlich komplexe Typen, die sich aus der Kombination gleicher und komplementärer Verteilung erzeugen lassen. Indonesische Personalpronomina verfügen über freie und affigierte Allomorphe. Die freien Formen treten in allen Umgebungen auf, während die gebundenen nur in den Funktionen des Verbobjekts und des Possessors vorkommen (s. Sneddon 1996: 165⫺6). Dieser Typ von Verteilung, bei dem eine Variante nur in einem Teil der Umgebungen, in denen die andere vorkommt, möglich ist, heißt inklusive Verteilung (s. Abb. 25.3). Subjekt

Objekt I

Possessor

affigierte Pronomina

freie Pronomina

I

J J

Abb. 25.3: Inklusive Verteilung

Chinesisch verfügt über zwei Varianten für die Kodierung des indirekten Objektes (s. 4.1). Es wird durch das Formativ geˇi markiert oder es bleibt unmarkiert. Die Verteilung beider Varianten ist durch das Verb bedingt; manche Verben erlauben das Vorkommen der einen Variante, manche das der anderen, und manche das beider. Dieser Typ von Verteilung, bei dem jede Variante in einer Umgebung obligatorisch ist, sie aber alle in einer anderen Umgebung möglich sind, heißt überlappende Verteilung (s. Abb. 25.4). jı` I I

we`n

jia¯o

unmarkiertes IO

markiertes IO

J

Abb. 25.4: Überlappende Verteilung

J

242

IV. Grundbegriffe

4.2.3. Kovariation Ein besonderer Typ von Verteilung der Varianten ist die Kovariation, nämlich die ikonische Korrelation zwischen variablen Größen auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen. Varianten, die mehrfach konditioniert sind, weisen Kovariation auf, wenn ihre Verteilungen hinsichtlich der verschiedenen Konditionierungen parallel sind. Die alternativen Strategien auf der Dimension der Determination im Beispiel die zehn roten Kugel (s. (2)) stehen in gradueller Beziehung hinsichtlich ihrer Distanz vom Bezugsnomen. Adjektive weisen die geringste und Artikel die maximale Distanz auf (s. 2.2.5). Parallel ist die Verteilung der Varianten hinsichtlich der Aussonderung der potentiell determinierten Bezugsnomina. So determinieren Adjektive eine spezifische Untermenge von Nomina (z. B. determiniert das Adjektiv rot nur Gegenstände, die eine Farbe haben können), Numeralia determinieren eine größere Untermenge von Nomina (alle Individualnomina) und Artikel eine noch größere Untermenge (alle Appelativa). So entsteht die folgende Analogie (s. Abb. 25.5): “Das Potential eines Determinators für die Aussonderung eines durch das Hauptnomen bezeichneten Gegenstandes wächst mit der potentiellen Distanz des Determinators von Hauptnomen” (Seiler 1985: 438; 1991: 441⫺447). minimale Distanz mittlere Distanz maximale Distanz potentiell farbige Gegenstände Individualnomina Appelativa I I I

zehn

die

rot

J J J

Abb. 25.5: Kovariation

Charakteristische Fälle von Kovariation sind die Grammatikalitätsskalen, bei denen unterschiedliche paradigmatische und syntagmatische Parameter parallel variieren (s. Leh-

mann 1995: 164; s. auch Iturrioz et al. 1988). Die englischen lokalen Relatoren in back of und behind stehen in gradueller Beziehung hinsichtlich ihrer syntagmatischen Kohäsion (in back of ist ein Syntagma, behind ein Wort) und hinsichtlich ihres Skopus (in back of wird vor allem mit Gegenständen, die eine orientierte Konfiguration aufweisen, verwendet, während behind mit allen Gegenständen auftritt). 4.3. Arten und Ebenen der Konditionierung Die Beziehungen zwischen Varianten und bedingenden Faktoren in den in 4.2.2 eingeführten Beispielen sind unterschiedlicher Art. In Abb. 25.4 ist die Beziehung der alternativen Markierungen des indirekten Objekts und der Verben, die ihr Vorkommen steuern, kontextuell, d. h. die Varianten stehen zu den Bedingungen in einer Beziehung ‘x in Kontext von y’. In Abb. 25.3 ist die Beziehung zwischen einerseits freien und affigierten Pronomina und andererseits den syntaktischen Funktionen Subjekt, Objekt und Possessor funktional, d. h. die Varianten stehen zu den Bedingungen in einer Beziehung ‘x in Funktion von y’. Die Bedingungen sind auf allen sprachlichen Ebenen zu identifizieren. Die Verteilung der Varianten kann strukturell, also phonologisch, morphologisch oder syntaktisch konditioniert sein. Strukturell konditionierte Variation besteht in der Bestimmung struktureller Umgebungen, in denen die jeweilige Variante möglich, obligatorisch oder ausgeschlossen ist (ausführlich über strukturell konditionierte Variation s. Art. 47⫺48). Auf der semantischen und pragmatischen Ebene besteht die Konditionierung in den Konnotationen, die das Vorkommen der Varianten begleiten. Im Huichol wird der Plural durch fünf alternative Techniken kodiert, die nach den semantischen Eigenschaften der Nomina verteilt werden (s. Iturrioz et al. 1986). Im Samoanischen verfügen ergative Verben über eine kurze und eine lange Form, die synonym und in den meisten Umgebungen austauschbar sind. Die lange Form wird jedoch vorgezogen, wenn der Actor prominent ist, während die kurze Form ausgewählt wird, wenn die Affektion des Patiens im Fokus der Äußerung steht (s. Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992: 747⫺763). Die freien und klitischen Pronomina im Griechischen (s. Tab. 25.1) sind jeweils ohne Änderung der Satzbedeutung verwendbar. Die Auswahl der freien

243


Formen ist jedoch emphatisierend; ihr Vorkommen impliziert, daß die bezeichnete Person eine prominente pragmatische Funktion innehat, wie z. B. neues Topik, kontrastiver Fokus u. a. Die Varianten können weiterhin anhand von Faktoren außersystematischer Art, wie die kommunikative Situation und die soziale oder geographische Distribution der Sprachgemeinschaft, verteilt werden. Varianten, die von außersprachlichen Parametern konditioniert werden, lassen sich verschiedenen Subsystemen der Sprache zuordnen, d. h. sie gehören zu Paradigmen von Elementen, die Merkmale eines kommunikativen oder sozialen Verhaltens oder auch regionaler Ausdruckspräferenzen sind. Dadurch, daß Sprachsysteme von verschiedenen Sprachen in verschiedenen Situationen zu verschiedenen kommunikativen Zwecken verwendet werden, verzweigen sie sich in Allosysteme. Variation ergibt sich aus der Anwendung der Sprache in verschiedenen kommunikativen Situationen. Im Einklang mit den wechselnden Redekontexten entwickelt jeder Sprecher eine breite Palette von systematisch alternierenden Ausdrucksweisen. Aus diesem Grund hatte Labov (1966) für die Beschreibung phonologischer Variation vier Elizitationsumgebungen ausgewählt (a. spontaner Ausdruck, b. Interview, c. Rezitieren, d. isolierte Wörter lesen; s. 4). Labov kritisiert die Idealisierung einer homogenen Sprachgemeinschaft und einer die soziale Funktion ausklammernden Kompetenz und führt stattdessen ein pragmatisch orientiertes Modell ein, das der Fähigkeit der Sprecher zur Konstituierung von Redesituationen und zum situationsangemessenen Sprachhandeln Rechnung tragen soll (s. Labov 1969; Sankoff & Labov 1979). Die kommunikative Konditionierung kann Variation auf allen sprachlichen Ebenen steuern. Im Huichol weisen einige Lokativpräfixe zwei phonologisch konditionierte Varianten, nämlich mit Endvokal /u/ oder /È/ auf, wobei die Anteriorisierung in Assimilation zum ersten Stammvokal auftritt. Die Anwendung der phonologischen Regel ist weiterhin von Faktoren der kommunikativen Situation, wie Tempo u. a. abhängig (s. Go´mez 1997). Im Samoanischen wird ein Suffix, das lange Formen ergativer Verben markiert, in formalem Redestil als -ina und in spontaner Rede als -a realisiert (s. Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992: 745). Im mexika-

nischen Spanisch sind alle Varianten der Kongruenz in (7) möglich: (7) (a) … esta mujer, uno de los miembros ma´s conocidos … (b) … esta mujer, una de los miembros ma´s conocidos … (Siglo XXI, 6. 12. 94) (c) … esta mujer, una de las miembros ma´s conocidas … (d) … esta mujer, una de las miembras ma´s conocidas … ‘… diese Frau, ein der bekanntesten Mitglieder …’ Keine dieser Varianten kann streng genommen als ungrammatisch angesehen werden. Unterschiedliche Sprechergruppen ziehen die genus- oder die sexusorientierte Kongruenz vor, was wiederum ihre Einstellung gegenüber den gesellschaftlichen Strukturen widerspiegelt. Variation kann weiterhin geographisch bedingt sein. Im Chicano-Spanischen (SüdUSA) werden auf -a auslautende Maskulina des Standard-Spanischen (s. Tab. 25.3) dem Paradigma der auf -a auslautenden Feminina angeglichen. Standard-Spanisch el programa el problema el dilema el drama el aroma

Chicano-Spanisch la programa la problema la dilema la drama la aroma

Tab. 25.3: Geographisch bedingte Genusvariation

Die Invariante bei der geographischen Konditionierung ist das im Rahmen der strukturellen Dialektologie als “Diasystem” bezeichnete tertium comparationis aller regionalen Varianten. Angenommen, zwei Sprecher verschiedener Dialekte kommen in Kontakt, z. B. ein Sprecher des Jiddischen, dessen Dialekt die Opposition /i/ und /i/ aufweist, und ein anderer, dessen Dialekt diese Opposition nicht aufweist und nur über ein einziges Phonem /i/ verfügt, dann müssen beide Sprecher auf das Diasystem zurückgreifen können, um festzustellen, welchen Einheiten des eigenen Subsystems die Einheiten des kontaktierten Subsystems entsprechen (s. Weinreich 1986: 22). Auf die Fälle außersystematisch konditionierter Variation richtet sich die sprachliche Normierung bzw. Standardisierung, die die Reduktion einer Menge von Varianten auf

244

IV. Grundbegriffe

eine einzige beabsichtigt. Die als Standard ausgewählte Variante ist oft die grundlegende, entweder in diachroner oder in synchroner Sicht, oder auch in Bezug auf die Sprachpräferenzen einer prominenten sozialen Gruppe. Typisches Beispiel ist der Gebrauch der unbetonten Formen der Personalpronomina der dritten Person im Spanischen. Die Real Academia Espanõla schlägt die folgenden Varietäten als Standard vor: lo ‘akk.m’, los ‘akk.pl.m’, la ‘akk.f’, las ‘akk.pl.f’, le ‘dat.m/f’ und ‘akk.m (belebt)’, les ‘dat.pl.m/f’ und ‘akk.pl.m (belebt)’. Diese Varianten seien grundlegend in Anbetracht der Etymologie und des Gebrauchs unter modernen Schriftstellern. Im tatsächlichen Sprachgebrauch kommen jedoch auch andere Varianten vor, die als Abweichungen von der Standard-Variante angesehen werden. So wird der Gebrauch von lo und los im Dativ (statt le und les) als loismo bezeichnet: (8) lo regale´ un disco ‘ich schenkte ihm eine Schallplatte’ Ähnlich wird der Gebrauch von la und las im Dativ (statt le und les) als laı´smo bezeichnet: (9) la regale´ un disco ‘ich schenkte ihr eine Schallplatte’ Schließlich wird der Gebrauch von le und les für das Femininum oder das unbelebte Maskulinum im Akkusativ (statt la und las sowie lo und los) als leı´smo bezeichnet: (10) yo le vi ayer en la calle ‘ich sah sie gestern auf der Straße’ Diese Variation im Sprachgebrauch ist durch mehrere Faktoren bedingt. Sie entsteht aus einer systemischen Motivation, nämlich die Disambiguierung des Dativs, der nur über eine Form für unterschiedliche Genera verfügt. Die Konditionierung ist außersystemisch, die Auswahl der entsprechenden Variante wird nämlich von der jeweiligen kommunikativen Situation und weiterhin von den Präferenzen in der jeweiligen sozialen oder geographischen Varietät des Spanischen beeinflußt.

5.

Funktion der Variation im Sprachsystem

Ideale kommunikative Systeme sind solche, die maximale Ökonomie aufweisen, bei denen nämlich jede strukturelle Einheit einen konstanten kommunikativen Beitrag leistet.

Programmiersprachen sind z. B. so konzipiert. Natürliche Sprache folgt diesem Prinzip nicht immer, da sie z. B. Variation aufweist. In Sprachauffassungen, die eine Idealisierung des Sprachsystems anstreben, wird Variation als redundantes Phänomen betrachtet. So zielen z. B. Planungssprachen auf die Standardisierung von idio- bzw. soziolektalen Varianten ab und in der Grammatikographie wird oft von außersystemisch konditionierter Variation abgesehen. Im Strukturalismus wird die Variation des sprachlichen Ausdrucks der parole zugewiesen, und als irrelevant für das Sprachsystem (langue) betrachtet (s. Saussure 1916: 36⫺39). Insofern es funktionale Korrelate der Variation zu identifizieren gibt, sind sie in ihrer Konditionierung festzustellen. Die Beziehung zwischen Varianten und Bedingungen ist dialektisch. Das Vorhandensein von Bedingungen steuert das Vorkommen der Varianten und das Vorkommen der Varianten impliziert umgekehrt das Vorhandensein von Bedingungen. In diesem Sinne ist es die Funktion der Variation, eine konditionierende Umgebung zu implizieren, sei es ihre strukturelle Umgebung, sei es der kommunikative oder soziale Rahmen, in den der sprachliche Ausdruck eingebettet ist. Die japanischen Allophone [ts] des Phonems /t/ und [›] des Phonems /h/ treten vor /u/ auf, und dementsprechend signalisiert das Vorkommen dieser Allophone das Vorhandensein eines nachfolgenden /u/; sollte das Phonem /u/ bei der Sprachperformanz nicht akustisch identifizierbar sein, würde man es durch die Realisation des vorhergehenden Phonems erraten können (s. Trubetzkoy 21958: 47). Entsprechend der bidirektionalen Beziehung zwischen Varianten und Bedingungen hat die Beschreibung der Variation zwei Herangehensweisen, die einander ergänzen (vgl. Lehmann 1989). Aus synthetischer Sicht werden zunächst die Bedingungen festgestellt und im zweiten Schritt wird die Variation des sprachlichen Ausdrucks bei Vorhandensein dieser Bedingungen beschrieben. So hat Labov (1966) unterschiedliche Sprechsituationen hinsichtlich des Kontinuums der Aufmerksamkeit (a. spontaner Ausdruck, b. Interview, c. Rezitieren, d. isolierte Wörter lesen) festgelegt und dann sprachliche Ausdrücke in diesen Situationen von Sprechern der Low East Side in New York elizitiert, um die phonetische Variation unter diesen Bedingungen zu beschreiben. Bei der analytischen


Herangehensweise wird zunächst die Variation des sprachlichen Ausdrucks festgestellt, und dann werden heuristisch die Bedingungen ihres Vorkommens aufgesucht. Sankoff et al. (1978) beschreiben mithilfe ethnosemantischer Methodologie die Anwendung der partiellen Synonyme rester ‘bleiben’, vivre ‘leben’, habiter ‘wohnen1’ und demeurer ‘wohnen2’ im kanadiscen Französisch. Auf der Basis der Postulierung distinktiver semantischer Merkmale und Kriterien für ihre Feststellung im Kontext wird die Rolle von sozialen Faktoren bei der Anwendung der Synonyme in Interviews von Sprechern aus verschiedenen sozialen Gruppen aufgezeigt. Die Variation ist ein dynamisches Merkmal des Sprachsystems. Nach Meillet ist die Variation eine inhärente Eigenschaft der parole, d. h. jeder Sprecher entwickelt seine eigene Fassung des Sprachsystems. Aufgrund dieser de facto Diskontinuität der Sprachgemeinschaft findet nun Sprachwandel statt. Jedes Individuum vermittelt die eigene Variante und durch die Verbreitung individueller Varianten wandelt sich das Sprachsystem (s. Meillet 1951: 72⫺73; vgl. Swiggers 1986; 1991: 190⫺193). Erhöhte Variation manifestiert sich im raschen Sprachwandel, z. B. bei Pidgin- und Kreolsprachen, wobei unterschiedliche Sprachvarianten auf einem Kontinuum mit Polen der Ausgangssprache und der Kreolsprache koexistieren (s. Rooij 1995). Variation ist außerdem ein dynamisches Merkmal der individuellen Sprachtätigkeit, wie es sich z. B. beim Spracherwerb und bei diversen Sprachstörungen feststellen läßt.

6.

Variation zwischen Sprachsystemen

Unterschiedliche Typen von Variation ergeben sich aus dem Vergleich sprachspezifischer und universaler Einheiten bzw. Kategorien. Pike (1967) unterscheidet in diesem Sinne den etischen und emischen Standpunkt. Der etische Standpunkt umfaßt die in den Sprachen der Welt verfügbaren Einheiten und Kategorien; er ist also universell bzw. systemextern. Demgegenüber steht der emische Standpunkt, der die innerhalb eines gegebenen Sprachsystems funktionalen Einheiten und Kategorien umfaßt; emisch ist dann sprachspezifisch und systemintern. Demnach lassen sich dann auf das Sprachsystem bezogen zwei Typen von Variation unterscheiden: (a) Einheiten, die in der systemexternen Perspektive unterschiedlich sind, z. B. die

245 Laute [p] und [ph], können in einem gegebenen Sprachsystem Varianten einer Invariante sein. Im Englischen sind [p] (in space) und [ph] (in pace) Allophone des Phonems /p/, d. h. sie werden im Sprachsystem nicht unterschieden. Hier liegt dann Variation zweier sprachexterner Varianten bezogen auf eine sprachinterne Invariante vor. In anderen Sprachen (z. B. Altgriechisch oder Hindi) sind diese Laute unterschiedliche Phoneme, d. h. sie sind zwei unterschiedliche Einheiten, sowohl systemextern als auch systemintern gesehen. In diesem Fall wäre nicht von Variation die Rede. (b) Einheiten, die in der systemexternen Perspektive invariant sind, sind systemintern betrachtet verschieden. Eine Erzählung, die in einer gegebenen Sprachgemeinschaft als humoristisch empfunden wird, kann in einer anderen Sprachgemeinschaft eine vollkommen unterschiedliche Reaktion erwecken. Systemextern betrachtet handelt es sich hier um dieselbe Erzählung, aber in systeminterner Perspektive erfüllt sie jeweils unterschiedliche kommunikative Funktionen (s. Pike 1967: 43). Beim Vergleich unterschiedlicher Sprachsysteme lassen sich universale und variierende Eigenschaften feststellen. Die variierenden Eigenschaften können gegebenenfalls auf eine Invariante in der Form eines implikativen Universals angeordnet werden. Keenan & Comrie (1977) haben beispielsweise gezeigt, daß die Sprachen der Welt hinsichtlich der syntaktischen Funktion des Bezugnomens eines Relativsatzes im Relativsatz variieren. Dieser Variation unterliegt die Abfolge der syntaktischen Funktionen, die in Abb. 25.6 dargestellt ist. Wenn eine Sprache die Relativisierung eines Bezugsnomens mit einer gegebenen Funktion ermöglicht, dann ist auch die Relativisierung bei allen Funktionen, die links von ihr in Abb. 25.6 stehen, möglich. Subjekt > Dir. Objekt > Indir. Objekt > Obliquus > Genitiv > Bezugsobjekt der Komparation Abb. 25.6: Hierarchie der syntaktischen Funktionen

Varianten sind hier die in jeder Sprache verfügbaren Möglichkeiten. Die Invariante ist die Abfolge in Abb. 25.6. Jede sprachspezi-

246

IV. Grundbegriffe

fische Variante ist ein kontinuierlicher Teil dieser Skala und insofern realisiert sie die universale Invariante.

Jakobson, Roman (1973), Main Trends in the Science of Language. London: Allen & Unwin (Main trends in the social sciences 6)

7.

Keenan, Edward L. & Comrie, Bernard (1977), “Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar”. Linguistic Inquiry 8 (1): 63⫺99

Zitierte Literatur

Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 62) Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Bloch, Bernard (1948), “A set of postulates for phonemic analysis”. Language 24: 1, 3⫺46 Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York etc.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Clairis, Christos (1991), “Identification et typologie des fluctuations”. Bulletin de la Socie`te´ de Linguistique de Paris 86.1, 19⫺35 Go´mez Lopez, Paula (1997), La aplicacioń de para´metros de gramaticalidad al ana´lisis de la polifuncionalidad de exponentes espaciales de clases cerradas. Thesis doctoral, El Colegio de Me´xico Hall, Robert A. (1953), Haitian Creole: Grammar⫺ Texts⫺Vocabulary. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 43) [reprinted (1979), Millwood: Kraus] Hjelmslev, Louis (1968), Prole´gome`nes a` une theórie du langage. Paris: Minuit [orig. dänisch 1943] Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Iturrioz-Leza, Jose´ Luis (1985), Tipos de abstractividad: Su manifestacioń en la estructura de los lenguajes naturales. Universitat de Barcelona Iturrioz-Leza, Jose´ Luis (1986), “Lo´gica y ontologıá. Tipos lo´gicos, grados de generalizacioń y niveles lingüı´sticos”. In: Iturrioz-Leza, Jose´ Luis & Leal Carretero, Fernando (Hrsg.), Algunas Consecuencias Filoso´ficas de UNITYP. Univ. de Guadalajara, 129⫺154 Iturrioz-Leza, Jose´ Luis (1990), “Variation und Invarianz bei der formalen und semantischen Beschreibung von grammatischen Morphemen”. In: Akup 80. Köln: Universität zu Köln Iturrioz-Leza, Jose´ Luis & Go´mez Lopez, Paula & Ramı´rez de la Cruz, Julio & Leal Carretero, Silvia (1986), “Individuacioń en huichol, I: Morfologıá y semańtica de las clases nominales”. Funcion 1/2, 309⫺354 Iturrioz-Leza, Jose´ Luis & Go´mez Lopez, Paula & Ramı´rez de la Cruz, Julio (1988), “Localizacioń en huichol: Jerarquıás de paradigmas y series funcionales”. Funcion 8, 111⫺166 Jakobson, Roman (1936), “Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre: Gesamtbedeutungen des russischen Kasus”. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 6 [Nachdruck in: Jakobson, Roman (1971), Selected Writings II, 23⫺71]

Kouwenberg, Silvia (1994), A Grammar of Berbice Dutch Creole. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter Labov, W[illiam] (1966), The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics Labov, W[illiam] (1969), “Contraction, Deletion and Inherent Variability of the English Copula”. Language 45: 715⫺762 Lehmann, Christian (1989), “Language Description and General Comparative Grammar”. In: Graustein, Gottfried & Leitner, Gerhard (Hrsg.), Reference Grammars and Modern Linguistic Theory. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Linguistische Arbeiten 226), 133⫺162 Lehmann, Christian (1995), Thoughts on Grammaticalization. München, Newcastle: LINCOM (Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 01) Li, Charles N. & Thomson, Sandra A. (1981), Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Univ. of California Press Meillet, Antoine (1951), Linguistique historique et linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Klincksieck Mel’cˇuk, I[gor] A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics: A System of Formal Notions for Theoretical Morphology [revised and edited by Ph. Luelsdorff]. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44) Merlan, Francesza C. (1994), A Grammar of Wardaman. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Mouton Grammar Library 11) Mosel, Ulrike & Hovdhaugen, Even (1992), Samoan Reference Grammar. Oslo: Universiteitsforlaget AS Mugdan, Joachim (1986), “Was ist eigentlich ein Morphem?”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 29⫺43 Nida, Eugene A. (21976), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: The Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Pike, Kenneth L. (1967), Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 24) Rooij, Vincent de (1995), “Variation”. In: Arens, Jacques & Muysken, Pieter & Smith, Norval (Hrsg.), Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins, 53⫺64 Sankoff, David & Labov, William (1979), “On the Uses of Variable Rules”. Language and Society 8

247

26. Word Sankoff, David & Thibault Pierrette & Be´rube´ He´le`ne (1978), “Semantic Fields Variability”. In: Sankoff, David (Hrsg.), Linguistic Variation: Models and Methods. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press, 23⫺43 Saussure, Ferdidand de (1916), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale, publie´ par Charles Bally et Albert Sechehaye. Paris: Payot [1972] Seiler, Hansjakob (1985), “Kategorien als fokale Instanzen von Kontinua: gezeigt am Beispiel der nominalen Determination”. In: Schlerath, Bernfried (Hrsg.), Grammatische Kategorien: Funktion und Geschichte. Akten der VII. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Berlin, 20.⫺25. Februar 1983. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 435⫺448 Seiler, Hansjakob (1991), “Invariance and Variation: The Dimensional Model of Language Universals”. In: Waugh & Rudy (Hrsg.), 437⫺449 Sneddon, James Neil (1996), Indonesian: A Comprehensive Grammar. London & New York: Routledge Swiggers, Pierre (1986), “La linguistique historique devant la variation: le cas de Meillet”. Recherches sur le français parle´ 7, 61⫺74

Swiggers, Pierre (1991), “Variation, Invariance, Hierarchy, and Integration as Grammatical Parameters”. In: Waugh & Rudy (Hrsg.), 185⫺220 Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (21958), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht [21939] Waugh, Linda R. & Rudy, Stephen (1991, Hrsg.), New Vistas in Grammar: Invariance and Variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 49) Weinreich, Uriel (1986), “Is Structural Dialectology Possible?” In: Allen, Harold B. & Linn, Michael D. (Hrsg.), Dialect and Language Variation. Orlando: Academic Press, 20⫺34 [reprinted from Word (1954) 10, 388⫺400] Wolfram, Walt (1973), “On What Basis Variable Rules?” In: Bailey, Charles-James N. & Shuy, Roger W. (Hrsg.), New Ways of Analysing Variation in English. Washington: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1⫺12

Jose´ Luis Iturrioz Leza, Guadalajara (Mexiko) Stavros Skopeteas, Erfurt (Deutschland)

26. Word 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Introduction Some fundamental distinctions The word in semantics and lexicography Defining the word-form The psychological word The word cross-linguistically Conclusion References

1.

Introduction

The linguistic unit that is most easily used by non-linguists is the word. When Polonius asked Hamlet what he was reading, the answer was “Words, words, words”. We exchange a few words with an interlocutor, take people at their word; actors learn their words, punsters play with words, and we speak of first words or famous last words. No other linguistic unit is as widely referred to in ordinary speech, and no other stands for the whole of language in the same way. Some languages, such as Yucatec Maya, have a single word (t’aan) to designate ‘word’, ‘speech’ and ‘language’. Yet for many years linguists have appeared remarkably reluctant to use the term at all, preferring to discuss

linguistic structure in terms of morphemes, phrases and sentences. To cite one extreme, but not atypical view, “despite unrelenting efforts over several millennia, no one has successfully defined ‘word’ in any linguistically useful way” (Beard 1981: 39; see also Bolinger 1963: 113; Martinet 1985: 74; Seiler 1964: 767). In this article, the reasons for this disparity between ordinary usage and technical usage will be considered. In particular, it will be shown that word is too ambiguous a term for easy use in a technical literature.

2.

Some fundamental distinctions

2.1. Lexeme and word-form There are two answers to the question “How many different words are there in a sentence such as (1)?” (1) She sees truth where I see beauty. In the first sense, see and sees are separate words because they have different shapes. Computer-generated concordances typically treat these two as separate items, as different words. In the second sense, see and sees rep-

248 resent the same word, which we might call the verb to see, but they are different shapes of this single word. It is this sense of word we use when we ask how many words of English a particular speaker knows. There are two tokens of this particular type (see Art. 25) in (1), and so there are two answers to how many words (1) contains. In morphological works published since the 1970s, this distinction is usually drawn as a distinction between word-forms and lexemes: see and sees in (1) represent the same lexeme, but are distinct word-forms (see also Art. 62). The lexeme can be variously defined as the minimal unit of syntactic analysis (Lyons 1963: 12), the fundamental unit of the lexicon (Matthews 1974: 22) or perhaps more simply as a dictionary word or abstract unit of vocabulary (Bauer 1988: 246). Some refinement of this notion will be made in 3.2. What is crucial is that a lexeme may be represented by one or more than one word-form. This use of the term lexeme originates with Lyons (1963). The term has been used by others with a variety of meanings (for a selection of different meanings, see, e.g. Goodenough 1956: 208; Hockett 1958: 169⫺171; Martinet 1985: 28). A word-form, on the other hand, is the orthographic or phonological form which represents a lexeme. The term appears to have been used first by Matthews (1972: 41), although the notion was current much earlier. The usual notation is to mark word-forms in italics, and this will be followed here. Although Lyons himself uses at least three different notations for lexemes, that most frequently adopted in other works is the notation introduced in 1968, by which lexemes are indicated by the use of small capitals. Using this notation, it can be said of (1) above that it contains two occurrences of the lexeme see (or simply, two occurrences of see), one in the word-form sees and the other in the wordform see. If see in (1) is compared with papal see we find the same word-form see representing different lexemes on different occasions. One of the word-forms which represents the lexeme is traditionally used to name the lexeme. This form is called the citation form of the lexeme (see further Art. 62). This is the way in which these words are referred to in conventional dictionaries. What is important to realise is that this name is no more than a convenient label for the lexeme: the lexeme

IV. Grundbegriffe

should not be equated with the word-form which happens to be used as its citation form, a confusion which seems to have been made in some discussions in the early part of the twentieth century (see e.g. Sapir 1921: 25f.; Bally 31950: 288). 2.2. Grammatical or morphosyntactic word In (2) and (3) there is a word-form chanted which, in both cases, represents the lexeme chant. Yet chanted in (2) does not have the same function as chanted in (3), as can be seen by comparing (2) with (4) and (3) with (5), where sang and sung are different wordforms. (2) (3) (4) (5)

She She She She

chanted the psalm. has chanted the psalm. sang the psalm. has sung the psalm.

To make this distinction, we need to be able to distinguish between chanted which is ‘chant-past’ and chanted which is ‘chantpast.participle’. That is, there is a third notion of word, intermediate between the wordform and the lexeme and distinct from both. It is the word as a place in a morphological paradigm (see Art. 24). For some scholars whose particular interest is in inflection, this notion is termed word tout court (Matthews 1972: 163), but it seems preferable to retain the general term as a superordinate or less specific term. The terms grammatical word or (because of the ambiguity of “grammatical word”, which can also be opposed to “lexical” or “content word”, see 2.3 and Art. 27) morphosyntactic word are now widely used in this sense (Lyons 1968: 196; 1977: 73; Bauer 1988: 244). Some authorities use the term lexeme only when the set of word-forms which can represent the lexeme is greater than one (Huddleston 1984: 2). For such scholars there is no lexeme because. Such an approach is tempting in an isolating language (see 6 below) where the citation form of the lexeme is the only word-form to represent that lexeme, and where the lexeme/word-form distinction is less obviously useful. According to the definitions given here, however, the distinction remains formally applicable in these cases too, even where the word-forms belong to onemember sets. 2.3. Function and content words Another distinction between types of words is the distinction between grammatical or function words on the one hand, and lexical

26. Word

or content words on the other (or, equivalently, between closed-class words and openclass words or functors and contentives). According to this distinction because is a grammatical word in that its function is purely grammatical, while dog has lexical content (Hockett 1958: 264; Hall 1964: 15). Some scholars use the term lexeme in the sense of content word (Martinet 1967: 16), though this is no longer usual terminology in English. For further discussion see Art. 27.

3.

The word in semantics and lexicography

3.1. Words and ideas The word has been defined by many scholars as a form with a particular meaning, and there has been a certain amount of dispute as to whether or not a word can be said to “have” meaning (Meillet 1921: 30; Gray 1939: 146; Rosetti 1947: 24; Bolinger 1963: 134; Miller 1966; Kra´msky 1969: 67). Many attempts at a definition of the word have made appeal to some notion of a meaning or an idea. Consider the definition from the Encyclope´die ou Dictionnaire raisoneé des Sciences, des Arts et des Me´tiers (1751⫺80; cited in Swiggers 1986: 3): “une totalite´ de sons devenue par usage, pour ceux qui l’entendent, le signe d’une ideé totale”. There are three major problems with this type of definition. Firstly, if Italian andiamo presents “une ideé totale”, why should Let us go, which means the same thing, be the sign of three total ideas? The same question applies to German das Haus as opposed to Danish huset, German Postamt as opposed to French bureau de poste, and an indefinitely large number of similar examples. There is simply no non-circular definition of a single idea. Secondly, many authorities give definitions of the sentence which are virtually identical. Consider, for example, “Sa¨tze sind die (kleinsten selbsta¨ndigen) Sinneinheiten der Rede” (Bühler 1934: 359). Thirdly, it is not clear that a word like of can be said to indicate “a total idea”, while on the other side of the coin a formative such as form within a word such as formalizations might well be taken to indicate a total idea. While it is clear that words are carriers of meaning, they are neither the minimal carriers of meaning nor the largest meaning-bearing units. It thus seems to be the case that

249 without some more exact delimitation meaning cannot be used to give a precise definition to the term word. 3.2. Complex lexical structures For some authorities, idiomatic phrases such as red herring or take the biscuit are lexemes. This type of lexeme is sometimes called a phrasal lexeme (Lyons 1977: 23). Others, however, object to this usage. If take the biscuit is a different lexeme from take, why do we find the irregular form took in the past tense of take the biscuit as well as in the past tense of take? We must have the same element in take at some level. For some, that level would be a (redefined) morpheme (Aronoff 1976: 14f.); for others the lexeme, having an appropriate set of word-forms (Matthews 1974: 34). Supporting this second view is the fact that take the biscuit has a parallel syntactic structure to a phrase like take a holiday, but has a non-compositional semantic reading, and the fact that its representatives are inflected internally, which is otherwise not true of lexemes in English. A distinction in terminology for referring to take and the phrase take the biscuit is clearly desirable. An expression like take the biscuit, as well as a lexeme, has been variously termed an idiom, or a phraseme. More recent terminology includes such constructions under the heading of listeme (Di Sciullo & Williams 1987). A listeme may be defined as any unit whose meaning is not derivable by rule from the meanings of its parts, thus any meaningful unit which has to be memorized (Di Sciullo & Williams 1987: 3). While many lexemes are also listemes, not all of them are. For example, in the sentence The multiverse is full of little dimensionettes, playstreets of creation (Pratchett 1989: 233) there is a lexeme dimensionette, which can be represented by two distinct word-forms, dimensionette and dimensionettes, and whose meaning is totally predictable from the meanings of its parts. dimensionette is thus a lexeme, but not a listeme. Conversely, in the terminology adopted here, take the biscuit is not a lexeme, it is composed of three lexemes, but its meaning is not predictable, and it is thus a listeme. Lexeme and listeme define intersecting sets, although in prototypical cases lexeme and listeme coincide. Given this distinction, the definitions of a lexeme given earlier (2.1) cannot be maintained. A lexeme has to be defined as a unit of vocabulary which may be realized by a set of one or more grammatical words.

250 The term lexical item (Beard 1981: 45) or lexical unit (Zgusta 1971) may be used as a neutral term to refer to any lexeme or listeme. This definition of the lexeme, however, implies that compounds are lexemes. Corresponding to a lexeme boyfriend there are the inflectional forms boyfriend and boyfriends. Compounds provide problems for the notion of a word. Various scholars comment on the apparent inconsistency of having a word (in whatever sense) which is made up of words (Beard 1981: 42; Herbermann 1981: 124 n). Some authorities try to avoid such paradoxes by arguing that a lexeme like boyfriend is made up not of two words, but of two stems (see Art. 42), which is why a fully inflected word-form cannot occur in the modifier position (*boysfriends is not possible) and why in a language like Latin we find obligatorily bound stems in the equivalent position (liquefacio ‘melt-make:1.sg (dissolve)’ where liqueis a stem of liquesco ‘melt’). This is only a partial answer. Since stems are representative of lexemes without full specification of inflectional categories, there appear still to be lexemes which contain (however indirectly) other lexemes. There are also items such as Dutch huizenrij ‘houses row’, Italian portalettere ‘carry letters (postman)’, English suggestions box where internal inflections are found. These have sometimes been called Zusammenrückungen ‘squashing-togethers’ as opposed to Zusammensetzungen ‘compounds’ in German (Fox 1990: 140) in an attempt at a terminological solution to the problem. There is no equivalent English terminology, and even in German the terminology has been used to cover a range of disparate phenomena (Fleischer 1975: 61⫺63). There are three basic reasons for calling compounds words. Firstly, they have the same function as other words in referring to entities, so that the compound parson bird refers to that particular type of bird in the same way as does tui, which is synonymous with it. Secondly, their meaning is frequently specialized or non-compositional: blackmail, which appears formally to contain black and mail, does not clearly contain either of these elements semantically. That is, in the terminology that has been presented here, such items are listemes. Thirdly, they are lexemes because they are represented by a set of one or more word-forms. It is not clear why there should be any contradiction involved in finding lexemes which have representatives of other lexemes

IV. Grundbegriffe

in their make-up. The major problem comes with word-forms. Given the definition provided in 2.1, there is no reason why actual word-forms should not contain other potential word-forms. Other definitions, however, focus on the word-form as the smallest potentially independent unit (see below 4.3 and Art. 62), and against a background of such definitions there are indeed paradoxical implications. 3.3. Problems with word-lists For the lexicographer, the set containing lexemes and listemes provides the basis of a word-list. Since the set of lexemes is open, no dictionary can ever give a full listing of the lexical items (see Art. 80) of a given language, but must always provide a selection. A major problem for the lexicographer is provided by the distinction between homonymy and polysemy. We speak of homonymy when two lexemes share the same word-forms (this definition follows Lyons 1977: 22, but is also a definition which has value in lexicography). We speak of polysemy when a single lexeme has two (or more) distinguishable meanings. There is no generally agreed criterion for distinguishing between the two. ear ‘organ of hearing’ and ear ‘spike of corn’ may be treated as two distinct lexemes (ear1 and ear2), and usually are in real dictionaries on the basis of distinct etymologies, although diachronic information should not in principle be used to determine synchronic linguistic structure. On the other hand, many speakers feel that an ear of corn is called that because it resembles the ear on someone’s head, and implicitly treat ear as a single polysemous lexeme. In the writing of any dictionary, a decision has to be taken as to how to distinguish between these two. Although homonymy may be defined as the case where two lexemes have identical wordforms for all of their grammatical words (Lyons 1977: 22), homographic citation forms of the lexemes are all that is required to raise problems for the lexicographer. There seems, in practical terms, to be a cline from pairs like lead1 ‘the metal’ and lead2 ‘to take’, which almost everyone would take as distinct lexemes (except perhaps in a word-list for Scrabble players), through ear1 and ear2, to plateau1 ‘flat land’ and plateau2 ‘a stable stage in an upward progression’, which most people would treat as two aspects of the same lexeme. The distinction is as much practical

26. Word

as theoretical. For further discussion see Art. 171. The lexicographer, too, must decide whether or not to list derivatives and compounds as words separate from the bases from which they are derived. In essence this will be a practical decision based on the degree of institutionalization (see Art. 80) or lexicalization (see Art. 149) of the word concerned, rather than on any theoreticallybased notion of word. Correspondingly, the practice of lexicographers has no necessary implications for what the linguist wishes to define as a word (in any sense), or vice versa.

4.

Defining the word-form

Given the definition of a lexeme above as a unit of vocabulary represented by a set of one or more word-forms, and the definition of a word-form as a form which represents a lexeme, there is clear danger of circularity in definitions. Alternative definitions of the lexeme have been cited in 2, but have their own problems associated with them. Unfortunately, there is no alternative clear definition of the word-form. Rather, we find a number of criteria of various kinds which do not always define precisely the same entities. The main criteria will be outlined briefly in 4. We can begin, however, by giving an introductory definition of the word-form as follows: the word-form is a constituent of a sentence to which special status is given (Seiler 1964: 767; Bauer 1988: 54). The special status will be illustrated in what follows. 4.1. The orthographic word An orthographic word is usually defined as a unit which, in writing, is bounded by spaces on both sides (thus Hall 1964: 134; Bauer 1988: 7). This oversimplifies, in a number of ways. Firstly, it omits references to punctuation marks and the like. It is usually taken to imply that apostrophes and hyphens do not break words, while dashes (even if not printed with a space before and after) do (Mugdan 1994). For a rigorous definition of the orthographic word, such matters would need to be spelled out. Secondly, and more importantly, it assumes an orthographic system which marks the word in this way, which is not true of all. For example, Classical Greek and modern Thai run all words together, and it can be argued that Chinese written in characters does not distinguish be-

251 tween the syllable and/or morpheme and the word (for further discussion see Art. 175). Any definition based on spaces is, of course, useless for the large number of languages that do not have a standardized spelling system. Nonetheless, it provides an operational definition of the word-form which has the benefit of simplicity. The main problem it gives rise to, at least among the literate (and this includes linguists), is a reification of the word-elements thus marked, and a consequent expectation (which is not always met) that other criteria will delimit precisely the same units. This seems to imply some kind of psychological reality for the orthographic word which may, but need not, derive from purely linguistic structure (see 5 below). Despite such weaknesses, some scholars fail to find any other reality to which to attach the term word (Hall 1964: 134; Martinet 1985: 84f.). 4.2. Phonological word The phonological word is the word-form defined by phonological criteria. Various criteria can define the word phonologically (see e.g. Ullmann 1957: 47⫺49; Bauer 1988: 46⫺ 48). The most obvious of these are word stress or accent, vowel harmony and various sandhi phenomena. The point is that phonologists frequently need to make reference to a unit which is intermediate between the minimal sign and the phrase as a domain for various phonological rules. For example, in some varieties of British English /r/-insertion after a number of vowels only takes place over word-boundaries, and not within the word. In these varieties, the word draw, for example, normally pronounced with no final /r/, gains an /r/ before a following vowel in draw /r/ in but not in drawing. In Russian, obstruents are devoiced in word-final position. In Nitinat, a word-final vowel is followed by aspiration (Swadesh 1934: 40). In English there is a host of allophonic rules which help delimit the word, including rules of aspiration, length and palatalization (Jones 1931). There is, however, no guarantee that these or other phonological criteria will delimit an item which is also isolated by non-phonological criteria, nor that various phonological criteria will delimit the same element. Some examples based on vowel harmony are presented below.

252 Vowel harmony is the agreement of phonological features of vowels within the boundaries of the word. For example, in Finnish there are two distinct series of vowels whose non-low vowels are rounded. In the front series there are /y, ø, æ/ and in the back series /u, o, a/. No vowel from the front series may occur in the same word as any vowel from the back series. The two extra vowels /i, e/ act as neutral vowels and may appear with either series. Thus we find words such as /auto-ssa/ ‘car-in (in the car)’ and /metsæssæ/ ‘forest-in’ (in the forest)’ where /-ssa/ and /-ssæ/ are allomorphs of the same morpheme conditioned by being in a back and front vowel domain respectively. Words such as */auto-ssæ/ are not possible. However, a single orthographic word such as kellonpera¨t /kellon-peræt/ ‘watch-chain’ counts as two phonological words in that the vowel harmony domain is each element of the compound, not the compound as a whole. In Chuckchee, on the other hand, compound words act as a single domain for vowel harmony, so that /pelvente-kopra-n/ ‘metal-netabs.sg’ contains an element meaning ‘net’ which in isolation would be /kupre-/ (Comrie 1981: 245). It is not clear that compound words in Finnish and Chuckchee differ in any aspect of their behaviour except this phonological one. In Finnish, the phonological word can be defined not only by vowel harmony but also by stress. The stress always falls on the first syllable of a phonological word. In compounds such as kellonpera¨t these two criteria agree that the compound is made up of two phonological words (though in equivalent Hungarian structures the two criteria would disagree, Szpyra 1989: 227). But in a sentence like Puhutko sina¨ englantia? ‘Do you speak English?’ the pronoun sina¨ ‘you:nom.sg’ does not receive a stress; it is only stressed if spoken in isolation. According to the stress criterion sina¨ is part of the previous phonological word; by the criterion of vowel harmony it is a separate phonological word. In brief, it is not clear that the phonological word necessarily corresponds to a morphological word, or that it can be defined coherently. There is also another sense in which the notion of the word is intimately linked with phonological structure. The notion of phonological contrast depends upon a prior notion of the word: Aspirated [th] and unaspirated [t] are not said to contrast in English, despite

IV. Grundbegriffe

the existence of pairs such as that’s tough [dætsthvf] and that stuff [dætstvf] because each of these is a phrase not a word (Rosetti 1947: 18; Bolinger 1963: 121f.). Many scholars are reluctant to give any unit which does not have phonemic structure the status of a word, whatever other criteria it may fulfil. Thus [?e?e?] signifying negation or [b] signifying coldness are not counted as words of English (Rosetti 1947: 24; Ullmann 1957: 52; Bolinger 1963: 122). Within Generative Phonology, the term phonological word has taken on a different, technical meaning (or, more precisely a range of such meanings). While such meanings are related to rules for the placing of accent, they do not necessarily coincide with what would be called a phonological word in other frameworks. Thus, in The book was in an unlikely place the phonological words are said to be the book, was in an unlikely and place (Chomsky & Halle 1968: 368). In a slightly different framework, compartmentalization is said to consist of three phonological words, parallel to combat mental elation (Aronoff & Sridhar 1987: 14). Phonological words in such frameworks are defined in terms of the constructs established within the theory, and the notions are not readily interpretable without the rest of the framework. 4.3. Morphosyntactic criteria Morphosyntactic criteria for the word-form are discussed in detail in Art. 40, to which the reader is referred. The most important of these are the criterion of a minimum free form (Bloomfield 1935: 178) and the criterion based on internal cohesion (for further discussion see Martinet 1949; Lyons 1968: 203f.; Kra´msky 1969: 17⫺40 and sources referred to there; Martinet 1985: 79⫺82; Bauer 1988: 50⫺53). Again, the criteria do not necessarily delimit precisely the same set of items. In general, criteria of internal cohesion, to the extent that they can be applied, delimit constituents, and the notion of a minimum free form delimits only those words which can occur isolated as phrases. Thus it is fairly easy to envisage situations when Lightbulbs might form a complete utterance, but much harder to envisage situations where Lightbulb might, although A lightbulb would be perfectly in order. Similarly, although most people would agree that puts is a word-form in She puts the meat on the table it is difficult to imagine a situation in which puts could form a complete

26. Word

utterance in actual language use as opposed to mention (Lyons 1977: 6). Thus we can conclude that the word-form is a constituent. More importantly, it is the minimal constituent that can be manipulated syntactically. While such a definition is helpful, it is not definitive, since it presupposes a definition of syntax in which words and not morphemes are the minimal units. Even if that problem can be circumvented, clitics (see Art. 41) provide a borderline phenomenon. In some languages, such as Greek and Sanskrit (Seiler 1964: 767) or Nkore-Kiga (Taylor 1985: 189), there are particles which have to occur after the first word-form in a sentence. These particles in effect give an operational definition of the word-form in these languages.

5.

The psychological word

Much is made in the literature of the fact that the word is a psychological unit, or a unit which has a certain psychological reality (Rosetti 1947: 17; Meeussen 1949: 295; Gudschinsky 1958; Kra´msky 1969: 71f.). This psychological reality (by which is meant that these constructs are involved in actual language processing by real speakers; see further Art. 162), is attributed both to lexemes and to word-forms, though the two need to be kept distinct. Where word-forms are concerned, one passage is often cited (Sapir 1921: 34) in which it is reported that illiterate North American Indians, totally unaccustomed to a writing system of any kind, could dictate a text “word by word”. This is superficially impressive, but appears to conflict with other evidence. One report (Havers 1931: 15) makes the point that semi-literates writing more familiar languages will frequently split words up apparently arbitrarily when writing. A French example is cited, Tu man verra du chaud cola for Tu m’enverras du chocolat. Children learning to write do not always put the word-breaks in the appropriate place (from the normative adult point of view), either. One five-year-old was heard to say that cartoon was a sequence of two words, for instance. Sam Goldwyn’s famous line: “In two words: im possible” comes inevitably to mind. But such cases are not the general rule, and children learning to write are, on the whole, good at knowing where words begin and end. Similarly, it is relatively easy to

253 show that the orthographic word does not always coincide with speakers intuitions about word-units. There are a number of cases even in highly codified languages like the European languages where native speakers are in doubt as to whether to write something as one or more words. Alright versus all right and insofaras versus insofar as versus in so far as provide simple examples from English, consider also Czech nadrobno ⫽ na drobno ‘in small pieces’ (Kra´msky 1969: 55) or Danish simpelt hen versus simpelthen ‘simply’. There are also isolated cases where the orthographic criterion gives rise to absurdities: consider the Los Angeles-San Francisco flight, which contains the orthographic word Angeles-San (Kucˇera & Francis 1967: xxi). For most adults in our society though, Kra´msky’s (1969: 71) comment needs to be borne firmly in mind: “The influence of the written language […] cannot be underestimated here”. Our notion of what is or is not a word is largely formed by our impression of the orthographic representations we see about us. These intuitions are not solely the result of our competence in speaking and understanding the language we use. The psychological reality of the lexeme can also be indicated by children’s behaviour. Every parent is familiar with questions of the form “What does X mean?” where “X” is a suitable citation form for a lexeme, or makes clear reference to a lexeme. To the extent that the citation form of the lexeme rather than any other word-form representing the lexeme is chosen in such questions (and specifically, to the extent that the word-form actually overheard in the utterance which gave rise to the question is avoided by the child) this appears to show a distinction between lexeme and word-form. Questions such as “What does -ation mean?” are exceedingly rare in comparison. That this is not simply a distinction between grammatical and lexical meaning is indicated by the fact that questions such as “What does to mean?”, where to is the infinitive marker, do occur. Where adult behaviour is concerned, we have the frequent observation that adult speakers recognize items as being or not being words (here meaning lexemes) of their language (see e.g. Aronoff 1983: 163). Presumably a better gloss would be lexemes of which they have experience in their language, but there is still an implicit notion that lexemes are somehow listed by the individual speaker. That in turn implies a certain psychological reality.

254

IV. Grundbegriffe

There clearly is not complete agreement among speakers about what constitutes a word of their language (either in terms of word-forms or in terms of lexemes), but the degree of agreement is striking. The likelihood that, in literate speakers, that agreement is imposed externally cannot be ignored, but there is sufficient evidence that it is not entirely imposed for it to seem likely that the word does have psychological status.

tion between the minimal sign and the word. If there were pure types, the answer might be negative, but there are no pure types and even the closest languages to the isolating “ideal” have compound words, that is lexemes which are made up of more than one morpheme. Many such compounds are listemes. For example, in Vietnamese, which is frequently taken to be a typical isolating language, we find compounds such as those in (6) (Thompson 1965: 129f.):

6.

(6) (a) daˆy wire (b) xe vehicle

The word cross-linguistically

Many scholars suggest that the word cannot be a linguistic universal (Lyons 1968: 181; Kra´msky 1969: 10; Matthews 1972: 147⫺ 156). But to consider this question properly, we need to distinguish between the various kinds of word, and various kinds of language. Firstly we need to foresee the discussion in Art. 115 and distinguish between isolating, agglutinating, fusional and polysynthetic languages. In an ideal isolating language every word would be invariable, and the word-form and the morph would be co-terminous. In an ideal agglutinating language there would be no need to distinguish between morpheme and morph, since there would only ever be one morph corresponding to any meaning, but the word-form might consist of several morphs. In an ideal fusional language, exponence of inflectional categories would be typically cumulative (see Art. 64), with the result that the morpheme-morph distinction would be of vital importance. For example, the suffix in the Russian word-form gazet-u indicates that the noun ‘newspaper’ is singular, accusative and feminine. The label “polysynthetic” is applied to a wide range of language types, all of which have in common that they have complex morphologies with large numbers of obligatorily bound forms which do much of the job done by syntax in the majority of the world’s languages (Fortescue 1994). There are no languages which have wordforms of only one of these various types. The question that needs to be asked for all of these types is whether there is a unit which is intermediate between the minimal sign and the phrase for that language type and, if so, whether distinctions between lexeme, wordform and grammatical word hold for that type. With the isolating type, questions have been raised as to whether there is a distinc-

the´p steel (‘telegram’) lw? ra fire (‘train’)

Such compounds show that there are lexemes in these languages which are distinct from minimal signs. Since the word-form is a representation of the lexeme, the word-form in such languages must also be distinct from the morph. The distinction between wordform and lexeme is not of any clear value in such a language, however, since every lexeme is represented by a single word-form. Within the agglutinating type, there are two potential problems for the notion of word. The first of these is whether there is a distinction to be made between word and phrase. The second is whether the distinction between word-form and lexeme is valid in such languages. The first of these problems arises perhaps even more clearly with polysynthetic languages (Uldall, cited in Gray 1939: 146f.; Wils 1949; Kra´msky 1969: 74), and the two types can be dealt with together in this respect. West Greenlandic, an Eskimo language, will be used as a language of exemplification, but the arguments are in principle generalizable. The problem here seems to be that what counts as a word in a polysynthetic language may look like a sentence when translated into a European language. For example, the West Greenlandic word in (7) could act as an entire sentence (Fortescue 1980: 261⫺2). (7) ungasin-niru-laatsia-ssa-qquu-q-aaq be:far-more-a:little-fut-undoubtedlyexcl-3. sg.indic ‘it will undoubtedly be somewhat further off’ Such a form is defined as a phonological word by complex processes of internal sandhi which do not apply over word-boundaries,

255

26. Word

and as a morphosyntactically-defined wordform by having an obligatory inflection closing it (Fortescue 1980: 260). While a word like that in (7) is a minimal free form and

also makes up a complete phrase, there are also instances where the phrase is made up of more than one such word (Fortescue 1984: 109f.):

(8) (a) inuit pikkursis-su-t people be:clever-intransitive-participle.pl ‘clever people’ (b) Nissi-p alla-nit ajuqirsussuti-sia-a name-relative other-abl.pl training-received-his ‘the training N. received from others’ Now, while it is clear that modifiers in phrases are themselves phrases (as is, indeed, necessary within the X-bar theory of syntax), at least inuit in (8) is a word that is not a phrase, and so a distinction must be drawn between the two constructs in West Greenlandic. The fact that a single word may take up a whole sentence is no more relevant to the description of West Greenlandic than the fact that parlo ‘I am speaking’ could be an entire sentence of Italian would be to our definition of the word in that language. The second problem concerned the distinction between lexeme and word-form in agglutinating languages. Typically, agglutinating languages have fairly productive morphology, with far fewer lexical gaps than would be expected in, say, English or German. If productivity is seen as a criterion for distinguishing derivation from inflection (see Art. 38), then it may not be possible to distinguish the two in these terms. If there is no distinction between derivation and inflection, then the definition of a word-form falls through, and we cannot necessarily distinguish lexemes from word-forms. In practice, productivity is far from being the only criterion which can be used to distinguish inflection from derivation (see Plank 1994 and references there; Art. 38), so that the extent of the problem has been exaggerated here. But if such a situation did occur, there would still be the most basic words (roots) and endings, and a lexeme/word-form distinction could be drawn in those terms. The distinction between the minimal sign, the word and the phrase is perhaps clearest in fusional languages (although not necessarily for all words in those languages). This is not surprising since the distinction was set up on the basis of such languages. However, as has been shown above, it does not only apply in such languages, but has application generally in language.

While the notion of grammatical word is in principle applicable to any language in which word-forms can be distinguished from lexemes, it is of clearest value in fusional languages where the morphological properties given exponence in the word-form are not clear from their form and/or the position of the morph in the word-form.

7.

Conclusion

The problems inherent in defining the word as a linguistic unit should not be minimized. A selection of them have been canvassed here. Nevertheless, it does seem to be the case that all languages have a unit which falls between the minimal sign and the phrase. That unit may not satisfy precisely the same criteria in all languages; it may be defined phonologically in some languages and grammatically or lexically in others. Distinct units may be isolable in terms of different sets of criteria. Distinctions between lexeme, wordform and grammatical word may be of greater practical value in some languages than in others. Nonetheless, there does seem to be such an intermediate unit which can fairly be called the word, and which can act as a domain for morphological statements. It is because of the fact that the criteria do not always overlap that linguists have been reluctant to use word as a technical term. If the word can be viewed as a prototype, this reluctance is not necessary.

8.

References

Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 1) Aronoff, Mark (1983), “Potential Words, Actual Words, Productivity and Frequency”. In: Hattori, Shiroˆ & Inoue, Kazuko (eds.), Proceedings of the

256 XIII International Congress of Linguists [Tokyo, 1982]. Tokyo: Tokyo Press, 163⫺171 Aronoff, Mark & Sridhar, S. N. (1987), “Morphological Levels in English and Kannada”. In: Gussmann, Edmund (ed.), Rules and the Lexicon: Studies in Word-Formation. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 9⫺22 Asher, R[onald] E. (1994, ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon; Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press Bally, Charles, (31950), Linguistique geńe´rale et linguistique française. Berne: Francke [1⫽1932] Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Beard, Robert (1981), The Indo-European Lexicon: A Full Synchronic Theory. Amsterdam etc.: North Holland Bloomfield, Leonard (1935), Language. London: Allen & Unwin Bolinger, Dwight L. (1963), “The Uniqueness of the Word”. Lingua 12, 113⫺136 Bühler, Karl (1934), Sprachtheorie. Jena: Fischer Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row Comrie, Bernard (1981), The Languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria & Williams, Edwin (1987), On the Definition of the Word. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 14) Fleischer, Wolfgang (41975), Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer Fortescue, M[ichael] D. (1980), “Affix Ordering in West Greenlandic Derivational Processes”. International Journal of American Linguistics 46, 259⫺278 Fortescue, Michael (1984), West Greenlandic. London etc.: Croom Helm Fortescue, Michael (1994), “Polysynthetic Morphology”. In: Asher (ed.), 2600⫺2602 Fox, Anthony (1990), The Structure of German. Oxford: Oxford University Press Goodenough, Ward H. (1956), “Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning”. Language 32, 195⫺216 Gray, Louis H. (1939), Foundations of Language. New York: Macmillan Gudschinsky, Sarah (1958), “Native Reactions to Tones and Words in Mazate”. Word 14, 338⫺345 Hall, Robert A., Jr. (1964), Introductory Linguistics. Philadelphia, New York: Chilton Havers, Wilhelm (1931), Handbuch der erkla¨renden Syntax. Heidelberg: Winter

IV. Grundbegriffe Herbermann, Clemens-Peter (1981), Wort, Basis, Lexem und die Grenze zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik: Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der Bildung komplexer Substantive. München: Fink Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Huddleston, Rodney (1984), Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Jones, Daniel (1931), “The Word as a Phonetic Entity”. Maıˆtre phone´tique 36, 60⫺65 Kra´msky Jirˇ´ı (1969), The Word as a Linguistic Unit. The Hague, Paris: Mouton Kucˇera, Henry & Francis, W. Nelson (1967), Computational Analysis of Present-day American English. Providence/RI: Brown University Press Lejeune, Michel (1949, ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Linguists [Paris, 1948]. Paris: Klincksieck Lyons, John (1963), Structural Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell (Publications of the Philological Society 20) [reprinted 1972] Lyons, John (1968), Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Lyons, John (1977), Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Martinet, A[ndre´] (1949), “Communication ećrite”. In: Lejeune (ed.), 292⫺295 Martinet, A[ndre´] (1967), Ele´ments de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Colin Martinet, Andre´ (1985), Syntaxe geńe´rale. Paris: Armand Colin Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology. A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of the Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Meeussen, A. E. (1949), [communication ećrite]. In: Lejeune (ed.), 295f. Meillet, A[ntoine] 1921), Linguistique historique et linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Champion Miller, Robert L. (1966), “The Word and Its Meaning”. Linguistics 28, 90⫺96 Mugdan, Joachim (1994), “Morphological Units”. In: Asher (ed.), 2543⫺2553 Plank, Frans (1994), “Inflection and Derivation”. In: Asher (ed.), 2600⫺2602 Pratchett, Terry (1989), Pyramids. London: Corgi Rosetti, A. (21947), Le mot, esquisse d’une theórie geńe´rale, deuxie`me e´dition revue et augmenteé. Copenhague: Munksgaard; Bucures¸ti: Institutul de linguistica˘ romaˆna˘ Sapir, Edward (1921), Language. London: Harvest Seiler, Hansjakob (1964), “On Defining the Word”. In: Lunt, Horace G. (ed.), Proceedings of the IX

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27. Lexical and grammatical meaning International Congress of Linguists [Cambridge/ MA 1962], The Hague etc.: Mouton, 767⫺770 Swadesh, M. (1934), “The Phonemic Principle”. Language 10, 117⫺129 [reprinted in Fudge, Erik C. (1973, ed.), Phonology. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 35⫺46] Swiggers, P. (1986), “Le mot comme unite´ linguistique dans la theórie grammaticale au dix-huitie`me sie`cle”. Indogermanische Forschungen 91, 1⫺26 Szpyra, Jolanta (1989), The Phonology-Morphology Interface: Cycles, Levels and Words. London, New York: Routledge

Taylor, Charles (1985), Nkore-Kiga. Beckenham: Croom Helm Thompson, Laurence C. (1965), A Vietnamese Grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press Ullmann, Stephen (21957), The Principles of Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell; Glasgow: Jackson (Glasgow University Publications 84) [11951] Wils, J. (1949), [communication ećrite]. In: Lejeune (ed.), 302 Zgusta, Ladislav (1971), Manual of Lexicography. Prague: Academia; The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 39)

Laurie Bauer, Wellington (New Zealand)

27. Lexical and grammatical meaning 1. 2.

6.

Introduction Formal correlates of the lexical-grammatical morpheme distinction Semantic structures distinguishing lexical and grammatical morphemes A general survey of grammatical meanings Grammaticalization and the lexicalgrammatical meaning distinction References

1.

Introduction

3. 4. 5.

The morpheme is the basic meaning-bearing unit of language (cf. Art. 46). In addition to categorizing morphemes by their formal properties, linguists have also attempted to categorize morphemes by their semantic properties, and to study correlations between formal and semantic categorizations of morphemes. The basic division that has been proposed for the semantic categorization of morphemes is the distinction between lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. A traditional morphological distinction, that between root and affix, is related though not identical to the semantic distinction. It has been assumed that the division between lexical meaning and grammatical meaning, and between root and affix, is clearcut. In fact it is not, and the chief reason for this fact is the diachronic process of grammaticalization, which causes root morphemes bearing lexical meaning to acquire grammatical meaning, generally becoming affixes in the process. Grammaticalization theorists have attempted to provide an overall characterization of the nature of the semantic change accompanying

grammaticalization (cf. Art. 145). The relevance of grammaticalization theory to the lexical-grammatical meaning distinction will be discussed in 5.

2.

Formal correlates of the lexicalgrammatical morpheme distinction

2.1. Affix vs. root as a formal correlate of the grammatical vs. lexical semantic division The distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning appears to be the semantic reflex of the formal morphological distinction between root and affix. A root is generally defined as the part of an independent word from which all its various morphological forms are derived, and an affix is defined as a morpheme that cannot occur except in combination with root (or stem; see Art. 53). For example, the Itza´ word t-in-wen-el ‘I was sleeping’ consists of a root wen ‘sleep’ and three affixes, t- durative, in- 1.singular and -el intransitive. Actually the term affix is too narrow. Apart from affixes there exist other processes which carry grammatical meaning, such as reduplication, ablaut, truncation, suprasegmentals and other nonconcatenative morphological combinations (cf. Ch. VIII). A useful term that includes all of these concatenative and nonconcatenative forms is dependent morpheme (Langacker 1987: 336, 488). This term captures the most plausible formal generalization covering nonroot morphemes,

258 namely that dependent morphemes can most perspicuously be described in terms of a process (in the simplest case, concatenation) applied to the root morpheme, and hence the form of a dependent morpheme is a function on the structure of the root or autonomous morpheme. However, this characterization of nonroot morphemes is not uncontroversial. 2.2. Problems in the correlation between root vs. affix and grammatical vs. lexical meaning Nevertheless, the correlation between form and meaning in this area, as in most other areas of grammar, is by no means exact. A purely semantic definition cannot be a sufficient definition, because there exist words that are generally agreed to indicate grammatical meaning but are instead independent words, not affixes. The term particle is used for such words (cf. Art. 40); the English article the is an example of a particle. Not all linguists would apply the term root to particles, because roots are generally thought of as forms to which inflections are applied, and many particles are uninflected. On the other hand, a purely morphological definition of the root-affix distinction may not be sufficient either. The distinction between compounding ⫺ the combination of two roots into a single word ⫺ and affixation ⫺ the combination of a root and an affix into a single word ⫺ rests on a distinction between root and affix that is not obviously defined in morphological or phonological terms (cf. Art. 37 and 38). There exist unclear cases from a morphological point of view; for example, is -man in postman, garbageman a root in a compound, or a derivational affix? Grammaticalization accounts for the problematic character of this example (see 5). The relationship between the lexical-grammatical meaning distinction and the root-affix distinction is not fully determined even in morphologically clear cases. Consider the meaning ‘to her’. In some languages, such as Djabugay, the root is the pronoun gulu ‘s/he’ to which is affixed a case suffix meaning ‘to’: gulu-nda [s/he-dat]. In other languages, such as Mam, the root is the preposition or relational noun ee meaning ‘to’, to which is attached a personal prefix meaning ‘s/he’: t-ee [3.sg-to]. Thus, given the meanings of two morphemes combined into a single word, one cannot always predict which meaning will be expressed as a root ⫺ i.e. is considered the lexical meaning ⫺ and which as an affix.

IV. Grundbegriffe

2.3. Closed class vs. open class as a formal correlate of the grammatical vs. lexical meaning distinction Another formal criterion is sometimes invoked to distinguish between lexical and grammatical morphemes, when the latter are not dependent morphemes. Words with lexical meaning, called content words, are said to belong to open syntactic classes, whereas particles or function words belong to closed classes. This is again only an inexact correlation to the semantic distinction. For example, in many African languages there is a closed syntactic class of adjectives, generally dimensional adjectives (e.g. short, long, big, small) or color terms, which few semanticists would describe as function words. Conversely, semantic role concepts are encoded as relational nouns in many Mesoamerican languages, and some linguists argue that these function words are actually part of the large open class of nouns, as a special subclass. However, this last example illustrates that it is not entirely clear what counts as a distinct (possibly closed class) syntactic category. A sufficiently fine-grained distributional analysis will distinguish a category of deictic motion verbs in English, for instance, which would be a closed class consisting of go and come; but this goes against intuition which would include these in the open class of verbs. This syntactic criterion is not usable without an independently justified set of criteria for defining syntactic categories.

3.

Semantic structures distinguishing lexical and grammatical morphemes

Having discussed the relationship between morphological form and lexical and grammatical meaning, the latter distinction itself can be discussed. This distinction itself has gone under several names. With respect to words or roots as opposed to affixes, the terms content word vs. function word, as mentioned in the preceding section, are found. In Chinese linguistics, where the language under study uses words to perform many of the functions carried out by affixes in European languages, the terms full roots (lexical) vs. empty roots (grammatical) are found. A number of semanticists have attempted to distinguish lexical and grammatical meaning (e.g. Talmy 1978; 1988 a; 1988 b; Morrow 1986; Croft 1990 a). In general, there is no agreement as to what semantic feature(s), if

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27. Lexical and grammatical meaning

any, distinguishes lexical from grammatical meaning. The semantic structures or properties that distinguish lexical from grammatical semantics tend not to provide a sharp distinction between the two. Some, though by no means all, semanticists have proposed that lexical meanings are encyclopedic in character (Haiman 1980; Langacker 1987). The encyclopedic view of lexical meaning is that there is no sharp dividing line between that part of a word’s meaning which is “strictly linguistic” (the dictionary view of lexical meaning) and that part which is “nonlinguistic knowledge about the concept”. While this dividing line is difficult to maintain, it is clear that some semantic properties are more central to a word’s meaning than others, particularly those properties that apply to (almost) all and only the instances of the kind, which are intrinsic to the kind, and which are conventional knowledge of (almost) all of the speech community (Langacker 1987: 158⫺161). If one accepts that lexical meaning is encyclopedic, then grammatical meaning might be distinguished from lexical meaning by arguing that grammatical meaning is not encyclopedic: I may have encyclopedic knowledge of bananas that may influence my use of the word banana, but it appears that I do not have encyclopedic knowledge of nonunit cardinalities that influences my use of the plural suffix -s. Nevertheless, Wierzbicka (1986) has demonstrated that encyclopedic knowledge governs the use of singular/plural with nouns in various languages (that is, whether the noun is treated as count, mass, or pluralia tantum). For example, the ambivalence of hair (mass)/hairs (count) and chocolate (mass)/chocolates (count) can be explained through different encyclopedic aspects of the real-world occurrence of discrete individuals and aggregates or substances: hairs can be visually discriminated but usually occur in a mass on one’s head, while chocolate is a natural substance but is also culturally used to form discrete objects with non-chocolate fillings. Similar examples can be constructed. A second property of meaning that seems to distinguish lexical and grammatical meanings is the degree of generality of the meaning. Grammatical meanings are hypothesized to be more general than lexical meanings. For example, the pronouns he, she and it are more general in meaning than any particular noun; the plural suffix -s is more general than

any individual numeral, including the vague numerals some, a few and many; and the past tense is more general than lexical temporal deictics such as yesterday or long ago. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to measure generality precisely. In many cases lexical and grammatical meanings are incommensurable. The notion of generality must also be broadened. For example, the high degree of generality of grammatical meanings is often not due to a single general meaning (Gesamtbedeutung) for a grammatical morpheme such as on. Instead, it is due to the great range of polysemy (meanings derived at least etymologically from an original basic meaning or Grundbedeutung) found in grammatical morphemes in comparison to lexical morphemes (Hopper & Traugott 1993: 100). The formal semanticists’ extensional definition of generality as subsumption ⫺ the more general meaning covers the wider range of situations ⫺ appropriately includes both general meaning and high degree of polysemy. Nevertheless, there are many lexical roots whose meanings are quite general and/or polysemous, such as man, thing, go and have (in its nonauxiliary use). A third property that has been proposed to distinguish grammatical and lexical meaning is that grammatical meaning represents a conceptualization or construal of the content of experience which is represented by lexical meaning (see Talmy 1978; 1988 a; 1988 b; Langacker 1987). The conceptualization hypothesis is based on the observation that meanings do not simply reflect an objective reality, but view it or even shape it from a particular perspective. For example, the choice of the progressive or the simple present provides different conceptualizations of the engine’s condition in the following examples (Goldsmith & Woisetschlaeger 1982): (1) The engine isn’t running. (2) The engine doesn’t run. In (1), the engine’s state is construed as a contingent property currently holding of the engine; it may be due to a temporary malfunction, or it may be due to the engine simply being turned off. In (2), the engine’s state is construed as an inherent, basic property of the engine, from the point of the view of the speaker. In fact, the two sentences could be applied to the same situation by two different speakers, who conceptualize the nature of the engine’s state in opposite ways.

260 However, construal plays a significant role in lexical meaning as well. This is most obvious in politically-charged vocabulary. For example, when the American stock market lost almost 25 % of its value in one day in October 1987, some newspapers described it as a meltdown or a crash, while the U. S. government described it as a correction. As with the hypothetical grammatical example in the preceding paragraph, different speakers used different lexical items to describe the same event, providing different conceptualizations of that event. All linguistic meaning, not just grammatical meaning, involves conceptualization of the experience being represented. Hence the existence of conceptualization processes cannot form the basis of the grammatical vs. lexical meaning distinction. It appears that grammatical meanings consist of little more than conceptualization operations. A fourth property that may distinguish lexical and grammatical meanings is the nature of the semantic domain which provides the frame supporting the denotation of the concept (or, in Langacker’s terms, against which the concept is profiled). A domain (Langacker 1987) or frame (Fillmore 1982; 1985) is a coherent dimension of experience by means of which a group of morphemes may be defined. For instance the commercial transaction frame provides a complex structure from one dimension of human experience that can be used to define buy, sell, pay, cost, price, worth etc. (A semantic frame resembles a semantic field; but Fillmore argues that words are not defined solely by mutual contrast within a semantic field, as in semantic field theory.) A survey of grammatical meanings demonstrates that certain domains, such as quantity, time, space, causation, scales, units, and identity have an inordinate population of grammatical meanings, while other domains, such as commercial transactions, baseball, futures trading, and medieval musicology have no grammatical meanings profiled in them at all. The former domains are traditionally labelled abstract, while the latter are labelled concrete. Again, this is a dimension that is difficult to measure and in fact appears to be difficult to define except by enumeration. However, a plausible solution to this problem is to note that the abstract domains are themselves components of a very large number of concrete domains. For example, almost all

IV. Grundbegriffe

domains make some reference to time or scales in defining the concepts profiled in them (any domain involving events and gradable properties respectively), and an enormous number involve some reference to spatial concepts in their structure (any domain involving physical objects or motion). It is more precise to think of domains as being themselves multidimensional (Langacker 1987: 150⫺152). This provides a definition of abstractness: the “dimensions” that are found in the largest number of domains are the most abstract ones. Abstractness is a continuum just as generality is. As with generality, one can observe lexical meanings in abstract domains, for example the nouns front and back in the spatial domain and the word extremely in the scalar domain. We may summarize by suggesting that the distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning is best described as a continuum. Grammatical meanings are defined over domains that cut across large expanses of human experience, are extremely general in their extension, are largely defined in terms of a conceptualization of human experience, and require access to a lesser amount of encyclopedic knowledge than lexical meanings.

4.

A general survey of grammatical meanings

It is essentially impossible to provide a general survey of lexical meanings. These are considered to be open-ended, constrained only by the range of human experience. Grammatical meanings, on the contrary, represent a restricted overall inventory of semantic concepts, which have a remarkable degree of uniformity across languages, and various attempts have been made to taxonomize and systematize the range of grammatical meanings that are found. A descriptive inventory of such meanings will be presented briefly here (a more detailed exposition of each of these categories is found in Ch. XIII and XIV). The taxonomy used here is as follows (although traditional terminology referring to affixes is used here, it is intended to apply to particles as well): ⫺ Inflectional meaning ⫺ Inherent inflection ⫺ Relational inflection ⫺ Derivational meaning ⫺ Type-changing derivation ⫺ Function-indicating derivation


The traditional division between inflectional and derivational meaning (cf. Art. 38) is followed here, though it has been argued that this is actually a continuum (Bybee 1985). Inflection is divided into inherent, which characterizes semantic properties of the entities denoted by the roots to which they are applied, and relational, which indicates relations between lexical meanings in phrases and clauses and between clauses (Anderson 1985: 172). Derivational meaning is in turn divided into type-changing derivation, which significantly alters the profiled concept in the frame presupposed by the lexical meaning specified by the root, and function-indicating derivation, which changes its syntactic category, but with much smaller semantic effects than are found in type-changing derivation (Croft 1991: 58). The categories of inherent inflection found in the world’s languages have been the focus of efforts to find a unified theme underlying grammatical meaning (Talmy 1978; 1988; Morrow 1986; Croft 1990 a; Langacker 1991). These efforts have focused on a set of similar schemes for organizing inherent inflectional meaning (Langacker 1991: 32⫺35; Croft 1990 a; in the exposition below, Langacker’s terms are in parentheses). In all cases, the assumption is that inherent inflections structure the experience encoded by the lexical meaning for communication. We can illustrate the scheme for grammatical semantic meanings with the Russian noun phrase e`ta travinka ‘this blade of grass’. The experience to be communicated must be categorized (assigned to a type). This function is largely one performed by lexical meanings, but nominal classification ⫺ including gender, such as the feminine -a in travink-a ⫺ appears to perform the same function. The existence of nominal classification poses difficulties for distinguishing lexical and grammatical semantic categorization; but the primary functions of grammatical categorization are actually reference tracking (anaphora) or relational (agreement; see the feminine form e`ta ‘this’). Next, the relevant instance of the type must be selected (instantiated). Selection involves instantiation, and hence grammatical meanings associated with generic/specific (determiners), individuation (unit terms), and verbal aspect. The Russian example includes a singulative suffix -in (plus diminutive -k) to indicate a blade of grass, rather than an expanse of grass. It also involves quantification, hence grammatical

261 number (for nouns ⫺ travinka is singular) and iteration (for verbs). Finally, the instantiated type must be situated, in space, time and in the discourse context of the speaker and hearer (critically involving their mutual beliefs). This situating function (grounding) usually involves direct reference to properties of the speech act situation, including the locations of the speaker and hearer ⫺ deictic expressions such as the proximal form e`ta ‘this’ in the Russian example ⫺ the time of the speech event (tense) and the beliefs and desires of the speaker and hearer (determiners and mood and modality). The semantics of relational inflectional meanings is easy to characterize in a general fashion, although the semantics of individual relational grammatical morphemes is often elusive. They simply encode the relation between lexical meanings in phrases, clauses and between clauses. This is found in grammatical agreement, linkers between heads and modifiers, case marking, and intersentential connectives. In general, one of the lexical meanings involved in the relation provides a semantic “slot” or “role” (usually an argument position) which the other meaning fills with a more specific description of the entity filling the role. Thus, the lexical items provide most of the semantic content of the relation, and the relational inflectional meaning is only a highly general construal of semantic relations between lexical meanings (either causal: Talmy 1988 a; 1988 b; Croft 1991; or Gestalt/spatial: Talmy 1983; Langacker 1991), and specification of the discourse or pragmatic status of that referent. The semantics of type-changing derivational morphemes can best be understood from a frame semantic perspective. A word such as run defines a profiled concept in a frame, in this case the central action of the frame. A derivational morpheme such as -er shifts the profile from that of the base to something else in the frame, in this case the actor performing the action. (Of course, other semantic shifts occur in derivation, which may involve a shift of frame; in this example, a runner is generally defined in a more specific frame of recreational activity, not just in the more general frame of human or animal locomotion.) The semantics of function-indicating derivation is more elusive. This grouping includes affixes and particles whose sole function appears to be a change of category. For example, the action nominalization suffix written

262

IV. Grundbegriffe

as -ion as in construction changes an verb to a noun without any major semantic change (such as the shift in denotation from action to agent with -er), and hence is a functionindicating derivational morpheme. There are subtle semantic changes effected by a shift in syntactic category (Bolinger 1967; Wierzbicka 1986; Croft 1991: 99⫺126) which are generally considered to be matters of conceptualization or construal. It has been argued that there is a change in what concept in a frame is profiled even for these derivational meanings (see for example Langacker 1987: 214⫺217). But the change is at most a subtle one, and in these cases it can be argued that the semantic content of function-indicating derivational meanings (if there indeed are such meanings, which is not widely accepted), then it is almost purely a shift in conceptualization.

5.

Grammaticalization and the lexicalgrammatical meaning distinction

Most of the research described in 2 to 4 assumes that the distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning is a sharp one. We have noted problems with this assumption in those sections. In fact, however, all grammatical meanings arise historically from lexical meanings. This semantic change is part of a more general linguistic process that is called grammaticalization (cf. Art. 145). Grammaticalization is a diachronic process by which lexical meanings shift to grammatical meanings, more or less along the continuum described at the end of 3. Grammaticalization, like all historical linguistic processes, is gradual, or at least incremental. In fact, the dynamic perspective on linguistic semantics provided by grammaticalization offers explanations for the empirical problems described in previous sections, in particular the “mismatches” between lexical and grammatical meaning and their formal correlates, and the fuzziness of the distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning. The “mismatches” frequently found between the formal distinctions described in 2 and the lexical-grammatical meaning distinction are a consequence of the nature of grammaticalization. In grammaticalization, lexical roots and their meanings evolve into grammatical particles or affixes with grammatical meanings. This process occurs more or less simultaneously at the semantic, phonological

and morphosyntactic levels. However, the parallel changes often are not perfectly synchronized (Croft 1990 b: 242⫺244). If phonological combination occurs before the semantic shift occurs, then compounding results. If the semantic shift occurs before phonological attachment does, then particles result. Likewise, the shift from open-class to closed-class morphosyntactic category is also a gradual one. As morphemes shift from lexical to grammatical meaning, they also organize themselves into a closed-class, paradigmatic set (Lehmann 1985). But the shift to grammatical meaning may also occur before the organization into paradigmatic sets, as with the relational nouns used for case meanings in Mesoamerican languages. In 3, we suggested that the distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning is actually a continuum along four dimensions, with the extreme points of the four dimensions providing prototypical lexical and grammatical meanings. From the perspective of grammaticalization, it can be seen that the continuum arises from the gradual process of semantic change. Lexical meanings are gradually extended to a wider range of uses (generalized); as a result they are used in a wider range of semantic domains (i.e. they become more abstract), they make less use of domain-specific encyclopedic knowledge, and as a result the conceptualization of experience they encode plays a larger and larger role in their definition. In other words, they become grammatical meanings. Some conceptual categories are intermediate in the semantic shift along these gradients. Personal deixis and semantic role relations are two such intermediate semantic categories. For this reason, cross-linguistically one finds variation as to which is encoded as the root and which as the affix, which depends also on their degree of grammaticalization at the phonological and morphosyntactic levels (cf. the Djabugay and Mam examples in 2). Not only does grammaticalization theory contribute to our understanding of lexical and grammatical meaning; the analysis of lexical and grammatical meaning can contribute to grammaticalization theory. Most grammaticalization theorists treat all specific grammaticalization processes (verb to mood marker, noun to case marker, noun to agentive affix, etc.) as instances of a single general process that is unidirectional. A central problem of grammaticalization the-


ory, then, is a general characterization of the process of semantic change from lexical meaning to grammatical meaning. The analysis of the continuum from lexical to grammatical meaning in 3 demonstrates that the process of semantic change involves (at least) four different semantic dimensions. Two of these dimensions, generalization (in the extensional sense) and abstraction (that is, shift of meaning to more abstract domains, as defined in 3), are already found in grammaticalization studies, albeit defined slightly differently by some grammaticalization theorists. A third semantic grammaticalization process, subjectification, may be related to the role of construal in a morpheme’s meaning. Subjectification is the process by which a morpheme’s meaning comes to make greater reference to speaker’s point of view and/or properties of the text or discourse (Traugott 1989). This is clearest in cases such as epistemic modality, in which indicators of various “objective” properties such as physical ability ultimately come to indicate speaker’s degree of commitment to the truth of a proposition, as with must in This must have been a sad shock to the poor disconsolate parent from Old English *motan, a verb of permission (Traugott 1989: 42, 37). Since speaker’s point of view represents a perspective on the experience communicated, it represents a conceptualization of that experience, and so a highly subjective meaning is a more grammatical meaning on that semantic dimension.

6.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), “Inflectional Morphology”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 150⫺201 Bolinger, Dwight (1967), “Adjectives in English: Attribution and Predication”. Lingua 18, 1⫺34 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins Croft, William (1990 a), Typology and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Croft, William (1990 b), “A Conceptual Framework for Grammatical Categories”. Journal of Semantics 7, 245⫺79 Croft, William (1991), Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Fillmore, Charles J. (1975), “An Alternative to Checklist Theories of Meaning”. Berkeley Linguis-

263 tics Society: Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting, 123⫺131 Fillmore, Charles J. (1982), “Frame Semantics”. In: The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin, 111⫺137 Fillmore, Charles J. (1985), “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding”. Quaderni di semantica 6, 222⫺54 Goldsmith, John & Woisetschlaeger, Eric (1982), “The Logic of the English Progressive”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 79⫺89 Haiman, John (1980), “Dictionaries and Encyclopedias”. Lingua 50, 329⫺57 Heine, Bernd & Reh, Mechthild (1984), Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languages. Hamburg: Buske Hopper, Paul & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1993), Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Langacker, Ronald W. (1987), Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. I: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press Langacker, Ronald. W. (1991), Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. II: Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press Lehmann, Christian (1985), “Grammaticalization: Synchronic Variation and Diachronic Change”. Lingua e Stile 20, 303⫺318 Lindner, Susan (1981), A Lexico-Semantic Analysis of the English Verb Particle Constructions with out and Up. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Diego Morrow, Daniel G. (1986), “Grammatical Morphemes and Conceptual Structure in Discourse Processing”. Cognitive Science 10, 423⫺455 Talmy, Leonard (1978), “The Relation of Grammar to Cognition”. In: Waltz, David (ed.), Proceedings of TINLAP-2. Urbana: University of Illinois Coordinated Science Laboratory Talmy, Leonard (1983), “How Language Structures Space”. In: Pick, Herbert L., Jr. & Acredolo, Linda P. (eds.), Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research and Application. New York: Plenum Press, 225⫺282 Talmy, Leonard (1988 a), “The Relation of Grammar to Cognition”. In: Rudzka-Ostyn, Brygida (ed.), Topics in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 165⫺205 Talmy, Leonard (1988 b), “Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition”. Cognitive Science 12, 49⫺100 Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1989), “On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English”. Language 65, 31⫺55 Wierzbicka, Anna (1986), “What’s in a Noun?”. Studies in Language 10, 353⫺389

William Croft, Manchester (Great Britain)

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28. Category and feature 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Categories in morphology Syntactic categories in morphology Categories in word formation Morphosyntactic categories and features Motivation for binary approaches Markedness Underspecification and redundancy References

1.

Categories in morphology

Aristotle allocated ¤words uncombinedÅ to one or other of the following ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, date, posture, possession, action and passivity (Ross 61995: 22). Aristotle was also the pioneer in western culture of classification in the modern biological sense: the assignment of every living creature to one of a range of mutually exclusive classes, these classes being assembled in turn into higher-level groupings. Classification of this clear-cut, nonoverlapping kind is often called Aristotelian. The beginnings of grammatical categorisation predate Aristotle, inasmuch as Plato already distinguishes between nominal and verbal elements (ono´mata and rhe˘ mata) (cf. Robins 31990 and Art. 6). In contemporary morphological theory, three kinds of classification or categorisation are especially important: (a) of words according to their syntactic function; (b) of words according to their formation; (c) of inflected word-forms according to their grammatical content and context. (In (a) and (b), word is to be interpreted in the technical sense of lexeme, whose definition and relationship to the term word-form are discussed in Art. 62.) Topics (a), (b) and (c) will be discussed in sections 2, 3 and 4 respectively, with particular attention to the numerous morphological applications of the terms category and feature. Sections 5, 6 and 7 discuss in more detail issues arising from section 4. Aristotelian classification operates on the basis that, when there is a range of possible classes to which an item might belong, it is in principle possible to arrive at a definite decision on the basis of necessary and sufficient conditions for membership of each class. In this respect Aristotelian classification differs from ¤fuzzyÅ classification in terms of proto-

typical and marginal membership (cf. Rosch & Mervis 1975). The difference can be illustrated by reference to the set consisting of sparrows, eagles, penguins and ostriches. In biological taxonomy, which is Aristotelian in spirit, these are all equally and unequivocally birds. In terms of the lay person’s folk biology, however, some are ¤betterÅ birds than others: sparrows are prototypical birds while eagles (in virtue of their large size) are less typical, and ostriches and penguins, being flightless, are marginal. Prototypical or gradient classification has also been applied in grammatical theory, for example by Ross (1972: 316). In morphology one might argue that prototypical classification is appropriate in circumstances where it is not clear on what side of the line, in Aristotelian terms, a phenomenon falls. For example, the possessive suffix -’s in English is caselike from the point of view of its meaning and syntactic functions, but is not case-like in that it attaches to the last word of a noun phrase, whatever that may be, rather than to nouns or pronouns in particular. Similarly, one might regard the English verb steal (past stole) as prototypically ¤strongÅ or ¤irregularÅ, while peel (past peeled) is prototypically ¤weakÅ or ¤regularÅ, thereby allowing feel (past felt) to be analysed as intermediate between these prototypes. Nevertheless, classification in morphology has generally been of the Aristotelian kind. Rightly or wrongly, most morphologists have handled borderline phenomena by refining the relevant criteria so as to place them unequivocally on one side of the line or the other. If this approach is correct, there is an important difference between morphological categories on the one hand and the concepts which underlie many lexical meanings on the other: the former are clear-cut whereas the latter are fuzzy. This implication raises questions which deserve to be further explored. In this article classification is to be generally understood in the Aristotelian sense; but that merely reflects the prevailing analytic fashion, and is not intended to prejudge the issue against prototypical classification.

2.

Syntactic categories in morphology

Syntactic categories (also known as lexical categories, word classes or parts of speech: cf. Art. 69) include traditional categories such

28. Category and feature

as noun and verb. The relationship of these to morphology in general is discussed in Art. 34. Here we are concerned only with their relationship to morphological categorisation. Because the membership of syntactic categories is based on syntactic criteria (cf. Art. 70), there is no logical necessity for a close fit between such categorisation and any kind of categorisation which morphology may require. Nevertheless, the classes into which words are divided for morphological purposes generally respect the basic categorisations imposed by syntax. The situation is somewhat different when it comes to subcategorisation. In English, for example, verbs can be subcategorised syntactically as transitive (such as introduce) or intransitive (such as disappear). Similarly, nouns can be subcategorised syntactically as count nouns (such as harbour) and mass nouns (such as water). But these syntactic subcategorisations need not correlate with morphological ones. For example, the morphological categorisation of verbs into inflection classes, such as the ¤weakÅ class illustrated by bake (past baked) and the ¤strongÅ class illustrated by take (past took) (cf. Art. 65) crosscuts the transitive-intransitive distinction. Similarly, the class of nouns for which a corresponding adjective in -less is in general use includes both count and mass nouns (e.g. harbour and water respectively) but excludes both count and mass nouns too (e.g. port and ice respectively). The apparent anomaly reflects the fact that morphological categorisation is driven by factors which overlap with syntax only partly (cf. Art. 34). In particular, morphological processes are much more widely implicated than syntactic ones in forming new lexical items, so it is not surprising that they should be more subject to arbitrary lexical restrictions (cf. Art. 36).

3.

Categories in word formation

Word formation is examined in detail in Ch. XI and XII. Here a summary is provided of the ways in which word formation processes can be categorised, as well as illustration of some of the terminology which has been used for this purpose. The formation of one lexeme from another has both a semantic and a formal side, either of which may be focused on independently

265 (cf. Art. 81). Consider for example the lexemes write and writer. One may be interested in their semantic relationship, that of a verb and the corresponding agent noun, and so compare them with other verb-noun pairs such as read and reader, type and typist, inform and informant, cookV and cookN, or steal and thief. Alternatively, one may be interested in their formal relationship via the suffix -er, and so compare them with other verb-noun pairs such as read and reader, cook and cooker, or stroll and stroller. Further afield, one may compare them with other lexeme pairs related via the suffix -er but of which neither is a verb, such as London and Londoner or teenage and teenager. Clearly there is a far from perfect correspondence between the formal and semantic sides of word formation. Even the pair read and reader, which appears in both the lists of verb-noun pairs above, illustrates this. Two of the senses of reader are ¤someone who readsÅ and ¤book of reading material for teaching purposesÅ. Reader appears in the first list because it has the first of these two senses, but it would be entitled to appear in the second list even if its only sense were ¤book of reading materialÅ. Various researchers have explored both the semantic side and the formal side of word formation. Their terminology is inconsistent, however. Let us distinguish the following: (a) meanings such as ¤agentÅ, considered independently of the formal processes (e.g. of suffixation) which express them; (b) formal processes such as the addition of the suffix -er, considered independently of what they may mean; (c) pairs consisting of a meaning and a process, such as: (c1) the formation of ¤agentÅ nouns by the suffixation of -er, e.g. writer; (c2) the formation of ¤agentÅ nouns by the suffixation of -ist, e.g. typist; (c3) the formation of ¤instrumentÅ nouns by the suffixation of -er, e.g. cooker; (c4) the formation of ¤inhabitantÅ nouns by the suffixation of -er, e.g. Londoner; etc. Affixes in the context of items of class (c), that is word-forming affixes with associated meanings, are derivational morphemes (or allomorphs of derivational morphemes). The term (derivational) category is applied to items of class (c) by van Marle (1985: 95f.)

266

IV. Grundbegriffe

but class (a) by Szymanek (1988: 22), whose term for class (c) items is derivational type (1988: 60). On the other hand, the term derivational type is used by Zwanenberg (1984 a: 138; 1984 b: 362) for class (a) items. Class (a) items loom large also in the morphological theory of Beard, but his term for them is lexical derivations or L-derivations (1995: 98); he contrasts them with MS-operations (or morphological spelling operations), which belong in class (b) (1995: 98). This complex terminological situation is summarised in Tab. 28.1: meaning Beard Szymanek Zwanenberg van Marle

form

LMSderivation operation category type

meaningform pair

type category

Tab. 28.1

The semantic categories relevant to word-formation (or L-derivations) could conceivably differ completely from one language to another. In practice, however, there is considerable overlap, and researchers such as Beard and Szymanek who focus on this aspect of morphology generally argue that there is a small finite inventory of such categories, perhaps grounded in more fundamental characteristics of lexical semantics or cognitive categorisation. Beard & Goddard (1997) argue independently that such lexical semantic categories have grammatical relevance too.

4.

Morphosyntactic categories and features

In word formation, the meanings which morphological processes can express (items of class (a), in terms of the discussion in section 3 above) are not generally regarded as forming a tightly knit structure. By contrast, the meanings or morphosyntactic functions expressed in inflectional morphology in any language constitute a more or less tightly knit structure or collection of structures. Some effects of this on morphological categorisation are discussed in 4.1. Section 4.2 discusses the view that morphological categorisation is binary (i.e. analysable in terms of categories with just two members).

4.1. Nonbinary approaches Consider the contrast between the English verb-forms walk and walked or sing and sang, as they are used in examples (1) and (2): (1) (a) (b) (2) (a) (b)

The children walk to school. They sing in the choir. The children walked to school. They sang in the choir.

Traditionally, the sentences in (2) would be described as the past-tense counterparts of those in (1), which belong to the present tense. But what is the relationship between the term tense and the terms past and present? And what is the relationship of past and present to each other? Analogous questions can be asked about some German facts illustrated in (3): (3) (a) Mein Vater las die Zeitung. (b) Meines Vaters Zeitung liegt auf dem Tisch. (c) Ich habe meinem Vater die Zeitung gegeben. (d) Die Nachricht hat meinen Vater sehr überrascht. Traditionally, these sentences would be described as containing variants of the noun phrase mein Vater differing in case: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative respectively. But what is the relationship between the term case and the terms nominative, genitive, dative and accusative? And what is the relationship of nominative, genitive, dative and accusative to each other? All four of these questions could in principle be of equal importance to morphological theorists. In practice, however, approaches differ according to the weight given to the first question in each pair (the questions about the superordinate terms, tense and case, and their relationship with their hyponyms such as past and genitive). Approaches which give particular weight to this issue will be considered first (cf. Matthews 1972; 21991; Wurzel 1984; Zwicky 1985; Bybee 1985; Mel’cˇuk 1993). In Matthews’s terminology, the superordinate terms tense and case are instances of (morphosyntactic) categories, while their hyponyms, such as past and genitive, denote (morphosyntactic) properties or features (1972: 162; 21991: 38⫺40). A morphosyntactic property can be thought of as a meaning or function which is syntactically as well as morphologically relevant and for which every

267


lexeme in a given word-class has an expression in some word-form (e.g. past in verbs, genitive in nouns). A morphosyntactic category can be thought of as a set of morphosyntactic properties whose meanings are related but mutually exclusive. It is the fact that morphosyntactic properties can be readily grouped into sets in this way which distinguishes inflectional categorisation from categorisation in word formation. Both categories and properties, in the senses just introduced, belong on the meaning side of the meaning-form dichotomy. Inflectional morphology has no term for the counterpart of the kind of meaning-form pair which Szymanek calls a derivational type (see Tab. 28.1 above); that is, there is no conventional term for items such as (in German nouns) the formation of the genitive singular by the suffixation of -s. However, a set of such meaning-form pairs, corresponding to the set of all possible combinations of morphosyntactic properties belonging to all the morphosyntactic categories relevant to a word class, is essentially what defines an inflection class (Art. 65). In Wurzel’s usage (1984: 61), the term Kategorie or category corresponds to Matthews’s property, and Wurzel’s counterpart of Matthews’s category is Kategoriengefüge or complex of categories. Zwicky’s counterpart of Matthews’s category is feature, while for Matthews’s property or feature Zwicky uses value (1985: 372f.). Other scholars use other terms entirely. This confusing situation is summarised at Tab. 28.2: superordinate

hyponym

Matthews

category

Bybee

category

Wurzel

Kategoriengefüge feature category

property, feature (inflectional) meaning Kategorie

Zwicky Mel’cˇuk

value grammeme

Tab. 28.2

Zwicky’s use of the terms feature and value reflects his view that a feature such as case may have more than two values. A widely held alternative view is that morphosyntactic features, and features generally, have only two values, generally identified as plus and

minus. This view will be discussed in 4.2 and 5. Approaches which emphasise the contrast between categories and properties (in Matthews’s sense) facilitate discussion of the relationship of categories to one another. This has empirical significance, because it implies that there are interesting things to be said about that relationship. For example, concrete claims have been made about the relationship between verbal categories such as voice, aspect, tense and person, affecting how these are realised in verbal word-forms (Bybee 1985: 33⫺43). Such claims would be harder to express in a framework which did not give prominence to voice, aspect etc. as categories, but focused only on active and passive voices, perfective and imperfective aspects, and so on. 4.2. Binary approaches The notion of features as binary entities (i.e. entities with two values, or involving an opposition between two terms) was explored by phonologists belonging to the Prague School in the 1930s, particularly Roman Jakobson (e.g. Jakobson 1936). Through Jakobson’s later association with Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky in the United States, this aspect of his approach became extremely influential in generative grammar, not just in phonology but also in syntax and morphology. To show the effect of this influence, it is helpful to contrast Jakobson’s approach with that of another Prague School phonologist, N. S. Trubetzkoy. Trubetzkoy (31962: 60⫺75 [1939]) emphasised not so much phonological features as the oppositions between phonemes in phonological systems. The opposition between /t/ and /d/ is bilateral, because the properties which /t/ and /d/ share (being both alveolar plosive) are shared by no two other phonemes in English. This opposition is also proportional, because the relation between /t/ and /d/ (the former being voiced, the latter voiceless) is shared by other oppositions, such as between /p/ and /b/, or between /s/ and /z/. But Trubetzkoy also recognised multilateral oppositions, such as that between /p/, /t/ and /k/. This opposition is also proportional, because the relationship between /p/, /t/ and /k/ is the same as that between /b/, /d/ and /g/. Jakobson’s influence in phonology led to a concentration of attention on bilateral proportional oppositions such as that between

268

IV. Grundbegriffe

/d/, /b/ and /z/ respectively and /t/, /p/ and /s/ respectively, analysable in feature terms as [voiced] versus [voiceless] (or [⫹voiced] versus [⫺voiced]). Moreover, Jakobson argued that all apparently multilateral oppositions should be analysed in binary terms. For example, the opposition between labial, dental, palatal and velar places of articulation is not really multilateral but a composite of two binary oppositions, [compact/diffuse] (or [⫾compact]) and [grave/acute] (or [⫾grave]), as set out in Tab. 28.3 (based on Jakobson & Halle 1956: 29⫺31):

labials dentals palatals velars

⫹ ⫺ ⫺

⫺ ⫹ ⫺

Tab. 28.6

⫺ ⫺ ⫹ ⫹

⫹ ⫺ ⫺ ⫹

A common feature of all these analyses is that superordinate terms such as case and person are less prominent than in the approaches summarised in 4.1, even though those superordinate categories are often tacitly presupposed as constituting the domains within which binary features are relevant. To some extent this reflects a difference in priorities: in binary approaches, the emphasis is generally not so much on the relationship of morphosyntactic categories to other categories (in Matthews’s sense), but rather on the relationship to one another of properties within the same category. So how successful are binary approaches in expressing such relationships? Analysing any multilateral opposition in binary terms requires a set of features such that each member of the opposition (or each property in the category) is associated with a unique combination of values for the features in the set. If there are no constraints on the nature or number of the features which may be invoked and the ways in which values of them (such as plus and minus) may be combined, this is trivially easy to achieve. In practice, however, features are chosen in such a way as to reflect one or more of the following:

[⫾oblique]

[⫾governed]

⫺ ⫹ ⫹ ⫺

⫺ ⫺ ⫹ ⫹

Tab. 28.4

Independently, Williams (1981: 267f.) analyses the Latin case system (excluding the vocative and genitive) in terms of three features, as in Tab. 28.5:

Tab. 28.5

[⫾you]

[⫾grave]

In morphology, the German cases nominative, genitive, dative and accusative could be seen as constituting a multilateral opposition, which is also proportional in the sense that all nouns, pronouns and determiners manifest it. However, a morphologist who is impressed by Jakobson’s preference for binary features will be inclined to handle these four cases in binary terms too. Thus, Bierwisch (1967: 246) analyses the German case system in terms of two features, as in Tab. 28.4:

nominative dative ablative accusative

1st person (¤IÅ) 2nd person (¤youÅ) 3rd person (¤she/heÅ)

[⫾me]

[⫾compact]

Tab. 28.3

nominative genitive dative accusative

An example of a binary analysis for another apparently multilateral opposition is the use of the features [⫾me] and [⫾you] to express oppositions of person in the verbal system, thus (e.g. Anderson 1992: 147, 159, 177⫺179):

[⫾direct]

[⫾N]

⫹ ⫺ ⫺ ⫹

⫹ ⫺

[⫾D] ⫹ ⫺

⫺ feature economy; ⫺ shared semantic or syntactic characteristics; ⫺ morphological neutralisation. The more closely these factors coincide in the feature systems that they motivate, the more strongly a binary approach is supported. No judgement on the strength of this support will be reached here, but in section 5 the various factors are illustrated.

269


5.

Motivation for binary approaches

5.1. Feature economy Given n binary features, the maximum number of terms which can be distinguished is 2n. For example, with the two features [⫾oblique] or [⫾governed], four terms can be distinguished. These features in fact yield just the four possible combinations illustrated in Tab. 28.4, each of which is associated by Bierwisch (1967: 246) with one of the four cases in German. The analysis at Tab. 28.4 can therefore be described as maximally economical: no more features are used than is mathematically necessary, and all the combinatorial possibilities of these features and their values are exploited. If a linguist sees full exploitation of a feature system as desirable, he or she may seek morphosyntactic interpretations for combinations of feature values which at first sight lack them. Faced with the analysis of person at Tab. 28.6, such a linguist will seek an interpretation for the sole combination of values for [⫾me] and [⫾you] which does not appear there, namely [⫹me, ⫹you]. And such an interpretation is indeed available; this combination is a natural way of representing so-called inclusive first person plural forms, meaning ¤me and youÅ, which are morphologically or syntactically distinguished in languages such as Tagalog (cf. Art. 135). If the number of properties in any given morphosyntactic category were always a power of 2 (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on), the binary approach would be strongly supported; for this fact would suggest that all categories were structured internally in terms of fully exploited binary features. However, although some categories do indeed have 2n members for some n (as the German and Tagalog facts illustrate), there seems to be no general tendency in this direction. 5.2. Semantic and syntactic motivations When Bierwisch introduces the binary feature analysis for German cases given as Tab. 28.4, he immediately qualifies it by suggesting that an extra feature [⫾genitive] may be needed, the genitive case being [⫹genitive] and all the other cases [⫺genitive] (1967: 247). This is not necessary in order to differentiate the genitive from the other cases, so it is superfluous from the point of view of feature economy. Bierwisch believes it may be justified, however, for a variety of reasons

including syntactic behaviour, in terms of which the genitive is set apart from the other three cases. He thus recognises that considerations of economy and syntax conflict when it comes to determining the number of binary features which the German case system needs. The case system of Russian, too, can plausibly be analysed as having a membership exactly equivalent to a power of 2, namely 23, or eight. An economical analysis would therefore be possible with just three features. However Jakobson (1966: 83f. [1936]) uses four features, as illustrated in Tab. 28.7:

nominative accusative genitive I genitive II instrumental dative locative I locative II

directional (Bezug)

scopal (Umfang)

peripheral (Rand)

shaping (Gestaltung)

⫺ ⫹ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺

⫺ ⫺ ⫹ ⫹ ⫺

⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫹

⫺ ⫺ ⫺ ⫹ ⫺

⫹ ⫺ ⫺

⫺ ⫹ ⫹

⫹ ⫹ ⫹

⫺ ⫺ ⫹

Tab. 28.7

The features [⫾directional] and [⫾shaping] are used uneconomically inasmuch as for each of them there are only two cases which have plus values while the other six have minus values. Jakobson chooses this analysis because his central concern is not with formal economy but with semantics: the search for ¤general meaningsÅ (Gesamtbedeutungen), each of which is represented through a binary feature. Evidently he thought that the meanings associated with [⫾directional] and [⫾shaping] were too disparate to be combined under a single, even more general, meaning. 5.3. Morphological neutralisation Williams’s analysis of four of the Latin cases, illustrated at Tab. 28.5 (1981: 267), is uneconomical in that he uses three features rather than two. Moreover, his features are not all combinable with one another: the feature [⫾N] applies only to [⫹direct] forms, while [⫾D] applies only to [⫺direct] ones. This departure from economy has a morphological motivation. Among the neutralisations or syncretisms which occur in Latin nominal or pronominal word-forms, two common ones are that of nominative and accusative (the

270

IV. Grundbegriffe

[⫹direct] cases) and that of dative and ablative (the [⫺direct] cases). To differentiate the four cases economically by means of a single further feature (say, [⫾F], with nominative and dative being [⫹F] and accusative and ablative being [⫺F]) could be taken to imply that the actually occurring syncretisms are no more to be expected than syncretisms of nominative and dative or of accusative and ablative, which do not occur. Similarly, Bierwisch’s feature [⫹genitive] has morphological as well as syntactic motivation. As he puts it (1967: 247): “the genitive is the only case for which there is predominantly an overt marking in the singular of non-feminine nouns.”

6.

Markedness

One of the earliest preoccupations of Prague School linguists, particularly phonologists, was markedness: the notion that in phonological oppositions, especially binary ones, one term is marked in relation to the other (cf. Art. 29). Criteria for markedness could be substantive (e.g. the marked term would involve an extra articulatory gesture) or formal (e.g. the unmarked term would be the one which appears in contexts where the opposition is neutralised or suspended). From the point of view of categories and features, the main issue is whether or not markedness relationships favour binarity. There is no logical necessity for this. In a category with five properties as members (say), it could be that just one is clearly unmarked while the rest are equally marked in relation to it; or it could be that markedness is a matter of degree or gradience. On the other hand, if among the five there is evidence for a variety of binary groupings which cross-cut one another, such that one group is always in some sense more marked than the other, then markedness relationships support the assumption of binary features. On the whole, linguists who explore markedness relationships have tended to use binary features; but this may have more to do with a tendency to equate ¤markedÅ and ¤unmarkedÅ with ¤plusÅ and ¤minusÅ respectively than with solid evidence that markedness behaviour is inconsistent with nonbinary morphosyntactic categories. The expectation that the marked term in a binary opposition should correspond to the plus value in a corresponding binary feature seems natural. This is not consistently

so in phonology, however; for example, the unmarked value for the feature [⫾voiced] is generally agreed to be [⫹voiced] for sonorants (vowels, glides, liquids and nasals) but [⫺voiced] for obstruents (plosives, fricatives and affricates). An association of markedness with plus values for binary features is explicit in Jakobson’s analysis of Russian cases, discussed in 5.2; thus the least marked case overall is the nominative, with a minus value for all four features, while the most marked is the second locative, with a plus value for three of the four features. But, just as in phonology, the association between plus values and markedness cannot always be maintained. For example, it is reasonable to analyse the morphosyntactic distinction between singular and plural, found in many languages, in terms of a binary feature [⫾plural], with [⫹plural] as the marked term of the opposition; but there may be particular lexical items designating collectivities, or objects seldom encountered singly, for which [⫺plural] is more plausibly the marked term (see Art. 100). Similarly, it is reasonable to regard the second person (¤[⫹you]Å) as normally marked in relation to the first and third persons (¤[⫺you]Å), except in imperative contexts, where it is the plus value which is unmarked. Exploration of markedness relationships is especially prominent in the work of the Natural Morphology school (cf. Mayerthaler 1981; Dressler 1987, ed.; Art. 31).

7.

Underspecification and redundancy

Can a word-form to which some binary feature [⫾F] is normally relevant have no specified value at all for that feature, neither plus nor minus? Or, in terms of multimember morphosyntactic categories, can a word-form to which some category is normally relevant express no specified property at all within that category? Such a word-form could be said to be morphosyntactically underspecified, although this term is not so commonly used in morphology as in phonology. In principle, there is no reason why the answers to these two questions should be different, e.g. yes to the first and no to the second. In practice, however, the issue of morphosyntactic underspecification is most usually discussed within a binary feature framework. This practice is followed here, although what is said could equally be applied to multimember categories.

271


Circumstances in which underspecification may be invoked in morphology include the following: (a) where the value for some feature is the unmarked value; (b) where the value for some feature is predictable from the context, so that specification of it is redundant; (c) where a feature is altogether irrelevant in some context, so no value for it can be specified there. Circumstance (a) links underspecification to markedness, which was discussed in section 6. Circumstances (b) and (c) can be illustrated by reference to Williams’s feature matrix for four Latin cases, given at Tab. 28.5. Circumstance (b) is illustrated by the two cases which have values for the feature [⫾N] (namely nominative and accusative); these are both [⫹direct], so this feature value is predictable in the context of either value of [⫾N]. Similarly, the two cases which have values for [⫾D] (namely dative and ablative) are both [⫺direct]. It follows that no information would be lost if the matrix contained no specifications in the [⫾direct] column, leaving them to be filled in by redundancy rules such as the following: (4) [⫾N] J [⫹direct] (5) [⫾D] J [⫺direct] Circumstance (c) is illustrated by the fact that, as Tab. 28.5 shows, [⫾N] and [⫾D] are defined by Williams so as to be irrelevant to [⫺direct] and [⫹direct] cases respectively. The Latin verb system too can be used to illustrate circumstances (b) and (c). The two Latin moods, indicative and subjunctive, can be analysed in terms of a binary feature [⫾subjunctive]. In the present and past tenses both indicative and subjunctive forms appear, but in the future tense there are only indicative forms. Therefore future tense forms may plausibly be underspecified in respect of [⫾subjunctive], the value of this feature being filled in by a redundancy rule such as: (6) [⫹future] J [⫺subjunctive] Circumstance (c) is illustrated by the fact that in Latin (unlike, say, Portuguese), infinitives are never inflected for person and number, so that, in any feature matrix for a Latin infinitive, values for [⫾plural], [⫾me] and [⫾you] (or analogous features) will be absent.

8.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press Beard, Robert (1995), Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology: A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation. Albany/NY: State Univ. of New York Press Bierwisch, Manfred (1967), “Syntactic Features in Morphology: General Problems of So-called Pronominal Inflection in German”. In: To Honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, 11 Oct. 1966. The Hague: Mouton, 239⫺270 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation Between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: Benjamins Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1987, ed.), Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Goddard, Cliff (1997), “Semantic Primes and Grammatical Categories”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 17, 1⫺41 Jakobson, Roman (1936), “Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre: Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus”. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 6, 240⫺288 [reprinted in: Hamp, Eric P. & Householder, Fred W. & Austerlitz, Robert (1966, eds.), Readings in Linguistics, Vol. II. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 51⫺89; English transl.: “Contribution to the General Theory of Case: General Meanings of the Russian Cases”. In: Jakobson, Roman (1984), Russian and Slavic Grammar: Studies 1931⫺1981, ed. by Linda R. Waugh and Morris Halle. Berlin etc.: Mouton, 59⫺103] Jakobson, Roman & Halle, Morris (1956), Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press [11974] Mayerthaler, Willi (1981), Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion Mel’cˇuk, Igor (1993), Cours de morphologie geńe´rale, Vol. I: Introduction et premie`re partie: Le mot. Montreál: Les Presses de l’Universite´ de Montreál; Paris: CNRS E´ditions Robins, R. H. (31990), A Short History of Linguistics. London, New York: Longman Rosch, Eleanor & Mervis, Carolyn B. (1975), “Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories”. Cognitive Psychology 7, 573⫺605 Ross, Sir David (61995), Aristotle, with a new introduction by John L. Ackrill. London, New York: Routledge

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IV. Grundbegriffe

Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (31962), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht [⫽ (1939), Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 7; English transl. 1969: Principles of Phonology. Berkeley, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press]

Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: AkademieVerlag (Studia grammatica 21) [English transl. 1989: Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness. Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer] Zwanenberg, Wiecher (1984 a), “Word Formation and Meaning”. Quaderni di Semantica 5, 130⫺142 Zwanenberg, Wiecher (1984 b), “Word Formation and Meaning: Derivation Types”. Quaderni di Semantica 5, 350⫺365 Zwicky, Arnold (1985), “How to Describe Inflection”. Berkeley Linguistic Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 11, 372⫺386

Williams, Edwin (1981), “On the Notions ¤Lexically RelatedÅ and ¤Head of a WordÅ”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Christchurch (New Zealand)

Ross, John R. (1972), “The Category Squish: Endstation Hauptwort”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 8.1, 316⫺328 Szymanek, Bogdan (1988), Categories and Categorization in Morphology. Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski

29. Markedness 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Markedness in phonology Markedness in morphology Markedness and cross-linguistic comparison Controversies about markedness Range of application of markedness References

1.

Introduction

Many morphological phenomena tend to consist of polar opposed pairs, e.g., grammatical (inflectional) categories such as singular-plural, masculine-feminine, active-passive, present-past, and word-formative relations like English do-redo, host-hostess, accented-unaccented, etc. In such binary oppositions (contrasts), moreover, the poles are not usually mere opposites: typically there is an asymmetry, such that one pole may be more special(ized), more precise, more constrained, less general and more complex than the other. In such cases, the more general category is unmarked, the specialized one marked (in the examples given here, the order is unmarked-marked). This is related to observations such as the following: in Spanish dictionaries, adjectives are listed in masculine singular since the feminine and the plural are considered to be special uses; the active voice is more common in English than the passive; do and host are simpler in form and wider in range of meaning than redo and hostess. Markedness is correlated with the asymmetric relationship between two choices, and

is applicable to all areas of morphology (synchronic and diachronic, first and second language acquisition, typology and universals) as well as to all other domains of language structure (phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, etc.). For more details, see Waugh & Lafford (1994).

2.

Markedness in phonology

The general discussion of markedness originated in the 1930’s, in the writings of the Prague School structuralists, who applied it first to phonology (see Trubetzkoy 1931: 97f.; 1939; Jakobson & Pomorska 1980: 93⫺ 98; Jakobson & Waugh 21987: 92⫺95). The essential insight is that phonemes are differentiated by binary distinctive features, e.g., /p/-/b/ [⫺voiced]-[⫹voiced] and /b/-/m/ [⫺nasal]-[⫹nasal], in which the two poles are not on equal footing with each other: one is marked ([⫹voiced], [⫹nasal]), the other unmarked. The markedness of voicing and nasality is correlated with the addition of the acoustic characteristic which introduces a complexity; it is also correlated with various factors such as universals and child language acquisition (see 4.1 below). In addition, the unmarked value of a feature has wider distribution than the marked one: for example, there are usually more (unmarked) oral consonants than (marked) nasal ones in a language (e.g., English has voiceless and voiced stops /p/-/b/, /t/-/d/, /k/-/g/, but only voiced

29. Markedness

nasals /m/, /n/, /n/); the unmarked phoneme tends to have more allophones than the marked one, e.g., in English, voiceless stops have both aspirated and unaspirated allophones, whereas voiced ones are only unaspirated; unmarked categories tend to have a greater functional load (they distinguish and identify a greater number of words) and higher text (token) frequencies than marked ones. Moreover, some cases of neutralization tend to exhibit markedness: in those contexts where only one member of the pair can occur and the resulting neutralization is not determined by some feature of the context (internally conditioned neutralization), it is the unmarked member which appears (e.g., in German only the voiceless obstruents are found in word-final position, although in other positions both voiceless and voiced can occur). However, when the neutralization is externally conditioned by some feature of the context, markedness does not determine what appears (e.g., in Spanish, all syllablefinal nasals are homorganic with the place of articulation of the following consonant: so, the indefinite article spelled un is realized as [um] before beso ‘kiss’, [un] before saco ‘jacket’ and [un] before gato ‘cat’).

3.

Markedness in morphology

At the same time as markedness was being explored in phonology, it was also applied to morphology, where there are some obvious binary relations (Jakobson 1932; 1936; Hjelmslev 1971 [1933]; Brøndal 1940; 1943; see also Greenberg 1966; Andersen 1989; Gvozdanovic´ 1989). For example, in the Russian verb, there is a set of unmarked-marked pairs, such as singular-plural, imperfectiveperfective, present-past (Jakobson 1932). From the early 1930’s on, various criteria for markedness have been defined for morphology. 3.1. Markedness and isomorphism The criterion for markedness which is the most discussed for morphology is that of isomorphism (iconicity; cf. Art. 30) between form and content. Formal complexity generally corresponds to conceptual complexity (Jakobson 1939): in general, elements that are marked on one linguistic level (phonology) are used to express marked forms on another level (morphology). For example, an unmarked term will tend either to have zero

273 expression (a zero morpheme; cf. Art. 45) or to be simpler in form than the marked term. Some examples from English and German are: the singular of the noun has no overt expression (cat) but the plural has the marker -s (cats); words with derivational affixes are generally marked vs. their non-derived counterparts (e.g., hostess is marked vs. host); the phonologically marked front rounded vowels /y/ and /ø/ (indicated by an umlaut ⫺ {ü} and {ö} ⫺ which are marked because the combination of rounding and frontness is not frequent in the world’s languages) are associated with the morphologically marked categories of plural, comparative, superlative, and past subjunctive (e.g., Germ. BuchBücher, hart-härter-härteste, hatte-hätte); an English active sentence has a simpler verb form and lacks the by-phrase of the passive, and the verb do is used for (marked) negative, emphatic, and interrogative predicates, but not for the ummarked neutral predicate. These last examples show markedness assimilation: unmarked categories tend to occur in unmarked syntagmatic contexts, marked categories in marked syntagmatic contexts (cf. Battistella 1990: 69⫺116). Of course, there are exceptions to this isomorphic principle in various languages, but these are rarer. Moreover, they seem to be prone to instability since many types of morphological change may (re)introduce isomorphism. Thus, in those few cases where there is an overt morpheme for an unmarked category vs. a zero for a marked category, the tendency is to replace the zero with an overt morpheme in the marked category or to eliminate the overt morpheme in the unmarked category. The replacement of zero can be exemplified by Russian, where some of the marked genitive plurals have no overt suffix, but the unmarked nominative singular does, and where many dialects have created an overt genitive plural: nominative singular jablok-o ‘apple’ (-o is the nominative singular morpheme) vs. genitive plural jablok, but dialectal genitive plural form jablok-ov. The elimination of an overt morpheme can be exemplified by the fact that in some languages a suffix for the unmarked third singular has been reanalyzed either as part of the root of the verb or as a marker of some other category such as tense ⫺ e.g., substandard English I says, you says, he says, where the -s has become a marker of the present tense vs. the -d for the past (for the unmarkedness of the third singular see also 5 below). Such changes

274 have led to claims about the naturalness of the iconic relation between zero expression and unmarkedness, and theories of natural morphology have placed emphasis on the interrelation of markedness and iconicity (see Art. 30 and 31). It should, however, be noted that there has been some confusion in this area due to the closeness of the terms ⫺ being marked (markiert) and having a marker (merkmalhaft) ⫺ and to the fact that the terminology may sometimes overlap: a marked category may be said to have a mark or to carry a marking or to be marked for a given feature (e.g., woman is marked for [⫹female]), just as a marker can also be called a mark or a marking or a form can be said to be marked for a given category if that category is overtly expressed (e.g., cats is marked for the marked plural and hits is marked for the unmarked third person singular). Collocations such as “unmarkiertes Merkmal” (‘unmarked mark’, Jakobson 1974; see also Mayerthaler 1981: 4⫺11) have also arisen, attesting to the confusion when marked categories have no overt marker and unmarked categories do. 3.2. Markedness and morphophonemics Markedness has also been used in morphophonemics (cf. Art. 35), both implicitly and explicitly. Thus, the allomorphy represented by cat/cats has been characterized as unmarked vs. the marked foot/feet for the following reasons: non-alternation of the root (it remains cat), representation of the morphological relation by a segmentable, agglutinative morpheme (cat-s), and phonological (i.e., regular) conditioning of the allomorphy in the former vs. the latter (the plural is realized as [s] in cats, [z] in dogs, and [ez] in horses for reasons having to do with the phonological system of English, but the alternation between foot and feet is due to the morphology). In fact, there is a general assumption that regularity and phonological conditioning are unmarked and irregularity and non-phonological conditioning (e.g., morphological conditioning) are marked. Thus, if both the unmarked and marked terms of an opposition have allomorphy, there is more morphological regularity of the marked term (less allomorphy, fewer different forms); in German, for example, the marked dative plurals uniformly have -n or -en, while the dative singular varies with gender and declensional class. There is also diachronic and synchronic levelling in child language, pidgins and cre-

IV. Grundbegriffe

oles, dialects, and informal speech, leading to regularization (e.g., English foots rather than feet); regular forms have greater lexical (type) frequency (the vast majority of English nouns take the -s plural and only a small minority the irregular plurals); regular forms are often the productive ones (e.g., new nouns coming into English normally take -s as in sputniks); in language change, the regular formation provides the pivotal terms for analogical reformations (e.g., in English, the irregular plural brethren was replaced by regular brothers); after analogical reformation, the irregular form may take on special meanings or functions (brethren has taken on a new, specialized ⫺ marked ⫺ meaning); and in pidgins and creoles, irregular forms are often dropped. Considerations such as these have been incorporated in natural morphology in which naturalness is tied to markedness and regularity (see Art. 31, 32, 33, 47 and 48). 3.3. Markedness and distribution There is a general principle whereby the unmarked category is the one with wider paradigmatic and syntagmatic distribution and thus many of the asymmetries of morphological systems and usage can be explained by markedness. In terms of paradigms, there is a general principle whereby marked categories tend to have fewer subvarieties than unmarked ones. This is known as Brøndal’s principle of compensation or the tendency not to combine marked categories together (see Brøndal 1940; 1943). This is exemplified by the following: syncretism / syncretization (cf. Art. 66), in which the marked term totally lacks categories present in the unmarked term (e.g., in the English pronouns there are gender differences in the singular he, she, it but not in the plural they); defectivation (defective categories) in which the marked term has only some of the categories that the unmarked term has, i.e., there are gaps in the paradigm (e.g., French has present indicative, present subjunctive and future indicative but no future subjunctive), or, instead of a morphological category, there is a more complex periphrastic one, made up of two or more words (e.g., future tense and passive voice in English are periphrastic but present tense and active voice are not ⫺ will hit, is hit vs. hits). Furthermore, this can be used as evidence for defining hierarchical relations / ranking between categories: number dominates gender in English and thus gender is

275

29. Markedness

syncretized in the plural; past tense is higher than future tense in French and thus past tense has both an indicative and a subjunctive but future tense does not (see Croft 1990: 92f.). The unmarked term is also syntagmatically more diversified. One of the most striking results of this greater diversity ⫺ and one of the first to be noted (see Jakobson 1932; Hjelmslev 1971 [1933]) ⫺ is that of the distribution of meaning between marked and unmarked categories and in particular the more limited range of meaning of the marked term and wider range of the unmarked. Thus, while the marked term means the presence of a certain property A (e.g., the English past tense is marked and signals past time), the unmarked has two major types of meaning: (a) non-A in its basic (nuclear) meaning (e.g., the unmarked present may signal non-past as in John is here right now, John is coming tomorrow), and (b) no signal of A at all (the present is atemporal as in the earth is round). In addition, there is a minor type: (c) signalling A (the present is used for past time as in the historical present ⫺ see 5.4 below). Wordformation may also exhibit the same types of asymmetries, such as Fr. acteur meaning either ‘male actor’ (type a) or ‘actor’ (type b) vs. actrice meaning only ‘female actress‘; Eng. host can be used for both males and females, whereas hostess cannot (e.g., your hosts tonight are Mr. and Mrs. Smith). Such correlations are not unique to morphology but arise also in the semantic analysis of other levels of language. For example, in the lexicon, for antonyms such as accented-unaccented, accented is both the opposite of unaccented and the name for the entire parameter (accentedness) (Waugh 1982: 308), and so forth. This tendency to use the unmarked category to represent both the entire category and the opposite of the marked category is pervasive in human thinking, ⫺ e. g, in mathematical and logical symbolism, -5 is always negative, but 5 can mean both the absolute value of 5 and ⫹5 (Jakobson & Pomorska 1980; Greenberg 1966: 25). Directly correlated with the greater semantic diversity of the unmarked term is the fact that it also appears in a wider array of syntagmatic environments, that is, it has greater freedom of occurrence. The following types of correlations with markedness have been found for singular-plural: wider distribution of the unmarked term (in English the plural is used in fewer morphological and syntactic

contexts than the singular ⫺ e.g., in compounds typically the singular is used even if the meaning is plural, as in owner-occupied, language laboratory); facultative use of the marked term (in Korean, there is optional use of the plural form and thus the singular form is usually understood as singular unless the context demands a plural meaning, just as English host normally refers to men but can be used for women); contextual neutralization ⫺ only the unmarked term may appear in some contexts (in Turkish, the singular form of the noun is used when a cardinal number precedes it); dominance of the unmarked term over the marked (in Spanish the masculine gender of los padres can be used to mean both ‘the parents’ and ‘the fathers’ but las madres can only refer to ‘the mothers’); agreement a potiori (a French adjective agreeing with both a masculine and a feminine noun is put in the masculine plural). The greater distribution of the unmarked term is also to be correlated with its higher frequency (e.g., in text counts of French, the nominal singular is more frequent than the plural; but see Schwartz 1980, who shows that text frequency does not always correlate with markedness).

4.

Markedness and cross-linguistic comparison

Many linguists claim that there is a markedness connection between language structure, types of changes, the universal and implicational distribution of categories within and across languages, language typology, the order of acquisition by children and of loss by aphasics, and the facts of second language acquisition. 4.1. Language universals, child language, and universal grammar The connection between cross-linguistic comparison and markedness relations was shown originally for phonology by Trubetzkoy (1939) and Jakobson (1941; 1958). Such comparison leads to the recognition that certain markedness relations may tend to be universal (absolute universals): nasality, non-present tense, and passive voice tend always to be marked. In addition, there are types of linguistic systems which seem to occur with great frequency upon which principles of dependency can be formulated. The most important is asymmetric implication (implica-

276 tional universals): the presence of x implies the presence of y, but y does not imply x and therefore y is more basic (Jakobson 1958 ⫺ see also Art. 115 and 116). In many cases, y is unmarked and x is marked. For example, the presence of a gender distinction in the marked plural implies the presence of that same distinction in the unmarked singular, but not vice versa; the presence of a dual implies the presence of a plural but not vice versa. Such findings have also been crucial for predicting types and orders of morphological changes. In particular, the implicational universals mean that no language can acquire a marked category unless it acquires the unmarked one before (or concurrently); and no language can lose the unmarked category without losing the marked one. Universals and typological relations, especially implicational universals, also have explanatory power for first-language acquisition by the child and for aphasic dissolution (Jakobson 1941). For example, children tend to learn first the unmarked category and only later the marked one (they go from simpler to more complex systems, e.g., singular is learned before plural); in like fashion, aphasics lose first the marked category and only later the unmarked one. The association of marked terms with lesser universality and later learning by the child has also received renewed attention recently in generative grammar, particularly with respect to the relation between universal grammar, which is made up of those grammatical phenomena which are found in all languages, and core grammar (Battistella 1996). Universal grammar is assumed to determine a set of possible core grammars for languages by setting parameters, each with a finite number of values. These parameters may be connected through hierarchical relations of markedness or various implicational or preferential relations. Systems that fall within core grammar constitute the unmarked phenomena while more marked elements are found in the periphery (e.g., unmarked use of prepositions with an object, as in he came in the room vs. marked use of prepositions as adverb-like elements, as in he came in). In the acquisition of grammar in the child, universal grammar is assumed to be innate, with unmarked options for parameters being preferred and learned first, the marked periphery of the system being learned later (Chomsky 1981).

IV. Grundbegriffe

4.2. Second language acquisition Markedness has also led to various proposals for second language acquisition (see Rutherford 1982). From an interlinguistic viewpoint, for example, the Markedness Differential Hypothesis proposes that the degree of difficulty in second language acquisition may be attributed to the similarities and differences in typological markedness between the first and the second language and that relative areas of difficulty in the target language can be predicted for learners with a particular first language (Eckman 1985). The intralinguistic view of the role of markedness in second language acquisition is also based on linguistic universals, whereby unmarked structures are acquired early, and marked structures later. In this view, markedness serves as an explanation for the development of grammatical patterns in the interlanguage (intermediate stages in the acquisition of a second language) of adult learners. For instance, adult second language learners of Spanish acquire the present tense before the past and the indicative mood before the subjunctive. It is interesting to note that in interlanguage, just as for children, the unmarked forms often substitute for the marked categories before the latter are acquired. In addition, just as for aphasia, second language attrition studies have found a relation between order of acquisition and language loss: in learners of English, the last question forms learned (whose) are the first to be unlearned.

5.

Controversies about markedness

It must be pointed out that there have been some controversies about the various criteria for markedness discussed here. In particular, there is a cluster of issues on which there is no general agreement: Which criteria are necessary and/or sufficient to show markedness? Is one criterion all-important or is there more than one? If more than one, how do they interrelate? What if the criteria give conflicting results? Are the criteria weighted or causally linked? Are they absolute or probabilistic? Do the same criteria hold in all areas of language? For example, each of the following criteria has been claimed to be the one which defines markedness: wider semantic distribution; wider syntactic distribution; text (token) frequency; lexical (type) frequency; zero expression and formal complexity; order of first language acquisition; implicational relations;

29. Markedness

neutralization. Given this, there is no small confusion as to what the term markedness actually means. 5.1. Markedness and non-binary systems While the use of markedness is widespread for such obviously binary categories as singular-plural, its application to ternary and larger systems has led to more uncertainty (just as in phonology, where relations such as /p/-/t/-/k/ or /i/-/e/-/i/-/a/ have also led to doubts about the application of both binarism and markedness). Some linguists have claimed that all inflectional (and phonological) systems can be characterized in terms of binary relations of markedness (Jakobson & Pomorska 1980; van Schooneveld 1978) and that for ternary systems there are two markedness relations, creating hierarchies of markedness. They have discerned two types of structures. In some cases, there is one unmarked term opposed to two marked ones, each with a different mark. For example, tense systems with present-past-future oppose the unmarked present to the marked past and the marked future (each with a different mark). In other cases, there is one unmarked term opposed to two marked terms, which are then further differentiated into marked and unmarked. For example, unmarked present vs. marked past, itself split into unmarked imperfective vs. marked preterite (perfective). Person in the verb or the pronoun is a particularly interesting example. Third person is assumed to be unmarked for the following reasons: it is often the one with zero expression; it combines with other categories such as definiteness, proximity, gender; it is used for many different types of subjects (definite and indefinite, human, animate and inanimate, nominal and pronominal, personal and impersonal) as well as when there is no subject, and it can encompass first and second person referents in its general usage (e.g., where the subject is one, as in One should never tell lies). First and second person, on the other hand, are marked because they generally have an overt marker, do not combine as freely with other categories (although first can combine with inclusive/exclusive and second with formal/familiar), are used with definite, human, pronominal subjects (but not other types) and cannot encompass third person referents in their usage. Within first and second, first is marked because it inevitably refers to the speaker, whereas second person

277 may sometimes refer to the speaker, as when one talks to oneself, and, as well, it can have various generic uses (Jakobson 1957; Benveniste 1946; Lyons 1968: 276⫺278). For even larger systems, some linguists have assumed that there is a set of grammatical features and that one term of the system is unmarked (e.g., English simple present tense, Russian nominative case), the others singly marked (e.g., simple past, present progressive, instrumental, accusative), doubly marked (e.g., past progressive, dative), and so forth (Jakobson 1936; 1959: 490f.). 5.2. Markedness, hierarchies, prototypes Others linguists claim that a continuum of markedness from least to most marked is relevant for some (or all) non-binary relations, such that there are degrees of markedness (relative markedness) rather than numbers of marks (absolute markedness) (see Croft 1990: 95⫺123). The continua that have been proposed include: singular-plural-dual, positive-comparative-superlative, masculine-feminine-neuter, present-past-future. Person (cf. Art. 96) has proven to be quite controversial because of its great semantic and morphosyntactic complexity: some say the continuum is in the order third-second-first (as in the binary analysis discussed above), others that it is third-first-second (Croft 1990: 93), given the greater frequency of first person over second in dialogue and the fact that first person is dominant in agreement (if the subject is both first and second or first and third, then first plural is used). Still others claim that it should be correlated with the animacy/ agency hierarchy found in morphosyntax, defined as first/second person pronoun ⫺ third person pronoun ⫺ proper name ⫺ human common noun ⫺ non-human animate noun ⫺ inanimate noun, in descending order (Croft 1990: 111⫺117). This hierarchy (one of several, sometimes called functional syntactic markedness hierarchies) is used to explain various morphosyntactic facts. For example, first and second person pronouns and third person animate pronouns and animate nouns are more likely to occur as subjects of transitive verbs than inanimates. In addition, objects high in animacy have non-zero case markers or differentiate subject from object case while objects lower in animacy do not (e.g., in Latin neuters, -um is used for nominative and accusative but masculines and feminines have -us and -a for nominative and -um and -am for accusative).

278 In similar fashion, markedness and hierarchy patterns do not occur in isolation, but rather tend to be found in clusters, which then define unmarked, sometimes called prototypical, combinations. For example, the unmarked (prototypical) subject has been defined in terms of a bundle of categories, e.g., it is animate, topical, agentive, singular, definite (thus, in English, a sentence of the general pattern John hit some balls is more common than A ball was in the corner), whereas marked subjects may differ in various ways from this prototypical combination. In fact, the notion of prototype is based on some of the same insights as the notion of markedness, since with prototypicality there is a recognition of asymmetry among exemplars of a given category: like unmarked categories, prototypes are more basic, combine more freely and productively than do non-prototypes, are more frequent and more familiar, are more salient, have more autonomy, etc. That is, prototypes resemble unmarked terms in many respects. However, they are not strictly the same; for example, the unmarked singular in its prototypical (basic) usage refers to one exemplar, but in its non-prototypical usage it can be generic (e.g., one man vs. modern man or mankind). Hierarchies and prototypes are especially used in those areas which have fewer obvious binary relations, are less tightly organized than are either morphology or phonology (syntax, lexicon, discourse, pragmatics), and in which the application of markedness is most controversial (see Croft 1990: 95⫺154). 5.3. Invariance, markedness and markedness reversals In the decades since markedness was first formulated, the original insight that marked and unmarked values are imposed on properties has been combined with other closely allied phenomena by some linguists. For example, the plus (⫹) value of a feature has been assumed to be marked by definition and the minus (-) value unmarked, where plus means presence and minus means absence of the feature (this is probably linked to the original, phonological definition of markedness as the presence of an extra, complex property such as voicing, nasality). In other cases, features are treated as just formal diacritics, in which the plus and minus values are symmetrical and thus in principle interchangeable, e.g.,

IV. Grundbegriffe

present tense is characterized as [⫹present] and past is [-present], just as man as [⫹male] and woman as [-male]. Other linguists claim, however, that mark and feature must be differentiated and in particular that the minus value of a feature may be marked, that marks can vary according to the simultaneous and/or sequential context (markedness is context-sensitive, not contextfree), and that the presence of an entity is not the same as markedness (see Battistella 1990; 1996). Considerations such as these have led to some revisions in how markedness has been applied in morphology as well as in phonology, syntax, and so forth. One basic change has been to differentiate between mark and property/feature: a given feature (e.g., [-plural], [⫹feminine]) may be either marked or unmarked. If the markedness value is different in different contexts, there is a case of markedness reversal/shift, also called global vs. local markedness when the reversal seems to occur in only some minor or special environments. For example, in Frisian, singular is unmarked and plural marked for many nouns, but for a small class of nouns (e.g., body parts which come in pairs, domestic animals which usually occur in herds), plural is unmarked and thus has served as the basis for analogical reformation (Tiersma 1982). In addition, to use a crosslinguistic example, nominative was the unmarked case in Classical Latin (it is the dictionary form). However, in Old French, nominative was marked, being used only for subjects, whereas oblique was unmarked (but see Mayerthaler 1988: 50⫺65); thus, for example, the modern French nominal forms come from the old obliques, not the nominatives. In the case of the animacy hierarchy, the subject of a transitive verb is less marked the higher in animacy it is, while the object is more marked the higher in animacy it is. Markedness reversals are also prevalent in the lexicon. There are many examples showing that the unmarked sex reference in English is male (host is used for both generic usage and to refer to the male; hostess is used only for females). In contrast, sometimes the term of the opposition which is used for the female is also used for generic usage, e.g., generic and female cow vs. bull, used for the male only. Such claims of reversals have proven to be controversial. For some linguists, markedness values are invariant and by definition

279

29. Markedness

they cannot differ. Some associate markedness with naturalness or normality: marked values are assumed to be unnatural and thus more difficult to produce, comprehend, and acquire, more prone to instability and change, and less common intra- and interlinguistically (see Mayerthaler 1981; Wurzel 1984; and Art. 31). For some others, markedness values can differ across languages and through time, but are invariant in a given language at a given time. In such cases, the plus value of a feature is always marked and its opposite is not a minus value but a zero value (van Schooneveld 1978; Andrews 1990). This means that markedness is equated with both feature and invariance: woman is invariantly female, which is its feature and its mark; in such cases, no difference is made between being unmarked and syncretism or defectivation (e.g., both he and they are unmarked for [⫹female]). Others have insisted that mark, feature and invariance are three different, interrelated, concepts (Jakobson 1974; Newfield & Waugh 1991). Early work had assumed, for example, that there was a universal markedness relation within certain grammatical categories (see 4). However, more recent work has shown that the separation of mark and feature allows for either pole of an opposition to be marked, both across languages and within a language, thus allowing for markedness reversals. For example, across languages, masculine is the unmarked gender of nouns in familiar European languages, but feminine is the unmarked gender in some Iroquian languages. Within a language, singular is the unmarked number in nouns in English, but plural is the unmarked number in the pronominal opposition we ⫺ I, since the unmarked we can refer not only to more than one person but also to one person alone (the royal or editorial we), whereas the singular I can only refer to one person. The same is true for many, or perhaps all, inflectional categories. 5.4. Other uses of the term markedness Because markedness is correlated with issues of frequency, regularity, normality, and so forth, marked has also come to mean strange, deviant, unusual, unexpected in a given context, that is, stylistically marked, e.g., the use of the present to refer to the past as in the historical present (Eng. and just as I was about to cross the street, John comes up to me and says…) is a stylistically marked us-

age of the unmarked term. The use of an unmarked category may also be pragmatically marked. For example, in French, the pronoun vous is unmarked vs. tu (both mean ‘you’) because tu means that the speaker is in a close relation of solidarity with the addressee, whereas vous is used in all other cases. The use of vous is pragmatically unmarked when addressed to a stranger but unexpected (pragmatically marked ⫺ it may be ironic or pejorative or teasing) when used with a friend. In like fashion, categories may be sociolinguistically/socioculturally marked (e.g., English non-standard throwed is marked vs. standard threw).

6.

Range of application of markedness

These last examples take us far from the original insight with which we started. Indeed some linguists believe that markedness is a hallmark of human language precisely because it is a very simple idea which explains seemingly disparate facts in a variety of domains. They see simplicity and generality on the one hand, and objective and empirical specificity on the other. However, there are other linguists who feel that the original definition of markedness has been stretched so far as to be an unwieldy cover term for very different phenomena, especially since the definition and the critera for markedness tend to change across theoretical traditions and the various domains of language. Indeed, this last point alludes to another area of controversy: namely, the range of application of markedness. Some restrict its application to just morphology or phonology, or see its validity within individual languages but doubt its universal applicability, while for others it can be applied both within a language and across languages (see Battistella 1990; 1996). For some linguists it is a lowlevel theory needing explanation, whereas for others it is one of the major conceptual and explanatory achievements of contemporary linguistics. Finally, while some see it as strictly linguistic, others argue that it is a biological phenomenon; still others correlate it with the cognitive and perceptual domains of prototypicality and the figure vs. ground distinction, or point out the correlation between complexity of thought and complexity of expression, or claim that is reasonable to expect the more widely-used human artifacts to be simpler in structure and to have more sub-

280

IV. Grundbegriffe

types in order to suit the wider range of uses to which they are put (Moravcsik & Wirth 1986). Still others point to its application to human culture more generally and to virtually all other symbolic/semiotic systems. For example, Jakobson & Pomorska (1980) point out that the custom of wearing clothes is unmarked for 20th century man, but is a marked state for Neolithic man. Indeed, for scholars like Jakobson, markedness is explanatory not just for language, but also for human behavior and thought in general. They claim that it is a characteristically human trait to conceive of phenomena as binary and asymmetrical, i.e., marked and unmarked.

Greenberg, Joseph H. (1966), Language Universals, with Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton

7.

Jakobson, Roman (1936), “Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre: Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus”. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 6, 240⫺288 [reprinted in Jakobson (1971 b):23⫺71; Eng. trans. in Jakobson, Roman (1984): 59⫺103]

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Andersen, Henning (1989), “Markedness Theory: the First 150 Years”. In: Tomic´ (ed.), 11⫺46 Andrews, Edna (1990), Markedness Theory: The Union of Asymmetry and Semiosis in Language. Durham/NC: Duke University Press Battistella, Edwin (1990), Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language. Albany: State University of New York Press Battistella, Edwin (1996), The logic of Markedness. New York: Oxford University Press Benveniste, Emile (1946), “Structures des Relations de Personne dans le Verbe”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique 43 [reprinted in: Benveniste, Emile (1966), Proble`mes de Linguistique Geńe´rale, Paris: Gallimard, 225⫺236; Eng. trans. in: Benveniste, Emile (1971), Problems in General Linguistics. Coral Gables/FL: University of Miami Press, 195⫺204] Brøndal, Viggo (1940), “Compensation et Variation, Deux Principes de Linguistique Geńe´rale”. Scientia [Bologna] 67, 101⫺109 [reprinted in: Brøndal, Viggo (1943), Essais de Linguistique Geńe´rale. Kopenhagen: Munksgaard, 105⫺116] Brøndal, Viggo (1943), “Structure et Variabilite´ des Syste`mes Morphologiques”. In: Brøndal, Viggo, Essais de Linguistique Geńe´rale. Kopenhagen: Munksgaard, 15⫺24 Chomsky, Noam (1981), “Markedness and Core Grammar”. In: Belletti, Adriana & Brandi, Luciana, & Rizzi, Luigi (eds.), Theory of Markedness in Generative Grammar. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 123⫺146 Croft, William (1990), Typology and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Eckman, Fred (1985), “Some Theoretical and Pedagogical Implications of the Markedness Differential Hypothesis”. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 7, 289⫺307

Gvozdanovic´, Jadranka (1989), “Defining Markedness”. In: Tomic´ (ed.), 47⫺66 Hjelmslev, Louis (1971), “Structure Geńe´rale des Corre´lations Linguistiques”. In: Hjelmslev, Louis, Essais Linguistiques, Vol. II, 57⫺98. Copenhagen: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 14) [written 1933] Jakobson, Roman (1932), “Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums”. In: Charisteria Gvilelmo Mathesio Quinquagenario a discipulis et Circuli Linguistici Pragensis sodalibus oblata. Prague: Cercle linguistique de Prague, 79⫺84 [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1971 b): 551⫺553; English transl. in: Jakobson (1984): 1⫺14]

Jakobson, Roman (1939), “Signe Ze´ro”. Me´langes de Linguistique Offerts a` Charles Bally, 143⫺152. Geneva: Librairie de l’Universite´ [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1971 b): 211⫺219; Eng. trans. in Jakobson (1984): 151⫺160] Jakobson, Roman (1941), Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1971 a): 328⫺401; English transl. by Allan Keiler (1968), Child Language, Aphasia, and Phonological Universals. The Hague, Paris: Mouton] Jakobson, Roman (1957), Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb. Cambridge/MA: Russian Language Project, Harvard University [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1971 b): 130⫺147] Jakobson, Roman (1958), “Typological Studies and Their Contribution to Historical Comparative Linguistics”. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Congress of Linguists, 5⫺9 August, Oslo 1957, 17⫺25 and 33⫺35. Oslo: Oslo University Press [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1971 a): 523⫺532 and Jakobson, Roman (1990): 143⫺151] Jakobson, Roman (1959), “Boas’ View of Grammatical Meaning”. In: Goldschmidt, William (ed.), The Anthropology of Franz Boas: Essays on the Centennial of His Birth [American Anthropologist 61.5, part 2; Memoir 89], 139⫺145 [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1971 b): 489⫺496 and Jakobson, Roman (1990): 324⫺331] Jakobson, Roman (1971 a), Selected Writings, Vol. I: Phonological Studies. The Hague: Mouton Jakobson, Roman (1971 b), Selected Writings, Vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton Jakobson, Roman (1974), “Mark and Feature”. In: World Papers in Phonetics: Festschrift for Dr. Onishi’s Kiju, 37⫺39. Tokyo: The Phonetic Society

30. Iconicity of Japan [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1985): 122⫺124] Jakobson, Roman (1984), Russian and Slavic Grammar: Studies, 1931⫺1981, edited by Linda Waugh & Morris Halle. Berlin, New York: Mouton Jakobson, Roman (1985), Selected Writings, Vol. VII, Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972⫺1982, edited by Stephen Rudy. The Hague: Mouton Jakobson, Roman (1990), On Language, edited by Linda Waugh & Monique Monville-Burston. Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press Jakobson, Roman & Pomorska, Krystyna (1980), “The Concept of the Mark”. Chapter 10 of: Jakobson, Roman & Pomorska, Krystyna, Dialogues. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press [reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1990): 134⫺140] Jakobson, Roman & Waugh, Linda R. (21987), The Sound Shape of Language. Berlin, New York: Mouton [11979, Bloomington: Indiana University Press] Lyons, John (1968), Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: University Press Mayerthaler, Willi (1981), Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion (Linguistische Forschungen 18) [English transl. by Jeanice Seidler (1988), Morphological Naturalness. Ann Arbor: Karoma (Linguistica Extranea Studia 17)] Moravcsik, Edith & Wirth, Jessica (1986), “Markedness: An Overview”. In: Eckman, Fred & Moravcsik, Edith & Wirth, Jessica (eds.), Markedness. New York, London: Plenum, 1⫺11 Newfield, Madeleine & Waugh, Linda (1991), “Invariance and Markedness in Grammatical Categories”. In: Waugh, Linda & Rudy, Stephen (eds.), New Vistas in Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins, 221⫺238

281 Rutherford, William (1982), “Markedness in Second Language Acquisition”. Language Learning 32.1, 85⫺108 Schooneveld, Cornelis H. van (1978), Semantic Transmutations. Prolegomena to a Calculus of Meaning. Vol. I: The Cardinal Semantic Structure of Prepositions, Cases, and Paratactic Conjunctions in Contemporary Standard Russian. Bloomington, Ind.: Physsardt Schwartz, Linda (1980), “Syntactic Markedness and Frequency of Occurrence”. In: Perry, Thomas (ed.), Evidence and Argumentation in Linguistics. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 315⫺333 Tiersma, Peter M. (1982), “Local and General Markedness”. Language 58, 832⫺849 Tomic´, Olga M. (1989, ed.), Markedness in Synchrony and Diachrony. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter Trubetzkoy, Nikolai S. (1931), “Die phonologischen Systeme”. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 4, 96⫺115 Trubetzkoy, Nikolai S. (1939), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 7 [English transl. by Christiane A. M. Baltaxe (1960), Principles of Phonology. Berkeley/CA: University of California Press] Waugh, Linda R. (1982), “Marked and Unmarked: A Choice between Unequals in Semiotic Structure”. Semiotica 38, 299⫺318 Waugh, Linda R. & Lafford, Barbara A. (1994), “Markedness”. In: The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. V. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 2378⫺2383 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag (Studia grammatica 21)

Linda R. Waugh, Ithaca/New York (U.S.A.) Barbara A. Lafford, Tempe/Arizona (U.S.A.)

30. Iconicity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Morphological bulk Incorporation Productive contrasts Statistical universals Markedness and essence References

1.

Introduction

The fundamental principle of semiotics is that signs are symbolic (arbitrary or unmotivated) in most mature grammatical systems

(see Art. 23). This has been a mainstay of grammatical theory for well over two thousand years, and consequently a heuristic in many branches of the field of language study, notably comparative and historical linguistics. For example, the fact that there is nothing houndlike about the word hound is the reason that resemblances like Germ. Hund, Eng. hound are taken as a sign of the common origin of these words (Anttila 1972). Nevertheless, there is a clear distinction to be made between the inventory of actually occurring more or less arbitrary morphemes

282 in a language, and grammatical structure in the broadest sense. There are two reasons for regarding the complex signs created by grammatical structure as different from the individual signs which are collocated to produce them. First, given obvious biological constraints, the possible array of structures in which morphemes may be put together is small enough that mere coincidence may be an acceptable explanation for similarity at the syntactic level. (If two languages have SVO word order, this is clearly not an index of genetic affiliation.) Second, however, grammatical structure is very often motivated by the meanings to which it corresponds. It is for this reason that cross-linguistic similarities can often be attributed to universal semantics rather than common origin, human biology, or coincidence. (For example, all languages have grammatical categories we are comfortable in labelling as nouns and verbs; languages with SOV word order will almost always have Verb Auxiliary order as well; the marker of the protasis in conditional sentences will frequently be related to the marker for the sentence topic; and languages in which the lexemes for ¤manÅ, ¤womanÅ or ¤waterÅ are sesquipedalian are non-existent.) In his typology of signs, the philosopher C. S. Peirce distinguished between symbols (those signs where the connection between the sign and its referent is totally conventional and arbitrary) and icons (those signs where the connection is motivated by some resemblance between the sign and what it stands for). Moreover, among icons, he made a distinction between images and diagrams. In Haiman (1985) and other recent writings on the subject, a diagram is treated as an attenuated image: although the parts of a diagram do not resemble their referents, the relationship among these parts does resemble the relationship among their referents. A diagram is a stylized simplification of an image, in which presumably essential features of the original are preserved. Diagrammatic iconicity of the sort attested by the linear order of veni, vidi, vici will be our concern here, rather than the image iconicity attested by onomatopoetic words. Even granting the plausibility of diagrammatic iconicity in grammatical structure, however, it would seem that morphological structure would be a far less likely place to

IV. Grundbegriffe

find motivation than syntax. This is because morphological structures are frozen, essentially ritualized forms. Attempts to find motivation, or even a fixed invariant Gesamtbedeutung, for grammatical categories collide with the fact that such categories (from parts of speech and notions like subject, to the subjunctive, the plural, and the imperative mood) have become partially emancipated from whatever motivation they once had through the very process of becoming institutionalized as grammatical categories. Within the sound articulation of language, the process of emancipation is familiar as phonologization, while in morphosyntax it goes by the name of grammaticalization (cf. Art. 145). But the process is characteristic of human institutions in general, and is by no means restricted to language. Thus, even the most thoroughgoing functionalist account of such phenomena as the instrumental case in Russian or the preposition at in English, for example, must adopt a “family resemblances” or “prototype” model of their meanings. Even adopting this massive implicit retreat from essentialism, such accounts must recognize a residue of meanings for most grammatical forms which are only explainable, if at all, on a purely historical basis. (Like all rituals, the structures were originally motivated, but that does not mean they are motivated now. In fact, their absence of motivation is one of the things which identifies them as rituals.) In fact, it could be defined as almost the essential property of purely grammaticized morphological constructions (and one which opposes them to their at least partially motivated syntactic near-equivalents) that they “fail to mean what they are supposed to mean”. Take, for example, the familiar contrast between grammatical gender on the one hand, and terms like male and female on the other; between the plural number and explicit numeral quantifiers; or between grammatical tense and temporal adverbs like yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The graded nature of the contrast between pure (semantically or pragmatically motivated) syntax and pure (ritualized) morphology is beautifully exemplified in Comrie’s (1975) and Corbett’s (1979; 1983; 1991) careful studies of the phenomenon of grammatical agreement in Russian and other Slavic languages. As is well known, agreement be-

30. Iconicity

tween a controller and the agreeing target constituent may be purely formal (ad formam) or it may be semantically motivated (ad sensum). Given a “hybrid” controller ⫺ one whose formal features are distinct from its natural features (the stock example is Germ. Mädchen (neuter) ¤girlÅ) ⫺ and a target, the target will tend to agree with the controller on the basis of arbitrary, un-natural, purely grammatical features if the two are close together, but more and more it will tend to agree with its controller on the basis of motivated natural features as the distance between the controller and target increases (Corbett 1991: 240). In other words: the smaller the unit of analysis, the more arbitrariness rules within it. All in all, then, although iconicity may be positively rife at the discourse level, there are good reasons for becoming increasingly skeptical about the extent of iconicity or semantic motivation in general within the smaller domains of the sentence, the clause, and the phrase. And, within the realm of the morphological word, it may be that motivation yields to formalism completely. Nevertheless, the following survey will cover what seem to be well established cases of absolute iconicity at the level of morphological structure.

2.

Morphological bulk

2.1. The root/affix dichotomy The fundamental morphological distinction in most languages is between necessarily lexical word roots and word-forming inflectional and derivational affixes, which may be either lexical or derivational. The formal contrast is between free-standing words of arbitrary length and complexity on the one hand (like cat, sing, and heavy), and parasitic morphemes of reduced structure which are incapable of being uttered by themselves on the other (like -s, re- -ize, or -hood). The conceptual contrast is less clear (cf. Art. 27), but with overwhelming frequency the object language which labels concrete entities and events in the world consists of words (based on stems), rather than affixes. Affixes tend to mark relatively vague or abstract concepts (although words also can do this). While most languages exhibit analytic structures like CAT S and CHILD HOOD, agglutinative structures like CAT-s and CHILD-hood,

283 or synthetic structures like MeN and FeLL (¤make fallÅ), there are no languages known with structures that we could model as *catS or *child-HOOD (capital and lower-case letters roughly indicate roots and affixes, respectively. (There are apparently no languages with structures like *mEn. That is, for purposes of morphological ablaut, it is consonants rather than vowels which are identified as the relatively invariable “skeleton” of the morphological word. But this is a different issue which is not discussed here). The more abstract the concept, the more reduced its morphological expression will tend to be. Morphological bulk corresponds directly and iconically to conceptual intension. Alternatively: the larger the set of things defined, the less features are needed to define it. 2.2. The antecedent/anaphor dichotomy A related morphological distinction is manifested in the contrast between antecedents and conventional anaphors. The first relate directly to (ideas about) (classes of) things in the world. The latter, which are metalinguistic variables, merely assert that they have the same reference as the antecedents to which they directly refer. Their intrinsic intension is minimal: he, for example, denotes no more than that its referent is male, and zero anaphora of course has no intrinsic denotation at all. Typically, anaphors are formally reduced relative to antecedents: pronouns (if they are not in fact null) are often clitics, and may reduce to agreement affixes, while nouns are not. The anaphoric reduction may be one of acoustic amplitude, as well as one of segmental bulk. A productive example due in its original form to G. Lakoff (1976) is the minimal contrast pair: (1) First John called Max a Republican and then … (a) he INSULTED him. (b) HE insulted HIM. In (1a), it is clear that calling someone a Republican is not to insult him: the heavy stress on INSULTED indicates that the act of insult is novel. In (1b) it is understood that “calling someone a Republican” constitutes an insult: the reduced stress on the verb insult signals that the verb is being used anaphorically. Conversely, the heavy stress on the pro-

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IV. Grundbegriffe

nouns indicates that their coreference cannot be to what would otherwise be their default antecedents. 2.3. The predictable/unexpected dichotomy A major obstacle in recognizing the iconicity of grammatical structures is that all signs, including zero, are capable of great ambiguity. Non-representation of the speaker, for example, signals unself-conscious total participa-

tion in (2a), but pseudo-divine transcendence, omniscience and objectivity in (2b): (2) (a) It’s to the right (of me). (b) (I think) most men are bad. Use of the emphatic pronoun signalled unexpected coreference in Old and most Middle English. Predictable coreference was signalled by the appropriate oblique casemarked personal pronoun. Thus for example:

(3) (a) pa ætiwde se coccel hine then showed the tare him(self) ‘Then the tares appeared.’ (Matthew 13: 26) (b) Gap to pæm ciependum and bycgap eow ele. go to the sellers and buy you(rselves) oil ‘Go to them that sell oil and buy for yourselves.’ (Matthew 25: 9) Modern English still exhibits a trace of this in structures like (4) (a) He always kept a gun on him. (b) Have you got your student ID on you? On the other hand, the emphatic pronoun now signals routine coreference, and unexpected coreference is signalled by the unmarked oblique pronoun in sentences like: (5) I’m in charge of me. Given that the unmarked oblique pronoun signalled routine coreference in Old English, while it signals deviant or unexpected coreference in late Modern English, it may seem senseless to speak of invariant meanings of a single form, let alone whether such a form is motivated or not. The counter to this objection is twofold: first, the meaning of zero, like meaning in general, is always relative to a context; second (and in particular, because this second answer is a subcase of the first), grammatical forms may either become ritualized and partially emancipated from their original motivations through frequent use or, conversely, they may become “valorized” or acquire new significance if they are taken out of use. That is, frequency of use is itself a meaning-determining context. The two meanings of the reflexive pronoun are a clear example of emancipation. What was remarkable at first ceases to become remarkable ⫺ becomes routine ⫺ through constant repetition: but its form remains the same. Thus the reflexive pronoun remains the same as the emphatic pronoun in English and other languages long after the coreference

which it signals is understood as routine. Conversely, what was unremarkable at first may become remarkable once it ceases to be used, or becomes rare. The two meanings of the oblique pronoun are a case of valorization. From signalling routine coreference in Old English, it now marks unexpected coreference and thus indirectly signals the existence of a “divided self”. It is used ⫺ exactly like a non-anaphoric expression ⫺ wherever the speaker wishes to underline a difference between the observing and participating aspects of a character, or between a character as an individual and as an institution. The value of the oblique pronoun in sentence (5) above is therefore analogous to the self-referential use of one’s own name in utterances like Imelda Marcos’ campaign pledge (November 8, 1991): (6) As long as there is one poor Filipino, Imelda’s work will not be over. But to acquire this novel value, it was necessary for the oblique pronoun to be replaced by the reflexive pronoun as the index of coreference.

3.

Incorporation

Phonological reduction of a morpheme is usually associated with its incorporation into a derived word (cf. Art. 88 for a different concept of incorporation). Incorporation can also be identified by the degree to which a morpheme is assimilated into its host. It is a commonplace that many rules of phonetic assimilation apply only within words, and not across word boundaries. For example,

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the negative prefixes un- and in- (to different degrees) assimilate the place of articulation of the final consonant to the following consonant (in-edible and un-answerable, but impossible, un-mitigated, in-tolerable, un-tried, and in-complete, un-conquered), while the negative word not is subject to no such assimilation. By this criterion of incorporation, the articles in English are (their orthography notwithstanding) prefixes, assuming different forms before consonant and vowel-initial words. In a string xy, x is incorporated into y to the extent that its form is affected by y. Given such a definition, there is no reason in principle to restrict incorporation to cases of phonetic assimilation alone. On the morphosyntactic level, we may say that x is incorporated into the string including …y… if it agrees with y or is affected by y with respect to number, gender, case, or any other grammatical category. It is then notable that incorporation iconically reflects different kinds of conceptual closeness. 3.1. Quotation For example, not one may become no, but not in cases which have been characterized (e.g. Horn 1985) as “metalinguistic”: (7) (a) Not one voice broke the silence. (b) No voice broke the silence. (8) (a) Not one donor responded, but several. (b) *No donor responded, but several. In the same way, not happy is not too far in meaning from unhappy, unless negation is

metalinguistic, in which case incorporation is impossible: (9) (a) (b) (10) (a) (b)

I’m not happy. I’m unhappy. I’m not happy, I’m ecstatic. *I’m unhappy, I’m ecstatic.

Morphological incorporation is not different from syntactic incorporation. Metalinguistically negated words and phrases are in effect being quoted. In general, quoted material, as is well known, is not incorporated into the matrix in which it appears: not only does it not have to be linguistic at all (let alone material in the same language as the surrounding material), but, when it happens to be in the same language, it does not assume the case role that non-quoted material would have, it does not behave like an anaphor, it does not occasion agreement, and it does not occasion word order adaptations in the surrounding material. 3.2. Reflexives Where a language distinguishes between a separate reflexive morpheme and a bound affix, the bound affix will be subject to assimilation processes. For example, in Russian, the reflexive -sja appears in the cited form after consonants, and in the form -sj after vowels. The separate reflexive morpheme seb’a will not be subject to any phonetic assimilation processes. Moreover, where a language distinguishes between these two exponents of reflexive morphology, the extruded reflexive will signal a separate individual, or some kind of divided self:

(11) (a) On scˇitaet-sja xorosˇim lingvistom he consider-refl good linguist ‘he is (generally) considered a good linguist.’ (b) On scˇitaet seb’a xorosˇim lingvistom. he consider refl good linguist ‘He considers himself a good linguist (but his colleagues don’t).’ A similar contrast between the incorporated and extruded reflexive is apparent in Hungarian and in Turkish, two languages where the relative assimilation that the incorporated morpheme is subjected to, is vowel harmony. Other languages exhibiting the same distinction are discussed in Kemmer (1993: 25⫺28, 151⫺200). A somewhat different conceptual distinction is also reflected in this contrast: the more predictable a morpheme, the more likely it will appear in a reduced ⫺ often incorpo-

rated ⫺ form. For example shave and kill are both transitive verbs, but the former is an action that one is far more likely to perform upon oneself. Verbs of the shave class may be called typically introverted, while those of the kill class are more typically extroverted. Where a language distinguishes two reflexives, the verbs of the introverted class are far more likely to occur with the incorporated reflexive morpheme, while transitive verbs of the extroverted class are far more likely to occur with the extruded reflexive morpheme.

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Thus Russ. myl-sja ‘washed (self)¤ but ubil seb’a ‘killed selfÅ. The contrast can also be neatly illustrated with reciprocal verbs, where the issue of object individuation which was used to distinguish between utomil seb’a and utomil-sja is clearly entirely irrelevant. Where a language distinguishes two reciprocals, verbs which are logically or empirically more likely to be reciprocal are far more likely to use the reduced incorporated reciprocal, while verbs which are less inherently likely to be reciprocal are more likely to use the extruded reciprocal. Thus Russ. poznakomili-sj, ‘met (each other)’, contrasts with l’ubili drug druga ‘loved each otherÅ. Predictability, then, as well as lack of intrinsic content, may lead to reduced morphological expression. This point was made in a series of classic accounts by G. K. Zipf (e.g. Zipf 1935), and has never been either challenged nor sufficiently exploited. It is predictability (in the sense that the concept is a frequent one in human discourse) which leads to the non-existence of morphemes like *hrekwataklsfligbenj meaning “man” in any human language ⫺ although one might not be surprised to encounter such a term for humans among the learned residents of another galaxy. But it is also predictability which accounts for the reduced expression of the reflexive and the reciprocal in constructions like those just discussed above, and which accounts for T. Givon’s (1985) hierarchy of topic expressions: the less accessible the antecedent, the more morphologically marked the resumptive topic expression.

4.

Productive contrasts

The grammatical categories of a language are frequently ritualized, so that there is no nonex post facto way to predict whether a concept will be a member of one grammatical category or another. For example, it cannot be predicted that hair will surface as a mass or a count noun in a given language. Similarly, it cannot be predicted whether the causative form of the verb meaning ¤make cleanÅ will be analytic (¤cause to become cleanÅ) or agglutinative (¤clean-ifyÅ) or synthetic (¤cleanÅ) in any language. But, if in a given language, the concept can be expressed in several ways, then the formal contrast will be motivated. In English, hairs contrasts meaningfully with hair: the plural is used when the noun is

viewed as countable, the mass noun when it is not. (The definitive discussion of the motivations of even this highly ritualized mass/ count distinction is Wierzbicka 1985.) In the same way, kill contrasts with cause to die: the synthetic causative is used when cause and effect are closely linked in time and place, when there is physical contact between killer and victim, and so on. (Some discussions of this classic issue are Fodor 1972; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Haiman 1985.)

5.

Statistical universals

5.1. The unmarked third person singular The non-expression of the third person singular in verbal and pronominal paradigms was first explained in functional terms by Benveniste (1946): nomenclature to the contrary, the third person was not just another person like first and second, but fundamentally distinguished from these two in that unlike first person (speaker) and second person (hearer), the third person was the person or people who were absent from the speech act (cf. Art. 96). Zero marking iconically signals the non-person. Watkins (1962) and subsequently other scholars demonstrated the dynamic power of this motivation by showing how a number of morphological changes in various languages had the effect of creating a correspondence between the morphological category third person singular and the null sign. Nevertheless, it had to be admitted that the third person singular is not everywhere and always morphologically unmarked, an example of a language where this correlation does not obtain being of course English. Yet in the overwhelming statistical majority of languages with person-number marking, the unmarked person/number is third person singular (see Art. 29). 5.2. The relative closeness of affixes to roots In an important study, Bybee (1985) has shown that the relative closeness of satellites (affixes or modifying constitutents) to the verbal or nominal root (or head of a phrase) is determined by the semantic relevance of the concept expressed by the satellites to the meaning of the verbal or nominal head itself. That is, conceptual closeness is reflected in formal closeness. The resulting patterns (aspect marked closer to the verb stem than mood, and so forth) are cross-linguistic ⫺

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but again, there are languages which fail to conform with the patterns without invalidating their reality.

6.

Markedness and essence

6.1. Prototypical parts of speech Skepticism regarding the notional motivation for the classic parts of speech is well known (cf. Ch. X). Rather than define a noun as the name of a “person, place, or thing”, it seems best to define it on purely formal and distributional criteria which are necessarily language-specific. Nevertheless, against the extreme relativism which is implied by the formalist approach, there remains the fundamental fact that the core membership of the major parts-of-speech categories like noun and verb is fairly constant in natural languages. Time-stable things will tend to be classified as nouns, while evanescent things will tend to be realized as verbs. Languages will predictably differ on the category to which they assign intermediate things like winds and flames. In a recent discussion, Hopper & Thompson (1985) have gone beyond this insight of Zipf. Noting that defining features like “temporal stability” and “individuation” are matters of degree, they have proposed the following correlation: the degree to which a nominal or verbal stem may appear with its category-specific “morphological trappings” covaries with the degree to which it approximates the prototypical meaning of the category. Incorporated nouns formally tend to lose their capacity to occur with nominal satellites, and conceptually lose their capacity to refer to individuated objects in the world. Verbs in the imperative mood formally tend to lose their capacity to occur with verbal satellites, and conceptually lose their capacity to denote single events that actually happen in the world. The predictive power of this principle is considerable, even though there are presumably exceptions to be found in many cases. 6.2. The marking of grammatical categories In a similar but probably misguided vein, one may look for examples of iconicity in the appropriateness of the grammatical device itself for signalling a given meaning. The pioneering discussion is Jakobson’s (1965) quest for motivation in categories like the comparative and superlative degrees of the adjective. Al-

though it is true that the comparative and superlative iconically signal semantic augmentation through morphological augmentation, most languages also signal diminution through morphological augmentation: there are no languages which in addition to big, big-ger, and big-gest also exhibit *bi ¤less bigÅ. The same argument can be made about the traditional exponence of plurality: although in the vast majority of cases, “more (form) is more (substance)”, there are systematic exceptions to this pattern which demonstrate that what is fundamentally at issue is markedness. Where plurality is the norm, it is the plural which is unmarked, and a derived marked singulative is employed to signal oneness: thus, essentially, wheat vs. grain of wheat (cf. Art. 100). The only morphological device which is even potentially iconically appropriate for the expression of its specialized meanings is that of reduplication, which, as has often been pointed out, often signals plurality in nouns, repetititve or habitual aspect in verbs, or, more subtly, is used to derive adjectives from nouns. As has also been noted, however, (e.g. Moravcsik 1978), reduplication signals not only augmentation but often, diminution; not only endearment, but often contempt; not only emphasis, but often disparagement and even sarcasm. There may be contextual principles (comparable to those invoked for determining the motivated meanings of unmarked forms, for example) which would allow one to predict which of two opposed meanings the device assumes in any given case. The existence and nature of such principles, however, is still an open question.

7.

References

Anttila, Raimo (1972), An Introduction to Comparative and Historical Linguistics. New York: MacMillan Benveniste, Emile (1946), “Relations de personne dans le verbe”. Bulletin de la socie´te´ linguistique 43, 1⫺12 Bybee, Joan (1985), “Diagrammatic Iconicity in Stem-Inflection Relations”. In: Haiman (ed.), 11⫺47 Comrie, Bernard (1975), “Polite Plurals and Predicate Agreement”. Language 51, 406⫺418 Corbett, Greville G. (1979), “The Agreement Hierarchy”. Journal of Linguistics 15, 203⫺224

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Corbett, Greville G. (1983), Hierarchies, Targets, and Controllers: Agreement Patterns in Slavic. London: Croom Helm Corbett, Greville G. (1991), Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Fodor, Jerry A. (1970) “Three Reasons for Not Deriving ¤KillÅ from ¤Cause to DieÅ”. Linguistic Inquiry 1, 429⫺438 Givoń, Talmy (1985), “Iconicity, Isomorphism, and Non-arbitrary Coding”. In: Haiman (ed.), 187⫺220 Haiman, J[ohn] (1985), Natural Syntax: Iconicity and Erosion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Haiman, John (1985, ed.), Iconicity in Syntax. Proceedings of a Symposium on Iconicity in Syntax, Stanford, June 24⫺6, 1983. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 6) Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1985), “The Non-arbitrariness of the Categories ¤NounÅ and ¤VerbÅ”. In: Haiman (ed.), 151⫺183 Horn, Laurence (1985), “Metalinguistic Negation and Pragmatic Ambiguity”. Language 61, 121⫺174

Jakobson, Roman (1965), “Quest for the Essence of Language”. Diogenes 51, 21⫺37 Kemmer, Suzanne (1993), The Middle Voice. Amsterdam: Benjamins Lakoff, George (1976), “Pronouns and Reference”. In: McCawley, James D. (ed.), Notes from the Linguistic Underground. New York: Academic Press, 273⫺335 Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark (1980), Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Moravcsik, Edith A. (1978), “Reduplicative Constructions”. In: Greenberg, Joseph (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. III: Word Structure. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 297⫺334 Watkins, Calvert (1962), Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb, Part I: The Sigmatic Aorist. Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies Wierzbicka, Anna (1985), “Wheat and Oats: The Fallacy of Arbitrariness”. In: Haiman (ed.), 311⫺ 342 Zipf, George K. (1935), The Psychobiology of Language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

John Haiman, St. Paul (U.S.A.)

31. Naturalness 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Development of Natural Morphology Universal, system-independent morphological naturalness Typological adequacy System-dependent naturalness References

1.

Introduction

1.1. Informal characterization of naturalness Natural has often been used by linguists in an inductive way as a synonym of intuitively plausible or of cross-linguistically frequent, in reference to both synchronic phenomena and diachronic change. In theoretically more elaborated views, it is often synonymous to cognitively simple or easily accessible (esp. to children), elementary and therefore universally preferred, i.e. derivable from human nature, or to unmarked/less marked (cf. Art. 29). Historically, concepts of morphological naturalness derive from two main sources: Jakobson’s (cf. Jakobson 1965) and, in general, Praguian concepts of markedness plus his

introduction of the Peircean, semiotic notion of iconicity (cf. Peirce 1965) into linguistics on the one hand (cf. Wurzel 1988 a), Stampe’s (e.g. 1973) model of Natural Phonology on the other. Naturalness is a relative, gradual concept: X is more or less natural than Y, e.g. within English plural formation, the type wife J wive-s is less natural than the type knife J knife-s but more natural than the type foot J feet. Thus many children tend to replace feet at some stage of language acquisition with foot-s or feet-s. A simplistic explanation of this gradation of naturalness is that the meaning of plural is ‘more’ and that this meaning is formally best reflected in a simple addition of form (i.e. in knife-s). Since such iconicity (cf. Art. 30) holds also for morphological categories with other meanings, a more sophisticated explanation refers to iconicity of markedness: plural is a morphosemantically more marked category than singular, the addition of morphosemantic markedness in the plural is iconically best reflected in the addition of morphotactic markedness. Mayerthaler (1981) has correctly pointed out

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an ambiguity of the term markedness in such reasoning: the relative morphosemantic markedness of the plural (vs. singular) refers to greater complexity, less accessibility, or less naturalness. The addition of a formal mark(er) is something else. In this way, (a) the plural knife-s has one mark(er) more than the plural sheep (identical with the singular), but (b) knife-s has a morphologically more natural (⫽ less marked) shape than the plural sheep. 1.2. Approaches to morphological naturalness The above-mentioned inductive conception of naturalness as intuitive plausibility and cross-linguistic (synchronic and diachronic) frequency is too trivial and too vague for having to be discussed here. The (already cited) more theoretically elaborated views share at least two basic tendencies: (A) they search for a motivation of morphological principles and preferences outside morphology, both (a) in other components of language such as syntax and phonology, and (b) outsides the linguistic system: (Aa) implies functional analysis or explanation (cf. Bates & MacWhinney 1982; Köpcke 1994, ed.; Dressler 1996 a), (Ab) (in addition) extralinguistic motivation ⫺ which is opposed to generative autonomy theses of grammar ⫺ where either cognitive and/or psychological and/or neurological motivation is sought (e.g. Bybee 1991; Köpcke 1993) or semiotic motivation (e.g. Laskowski 1985; Bybee 1985; Plank 1981). Examples for (Aa) are, e.g., the partial motivation of case morphology by case syntax (thus the classical dative is more marked than the accusative) or the phonology-based preference for bisyllabic and trisyllabic words (cf. 3.1 on the optimal shape). Examples for (Ab) will be given in 3.1. (B) they consider “external evidence” (particularly from diachronic change and language acquisition) as being of equal importance with internal evidence from corpus analysis (cf. Bates & MacWhinney 1982; Bybee 1991; Köpcke 1993; Laskowski 1985; Plank 1981). In both main areas of external evidence there is an often unclear transition from notions of naturalness to those of simplicity, i.e. to views that natural morphological change results in simplification, and that children learn simpler morphological structures before more complex ones. Within diachronic studies Bailey’s (1982) “developmen-

tal linguistics” deserves special mention here. Naturalness also plays a role in the work of some adherents of Langackerian Cognitive Grammar (e.g. Winters 1993). In partial overlap with these approaches to naturalness, there is an approach which stresses the importance of frequency and of resulting economy (cf. Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 240⫺244). It may be seen as a revival of Zipf’s (1935) law on the inverse relationship between frequency and complexity, but in contemporary psycholinguistic terms (cf. Bates & MacWhinney 1982; Bybee 1991; Fenk-Oczlon 1990; Köpcke 1993; 1994, ed.; Werner 1989). For example, it is claimed that the more frequent an inflectional form is, the shorter and also the more irregular it may be, and that this may explain the adequacy of suppletion (cf. also Harnisch 1990 in terms of Natural Morphology). The following discussion will focus on the approach of Natural Morphology, because in this current trend, notions of naturalness have been elaborated in the most consistent and complex ways and in the greatest number of publications specifically devoted to naturalness.

2.

Development of Natural Morphology

The most complex, explicit and widely followed theory of morphological naturalness is the theory of Natural Morphology (cf. Kilani-Schoch 1988; Dressler et al. 1987; Luschützky 1991; Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 215⫺240; Tonelli & Dressler 1993, eds.; Wurzel 1993). Omitting earlier predecessors (cf. Wurzel 1988 b), it originated with the integration of concepts of markedness and phonological naturalness (see 1.1; cf. Wurzel 1988 a) into the study of morphology and the conception of naturalness conflicts by Mayerthaler (1977) and Dressler (1977). They, together with Wurzel and Panagl, formulated a common platform at the 1977 LSA Summer Institute at Salzburg. This common platform was then extended to the publication of Dressler et al. (1987). Later, naturalness has become a cover term for a set of more specific terms to be defined in subtheories and to be derived from more general semiotic, cognitive and/or psychological concepts. These subtheories proposed in the course of time were and are, in chronological order: a universal markedness theory of system-in-

290

IV. Grundbegriffe

dependent morphological naturalness (cf. Mayerthaler 1981; see 3 below); a theory of system-dependent naturalness or system-adequacy (cf. Wurzel 1984; see 5 below); finally, mediating between the two, a theory of typological adequacy (cf. Dressler 1985 a; 1988 a; see 4 below). Subtheories for border areas of morphological naturalness were established for morphonology (cf. Dressler 1985 b) and morphopragmatics (cf. Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994), and Mayerthaler is preparing one for morphosyntax, in conjunction with a fullfledged theory of natural syntax (cf. the volumes of Mayerthaler et al. 1994). Morphological naturalness has also been accounted for theoretically in specific areas of external evidence (cf. 1.2), particularly in diachronic change (cf. now Wurzel 1994; Boretzky et al. 1995, eds.), but also in first language acquisition (cf. now Dressler & Karpf 1995), second language acquisition (cf. now Schmid 1995; Karpf & Dringel-Techt 1995), language attrition and language pathology (cf. Dressler 1991).

3.

Universal, system-independent morphological naturalness

The respective subtheory of universal markedness (within the theory of Natural Morphology; see 2) is a preference theory (cf. Vennemann 1983). It establishes deductively degrees of universal preferences on a restricted number of naturalness parameters (translatable into, but more systematic than, and not ad hoc like, many operating principles of Slobin 1985). Here naturalness does not refer to any global or overall preference, but to what is universally preferred on one given parameter. Parameters and their preference degrees are deduced from the extralinguistic bases mentioned in 1 (cf. Dressler et al. 1987; Kilani-Schoch 1988). The following parameters are those established by Dressler (Dressler et al. 1987; Dressler 1988 b; 1989). Thus instead of using the term markedness in either a descriptive or inductive way (as in earlier schools of thought), markedness is a theoretical and parameterized notion, based on extralinguistic and semiotic notions of what is more basic or elementary, cognitively more accessible, more efficient in communication. Moreover markedness should be modelled according to general standards of preference theories (an ongoing project of Dressler).

3.1. Universal naturalness parameters The best-known semiotically-derived parameter is the parameter of iconicity (cf. Art. 30), especially its subparameter of constructional iconicity (cf. Mayerthaler 1981). According to Peirce’s (1965) classification of icons, the illustrative examples of plural formation in 1.1 can be classified as follows: knife-s as diagrammatic, feet as only metaphoric (i.e. with weaker iconicity), sheep as non-iconic, and the Franconian subtractive plural hon of singular hond ‘dog’ as anti-iconic, and naturalness decreases accordingly on this parameter. Another parameter derived from Peircean semiotics is the parameter of indexicality. On this parameter adjacency is preferred to distance. Thus affixation of a marker to an immediately adjacent base is preferred to having something between an affix and its base, as is the case with intermediate interfixes, e.g. in Span. pueblo ‘village’ J diminutive pueblito and, with interfixation, puebl-ec-ito (lit. ‘village-interfix-diminutive’; cf. Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994). Another consequence of indexicality is the preference for fixed morpheme order within a morphological word, since the reliability of indexicality increases when a given position class of, e.g., suffixes always refers back to an identical position class or set of position classes of other suffixes. From the semiotic preference for transparency, the two parameters of morphosemantic and morphotactic transparency (or transparence) are derived: on the parameter of morphosemantic transparency, full transparency means fully compositional meaning, as is generally the case with inflectional meanings. For example, the meaning of knife-s equals the meanings of knife and of plurality. There is, however, morphosemantic opacity in cases of parasitic formation (cf. Aronoff 1994: 33), such as in the formation of the Polish conditional, e.g. czyta-ł-by ,he would read’ (readpast-conditional), formed via the past tense in -ł, whereas there is no meaning of past in the conditional; also in the Polish periphrastic future be˛de˛ czyta-ł ‘I’ll be reading’ (fut.aux:1sg read-past) there is no meaning of past, as the past tense suffix -ł would imply. In general, however, due to iconicity, there is a preference for a pairing of transparent meaning and form. On the parameter of morphotactic transparency, the most natural forms are those where there is no opacifying obstruction to ease of perception. Purely phonological pro-

31. Naturalness

cesses opacify very little, e.g. phonological surface palatalization in the Polish pejorative nom. pl. Polak-i [polak’i] of sg. Polak ‘Pole’. More morphotactic opacity occurs in the frequent intervention of morphonological rules, such as in Polish morphonological palatalization, e.g. normal (i.e. non-pejorative) nom. pl. Polac-y [polatsÈ]. Most opaque is suppletion, as in Eng. am vs. is vs. are vs. was, etc. Another aspect of the preference for morphotactic transparency is the preference for continuous (rather than discontinuous) morphs. Therefore suffixation and prefixation is preferred over infixation (discontinuous base) or circumfixation (discontinuous affix). Thus diminutive/hypocoristic suffixes are generally preferred to such infixes, such as in Span. Cesar-ito vs. Ces-ı´t-ar, hypocoristics of the name Ce´sar (cf. Meńdez Dosuna & Pensado 1990). Another semiotically-based parameter has biuniqueness as its most natural option. Biuniqueness, which holds if one and the same form has always the same meaning (and viceversa), is most natural. For example in Turkish, plurality in nouns can be expressed only by the suffix -ler, and this suffix has no other meaning than plurality. Uniqueness is already less natural: for example in German, the category of superlative must be (uniquely) expressed by the suffix -st, but this suffix shape may also mean 2.sg. of verbs. Least natural is ambiguity, where there are many-to-many relations between form and meaning. For example in Latin case morphology, -i may express gen. sg., dat. sg., loc. sg., abl. sg., nom. pl., and all of these cases may also be expressed by other endings than -i. The most natural base of a morphological rule is a word (because this is, in semiotic terms, a primary sign). Smaller bases (stems, roots) or more complex bases (phrases, sentences) are dispreferred. This makes, among the two German plural variants of Pizza, word-based Pizza-s more natural than rootbased Pizz-en, and renders compounds like Eng. do-it-yourself movement (with a sentence as first member) less natural than eye movement (where the first member is a word). Although all of these parameters are based on semiotic concepts in the first place, there is also abundant psychological (incl. psycholinguistic) evidence as to their validity. The following two parameters have an exclusively psychological basis: Grammatical relations are preferentially binary (based on the binary nature of neuro-

291 logical information transmittance), and this both in paradigmatics and syntagmatics. As has been ascertained already within structural linguistics, even apparently ternary relations have to be usually split up into two binary relations. For example Slovenian and Ancient Greek have three number categories: singular, dual, plural. But the semantic and structural relations of the dual with the plural (e.g. in agreement) are much closer than those between dual and singular. This induces us to assume two binary relations or oppositions: singular vs. non-singular and, within non-singular: plural vs. dual. In syntagmatic relations, the preferred patterning consists in concatenating one element to one base, for example by prefixing or suffixing to only one base. In circumfixing, two elements are affixed to one base. Therefore circumfixing is more marked on this parameter than prefixing or suffixing. The same preference for binarity holds for compounding, both in subordinate and coordinate compounding. Thus, in coordinate compounding, there is a universal preference for two-member compounds, such as queen-mother or prince-consort ⫺ due to entirely extralinguistic reasons (e.g. the model of the French tricolore), many adjective compounds which refer to flags, are three-member compounds, e.g. redwhite-red referring to the Austrian and Peruvian flag. Superficial three-member compounds, among subordinate compounds, usually have to be grouped into two binary relations. For example [[three][star][general]] has to be analysed into a binary subordinate relation between the non-head three-star and its head general, and three-star, in its turn, into a binary relation between the non-head three and its head star. On the parameter of the optimal shape of morphological words, the most natural option is the equation of one morphological word with one prosodic foot. The most natural foot, and thus the most natural word shape, is binary (bisyllabic) rather than trisyllabic, polysyllabic or monosyllabic. Here prosodic phonology motivates morphological naturalness (cf. 1.2). 3.2. Alternative naturalness parameters The naturalness parameters of 3.1 differ partially from Mayerthaler’s (1981), which are essentially maintained by Wurzel (1984 and later). For example, instead of the parallel pair of morphotactic and morphosemantic transpar-

292 ency, Wurzel has one single parameter of “morpho-semantic transparency” with several subparameters. One of them is called “semantic transparency (compositionality)” and corresponds to the parameter of morphosemantic transparency of 3.1, whereas the subparameter of “morphological (formal) transparency” corresponds to morphotactic transparency of 3.1. Mayerthaler’s parameter of uniform symbolization corresponds, on the one hand, to the parameter of biuniqueness (3.1) with the preference for a biunique relation between form and meaning. On the other hand, it is partially covered by the parameter of the optimal base of a morphological rule (3.1). When comparing such alternative solutions, the following criteria are relevant: Which solution (set of solutions) is more consistent? (cf. above on transparency). Which has a more solid extralinguistic base, including psycholinguistic evidence? Which one is terminologically more transparent? (cf. again above on transparency). Which one is empirically more satisfactory (cf. 3.3)? Furthermore, which solution allows a better functional explanation (cf. Dressler 1995)? Thus morphological naturalness is connected to the main function of morphology which consists in word-internal morphosemantic and morphotactic motivation, which again vouches for a parallel treatment of morphosemantic and morphotactic transparency. Which solution allows better intercomponential comparisons, i.e. which concepts have wider application in natural phonology, natural syntax, natural textlinguistics (cf. Dressler 1985 b; 1989; 1996 a; 1996 b)? Thus preferences for iconicity, indexicality, transparency (including continuity), (bi)uniqueness, and binarity have been shown to hold in other components as well, whereas optimal shapes differ widely with the size of units of each component. Finally, there is the criterion of coverage: Mayerthaler’s (1981) three parameters of constructional iconicity, transparency and uniformity have much less explanatory coverage than the eight preferences of 3.1. This is in stark contrast to the great explanatory coverage of Mayerthaler’s (1981) semantic markedness claims. He has shown how virtually all contrasting categories can be brought into relations of more vs. less marked. For example, plural is more marked than singular, dual more marked than plural (cf. Art. 29). Thus a semantically/pragmatically

IV. Grundbegriffe

unmarked category or element thereof is (an element of) a category A which is more basic in meaning than a comparable category B, as determined by pragmatics and/or syntax. 3.3. Predictions and conflicts The above-sketched deductive subtheory of universal morphological naturalness preferences allows several predictions (cf. Mayerthaler 1981; Dressler 1985 c): Universal preferences should have a significant effect on cross-linguistic distribution. For example, the preference for morphosemantic transparency should have the effect that, in a representative sample of languages of the world, meanings of inflected and derived words should be, with statistical significance, more morphosemantically transparent than opaque. As we will see in 4 and 5 below, such predictions need not hold within a single language or a given type of languages. But if they do not hold cross-linguistically, they are either falsified or it must be shown that diminution of statistical significance is due to naturalness conflicts, i.e. to conflicts between universal preferences within the morphological component itself or between preferences of different components. Thus the preference for biuniqueness results in languages with a rich morphology, such as Turkish (see 4), in polysyllabic word forms, and thus conflicts with the preference for bisyllabic word forms (optimal shape), i.e. with another universal preference of morphological naturalness. Or the preference for morphotactic transparency comes into conflict with the preference of phonological processes to be applied rather than to be suppressed. A satisfactory diachronic account of this conflict between two different grammatical components addresses many of the questions raised by neogrammarians of the 19th century in their conceptualization of the conflict between sound laws and analogy (cf. Wurzel 1988 b). Morphosemantic transparency holds much more in inflectional morphology than in word formation. Dressler (e.g. in Dressler et al. 1987) has tied this to a biuniqueness conflict within word formation, i.e. to a conflict between biunique form-meaning relations of morphemes vs. those of whole words. For example, in Eng. flut-ist, morpheme biuniqueness should hold separately for the meaning and form of (a) flute and (b) agent noun formation with -ist, whereas whole-word biuniqueness holds for the whole complex

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word flutist. Since words have a semiotic priority over morphemes, lexical (whole-word) biuniqueness wins and accounts for idiosyncratic lexicalizations in word formation. This is, predictably, not the case in inflectional morphology, because inflected words are not lexical entities in their own right. The meager distribution of biuniqueness in general is due to another conflict, viz. with economy, i.e. parsimony of storage (cf. above 1.2, Ronneberger-Sibold 1980), a general cognitive factor. As one can easily see, in contrast to frequency approaches mentioned in 1.2, frequency is not a basis of naturalness, neither in theoretical explanation nor in heuristics, but one of its results. More specific predictions hold for domains of external evidence. Thus, in diachronic change, more natural options should be more stable than less natural ones on one and the same naturalness parameter, and the direction of morphological change should be preferrably towards more morphological naturalness. In addition to naturalness conflicts (such as the above-mentioned), there is a need for a specification of types of morphological change (cf. Wurzel 1994). Or in the domain of language acquisition, children should identify and acquire morphological rules the earlier the more natural these rules are according to universal parameters. An example is the earlier learning of plural formation rules for morphotactically very transparent plurals such as knife-s, girl-s than for less transparent ones such as wife J wives, foot J feet (often replaced by foot-s or being made more diagrammatic by adding the plural suffix to the adult form, which results in feet-s). It must also be noted that naturalness conflicts may find different solutions in different domains of external evidence, for example in early language acquisition as opposed to psycholinguistic experiments with adults. For example, in regard to Turkish polysyllabic inflectional forms, the above-mentioned conflict between biuniqueness and preference for disyllabic (or at most trisyllabic words) is solved by small children (but not adults) in a radical way, i.e. by avoidance of polysyllabic words.

4.

Typological adequacy

Since naturalness is not often understood in terms of typological adequacy, its discussion will be brief. Inspired by basic insights of

Skalicˇka (1979) on ideal language types which consist of properties which favor one another, language types have been reinterpreted as (alternative) sets of consistent responses to naturalness conflicts. Since it is impossible to combine the most natural options on all parameters within one language, naturalness on certain parameters must be, so to say, sacrificed for greater naturalness on others (cf. Dressler 1985 c; 1988 a). Thus the agglutinating type (as represented by Turkish) has the advantages of great constructional iconicity, great morphosemantic and morphotactic transparency, much biuniqueness, but deviates with its often very long word forms dramatically from the optimal shape of morphological words and does not fully achieve fixed morpheme order, whereas the opposite holds for the inflecting and introflecting type. Therefore universally rather unnatural options may be typologically adequate if they fit the properties of the respective language type (in the framework of the subtheory of typological adequacy).

5.

System-dependent naturalness

5.1. System-adequacy Language-specific, system-dependent naturalness, as conceived by Wurzel (1984) for systems of inflectional morphology, represents what is normal or system-congruous (system-adequate) within the morphology of a language, although it may contradict some universal morphological preference (as delineated in 3). Among competing system-defining structural properties the most dominant is the most adequate one. Let us illustrate this point with the universal parameter of the optimal base of morphological rules (3.1) and the respective systemadequacy of Latin declension. Universally most natural is word-based inflection (Wurzel’s base-form inflection), where the base of an inflectional paradigm is the unmarked autonomous inflectional word form, i.e. nom. sg. This holds for all case-forms of the feminine class terra ‘earth’ (gen./dat. terrae, acc. terram, voc. terra, abl. terra, nom./ voc. pl. terrae, gen. terrarum, acc. terras) except dat./abl. pl. terris, and for the whole paradigms of many subclasses of the consonantal declension, such as odor ‘odor’. Universally less natural stem-based inflection, where the root plus a thematic marker, i.e. less than an autonomous inflectional

294 word form, is the base of a paradigm, holds for the small i-class of turris ‘tower’ (where all case-forms are built on the stem turr-i-, with the exception of nom. pl. turres) and for several other classes. Universally still less natural root-based inflection, where the base of the paradigm is a root (without a thematic marker), holds, e.g., for the o- and mixed ideclension (e.g. acc. fin-em, abl. fin-e, nom. pl. fin-es, as opposed to stem-based nom. sg. fin-i-s). Thus, in terms of number and productivity of Latin declensional (sub)classes and caseforms, stem-based inflection is dominant and thus most system-adequate in Latin declension of nouns (and adjectives as well). For other properties of system adequacy see Wurzel (1984). 5.2. Universal vs. typological vs. systemdependent naturalness Typological adequacy (4 above) may be understood as a filter and elaboration on universal naturalness/markedness (3), and language-specific system adequacy (5.1) as a filter and elaboration on typological adequacy. Each lower-level filter can specify and even overturn preferences of the preceding higherorder level (cf. Dressler et al. 1987; Bittner 1988; Wheeler 1993). As a consequence, lack of the typological and the language-specific system-dependent filter leaves universal preferences intact. Therefore these play a higher role in the earliest phases of morphology acquisition by small children and in extragrammatical or expressive morphology (cf. Dressler & Karpf 1995), such as in echo-word formation (cf. Mayerthaler 1977) or in blends (contaminations, cf. Thornton 1993). For example, extragrammtical reduplication in echo-word formation (e.g. zig-zag, tick-tock) is in two ways more iconic than word-initial grammatical reduplication in the Latin perfect cu-curri/ce-curr-i ‘I ran’ from present curr-o ‘I run’: (a) reduplication is more complete in echowords, (b) there is diagrammaticity (analogy) between repetitive meaning and form in echo-words and metaphoricity between change of direction in the meaning of zig-zag and change of its vowels, whereas there is no iconicity between meaning and form in the Latin perfect. Symptomatically, small children produce many more echo-words and similar extragrammatical reduplications before they really start to acquire morphological grammar, i.e. before system-independent

IV. Grundbegriffe

preferences of universal naturalness are filtered by language-specific system adequacy. Particularly the above differentiation between these subtheories shows important differences between earlier uses of the terms markedness (e.g. in structuralism) and naturalness (e.g. in early “translations” of concepts from Stampean Natural Phonology to Natural Morphology) on the one hand, and current versions of Natural Morphology. These disallow simple statements of the type “The morphological construction X is more natural (less marked) than the comparable construction Y”. Instead, it is necessary to define on which parameters of universal markedness X is less marked than Y (cf. 3). This does not equal the evaluation of the respective type adequacy of X vs. Y in regard to one or another language type. And the relative system adequacy of X vs. Y may again differ, according to distinct and not necessarily covariating criteria of system adequacy (cf. already Wurzel 1984), within the system of one language as opposed to another one, even if both languages belong to the same language type. A comparable change has been going on in investigations of various domains of external evidence: sweeping statements as the binary markedness relations of Mayerthaler (1981), in an often hasty and superficial interpretation, are no longer adequate: for example, more natural morphological constructions are learned earlier by children than less natural ones. Quite apart from many intervening variables, which had been overlooked in earlier investigations, such sweeping predictions hold best for universal markedness predictions at very early stages, for system-adequacy predictions later on, because it takes time for small children to grasp all the language-specific properties of systemadequacy. In other words, in Natural Morphology, naturalness has become a cover term for more specific, distinct and theory-dependent subcategories (a similar move can be identified in Bybee 1991). Instead of inductive reasoning and descriptive labelling as natural, as has been frequent practice earlier on, a deductive theory has been proposed and is still in the process of being further elaborated.

6.

References

Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself: Inflectional Classes. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Bailey, Charles-James N. (1982), On the Yin and Yang Nature of Language. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publ.

31. Naturalness Bates, Elizabeth & MacWhinney, Brian (1982), “Functionalist Approaches to Grammar”. In: Wanner, E. & Gleitmann, L. (eds.), Language Acquisition. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 173⫺218 Bittner, Andreas (1988), “Is Anything ‘More Natural’? Considerations on Establishing a Hierarchy of Naturalness Principles (NP)”. Linguistische Studien A 188 (Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR: Zentralinstitut für Sprachwissenschaft), 23⫺35 Boretzky, Norbert & Dressler, Wolfgang & Oresˇnik, Janez & Wurzel, Wolfgang (1995, eds.), Natürlichkeitstheorie und Sprachwandel. Bochum: Brockmeyer Bybee, Joan L. (1985), “Diagrammatic Iconicity in Stem-inflection”. In: Haiman, John (ed.), Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 11⫺47

295 Functional Deficiencies”. In: Millar, Sharon & Mey, Jacob (eds.), Form and Function in Language. Odense: Odense University Press, 11⫺39 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1996 a), “Principles of Naturalness in Phonology and across Components”. In: Hurch, Bernhard & Rhodes, Richard (eds.), Natural Phonology: The State of the Art. Berlin: de Gruyter, 41⫺51 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1996 b), “Parallelisms between Natural Textlinguistics and Other Components of Natural Linguistics”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 49, 295⫺311 Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Karpf, Annemarie (1995), “The Theoretical Relevance of Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition”. Yearbook of Morphology 1994, 99⫺122

Bybee, Joan L. (1991), “Natural Morphology: The Organization of Paradigms and Language Acquisition”. In: Huebner, Thomas & Ferguson, Charles (eds.), Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 67⫺91

Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Mayerthaler, Willi & Panagl, Oswald & Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1987), Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins

Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (1992), Current Morphology. London: Routledge

Fenk-Oczlon, Gertraud (1990), “Ikonismus versus Ökonomieprinzip, am Beispiel russischer Aspektund Kasusbildungen”. Papiere zur Linguistik 42, 49⫺69

Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1977), “Elements of a Polycentristic Theory of Word Formation”. wiener linguistische gazette 15, 13⫺32 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985 a), “Typological Aspects of Natural Morphology”. wiener linguistische gazette 36, 3⫺26 [Acta Linguistica Hungarica 35, 1987, 51⫺70] Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985 b), Morphonology. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publ. Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985 c), “On the Predictiveness of Natural Morphology”. Journal of Linguistics 21, 321⫺337 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1988 a), “Zur Bedeutung der Sprachtypologie in der Natürlichen Morphologie”. In: Albrecht, J. (ed.), Energeia und Ergon, Studia in honorem Eugenio Coseriu, Vol. III. Tübingen: Narr, 199⫺208 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1988 b), “Preferences vs. Strict Universals in Morphology: Word Based Rules”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego: Academic Press, 143⫺154 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989), Semiotische Parameter einer textlinguistischen Natürlichkeitstheorie. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1991), “The Sociolinguistic and Patholinguistic Attrition of Breton Phonology, Morphology, and Morphonology”. In: Seliger, Herbert & Vago, Robert (eds.), First Language Attrition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 99⫺112 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1995), “Wealth and Poverty of Functional Analyses, with Special Reference to

Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1994), Morphopragmatics. Berlin: de Gruyter

Harnisch, Rüdiger (1990), “Morphologische Irregularität ⫺ Gebrauchshäufigkeit ⫺ psychische Nähe”. In: Meńdez Dosuna & Pensado (eds.), 65⫺76 Jakobson, Roman (1965), Selected Writings, Vol. II. The Hague: Mouton Karpf, Annemarie & Dringel-Techt, Eva (1995), “The Role of Morphological Naturalness in Second Language Development”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Burani, Cristina (eds.), Crossdisciplinary Approaches to Morphology. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 131⫺ 147 Kilani-Schoch, Marianne (1988), Introduction a` la morphologie naturelle. Bern: Lang Köpcke, Klaus-Michael (1993), Schemata bei der Pluralbildung im Deutschen: Versuch einer kognitiven Morphologie. Tübingen: Narr Köpcke, Klaus-Michael (1994, ed.), Funktionale Untersuchungen zur Deutschen Nominal- und Verbalmorphologie. Tübingen: Narr Laskowski, Roman (1985), “What Seems Natural in Inflectional Morphology?”. Studia gramatyczne 7, 65⫺82 Luschützky, Hans-Christian (1991), Twenty Years of Naturalism in Linguistics: A Bibliography. Wien: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft (wiener linguistische gazette supplement 10) Mayerthaler, Willi (1977), Studien zur theoretischen und zur französischen Morphologie: Reduplikation, Echowörter, morphologische Natürlichkeit, Haplologie, Produktivität, Regeltelescoping, paradigmatischer Ausgleich. Tübingen: Niemeyer

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Mayerthaler, Willi (1981), Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion [English transl. (1988): Morphological Naturalness. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publ.] Mayerthaler, Willi & Fliedl, Günther & Winkler, Christian (1994), Infinitivprominenz in europäischen Sprachen, Vol. 1⫺2. Tübingen: Narr Meńdez Dosuna, Juliań & Pensado, Carmen (1990), “How Unnatural Is Spanish Vıćtor J Victı´t-or? Infixed Diminutives in Spanish”. In: Meńdez Dosuna & Pensado (eds.), 89⫺106 Meńdez Dosuna, Juliań & Pensado, Carmen (1990, eds.), Naturalists at Krems. Salamanca: Acta Salmanticensia (Estudios Filolo´gicos 227) Peirce, Charles S. (1965), Collected Papers. Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten. Tübingen: Narr Ronneberger-Sibold, Elke (1980), Sprachverwendung, Sprachsystem, Ökonomie und Wandel. Tübingen: Niemeyer Schmid, Stephan, (1995), “Morphological Naturalness in Spanish-Italian Interlanguages”. In: Pishwa, Hanna & Maroldt, Karl (eds.), The Development of Morphological Systematicity. Tübingen: Narr, 263⫺291 Skalicˇka, Vladimir (1979), Typologische Studien. Braunschweig: Vieweg Slobin, Dan I. (1985), “Crosslinguistic Evidence for the Language-making Capacity”. In: Slobin, Dan (ed.), The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1157⫺1256 Stampe, David (1973), “On Chapter Nine”. In: Kenstowicz, Michael & Kisseberth, Charles (eds.), Issues in Phonological Theory. The Hague: Mouton, 44⫺52 Thornton, Anna M. (1993), “Italian Blends”. In: Tonelli & Dressler (eds.), 143⫺155

Tonelli, Livia & Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1993, eds.), Natural Morphology: Perspectives for the Nineties. Padova: Unipress Vennemann, Theo (1983), “Theories of Linguistic Preferences as a Basis for Linguistic Explanations”. Folia Linguistica Historica 4, 5⫺26 Werner, Otmar (1989), “Sprachökonomie und Natürlichkeit im Bereich der Morphologie”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42, 34⫺47 Wheeler, Max W. (1993), “On the Hierarchy of Naturalness Principles in Inflectional Morphology”. Journal of Linguistics 29, 95⫺111 Winters, Margaret E. (1993), “Diachronic Natural Morphology and Cognitive Grammar”. In: Tonelli & Dressler (eds.), 169⫺178 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag [English transl. (1989): Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness. Dordrecht: Kluwer] Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1988 a), “The Structuralist Heritage in Natural Morphology”. Linguistische Studien A 188 (Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR: Zentralinstitut für Sprachwissenschaft), 99⫺116 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1988 b), “Hermann Paul ⫺ Analogie und die Natürliche Morphologie”. Zeitschrift für Germanistik 5, 537⫺544 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1993), “Morphology, Natural”. In: Asher, R. E. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 2590⫺2598 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1994), “Grammatisch initiierter Wandel”. In: Jeßing, Benedikt (ed.), Sprachdynamik: Auf dem Weg zu einer Typologie sprachlichen Wandels, Vol. I. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 7⫺ 114 Zipf, George K. (1935), The Psycho-biology of Language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Wolfgang U. Dressler, Wien (Austria)

32. Regularity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The notion of regularity Regularity and the rules of grammar Regularity and productivity Regularity and frequency Regularity as a scalar phenomenon Regularity and diachrony References

1.

The notion of regularity

Most broadly conceived, regular means ‘conforming to the rule(s) of grammar’ and irregular means ‘in violation of the rule(s) gram-

mar’. In the first case both the inputs and the outputs of a rule must be regular (cf. Dressler 1985: 65⫺68). The input to a rule is regular if it can be characterized as a (natural) class. For example, there is a rule in English that makes tense vowels lax in the syllable before the suffix -ity (providing that there is an intervening consonant). This rule is one of the rules which are responsible for the vowel alternations in obscene-obscenity, divine-divinity, vain-vanity. The regular input to the laxing rule comprises the class of Latinate adjec-

297

32. Regularity

tives. Or to take another example, the regular input to the -s-plural rule is the set of all count nouns. In syntax the regular input to the passive rule covers, in principle, all transitive verbs. The words which may not undergo a rule constitute simple exceptions. In this sense obese is a simple exception to the laxing rule, oxen to the plural rule and resemble (cf. John resembles Mary’s mother ⫺ *Mary’s mother is resembled by John) to the passive rule. In this respect there is no difference between regularity in syntax, phonology and morphology. A morphological process may be more or less regular, that is, the shape and, more especially, the meaning of its products may be more or less predictable on the basis of the shape and the meaning of the bases to which it applies. Regularity thus has not only to do with form but also with meaning. If meaning is predictable it is also compositional. In this sense regularity is related to compositionality (cf. Art. 82). Consequently, “regular output” means both ‘regular shape’ and ‘compositional meaning’. A grammatical rule is any statement expressing a linguistically significant generalization about the grammatical facts of a particular language. Rules can be viewed as static statements or as dynamic processes. As for morphology, it is normally assumed that words are constructed out of morphs by means of morphological rules. Rules as processes must have a predictive power: they do not only account for actual words but can also be used to generate nonattested potential words. If a rule describes a productive process, it must have a regular output. If conceived as statements of linguistic generalizations, however, the notion of rule does not coincide with the notion of regularity. Rules can be formulated for irregular forms as well. Regularity can be ascribed to any linguistic unit which may undergo a rule (syllables, words, phrases, sentences, etc.). In languages in which paradigms exist they also obey certain rules. Consequently, paradigms may be regular as well. For example, the regular inflectional paradigm for the first conjugation in French is represented by a verb such as donner ‘to give’. Verbs such as mener ‘to lead’, semer ‘to sow’, se promener ‘to walk’ are to some extent irregular with respect to this paradigm since they undergo an unpredictable phonological rule. Any theory of language should provide a way for grammars defined by that theory to

distinguish irregular cases from regular ones. Different grammars, however, can draw the line between exceptions and regular cases differently. The relationship can even be reversed: what counts as irregular according to one grammar may count as fully regular according to another grammar. Moreover, exceptions may exhibit certain subregularities, they need not be completely irregular. It has often been claimed that a grammar which points out the most regularities should be preferred (cf. Lakoff 1970: 14). However, exceptions belong to grammar, too. It is wrong to assume that particular statements (i.e. lists) must be excised from the grammar of a language if general statements (i.e. rules) that subsume them can be established (the rule/list fallacy, cf. Langacker 1987: 29, 42). Theoretical linguists have normally resisted the idea that irregular expressions should be listed in a grammar, on the assumption that listing entails a failure to capture significant generalizations. This is fallacious because it tacitly presupposes only two options: rules vs. lists. But nothing in principle prevents a third option, namely positing both rules and lists. Some irregular forms are not only tolerated but desired in a language. This must be the case with suppletive forms which never get regularized (am, is, are; go ⫺ went; will ⫺ would). These are often function words or words which refer to our immediate experience. The more important the function of a lexical category is for the encoding of grammatical categories, the more important becomes their distinctiveness. Suppletion ensures maximal distinctiveness (cf. Bittner 1988: 422f.).

2.

Regularity and the rules of grammar

Not every regularity in the use of language is a matter of grammar. For example, shmreduplication in English producing constructions such as transformations shmansformations (with a meaning something like ‘Who cares about transformations?’) is quite regular (rule-governed), but it cannot be considered to be a rule of grammar. Consequently, one has to distinguish between grammatical and extragrammatical regularity (cf. Zwicky & Pullum 1987). More important than the distinction between grammatical and extragrammatical regularity is the fact that regularity depends

298

IV. Grundbegriffe

heavily on how the rules are formulated (or, what speakers consider to be the rule). For example, if one assumes that German selbstcompounds are derived from a reflexive construction (or are based on such a construction), then compounds such as Selbstkritik ‘self-criticism’, Selbstbildnis ‘self-portrait’, Selbstmord ‘suicide’ are regular, the ungrammaticality of forms as *Selbstteppich ‘selfrug’, *Selbststein ‘self-stone’, *Selbstkopf ‘self-head’ is predictable, and compounds such as Selbstfinanzierung ‘self-financing’, selbstklebend ‘self-adhesive’ are exceptions. If, however, selbst ‘self’ is analyzed as an intensifier (‘somebody does something personally’) rather than a reflexive, then the exceptions become regular, and the compounds which are regular in the previous analysis must be treated differently (cf. Plank 1981: 5). Regularity can be identified with regular shape or with regular meaning. The selbstcompounds in German are all regular in terms of shape (they are morphotactically regular), but semantically they do not conform to the same rule. Thus, some of them are (morpho-)semantically regular, others are not. The reverse situation may hold, too. For example, the comparative in English is morphosemantically regular, morphotactically, however, this is not always the case (large ⫺ larger, small ⫺ smaller versus good ⫺ better, bad ⫺ worse). That is, a distinction must be made between morphotactic and morphosemantic regularity. Some irregular forms may be accounted for by what has become known as “minor rules” (cf. Lakoff 1970: 30⫺48). Such forms must then be considered regular with respect to these minor rules (i.e. they obey certain subregularities), though they are still irregular with respect to the “major rules” of grammar. For example, in Hungarian certain stems appear in two forms, e.g. lo´ ⫺ lov ‘horse’, ho´ ⫺ hav ‘snow’, but the choice between them is rule-governed, their distribution is fully predictable. Nevertheless these stems have to be marked as exceptions in the lexicon.

3.

Regularity and productivity

A morphological rule is called productive if it can freely be applied to any item meeting its requirements, including elements newly

added to the language (cf. Art. 33). Productivity is a gradual notion, but, in general, it is sufficient to postulate three degrees of productivity: fully productive, semi-productive and unproductive. There is no direct relationship between regularity and productivity, though truly irregular forms cannot be produced by productive rules. Some morphological rules are unrestrictedly productive. This is the case with most inflectional rules quite independently of the fact whether they produce regular or irregular forms. Regular forms may be productive in a certain lexical area only; this is true of quite a few word formation rules. For example, normally the productive negative prefix unattaches to the positive adjective. If un- is attached to the negative member of the pair, the resulting form is usually ill-formed. Compare unwell, unloved vs. *unill, *unhated. Several aspects of a rule can enhance productivity. To these belong type- and tokenfrequency and semantic transparency (cf. Becker 1990: 115⫺118). However, semantic transparency is not a necessary condition for productivity. For example, the deverbal nominalization in -er is very productive yet semantically vague or polysemous. Unproductive forms can be either regular or irregular. They can be regular provided they can be described by means of a rule which is not distinct from other rules of grammar except for the degree of productivity. In other words, rules can be unproductive. Such rules do not describe synchronic morphological relations, however. Regular but unproductive forms are, for example, Germ. heiss ‘hot’ ⫺ Hitze ‘heat’, schaffen ‘create’ ⫺ Geschöpf ‘creature’ which exhibit a regular consonant alternation. Such forms are historical relics, but they are relatively frequent and in the given domain completely regular.

4.

Regularity and frequency

Once again, there is no direct relationship between regularity and frequency. Frequency may refer to type-frequency or to token-frequency. Word frequency counts have very little to say concerning regularity. But even type-frequency is not an appropriate measure of regularity. It is impossible to extract information concerning the number of possible

32. Regularity

items of a morphological class from the observed number of types. Moreover, two word formation rules may yield approximately the same number of types in a corpus while differing significantly with respect to (their degree) of regularity (cf. Baayen 1989: 41). There are quite regular forms which are relatively unfrequent, e.g. the Hungarian noun form ha´z-am-e´-i-t ‘house-1.poss-belonging. to-pl-acc (things (acc) belonging to my house)’ or even practically non-occurring (though, in principle, quite possible), e.g. the iteration of the possessive and the plural with Hungarian nouns Pe´ter-e´-i-e´-i ‘Peter-belonging.to-pl-belonging.to-pl (things belonging to things which belong to Peter)’. Moreover, there are irregular forms which are quite frequent (e.g. went, is, are). In fact, there seems to be a close correlation between high frequency and irregularity, e.g. the present tense singular forms of the English verb to be (am, are, is) or the present tense and past tense forms of irregular verbs (go ⫺ went). This is considered to be one of the reasons why suppletion is maintained.

5.

Regularity as a scalar phenomenon

5.1. Degrees of regularity in terms of rules One way to show that regularity/irregularity is not a dichotomy but rather a scalar phenomenon is to describe the typical properties of regular forms and those of irregular forms and then examine whether there are forms which share some, but not all, of the properties of these forms. The strong/weak distinction in Germanic verb inflection is a case in point. Thus, for example, typical strong verbs in German have the following characteristics: (a) past participle ending in -en, (b) subjunctive preterite with umlaut (provided that the stem vowel is umlautable), (c) vowel alternation (ablaut), (d) first and third person singular preterite without the ending -e, (e) second and third person singular present tense with umlaut or e/i-alternation, and (f) the imperative with e/i-alternation and/or 0-suffix. Typical weak verbs, on the other hand, have the following properties: (a) past participle ending in -(e)t, (d) preterite ending in -t(e), (d) first and third person singular preterite ending in -e, and (d) imperative -e/i-alternation but with an -e-suffix. The reduction of the characteristics of strong verbs is not arbitrary but follows certain patterns. These

299 patterns show an implicative structure which is depicted in Fig. 2.1 (cf. Bittner 1985: 35): e/i alternation and/or 0-ending in 2nd imp. 傻 vowel alternation in 2nd/3rd sg. pres 傻 no dentals in pret. and/or 0-ending in 1st/3rd sg. pret. 傻 ablaut in pret. 傻 umlaut in subj. pret. 傻 strong part. perf. Fig. 32.1: The implicative pattern of strong verbs in German

This implicational pattern yields 7 classes, each of which shows a different degree of regularity. Class 7 comprises the prototypical (most irregular) strong verbs such as lesen ‘read’, essen ‘eat’, helfen ‘help’, sprechen ‘speak’, etc. which show all the characteristics of strong verbs. Class 6 contains verbs which have weak imperative forms but share all the other characteristics with strong verbs (e.g. tragen ‘bear’, graben ‘dig’, wachsen ‘grow’, etc.). Verbs in class 5 have weak imperative forms and no vowel alternation in present tense (e.g. heben ‘lift’, kommen ‘come’, schaffen ‘create’, genesen ‘recover’, etc.). Class 4 comprises the so-called Rückumlautsverben, i.e. verbs which have ablaut and umlaut in the subjunctive preterite but are otherwise regular (e.g. brennen ‘burn’, kennen ‘know’, nennen ‘call’, senden ‘send’, etc). Only a couple of verbs belong to class 3 where umlaut is still present but the preterite has no ablaut and shows the regular -t suffix: dingen ‘hire’ (the ablauted forms of ‘dingen’ are obsolete except for the subjunctive preterite dänge), schinden ‘flay, skin’, schleißen ‘slit, split’. These verbs still have strong forms in the past participle. Verbs in class 2, where the only strong characteristics appears in the past participle, are mahlen ‘grind’, melken ‘milk’, bersten ‘burst’, fechten ‘fence, fight’, etc. Some of these verbs are still listed in dictionaries as having strong forms though ⫺ at least in spoken language ⫺ these are no longer used. Finally, class 1 contains the prototypical weak (most regular) verbs. The “strongweak-continuum” is a scale from “typical strong” to “typical weak”, between these two extremes there are verb classes which show various degrees of the loss of the characteristics of typical strong verbs. The characteristics of verbal inflection are hierarchically ordered. This hierarchy is based exclusively on the formal properties of forms and on their implicational organization.

300 5.2. Degrees of regularity established on the basis of psycholinguistic evidence There are, of course, other ways of looking at gradualness in morphology. For example, hierarchies may also be based on psychological evidence (resulting from research on child language, second language acquisition, aphasia, etc.). Contrasting once again weak and strong verbal forms in Germanic it can be seen that while strong paradigms are mainly based on vowel oppositions, weak ones function by opposing consonants (present -0 vs. past -(e)d/t). People seem to use different strategies for producing and decoding strong and weak verbs. The consonantal opposition is categorial and located in the left hemisphere of the brain, the ablaut is gradual (among different vowels) and seems to be located in the right hemisphere (cf. McNeill 1970: 140; Deegener 1978: 83). At the same time, the left hemisphere seems to govern the analysis of symbolic properties of the received information, the right hemisphere is charged with the analysis of the structural stimuli of that information. In languages there seems to be a balance between regular, predictable forms, which are produced along regular patterns, and irregular, unpredictable forms which are stored in the mental lexicon. This balance may be due to the effect of two conflicting principles: the principle of least effort striving toward grammatical regularity, on the one hand, and iconicity in the Peircean sense (cf. Art. 23) striving toward easily recognizable forms (labels, or icons), on the other. The more easily recognizable they are, the more easily can the labels be stored in the mental lexicon. For example, in Germanic, weak verbal forms belong to the domain of grammar in the sense that they are produced along predictable patterns (rules) whereas strong forms have to be stored as such in the mental lexicon. They are iconic to the extent they belong to the basic vocabulary endowed with high frequency. It has been shown that English speaking children go through four phases in the acquisition of the past verbal forms (cf. Slobin 1971: 220): (a) production of irregular past forms whose frequency is very high (go, drink, eat, give, can, may, have, be, ets.); (b) acquisition of the regular past forms; (c) overgeneralization of the rule and possible production of hypercorrected forms: I bringed, I goed; (d) acquisition of new irregular

IV. Grundbegriffe

forms. Experiments on adult American speakers have shown that there still exists a kind of linguistic competence, probably based on rhyming analogy, for the production of new strong forms of invented verbs like to gling or to bing (cf. Berko 1958). However, the strong verbal forms are not irregular to the same degree. For example, English verbal forms with ablaut and -t/-d such as told, sold, brought come closest to the regular weak forms. They are more correctly reproduced by learning children than past forms based on ablaut alone. On the other pole we have isolated items, which were originally verbal forms but whose link with the verbal paradigm became more and more feeble in the course of linguistic development (cf. the past participles cloven from cleave and shorn from shear ‘deprived’; Ramat 1985: 167). Suppletion (e.g. was, went) is one step away from this pole. Strong verbs with three ablauted vowels come next (sing, fly) followed by strong verbs with two ablauted vowels (do, speak). A separate level can be postulated for doublets, i.e. where both strong and weak forms are possible independently of the direction of the development (cf. Dutch zwoer/ zwoerde ‘I/he sweared’, dolf/delfde ‘I/he delved’). Diachronically they represent clear evidence of the extension of the new analogical forms. Between the two poles, grammar and lexicon, there is a scale with the possibility of shifts. That is, we have to do with a dynamic process. Consequently grammar and lexicon should be replaced by the dynamic terms grammaticalization and lexicalization, respectively (cf. Ramat 1985: 168). Cf. the diagram below (reproduced with slight changes from Ramat 1985: 170). lexicalization grammaticalization ø¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ isolated supablaut weak and ablaut weak stems pletion strong -d/-t forms Fig. 32.2: Lexicalization and grammaticalization of Germanic verbs

Forms which exhibit the highest degree of grammaticalization are the most regular, and forms which show the highest degree of lexicalization are the most irregular. Between these two poles there is a continuum (with constant shifts) of regularity or irregularity (depending on the perspective chosen; cf. 1).

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32. Regularity

5.3. The principle of economy There are inflectional affixes which express simultaneously several morphological categories, which can be quite different (cf., for example, the Person/Number syncretism in the verbal morphology of quite a few IndoEuropean languages). This compression of morphological information makes the morphological form shorter and simplifies its syntagmatic effects making thus (re)production easier. At the same time, however, it increases the number of elements in the paradigm and, consequently, the learning load. The abandonment of diagrammatic iconicity pays off only if the form is used frequently. (Cf. “Diagrams are icons which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts”, Peirce 1965: 157; cf. also Art. 30.) Therefore, compression and high frequency exhibit a close correlation. In some cases compression may lead to disturbing homomorphy, which may motivate de-compression (cf. OHGerman huˆs (sg.) ⫺ hiusir (pl.), MHGerman huˆs (sg.) ⫺ huˆs (pl.), Germ. Haus (sg.) ⫺ Häuser (pl.) where the stem has been expanded by the plural suffix -er). Strongly compressed, but less frequent forms, too, can be expanded (cf. Germ. (wir) kiesen ⫺ kuren; kiesen ⫺ koren; küren ⫺ kürten ‘choose’ (rare) where the expansion has led to the adoption of the weak form for the past tense). Expansion or de-compression is the process which runs counter compression (cf. Werner 1987). In general, expansion processes are more regular (e.g. the perfect or the past tense of weak verbs) and are applicable to a large portion of lexical elements whereas compression processes are mostly irregular (the past tense of strong verbs, suppletion) and appear quite often only with a handful of lexical elements. This is so because compression is most often accompanied by various assimilation and reduction processes, which are tolerated with elements of high frequency only. Between strong suppletion and full iconicity there is a scale with more regular cases in the direction of expansion and with less regular (or more irregular) cases in the direction of compression. compression, expansion, less regular cases more regular cases ø¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ strong suppletion full iconicity Fig. 32.3: The relationship between compression/ expansion and regularity

In this sense, then, even irregularity is rulegoverned and can be subsumed under a “higher order” regularity. The three approaches motivate and define regularity in three different ways. In principle, the three scales thus defined need not coincide. However, they turned out to be by and large identical, which shows that what these approaches offer are different explanations for the same set of facts. The first one of these is a morphology-internal explanation, the other two invoke extragrammatical principles. The scale of regularity can be explained in terms of formal properties and rules internal to morphology. But the explanation of the ultimate reason of the existence of such scales comes from outside: it has to do with language use and the cognitive principles which underlie it.

6.

Regularity and diachrony

The scales of regularity established above are not static, i.e. they do not simply depict the present state of the morphological phenomena involved. Rather, they have a dynamic aspect, too. Grammaticalization and lexicalization, or expansion and compression are at the same time historical processes. The process of gradual compression can be observed in a considerable number of morphological changes. First, syntagms are turned by means of cliticization into “clitic groups” (e.g. Germ. da haben wir es ⫺ da hammers). As soon as cliticization becomes obligatory, clitics may give rise to affixes. The affixes are first agglutinative, there is a one-to-one correspondence between morphemes and morphs. High frequency, however, may bring about further compression. The agglutinated suffixes may phonologically affect the stem (assimilation, change of the root vowel, etc.). We may thus get discontinuous affixes, the inflected word can no longer be segmented. The affixes may lose their distinctiveness: OHGerman geb-ames ⫺ geb-ant + (wir) geben ⫺ (sie) geb-en, or they may completely disappear as in Germ. Bruder (sg.) ⫺ Brüder (pl.), geben (first and third person plural present tense) ⫺ gäben (first and third person plural present conditional). Inflection is expressed by root alternations. Both cases are typical of inflecting languages. The next and last step is (first weak and then strong) suppletion. The full scale of the diachronic change of compression is depicted in the following diagram (cf. Werner 1987: 300).

302

IV. Grundbegriffe

syntagms

cliticization

affixes affixes root alternation suppletion morphemewith variable morph 1:1 stems ø¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ isolation ⫺ agglutination ⫺ inflection ⫺ suppletion Fig. 32.4: Compression as a diachronic change

To be sure, not every language is passing through all the stages in Fig. 32.4. How far a language goes in the direction of compression will depend on various factors: on the role of assimilation processes, on the extent to which the language allows reduction processes, and on the proportion of forms which can feed such processes. Irregular forms are not just the relics of bygone times, a “semiotically deviant and essentially arbitrary synchronic residue” (Maiden 1992: 306). Allomorphic irregularity may not only persist, it may also emerge. “Novel allomorphy is the creation […] of patterns of alternation whose phonological form or whose paradigmatic distribution is unprecedented” (Maiden 1992: 297). Apparently, speakers, when confronted with conflicting typological evidence in lexical roots, seek to identify common distributional patterns. These patterns can then be made more prominent by emphasizing and elaborating phonological differences. An analogical change can propagate allomorphic irregularity and produce at the same time regularity in the sense that the number of lexical exceptions to irregular allomorphy is decreasing (cf. Maiden 1992: 310).

7.

References

Baayen, Rolf Harald (1989), A Corpus-based Approach to Morphological Productivity. Statistical Analysis and Psycholinguistic Interpretation. Amsterdam: Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica Becker, Thomas (1990), Analogie und morphologische Theorie. München: Fink Berko, Jean (1958), “The Child’s Learning of English Morphology”. Word 14, 150⫺177 Bittner, Andreas (1985), “Implikative Hierarchien in der Morphologie: Das ‘Stark-schwach-Kontinuum’ der neuhochdeutschen Verben”. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 35, 31⫺42

Bittner, Andreas (1988), “Reguläre Irregularitäten”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 41.4, 416⫺425 Deegener, Günter (1978), Neuropsychologie und Hemisphärendominanzbeziehungen zwischen Händigkeit, Sprache und funktioneller Hemisphärensymmetrie. Stuttgart: Enke Dressler, Wolfgang U[llrich] (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers Lakoff, George (1970), Irregularity in Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston Langacker, Ronald (1987), Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. I: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press Maiden, Martin (1992), “Irregularity as a Determinant of Morphological Change”. Journal of Linguistics 28, 285⫺312 McNeill, David (1970), The Acquisition of Language: The Study of Developmental Psycholinguistics. New York: Harper & Row Peirce, Charles Sanders (1965), Collected Papers, Vol. II. Cambridge: Harvard University Press Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 13) Ramat, Paolo (1985), “On the Scalar Character of (Morphological) Irregularity”. In: Seiler, Hansjakob & Brettschneider, Gunter (eds.), International Interdisciplinary Conference on Language Invariants and Mental Operations. Tübingen: Narr, 162⫺171 Slobin, Dan (1971), “On the Learning of Morphological Rules. A Reply to Palermo and Eberhart”. In: Slobin, Dan (ed.), The Ontogenesis of Grammar. New York: Academic Press, 215⫺224 Werner, Otmar (1987), “Natürlichkeit und Nutzen morphologischer Irregularität”. In: Boretzky, Norbert & Enninger, Werner & Stolz, Thomas (eds.), Beiträge zum 3. Essener Kolloquium über Sprachwandel und seine bestimmenden Faktoren. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 289⫺316 Zwicky, Arnold M. & Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1987), “Plain Morphology and Expressive Morphology”. Berkeley Linguistic Society Papers 13, 339⫺342

Ferenc Kiefer, Budapest (Hungary)

303

33. Productivity

33. Productivity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

1.

Meaning and usage of the term productivity Productivity in relation to inflection, derivation and compounding Productivity as a property of the langue The functions of productive morphological processes Morphological productivity as a ¤matter of degreeÅ: factors pertaining to the langue The actuation of morphological processes: factors pertaining to the parole Concluding remarks References

Meaning and usage of the term productivity

In linguistics the word productivity is used to refer to both morphological and syntactic phenomena. The general opinion, however, is that productivity has more to do with words than with phrases or sentences. In conformity with this, in this contribution focus will be on productivity as a morphological phenomenon, although some brief remarks will be made on the difference between morphological and syntactic productivity in 2. Within morphology the term productivity is applied both to rules or processes and to categories or word types. So, with regard to a pair like Eng. sweet ⫺ sweetness, one may say that the rule or process that relates sweetness to sweet (or derives the former from the latter) is productive or that sweetness represents a productive category or word type. The phenomenon to which both formulations refer is that words of the type [[x]A-ness]N constitute an open-ended category, or ⫺ in terms of rules ⫺ the word formation rule that derives nouns from adjectives by suffixation of -ness applies to an in principle not-countable number of adjectives. In a case like this, these different formulations are factually equivalent; yet they may point to different approaches to the phenomenon of morphological productivity or word structure as such (cf. 3). What has been said so far about morphological productivity may be considered to belong, more or less, to the communis opinio of the linguistic community. There remain many questions and problems, however, on which there are controversial opinions. The most important one is the question whether morphological productivity belongs to the langue

(the language as a given system), to the parole (the use of language) or, perhaps, to something in between. Inherently connected with this issue are questions with regard to the gradual nature of productivity. Observations which are relevant in this connection are for instance: some productive processes appear to be less restricted than others, some productive word types seem to permit new words with more ease than others, some productive processes can be applied much more readily than others etc. In this contribution the view is taken that the productivity versus unproductivity of a certain word type or word formation process within a language must be seen as a characteristic of the langue and should, therefore, be accounted for in the ¤grammarÅ of that language. However, the factors that pertain to the degree of productivity of morphological processes may belong either to the sphere of the langue or to the sphere of the parole.

2.

Productivity in relation to inflection, derivation and compounding

Traditionally, three types of morphological processes are distinguished: inflection, derivation and compounding (cf. Art. 37, 38, 87 and 89). These three processes show different kinds of productivity. In recent work in morphology the distinction between contextual inflection on the one hand and inherent inflection on the other is re-established. The former type of inflectional processes add no meaning to the underlying base at all. Processes such as case marking or agreement only add information that is relevant to the syntagmatic structure on phrase or sentence level. Processes of contextual inflection, then, typically possess an essentially unrestrained productivity, the type of productivity that one generally finds in syntax. This is not surprising, of course, since these morphological processes are imposed on words by the syntax. As soon as a word is used in a syntactic construction, it is automatically subjected to all obligatory inflectional rules. On the whole, this is even the case with incidental loans. Many rules of inherent inflection (such as those in the realm of verb conjugation) reveal more or less the

304 same picture. That is, those rules, too, exhibit the syntax-like kind of productivity that is characteristic to contextual inflection. Yet, in the domain of inherent inflection processes may be found (e.g. nominal plural formation) whose productivity is less automatic and which, consequently, resembles that of the most unrestrained derivational processes. Generally speaking, however, the productivity of most inflectional rules is a syntactic rather than a morphological phenomenon. Traditionally, this is often formulated by saying that inflection is concerned with ¤forms of wordsÅ rather than with words. Inflectional rules do not create new words. Many of them are necessary to express or modify propositions and/or speech acts; others, like the pluralization of nouns, do have a referential meaning, but they are not used to denote concepts. In contrast with inflection, derivation and compounding are both word formation processes in the strict sense. Both types of processes produce new words in the sense of new ¤namesÅ for concepts. It has often been claimed that, in general, compounding is far more productive than derivation and that in case of the former productivity comes close to the kind we find in syntax. Evidently, this is not universally true: of the Indo-European languages, for example, Latin appears to be far less productive in compounding than Greek. Moreover, within a language such as Dutch, the compound types N ⫹ N and V ⫹ N do exhibit a syntax-like across the board productivity, whereas other types, like A ⫹ N (snelweg ¤motorwayÅ; lit. ¤rapid wayÅ), are unproductive and are only expanded incidentally by more or less conscious creations. Note that it is precisely in this respect that the productivity of compounding resembles that of syntactic constructions: if a given compound type is productive, its productivity is of the kind we meet in syntax, which means that there are virtually no restrictions. The assessment of a category’s productivity is most problematic in the realm of derivation. It necessarily includes all kinds of modifications, from ¤very productiveÅ via ¤rather productiveÅ to ¤almost unproductiveÅ or ¤unproductive, but producing incidental neologismsÅ. In the light of this fact it is far from surprising that the discussion of morphological productivity centres by and large on derivational morphology. To come to grips with these rather subtle differences in the degree of productivity of derivational

IV. Grundbegriffe

processes, it is necessary to distinguish the langue-aspects and the parole-aspects of word formation, i.e. to distinguish between properties of word formation processes that belong to the language system and factors that pertain to the actuation of these processes in language use.

3.

Productivity as a property of the langue

Before discussing the reasons why morphological productivity must be considered a property of the language system (and not of its use), the notion of langue will have to be discussed briefly. In separating langue from parole Saussure (1976 [1916]: 25f.) made two distinctions: one between the social, conventional aspect of language in contrast with the individual linguistic creativity, and one between the language system per se and the use of that system. These two distinctions do not completely coincide. Although use and individual creativity clearly belong both to the same sphere, system and conventionality do not, or not necessarily. What is conventional in language is not necessarily systematic from a grammatical point of view and vice versa (cf. also Art. 80). In fact, the lexicon of a language (in its Bloomfieldian sense: the total sum of its idiosyncrasies) consists wholly of conventional but unsystematic forms, unsystematic in the sense that there is no system by which they are produced. A regularized form, such as a regular past tense of an irregular verb, represents the opposite: it is produced by the language system, but not (yet) conventional. Therefore, although a language, for most purposes, can be characterized as ¤a conventional systemÅ, one should bear in mind that ¤conventionalityÅ and ¤systematicityÅ are two distinct aspects of a language. As will be pointed out below, this distinction is crucial to a good understanding of the nature of morphological productivity. Conventionality, by definition, refers to social norms. Grammaticality or wellformedness refers to systematic ¤normsÅ (¤normÅ may not be the proper expression in this case but it is only used for reasons of clarity). As many linguistic studies show, it is very well possible to discuss rules of language without referring to the social norms of language; as a matter of fact, there are many linguistic phenomena to which social norms or conventions are not relevant, such as the

33. Productivity

grammaticality versus ungrammaticality of many constructed (and often rather artificial) sentences. In morphology, however, things are different, particularly in the realm of derivation. The productivity of a certain word type or word formation process involves not only the systematic well-formedness of new words, but crucially the social or conventional acceptability as well. In short, we may say that there is morphological productivity as soon as and as long as the two sets of norms coincide. This implies that one cannot discuss productivity without referring to the language community and its judgements about the conventional norms determining the acceptability of new words. This fact is directly reflected in those characterizations of productivity which stress the ¤unintentionalityÅ with which new words must be formed (Schultink 1961: 113). That is, the possibility of making new words in itself is not a sufficient characterization of productive processes; newly coined words should not attract attention as deviating, not-normal forms. Unproductive word types are then defined as those word types which permit no new formations, unless a speaker intentionally violates the conventional restrictions of the language. In that case the speaker creates an in a sense ¤poeticÅ language form which is meant to attract attention for some stylistic purpose (Jakobson 1960). Below it will be pointed out that this is not the only reason why speakers incidentally ¤reviveÅ unproductive word types (cf. 6). What has been said above can also be formulated in terms of the linguistic knowledge of the individual speaker. Speakers do not only know the words of their language as ¤namesÅ for concepts, they are also aware of relations between words of their language like those in (1), (2) and (3) below. Consider: (1) long ⫺ length; one ⫺ alone ⫺ lonesome; land ⫺ landscape; (2) count ⫺ countess; lion ⫺ lioness; god ⫺ goddess; (3) good ⫺ goodness; sweet ⫺ sweetness; narrow-minded ⫺ narrow-mindedness. But speakers also know that there is a systematic difference between relations of type (1) on the one hand and relations of type (2) and (3) on the other. The first are irregular, while the two other types constitute a systematic pattern. With regard to existing words (words that have been accepted by the community as

305 conventional expressions) there is no difference between relations of type (2) and of type (3): both are recurrent in a number of words and can, therefore, be formulated as a rule. But the speaker is also aware of the fact that the relations of type (2), or the rules that can be derived from them, and those of type (3) have a different status with regard to the conventional aspect of the language system. To use a traditional metaphor: he knows that the process in (2) is ¤deadÅ, whereas the process in (3) is still ¤livingÅ. He knows that a new word of the type [[x]A-ness]N belongs to the regular, ¤convention-governedÅ possibilities that his language provides, whereas coining a new word of the type [[x]N-ess]N would represent a creative, ¤convention-breakingÅ language act. It is precisely this knowledge that enables a speaker to distinguish between normal and playful, poetic language use. Thus, productivity versus unproductivity is a property of relations between (categories of) words. Since it involves properties of both the systematic and the conventional dimension of a language, it belongs to the speaker’s knowledge of that language and, therefore, should be situated in the langue and not in the parole. The question arises whether productive morphological processes possess defining characteristics in terms of which they are systematically different from their unproductive counterparts. Not infrequently morphological productivity is associated with semantic transparency. There can be no doubt that there is a link between these two phenomena, but it should be emphasized that morphological processes may vary greatly in terms of the specificness of their semantic contribution. In many cases ⫺ N ⫹ N compounds constitute a classic example ⫺ the semantic structure exhibited by morphological processes is of a very open nature. As far as their semantic characteristics are concerned, many newly coined words do not so much characterize one specific concept but a whole class of concepts. In other cases, however, the semantics of morphological processes is much more specific. There appears to be no direct link between the degree of specificness of a given morphological process on the one hand and its productivity on the other. However, semantic transparency per se is no doubt a condition for productivity, irrespective of the degree of semantic specificness (Van Marle 1988).

306 Formal transparency also appears to be a necessary condition for productivity. With respect to the formal dimension of morphological processes we are faced with the fact that the products of some processes can be analysed and/or segmented much more easily than the products of others. In general, processes associated with an elaborate allomorphy are considered less transparent than processes without such a rich morphologically determined form variation. With regard to morphological productivity, however, only one factor seems to be relevant: the fact that the formal characteristics of newly coined words should be predictable. Clearly, this means that the morphological process underlying these words must be formally transparent as well. Diminutive formation in Dutch involves a five-fold allomorphy (phonetic details disregarded): -tje, -je, -etje, -pje and -kje. The coining of new diminutives, however, hardly ever gives rise to any problems, which means that the complex allomorphy does not affect the transparency of the process. Note that both semantic and formal transparency are necessary conditions for productivity, but no sufficient conditions for productivity. Many morphological processes are semantically as well as formally transparent, and yet unproductive. This is illustrated by the category in -ess which was discussed above. Despite its semantic and formal transparency this word type is not productive: newly coined words in -ess are stylistically deviant, that is against the conventions of the language. As was pointed out, the only place where the ill-formedness of such categories can be accounted for is in the grammar. In terms of the above discussion this fact may be characterized as follows. The two conditions in question (i.e. formal and semantic transparency) exclusively bear upon the form-meaning relationships in the language system. Morphological productivity, however, also relates to the conventionality dimension of the system. Clearly, this latter factor is independent of the structural properties of the system. Words like ap-ess or spider-ess may be completely transparent from a structural point, in terms of the conventionality of the system they are deviant. In other words, ap-ess and spider-ess represent formations where the systematic and the conventional dimension of the morphological system do not coincide.

IV. Grundbegriffe

Now that the view taken in this contribution is expounded that morphological productivity should be considered a property of the langue as a conventional system, the forces underlying the variable nature of morphological productivity can be elaborated in a principled way. Before discussing this topic (cf. 5 and 6), a different but related topic will have to be dealt with: the functions of productive morphological processes.

4.

The functions of productive morphological processes

Nouns, verbs and adjectives are words that function as ¤namesÅ for concepts. It is precisely this major group of content words, i.e. words with a predominantly referential meaning, in which one finds productive word types. In other word classes, such as prepositions, complementizers and pronouns, productive word types are virtually absent. If such a class expands, it is by a gradual historical process of grammaticalization or by a conscious act of language creation by an influential author. Therefore, the main function of word forming processes appears to be the creation of new ¤namesÅ to provide new linguistic expressions for (new) concepts, in contrast with inflectional processes which only provide ¤forms of wordsÅ (cf. 2). Traditionally, this function of word formation is referred to as lexical enrichment. Some morphologists distinguish a second function of morphological processes. The general idea is that in actual usage complex words may sometimes be used primarily for stylistic reasons of variation and/or conciseness and reasons of text cohesion. That is, in these cases complex words do not primarily function as ¤namesÅ for concepts, but they are considered to add a specific stylistic value/effect to the context in which they occur. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as recategorization (cf. Kastovsky 1986: 594⫺596). Consider the following example from Dutch: (4) Sommige werknemers reizen per bus, andere per trein. Het is opmerkelijk dat de “bussers” veel vaker te laat komen dan de “treiners”. ¤Some employees travel by bus, others by train. It is remarkable that the “bussers” are late much more often than the “trainers”Å.

307

33. Productivity

This example does not only illustrate the phenomenon of recategorization as such, it also makes clear that the two functions are not mutually exclusive, i.e. one and the same rule can be used in both functions. The rule which derives subject names in -er in Dutch, for example, has produced quite a number of conventional names and is still productive in this function. At the same time it is frequently used for recategorization. The dual function of this rule, then, is the result of the fact that the second function relates to the stylistic dimension of complex words and the ways they may be used, whereas the first one does not. A third function of morphological processes, finally, is that of lect-marking, i. e. the phenomenon that a specific register or style is assigned a formal characterization. This may be attained not only by articulatory and lexical means, but also by morphological means. This phenomenon is particularly wellknown in the case that a speaker wants to express a special affect. A classic example is the use of diminutives in the language spoken to little children, pet animals and between lovers. There can be no doubt that it is the first function which is primary, whereas the second and the third represent secondary, derived functions. The differences in function that morphological processes display may be accompanied with other differences, particularly on the level of their formal characteristics (the restrictions they exhibit). In Dutch, for instance, the coining of diminutives may take place on the basis of nouns (the unmarked case), as well as adjectives, verbs, prepositions, adverbs and numerals. However diverse as far as their base is concerned, all these diminutives have one property in common: the resulting diminutive is always a noun. In Afrikaans, where the formation of diminutives is even more heterogeneous, this latter condition is no longer in force. In that language ⫺ or, more precisely, in the affective registers of that language ⫺ the diminutive suffix may be attached to simply any kind of base, without any change in morphological class taking place. That is, if tacked to a pronoun the resulting formation is a pronoun, if tacked to a verb the resulting formation is a verb etc. In these cases the addition of the diminutive suffix has no longer anything to do with the normal pattern of diminutive formation as it is in force in the non-affective registers. In the latter case, diminutive formation always results in the formation of a

noun. In the affective registers, the diminutives have lost their morphological status and serve stylistic purposes only, i.e. they have become pure lect-markers. In affective language it is only the phonological shape of the diminutives that is relevant, in that it is the phonotaxis which conveys a socio-stylistic value. The words in question do no longer take part in the system of form-meaning correspondences which normal diminutives exhibit. In other words, in affective language the diminutive suffix functions like a phonological marker. Also in the case of recategorization it is not simply clear whether the systematic features of the morphological process which is used in this way are still intact. Put differently, the question arises whether in the case of recategorization the same structural characteristics are in force as in the case of the primary function of derivational morphology, i.e. that of the creation of new names. Some of the examples suggest that this is not simply the case. Clearly, this is tantamount to saying that it may well be the case that the systematic properties of morphological processes particularly show in their primary function, i.e. that of lexical enrichment.

5.

Morphological productivity as a ¤matter of degreeÅ: factors pertaining to the langue

One of the time-honoured truisms about productive morphological processes is that productivity is a matter of degree. To come to grips with this, a distinction will have to be drawn between two sets of factors that contribute to this gradual character of morphological productivity: (a) factors which bear upon the properties of the langue as a conventional system, and (b) factors which relate to the parole, that is the way in which the system may be put into use (for the latter, cf. 6). Since, as was pointed out in 3, systematicity and conventionality do not always coincide, the ¤langue-factorsÅ must in fact be divided into purely systematic factors and factors that relate to matters of conventionality. A crucial concept with regard to morphological processes is that of morphological domain (cf. Van Marle 1985). By the domain of a given morphological process is to be understood the set of words constituting potential

308 bases for that process. Differences in productivity between word formation processes, then, may be due both to differences in the size of their domains and to differences in the way their potential base is actuated (within their respective domains). Therefore, a distinction has to be made between factors or conditions pertaining to the delimitation of morphological processes and factors relating to the actuation of morphological processes (Van Marle 1985: 169f.). Clearly, the factors defining the domain of a morphological process constitute the core of the set of purely systematic factors which determine the productivity of that process. Note, however, that it would be mistaken to consider all factors relevant to the actuation of morphological processes to belong to the parole: these factors may either bear upon the conventionality of the language system or upon the parole. There is much variability among morphological processes as far as their morphological productivity is concerned. This is the direct result of the fact that the morphological domain of some processes is much more restricted than that of others. To give an example, in Dutch the coining of ¤passiveÅ deverbal adjectives in -baar ¤-ableÅ is restricted to transitive verbs, whereas their ¤activeÅ pendants in -erig ¤inclined toÅ may take both transitive and intransitive verbs as their starting-point. The ways in which the morphological domains of morphological processes may be subjected to such rigid restrictions are quite diverse, in consequence of the fact that these restrictions may relate to virtually all properties of the underlying word we may think of (cf. Art. 85). That is, these restrictions may bear both upon direct properties such as their phonological make-up (both segmental and prosodic), their morphological make-up, their grammatical characteristics, and their semantics, and upon indirect properties such as the position of a given word-type within the morphological system as a whole (i.e. their paradigmatic position). A factor affecting the actuation of morphological domains which is considered to relate to the conventional part of the system ⫺ and which, consequently, still pertains to the langue ⫺ is the well-known phenomenon of blocking (cf. Aronoff 1976; Van Marle 1985; Rainer 1988; cf. also Art. 85). Blocking is the ⫺ paradigmatically determined ⫺ phenomenon that a specific word is not formed due to

IV. Grundbegriffe

the existence of another word with the same meaning. A well-known example illustrating this phenomenon is the fact that forms like English stealer / Dutch steler are neither readily formed nor accepted (apart from situations in which specific stylistic effects are pursued or expected) because of the existence of English thief / Dutch dief, irrespective of the fact that both in English and in Dutch coining of deverbal derivatives in -er is productive. In the literature blocking is either considered a property of the language system or a matter of the parole. However, the distinction between the systematic and the conventional aspects of a language provides a better way to characterize this phenomenon. Since formations such as stealer / steler completely concur with the conditions governing the concept of morphological well-formedness in their respective languages, the only correct characterization of stealer / steler is that both formations are ¤unconventionalÅ. Blocking does not relate to the morphological system per se, but to the conventional aspects of such a system. Another, lesser known phenomenon which bears upon the conventionally determined actuation of morphological processes is the fact that the actuation of many derivational processes is, in one way or other, stylistically restricted. In some cases the actuation is restricted to the more formal registers, whereas the actuation of others, on the contrary, is particularly prominent in the informal registers. An example of the former kind of category is constituted by Dutch ¤passiveÅ adjectives in -baar, which are prominent in the written language, whereas the latter kind of category is illustrated by Dutch denominal derivation in -er. The category of deverbal ¤subject namesÅ in -er, finally, may be an example of a word type which may easily be actuated in both formal and informal registers. In many works on derivational morphology this register-dependent character is neglected since, in all probability, it is considered to exclusively relate to the parole-dimension of morphological productivity. According to the view taken in this contribution, this is not correct: whether or not a certain word type is productive within a given register of the language, is a matter of convention within the speech community; it belongs to the conventional aspects of the langue (and therefore to the speaker’s knowledge of his language). Furthermore, derivational processes which belong to the more formal regis-

33. Productivity

ters seem to be structured much more clearly than those whose actuation forms part of the informal registers. In other words, differences in stylistic orientation seem to have repercussions on the way and the degree in which morphological processes may be delimited. This may even imply that morphological processes which are particularly prominent in the informal registers lack the transparent delimitation that is characteristic of their counterparts which are prominent in the formal registers. At the end of this section a potential connection should be mentioned between the above and the different functions of word forming processes, as discussed in 4. Both recategorization and lect-marking have a primarily stylistic function. It was suggested that it is precisely in these functions that morphological processes seem to expand their domain easily up to a point that no systematic delimitation can be stated. Also, it is hard to avoid the impression that recategorization typically uses processes that are highly productive in informal styles. This suggests that there may be a type of morphological process with the following cluster of properties: productive in informal registers, frequently used for stylistic purposes (lectmarking and particularly recategorization), and not strictly delimitated as far as its domain is concerned. This type would be represented by Dutch denominal derivations in -er. The opposite type ⫺ represented by Dutch deverbal derivations in -baar ⫺ is: productive in formal (or in both formal and informal) registers, primarily used in referential functions (to provide names for new concepts, lexical enrichment) and rather strictly delimitated in its domain.

6.

The actuation of morphological processes: factors pertaining to the parole

In section 5 two factors were discussed which determine the actuation of morphological processes and which pertain to the conventionality of the langue. In this section, too, the actuation of derivational domains will be dealt with, but this time it is the parole-factor which will be concentrated on. This aspect of productivity is paid relatively much attention to in Aronoff (1976:62f.). There it is pointed out in some detail that some base types underlie the coin-

309 ing of new words much more readily than others. An example from Dutch derivational morphology illustrating this point is the following. As said before, in modern Dutch the coining of deverbal adjectives in -baar is productive in so far as the underlying verb is transitive (or, more precisely, has a clear-cut transitive reading). Not all transitive verbs, however, underlie coining in -baar with the same ease. Transitive verbs which particularly qualify for coining in -baar are those ending in -eren (with penultimate stress), cf. dupliceren ¤duplicateÅ ⫺ dupliceerbaar, ¤duplicatableÅ, rangeren ¤shuntÅ ⫺ rangeerbaar ¤shuntableÅ etc. Clearly, these differences among base types in their potential to underlie a given morphological process are no part of the definition of ¤potential wordÅ in the language in question, i.e. they do not relate to morphological well-formedness. Therefore, such relative differences in ¤ease of actuationÅ within the domain of a given morphological process belong to the dimension of the parole, the actual use of the language system’s potential. In general the following rule of thumb seems to hold: the more productive a given morphological process, the easier the process is handled, and the more readily the resulting word is accepted. In relation to the acceptance of newly coined words, factors appear to be involved which do not bear upon morphological productivity per se, but which primarily relate to the phonological characteristics of the resulting formations. In the above (cf. 5) the fact was mentioned that within the productive category of Dutch deverbal adjectives in -baar, those ending in -eer-baar are more easily produced and more readily accepted than others. This is even true with respect to ungrammatical formations of the same type. Since the coining of deverbal adjectives in -baar is restricted to transitive verbs, both *concerteerbaar (on the basis of intransitive concerteren, ¤to perform a concertÅ) and *grinnikbaar (on the basis of intransitive grinniken, ¤to chuckleÅ) are excluded. Yet there can be no doubt that *concerteerbaar does by far not sound as odd as *grinnikbaar. The explanation must lie in the fact that *concerteerbaar fits in the wellknown pattern of coining in -baar on the basis of verbs in -eren, which, not surprisingly, has resulted in a considerable number of existing adjectives of the X-eerbaar type. Put differently, *concerteerbaar sounds familiar.

310 From the above the following picture arises. Morphological processes that are productive may differ considerably as to the actual ease with which they underlie newly coined words. This phenomenon is often referred to as the gradual nature of morphological productivity. The factors underlying these different degrees of productivity are highly diverse, because they belong to three distinct ¤spheresÅ: the morphological system per se, its conventional aspects and, finally, properties that determine how readily a certain process is handled. Moreover, it should not be lost sight of that unproductive categories ⫺ incidentally, and if circumstances are favourable ⫺ may be actuated as well. From this it follows, that the following situations may occur: (a) a category may be productive but hard to actuate, and (b) a category may be unproductive but easy to actuate. In order to come to grips with the latter situation, consider the following discussion which is based on data stemming from morphological experiments. A well-known characteristic of modern Dutch derivational morphology is that it has quite a number of morphological processes by means of which neutral personal names are turned into female ones. Typical of many of these processes is that they are decidedly unproductive. A clear example of such a morphological process is that of female personal names in -in (type: boer-in vs. boer ¤farmerÅ). In morphological tests, however, coining in -in turned out to be remarkably popular. In all probability, this is favoured by the following circumstances. The lexical stock contains quite a few words in -in which are rather common and which, moreover, are highly transparent as far as their morphological structure is concerned. In addition, there is no ready alternative for coining by means of -in on the basis of simplex nouns. This popularity manifests itself in the following three ways (Van Marle 1990). In the first place, some of the newly coined formations in -in directly join in with their existing counterparts of the lexical stock of Dutch. This is e.g. the case with vrekk-in ¤female miserÅ or slager-in ¤female butcherÅ that, neither with respect to their formal nor with respect to their semantic properties, can be distinguished from existing words such as boer-in ¤farmer’s wifeÅ of keizer-in ¤empressÅ (stylistically they may differ from their existing counterparts, of course). Secondly, the popularity of feminization in -in is also evidenced

IV. Grundbegriffe

by the fact that this pattern is used in the case that the lexical stock does not offer formations in -in exactly parallelling the newly coined word in -in. Consider e.g. emir-in ¤female emirÅ and giraff-in ¤female giraffeÅ coined by the testees. As far as the existing words are concerned, coining in -in is nearly exclusively restricted to native bases. As emirin and giraff-in show, the testees used -in in relation to nonnative emir and giraffe as well. Thirdly, in the tests coining in -in is also invoked in those cases which, normally, do not qualify for feminization at all, or only exceptionally. Neutral personal names in -aard and -erik, for instance, systematically lack on the whole female counterparts. Yet, many of the testees coined gierigaard-in and viezerik-in on the basis of gierigaard ¤miserÅ and viezerik ¤pigÅ. What these data show is that some morphological processes ⫺ such as coining in -in ⫺ may easily be involved in the coining of new words, irrespective of the fact that they are unproductive. The fact is, that words such as emir-in and gierigaard-in are considered ill-formed by adult speakers of Dutch, whereas words such as vrekk-in would at least be regarded as stylistically deviant.

7.

Concluding remarks

Every language can be viewed from three perspectives: as a system, as a set of conventions and as the knowledge of an individual speaker. What one perceives from these three angles, are in a sense three distinct realities: an abstract, mathematically definable reality, a social reality and a mental reality. In 3 the view was taken that the systematic and the conventional aspects do not completely coincide. Nor does any of these two linguistic ¤realitiesÅ completely coincide with the mental reality. In a sense, both the systematic and the social properties of languages come together in the speaker’s knowledge of his language: a speaker ¤knowsÅ his language both as a system of rules and relations and as a set of conventions. But this general statement needs two important modifications. First, no individual speaker has a complete knowledge of all the systematic and conventional aspects of his language. The ¤amountÅ of his knowledge depends on his experience. (That is why theoretical linguistics had to create the abstract concept of the ¤ideal native speakerÅ, in order to define, as a homogeneous psycho-

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33. Productivity

logical object, this ideal speaker’s linguistic competence that would at least comprise all systematic properties of a language.) Second, a speaker’s knowledge is not a static object, some final ¤state of mindÅ as the result of a once completed process of acquisition. Precisely because the knowledge of a real world speaker depends on his experience, new language experiences may lead him to new discoveries. Both as a hearer and as a speaker the individual is constantly activated to expand, to re-examine and to modify his (knowledge of his) language: as a hearer when he has to interpret expressions which are not included in his knowledge of the systematic and conventional aspects of his language; as a speaker when he wants to express concepts or thoughts for which his linguistic knowledge does not provide systematic-conventional expressions. In the preceding sections it was demonstrated that productivity as a morphological phenomenon cannot be understood if language is viewed from just one perspective. Productivity as a property of word formation rules or morphological categories is a languephenomenon, but it can only be defined in terms of both the systematic and the conventional aspects of the langue. Degrees of productivity are the result of the interaction of these two aspects of the langue and factors pertaining to the parole, the set of activities performed by individual speakers when they express their thoughts. Eventually, the individual speaker is the central factor with regard to all linguistic phenomena. His mind is the locus where linguistic knowledge is stored and where all processes pertaining to language acquisition and language use take place. These processes, however, cannot simply be divided in two separate sets: processes of language acquisition, leading from an initial stage 0 to a final state n, and processes of use of that knowledge in speaking and understanding. In using language, a speaker reflects on what he hears,

reanalyses what he already knows, plays with both systematic and conventional properties of his language and weighs or evaluates the results when a rule or grammatical process is applied to new material (¤does it sound odd or familiar?Å). It is precisely this set of metalinguistic activities, performed by individual speakers upon (parts of) their language as a conventional system, that explains the many shades of morphological productivity.

8.

References

Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988. Dordrecht: Foris Jakobson, Roman (1960), “Linguistics and Poetics”. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Style in Language. Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press, 350⫺377 Kastovsky, Dieter (1986), “The Problem of Productivity in Word Formation”. Linguistics 24, 585⫺600 Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Marle, Jaap van (1988), “On the Role of Semantics in Productivity Change”. In: Booij & Van Marle (eds.), 139⫺154 Marle, Jaap van (1990), “Rule-Creating Creativity: Analogy as a Synchronic Morphological Process”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Lüschützky, Hans C. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. & Rennison, John R. (eds.), Contemporary Morphology. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 267⫺273 Rainer, F. (1988), “Towards a Theory of Blocking: The Case of Italian and German Quality Nouns”. In: Booij & Van Marle (eds.), 155⫺185 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1976 [11916]), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale, ed. by Tullio de Mauro. Paris: Payot Schultink, H. (1961), “Produktiviteit als morfologisch fenomeen”. Forum der Letteren 2, 110⫺125

Geert Koefoed, Utrecht (The Netherlands) Jaap van Marle, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

V. Die Rolle der Morphologie in Grammatik und Lexikon The role of morphology in grammar and lexicon 34. Morphology and syntax 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Morphology-syntax interactions Syntax and internal word structure Theoretical approaches Morphology as a module or a component Conclusions References

1.

Morphology-syntax interactions

There are several respects in which morphology and syntax interact, and which have to be accounted for in any theory of grammar. These can be listed under the following headings: (i) ways in which morphology and syntax share representations or principles of organization at the interface between the two, (ii) ways in which syntactic processes might appeal to or affect morphological structure, (iii) ways in which morphological processes might appeal to or affect syntactic structure, (iv) ways in which morphology and syntax appeal to the same processes or types of representations. The most salient set of questions concern (i), the interface between morphology and syntax. At its simplest this is reflected in the fact that both components (or modules) of grammar deal in words. Syntax governs the distribution of words while morphology governs the structure of words. There is a sense, then, in which morphology constructs the objects which are then manipulated by syntax. Lexical categories such as noun and verb, and inflectional properties such as agreement features then form part of a vocabulary shared between morphology and syntax. However, there are several other ways in which the interface manifests itself. In an ‘ideal’ world we would expect a clear-cut distinction between the principles governing word formation and those governing phrase formation. On the one hand, this means that we would expect parts of words to be impervious to syntactic processes. In

other words, we would not expect to find much interaction under the heading (ii) above. For instance, suppose we agree that the verb to bottle is derived from the noun bottle by some process. Then we would not expect to be able to refer to the noun bottle in a sentence which used the word as a verb. This seems to be true. For example, in (1) it is impossible for one to refer to the noun bottle from which the verb is derived (though it could refer back to another token of the noun bottle mentioned elsewhere in the discourse): (1) Tom bottled the beer in green ones. Contrast this with (2): (2) Dick put the beer in brown bottles and Tom put it in green ones. Likewise, when the noun bottle occurs in compounds it cannot be referred to anaphorically in (3), in contrast to (4): (3) Tom used milkbottles and Dick used brown ones. (4) Tom used bottles which had had milk in them and Dick used brown ones. In summary, we expect components of words to show referential opacity, even if they are parts of compounds. Another way of expressing this is to say that words, including compounds, are anaphoric islands. In more general terms words are supposed to be closed units inaccessible to syntactic processes which might ‘look inside’ them, a supposition known as the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis. At the same time, in considering interactions of the type (iii) we would not expect words to contain expressions constructed by rules of syntax. For instance, although it is possible to construct long and complex compound nouns in English, in general, it is not usually possible to include syntactic phrases.

34. Morphology and syntax

Thus, we can have compounds such as computer manufacturer and phrases such as manufacturer of the kind of computer you can put in a small suitcase. However, we cannot construct compounds of the form *kind of computer you can put in a small suitcase manufacturer. On the other hand, phrases are allowed inside compounds to a limited extent, as is discussed below. Hence, in the real world we expect two types of deviation from ideality. First, there are cases in which parts of words seem to be manipulated by syntactic processes. Second, there are cases in which morphological processes (or word formation processes) seem to be defined over phrases which have been formed by the syntax. At the same time, both syntax and morphology can be thought of as governing the distribution of formally and semantically identifiable units, namely, words and morphemes. Just as syntax concatenates words into phrases, so morphology concatenates morphemes into words. Even in the absence of ‘deviations’ of the kind just mentioned, it is therefore possible that consideration of point (iv) above will show that similar or even identical principles govern both components of grammar. This assumption is enshrined in the notion the syntax of words (cf. Art. 42), and it has been proposed by a number of theorists that, for example, words have a constituent structure with head-complement and modifier-head constructions, just as in syntax. Further questions that arise from points (ii) and (iii) relate to the extent to which morphological rules and principles can appeal to syntactic structures, and the extent to which syntactic rules and principles might be sensitive to morphological structures. For example, is it possible to find morphological rules of the form “choose allomorph X of verb inflectional morpheme M if the verb precedes the subject in surface structure, and allomorph Y otherwise” (cf. Hudson 1977). Likewise, do there exist syntactic processes of the form “adjoin the verb to the left of the sentence if and only if it has a monomorphemic stem”? Unlike most of the other interactions, these are controversial. In most theories, putative examples are likely to be analyzed away as reflexes of something different. In examining any particular set of constructions, we often see more than one of these three broad types of interaction. I shall therefore briefly survey some of the commoner sets of situation which the morpholo-

313 gist needs to address, before reviewing the theoretical positions that have been taken up. The most obvious ways in which morphology and syntax interact are seen in inflectional systems. One of the primary functions of inflection is to signal dependencies between syntactic units, for instance, the syntactic relationships of agreement and government. Grammatical theory therefore needs to find a way of explicitly relating the morphological form with the syntactic construction or relationship. Syntactic constructions in one language frequently correspond to morphological constructions in another. For instance, the dependencies expressed by inflection in one language may be expressed by other lexical and syntactic means, such as periphrasis, word order and so on, in another. Grammatical theory must be able to state the commonalities in such constructions, independently of morphosyntactic expression. This problem becomes particularly acute when similar relationships are expressed by morphology in one construction and syntactically in another, closely related construction. For example, grammatical theory has to have some way of relating the periphrastic comparative form of adjectives such as more bold with the synthetic, morphological construction, bolder (cf. Art. 68). Word formation processes may alter the syntactic properties of words. This is trivially true in the case of derivation which changes syntactic word class. However, there are more subtle changes possible when syntactic word class is not affected. The most wellknown of these concern argument structure, manifested as valency changes and voice alternations (cf. Art. 107, 108). In many languages a causative construction exemplified by Tom made Harriet eat the apple is expressed by affixation of a causative morpheme to the verb, turning it from a twoplace predicate into a three-place predicate. On the other hand, many languages have a productive construction (for instance, a passive or an antipassive) in which valency is decreased by one argument. Other types of word formation may affect argument structure. For instance, in English it is possible to prefix out- to certain intransitive (or intransitively used) verbs to produce a transitive verb with the meaning ‘to verb to a greater extent than’, e.g. Tom outran all the other competitors, Tom outate Dick. At the very least grammatical theory has to make available a framework of description in which operations of

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V. Die Rolle der Morphologie in Grammatik und Lexikon

this sort can be stated, and their syntactic effects predicted. It is common for one language to express modifier-modified relationships by means of compounding, where another language might employ syntactic means. For example, an expression such as water-mill is translated as vodjanaja mel’nitsa in Russian, where vodjanaja is a relational adjective (with the -n- formative characteristic of adjectives) derived from the noun voda ‘water’. This typifies the difference between the Slavonic languages and the Germanic languages with respect to this sort of construction. Intermediate cases are also found, in which it is not entirely clear whether we are dealing with syntactic constructions or morphology. The construct (or izafet) of languages such as Semitic, the Iranian languages and the Turkic languages (among others) are typical in this regard. In

Turkish, for instance, the so-called indefinite izafet (Lewis, 1967) is a construction in which the head of the expression appears to agree with the modifier in person/number features. For instance, in (5) -i is identical to the 3rd singular possessive formative, so that the whole expression appears to mean ‘Istanbul its-mosques’: (5) Istanbul cami-ler-i Istanbul mosque-pl-3.sg.poss ‘Istanbul mosques’ However, in many respects such an expression is more like an English compound noun. For instance, it is not possible to modify the word camileri syntactically. In that case a different construction must be used. The modifier Istanbul must appear in the genitive case (forming the so-called definite izafet), as seen in (6), where ‘mosques’ is modified by an adjective:

(6) Istanbul-un tarihi cami-ler-i Istanbul-gen historic mosque-pl-3.sg.poss ‘Istanbul’s historic mosques’ The impossibility of *Istanbul tarihi camileri is mirrored by the impossibility in English of a construction such as *Istanbul historic mosques compared with the acceptable Istanbul mosques (see also Borer 1988 for an important discussion of the construct state in Hebrew). While modifier-modified constructions may be expressed syntactically or morphologically (by compounding), this is also true

of head-complement constructions. The most well-known such case is that of so-called noun incorporation, a rather common phenomenon in the world’s languages (cf. Art. 88). In typical cases a finite verb can form a compound with a noun stem representing its object. Thus, in Chukchee, a Palaeosiberian language spoken in North East Siberia, we find synonymous examples such as (7) (Skorik 1977: 238):

(7) (a) Te-wala-mna-rken I-knife-sharpen-1.sg:subject ‘I sharpen a knife/knives.’ (b) Te-mne-rken-et wala-t I-sharpen-1.sg:subject-3.pl:object knife-abs:pl ‘I sharpen knives.’ Chukchee is an ergative language, and the direct object in (7b) is in the absolutive case. There is no doubt that it is a separate noun phrase. Equally, however, in (7a) the noun root wala forms part of the verb stem: it is preceded by a person/number agreement prefix, t-, and it conditions vowel harmony in the verb root, mne-/mna. (7a) and (7b) are essentially synonymous, except that walat in (7b) is marked for plurality, whereas an incorporated root can never be marked for number (or any other inflectional category). Interestingly, in both cases the noun root re-

tains a degree of referentiality. Thus, although (7a) would normally be used to mean something like ‘he is doing some knife-sharpening’, it could be used in principle to refer to some specific knife. Incorporation of noun stems is typically from noun phrases functioning as a direct object. The verb then generally takes intransitive agreement morphology (Chukchee verbs normally agree with their objects) and the subject is marked with absolutive, not ergative case. In other words, in Chukchee, though not in all languages (e.g. Mohawk; cf.

315


Art. 88) object incorporation leads to valency reduction (cf. Art. 107). However, other arguments can be incorporated, including subjects, provided the verb is unaccusative (roughly, an intransitive verb whose subject argument has the semantic role of theme rather than of agent). Thus, it is possible for the verb in (8a) to incorporate the subject snow, marked in the absolutive case (Nedjalkov 1976: 188): (8) (a) neje-k ?el?el telge-g?i hill-loc snow:abs thaw-3.sg:subject (b) neje-k ?el?el-lge-g?i hill-loc snow-thaw-3.sg:subject ‘The snow thawed on the hill.’ [Lit. ‘on the hill it snow-thawed’] Chukchee also allows incorporation of adjuncts, which may include adjective (9) (Skorik 1977: 238) or verb (10) roots (Skorik 1948: 77): (9) (a) jeq-amecat-g?e quick-hide-2:sg (b) ne-jeq-?ew amecat-g?e adv-quick-adv hide-2:sg ‘You hid quickly.’ (10) (a) galga-t ne-rine-ekwet-kine-t bird-abs:pl perf-fly-leave-perf-3:pl (b) galga-t rine-te n-ekwet-kine-t bird-pl fly-ger perf-leave-perf-3:pl ‘The birds have flown off.’ Nouns frequently incorporate their modifiers, for instance adjectives or determiner-like elements (from Leontiev & Ajnewtegin 1957; Skorik 1961): (11) (a) n-?omre-qen gilgil adj-hard-adj ice (b) ?omre-gel hard-ice ‘hard ice’ (12) t?ar-qaw-orw-ek which-ordinal-sledge-loc ‘on which sledge?’ [Lit.: ‘on whichth sledge?’] (13) moreg-klass-ek our-class-loc ‘in our class’ (14) notqene-rgena-qaj?etw-ete this-poss:pl-whaleboat-dat (15) g-a-raqe-ke-l?e-enpenacg-ere-ma comitative-neg-what-neg-partold:man-pl-comitative ‘with the old men who do not have what?’

(16) ga-ketepa-tor-tan-nalge-ma comitative-sheep-new-good-skincomitative ‘with a new, good, sheep skin’ Moreover, a complement which itself has incorporated a modifier can undergo noun incorporation: (17) te-majne-kopra-ntewate-rken 1.sg-big-net-set-asp ‘I am setting a big net.’ The principal challenge of such phenomena is in reconciling their syntactic aspect with their morphological structure. One influential theoretical approach to such constructions, that of Baker (1988 a) discussed below, claims that they are essentially syntactic in nature, and that the process of incorporation they represent lies at the basis of a good many processes affecting argument structure. Thus, the fact that (7a, b) are synonymous would be accounted for by the assumption that they are both constructed by rules of syntax. This then leaves the problem of formulating a theory of morphology which permits words to be formed by syntactic processes. Others (e.g. Di Sciullo & Williams 1987; Mithun 1984; Spencer 1995) have argued that all types of incorporation have to be regarded as lexical phenomena, hence the concern of morphology. This leaves the problem of ensuring that morphological rules have effects on argument structure, case assignment and so on that mimic the effects of syntax. In Chukchee, as in many languages which exhibit incorporation, compounds are morphosyntactically and morphophonologically easily distinguished from phrasal constructions. However, this is far from always being true and the distinction between compounding and phrase formation represents one of the more vexed problems in morphological theory, particularly in languages which are relatively poor in agreement morphology. There are two main aspects to the problem. First, there is the difficulty of knowing whether to analyze a modifier-modified construction as a type of compounding (hence essentially morphological) or as a type of syntactic phrase. Second, independently of this, it frequently turns out that constructions we may wish to call compounds nonetheless appear to have syntactic properties (rather as is the case with incorporation). Both these problems are illustrated in the expression London taxi driver. The subexpression taxi

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driver is a synthetic or verbal compound. (cf. Art. 87). Taxi is interpreted as the direct object of the verbal base of the noun driver. A variety of theories have been proposed to handle such facts (cf. Spencer 1991: ch. 8). Most observers are agreed, however, that it is a kind of compound, and hence, more of a word than a phrase. What, however, of London taxi driver (on either interpretation)? London is clearly a noun, and one option would be to regard the whole expression as another compound. However, others might argue that the modification is essentially syntactic and that London, though a noun, is being used ‘like an adjective’ (cf. the notion of ‘noun premodification’ in Quirk & Greenbaum 1973: 399). The first of these problems, how to describe syntactic relations between parts of compounds, becomes especially acute in languages in which phrases and compounds are even less easily distinguished than in English. The synthetic compound taxi driver is distinct from a phrase such as driver of taxis or even drives taxis amongst other reasons, because of its characteristic word order. In particular, such a compound has much the same structure as any other endocentric noun ⫹ noun compound in English, such as houseboat. In a number of languages, notably those of South East Asia, we find a plethora of compounding types most or all of which correspond in nearly all respects to syntactic phrases. Anderson (1985), basing himself on Chao (1968), provides a useful survey of such constructions in Chinese. He points out that an expression such as (18) can have two meanings, one the regular syntactic meaning, the second a specialized compound meaning: (18) da shou strike hand (i) ‘strike(s) the hand’; (ii) ‘hired rioter, thug’ In many respects expressions such as the Chinese compounds behave like frozen pieces of syntax which have become lexicalized, rather than like a special morphological construction such as a true compound. One of the problems we encounter in defining the

notion of ‘wordhood’ arises when we compare words with lexicalized phrases (cf. Art. 26). This problem has been discussed by Di Sciullo & Williams (1987), who point out that French is replete with constructions of the type le porte-parole ‘the spokesman’, le va-etvient ‘the coming and going’, constructed out of phrases which include verb forms with finite inflections. That these are words, indeed, nouns, is shown by the fact that they take the definite article and other modifiers characteristic of nouns, and have a meaning which in some degree is idiosyncratic. This suggests that languages may be permitted to take a phrase, or even a whole sentence, and reanalyze it as a word. This is the opposite of the first of the interactions mentioned above, for here it is syntax which creates the objects which are then stored in the lexicon as words. Cases such as this, in which syntactic expressions are reanalyzed as words, represent a particularly interesting, if poorly studied, type of interaction between morphology and syntax. A language which illustrates some of the complexities of word formation possible by such processes, and which makes particularly frequent use of them is Navajo. I rely for my data on Young & Morgan (1980). Navajo nouns consist of a simple stem, with possibly a prefix and possible what Young & Morgan call a ‘nominalizing enclitic’ glossed ‘the (particular) one that …’. However, it is common to find inflected verbs used as nouns. Consider, for instance, the literal glosses given by Young & Morgan for the words shown in (19) (the apostrophe ’ after a consonant represents an ejective and elsewhere represents a glottal stop, an acute accent means high tone, ł is a voiceless lateral; a doubled vowel is long): (19) (a) ha-do 3:impers-warm ‘heat’ (‘it is warm’) (b) ha-k’az 3:impers-cold ‘coldness’ (‘it is cold’) Another common way of forming nouns is by suffixing a nominalizer to an inflected verb form, as in (20):

(20) (a) ’ani’iih-ı´ he:steals-nominalizer ‘thief’ (b) bidookiił-ii they:will:give:sustenance-nominalizer ‘provisions (for future use)’

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Compound nouns are formed in a variety of ways, including the concatenation of noun stems, noun ⫹ postposition, noun ⫹ postpo-

sition ⫹ noun, and noun ⫹ possessed noun (reminiscent of the Turkish izafet). Some examples are given in (21):

(21) (a) jooł yital-ı´ ball it:is:kicked-nominalizer ‘football’ (b) bee ’iigis-ı´ with:it laundry:is:washed-nominalizer ‘washing machine’ (c) ’atsiniltł’ish bee ’adinı´dı´´ın electricity with:it light ‘electric light’ (d) ch’il bee naazkań-ı´ plant with:it they:sit:around-nominalizer ‘flowerpot’ (e) chidı´ bitoo’ car its:juice ‘gasoline’ Young & Morgan then give (22) as examples of a type they call ‘descriptive noun phrase’: (22) (a) keýah ’a´łts’oó´zı´go to´ land being:slender water ‘isthmus’ (b) chidı´ naa’na’ı´ caterpillar:tractor big:guns ‘army tank’

bita’gi ha’naa nanı´’a´h-ı´gı´´ı at:a:location:between:them across it:extends:across-nominalizer bee’eldoohtsoh bikaá´’dahnaaznil-ı´gı´´ı on:top:of:it they:sit:up-nominalizer

These expressions are words in the sense that they express a particular meaning (despite the relatively wide range of referents that might be suggested by the literal glosses). In other words, they share with words specificity of reference. However, their component parts appear to have been concatenated in part by syntactic rules, including inflectional processes. It is an interesting, and potentially important question, whether such constructions should be regarded as the result of word formation or word creation (cf. van Marle 1985).

One way in which such nouns behave like syntactic constructions is seen in certain cases with the possessed form. Possession is signalled by a person/number agreement prefix. Young & Morgan (1980: 18f.) report that most nouns of the type (21, 22) take possessive morphology just like any other noun. For instance, from beé´sh bee ’e´lzhe´he´ ‘knife with:it something:is:peeled-nominalizer (paring knife)’, we form shi-beé´sh bee ’e´lzhe´he´ ‘my paring knife’. However, in other cases the internal structure of the complex noun determines how possession is expressed. Thus, the word for ‘scholarship grant’ is given as (23):

(23) beéso bik’e´ ’o´lta’ı´-gı´´ı money in:exchange:for:it someone:goes:to:school-nominalizer However, the words for my scholarship grant and your scholarship grant are respectively (24a, b), with a different verbal stem, reflecting the person/number of the possessor/subject of the verb (the stem of the verb ‘go to school’ is ta’): (24) (a) beéso bik’e´ ’ı´´ını´shta’ı´gı´´ı (b) beéso bik’e´ ’ı´´ını´łta’ı´gı´´ı

These refer to current grants. The words for my future grant and the grant I have just used up would be (25a, b) respectively: (25) (a) beéso bik’e´ ’ı´´ıdeéshtahı´gı´´ı (b) beéso bik’e´ ’ı´´ıłtahı´gı´´ı These include the future and perfective markers respectively. If these expressions are

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words, then they are inflected by rules which belong to syntax, not morphology. A theory of the morphology-syntax interface should give an account of such phenomena. In English, too, we sometimes see what appears to be a syntactic construction (i.e. a phrase) inside an expression we would normally want to call a word, namely, a compound noun: car-of-the-month competition (cf. Lieber 1988; 1992). This violates what Botha (1983) dubs the ‘No Phrase Constraint’ on compound formation: a compound cannot contain a phrase (though the term No Phrase Constraint itself would appear to violate this constraint). This type of construction is more tolerable in English when the phrase can be perceived as lexicalized (in some rather unclear sense), though in Dutch, apparently, there is no such restriction (G. Booij, personal communication). Moreover, in some cases we seem to be incorporating a fossilized piece of genuine syntax, complete with specific expressive intonation contour in some cases (his why-do-I-alwayshave-to-get-the-blame look), while in other cases it is only a disjointed fragment which is incorporated, which itself would not be syntactically well-formed (no-go area). The question of the boundary between words and phrases is discussed in more detail in Art. 40. Another way in which the morphology-syntax interface gives rise to overlap is found with clitic systems (cf. Art. 41). It is very common for function words such as auxiliary verbs, articles, or pronouns to lose some of their status as words and become phonologically dependent on a ‘host’ word. When the clitic and host fuse together phono-

logically and/or morphologically this frequently gives rise to a structural mismatch between morphophonological form and syntactic form (often referred to as a bracketing paradox). A striking example is provided by the fusion of a preposition with a definite article in French (e.g. du ⫽ de ⫹ le ‘of the (masc. sg.)’. This simple case constitutes a massive violation of the one:one correspondence between form and function entailed by the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis, because a single morphophonological word, du, corresponds to two morphosyntactic words which together do not even form a syntactic constituent. Finally, a type of deviation from lexical integrity which has not been widely publicized is illustrated in the copiously documented description of Slavonic possessive adjectives presented by Corbett (1987), the most interesting examples coming from Upper Sorbian (a West Slavonic language closely related to Polish). The possessive adjectives have a meaning roughly paraphrasable as ‘pertaining or belonging to N’ where N is the base noun. They are thus similar to the form presidential in an expression such as the presidential limousine meaning the President’s limousine. In Upper Sorbian they are formed by suffixing -ow to masculine nouns and -in/-yn to feminine nouns: from muzˇ ‘husband’ we form muzˇow and from sotra ‘sister’ we form sotrin. What is peculiar about these adjectives is that in certain constructions, the stem noun behaves like an independent syntactic element. Specifically, this stem can control agreement on a further possessive adjective. Thus, Corbett (1987: 303) records examples such as (26⫺28):

(26) mojeho muzˇowa sotra my:gen:sg:masc husband’s:nom:sg:fem sister:nom:sg:fem (27) mojeje sotriny nawozenja my:gen:sg:fem sister’s:nom:sg:masc fiance´:nom:sg:masc (28) k nasˇeho wucˇerjowej dzˇowce to our:gen:sg:masc teachter’s:dat:sg:fem daughter:dat:sg:fem In (26) we see that the possessive adjective takes feminine agreements, controlled by the head ‘sister’. However, the word for ‘my’ takes genitive masculine singular agreement morphology. The masculine singular features are controlled by ‘husband’, while the genitive case seems to be determined by the possessive construction itself. Likewise, in (27) the possessive ‘my’ is in the genitive case and takes feminine agreements in concord with

‘sister’, even though this word itself agrees with its masculine nominative singular head noun ‘fiance´’. Finally, (28) shows that the first possessive (in this case ‘our’) will take genitive case irrespective of the case of the nominal phrase as a whole (in this case genitive, governed by the preposition). Corbett discusses other respects in which the stem nouns of possessives appear to enjoy independent syntactic existence.

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2.

Syntax and internal word structure

If we regard word structure as essentially morphotactics, i.e. the concatenation of morphemes, and syntax as word concatenation (i.e. disregarding questions such as agreement, government, the binding of pronominals and anaphors, the control of ‘understood’ subjects and other such phenomena) then morphology resembles syntax. This is reflected in the difficulty in distinguishing between words and phrases using purely distributional criteria of the sort found in Bloomfield (1933). In principle, word formation can be as productive as phrase formation, morphemes may concatenate in various orders within the word, depending on meaning or function, morphemes within a word can be ‘interrupted’, and so on. (Bauer 1988: 45⫺55 provides a convenient textbook introduction to these issues; cf. also Art. 29, 40.) Nonetheless, there are several respects in which morphological operations are distinct from syntactic operations. Thus, there is no syntactic equivalent to purely phonological or morphophonemic operations such as consonant mutation or ablaut (cf. Art. 53). Nor do we find individual formatives in syntax exhibiting allomorphic variation depending on arbitrary classes in the formatives to which they are attached, though this is common in morphology. Syntactic processes frequently involve discontinuous dependencies between one part of the sentence and another, as for example in the case of the ‘fronting’ of wh-phrases to form questions in English. Such ‘movement’ processes (however they are formulated syntactically) are foreign to word formation, with the specific exception of metathesis. Despite the difference, much effort has been put into showing that affixation produces words with something akin to syntactic constituent structure (Williams 1981; Selkirk 1982). Since such structures are described using a phrase structure grammar, we may call these ‘phrase structure approaches’ (cf. Spencer 1991: 198⫺205). It seems reasonably clear that endocentric compounding gives rise to a simple binary branching constituent structure, though what that structure is may be controversial, particularly in the case of synthetic compounds (cf. Art. 83, 87). More controversially this is also claimed for derivational processes. A category changing affix is regarded as the head of the word which it creates. The features of this head are inherited by the word as a whole by virtue of the

usual percolation mechanisms. On this view a word such as indecipherability would have the structure indicated in (29): (29)

N A A V

N in

de

cipher

able

ity

In this structure de- is the head of the verb decipher, while -ity is the head of the noun as a whole. In the theory of Lieber (1980) the constituent structure is entirely free of node labelling. Affixes as well as roots have categorial features, which percolate according to a set of conventions. This theory utilizes another syntactic device, that of subcategorization. In order to express the fact that, say, -able suffixes exclusively to verb bases, the lexical entry for this suffix is given a subcategorization frame which states that it attaches to the right of a verb. The obligatoriness of this subcategorization captures the fact that -able is a bound morpheme. In these theories, it is not possible to distinguish morphologically between inflectional and derivational formatives. This leads to problems with the percolation of features, since inflectional affixes, which are regarded as heads on these approaches, do not always supply all the featural content to the entire word. For this reason, Di Sciullo & Williams (1987), for example, introduce a notion of ‘relative head’: features may percolate from what is strictly speaking the non-head (complement?) of the affix provided the ‘real’ head is not specified for such features. Further details of phrase structure grammar approaches can be found in Art. 42. There has been no little debate over crucial aspects of this approach. Doubts have been raised about the appropriateness of using a syntactic notion such as ‘head’ for word structure (e.g. Zwicky 1985; Bauer 1990).

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Williams (1981) has proposed that in words the head is universally to be found on the right, while in syntax phrases can be left or right headed. Moreover, the kind of constituent structure found in word formation is extremely simple and it is very difficult to see how the relatively rich structures found in, say, the X-bar theory of syntax are reflected in word structure. There is no obvious sense in which morphological formatives form modifier-modified structures, or governorgovernee combinations (outside compounding, at least), and no evidence whatever for the assumption current in Government-Binding syntax that there is a Specifier position. Constituents of words do not generally behave like sentence constituents, in that the usual tests of constituenthood for phrases are inapplicable for words. Thus, we do not find word-internal constituents being replaced by single elements (e.g. pro-forms) and such constituents do not undergo movement processes. Even where affix movement processes are postulated (as in Pesetsky’s 1985 proposal) it is only a single affix, not a constituent comprising strings of affixes, that is moved. Indeed, in general it is necessary to appeal to special principles to prevent phonological or morphological processes from gaining access to internal constituents (e.g. the Atom Condition (Williams 1981) or the Adjacency Condition (Siegel 1977); cf. Scalise 1984: ch. 8; and Art. 42). Moreover, morphological operations such as consonant mutation or conversion, which have no counterpart in syntax, require special treatment, e.g. by recasting into an agglutinating form or by setting up special headless constructions. The phrase structure approaches inherit from structuralist progenitors an emphasis on the view of the word as a linear string of morphemes, and rely heavily on the view of the morpheme as a formative which has meaning as well as form. Given this it is easy to equate morpheme-in-a-word with wordin-a-phrase and attempt to use the same formal means of modelling them, particularly in those theories, like Lieber’s (1980) in which affixes are listed along with roots as lexical entries in the lexicon. In a different set of approaches a distinction is drawn between morphological operations and morphological processes. Morphological formatives (affixes), morphophonological processes such as mutation or ablaut, or lack of morphological operation as in conversion, are all simply exponents of a given process. There is no sense in which an affix has a ‘meaning’ or a lexical entry of its own

(though this impression can be created in the limiting case, when a single formative uniquely realizes a single meaning or function). Nor is it necessary to push morphophonological processes such as mutation or conversion into an agglutinative straitjacket by assuming affixes whose effects are purely phonological, or a plethora of zero affixes. A strong version of this thesis is proposed by Beard (e.g. Beard 1987). It is widely recognized that inflectional paradigms pose serious problems for a strictly agglutinating view of morphology of the kind implied in word syntax approaches. Well-known problems of cumulation, fusion, syncretism and so on (cf. Art. 38, 65, 66) have led some (e.g. Matthews 1972; Anderson 1982) to propose a paradigm-based theory in which the inflectional properties expressed by a set of morphological operations on a word be regarded separately from the formatives themselves. Beard observes that this many-many correspondence between form and function is not uncommonly found in derivation, too. (In this respect, affixes behave more like functional elements, such as prepositions, than as lexical elements.) His proposal is the Separation Hypothesis, which treats the more abstract notion of lexical derivation (e.g. ‘nominalization of a verb’) as a separate phenomenon from the morphological operation associated with it (say, adding -ment to the base or root ablaut). In order to ensure that the mapping between the two is not entirely unconstrained, only the features last added to a base are accessible to further word formation or to syntactic processes. In this way, indecipherability behaves much like the word ability, while decipherable behaves much like readable. One consequence of the separation of form and function is that morphologically complex words are at most linear strings of formatives, in other words they cannot have a constituent structure. This immediately explains why certain so-called ‘bracketing paradoxes’ are possible (cf. Art. 81; see also Beard 1991). A much-discussed example of this is a word such as ungrammaticality. The problem is that un- in English is a word level (‘native’, ‘Class II’) affix, while -ity is a root level (‘nonnative’, ‘Class I’) suffix. In general, root-level affixation must precede word-level affixation. Now, if -ity is affixed first, we create a noun grammaticality. Hence, un- will have to be prefixed to that noun. However, un- may only attach to adjectives such as grammatical, and not to nouns. Therefore, the morphological requirements on affixation


predict a constituent structure [un[grammatical]ity], while morphosyntactic constraints demand an incompatible structure: [[un[grammatical]ity]. However, if the morphological structural requirements at the level of morphological formatives is simply that a root affix such as -ity may only attach to a latinate formative such as the -al of grammatical then there is no paradox. A very similar explanation has been proposed by Sproat (1985; 1988), discussed in some detail in Spencer (1991: 409⫺413, 417⫺420). (For another approach see Stump 1991.)

3.

Theoretical approaches

There are several different ways of interpreting the interaction between syntax and morphology. A particularly important distinction is that between lexical approaches and what we may call ‘syntactic’ approaches to morphology. On a strictly syntactic approach to morphology, all word formation and inflection is the consequence of syntactic rules. Roughly this position seems to have been taken by proponents of Generative Semantics (cf. Newmeyer 1980). Thus, the nominalization destruction would be formed from the verb destroy by means of a syntactic rule, in the same component of grammar as that responsible for, say, fronting a wh-word in a special question such as What did Tom eat? Likewise, the present tense agreement marker -s in Tom sings would be attached by a syntactic rule. Chomsky (1970; cf. also Newmeyer 1980; Scalise 1984; Spencer 1991) argued that nominalizations such as destruction could not be the result of regular transformational syntactic process, essentially because such formations show too many idiosyncrasies to be so analyzed. In this respect they contrast with genuinely regular, productive and transparent -ing nominalizations (destroying). Derivational morphology of this type came to be handled by means of special morphological rules applying specifically to words, and not to syntactic units. However, under this model inflection (including -ing nominalization) could still be handled by syntactic rules. The place at which word-level derivational process apply has been identified with a specific morphological level (‘component’, ‘module’) or the lexicon itself. Hence, we may refer to such a model as a Lexicalist model. However, since not all word forms are created by lexical processes this variant is known as weak lexicalism. The principal claim of this

321 approach is that “the syntax neither manipulates nor has access to the internal form of words” (Anderson 1988: 165). Under this model, derivational morphology has to be distinguished from inflectional morphology in a principled way, with each handled by different types of rule. This is known as the split-morphology hypothesis (cf. Anderson 1982; Perlmutter 1988). It has also been claimed that all morphological processes defining the form of words, whether traditionally derivational or traditionally inflectional, should be handled in a unitary fashion by means of lexical operations. This is strong lexicalism. On this model it is possible to understand why the morphological operations subserving derivation (i.e. affixation, ablaut, and so on) are in general indistinguishable from those subserving inflection (cf. Lieber 1980; Marantz 1984). However, it is then necessary to provide a mechanism for syntactic processes such as agreement to have access to just those aspects of morphological structure which are relevant to syntax. This is generally handled by ensuring that properties of, say, agreement formatives become properties of the whole word, for example, by feature percolation (for explicit discussion of this see Lapointe 1981; 1988). When, say, a predicate and its subject agree in person/number features, this is achieved by a checking process in which the features distributed over the syntactic representation must match the feature composition of the fully inflected words inserted into the syntactic representation from the lexicon. On this view the lexicon in principle contains all the possible word-forms of a given lexeme, though in many cases these have more the status of ‘virtual’ word-forms, generated by productive inflectional processes. I shall illustrate some of these ideas with some specific case studies. Consider noun incorporation, in which, for instance, the noun of a verb’s direct object forms a compound with the verb stem. Baker (1988 a) in an influential theory of grammatical function changing argues that this is just one instance of a general syntactic process of head-to-head movement. In Government-Binding theory it is assumed that a head may be raised and adjoined to another head under certain circumstances, leaving an empty category (‘trace’) with which it is coindexed. In Baker’s theory the constraints on head-to-head movement are a consequence of a syntactic restriction, the Empty Category Principle or ECP (see Haegeman 1991, for a textbook treatment of

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these issues). For the purposes of incorporation, this states that the trace of the moved head must be governed by the host head, and the phrase from which the moved head originates must be a complement of the host. Thus, it is possible for a verb to incorporate the head of a direct object, but not the head of a subject, or an adjunct. This corresponds to other syntactic asymmetries between subjects and adjuncts on the one hand, and subcategorized phrases on the other. Because incorporation is movement leaving a trace, this theory predicts two things. First, it is impossible to ‘double’ the incorporated noun giving sentences corresponding to, say, Tom horse-rode the stallion. Second, it is possible to strand modifiers of the incorporated noun. So in some languages at least it should be possible to say Tom horse rode the black meaning Tom rode the black horse. A number of lexicalist accounts have been proposed for such constructions (e.g. Mithun 1984; Di Sciullo & Williams, 1987; Rosen

1989). These accounts stress that in some of the languages discussed, particularly Mohawk, it is indeed possible to double the incorporated noun. In addition, it has been claimed that when incorporation strands modifiers, the resulting headless phrase is one which is permitted by the language even without incorporation. (Further details of these issues are found in Art. 88.) Baker’s head-to-head movement theory of incorporation is extended to an impressive array of phenomena. He argues that all the main grammatical function changing processes are instances of head-to-head movement (see Spencer 1991: ch. 7.4 for overview). For instance, he argues that regular causativization, even when marked by a morphological process, is the result of incorporation of a verb by a governing causative verb (Marantz 1984 adopts a similar position). This can be illustrated in very simple terms (ignoring considerable technical detail) by the Chichewa example in (30) (Baker 1988a: 221f.):

(30) Kalulu a-na-bay-its-a njovu kwa alenje hare subj-past-stab-cause-asp elephant to hunters ‘The hare made the hunters stab the elephant.’ Baker assumes an initial syntactic structure (D-structure) which is essentially like the English gloss to (30), namely (31) (simplifying Baker’s account somewhat): (31)

S NP hare

VP V

CP

made

C' C

(32)

NP

hare

VP

0 V stab

S NP

S

hunters

joined to the matrix verb, the causative morpheme. In order to respect the Empty Category Principle this has to involve movement of the whole embedded VP to a position under the CP (Specifier position of C). From there the verb stab is incorporated leaving behind the NP elephant as the derived direct object of the causative verb, and leaving the embedded subject the hunters to be case marked by a special rule introducing the preposition kwa. The result is shown in (32):

NP elephant

Baker assumes that the causative morpheme is represented syntactically as a verb selecting a clausal complement (CP). The complement clause verb ultimately gets ad-

V

VP V

CP V

VP V

C' NP

S

stab made t elephant NP hunters

VP t


Similar accounts are offered for applied verb formation (cf. Art. 107) which is regarded as a form of preposition incorporation. Thus, schematically, in a Bantu language such as Chichewa a structure underlying The boys hand an apple to Harriet would alternate with an expression of the shape The boys hand-to Harriet an apple, in which handto represents a specially suffixed form of the verb. More controversially Baker assumes that passive morphology is the result of incorporation. The passive morpheme is regarded as a kind of nominal auxiliary to which is assigned the subject argument role of a transitive verb. This has the effect of reducing the valency of the verb by one argument. The passive morpheme, which is in the I(nfl) position, then incorporates the verb stem. A more articulated version of this theory is presented in Baker & Johnson & Roberts (1989). There are several advantages to this type of syntactic approach. That advocated by Baker, in particular, proposes a number of elegant ways of accounting for many of the syntactic properties of morphologically complex words. The complementarity of distribution between overt direct objects and incorporated direct object nouns is one such case (essentially the same argument as that advanced by Kayne 1975 for assuming that pronominal clitics in Romance are attached to the verb by a syntactic movement rule). In addition, Baker explains the fact that noun incorporation is restricted in essentially the way that other types of movement are restricted. The trace left by movement of the head must be in a strict relationship of proper government with its antecedent, the moved head. For this reason, it is impossible to form a causative which ‘skips’ out of another, lower, clause. For example, it would be impossible in Chichewa, or any other language, to construct a verb form meaning ‘cause to stab’ which could be used to transform a sentence with the structure of (33) into a hypothetical sentence-type with the structure of (34): (33) The hare made [CP[NPthe hunters [CPwhich stabbed the elephant]] leave] (34) The hare made-stab [[the hunters which the elephant] leave] In (34) the verb has been incorporated from a relative clause modifying the subject of the complement clause. The result is gibberish in

323 any language. This is accounted for on a theory such as Baker’s by general principles, independent of this kind of construction, which prohibit movement across certain phrasal categories. In particular, it is impossible to extract anything out of a relative clause. For example, it is impossible to ask a question of an element of a relative clause. Hence, it is impossible to relate (35) to any non-emphatic version such as (36): (35) You met a man who has built WHAT?! (36) *What did you meet a man who has built? Baker’s theory is able to exclude nonsense such as (34) by appeal to precisely the kinds of syntactic principles which exclude (36). Moreover, in principle this pattern of explanation is open to any theory of valency operations which can make appeal to syntactic principles or syntactic structure in a comparable fashion. Causative constructions illustrate an important sense in which morphological structure seems to reflect syntactic structure. If we oversimplify somewhat we can say that there are essentially two sorts of causative construction. The first the type is illustrated schematically by the English gloss to the Chichewa example (30), represented schematically in (31). This has rather different syntax from that of the Chichewa example to which it corresponds. First, the embedded subject behaves rather like a derived object of the matrix verb make. (Such a verb is often referred to as a ‘Raising-to-Object’ verb, because the subject appears to have risen out of the embedded clause into the complement position of the matrix verb. Alternatively, it is referred to as an ‘Exceptional Case Marking’ verb in Government Binding theory, because the matrix verb is able, exceptionally, to assign objective case to the lower subject, as can be seen when the NP is a pronoun: The hare made them stab the elephant). At the same time the embedded object, of course, remains an object. This is very different from the behaviour of the Chichewa nominals, in which the embedded subject loses its argument status, and is treated more as a kind of adjunct phrase. Here, the causativized verb behaves very much like a derivationally simple verb in the sense that it may only take one genuine object, namely the NP corresponding to the object of the embedded verb. It is this NP, for

324


instance, which is cross-referenced by the verb in constructions in which the verb agrees with its object, and it is this NP which undergoes passivization. Another difference is apparent when we replace the embedded object with a reflexive pronoun. The general pattern with Chichewa and other such languages is that the reflexive must refer back to the subject of its clause. In English, if we replace elephant in (31) with a reflexive we get (37): (37) The hare made the hunters stab self. Here, self must refer to the hunters (and hence assumes the form themselves). However, in the equivalent in Chichewa we would find that the reflexive morpheme in (38) would refer back to the hare, the subject of the matrix clause: (38) The hare stab-made the hunters self.

In other words, (38) would be glossed ‘The hare made the hunters stab him (⫽ the hare)’. One way of summarizing these differences is to distinguish broadly two types of causative construction which we may call monoclausal and biclausal (cf. Aissen 1979). The biclausal type is illustrated by the English ‘make’ examples. Here the embedded complement is syntactically autonomous in that clause-level principles apply to it. However, in the Chichewa example the causative verb seems to be the predicate of just a single clause. The point of crucial interest is that there are languages with morphological causatives which behave like the English biclausal type. The Bantu language Chi-Mwi:ni is a case in point. (Indeed, there is a dialect of Chichewa itself which behaves like this.) In Chi-Mwi:ni a reflexive in the position of the (surface) direct object of the causative verb can refer to the subject:

(39) Mi m-phik-ish-ize ru:huya cha:kuja I l:sg-cook-cause-asp myself food ‘I made myself cook food.’ However, if the reflexive is in the position of the embedded object then it can only refer back to the (underlying) embedded subject,

which, of course, is now the direct object of the causative verb (40); it cannot refer back to the matrix subject (41) (cf. Baker 1988 a: 211):

(40) Mi ni-m-big-ish-ize mwa:na ru:huye I l:sg:subj-obj-hit-cause-asp child himself ‘I made the child hit himself.’ (41) *Mi ni-m-big-ish-ize Ali ru:huya I l:sg:subj-obj-hit-cause-asp Ali myself ‘I made Ali hit myself.’ This behaviour is explained on Baker’s account by assuming a different path for the incorporation of the lower verb. Again, representing the Chi-Mwi:ni examples schematically, we have the derivation illustrated in (42⫺44): In this derivation the embedded verb raises to the position of the complementizer of the complement clause (C in (43)), leaving a trace which it (properly) governs. Thence, it raises again to be incorporated by the matrix causative morpheme. However, the original clausal structure is left intact, inasmuch as the original direct object remains in direct object position, and the original subject remains in its original structural position. This means that the anaphor self will refer back to child and not to the matrix subject I, even after incorporation.

S

(42) NP I

VP V

CP

made

C' C

S NP

VP

0 child

V

NP

hit

self

325


S

(43) NP I

S

(44) VP

NP

V

CP

made

C' C hit

V

I V S

CP V

C'

made hit C

NP child

VP

VP

t

V

NP

t

self

This analysis explains another feature of these constructions. The NP which behaves like the true object of the derived causative verb is the embedded subject NP, not the original object. Contrast the situation with the monoclausal causatives. This again can be related to the structural difference. The derived verb can be said to govern the embedded subject in essentially the same way that make governs its embedded subject. The remaining lower object then has to be specially marked (as a ‘second object’) by devices which are employed in other constructions in the language. (But see Baker 1996 for a revised account.)

S NP child

VP V

NP

t

self

Constructions such as these pose a challenge to lexicalist theories, for such theories have to find some non-syntactic way of accounting for the apparently syntactic differences between the two types of causative. Di Sciullo & Williams (1987) and Anderson (1989) have addressed this problem. Their suggestion is a further radical lexicalization of syntax. (See also Alsina 1996 for discussion within Lexical-Functional Grammar.) Anderson (1989: 3) notes the Georgian is a language with morphological causatives which may pattern in the biclausal manner. Consider example (45):

(45) ekimma vanos alap’arak’a tavistav-ze doctor Vano talk:cause self’s:self-on ‘The doctor got Vano to talk about himself.’ In (45) it is possible for himself to refer to Vano. Normally, however, it is impossible for a reflexive of this kind to refer to a non-subject. Thus, it appears that at the level at which anaphor binding is defined, Vano is a subject in (45). Anderson proposes to handle this by assuming that there is a morphosyntactic feature [reflexive] which accounts both for the binding properties of independent words (such as anaphoric elements) and for the behaviour of certain verb types. Citing Di Sciullo & Williams (1987), he suggests that transitive verbs may be marked so as to require this feature on their direct objects,

having the effect of binding the object to the subject position. This would mean that only a reflexive pronoun could cooccur with such a verb. In many languages this feature would take the form of affixation, and the affix would then fulfil the role of the reflexive direct object, in effect turning the verb into an intransitive (see Spencer 1991: 248⫺ 251 for discussion of such cases). Anderson assumes that in Georgian there is no overt morphological reflex of reflexivization. However, he does provide evidence from elsewhere in Georgian grammar of the need for a clearly lexical rule to appeal to a [reflexive] feature.

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Since the reflexivization process is lexical it can feed other lexical rules, such as causati-

vization. In this case, the verb talk will undergo the processes shown in (46):

(46) talk J [talk ⫹ REFL] J [[talk ⫹ REFL] CAUSE] ‘to cause to talk to/about oneself’ This form will correctly account for the relevant reading of (45). Of some interest is the fact that (45) is actually ambiguous. It can also mean that Vano was persuaded to talk about the doctor. On this interpretation we have a monoclausal causative. Baker does not discuss cases of this sort explicitly, and probably he would analyse this as optional alternation between a monoclausal and a biclausal type structure

(though this would have implications for case marking and other aspects of syntactic structure which are not entirely obvious). For Anderson, the ambiguity is what is to be expected if reflexivization and causativization are lexical processes (though it is unclear on this account why such ambiguity is not reported for other languages with morphological causatives). For beside (46) we can just as easily construct a verb form along the lines of (47):

(47) talk J [talk ⫹ CAUSE] J [[talk ⫹ CAUSE] ⫹ REFL] ‘to cause to talk to/about oneself’ Clearly, such a form will underly the second reading of (45). A phenomenon related to the question of noun incorporation is the satisfaction of argument structure in synthetic compounds. A synthetic compound consists of a deverbal noun head modified by a nominal non-head, as in truck driver. Much discussion has been devoted to the observation that in such cases truck seems to function as the direct object of the verb drive. In this respect the compound resembles a syntactic phrase such as drives a truck or more tellingly, (a) driver of trucks. (See Spencer 1991: 324⫺340 for a review). One approach is to claim that syntactic principles governing the satisfaction of argument structure operate at the level at which synthetic compounds are formed. Sproat (1985), for instance, argues that truck driver is constructed in the syntax by first compounding truck with the verb and then affixing -er, to give (48): (48)

Projection Principle, which says that the valency of a predicate cannot change during a derivation, and the Theta Criterion, which says that all arguments must be satisfied. This presupposes that the non-head of a compound counts as an argument position. Notice that (48) counts as a type of ‘bracketing paradox’ (see section 2), in that the morphologically determined constituent structure of the compound must presumably be [[truck] [drive ⫹ er]]. This is a further example of the separation of morphological and syntactic well-formedness principles. An alternative approach, which we may call ‘lexical’ is to regard synthetic compounds as noun ⫹ noun compounds, but permit the argument structure of the verbal base to be ‘inherited’ by the deverbal nominal. An account of this sort is proposed by Di Sciullo & Williams (1987), illustrated in somewhat simplified form in (49): (49)

N

N

N*Agi, Thj+

Nj V

er

V*Agi, Th+ N

V

truck

drive

truck

On the intended reading, in which drive is used transitively, it must have a direct object. In the Government and Binding theory assumed by Sproat this is encapsulated in the

drive

eri

The symbol *Ag, Th+ represents the argument structure of drive, taking an Agent (subject) and a Theme (object) argument. The coindexation indicates that the Agent role is linked to -er, expressing the fact that this is


an agentive affix. The argument structure of the verb base percolates to become a property of the deverbal noun, and its Theme role is linked to the non-head truck. On this analysis there is no ‘bracketing paradox’. However, this type of account needs to explain what aspects of argument structure can be inherited and which cannot. A variety of refinements to the basic idea of inheritance have been proposed, particularly where the interpretation of affixes such as -er is concerned. Booij (1988) provides an example and a good summary of the issues (cf. Art. 83). Related to the question of synthetic compounding is the vexed issue of argument structure satisfaction in nominalizations. For instance, in a hallowed expression such as the city’s destruction the ‘possessive’ expression the city’s acts as the object of the verb stem destroy, just as in the expression the destruction of the city. On the other hand, in the barbarian’s destruction of the city the ‘possessive’ acts like the subject of the verb stem. This depends on a variety of factors, including lexicalization and on the extent to which aspectual districtions are preserved from the verbal base (see Grimshaw 1990). Cliticization represents a particularly complex example of the interfacing of distinct linguistic components, in that it involves the mapping between morphology (and the lexicon) on the one hand and both phonology and syntax on the other. Particularly striking are the mismatches induced by cliticization between morphological structure and syntactic structure, of the kind illustrated in section 1 (26⫺28). Klavans (1985) has argued that there are theoretically exactly eight types of clitic possible (cf. also Sadock 1990: 72⫺77; Spencer 1991: 375⫺381). These are defined in terms of two syntactic parameters and one phonological parameter. All clitics are positioned peripherally to a syntactic domain (e.g. sentence, verb phrase, noun phrase). Given a domain a clitic may be either initial or final, and it may be placed either before or after the peripheral constituent. Phonologically, it may be either enclitic or proclitic. For instance, consider the clitic form of the auxiliary verb ‘have’ in a sentence such as The man responsible’s been punished. Assuming the clitic ’s is attached syntactically to the verb phrase been punished, then it is initial, before (the verb) but enclitic. Hence, it attaches phonologically to the previous word (which will in practice mean the final word of the subject noun phrase, responsible). Now

327 consider the outwardly similar possessive ’s, as in the man responsible’s punishment. This will be final in its domain (of noun phrase), after and enclitic. The crucial point is that the phonological parameter can induce a direction of morphophonological attachment which is entirely at odds with morphosyntactic requirements. A typical clitic has some of the properties of a word, in that it cooccurs with a great variety of different word and phrase types, and some of the properties of an affix, in that it is obligatorily bound to a host. Indeed, clitics are often referred to as phrasal affixes for this reason (though see Art. 41 for a discussion of the possibility of distinguishing phrasal affixes from bound words). In addition, groups of clitics often form clusters which respect strict ordering constraints. This is particularly obvious in a language such as Serbo-Croat, where phrasal word order is rather free, but where the order of elements in the clitic cluster is rigidly fixed. However, many of the formatives which are often referred to as clitics have more of the character of genuine affixes than clitics. Thus, the pronominal clitics of the Romance languages tend to cluster around the verb (not the verb phrase) and in some varieties (most famously, Argentinian Spanish) the object clitic can be ‘doubled’ by a full and overt noun phrase (cf. Sun˜er 1988). In Macedonian, this type of doubling is obligatory (see Spencer 1991: 358⫺ 362), and Lyons (1991) has argued that the best way to accommodate these facts is to assume that all such clitics, whether they permit doubling or not, are actually (degenerate) agreement markers. Agreement itself represents one of the more common aspects of the morphologysyntax interface. However, it appears in a great variety of guises and there is no consensus on how best to describe it. In its simplest form agreement is a morphophonologically realized cross-referencing of a head and its complement or a head and its modifier. A checklist of cases is given in Lapointe (1988). The problem of distinguishing agreement from cliticization assumes intriguing dimensions when we examine cases such as Celtic (cf. Doron 1988, and especially Sadler 1988: 49⫺66). In Irish (and Breton) verbs may either bear inflections cross-referencing the subject (the ‘synthetic’ form of the verb) or bear a default, non-agreeing inflection (the ‘analytic’ form). There is an absolute ban on the appearance of subject-verb agreement

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morphology (i.e. the ‘synthetic’ form) when the subject is phonologically overt. Thus we may have (50a) but not (50b) (McCloskey & Hale 1984): (50) (a) Chuirfinn isteach ar an phost sin. put:cond:1.sg in on that job ‘I would apply for that job.’ (b) *Chuirfinn me´ isteach ar an phost sin. put:cond:1.sg I in on that job Not all person/number combinations have inflected forms. However, where they exist they are obligatory. When the subject is a lexical NP then a default 3rd person singular

form is used. In other words, there seems to be a principle of ‘complementarity’ at work: when there is an overt subject the analytic form of the verb must be used (i.e. the one which lacks subject marking), and when the synthetic form is used there can be no overt subject. Welsh resembles Irish in that lexical NPs are not allowed to cooccur with verbs in the synthetic form. When there is an overt lexical subject, the verb appears in the analytic form and assumes default (3rd person singular) morphology, as shown in (51) (from Sadler 1988: 50f.):

(51) (a) Agorodd y dynion / y dyn y drws. open:past:3.sg the men / the man the door ‘The men / man opened the door.’ (b) *Agoron y dynion y drws. open:past:3.pl the men the door ‘The men opened the door.’ However, Welsh demands the synthetic form when the subject is a pronoun: (52) Agorodd *hwy / ef / hi y drws. open:past:3.sg they / he / she the door ‘He / she opened the door.’ This is in contrast to Irish, or a close relative of Welsh, Breton. Welsh is a null subject language, so that examples such as (53) are also found: (53) (a) Agorodd y drws. open:past:3.sg the door ‘He / she opened the door.’

(b) Agoron y drws. open:past:3.pl the door ‘They opened the door.’ If we assume that the null subject in such cases is an empty pronominal (‘small pro’ in Government Binding parlance) then we can say that Welsh verbs must agree with pronominal subjects. Hebrew (Doron 1988: 205) appears to be the reverse of Welsh, in that a verb may agree with any overt subject except a pronoun (depending on tense):

(54) (a) Etmol sˇama’t harca’a yesterday hear:past:2:sg:fem lecture ‘Yesterday you heard a lecture.’ (b) *Etmol sˇama’t at harca’a yesterday hear:past:2.sg:fem you:sg:fem lecture The patterning of agreement morphology with syntactic expression of subjects surveyed here only touches on the complexity found in each of the languages cited. One question that has received much consideration is the relationship between the agreement features (especially with subject-verb agreement) and nominal features. The view developed within Government Binding theory (e.g. Rizzi 1982; cf. also Lapointe 1988) is that the bundle of features representing person, number and gender constitute a kind of pronominal element and that it is this element (denoted AGR) which agrees with the subject (overt or

otherwise). A variant of this idea is applied to Breton by Anderson (1982), who argues that the complementarity of subject marking and overt subjects is to be analysed as the incorporation of a pronominal by the verb in the synthetic forms. Thus, where there is no pronominal subject, there is no agreement and the verb assumes the analytic form. Where there is a pronominal subject it necessarily gets incorporated into the verb to give rise to the synthetic forms. This type of analysis is, in effect, the reverse of that of Sun˜er (1988) or Lyons (1991). They argue that elements which traditionally

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are thought of as pronominal clitics are syntactically agreement markers. However, on Anderson’s analysis of Breton, verbal morphology which would normally be regarded as agreement inflection is treated as a species of cliticization. (One might add to this type of argumentation the claim in Baker & Johnson & Roberts 1989 that the passive participle morphology of languages such as English is a type of pronominal clitic; see Spencer 1991: 384⫺390 for further data and discussion).

4.

Morphology as a module or a component

There is a further important aspect of morphology-syntax interactions concerning the way that morphological phenomena are viewed within the overall organization of grammar. Two principal alternatives can be discerned: either we can view the morphological system as a separate component of grammar, ordered with respect to other components such as phonology or syntax, or we can view morphology as a set of well-formedness principles which operate over structures created in grammatical components, such as syntax or phonology. On this second view, morphology is not a component in the sense of a stage which a derivation ‘passes through’, rather it is a module of grammar, in much the way that Case Theory or Binding Theory

are modules of grammar (cf. Chomsky 1986; see Grimshaw 1986 for the terminological distinction between ‘module’ and ‘component’). As such it may have rather complex relationships to the components of grammar, and to other modules. Baker (1985: 375) has argued that languages adhere to the Mirror Principle: (55) Morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa). What this means is that if an affix A appears closer to the base than affix B, then the syntactic operation associated with A occurs earlier in the derivation than that associated with B. Other things being equal, this in practice only has any obvious interpretation where A and B are both prefixes or both suffixes. Baker takes the Mirror Principle to be true, and much of Baker (1988 a) is given over to providing syntactic analyses of grammatical function changing operations, such as the causative constructions seen in the previous section, in which morpheme ordering can be derived from the order in which syntactic processes apply. The argument is that such analyses would not be possible unless word formation and syntax were, in a certain sense, part of the same ‘component’. A crucial illustration of the Mirror Principle involves agreement in Chamorro. A prefix fan- appears if the clause contains an intransitive verb and the subject is plural. Baker draws attention to examples (56, 57):

(56) Para-u-fan-s-in-aolak i famagu’un gi as tatanniha irr-3:subj-pl-pass-spank the children obl father:their ‘The children are going to be spanked by their father.’ (57) Hu-na’-fan-otchu 1:sg:subj-caus-pl-eat ‘I made them eat.’ These purport to show that fan- is found with derived (surface) subjects (example (56)) but that fan- may also agree with a plural embedded subject (the causee in (57)). The force of the example is lessened somewhat by Durie’s (1986) painstaking analysis of this and similar cases, in which he shows that number agreement is not, in fact, involved. Another illustration, encountered in large numbers of languages can be cited schematically. In a language with both passive and causative constructions we often find that it is possible to derive verbs of the form (58a) or (58b):

(58) (a) [[[verb] CAUS] PASS) (b) [[[verb] PASS] CAUS] These are always accompanied by characteristic meaning differences: the first means ‘be caused to verb’ while the second means ‘cause to be verbed’. In Baker’s theory this is automatically accounted for, since both the causative and passive morphemes are heads which can incorporate their complements. In (58a), the causative head incorporates the verb stem, then this complex verb base is incorporated by the passive morpheme. In (58b) the opposite order is followed. Baker includes evidence from Bantu languages to

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support this thesis. However, Hyman & Mchombo (1992) offer examples in which some morphemes are doubled (violating the strict interpretation of the principle) as well as cases in which morphemes simply occur in the ‘wrong’ order. Baker (1988 a: 487f., fn. 39) points out that his theory can derive the Mirror Principle without stipulation but only in the case of valency changing. It does not follow automatically in the case of agreement (or, indeed, other types of inflectional morphology, such as case marking, tense/aspect/mood marking and so on). However, in the theory of verbal inflection and agreement proposed by Pollock (1989) each (verbal) inflectional formative or functional category is regarded as a syntactic head, each licensing its own phrasal projection. Inflected words are constructed by a process of head-to-head movement. Thus, in a language in which a finite verb receives, say, a tense suffix followed by an agreement suffix the inflected verb form is generated by first incorporating the verb root into the tense head, and then incorporating this composite into the agreement head. For instance, we might generate the Italian verb form parlavo ‘I was speaking’ from [-o [-av[parl-]]] via [-o [[parl-av] [t]]] and [[[parl-av]-o] t [t]]], where t stands for the trace of the moved constituent. Under these assumptions, inflection must then obey the Mirror Principle (see Ohalla 1990 for explicit discussion of Berber and Turkish verb inflection from this point of view). In its strongest form, this thesis would claim that any inflectional formative must be a syntactic head (this is referred to as the ‘Full Functional Projection Hypothesis’ in Spencer 1993). However, in inflectional morphology, replete as it is with cumulations, fusions, and total suppletions, it is clear that the Mirror Principle should be weakened, to read ‘morphological derivations may not contradict syntactic derivations’. Even this formulation should be given a rider to accommodate the not uncommon phenomenon of morpheme metathesis. This occurs particularly commonly in languages with template morphology (cf. Simpson & Withgott 1986; Speas 1991), which frequently involves discontinuous dependences between inflectional (or derivational) formatives. It is very difficult to see how such phenomena can be reconciled in a principled way with Full Functional Projection Hypothesis. Joseph & Smyrniotopoulos (1993) argue that inattention to the

niceties of morphological structure seriously undermines the program to reduce inflection to syntax. There are other problems with morpheme ordering and the Full Functional Projection Hypothesis. First, the principle would presumably rule out a situation in which subjects were syntactically external to the verb phrase, and in which a verb agreed with both its subject and its object and in which the subject marker appeared closer to the verb stem than the object marker. In other words, structures such as the following should be excluded: [OBJ [SUBJ [verb]]] or [[[verb] SUBJ] OBJ], with the (possible) exception of cases in which the subject appears closer to the verb in the syntax (e.g. in which the word order is OSV or VSO). It is fairly rare for subject markers to be internal to object markers, though this is found for instance in Adigei, a language of the North Caucasus. Embarrassingly for the Mirror Principle, the affix order [OBJ [… [SUBJ [… [verb]]]]] is found in Navajo, and this language maintains a rather strict SOV word order. Another problem is discussed in detail in Spencer (1993) and concerns nominal inflection. Presumably possessive agreement markers are attached within the nominal syntagma itself, since they express a dependency between phrases contained entirely within that syntagma. Case marking of the syntagma as a whole, however, must presumably follow such phrase-internal inflection. This implies that where possession and case marking appear as inflections on the head noun, the morpheme order must be (for suffixation) [[[noun] POSS] CASE]. This is found in languages such as Hungarian and Turkish. However, in Finnish, together with the Samoyed languages, Saami (Lappish), and Mordvinian exactly the opposite order is found. In some Uralic languages (e.g. Mari, Udmurt, Komi) the morpheme order depends on which case is used (cf. Hajdu & Domokos 1987: 240). These facts are very difficult to reconcile with obvious interpretations of the head-tohead movement analysis of inflectional morphology. Two other problems are cited in Spencer (1993). First, there is the problem of doubled formatives. A more subtle problem is posed by the Turkish indefinite izafet discussed in section 1. This is marked by the same inflectional formative that is found in the definite izafet (a phrasal construction). This should therefore project a syntactic


phrase. However, the indefinite izafet is lexical and cannot contain phrases. Given other doubts surrounding the manœuvre of regarding agreement as a syntactic head this may count as evidence against this radically syntactic approach. Baker’s interpretation of the Mirror Principle effects are challenged by Grimshaw (1986) who points out that it is not necessary to assume that the affixes are syntactic heads, merely that they are morphological heads. Then, their crucial semantic properties will be nested in precisely the same way that is predicted by the head-to-head movement analysis. Thus, Baker’s approach shows only that the syntactically based approach is compatible with the Mirror Principle, not that it is entailed by it. Finally, within the ‘minimalist’ program of syntax (Chomsky 1993) inflected words are constructed in the lexicon and checked against features resident on syntactic head. On this view there is no necessary relationship between order of inflectional formatives and order of syntactic processes (or syntactic constituent structure). Grimshaw raises another point of importance, concerning the notion of a ‘component’. She provides the following definitions (Grimshaw 1986: 748): (59) “(i) A set of rules or representations defined over a certain vocabulary and governed by principles of a particular type. A component in this sense is a domain of the theory. (ii) A set of rules/operations that act as a block in the organization of the grammar.” Let us use the term ‘module’ for component in the first sense. Grimshaw argues that Baker’s arguments show only that affixation processes and the morphosyntactic effects of those processes must be found in the same component (sense (ii)), not that they must belong to the same module (component sense (i)). In principle, then, the affixation and its associated morphosyntactic changes could take place in a component called ‘the lexicon’ rather than in the syntax. On the other hand, nothing precludes us from claiming that some (presumably non-productive) processes occur in the lexicon, while other (presumably productive) processes occur in the syntax. Borer (1988) has developed a promising theory of ‘Parallel Morphology’ along exactly these lines, on the basis of a detailed comparison of lexicalized compounds and the so-

331 called ‘constructs’ in Hebrew (cf. Art. 103, 125; cf. also Spencer 1991: 447⫺453) and the differential behavior of deadjectival causatives and inchoatives (Borer 1991). Borer’s proposals are reminiscent of Kiparsky’s (1985) claim that a single phonological rule may apply lexically or postlexically with systematically different effects. The idea that morphology might be a separate module interacting in complex ways with syntax but obeying its own domain specific principles is one which has attracted a number of theorists (see Spencer 1991: ch. 11 for review; note that it is explicitly endorsed by Baker 1988 b). One of the more carefully worked out approaches which takes this line is that of Sadock (1990) (itself a reworking and refinement of Sadock 1985). Sadock observes that when we assume that morphology is an autonomous module with distinct sets of organizational principles, we heighten the need to provide explicit constraints on the interaction between morphological structure and syntactic structure. In Baker’s theory of valency alternations the Mirror Principle together with the Head Movement Constraint (ultimately the Empty Category Principle) restrict the types of interaction. Sadock adopts a model of syntax which does not include the Empty Category Principle, namely Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (Gazdar et al. 1985). He therefore proposes two basic constraints, the Incorporation Principle, and the Cliticization Principle, which he states in preliminary form as follows: “Incorporation Principle (IP): A lexeme that combines with a phrase at some level may combine with the head of that phrase at some other level.” “Cliticization Principle (CP): A lexeme that combines with a phrase at some level may combine at another level with a unit immediately to its right or left.” (Sadock 1990: 43)

By ‘level’ Sadock means essentially ‘semantic, syntactic or morphological level of representation’. By ‘combines with’ Sadock means ‘forms part of’. Thus, in the case of noun incorporation, the paradigm case of the Incorporation Principle, we would say that an object noun forms a noun phrase, which then forms part of a verb phrase in the syntax, but at the morphological level that noun may combine with the head of that verb phrase, namely the verb. In the case of the possessive clitic, ’s, in English, we would say that the clitic combines with a noun phrase in the syntax, but with the word immediately to its left in the morphology.

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For Baker, incorporation is invariably a matter of raising a head to combine with a higher head which governs it. However, in the approach to inflection advocated by Pollock (1989) it is possible for an inflectional head to be lowered (provided certain conditions are fulfilled). Sadock argues for other cases (outside of verbal inflection) in which lowering must be assumed. Thus, it is not necessary in his theory for the host head to govern the incorporated head in the syntax. In a theory in which morphology is a module, then, there is considerable scope for variation in the way the interaction between morphology and syntax can be conceived, depending particularly on which principles of syntax are assumed. However, there is widespread agreement with Sadock’s overall conviction that in certain types of interaction (‘incorporations’) syntactic constituency, and especially syntactic headedness is crucial, while in others (‘cliticizations’) it is linear adjacency which plays the greater role. It is intriguing to note the parallel with certain approaches to affixational processes (e.g. Sproat 1985; 1988).

5.

Conclusions

The way the relationship between morphology and syntax is viewed obviously depends on one’s view of the way morphology and syntax are separately organized. Word structure has traditionally been accounted for by three types of morphological operation: morphophonemic operations, affixation, and compounding. Of these, only affixation and compounding lend themselves to comparison with syntax, and although there is a widespread view that affixation leads to constituent structures similar to those found in phrases, this is only really evident in the case of endocentric compounding. At the same time if we view the word in two distinct ways, as a morphophonological form, and as an abstract unit, we may ask to what extent that unit has an articulated structure that conforms to syntactic principles. By regarding the derivational affix as a kind of lexeme we can reduce affixation to a kind of compounding, submitting to syntactic constraints such as the Head Movement Constraint. By ignoring morphological formatives altogether, we can even try reducing inflectional morphology to a kind of compounding operation (as in Pollock’s 1989

theory). This implies a type of separationism, at least for inflectional morphology (the ‘split morphology hypothesis’). In any event, this means that in a certain sense, it is the sentence which forms the basis for word formation. This is explicit in Beard’s (1987; 1995) model, and obvious, albeit implicit, in Baker’s (1988 a). Not everyone would accept this position, however. Those who adopt a strictly lexicalist approach to word structure would hold that the syntactically relevant aspects of a word are to be thought of as features, visible to syntactic processes, but that otherwise syntax plays no direct role in word formation. This tension between syntactically-based approaches to word formation and lexicallybased approaches represents the greatest challenge to theorists interested in the interaction between morphology and syntax, as well as one of the most fertile research areas.

6.

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Scalise, Sergio (1984), Morphology in Generative Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris Selkirk, Elisabeth (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Siegel, Dorothy (1977), “The Adjacency Condition and the Theory of Morphology”. Proceedings of the Eighth Meeting of the North Eastern Linguistics Society, 189⫺197 Simpson, Jane & Withgott, Margaret (1986), “Pronominal Clitic Clusters and Templates”. In: Borer, Hagit (ed.), The Syntax of Pronominal Clitics, Orlando: Academic Press, Syntax and Semantics 19, 149⫺174 ˇ uSkorik, Pjotr Ja. (1948), Ocˇerk po Syntaksisu C kotskogo Jazyka: Inkorporatsija. Leningrad: Ucˇpedgiz ˇ ukotskogo Skorik, Pjotr Ja. (1961), Grammatika C Jazyka, Vol. I. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk. ˇ ukotskogo Skorik, Pjotr, Ja. (1977), Grammatika C Jazyka, Vol. II. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk Speas, Margaret (1991), “Functional Heads and Inflectional Morphemes”. The Linguistic Review 8, 389⫺417 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Spencer, Andrew (1993), “Nominal Inflection and the Nature of Functional Categories”. Journal of Linguistics 28, 313⫺341 Spencer, Andrew (1995), “Incorporation in Chukchi”. Language 71, 439⫺489 Sproat, Richard (1985), On Deriving the Lexicon. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sproat, Richard (1988), “Bracketing Paradoxes, Cliticization, and Other Topics: the Mapping between Syntactic and Phonological Structure”. In: Everaert et al. (eds.), 339⫺360 Stump, Gregory (1991), “A Paradigm-theory of Morphosemantic Mismatches”. Language 67, 675⫺725 Sun˜er, Margarita (1988), “The Role of Agreement in Clitic-doubled Constructions”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6, 391⫺434 Williams, Edwin (1981), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274 Young, Robert, W. & Morgan, William (1980), The Navajo Language. A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press Zwicky, Arnold (1985), “How to Describe Inflection”. Proceedings of the 11th Annual Meeting of the Berkely Linguistics Society, 372⫺386

Sadock, Jerrold (1990), Autolexical Syntax. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Andrew Spencer, Colchester (Great Britain)

Lieber, Rochelle (1992), Deconstructing Morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Lyons, Christopher (1991), “An Agreement Approach to Clitic Doubling”. Transactions of the Philological Society 88, 1⫺57 Marantz, Alec (1984), On the Nature of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press McCloskey, James & Hale, Kenneth (1984), “On the Syntax of Person-Number Inflection in Modern Irish”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1, 487⫺534 Mithun, Marianne (1984), “The Evolution of Noun Incorporation”. Language 60, 847⫺894 Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. (1976), “Diathesen und Satzstruktur im Tschuktschischen”. In: Lötsch, R. & Ru˚zˇicˇka, R. (eds.), Satzstruktur und Genus Verbi. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 181⫺211 Newmeyer, Frederick (1980), Linguistic Theory in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Ohalla, Jamal (1990), “Sentential Negation, Relativised Minimality and the Aspectual Status of Auxiliaries”. The Linguistic Review 7, 183⫺231 Perlmutter, David (1988), “The Split-morphology Hypothesis: Evidence from Yiddish”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology. Orlando: Academic Press, 79⫺ 101 Pesetsky, David (1985), “Morphology and Logical Form”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 193⫺246 Pollock, Jean-Yves (1989), “Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP”. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365⫺424 Quirk, Randolph & Greenbaum, Sidney (1973), A University Grammar of English. London: Longman Rizzi, Luigi (1982), Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris Rosen, Sara (1989), “Two Types of Noun Incorporation: A Lexical Analysis”. Language 65, 294⫺317 Sadler, Louisa (1988), Welsh Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Beckenham: Croom Helm

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35. Morphology and phonology

35. Morphology and phonology 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

1.

The relations between morphology and phonology The morpheme as a phonotactic domain Allomorphy The place of morphonology in the grammar Morphological structure and the domain of phonological rules Phonological conditioning of morphological operations References

The relations between morphology and phonology

This article deals with the ways in which morphology interacts with phonology. The place of morphology in the language system in general is described in Art. 3. Here, we focus on its relation to a specific subsystem, phonology. Phonology deals basically with two types of phenomena: the distribution of sounds, and alternations in the phonological form of morphemes. There are two ways in which morphology and phonology interact. On the one hand, morphological information plays an important role in the phonological system of a language because the distribution of sounds and the occurrence of alternations is partially determined by the morphological structure of words. For instance, certain combinations of sounds may only occur within a morpheme, or only across morpheme boundaries. In Germanic languages, for example, a nasal consonant is always homorganic with a following obstruent within the same morpheme, whereas this is not necessarily the case across morpheme boundaries (compare the English simplex word damp to the compound timetable [taimteibl]). In Polish, a word-final obstruent is always voiceless, unlike word-internal obstruents. Thus, in describing the alternative between [b] and [p] in chleb [xlep] ‘bread-sg’ and chleby [xlebı] ‘bread-pl’, reference to the notion word boundary, i.e. to non-phonological, grammatical information, is crucial. On the other hand, morphological processes may make use of phonological information. For instance, many languages make use of reduplication processes in which one or more syllable of the stem is copied, thus

making crucial use of the syllable structure of the stem. Moreover, phonological alternations may have a purely morphological function, as is the case for ablaut phenomena in Germanic languages like the expression of tense in the pair sing ⫺ sang. The study of the interaction between morphology and phonology is traditionally referred to as morpho-phonology or morphonology for short (Trubetzkoy 1929; 1931). Trubetzkoy defined this area of investigation as that part of linguistics which studies the morphological use of phonological differences (Trubetzkoy 1929: 85). The following subtasks are distinguished by him for morphonology: (1) “(1) die Lehre von der phonologischen Struktur der Morpheme; (2) die Lehre von den kombinatorischen Lautveränderungen, welche die Morpheme in den Morphemverbindungen erleiden; (3) die Lehre von den Lautwechselreihen, die eine morphologische Funktion erfüllen.” (Trubetzkoy 1931: 161f.) The first area is that of the phonotactic properties of morphemes, the second area is that of allomorphy, and the third one is that of the morphological use of phonological alternations. We will take Trubetzkoy’s classification as the starting point of our discussion. These three areas of investigation will be discussed in 2⫺4. Subsequently, I will discuss the relation between morphological structure and the domains of phonological rules (5), and the phonological conditioning of morphological operations (6).

2.

The morpheme as a phonotactic domain

As pointed out above, the first area of investigation that belongs to morphonology is the study of the phonological structure of morphemes. This does not mean that the morpheme is the most important domain of phonotactic constraints. There is general agreement that the syllable rather than the morpheme is the most important domain of phonotactic constraints: a phonemic string is phonotactically

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well-formed if it can be divided into one or more well-formed syllables. In early generative phonology phonotactic constraints were interpreted as morpheme structure rules or morpheme structure conditions. However, since Hooper (1976) and Kahn (1976) it has been generally accepted that phonotactic constraints should primarily be seen as constraints on syllable structure. Nevertheless, in the literature one also finds the observation that languages have phonotactic constraints that hold specifically for the domain of the morpheme. An example is that within Dutch lexical morphemes a cluster of two obstruents is always voiceless, whereas voiced obstruent clusters do occur within words across morpheme boundaries, as in the past tense of the verb tobben ‘to toil, tob-de [tcbde], with the past tense suffix -de. The morpheme is also relevant for phonotactic generalizations in that different classes of morphemes obey different phonotactic constraints (Jakobson 1949 a [1971: 106⫺108]; Nida 1949: 66). For instance, in many languages the phonological form of affixes is shorter than that of lexical morphemes. In Bantu languages roots are predominantly CVCV, but affixes are almost always of the CV type (Nida 1949: 66). Dutch affixes consist of at most two syllables, unlike lexical morphemes, which can consist of more; suffixes can also be vowelless, unlike lexical morphemes (Booij 1995). In Semitic languages lexical roots usually consist of a skeleton of three consonants, whereas the inflectional morphemes consist of a sequence of vowels (cf. Art. 56). A survey of this kind of data is given in Dressler (1985: 219⫺245). Prosodic restrictions may also pertain to the domain of the morpheme. For instance, the rhymes of morpheme-internal Dutch syllables consist of at most a long vowel or a short vowel plus one consonant; longer syllables only occur at the end of morphemes. In sum, the morpheme functions as a domain of phonological generalizations.

3.

Allomorphy

A morpheme may have more than one phonological form. For instance, the Dutch phonemic strings [hut] and [hud] that occur in hoed [hut] ‘hat’ and hoeden [huden] ‘hats’ resepctively are different phonetic realisations of the same morpheme hoed ‘hat’. Therefore,

we speak of the two allomorphs [hut] and [hud] of the morpheme hoed (cf. Ch. VII), and observe an alternation in the phonetic realization of this morpheme. The example given here is a case of nonsuppletive allomorphy since the two allomorphs are phonetically similar. In the case of suppletive allomorphy, the phonetic similarity is (almost) absent, as in the different allomorphs of the verb to be (am, are, is, was, were). The distribution of allomorphs can be governed by morphological structure (see 5), or by adjacent words. A case of selection by an adjacent word is the choice in English between the determiners a and an, which depends on the nature of the first segment of the next word: an before a vowel-initial word, a before a consonant-initial one. Allomorphy can be dealt with in a number of ways (cf. Ch. VII). In the case of non-suppletive allomorphy one basic form or representation may be assumed for each morpheme, from which the different phonetic forms are derived by means of phonological rules. This basic representation is referred to as basic form (Bloomfield 1939), or as underlying representation (in generative phonology). In the case of the Dutch word hoed ‘hat’ discussed above, the underlying form is 兩 hud 兩. If it is not followed by another suffix, it will be syllabified as (hud)s, where s stands for ‘syllable’. A phonological rule of syllable-final devoicing will then change the 兩 d 兩 into [t], and hence the phonetic form is [hut]. If the morpheme is followed by another one, as in the plural form hoed⫹en ‘hats’, the syllable structure is (hu)s(den)s. Here, the /d/ will not devoice because it is not in syllable-final position, and thus the phonetic form is [huden]. Such analyses imply that allomorphy is partially accounted for by the phonological component of a language. Obviously, this kind of allomorphy can be easily accounted for by the phonological component because the relevant generalisation holds across the board. The rule involved is an automatic phonological rule (Bloomfield 1933: 211). Trubetzkoy accounted for such alternations which are the effect of the neutralisation of phonemic contrast in certain positions, by means of the notion archiphoneme (cf. Art. 50), and did not consider them to be part of morphonology proper. A word like hoed would have been given the representation /huD/, where the capital D stands for the


common properties of /t/ and /d/. Such a representation does not suffice, however, to predict that the plural form of this word is [huden], and not [huten]. For Bloomfield, however, such alternations belong to morphophonemics (Bloomfield 1939). A historical survey of the development of these notions is given in Kilbury (1976) and Anderson (1985). Post-Bloomfieldian phonology, which stressed the autonomy of phonology, and required a biunique mapping between the segments of the phonetic representation and those of the phonological representation, did not allow for such analyses because they make use of non-phonetic information (the existence of two alternating forms) in the phonological analysis. It was Pike (1947) who opposed this rigid separation of phonology from the rest of the grammar in post-Bloomfieldian phonology, and who pointed out that grammatical information is often undispensable for a proper phonological analysis. Not all cases of allomorphy within complex words can be accounted for in terms of automatic phonological rules. To begin with, allomorphy may be the historical relict of a once active phonological process like deletion of word-final schwa. Many lexical morphemes of Dutch, for example, have two allomorphs, one ending in schwa, and a shorter one, without schwa, which arose due to a historical process of schwa-apocope, which is no longer active. The word aarde [a:rde] ‘earth’ has an allomorph aard [a:rt] which has to be used when this word occurs in the non-head position of compounds, as in aardbei ‘strawberry’. That is, the rule of schwa-deletion is not an automatic phonological rule: both allomorphs must be listed, and the distribution of the allomorphs can only be stated by referring to morphological structure and/or specific complex words. Thus, such allomorphy will not be accounted for by morphonology. The voiceless ⫺ voiced alternation in English singular-plural pairs such as house [haws] ⫺ houses [hawziz] and wife [waif] ⫺ wives [waivz] is restricted to an enumerable set of nouns (listed in Bloomfield 1933: 213f.). Such lexically or morphologically governed alternations are called morpholexical variations by Bloomfield (1939 [1970: 352]). They can be relegated to morphology proper. The common idea is that such allomorphs are all listed, and that they can be related by a kind of reduncancy rule, called viarule (Vennemann 1972), or relational rule (Tiersma 1978). The idea that such allo-

337 morphs are all listed can also be found in Hudson (1974) and Lieber (1981). There are many alternations which, although they are regular, i.e. not lexically governed, can only be accounted for by referring to morphological information, and thus instantiate the class of morphonological rules. An example from Dutch is the allomorphy of the diminutive suffix, which has five different phonetic shapes, depending on the phonological properties of the final syllable of the base word: [je] as in huis-je ‘little house’, [pje] as in riem-pje ‘little belt’, [kje] as in konin-kje ‘little king’, [etje] as in lamm-etje ‘little lamb’, and [tje] as in traan-tje ‘little tear’. The distribution of these five allomorphs is given in (2) (Booij 1995): (2) je after obstruent consonants; pje after /m/ preceded by a long vowel, a schwa or a consonant; kje after /n/ preceded by a stressless vowel; etje after stressed short vowels (except schwa) followed by a liquid or nasal; tje in all other cases Suppose that we derive the allomorph /je/ from the basic form /tje/ by means of a rule of /t/-deletion that deletes /t/ after an obstruent. This rule will then be crucially conditioned by the morphological property diminutive since there is no general phonological rule of Dutch that deletes every /t/ after an obstruent, witness past tense forms such as hoopte [hopte] ‘hoped’, where the /t/ remains after the obstruent /p/. Also, in a sentence like Koopt je moeder dat? ‘Does your mother buy that?’, the final /t/ of koopt does not delete before je, which underscores the non-automatic character of the /t/-deletion involved here. Therefore, there are two options. One is to assume one underlying form for the diminutive suffix, and a set of phonological rules that crucially mention the property diminutive in their domains of application. The other is to list the five allomorphs of the diminutive suffix, and to state their distribution in terms of the phonological properties of the stem to which they attach. The drawback of the latter approach is that it does not express that the competing diminutive suffixes discussed here are phonetically similar. In other words, this description does not distinguish these alternations from cases in which competing suffixes are phonologically unrelated.

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In some cases, the second option is the only possible one even though phonological conditioning is involved. As pointed out by Carstairs (1988), languages may have competing affixes which are phonologically unrelated. Yet, their distribution can be stated by referring to phonological properties of the stem. For instance, in Hungarian the suffix -ol is used for the 2nd sing. indef. pres. indicative form of the verb after sibilants and affricates, and -(a)sz elsewehere. These suffixes cannot be derived from a common underlying form, although their distribution is statable in phonological terms. Another example of a non-automatic alternation is the alternation between front and back vowels in some French morphemes, both in lexical roots and suffixes. The generalization is that the rightmost vowel of a morpheme, if it is low, becomes [⫹back] if that morpheme is immediately followed within the same word by a morpheme from the class of so-called learned morphemes (Dell & Selkirk 1978: 8). Some examples are given in (3): (3) vain [vi˜ ] ‘vain’ ⫺ vanite´ [vanite] ‘vanity’; clair [klir] ‘clear’ ⫺ clarifier [klarifje] ‘to clarify’; immortel [imcrtil] ⫺ immortalite´ [imcrtalite] ‘immortality’ The class of morphemes that trigger vowel backing cannot be defined in purely phonological terms: they have to be marked with the feature [⫹learned]. So we either assume a phonological rule that mentions [⫹learned] in its structural description, or we list both allomorphs, and state which allomorph is to be used for which set of suffixes. Allomorphy may also be conditioned by a word class feature. For instance, within Russian verbal stems “any morpheme which ends in a vowel loses that vowel before a suffix begining with a vowel” (Jakobson 1948 [1971: 124]). This generalization crucially refers to the word class of the stems involved. As mentioned above, there are also alternations that have a purely morphological function, the third area of morphonology. For instance, whereas in the pair knife ⫺ knives the plural character of knives not only manifests itself in the voicedness of the stemfinal fricative, but is also indicated by the presence of a plural suffix, realized as [z], the plural character of feet is only indicated by the fact that the vowel /i:/ stands in opposition to the vowel /u/ of the singular form (historically a case of umlaut). This also holds

for German as in Apfel [apfel] ‘apple’ ⫺ Äpfel [ipfel] ‘apples’. In these cases this morphological function of phonological alternations is the effect of the morphologization of a once regular phonological process. In Semitic languages, on the other hand, the vowel alternations in the different forms of the verbal paradigm are themselves ‘morphemes’: each vowel pattern has a particular meaning (cf. Art. 125).

4.

The place of morphonology in the grammar

In the linguistic literature the question has been discussed whether morphonology is a separate component of the grammar (Martinet 1965; Linell 1977; Dressler 1981; 1985; Wurzel 1981). The answer is usually negative: morphonology is claimed to belong either to morphology (Martinet 1965; Linell 1977), or is divided between phonology and morphology, where grammatically conditioned alternations, i.e. alternations without any phonological conditioning, belong to morphology, and the rest to phonology (Wurzel 1981: 417). Other linguists consider morphonology as belonging neither to morphology or to phonology; “it mediates between both components without being itself a basic component like morphology or phonology” (Dressler 1985: 4). In the cases of ablaut and umlaut it is not so easy to decide where to account for the alternations involved. The alternation between back and front vowels exemplified by German Apfel ⫺ Äpfel can be seen as a case of morphology, since vowel alternation is one of the available morphological mechanisms in natural languages. However, we might also claim that this vocalic alternation should be accounted for by a rule of phonology that is conditioned by the presence of the morphological property plural. An argument for the phonological approach in this particular case is that the back/front alternation also occurs in nouns that take the regular plural suffix -e, e. g. Gast [gast] ⫺ Gäste [giste]. In this case the phonological alternation seems to be a concomitant effect of pluralization rather than the expression thereof, and this suggests a phonological interpretation of this alternation. Similarly, ablaut in Germanic languages not only occurs as the sole marker of morphosyntactic properties such as past tense

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and past participle, but also in addition to marking by affixation. Consider, for instance, the following examples of inflection of Dutch strong verbs: (4)

pres.

past

participle

(a) roep loop (b) neem vind

riep liep nam vond

geroepen gelopen genomen gevonden

‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to

call’ walk’ take’ find’

In the past tense forms ablaut is the only marker, whereas in the past participles we always get the discontinuous affix ge … en, without (4a) or with (4b) ablaut. That is, the same vowel alternation sometimes functions as the sole marker of a morphosyntactic property, but as one of the markers in other cases. The most reasonable position is that such purely grammatically conditioned sound alternations are morphological phenomena, whether symbolizing grammatical categories alone, or along with other means (Wurzel 1981: 417; Anderson 1992). In standard generative phonology, morphonology is part of phonology, and there is no separate morphonological component. The following characteristic of generative phonology is given in Goldsmith (1995: 9): (5) “The motto ‘minimize allomorphy’ remains today’s watchword, in the sense that in practice morphology continues to be concerned with the linear order and constituent structure of words, and with making a choice of which morphemes are to be employed to realize a set of morphosyntactic features in a given sentence; but contextually determined variations in the realization of a given morpheme will be to the extent possible be accounted for phonologically.” Generative phonology tries to account for as much allomorphy as possible by making use of underlying forms and derivations. By making use of complex derivations and sometimes also of extrinsic ordering of rules it is possible to account for a considerable amount of allomorphic relations in terms of common underlying forms. Anderson (1975) has pointed out that the application of morphonological rules usually has to precede that of automatic phonological rules. Hence, the distinction between morphonology and phonology might be expressed by a principle of rule ordering that,

within the phonological component, morphonological rules must apply first. This is reminiscent of Dressler’s position that morphonology is an intermediate component between morphology and phonology. However, Anderson also argues that sometimes a phonological rule may have to precede a rule that accounts for morpholexical variation, i.e. a morpholexical rule. The most elaborated theory of the interaction between phonology and morphology within the framework of generative phonology is that of Lexical Phonology (cf. Kiparsky 1982; 1985). Its basic claim is that the rules of morphology and the rules of phonology apply in tandem, i.e. morphological and phonological rules are interspersed (cf. Booij 1981). In other words, phonological operations may both precede and follow morphological operations. The basic idea is as follows: given an underived form A, we first apply the rules of phonology to that form, giving us A⬘ (the first cycle). We may then apply a morphological rule to A⬘, thus creating a second cycle on which the rules of (word) phonology apply, and so on. A specific hypothesis about the role of morphological structure in the application of phonological rules within the framework of Lexical Phonology is the so-called Revised Alternation Condition which states that neutralizing phonological rules apply in derived environments only (Kiparsky 1973: 65). A phonological string counts as a derived environment if it is the result of the application of either a morphological or a phonological rule. Consider the Polish rule of palatalization that turns coronal consonants into prepalatals before front vowels (Rubach 1984: 59⫺ 70). For instance, /s/ becomes a palatalized [s⬘] in pasie ‘belt-loc-sg’ with the morphological structure /pas⫹e/. The nom.sg. form is pas [pas] ‘belt’. The Revised Alternation Condition can now be invoked to explain why in the loc.sg. form of the word serwis [serv⬘is] ‘service’, serwisie [serv⬘is⬘e], the first /s/ does not palatalize, whereas the second does. The first sequence /se/ is not a derived environment, because it is already present in the underlying form of serwis. The morpheme-final /s/, however, stands before an /e/ which has been introduced by a morphological rule. Hence, this sequence /se/ is a derived environment, and thus the rule can apply: /se/ becomes [s⬘e].

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A consequence of the Revised Alternation Condition is that both /s/ and /s⬘/ occur in underlying forms. In sejm ‘parliament’ and sekunda ‘second’ the initial consonant is [s], but in siew ‘sowing’ and siwy ‘grey’ it is [s⬘]. Therefore, there is a lexical contrast between these two sounds, and thus the rule of palatalization is a neutralizing rule: in certain contexts, it neutralizes an underlying distinction between segments. In sum, the Revised Alternation Condition makes use of morphological information in determining the applicability of a phonological rule since one of the cases of ‘derived environment’ is ‘derived by application of a morphological rule’. A further development of this theory of rule application is the idea that the class of rules subject to the derived environment constraint is the class of cyclic rules rather than the class of (obligatorily) neutralizing rules. A cyclic rule is a rule which applies in a cyclic fashion, as determined by the morphological structure of the phonological string. For instance, given a word with the structure [[[…]A…]B…]C the set of cyclic rules, which are linearly ordered, first applies to the phonological material within the brackets A, then to the material within the brackets B, and finally to the material within the outer brackets C. The assumption that certain phonological rules apply cyclically is also motivated by the observation that morphological operations may make use of derived phonological information (cf. 6). Whereas the notion cyclicity refers to the hypothesis that phonological rules apply in a cyclic fashion, the notion strict cyclicity that is also used in Lexical Phonology refers to the hypothesis that it is the set of cyclic rules that is subject to the derived environment constraint (Mascaro´ 1976). Thus, the theory of Lexical Phonology can be seen as an attempt to account for morphonological phenomena in the phonological component, and to do away with a separate morphonological component (cf. Booij 1994 for a general survey of Lexical Phonology, and Spencer 1988; 1991, for a discussion of the position of morphology in generative grammar).

5.

Morphological structure and the domain of phonological rules

The phonemic string that constitutes a word is structured according to two dimensions. On the one hand, it may consist of more than

one morpheme (i.e. it has an internal morphological structure), on the other hand it is hierarchically organized into one or more syllables, i.e. it has a prosodic structure as well. These two structures are not necessarily isomorphic. For instance, the Dutch word hoeden /huden/ ‘hats’ consists of the lexical morpheme /hud/ ‘hat’ and the plural suffix /-en/, but the prosodic structuring is different: it contains the syllables (hu)s and (den)s. In this example, the morphological structure of the word does not influence its syllabification: hoeden is syllabified as if it were a morphologically simplex word. In other cases the morphological structure of a word does codetermine its syllabification, and thus it determines indirectly the way in which phonological rules that are sensitive to the prosodic structuring of words apply. Compounds are classical examples of this non-isomorphy of morphological and phonological structure. Compounds are one word from the morphological and syntactic point of view, but in many languages each member of a compound corresponds with a separate phonological (or prosodic) word. Since the phonological word is usually the domain of syllabification, the boundaries between the members of a compound coincide with syllable boundaries. For instance, the English compound meat eater is syllabified as (meat)s(ea)s(ter)s, not as (mea)s(tea)s(ter)s; the latter syllabification would be expected if the word had no compound structure. An additional type of relevant evidence is available for German. Vowel-initial words of this language predictably begin with a glottal stop, and this glottal stop also occurs wordinternally at the beginning of a vowel-initial member of a compound, as in farb-echt [farb ? ixt] ‘color fast’. Another illustration comes from Hungarian vowel harmony. In Hungarian vowels are harmonic with respect to the feature [back] within the domain of the phonological word (Booij 1984). Therefore, the members of a compound may be disharmonic, as is illustrated by the compound word Budapest: Buda contains back vowels, and pest a front vowel. Prefixes and suffixes often differ in their effects on the delimitation of phonological domains. In Slavic languages “a word with a prefix is conceived of as a kind of compound” (Jakobson 1949 a [1971: 107]). “The root plus derivational and inflectional suffixes forms a simple word. A root preceded


by another root or by a prefix produces a complex word” (Jakobson 1949 b [1971: 115]). Thus, prefix boundaries coincide with syllable boundaries even if the prefix ends in a consonant and the following morpheme is vowel-initial, and prefix boundaries often block the application of phonological rules just like the internal compound boundaries (cf. Booij & Rubach 1984; Cohen 1989; Rubach & Booij 1990). Note also that in German glottal stop insertion also takes place word-internally after a prefix, if the following morpheme begins with a vowel, as in beachten [be?axten] ‘to observe’. Suffixes may also differ in their effects on the domains of phonological rules, and a distinction has to be made between cohering and non-cohering suffixes (Dixon 1977; Booij 1983). Cohering suffixes form one phonological word with the preceding morpheme, whereas non-cohering suffixes form phonological words of their own. Yidiny has monosyllabic suffixes, which are cohering, and bisyllabic suffixes which are non-cohering. In this language, non-cohering suffixes form independent domains for the rules of stress assignment and penultimate vowel lengthening (Dixon 1977: 43, 90f.). In Germanic languages we also find non-cohering suffixes, like the suffix -achtig ‘-like’ in Dutch; compare roodachtig ‘reddish’ with the syllabified phonetic form [(rot)s(ax)s(tex)s] to rodig ‘reddish’ with the phonetic form [(ro)s(dex)s]. Since -achtig is an independent domain of syllabification, unlike -ig, the 兩 d 兩 of the morpheme /rod/ ends up in syllable-final position, and hence it is devoiced by the rule of syllable-final devoicing of obstruents. The correspondence in phonological status between non-cohering suffixes and members of compounds also manifests itself in the phenomenon of coordination reduction in German and Dutch, where part of a complex word can be omitted if it is identical with a constituent of another complex word and if it forms a phonological word of its own. This is illustrated in (6) for German for compounds and for the suffix -schaft ‘-ship’ (cf. Booij 1985): (6) Herbst- und Frühlingsblumen ‘autumn- and spring flowers’ ‘autumn flowers and spring flowers’ Freund- oder Feindschaft ‘friend- or enemyship’ ‘friendship or enmity’

341 The relation between morphological structure and phonological domains is also dealt with in Nespor & Vogel (1986: 109⫺144). In standard linear generative phonology (Chomsky & Halle 1968) the differential effects of morphological boundaries on the delimitation of phonological domains were encoded by the difference between ⫹ boundaries and 쒙 boundaries. By convention, phonological rules freely apply across ⫹ boundaries, but they only apply across 쒙 boundaries if these 쒙 boundaries are explicitly mentioned in the phonological environment of the rule (Chomsky & Halle 1968: 364). Thus, only 쒙 may block the application of phonological rules. The ⫹ boundary corresponds roughly with the boundary of cohering affixes, the 쒙 boundary with that of non-cohering affixes and the members of compounds. A third formal boundary, the prefix boundary ⫽, was also proposed by Chomsky & Halle, but played almost no role in subsequent phonological analyses, and was soon rejected (cf. Siegel 1980). A more refined ranking of boundaries in terms of their effects on the domain of application of phonological rules was proposed by Basbøll (1978) (cf. Art. 40). The issue of juncture, i.e. the influence of word (and phrase) structure on phonological processes has been extensively discussed in American structuralism. The issue was whether “grammatical prerequisites to phonemic analysis” are allowed (cf. Pike 1947; Aronoff & Kean 1980, eds.; Anderson 1992). In present-day non-linear phonology the use of ⫹ and 쒙 boundaries has been replaced by a theory of phonological domains such as the syllable and the phonological word, in conjunction with an algorithm that maps morphological structure onto prosodic structure (Nespor & Vogel 1986). This implies that many phonological rules do not directly refer to morphologically defined domains, but only indirectly in that they apply in prosodic domains derived from morphological structure. The relation between morphological structure and phonological structure can also be described in terms of principles of alignment that specify how the edges of morphological domains align with those of phonological domains such as the syllable and the prosodic word (McCarthy & Prince 1994). For instance, if the boundary between a prefix and a stem coincides with a syllable boundary,

342


this can be expressed as the alignment condition that the stem boundary align with a syllable boundary.

6.

Phonological conditioning of morphological operations

As pointed out in 1, not only may phonological rules be conditioned by morphological properties, but, vice versa, morphological processes may also be conditioned by phonological properties. More specifically, a morphological process may impose phonological requirements on its input forms. For instance, the Dutch nominalizing suffix -erd /ert/ that derives personal names from adjectives (e.g. viezerd ‘dirty person’ from vies ‘dirty’) cannot attach to adjectives ending in /er/: dapper ‘brave’ ⫺ *dappererd (Schultink 1962: 203). Similarly, the Dutch suffix -heid ‘-ness’ does not combine with base words ending in schwa (Van Marle 1985: 231). Many of these phonological restrictions on morphology can also be interpreted as phonological output conditions on morphologically complex words. For instance, Dutch does not allow for the sequence /rer/. Such a sequence is avoided either by blocking the word formation process, as is the case with -erd-affixation discussed above, or by choosing another allomorph of the affix. In the case of comparative forms in Dutch, the allomorph -der is chosen instead of -er after adjectival stems ending in /r/; thus we get duisterder ‘darker’ instead of the ill-formed *duisterer. Besides segmental restrictions we also find cases in which prosodic properties of the input forms play a role. For instance, the English comparative suffix -er only attaches to monosyllabic adjectives (nice ⫺ nicer), and to bisyllabic adjectives with a light final syllable (happy ⫺ happier), and to a few other disyllabic adjectives including common, handsome, polite, quiet and wicked. In all other cases, the periphrastic form with more has to be used. In many cases, the periphrastic construction is also possible with adjectives that do allow for -er-affixation. So we see that syllable structure plays a role in morphology. Stress properties may also play a role. For instance, the English deverbal nominal suffix -al only attaches to verbs with main stress on the final syllable: (7) (a) betraý ⫺ betrayal, refu´se ⫺ refusal (b) o´rganize ⫺ *organizal, encoúrage ⫺ *encourageal

Another example is that in Dutch the adjectival suffix -ief only attaches to nouns in unstressed /i/ (e.g. agre´ssie ‘aggression’ ⫺ agressief ‘aggressive’). Otherwise, -isch has to be selected, as in hysterıé ‘hysteria’ ⫺ hysterisch ‘hysterical’ (Booij & Rubach 1987: 2). The phonological structure of base words also plays a role in partial reduplication. In Classical Greek perfective forms, the first segment of the verbal stem must be copied, and precedes the fixed vowel /e/, as in luo ⫺ leluka ‘to loose’. In Yidiny nominal reduplication, the first two syllables of the input form are copied (Dixon 1977): (8) mulari ‘initiated man’ ⫺ mulamulari ‘initiated men’ kintalpa ‘lizard’ ⫺ kintalkintalpa ‘lizards’ In this case the copying proces has to be defined in terms of syllables, and this accounts for the fact that we get a CVCV copy in the first example, but a CVCCVC copy in the second case. These examples thus show that morphological operations must have access to the phonological properties of the stems to which they apply. The class of morphological operations that are defined in terms of prosodic properties of the stems and those of the resulting complex words is also referred to as prosodic morphology (McCarthy & Prince 1990).

7.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1975), “On the Interaction of Phonological Rules of Various Types”. Journal of Linguistics 11, 39⫺62 Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), Phonology in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: Chicago University Press Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Aronoff, Mark & Kean, Mary-Louise (1980, eds.), Juncture. Saratoga/CA: Anma Libri (Studia Linguistica et Philologica 7) Basbøll, Hans (1978), “Schwa, jonctures et syllabification dans les repre´sentations phonologiques du français”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 16, 147⫺182 Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt Bloomfield, Leonard (1939), “Menomini Morphophonemics”. Traveaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8, 105⫺115 [reprinted in: Hockett, Charles F. (1970, ed.), A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Bloomington, London: Indiana University Press, 351⫺362]


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Booij, Geert E. (1981), “Rule Ordering, Rule Application and the Organization of Grammars”. In: Dressler et al. (eds.), 45⫺56

Hooper, Joan Bybee (1976), An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York etc.: Academic Press

Booij, Geert E. (1983), “Principles and Parameters in Prosodic Phonology”. Linguistics 21, 249⫺280

Hudson, Grover (1974), “The Representation of Non-productive Alternation”. In: Anderson, John M. & Jones, Charles (eds.), Historical Linguistics, Vol. II: Theory and Description in Phonology. Amsterdam: North Holland, 203⫺229

Booij, Geert E. (1984), “Neutral Vowels and the Autosegmental Analysis of Hungarian Vowel Harmony”. Linguistics 22, 629⫺641 Booij, Geert E. (1985), “Coordination Reduction in Complex Words: A Case for Prosodic Phonology”. In: van der Hulst, Harry & Smith, Norval S. H. (eds.), Advances in Non-linear Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris, 143⫺160 Booij, Geert E. (1994), “Lexical Phonology: A Review”. Lingua e Stile 19, 525⫺555 Booij, Geert E. (1995), The Phonology of Dutch. Oxford: Clarendon Press Booij, Geert E. & Rubach, Jerzy (1984), “Morphological and Prosodic Domains in Lexical Phonology”. Phonology Yearbook 1, 1⫺27 Booij, Geert E. & Rubach, Jerzy (1987), “Postcyclic versus Postlexical Rules in Lexical Phonology”. Linguistic Inquiry 18, 1⫺44 Carstairs, Andrew (1988), “Some Implications of Phonologically Conditioned Suppletion”. In: Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988. Dordrecht: Foris, 67⫺94

Jakobson, Roman (1948), “Russian Conjugation”. Word 4, 155⫺167 [reprinted in: Jakobson 1971: 119⫺129] Jakobson, Roman (1949 a), “The Phonemic and Grammatical Aspects of Language in Their Interrelations”. Actes du Sixie`me Congre`s International des Linguistes, Paris, 1948. Paris: Klincksieck [reprinted in: Jakobson 1971: 103⫺114] Jakobson, Roman (1949 b), “Comparative Slavic Grammar”. In: Jakobson, Roman, Slavic Languages. New York: Columbia University Press [reprinted in: Jakobson 1971: 115⫺118] Jakobson, Roman (1971), Selected Writings, Vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton Kahn, Daniel (1976), Syllable-based Generalizations in English Phonology. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club Kilbury, James (1976), The Development of Morphophonemic Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (Studies in the History of Linguistics 10)

Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row

Kiparsky, Paul (1973), “Phonological Representations”. In: Fujimura, Osamu (ed.), Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory. Tokyo: TEC Cy, 87⫺136

Cohen, Abigail C. (1989), “Stress in Indonesian and Bracketing Paradoxes”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7, 167⫺216

Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “From Cyclic Phonology to Lexical Phonology”. In: van der Hulst, Harry & Smith, Norval S. H. (eds.), The Structure of Phonological Representations, Part 1. Dordrecht: Foris, 131⫺175

Dell, François & Selkirk, Elisabeth (1978), “On a Morphologically Governed Vowel Alternation in French”. In: Keyser, Samuel J. (ed.), Recent Transformational Studies in European Languages. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 3), 1⫺51 Dixon, R[obert] M. W. (1977), A Grammar of Yidiny. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1981), “Outlines of a Model of Morphology”. In: Dressler et al. (eds.), 113⫺122 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. & Rennison, John R. (1981, eds.), Phonologica 1980. Akten der Vierten Internationalen Phonologietagung, Wien, 29. Juni ⫺ 2. Juli 1980. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 36) Goldsmith, John (1995), “Introduction”. In: Goldsmith, John (ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Oxford/UK, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell, 1⫺15

Kiparsky, Paul (1985), “Some Consequences of Lexical Phonology”. Phonology Yearbook 2, 83⫺ 138 Lieber, Rochelle (1981), On the Organization of the Lexicon. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club [reprint 1990, New York: Garland Press] Linell, Per (1977), “Morphophonology as Part of Morphology”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. (eds.), Phonologica 1976. Akten der dritten Internationalen Phonologietagung, Wien, 1.⫺4. September 1976. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft), 9⫺20 Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Martinet, Andre´ (1965), “De la morphonologie”. La Linguistique 1, 15⫺30 Mascaro´, Joan (1976), Catalan Phonology and the Phonological Cycle. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club

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McCarthy, John & Prince, Alan (1990), “Foot and Word in Prosodic Morphology”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 209⫺282 McCarthy, John & Prince, Alan (1994), “Generalized Alignment”. In Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1993. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 79⫺153 Nespor, Marina & Vogel, Irene (1986), Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor/MI: University of Michigan Press [11946] Pike, Kenneth L. (1947), “Grammatical Prerequisites to Phonemic Analysis”. Word 3, 155⫺172 Rubach, Jerzy (1984), Cyclic and Lexical Phonology. The Structure of Polish. Dordrecht: Foris (Studies in Generative Grammar 17) Rubach, Jerzy & Booij, Geert (1990), “Edge-ofconstituent Effects in Polish”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 427⫺463 Schultink, Hendrik (1962), De Morfologische Valentie van het Ongelede Adjectief in Modern Nederlands. Den Haag: Van Goor Zonen

Siegel, Dorothy (1980), “Why There is No ⫽ Boundary”. In: Aronoff & Kean (eds.), 131⫺134 Spencer, Andrew (1988), “Arguments for Morpholexical Rules”. Journal of Linguistics 24, 1⫺29 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Tiersma, Pieter M. (1978), “Bidirectional Leveling as Evidence for Relational Rules”. Lingua 45, 65⫺77 Trubetzkoy, N[icolaj] S. (1929), “Sur la ‘morphonologie’ ”. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 1, 85⫺88 Trubetzkoy, Nikolaj S. (1931), “Gedanken über Morphonologie”. In: Reúnion phonologique internationale tenue a` Prague 1930. Prague: Jednota ˇ eskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux C du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4), 160⫺163 Vennemann, Theo (1972), “Rule Inversion”. Lingua 29, 209⫺242 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1981), “Problems in Morphonology”. In: Dressler et al. (eds.), 413⫺434

Geert Booij, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

36. Morphology between lexicon and grammar 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Grammar versus the lexicon Lexicalist conceptions of the lexicon Where’s morphology? Blocking Conclusion References

1.

Grammar versus the lexicon

Traditional grammarians divided a language into two major parts: grammar and lexicon. The lexicon contains the basic elements, while the grammar contains the rules for combining these basic elements and providing their proper forms in context. Both Jespersen (1965) and Chomsky (1965) approvingly quote the same dictum from Sweet (1913: 13) on this dichotomy: “Grammar deals with the general facts of language, and lexicology with the special facts.” From early on, the lexicon was thought of as simply an unstructured list of words (the first lexicons were lists of especially hard words). Grammar had three parts: inflection (or accidence), which dealt with the systematic variations in the forms that words took in context; word formation (derivation and compounding),

which dealt with the systematic means by which new words were formed and added to the lexicon; and syntax, which dealt with the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences (although compounding was sometimes included in syntax). In addition, both inflection and word formation were often grouped together under the rubric of morphology, inasmuch as they are both concerned with bound formatives or affixes (as opposed to compounding and syntax). Traditional grammar was thus word-based, as British scholars have emphasized (Robins 21979) and consisted very largely of morphology, in practice and sometimes in theory. Saussure, for example, considered syntax to be part of parole and not part of langue, and thus completely outside the purview of grammar. There was also little connection between morphology and the lexicon in this system, although it was acknowledged that word formation was a mechanism for enlarging the lexicon. Sometime before 1881, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay coined the term morpheme to refer to the minimal meaningful forms of language. Baudouin defined the morpheme as

36. Morphology between lexicon and grammar

“that part of a word which is endowed with psychological autonomy and is for the very same reasons not further divisible” (Baudouin 1972: 153). Bloomfield later gave the term a characteristically formal definition free of mentalist baggage. In his postulates, he defined the morpheme as “a recurrent (meaningful) form which cannot in turn be analyzed into smaller recurrent (meaningful) forms” (1926 [1970: 130]). For Bloomfield and Baudouin, unlike their traditional predecessors, morphemes, not words, were the basic elements of language. Grammar no longer dealt with the forms and arrangements of words in three distinct subcomponents, but in a uniform way with all arrangements of morphemes. This strongly uniformitarian attitude prevailed in most theoretical circles until the 1950’s (Harris 1951). This union of morphology and syntax deeply affected the theoretical conception of the lexicon, the list of basic elements in a language, which was now viewed as a list of morphemes rather than a list of words: “The total stock of morphemes in a language is its lexicon” (Bloomfield 1933: 162). Furthermore, since “every morpheme is an irregularity […]” then the lexicon is “a list of basic irregularities […]” (Bloomfield 1933: 274), so that all irregularity is confined to a lexicon of morphemes rather than of words. This simple and elegant conception ⫺ a lexicon of morphemes; a grammar that treats morphology together with syntax as a single component; and no relation between the lexicon and the grammar ⫺ prevailed in the theoretical mainstream for a half-century after Bloomfield’s codification. The traditional distinctions between syntax and morphology, inflection and word formation, were also largely ignored, except in discussions of such peripheral questions as the relation between linguistics and lexicography (Gleason 1967; Hoenigswald 1967) and even then they were given only marginal attention.

2.

Lexicalist conceptions of the lexicon

The Lexicalist Hypothesis (cf. Art. 22), which questioned the reductionist Baudouin/Bloomfield program, brought to the theoretical fore again questions concerning the relations among inflection, word formation and syntax, but based on a better understanding of syntax. In addition, the Lexicalist Hypothesis drew special new attention to word formation and its relation both to the lexicon and

345 to inflection and syntax. The traditional notions of inflection, word formation, derivation, morphology and syntax had encoded two useful distinctions: that between wordinternal and word-external phenomena (morphology vs. syntax) and that between rules by which the vocabulary of a language was enriched (derivation and word formation) and rules of grammar that referred crucially to syntactic notions (inflection and syntax). In addition, the opposition between grammar and lexicon expressed the fundamental distinction between a list and rules. Within a lexicalist framework, however, the lexicon is no longer simply a list of unanalyzeable atomic units, for the fundamental point of lexicalist theories was that the units that previously had always been treated as lexical atoms (Chomsky’s lexical formatives) could have internal structure. A basic characteristic of almost all lexicalist theories is therefore that word formation, which is responsible for the analysis of existing complex members of major lexical categories and for the morphological creation of new members of major lexical categories, operates inside the lexical component or lexicon. In the lexicalist literature, however, two quite distinct entities exist, both of which, unfortunately are called the lexicon. The first is a list, sometimes called the permanent lexicon, containing all idiosyncratic items that a speaker has stored, regardless of whether they are monomorphemic. This list is close to the traditional notion of a lexicon (though there is now experimental evidence that an item may be stored in the permanent lexicon even if its only idiosyncrasy is the fact that it is quite frequent (Stemberger & MacWhinney 1988) and it does not play a central role in lexicalist theories of morphology (though see 4). The second and theoretically more important entity, sometimes called the potential lexicon or the lexical component, is the open set of all potential lexemes or words, especially the members of the major lexical categories of a language, the categories (usually noun, verb, adjective and adverb) which are open in the sense that new words may be added to them. This lexical component or lexicon is where lexicalist theories locate word formation. It is crucial, therefore, in reading the literature, to try to ascertain which lexicon a given author has in mind, since theoretical claims can crucially depend on the distinction between the two and can easily be misunderstood (sometimes even by their author).

346


Lexicalist theories differ as to what types of phenomena they include in the lexical component (cf. Art. 22). The scope of Chomsky’s original lexical rules was largely limited to unproductive derivational morphology. Most later theories included at least all of traditional word formation. Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan 1978; 1982, ed.) extended the lexical component to all grammatical function-dependent constructions like the passive and causative, which other theories placed in the syntax, including constructions such as English causatives, which might have no overt morphological exponents. An excellent discussion of this and related theories of lexical syntax can be found in Hoekstra et al. (1980, eds.). Within lexicalist theories that distinguish the permanent from the potential lexicon, the question arises whether all newly coined words are automatically entered in the permanent lexicon (lexicalized). There are experimental arguments against the idea that all new coinages are automatically lexicalized (Anshen & Aronoff 1988; Stemberger & MacWhinney 1988). It is not clear, however, exactly what criteria play a role in deciding this question in individual cases, although productivity is one of them (Baayen 1991). Another issue that has been central in morphological discussions of the lexicon is exactly what a lexical entry contains. According to information theory, information is defined as what is unpredictable. This idea was easily and directly translated in early generative phonology into a system in which all predictable phonological aspects of an utterance would be provided by rules, while all unpredictable information would be contained in the lexicon (Halle 1959), following Sweet’s dictum to its logical conclusion. The entries in such a lexicon were therefore not simply items with unpredictable properties, as in previous lexicons, for only the unpredictable properties of these items were contained in their lexical representations. Such lexical entries have been termed impoverished, by contrast with fully-specified entries. Early lexicalist theorists adopted fully specified entries (in part under the influence of developments in phonology (Kiparsky 1973) and either expressed the morphological regularities found in such a lexicon by means of redundancy rules (Jackendoff 1975) or permitted morphological rules to function both actively (in the creation of new forms) and passively as redundancy rules (in the analysis of existing

lexical entries). Some later full-entry proponents (Bybee 1988) did without rules entirely, adopting instead a type of connectionist network for expressing all morphological relations. Impoverished lexical entries regained popularity with lexical phonology (Kiparsky 1982) and renewed interest in phonological underspecification (Archangeli 1988), but there has been little explicit comparison in the last decade of these two types of lexicons. In the end, the issue may be decided experimentally (cf. Art. 162), but this is unfortunately not an issue that has attracted the attention of experimentalists.

3.

Where’s morphology?

The introduction of a structured lexical component dealing with all potential lexemes naturally raises the possibility that even regular inflection (which is responsible for the different forms that each lexeme assumes) might lie within the lexical component. Advocates of the Strong Lexicalist Hypothesis (e.g. Lapointe 1980; Jensen & Stong-Jensen 1984) have proposed that it does, using the potential lexicon as a theoretical device to separate all (word-internal) morphology from (wordexternal) syntax, in a restatement of the traditional distinction between morphology and syntax. Others (expecially Anderson 1982; 1988) point to the interaction of inflection with syntax as evidence against its being lumped together with word formation in the potential lexicon. Anderson, Carstairs (1987) and Zwicky (1985; 1990), following Chomsky (1965) and Matthews (1972) argue that the main job of inflection is to spell out the phonological forms of morphosyntactic representations. Because these representations must contain information provided by the syntax, it follows that inflection can not be insulated from syntax as neatly as word formation can be (cf. Art. 38). Since the major claim of lexicalist theories is precisely that word formation and syntax are disjoint, because word formation but not syntax creates members of the set of lexemes and is insulated from syntax (cf. Art. 34), putting inflection in the lexicon weakens the force of this disjunction. In any case, given that we already have two theoretically distinct entities that go by the name lexicon (the list of idiosyncratic items and the set of lexemes) it is not wise to use the same term to designate yet another entity and one which already has a name: morphology.

36. Morphology between lexicon and grammar

There are still important questions at issue here, though. For one, is there a single morphological component in the grammar, separate from the lexical component, that encompasses both inflection and derivation? The main argument in favor of a single component is that the two are always similar in the core morphological domain of realization or spell-out (cf. Art. 39), despite their very different relations to syntax and the lexicon. If there is a single component, though, it must insulate morphological realization from the properties by which inflection and derivation differ, so as not to obliterate the valid distinction between the two. The next logical question is how such a component would interact with the rest of the grammar. Anderson (1982) argues that it operates in tandem with the phonology, as do proponents of lexical phonology and morphology (cf. Art. 22; Art. 35), but there are differences in the details of this interaction. Halle & Vergnaud (1987) opt for a separate pre-phonological morphology, in the tradition of Chomsky & Halle (1968). The relation of a separate morphological spell-out component to the syntax is also at issue. One likely candidate is a system in which the morphological spell-out component makes available all potential inflected forms of a lexeme and the syntax simply chooses the one that is compatible with its needs in a given context. This has the advantage of allowing the inflectional morphology and the syntax to interact without having them be one and the same and without raising the issue of ordering between the components. However, there are various ways in which the inflected forms could be made available. The most obvious is to list them all (Halle 1973), but this is difficult for languages like Turkish, with large individual verb paradigms (Hankamer 1989). Other models call on psycholinguistic evidence to argue for a combination of listing and generation (Caramazza et al. 1988; Frauenfelder & Schreuder 1991; cf. Art. 162): idiosyncratic and frequent forms are listed, while others are produced on-line as needed.

4.

Blocking

Morphology may not all be in the lexicon, but especially if we assume that there is a separate morphological spell-out component, there are important ways in which this component must interact with the permanent lex-

347 icon. The most striking of these is the phenomenon that has come to be known as (morphological) blocking, which is rooted in the well-known fact that languages tend to avoid having exact synonyms. This tendency emerges in morphology as the blocking of an expected productively generated form (cf. Art. 33) by an already existing (and hence lexically listed) form. The result is that synonyms are avoided: *goed is blocked by went; childs by children, etc. There will be no blocking when there is no synonymy, so that we may find a pair like brethren and brothers, precisely because the latter refers not to actual brothers burt rather to fellow members of an organized group of some sort. The tendency to avoid synonyms seems to be strongest with morphologically related words: liquefy, melt, and thaw are nearly synonymous (indeed all the senses of thaw form a subset of the senses of melt), and yet the language easily tolerates all three; by contrast, both *liquidize and *liquidify are perfectly well-formed, but blocked by liquefy, and liquidate is semantically unrelated to liquid from a synchronic point of view in English. Blocking is subject to both individual and performance constraints: if a person does not know or has temporarily forgotten the word fame, then that person might use the word *famousness, which fame would otherwise block. This seeming failure of blocking is especially common in children, who coin new words quite freely, because their vocabulary is not as lexically entrenched as that of adults (cf. Art. 165). I have in fact heard a child use both famousness and liquidize in conversation without hesitating. The blocking of individual potential words by actual words (token blocking), must be distinguished from type blocking, the blocking of one morphological rule by another. For example (van Marle 1985), the more common Dutch plural suffix -en is blocked by the rival suffix -s under certain morphologically restricted conditions. But type blocking does not involve the lexicon, at least on most conceptions, inasmuch as the blocking entity is a morphological pattern or rule and not a lexical entry. Token blocking is sensitive to word frequency: the more frequent a word is, the more likely it is to block a new coinage (Rainer 1988). This finding has been verified both historically and synchronically. From the historical point of view, the prediction is that irregular words that become less frequent over time will also become less effec-

348


tive at blocking regular forms, which has been shown to be true for irregular verbs and irregular nouns in English (Hooper 1976; Anshen & Aronoff 1988). Synchronically, it has been shown experimentally that the more often children hear an irregular verb, the less likely they are to regularize it (Bybee & Slobin 1982). Productivity (cf. Art. 33) also plays a role in blocking. Normally, productive rules are more liable to be blocked (Rainer 1988); however, in some cases, a productive rule will not be blocked, because the existing word that should block it, although frequent, is semantically idiosyncratic and hence not quite synonymous with the semantically compositional new derivative (Aronoff 1976). For example, we expect glory to block gloriousness, but glory has many senses and the sense that is synonymous with that of gloriousness is so infrequent that it has no blocking effect. Less productive rules, which are also usually less predictable semantically, may be used to coin special or narrowly technical terms (Aronoff 1982) and may therefore sometimes be less susceptible to blocking. For example, the word specialism has come into use quite recently in the very restricted sense of ‘what a specialist practices’. One might expect it to be blocked by specialty, but its technical specificity, and the fact that specialty, by contrast, has many senses, are apparently enough to prevent blocking.

5.

Conclusion

All theories agree that the lexicon is the repository of idiosyncratic items, but they agree on little else concerning this central component of language and how it interacts with the grammar. We may contrast two very general attitudes: the minimalist and the maximalist. Minimalists tends to make the lexicon as small as possible, in the number, variety and content of lexical entries; minimalism avoids redundancy of any sort in the lexicon. Maximalists, by contrast, tend to enlarge the lexicon, permitting a good deal of redundancy and complex internal structure. Each view has consequences for morphology, but so far, neither side has won.

6.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1982), “Where’s Morphology?”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 571⫺612 Anderson, Stephen R. (1988), “Inflection”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 23⫺43

Anshen, Frank & Aronoff, Mark (1988), “Producing Morphologically Complex Words”. Linguistics 26, 641⫺655 Archangeli, Diana (1988), “Aspects of Underspecification Theory”. Phonology 5, 183⫺297 Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Aronoff, Mark (1982), “Potential Words, Actual Words, Productivity and Frequency”. Preprints of the Plenary Session Papers, The XIIIth International Congress of Linguists, Tokyo, 141⫺148 Baayen, Harald (1991), “Quantitative Aspects of Morphological Productivity”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 109⫺149 Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1972), “An Attempt at a Theory of Phonetic Alternations”, English trans. by Edward Stankiewicz [orig. German: 1885]. In: Stankiewicz, Edward (ed.), A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Press, 144⫺212 Bloomfield, Leonard (1926), “A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language”. Language 2, 153⫺ 164 [reprinted in: Hockett, Charles F. (1970, ed.), A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Press, 128⫺138] Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (1988, eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988. Dordrecht: Foris Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (1991, eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1991. Dordrecht: Kluwer Bresnan, Joan (1978), “A Realistic Transformational Grammar”. In: Halle, Morris & Bresnan, Joan & Miller, George (eds.), Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 1⫺59. Bresnan, Joan (1982, ed.), The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Bybee, Joan (1988), “Morphology as Lexical Organization”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 119⫺141 Bybee, Joan & Slobin, Daniel (1982), “Rules and Schemas in the Development of the English Past Tense”. Language 58, 265⫺289 Caramazza, Alfonso & Laudanna, Alessandro & Burani, Cristina (1988), “Lexical Access and Inflectional Morphology”. Cognition 28, 297⫺332 Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. Beckenham: Croom Helm Chomsky, Noam (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row Frauenfelder, Uli H. & Schreuder, Robert (1991), “Constraining Psycholinguistic Models of Morphological Processing and Representation: The Role of Productivity”. In: Booij & van Marle (1991, eds.), 165⫺183

37. Derivation and compounding Gleason, Henry A. (1967), “The Relation of Lexicon and Grammar”. In: Householder & Saporta (eds.), 85⫺102 Halle, Morris (1959), The Sound Pattern of Russian. The Hague: Mouton Halle, Morris (1973), “Prolegomena to a Theory of Word Formation”. Linguistic Inquiry 4, 3⫺16 Halle, Morris & Vergnaud, Jean-Roger (1987), An Essay on Stress. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Hammond-Michael & Noonan-Michael (1988, eds.), Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics. San Diego: Academic Hankamer, Jorge (1989), “Morphological Parsing and the Lexicon”. In: Marslen-Wilson, William D. (ed.), Lexical Representation and Process. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 392⫺408 Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hoekstra, Teun & Hulst, Harry van der & Moortgat, Michael (1980), “Introduction”. In: Hoekstra et al. (eds.), 1⫺48 Hoekstra, Teun & Hulst, Harry van der & Moortgat, Michael (1980, eds.), Lexical Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris Hoenigswald, Henry (1967), “Lexicography and Grammar”. In: Householder & Saporta (eds.), 103⫺110 Hooper, Joan Bybee (1976), Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press Householder, Fred & Saporta, Sol (1967), Problems in Lexicography. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Press Jackendoff, Ray (1975), “Morphological and Semantic Regularities in the Lexicon”. Language 51, 639⫺671 Jensen, John T. & Strong-Jensen, Margaret (1984), “Morphology Is in the Lexicon!”. Linguistic Inquiry 15, 474⫺498

349 Jespersen, Otto (1965), The Philosophy of Grammar. New York: Norton [1924] Kiparsky, Paul (1973), “Phonological Representations”. In: Fujimura, Osamu (ed.), Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory. Tokyo: TEC, 1⫺36 Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “From Cyclic Phonology to Lexical Phonology”. In: Hulst, Harry van der, & Smith, Norval (eds.), The Structure of Phonological Representations, Vol. I. Dordrecht: Foris, 131⫺175 Lapointe, Steven (1980), “A Lexical Analysis of the English Auxiliary Verb System”. In: Hoekstra et al. (eds.), 215⫺254 Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Rainer, Franz (1988), “Towards a Theory of Blocking: The Case of Italian and German Quality Nouns”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 155⫺185 Robins, R. H. (21979), A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman Stemberger, Joseph Paul & MacWhinney, Brian (1988), “Are Inflected Forms Stored in the Lexicon?”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 101⫺116 Sweet, Henry (1913), Collected Papers, ed. by H. C. Wyld. Oxford: Clarendon Press Zwicky, Arnold (1985), “How to Describe Inflection”. Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 372⫺386 Zwicky, Arnold (1990), “Inflectional Morphology as a (Sub)component of Grammar”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Luschützky, Hans & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. & Rennison, John R. (eds.), Contemporary Morphology 3. Berlin: de Gruyter, 217⫺236

Mark Aronoff, Stony Brook/NY (U.S.A.)

37. Derivation and compounding 1. 2. 3. 4.

Introduction Criteria Classes of problem cases References

1.

Introduction

Traditionally, word formation is divided into derivation and compounding. In modern works, the latter term is preferred over composition, no doubt because of undesired associations with compositionality of interpretation.

As a starting point for recognizing the two classes, we can assume that a prototypical compound consists of two words, e.g. bookshop, and a prototypical derivation of a word and an affix, e.g. employer. The questions to be discussed here are: (1) How can the borderline between derivation and compounding be determined? (2) Are there any word formation processes other than derivation and compounding? Examples of borderline cases for question (1) to be discussed in this article include anthro-

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pology, warmonger, policeman, and blue-eyed. In interpreting (2) we will be concerned only with rule-based phenomena, excluding such phenomena as clippings and acronyms (cf. Art. 92). The characterization of the borderline between compounding and derivation has not been as prominent an issue as the characterization of their other borderlines, especially those between derivation and inflection (cf. Art. 38) and between compounding and syntactic constructions (cf. Art. 26). As a consequence, criteria for the recognition of compounds often concentrate on their status as a single word (cf. Marchand 1969: 20⫺24) and criteria for identifying derivation rules on the status of the resulting form as a new word (cf. Nida 1949: 99f.). This observation supports the initial characterization given above, but complicates the task envisaged in this article. The characterization of the borderline between compounding and derivation has a different value in the two approaches to grammar described by Hockett (1954) as Item and Arrangement (IA) and Item and Process (IP) (cf. Art. 20). A third approach, Word and Paradigm, is elaborated by Matthews (1974) but, since its distinctive character is visible mainly in inflection, it is of minor importance here. For derivation and compounding, we may practically identify IA with morphemebased and IP with word-based approaches. In IA both derivation and compounding are rules for arranging morphemes, and the only difference between them is the status of the morphemes. This leaves considerable freedom in determining the number of morpheme classes distinguished. Modern adherents of IA often use this to reduce the number to the extent that word formation does not constitute an autonomous component of grammar. Thus Di Sciullo & Williams (1987) include inflection in word formation and Lieber (1992) includes word formation in syntax. As shown in 3.2 below, however, it can also be used to create intermediate classes between derivation and compounding. In IP derivation is seen as a process affecting a base, with affixation as a special case. Compounding is a fundamentally different mechanism. Thus Anderson (1992: 256⫺319) argues that word-internal structure does not exist except in compounds and Aronoff (1994: 16) excludes compounding from morphology proper, calling it “lexeme-internal syntax”. Non-concatenative proces-

esses, e.g. the one relating sell and sale, are more easily covered in IP than in IA. This fact was noted by Hockett (1954) and elaborated at great length as an argument for IP by Anderson (1992: 48⫺72). In what follows, IA and IP will each be considered when the contrast between them affects the force of arguments and criteria discussed. It will be assumed that the problems relating to non-concatenative processes are solved in IA in one way or another, so that sale can be considered as derived from sell even in the absence of a clear affix. Criteria for the distinction between phenomena such as derivation and compounding can be derived from a more general characterization of each of the phenomena or by a contrastive analysis. The purest form of the former approach is based on independent definitions of derivation and compounding (e.g. ten Hacken 1994; 1999). A problem associated with definitions is that they never completely coincide with common usage, because the latter is not coherent or consistent in the classification of borderline cases. The approach based on contrastive analysis results in a list of properties where the two phenomena diverge. In the absence of an independent characterization of the phenomena, the resulting list tends to yield a cline rather than a borderline (cf. Bauer 1983: 36⫺39). For a more extensive discussion of questions of classification cf. Art. 86.

2.

Criteria

The criteria used in the characterization of derivation and compounding in the literature can be divided into phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic criteria. As mentioned in 1, most criteria have been used primarily in delimiting derivation from inflection and compounding from syntax. Only those which are not obviously inapplicable to questions (1) and (2) will be mentioned here. 2.1. Phonological criteria Most prominent among the phonological criteria used for derivation and compounding are the ones based on stress. Stress has been used to distinguish compounds from phrases (e.g. Bloomfield 1933: 228) and to distinguish two levels of affixes (Siegel 1979: 111⫺148). Since these borderlines do not coincide with the one between derivation and compounding, we will not consider them any further

37. Derivation and compounding

here. Other phonological phenomena, however, are sensitive to a notion of word which treats a compound as consisting of two words. These phenomena include sandhi and vowel harmony (cf. also Art. 46). An example of sandhi restricted to words and compound components is the devoicing of voiced stops and fricatives in final position in Dutch. The verb stem schrijv- (‘write’) appears with [v] in schrijver (‘writer’), but with [f] in the imperative schrijf and in the compound schrijfoefening (‘writing exercise’). Vowel harmony in Turkish derivation is illustrated by the suffix /Im/ denoting a single action (Lewis 1967: 224f.). When it is attached to dog˘- (‘be born’) the result is dog˘um (‘birth’), attachment to öl- (‘die’) yields ölüm (‘death’). In a compound such as gözkulak (‘alert’, from göz ‘eye’ and kulak ‘ear’), the cooccurrence of [œ] and [u] shows that the domain of vowel harmony is not the entire grammatical word. Problems in the application of this criterion occur when independent factors intervene. Thus, a voiced stop or fricative in Dutch is always devoiced before a consonant, e.g. schrijft (‘writes’), schrijfster (‘female writer’), so that the status of -ster cannot be determined by this test. Moreover, phonological generalizations of this type tend to have exceptions. For Dutch, Booij (1985: 152) discusses suffixes triggering devoicing as if they were stems. For Turkish, Lewis (1967: 17) lists a number of invariable suffixes violating vowel harmony. 2.2. Morphosyntactic criteria Morphological criteria impose restrictions on the nature of the elements combined or on the way these elements are combined. Our starting point in characterizing derivation and compounding was that the former combines a word and an affix whereas a compound combines two words. Assuming with Bloomfield (1933: 178) that a word is “the minimum of free form”, Höhle (1984: 324f.) argues that the only consistent way to distinguish compounds from derivation is by counting the number of freely occurring forms. When there are two or more of them in a word, the word is a compound. This raises a logical problem, however, because when a form occurs in a compound it is not a free form. It is not always easy to establish that it is the same form which occurs in a compound and as a free form. As pointed out by Schmidt (1987: 55), we find clear cases of

351 non-identity such as, in German, the abstract noun forming -ei in Drängelei (‘pushing’, from drängeln ‘push’) and the noun Ei (‘egg’), but also much less clear-cut cases, such as los (either ‘loose’ or ‘-less’). Therefore, criteria for recognizing the identity of free and bound occurrences of a word are required. As a criterion for affixes it has been proposed that they must be specified for their position relative to the base, e.g. as prefix or suffix (Scalise 1984: 75). Thus, if we find anthropo both in anthropology and in philanthropy it is not an affix. These cases are discussed in more detail in 3.1. Other generalizations which have been proposed as morphological constraints include the Uninflected Base Hypothesis, the Extended Ordering Hypothesis, and the Right-hand Head Rule. Since they are usually meant to cover both derivation and compounding they are not immediately relevant to question (1), but they may influence the answer to question (2). The label Uninflected Base Hypothesis has been used for the hypothesis that only uninflected bases are taken as input in word formation (e.g. Scalise 1984: 103⫺105). This hypothesis has predecessors in the observations by Bloomfield (1933: 224⫺226) concerning the derivational unity of inflectional paradigms, and Greenberg’s (1963: 93) universal 28, stating that derivational markers are found between the root and the markers of inflection. The extent to which counterexamples to this generalization exist has been debated in various places, e.g. Anderson (1992: 126⫺128), Booij (1993), ten Hacken (1994: 147⫺156). Good candidates for genuine counterexamples are derivations from participles, e.g. unabridged, and contrasts such as Dutch stadsraad (‘city council’) vs. stedenraad (‘cities council’). The Extended Ordering Hypothesis is proposed by Allen (1978: 215) as an extension of the level ordering hypothesis of Siegel (1979: 148⫺155). Siegel proposes that derivational affixes in English are divided into two classes, one of them having at the same time a position closer to the root and a larger phonological impact (assimilation, stress attraction). Thus, -ity is a level I and -ness a level II affix, as shown by the contrast between curiosity and curiousness. Allen proposes that compounding constitutes a third level and Botha (1984: 137) observes that she and others assume what he calls the No Phrase Constraint, which orders syntax after morphol-

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ogy. In order to remain in line with generalizations concerning level-ordering, Selkirk (1982: 100⫺106) assumes that derivational affixes such as un- belong to two classes at once (class I in [ungrammatical]ity and class II in un[healthy]), Allen (1978: 222⫺224) classifies non in non-class-conscious as a stem in compounding, and Scalise (1984: 119⫺ 122) assumes that Italian ferrovia (‘railway’) is a ‘strict’ compound, not formed by a regular word formation rule, because it appears in ferroviario (‘railway’ as a relational adjective). De Villiers (1979), referred to by Botha (1984: 27f.), shows, however, that various suffixes in Afrikaans can attach productively to full phrases, as in in-die-straat-sit-er (‘in the street sitter’). The Right-hand Head Rule is proposed by Williams (1981) as an extension of an earlier generalization by Allen (1978) that in compounds and in derivation the right-hand element determines the morphosyntactic properties of the result. Counterexamples which have been adduced include derivations such as debug, where de- determines the syntactic category, and French centre-ville (‘town centre’), where centre rather than ville determines the gender of the result. It should be noted in this context that the contrast of head vs. non-head has also been used in referring to the components of compounds independently of the Right-hand Head Rule. Apart from morphosyntactic properties, meaning is often used to identify the head, assuming roughly that if Y is the head of a compound [X Y], the compound denotes a particular type of Y. In this sense, the contrast will be used below. Among syntactic criteria, coordination has long been known as a process which can separate the components of a compound. Bloomfield (1933: 232), for instance, gives German Sing- oder Raubvögel (‘song[birds] or birds of prey’). As shown by Booij (1985), however, the same is possible with certain affixes, as in Dutch storm- en regenachtig (‘storm[y] and rainy’). These affixes are the same as those which violate the devoicing generalization in 2.1. In German, coordination of prefixes as in be- oder entladen (‘load or unload’) is also possible. Thus, coordination groups together part of derivation with compounding. 2.3. Semantic criteria The most straightforward application of semantic criteria to question (1) is a list of properties distinguishing the type of meaning

a stem or base can have from the type of meaning that can be associated with a derivational affix or process. The complexity of this task made Höhle (1984: 324) claim that “there exists no general criterion” of this kind. Instead of this conclusion, one could also consider a less direct approach, based on semantic relationships. It has long been acknowledged that the meaning of a compound such as war film can be paraphrased by placing its two components in a particular relation, e.g. ‘film about a war’. After describing a great many types of compounds and classifying them according to the relationship between their components, Jespersen (1942: 143) concludes that “the number of possible logical relations between the two elements is endless”. In early transformational-generative grammar, compounds were derived from these paraphrases by complex transformations which, in the example of war film, would delete about a and reverse the order of the remaining words (cf. Lees 1960: 113⫺185). It was soon recognized that the type of transformations required here is far too powerful to be explanatory. Where one can describe everything, one can explain nothing. In the search for a better account of the relationships between the components of a compound, two directions have been taken. The first, culminating in the work by Levi (1978), restricts and classifies the relationships in terms of a relatively small number of predicates. This restricts transformational power, as suggested by the name Recoverably Deletable Predicates. For predicates which can be recovered on the basis of the head of the compound (e.g. sell in car sale, steal in car thief ) a restriction in terms of recoverably deletable predicates is considered unnecessary. Levi proposes a set of nine recoverably deletable predicates for English, three of which can be active or passive. As a result, a compound with a non-verbal head is ambiguous in precisely 12 ways. It has been observed, however, that Levi’s recoverably deletable predicates exploit idiosyncrasies of English (e.g. make in cellblock and in silkworm), cover only a part of the relation due to their vagueness (e.g. for in headache pills and in fertility pills) and fail to cover all compounds (e.g. cranberry morpheme) (cf. Downing 1977: 812⫺814, 827f.). The other type of approach is exemplified by Allen (1978: 91⫺ 94), who proposes the Variable R Condition. According to this condition, the relationship

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is not taken from an independent list, but depends on the available feature slots of the second component and on the ways they may be filled by the first component. Thus a water mill may be a mill powered by water, producing water, located near the water, analysing the content of water, etc., but not a mill living near the water or made out of water, because these interpretations would violate the restrictions imposed by the meaning of mill and water respectively. For derivation, the semantic relationship which has been studied is not so much the one between the two components but rather the one between the base and the result of derivation. An example of an attempt to classify the possible relationships is the theory of Szymanek (1988). He lists 24 “fundamental concepts of cognition” and four processes for deriving derivational categories from them. A similar approach is taken by Beard (1988), who takes the nominal case system of Indoeuropean languages as a basis. This type of approach suffers from the same kind of drawbacks as Levi’s recoverably deletable predicate-approach (cf. ten Hacken 1994: 277f.). In an alternative proposal, reminiscent of Allen’s solution for the relations in compounding, derivation is defined as the application of a process to a base, for which the semantic structures of the base needs to open up a possibility (ten Hacken 1994: 303). Of course this formulation presupposes an IP perspective on morphology. If we assume both Allen’s (1978) approach to the characterization of the semantic relationship in compounds and ten Hacken’s (1994) approach to derivation, we have an indirect way of observing the difference in semantic contribution between a stem and an affix. Where in a compound the interaction of stems creates a range of possible relations, an affix has a fixed meaning the application of which may be allowed or disallowed by the semantics of the base. Ten Hacken (1999: 46 f.) uses this criterion to differentiate baby duck and duckling. It is true that a number of constructions traditionally classified as compounds do not obey the Variable R Condition of Allen (1978). They include exocentric and copulative compounds, called bahuvrı¯hi and dvandva in the Indian grammatical tradition (cf. Art. 5). They will be discussed more extensively in 3.4 and 3.5 below.

3.

Classes of problem cases

There are two types of classification problems in the domain of word formation. The first type encompasses cases where derivation and compounding seem to be in competition. The uncertainty may be due to either the unclarity of the status of the elements concerned or the unclarity of the priority when both phenomena are observed in the same word. A well-known class of problems as to the status of the elements concerned is what is called neoclassical compounding. An element such as anthropo in anthropology lacks some typical properties of a stem, but cannot easily be treated as an affix or process either. A similar type of problem arises for elements such as Germ. frei (‘free’) in fehlerfrei (‘perfect’, litt. ‘error-free’). In the German literature, the term ‘affixoid’ has been used for elements of this type. The terms neoclassical compounding and affixoids will be used descriptively here, without commitment to a particular analysis. They are discussed in 3.1 and 3.2 respectively. Priority problems arise in what are known as synthetic compounds such as truck driver and blue-eyed. They are discussed in 3.3. The second type of classification problems encompasses cases which, depending on the criteria applied, seem to belong neither to compounding nor to derivation. If we assume that counting the number of stems in a word determines whether the word is a compound or a derivation, as Höhle (1984: 324) proposes (cf. 2.2), this type of problem is excluded in principle. In order to justify compounding and derivation as natural classes, however, additional properties have been attributed to stems and affixes (or processes). These properties are the basis of criteria as discussed in the previous section. With each additional generalization of this kind, the possibility of counterexamples arises. When such a property is taken as a definition, counterexamples to the generalization are turned into a new class of items. The process can be illustrated by the morphological constraints discussed in 2.2. When the Uninflected Base and Extended Ordering hypotheses, and the Right-hand Head Rule are treated as generalizations on the components and processes involved in compounding and derivation, each of them has counterexamples. Usually, either these counterexamples are used as a basis for rejecting the generalization, e.g. where Anderson (1992: 311⫺

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318) rejects the Right-hand Head Rule, or an attempt is made to explain the counterexamples in such a way that they are excluded from the domain of the generalization, e.g. where Scalise (1984: 119⫺122) creates the class of strict compounds to avoid subjecting ferrovia to the Extended Ordering hypothesis. Only when a generalization is taken as a definition is a new class of items created. When, for instance, Di Sciullo & Williams (1987: 24, 79⫺88) take the Right-hand Head Rule as the defining criterion for word formation, all exocentric and left-headed compounds and derivations constitute a new class of problems. In most cases, taking a generalization as a definition despite the known existence of counterexamples is an unattractive proposition. It weakens the theory, because a definition cannot be refuted, and it creates new classes of problems. It can be motivated, however, when the new problems form a natural class themselves. Thus, while few morphologists are willing to follow Di Sciullo & Williams’s (1987) definition, the classes of exocentric and copulative compounds may in fact deserve separate treatment because they are not based on a single criterion. They are discussed in 3.4 and 3.5. 3.1. Neoclassical compounds In English, there is a class of elements such as anthropo, logo, hydro, and electro, which derive their form and meaning from Ancient Greek and combine with each other and with a restricted number of affixes to form words such as anthropology and hydro-electric. A similar phenomenon is found in many other European languages. Outside Europe, languages other than Ancient Greek sometimes provide the corresponding elements. Listing words such as anthropology without referring to their internal structure is not an adequate solution, because the structure plays a role in interpretation. It can even be claimed that exhaustive listing is impossible. Even though the number of basic elements is relatively small, the number of combinations is increased more than just occasionally. Moreover, newly formed items are not introduced in the same way as new acronyms, i.e. with an explicit statement of their meaning, but rather in the same way as new compounds (cf. ten Hacken 1994: 130f.). Therefore, elements such as anthropo are often given the status of an element in the English lexicon.

One property items such as anthropo share with affixes is that they are bound. Thus Siegel (1979: 105) treats electro- as a prefix and Williams (1981: 258) assumes that hydro is an affix. In two other respects, however, these items differ from affixes. First, many of them would be a prefix in some words and a suffix in others. In biography and graphology the element grapho contributes to the meaning in roughly the same way. In that there are differences at all they are due to the contrast between head and non-head in a compound, parallel to the contrast we find in compound pairs such as book writing and writing style. Second, these elements occur in words which contain no other stems. In electric and dehydrate the elements apart from electro and hydro are clear affixes. In an IP approach, where an affix is the result of a process applied to a base, each word has to contain at least one stem, so that the properties of electro and hydro observed here enforce an analysis as a bound stem. In IA, the argument is less compelling, because the stem-affix dichotomy is less strong. Various other reactions are possible, such as denying any inherent difference between affixes and stems, as Höhle (1984) and Lieber (1992) propose, or creating an intermediate class for elements such as electro and hydro. Bauer (1979) even assumes that a word such as francophone consists of a prefix and a suffix, and uses this as an argument against IP approaches. If elements such as anthropo are stems, a problem is how to account for their bound nature. Selkirk (1982: 98⫺100) proposes that neoclassical compounding takes place at the same level as stress-changing affixation, as opposed to normal compounding. In her terminology, neoclassical compounding is root compounding instead of word compounding. Ten Hacken (1994: 133) suggests that neoclassical stems lack syntactic features so that they need affixes or processes to become words. In both proposals, anthropology is formed by affixation to the bound compound anthropologo. Semantically such an analysis is more attractive than one with logy as an intermediate form, because it links anthropology more strongly to anthropologist than to hydrology. Special types of neoclassical compounds are exemplified by polychromatic, Anglo-Frisian, and philanthropy. The first is a synthetic compound similar to multi-coloured (cf. 3.3). The second is a copulative compound. Neoclassical copulative compounds share with


the main type of neoclassical compounds the property of being bound. In other respects they resemble copulative compounds as treated in 3.5. The third has similarities with exocentric compounds of the type pickpocket, treated in 3.4. A full parallel depends on the problematic assumption that the left-hand element is a verb. This type of formation seems to be restricted to compounds with philo as their first element. The productive use of philo as a synonym of pro, on the other hand, seems to be an example of a stem having turned into an affix. Scalise (1984: 75) gives philo- or anti-Soviet as an argument that philo is not an affix, assuming that coordination of non-heads of compounds is possible, but coordination of prefixes is not. In 2.2 we saw, however, that coordination is not restricted to compounds. Coordination can also be used in an argument of a different kind, exploiting the observation that coordinated items must have a fairly high degree of similarity in morphosyntactic status. We can construct a chain of related coordinations as in (3): (3) (a) philo- or anti-Soviet (b) pro- and anti-government demonstrations (c) pro- and enclitics It seems reasonable to assume that en- in (3c) is a prefix rather than a stem. The similarity argument for coordination forces us to accept pro, anti, and philo as affixes too. The fact that philo also occurs as a stem in words such as philanthropy and francophile suggests that it is related to affixoids discussed in the next section. 3.2. Affixoids As noted in 1, an IA approach does not force the bipartition of word-formation into derivation and compounding, but allows for any number of types of elements and combination rules. This possibility has been used not only in an attempt to simplify the grammar by eliminating the difference between affix and stem, but also to increase the number of distinctions. In the German literature especially, it has been common to assume a class of affixoids or semi-affixes in between affixes and stems. An influential early source for the recognition of an intermediate category between stems in a compound and affixes in derivation is Fleischer (1969: 63⫺66), who refers to

355 earlier sources going back as far as 1933. He gives examples such as Zeug (‘thing’) occurring in Flugzeug (‘plane’, lit. ‘flight-thing’) and Schreibzeug (‘writing utensils’), and frei (‘free’) in fehlerfrei (‘perfect’, lit. ‘error-free’) and widerspruchsfrei (‘without opposition’). Diachronically, such elements can be viewed as transitional between stems and affixes. Affixes such as English -dom and -hood have completed this transition process (Marchand 1969: 293). For synchronic use, various criteria have been proposed (cf. Schmidt 1987: 55⫺78), but it is common to accept at least the following three: (i) an increased productivity; (ii) a decreased semantic specificness; and (iii) an etymological and formal link to an existing free stem. The last of these criteria distinguishes affixoids from affixes. The other two are applied by comparing the affixoid to its corresponding free stem. Difficulties with the classification of borderline cases have given rise to three types of reactions: additional criteria, additional classes, and doubt as to the validity of the entire concept. As an example of the first type of reaction, Kühnhold et al. (1978: 427⫺ 518) propose additional criteria based on paradigmatic and syntagmatic possibilities and restrictions. As a paradigmatic criterion they suggest that affixoids must be in competition or in complementary distribution with affixes. As a syntagmatic criterion they propose that there must be differences between the distributional behaviour of an affixoid and its corresponding stem. Their method of analysis is based on a semantic grouping of affixoids. Thus, where X stands for the meaning of the base, the class “having much X” includes -reich, -voll, -stark, -schwer, etc. An example of the second type of reaction is the introduction of the classes of affixoid-like elements between affixes and affixoids, and stem-like (or compound-component-like) elements between affixoid and stems in a compound by Ortner H. & Ortner L. (1984: 12, 33, 40). An example of the third type of reaction is the highly critical assessment of the use of the term affixoid by Schmidt (1987). He observes that the introduction of a new class will increase rather than solve classification problems, unless the new class has a strong justification as a natural class of its own. The problematic nature of the criteria proposed for affixoids is shown by the reliance on unaided intuition in establishing the semantic distance

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between two senses of a word, e.g. frei in fehlerfrei and as an independent adjective. The analytical method of Kühnhold et al. (1978) tends to obscure part of the meaning of the components by suggesting that their meaning can be reduced to the description of the class. In this context Schmidt (1987: 63) mentions the contrast Sportsmann vs. Sportler as a problem. In some cases, items considered candidates for the affixoid status depend on controversial segmentation. Thus, according to Schmidt (1987: 94f.) orkanartig (‘hurricane-like’) should be analysed as Orkanart⫹ig rather than as Orkan⫹artig, so that the presumed affixoid -artig would not constitute a component (cf. also the discussion of blue-eyed in 3.3 below). His conclusion that affixoid is a term referring to an unclear concept whose usefulness is doubtful has been influential enough for Fleischer & Barz (1995: 27f.) to avoid the term in updating Fleischer’s earlier text, while explicitly referring to Schmidt (1987) in justification. Outside the community of German linguistics, the term affixoid and equivalents are rarely used. Marchand (1969: 356⫺358) introduces ‘semi-suffix’ for a small set of elements for which formal criteria establish a distinction from stems in compounding, e.g. -monger, a bound stem, and -like, which forms adjectives admitting prefixation with unas in unmanlike. Although the weak form /men/ of man in policeman is mentioned, it is not classified as different from compounding (Marchand 1969: 60f.). This decision is justified by Matthews (1974: 54f.) on the basis of the plural policemen instead of *policemans and the contrast with policewoman. Bauer (1983: 36⫺38) argues for a cline from compound to derivation rather than the introduction of intermediate classes. He also mentions the unique morpheme cranin cranberry, which violates all the usual criteria for affixoids, as an intermediate element. To sum up, the idea of introducing one or more intermediate classes between derivation and compounding seems to be restricted to an episode in German linguistics of the 1970s and 1980s. Elsewhere the corresponding examples are used in various IA approaches to argue against a fixed borderline between derivation and compounding. In IP approaches, where intermediate classes or a cline are impossible, the relevant examples have been divided up between derivation and compounding. If it is admitted that stems may be bound

and bound stems can be components of a compound, no further assumptions are required for such a division. 3.3. Synthetic compounding Synthetic compounds are items such as truck driver, which show traces of compounding as well as of derivation. From an early stage, two types have been distinguished, exemplified by truck driver and blue-eyed respectively (e.g. Bloomfield 1933: 231f.). The former type is also called verbal compounds. Whether synthetic compounds are compounds or derivations depends on the order of application of the two phenomena. In principle there are three possibilities, giving rise to the following structures: (4) (a) [truck[ [drive er], [blue] [eye ed] (b) [[truck drive] er], [[blue eye] ed] (c) [truck drive er], [blue eye ed] If (4a) is assumed as a structure, synthetic compounds are compounds whose second component is the result of derivation. If (4b) is assumed, they are derivations of phrases or compounds. The flat structure in (4c) is strongly disfavoured because it implies the existence of special rules combining three elements in IA or a new process combining derivation and compounding in IP. In (4a) and (4b) an intermediate result of the formation process exists. Therefore, arguments for (4a) concentrate on the status of driver and eyed, arguments for (4b) on the status of truck drive and blue eye as components of truck driver and blue-eyed. The arguments invoked refer to the best account of the relationship of the synthetic compound to the syntactic properties and meaning of its components and to the rule types involved in the formation process. Whether in (4b) truck drive and blue eye are compounds or phrases is a secondary question. The choice is usually determined by theoretical assumptions justified elsewhere because it is hard to conceive of tests accessing these components. A first argument can be derived from the existence of the intermediate node as a free word. It is clear that eyed is not an attested word. Roeper & Siegel (1978: 219) argue that a similar objection against (4a) applies also in the case of verbal compounds. They give a list of examples such as heartbreaker, churchgoer, where the second component in (4a) would not be an independently existing word. Allen (1978: 159⫺163) shows, however, that for most of these cases, the examples used by


Roeper & Siegel (1978) are not to the point. Instead of using (5a) to show the impossibility of breaker, she uses (5b) to demonstrate its existence: (5) (a) *He is a breaker. (b) He is a typical breaker of contracts and promises. Only goer remains exceptional, but here she argues that it is church-goer which constitutes a genuine exception, because other compounds with goer do not occur (e.g. *bed-goer). Similarly to eyed, we find tailed in tailed monkeys and in long-tailed. It has been argued, therefore, that insofar as the intermediate nodes of the compound structure do not exist, they are at least possible words (Allen 1978: 246f.). By contrast, the intermediate nodes required in (4b) are not in general possible words. The argument structure is used by Selkirk (1982: 28⫺43) as an argument for (4a) in the case of verbal compounds. The verb eat has an optional direct object and for that reason, she argues, tree in tree eater can but need not be interpreted as the object of eat. A different interpretation is forced in (6): (6) He was a tree eater by choice and caused his parents great chagrin. An avid eater in the trees, Cosimo refused the smallest bite with his feet on solid ground. The verb devour, however, has an obligatory direct object, and this property is percolated to devourer in the verbal compound tree devourer. Therefore, tree devourer cannot have the meaning parallel to the favoured one for tree eater in (6), but must be interpreted so that tree is the object of devour. Semantic arguments are used by ten Hacken (1999), who argues that the two types of compound each have a different structure. The type blue-eyed has a structure as in (4b), because even in cases where an element corresponding to eyed exists, it does not constitute a part of the meaning of the entire expression. The Dutch suffix -ig, whose contribution to the meaning can be described as adding ‘characterized by’, occurs in roodharig (‘red-haired’). If it is attached to haar only, as in harig, the implication is ‘having a lot of hair’. If it is attached to the phrase rood haar, no such implication exists. Since roodharig does not imply ‘having a lot of hair’, -ig is argued to be attached to rood haar rather than to haar alone. The analysis of rood haar as a phrase rather than a compound can be motivated semantically (cf. ten Hacken, 1994:

357 98⫺101). For verbal compounds, Selkirk’s example tree eater shows that regularly predicted variation in the relation between two components in a compound does actually occur, thus justifying (4a). As far as rule types are concerned, accounts of synthetic compounds can be divided into transformational and purely lexicalist ones. Roeper & Siegel (1978) propose a lexical transformation for verbal compounds, taking a verb and its first sister to the right, reversing the order and adding one of the suffixes -er, -ing, or -ed. This account has been heavily criticized both for its use of transformational power and for various inadequacies as to the data. Thus it arbitrarily restricts verbal compounds to three suffixes and it does not allow for the incorporation of subjects of the verb into the verbal compound. As soon as similar processes with other suffixes are admitted, cases such as population growth occur, which defy the exclusion of subjects. Lieber (1992: 59⫺62) also proposes a transformation for verbal compounds, but assumes that the derivation process nominalizing the verb takes place before the transformation, which implies a structure as in (4a). This illustrates that the choice of a transformational mechanism does not exclude any of the structures in (4). No transformational account of the type blue-eyed has been proposed since Lees (1960). Non-transformational accounts within an IA approach often start from an ordering hypothesis such as the Extended Ordering Hypothesis or No Phrase Constraint. This makes Allen (1978: 251f.) exclude (4b). Such arguments are entirely dependent on theoretical assumptions and therefore not very convincing in themselves. Empirical problems with the structure required by theoretical constraints such as the arguments discussed above for (4b) at least for the type blue-eyed may easily be constructed as arguments against the theoretical constraints in question. Botha (1984) gives a highly critical overview of a number of mechanisms for synthetic compounding. 3.4. Exocentric compounding In traditional Indian Grammar, three compound classes are distinguished. The one corresponding to the compounds discussed here so far is called tatpurusøa, the other two are bahuvrı¯hi and dvandva (cf. Art. 5). The term exocentric compounds for bahuvrı¯hi was introduced by Bloomfield (1933: 235). There is a slight mismatch between the two terms as

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used by Sanskrit grammarians and by Bloomfield, however. Exocentric compounds exist in two types, exemplified in English by loudmouth and egghead on the one hand, pickpocket on the other. Only the former type occurs regularly in Sanskrit and was therefore recognized by Sanskrit grammarians. They are called possessive compounds by Whitney (1879: 481). In modern use, the term exocentric compounds always refers to both types. Their traditional classification as compounds can be defended because they combine two words. Both types are exceptional, however, with respect to a number of more precise generalizations which have been used to identify compounds. In view of their problematic nature, it is not surprising that it has sometimes been proposed that exocentric compounds are irregular and unproductive, so that they should be covered by a list instead of by a set of rules (e.g. Allen 1978: 101f.). Of course, the issue depends on the particular concept of productivity applied (cf. Art. 33). In the case of English, possessive compounds of the A⫹N type at least do not constitute a closed class and new coinages can be interpreted on a regular basis. The V⫹N type is productive in Romance languages. Examples are French porte-parole (‘spokesperson’) and Italian asciugamano (‘towel’, lit. ‘dry-hand’). If exocentric compounds are to be treated as compounds, the main problem is how to account for the absence of a head. Neither element in loudmouth or porteparole is directly responsible for the morphosyntactic properties of the entire word, and, although the elements contribute to the meaning of the entire word, no semantic inclusion relation holds as found in the case of regular compounds. The solution suggested by Levi (1978: 6) is that in items such as loudmouth, regular compound formation processes, resulting in loudmouth person, are followed by an irregular process of “beheading”. A problem with this analysis is that Levi’s system of recoverably deletable predicates (cf. 2.3) predicts that various relations may hold between the two components, but only have is actually possible. Thus, whereas loudmouth person can refer to someone who makes people speak more loudly loudmouth cannot. Other proposals do not treat exocentric compounds as compounds. Di Sciullo & Williams (1987: 79⫺86) discuss French exocentric compounds such as essui-glace (‘windscreen wiper’) and conclude that they must have been formed syntactically. They are

forced to this conclusion by their assumption of the Right-hand Head Rule as a defining criterion for morphology (cf. 2.2). As pointed out by Anderson (1992: 316⫺318), however, the rule N J XP they propose is far too general, because most phrases cannot occur as a noun, and at the same time not sufficiently broad, because the corresponding phrases are often ungrammatical without additional function words. Ten Hacken (1994: 114⫺121) observes a similarity between the two types of exocentric compounding and the two types of synthetic compounding. Thus, loudmouth corresponds to blue-eyed without the suffix -ed. For essuiglace to correspond to windscreen wiper it must be assumed that, parallel to the relationship between centre ville and town centre, French compounds have the reverse order of head and non-head compared to English. In addition, the suffix which is -er in English is missing in French. In an IA model, an empty affix must be hypothesized in both cases, in IP a process not affecting the form. The most common objections to empty affixes or processes do not apply because the description follows a pattern similar to the one for synthetic compounds. Apart from its lack of phonological form (or effect), the affix turning loud mouth into loudmouth is the same as -ed in blue-eyed. One might also consider an analysis of the A⫹N type as a metonymical extension of a phrase. Problems of such an analysis show up if we compare Dutch kaalkop (‘baldhead’) with the corresponding phrase kale kop. Both can be used deictically to refer to someone bald, but stress pattern, presence of an inflectional ending on the adjective and modifiability of both words distinguish the phrase. Furthermore, metonymy does not have the same meaning as found in exocentric compounds. As shown by the contrast between redcap and metonymical use of red cap, the former refers to a habitual, the latter to an actual relation between the person referred to and the object literally referred to. 3.5. Copulative compounding In the same way as for exocentric compounding, copulative compounding is a phenomenon first observed among Indian grammarians (dvandva) and subsequently extended to include additional types not occurring in Sanskrit. It is treated here only because of its relevance to question (2). In the type originally meant in Sanskrit, words are combined to designate a set. This type also occurs

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in Modern Greek, e.g. aœntro¬gyno (‘manwoman’, i.e. ‘couple’), and in the non-head position of compounds in English, e.g. attribute-value pair. Semantically these compounds are not headed. Thus, attribute-value refers not to either element but only to their combination. Insofar as morphosyntactic features need to be specified, they must be determined by specific rules. An example of such rules is the description by Whitney (1879: 485⫺487) of how gender and number features as well as declension class are determined in Sanskrit dvandva compounds. The absence or markedness of such rules may explain the restricted distribution in languages such as English. Note that the non-head position of compounds can be argued not to require any morphosyntactic features. Insofar as copulative compounds exist in English as independent words, they are of a different type, exemplified by speaker-listener. Here the interpretation is a single entity described in two roles, rather than a set of entities. In a sense items such as speaker-listener may be said to have more than one head (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 235). Ten Hacken (1994: 122⫺130) argues that both types, called collective and additive respectively, belong to word formation but neither to compounding nor to derivation, having a marginal status comparable to coordination in syntax. For other types, arguments for such a status are less compelling. Marchand (1969: 61f.) also mentions the appositional type, illustrated by girlfriend, and the subsumptive type, illustrated by oaktree. In these cases, the right-hand element is clearly the head. As opposed to the two types of copulative above, inserting and between the two is semantically odd, cf. (7): (7) (a) This is a speaker and listener. (b) *?This is an oak and tree. This test also excludes a type which may make a stronger claim for a special treatment, exemplified by north-west and Dutch blauwgrijs (‘bluish grey’). This type, which may be called approximative, differs from the collective and additive types in a number of other respects as well. Additive compounds can occur with more than two elements, e.g. mixer-fruitpress-toaster-coffeemachine. Their flat structure makes order semantically irrelevant (e.g. mixer-fruitpress vs. fruitpressmixer). In the approximative type, insofar as it is possible to combine more than two elements, the result is clearly binary branching,

e.g. [north [north west]]. Insofar as it is possible to reverse the two elements at all, this operation may be argued to affect the meaning. Thus blauwgrijs is a kind of grijs, but grijsblauw is a kind of blauw. Though the difference between these two colours is referentially quite subtle, it has been suggested that blauw in blauwgrijs has a function similar to olive in olive green, and that the approximative type is in fact a subtype of regular, determinative compounds (ten Hacken 1994: 129).

4.

References

Allen, Margaret Reece (1978), Morphological Investigations. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Connecticut Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Aronoff, Mark H. (1994), Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Bauer, Laurie (1979), “Against Word-based Morphology”. Linguistic Inquiry 10, 508⫺509 Bauer, Laurie (1983), English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Beard, Robert (1988), “On the Separation of Derivation from Morphology: Toward a Lexeme-morpheme-based Morphology”. Quaderni di Semantica 9, 3⫺59 Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. London: Allen & Unwin Booij, Geert E. (1985), “Coordination Reduction in Complex Words: A Case for Prosodic Phonology”. In: van der Hulst, Harry & Smith, Norval (eds.), Advances in Nonlinear Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris, 143⫺160 Booij, Geert (1993), “Against Split Morphology”. In: Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1993. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 29⫺49 Botha, Rudolf P. (1984), Morphological Mechanisms: Lexicalist Analyses of Synthetic Compounding. Oxford: Pergamon De Villiers, Reinette (1979), “Phrasal Categories in Word Formation Rules”. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics 2, 39⫺69 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria & Williams, Edwin (1987), On the Definition of Word. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Downing, Pamela Ann (1977), “On the Creation and Use of English Compound Nouns”. Language 53, 810⫺841 Fleischer, Wolfgang (1969), Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartsprache. Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut

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Fleischer, Wolfgang & Barz, Irmhild (21995), Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartsprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer [11992] Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Language. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 73⫺113 Hacken, Pius ten (1994), Defining Morphology: A Principled Approach to Determining the Boundaries of Compounding, Derivation, and Inflection. Hildesheim: Olms Hacken, Pius ten (1999), “Motivated Tests for Compounding”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 31, 27⫺58 Hockett, Charles F. (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231 Höhle, Tilman N. (1984), “On Composition and Derivation: The Constituent Structure of Secondary Words in German”. In: Toman, Jindrˇich (ed.), Studies in German Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris, 319⫺376 Jespersen, Otto (1942), A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Vol. VI: Morphology. Copenhagen: Munksgaard Kühnhold, Ingeburg & Putzer, Oskar & Wellmann, Hans (1978), Deutsche Wortbildung, Vol. III: Das Adjektiv. Düsseldorf, Schwann Lees, Robert B. (1960), The Grammar of English Nominalizations. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Press; Den Haag: Mouton Levi, Judith N. (1978), The Syntax and Semantics of Complex Nominals. New York: Academic Press Lewis, Geoffrey L. (1967), Turkish Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press Lieber, Rochelle (1992), Deconstructing Morphology: Word Formation in Syntactic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Marchand, Hans (21969), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation. München: Beck [11960] Matthews, Peter H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology. Ann Arbor/ MI: University of Michigan Press [11946] Ortner, Hanspeter & Ortner, Lorelies (1984), Zur Theorie und Praxis der Kompositionsforschung. Tübingen: Narr Roeper, Thomas & Siegel, Muffy (1978), “A Lexical Transformation for Verbal Compounds”. Linguistic Inquiry 9, 199⫺260 Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris Schmidt, Günther Dietrich (1987), “Das Affixoid: Zur Notwendigkeit und Brauchbarkeit eines beliebten Zwischenbegriffs der Wortbildung”. In: Hoppe, Gabriele & Kirkness, Alan & Link, Elisabeth & Nortmeyer, Isolde & Rettig, Wolfgang & Schmidt, Günther (1987), Deutsche Lehnwortbildung. Tübingen: Narr, 53⫺101 Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge /MA: MIT Press Siegel, Dorothy (1979), Topics in English Morphology. New York: Garland Press [orig. 1974, Ph.D. diss., MIT] Szymanek, Bogdan (1988), Categories and Categorization in Morphology. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego Whitney, William Dwight (1879), Sanskrit Grammar. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel [reprint 1962, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass] Williams, Edwin (1981), “On the Notions Lexically Related and Head of a Word”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274

Pius ten Hacken, Basel (Switzerland)

38. Inflection and derivation 1. 2. 3.

1.

Differences between inflection and derivation Split morphology? References

Differences between inflection and derivation

The main distinction between inflection and derivation is a functional one: derivation (i.e. word-formation except compounding) is that kind of morphology that serves to create new

lexemes, whereas inflection serves to create different forms of the same lexeme. Therefore, it is also said that derivation, unlike inflection, creates words for new concepts. However, one should realize that derivation has a secondary function in that it is also used to make stylistic variation possible. For instance, of the following two alternative phrasings of a referring expression, the second makes use of derivation (of reader from read): (1) (a) He who reads this book (b) The reader of this book

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38. Inflection and derivation

Derivation differs from compounding, another type of lexeme formation, in that in compounding (at least) two lexemes are involved, and combined into a complex word, whereas the input to derivation is a single lexeme (cf. Art. 37). The formal means by which inflection and derivation are expressed are often the same. In both, the processes of affixation, vowel change, reduplication etc. may be used. For instance, in many Indo-European languages inflection is expressed primarily by suffixation, which is also a kind of morphological operation used in derivation. Whether a sharp demarcation of inflection with respect to derivation is possible, is a classical problem in morphological theory. Whereas some linguists claim that there is no sharp demarcation between the two, and that there is a cline from prototypical derivation to prototypical inflection (Bybee 1985; Dressler 1989; Plank 1994), others do make a sharp distinction which is reflected by their organizational model of the grammar (Perlmutter 1988; Anderson 1982; 1992). In order to come to grips with this demarcation problem, I will review the different arguments and criteria proposed in the literature for distinguishing between the two (see also Scalise 1986 and Dressler 1989). 1.1. Change of word class The first criterion is that derivation, unlike inflection, may change the word class of the input word. That is, derivation may cause transposition of word class. This may be seen as a consequence of the lexical enrichment and stylistic variation functions of derivation, which do not apply to inflection. However, since derivation does not necessarily change word class, the fact that a morphological process does not change word class, is no proof of its inflectional nature. First, a category-determining affix may happen to attach to a word of the same category. An example is the Dutch nominalizing suffix -er that may be affixed to nominal bases, e.g. wetenschap ‘science’ ⫺ wetenschapper ‘scientist’. Second, languages may have evaluative morphology that is, like inflection, transparent for the syntactic category and the gender of the base, but that is felt as derivation as far as the semantic change involved is concerned. For instance, the Italian diminutive suffix -ino/ina can be attached to nouns to form nouns, and to adjectives to form adjec-

tives: ragazzo ‘boy’ ⫺ ragazzino ‘little boy’, ragazza ‘girl’ ⫺ ragazzina ‘little girl’, giallo ‘yellow’ ⫺ giallino ‘yellowish’. This shows that the Italian diminutive suffix is transparent for the syntactic category and gender of its stem. On the other hand, Dutch diminutive suffixes are category-determining, and always create nouns, e.g. blond ‘blond’ ⫺ blondje ‘girl with blond hair’. Moreover, the Dutch diminutives are always neuter, unlike their base words: de stoel ‘the chair (non-neuter)’ versus het stoeltje ‘the little chair (neuter)’. Thus, Dutch diminutives are a clearer case of derivation than the Italian ones. A problem for the demarcation criterion discussed here is that inflection can change the syntactic category of its inputs too (Haspelmath 1996). For instance, infinitives do not only exhibit verbal properties, but also nominal ones. This is illustrated by the Dutch infinitival phrase het boeken kop-en ‘the books buy-inf (the buying of books)’. The syntactic distribution of the infinitive is that of a noun, since it occurs with the determiner het ‘the’. On the other hand, it behaves as a verb with respect to its complement, since it allows for a preverbal preposition-less noun phrase complement, boeken. Other examples of Dutch infinitives, preceded by a determiner and a preposition are: (2) (a) Ik ben aan het fietsen I am at the cycle-inf ‘I am cycling.’ (b) Ik zette het op een lopen I put it on a walk-inf ‘I started running.’ In Romance languages, infinitives also function as nouns, as in French le parler ‘the dialect’. Infinitives also feed nominal word formation. In Dutch, as in many Germanic languages, verbal compounding is unproductive, whereas nominal compounding is productive. Infinitives behave like nouns in this respect: Dutch has many compounds of the type school-zwemmen ‘school-swim-inf (schoolswimming)’ which do not have finite forms, and thus cannot be interpreted as the infinitival forms of verbal compounds (Booij 1989). In many languages, participles behave like adjectives in that they can be used attributively and as predicates, and agree in gender, number and case with the noun that they modify. On the other hand, participles still have verbal potential in that they case-mark

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nominal phrase arguments, as in the following example from German (Haspelmath 1996): (3) ein den Richter überraschendes Faktum a the judge surprising fact ‘a fact that surprises the judge’ Here, the participle überraschendes ‘surprising’ agrees in number, case and gender with its head Faktum ‘fact’; yet it has an accusative-marked verbal complement den Richter ‘def:acc.sg.m judge’. Participles also feed deadjectival word formation, as in English spoiledness and its Dutch equivalent bedorvenheid. They lexicalize quite often as adjectives with an idiosyncratic meaning, e.g. Dutch gesloten (past participle) ‘closed’, but also ‘close-mouthed’, and woedend (present participle) ‘raging’, but also ‘angry’. In Biblical Hebrew, participles may have the distribution of nouns. For instance, they can be preceded by a determiner, and they can be inflected for number, gender, and state (construct state when followed by a specifier or complement, absolute state if there is no specifier or complement). Yet, they are still verbal in that they allow for verbal complements marked with the accusative particle et (Dyk 1994). Gerunds are another case of transpositional inflection: they are verbal forms with

nominal properties. For instance, in John’s reading the papers the gerund reading behaves externally as a noun since it assigns genitive case to John, whereas it behaves as a verb with respect to its nominal, prepositionless complement the papers. An example from a non-Indo-European language is the Austronesian language Kambera. In this language the relative markers on verbs, -pa and -ma, which are inflectional elements, also have a nominalizing function (Klamer 1994: 320⫺326). Other cases of category-changing morphology that might be interpreted as category-changing inflection are deadjectival adverbs such as happily (from happy), substantivized adjectives like Dutch (de) lang-e ‘(the) tall (person)’, and deverbal adverbs (converbs, cf. Haspelmath & König 1995, eds.) such as Kannada heel]v-ade]Adv ‘say-neg.adv (without telling)’. The fact that these morphological operations are possible for each relevant word, and are also required by the syntactic environment suggest that they belong to inflection (cf. section 1.3 and Art. 62). A particular telling example of this is the category of possessive adjectives in Sorbian. In this language, denominal adjectives exhibit transparency as to gender of their nominal bases, a kind of transparency that is typically expected from inflection, not from derivation. The following example illustrates this transparency (Corbett 1987: 303):

(4) mojeho muzˇ]N -ow]A -a sotra 1.sg-masc.sg.gen husband ’s fem.sg.nom sister ‘my husband’s sister’ In this example, the possessive pronoun mojeho agrees in gender with the nominal stem muzˇ, whereas muzˇowa, with the adjectival suffix -ow, agrees with the head noun sotra in gender and case. 1.2. Obligatoriness The second criterion found in the literature is that derivation is optional, whereas inflection is obligatory. For instance, given that Latin nouns are inflected for number and case, each Latin noun must be inflected for these two categories, and has an ending indicating number and case. Whether this applies to all words and/or all languages, depends on one’s analysis. For instance, the English noun book may be claimed to lack a specification for number, which is an inflectional category for English nouns, or considered as specified as

singular by means of a zero-morpheme. In the first analysis, the word book is not specified for number, and thus contradicts the obligatoriness claim. Therefore, the criterion of obligatoriness is not always helpful as a demarcation criterion. 1.3. Paradigms A characteristic difference between inflection and derivation is that inflection is often organized in terms of paradigms. Each cell in the paradigm specifies the form of a word for a particular value (property) of the relevant inflectional categories, such as number, person, tense, and case. A consequence of this view is the assumption of zero-markers in case there is no explicit marking for a particular inflectional property; thus a singular noun as book is given the morphological analysis


book-ø because book fills the cell for noun singular. The same applies to the expression of present tense in works which is analyzed as work-ø-s ‘work-pres-3.sg’. This difference between inflection and derivation seems, however, to be relativized by morphologists who assume zero-morpheme in derivation. Given data such as the following from Dutch: (5) val]V ‘fall’ val]N ‘fall’ vang]V ‘catch’ vang]V-st]N ‘catch’ beloof]V ‘promise’ belof]V-te]N ‘promise’ we may reason that each verb has a corresponding deverbal event noun with a nominalizing marker that is expressed as -st in the case of vang, -te in the case of beloof, and as zero in the case of val. This reasoning seems to presuppose that each verb has a paradigmatic cell for a deverbal event noun. However, there is a difference with inflectional zero-morphemes, because derivational zeromorphemes are only assumed if there are also non-zero morphemes for the relevant morphological category. Whereas we may assume a zero-morpheme for the English singular nouns without there being an overt counterpart, in derivational morphology at least one overt marker for the morphological category involved is usually required, the overt analogue criterion. This criterion then distinguishes derivation from inflection (cf. Sanders 1988). Related to the paradigmatic structure of inflection, we often find that there is no oneto-one correspondence between inflectional properties and their formal expression: two or more properties may be expressed by the same form, or vice versa (Matthews 1991; cf. also Art. 64, 65). An inflectional property will be expressed in more than one way if the language involved has inflection classes (declensions for nouns, and conjugations for verbs); each class may have its own formal expression for a particular array of inflectional properties. Whereas in Latin mensa ‘table’ the properties ‘nominative’ and ‘singular’ are expressed by the suffix -a, the same properties are expressed by -us in the noun domus ‘house’. On the other hand, we also find syncretism (Art. 66) i.e. certain cells in the paradigm are filled with the same word-form: mens-is is both the dative and the ablative plural for mensa. A characteristic of inflectional paradigms in many languages is that the formation of the inflectional forms involves more than one

363 stem form. Latin, for instance, uses three stem forms for each verb, one for the present tense, one for the perfect, and one for the past participle. Thus, the verb ponere ‘to put’ has the stem forms pone-, posu-, and posit-, as in pone-o ‘I put’, posu-i ‘I have put’, positus ‘put (past participle)’ (cf. Art. 62). This type of stem allomorphy is nevertheless no exclusive characteristic of inflection: we also find cases where different stem forms of a base word have to be used in derivation. For instance, in Germanic languages many non-native words have two stem forms, one for native derivational morphology, and another one for non-native derivation. A word like drama has two stem forms, drama- as in the plural form dramas, and dramat-, as in dramat-ic (Booij 1997). Since the words of an inflectional paradigm are more closely connected to each other than derivationally related words, analogy applies more frequently within inflection. For instance, whereas Latin honos ‘honor’ changed to honor because of the genitive form honor-is (from underlying honos-is, through a rule that turns intervocalic 兩s兩 into [r]), a case of analogy, the derived adjective honestus ‘honest’ kept its 兩s兩. 1.4. Generality and productivity A number of properties of inflection reflect the basic generalizations concerning the differences between inflection and derivation discussed above. First, if inflection is obligatory in the sense that for each word there is a paradigm of which the cells have to be filled (1.2), we expect that all words of the relevant category undergo the pertinent inflectional rules. That is, inflectional rules tend to be general (apply to all relevant words) and are productive (that is, new word-forms can be made in accordance with the rule). This is the main reason for considering certain types of class-changing morphology discussed in 1.1 as inflection. Productivity of inflectional patterns is certainly a universal tendency, but not without exceptions: we do find paradigmatic gaps, i.e. words for which certain inflectional forms are not available. Dutch has a number of complex verbs that only exist in the infinitive, and do not have finite forms, for instance bloemlezen ‘to make an anthology’. French has a number of verbs for which not all tense forms can be formed. The verb frire ‘to fry’, for example, has no plural forms for the present indicative (Morin 1995). Moreover, the

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property of generality does not always hold. In English many nouns do not have a plural form at all (courage, food, grace, March, assuredness, etc.), and many English adjectives do not have comparative or superlative forms (instead, one has to use more/most ⫹ adjective). Conversely, languages may also have pluralia tantum, i.e. nouns that only occur in the plural, such as Dutch Alpen ‘Alps’, notulen ‘minutes’ and hurken ‘haunches’. 1.5. Semantic transparency Another corollary of the more general and productive nature of inflection is that it is semantically more transparent than derivation. Whereas derived words often have a meaning that is not purely a compositional function of the meaning of its morphological constituents, this is very rarely the case with inflection. Exceptions are some plural nouns: brethren has the special meaning ‘members of a religious community’ that brothers does not have necessarily, and whereas cloth means ‘woven material’, the plural clothes has the meaning ‘garments’. Such inflectional forms exhibit the phenomenon of lexical split: the semantic relation between two formally related words is no longer transparent. It is a pervasive phenomenon in derivation, and relatively rare in inflection. The criterion of semantic regularity is also involved in the issue whether the system of conjugational classes in Hebrew (the binyanim) and other Semitic languages is a matter of inflection or of derivation. Since the different binyanim of a verbal root often have unpredictable meaning aspects, one is inclined to consider this system as derivation. For instance, the verbal root qtl has the following active binyanim (the forms given are the 3.sg.masc.perf. forms (Aronoff 1994: 124)): (6) quatal ‘to kill’, niqual ‘to kill oneself’, qittel ‘to massacre’, hiqtil ‘to cause to kill’, hitquattel ‘to kill oneself’ On the other hand, the fact that the binyanim of a verbal root such as qtl ‘to kill’ form a kind of paradigm reminds us of inflection. The best interpretation appears to be that binyanim are inflectional classes, and that Hebrew derives new verbs by changing the inflectional class (binyan) of a verb. That is, transposition of conjugational class is a form of derivation (Aronoff 1994).

1.6. Psycholinguistic differences The differences between derivation and inflection outlined in the preceding sections may also have a psycholinguistic reflex in that products of derivation will more readily be stored in the mental lexicon, whereas inflectional forms, being mostly regular and formed according to productive rules, will often be made ‘on the spot’ (cf. Art 165). This will in particular be the case for languages with rich inflectional systems, for which it is simply impossible to store all the possible inflectional forms of a lexeme. The distinction between storage and rule does not completely coincide, however, with that between inflection and derivation. Irregular inflectional forms, and regular forms with a high token frequency appear to be stored, whereas regular inflectional forms with a low frequency are produced by rule (Stemberger & MacWhinney 1988). On the other hand, there are very productive and regular derivational categories that can easily be extended by rule, and for which it is therefore implausible that all its members are stored in the mental lexicon. This is in particular the case for languages with agglutinating morphology like Turkish where with one root we may have millions of different word forms which cannot possibly be stored (Hankamer 1989). A related observation reported in the literature is that in speech errors inflectional morphemes are much more easily put in the wrong place than derivational morphemes. The distinction between inflection and derivation has also been investigated in studies of aphasia, with unclear conclusions. Badecker & Caramazza (1989) investigated the language of an Italian aphatic who made many inflectional errors, but almost no derivational ones. They therefore concluded that the grammar must distinguish inflection and derivation, although, as they point out, this does not imply that inflection and derivation belong to two different components of the grammar (as in the split morphology hypothesis, cf. 2). On the other hand, there are also speakers with agrammatism (Broca aphatics with poor syntax and almost no function words) whose inflectional morphology is not affected, and as well preserved as their derivational morphology (De Bleser & Bayer 1988). A survey of possible psycholinguistic differences between inflection and derivation is given in Bertinetto (1995).


1.7. Recursivity A consequence of the functional differences between derivation and inflection is that, whereas an inflectional process is applied only once to a word in order to create a word form that fills a cell of the paradigm, derivational morphology may apply recursively because each derivational step may add some additional meaning. For instance, in the Dutch adjective werke-loos-heids-loos ‘being without unemployment’, the suffix -loos ‘without’ occurs twice. Recursive application of derivational morphology is also found for a number of languages in the domain of evaluative morphology. For instance, we find two consecutive diminutive (endearment) suffixes in Polish koteczek, underlying form 兩 kot-ekek 兩 ‘dear little cat’, with two instances of the diminutive suffix -ek, and in Afrikaans huisie-tjie ‘dear little house’ (-ie and -tjie are allomorphs of the diminutive suffix). The possibility of recursivity in derivation reflects the fact that derivational morphology often consists of the linear concatenation of morphemes, similar to compounding, whereas inflection is often of the fusional, non-agglutinative type. 1.8. Syntactic relevance An important demarcation criterion often proposed in the literature is that inflection is that part of morphology that is relevant to syntax (e.g. Anderson 1982: 587). Particular inflectional forms of words may be required by the syntactic context, i.e. they are determined by agreement or rection (i.e. government). This is what is called contextual inflection in Booij (1994). Typical examples are agreement in number and person between subject and finite verb, and the selection of particular case forms of nouns by verbs and prepositions. Note, however, that not all inflection is dependent on syntax. For instance, the number of a noun in subject position is not determined by syntactic context, but is a matter of free choice by the speaker. That is, there is also inherent inflection (e.g. number of nouns, tense, aspect, comparatives, and superlatives), which is closer to derivation than contextual inflection. The distinction between inherent and contextual inflection is reflected by the fact that inherent inflection tends to be more idiosyncratic than contextual inflection (lexical split, defective paradigms, forms without base words, etc., cf. Booij 1994).

365 This difference between inherent and contextual inflection has also been observed by Kuryłowicz who distinguished between inflectional categories with a primarily syntactic function such as case and inflectional categories with a primarily semantic or autonomous function. He pointed out that number is “a semantic trait of the noun” (Kuryłowicz 1964: 31), and that “degrees of comparison […] represent the autonomous inflection of the adjective. This inflection is intrinsically semantic and never assumes a special syntactic function” (Kuryłowicz 1964: 34). The criterion that syntactically relevant morphology is inflection is not so easy to apply in all cases. Note that derivation is also relevant to syntax in that it often determines the syntactic category and the syntactic valency of the words it creates. For instance, the Dutch prefix be- creates transitive verbs from verbs and nouns. The transitivity effect shows that be-prefixation is syntactically relevant. Yet, we consider be-prefixation derivation, because of its potential for word class transposition, and the often unpredictable meaning of the be-verb. We meet a similar problem when we want to determine whether the formation of adverbs in -ly in English is inflection or derivation. The use of the adverb(ial form) happily in They sang happily is required by the syntactic context. This does not necessarily imply that -ly suffixation is a matter of inflection: one might also say that the syntactic context requires an adverb, and that suffixation with -ly is the morphological answer to this need, i.e. morphology creates adverbs. Similarly, the use of a than NP phrase requires the use of an adjective, as in John is bigger than Peter, but we can also use the comparative form without a than-phrase. On the other hand, in the noun phrase type something ⫹ adjective, e.g. something good, the Dutch equivalent is the phrase iets goeds in which the class-changing nominalizing suffix -s is obligatorily added to the adjective goed ‘good’. That is, what we meet with here is syntactically required word class changing derivation. Thus, the criterion of syntactic relevance does not always distinguish between derivation and inflection (cf. van Marle 1996). 1.9. Order of morphemes In a complex word with both derivation and inflection, inflection is usually peripheral with respect to derivation. For instance, in

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the Dutch diminutive moedertjes ‘little mothers’, the diminutive suffix -tje precedes the plural suffix -s, and a form like *moederstje is ill formed. This is one of the most important formal reasons for distinguishing between inflection and derivation: derivational suffixes are not attached to words in the concrete sense, but to stems, i.e. words minus their inflectional endings (in the Italian example given in 1.1, the diminutive suffix -ino is not attached to ragazzo ‘boy’, but to the stem ragazz-). The peripherality of inflection has been stated as a universal by Greenberg (1963: 93): (7) “Universal 28. If both the derivation and the inflection follow the root, or they both precede the root, the derivation is always between the root and the inflection.” Some morphologists have claimed that German diminutives such as Kinderchen ‘small children’ are counterexamples to the claim that inflection is always peripheral with respect to derivation, because the plural morpheme -er precedes the diminutive suffix -chen. However, it is not so certain that the morpheme -er in this example has a plural function; it can also be reinterpreted as an extension of the stem of the lexeme Kind ‘child’; this implies that the plurality is expressed by zero, just as is the case for all other words in -chen such as Mädchen ‘girl’. As we saw in 1.8, inherent inflection appears to share a lot of properties with derivation; this is in line with the generalization that contextual inflection tends to be peripheral with respect to inherent inflection. For instance, in Dutch finite verbs, the (contextually determined) number suffix is peripheral with respect to the (inherent) tense-suffix, e.g. werk-te-n ‘work-past-pl’. Morphologists who do not accept a rigid distinction between inflection and derivation, have tried to establish principles for the ordering of affixes within a complex word. The best known proposal is that of Bybee (1985). According to her, the order of affixes is determined by the degree of relevance of an affix for the meaning of the word. Since derivational affixes such as the causative suffix, have a considerable and specific effect on the meaning of the word, and thus have a higher semantic relevance, they occur close to the stem, whereas affixes for aspect, tense and the like are more peripheral: they have more general, hence vaguer meanings. Moreover,

inflectional markers often do not pertain to the meaning of the complex word itself, but express the relation of a word to situation and context. Tense, for example, expresses the time relation between the event or situation expressed by the verb and the moment of speaking, and case expresses the relation of a noun to other parts of the sentence. Bybee (1985: 35) established the following tendencies in the ordering of verbal inflectional markers with respect to the stem: (8) stem-aspect-tense-mood-number/person This scheme reflects that contextual inflection tends to be peripheral with respect to inherent inflection (Booij 1994). To put it differently, syntactically relevant morphemes tend to occur at the periphery, in order to be visible for the syntax (Williams 1981). For instance, as Greenberg pointed out, there is a strong universal tendency for case affixes to be peripheral with respect to number affixes. This is in line with the observation that inherent inflection is more like derivation than contextual inflection (Greenberg 1963: 95): (9) “Universal 39. Where morphemes of both number and case are present and both follow or precede the noun base, the expression of number almost always comes between the noun base and the expression of case.” In sum, the following universal tendency appears to occur: contextual inflection is peripheral with respect to inherent inflection, and inherent inflection is peripheral with respect to derivation. This generalization therefore supports the inflection-derivation distinction.

2.

Split morphology?

The differences between inflection and derivation discussed above have led some linguists to assume an organizational model of the grammar in which there is a strict separation of derivation and inflection. Derivation is located in a pre-syntactic morphological component and functions to enrich the lexicon. Inflection, on the other hand, is located in a post-syntactic component of morphological spell-out rules, since the correct inflectional form of a word depends on its position in syntactic structure. This model is called the model of split morphology (Perlmutter 1988), and is also advocated in Anderson (1982; 1992). An additional reason for this separa-

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tion is that, whereas in derivational morphology there is usually a one-to-one relation between form and meaning, this is different for inflection, since more than one inflectional category may be expressed by one morpheme (e.g. number and case in Latin), or one inflectional category by more than one morpheme (e.g. the Greek perfect is expressed both by reduplication, a particular suffix, and a specific ending: lyo ⫺ le-ly-k-a ‘I have loosened’). Therefore, inflection rules are seen as realizational rules or spell-out rules that specify the formal expression of each array of inflectional properties. A variant of this organizational model is proposed in Beard (1994): derivation is presyntactic as far as semantic and syntactic properties are concerned, inflection is postsyntactical. Both derivational properties (e.g. agent, action), and inflectional ones are spelled out by the same realizational component. The reason for this conflation of the formal expression of derivational and inflectional categories is that derivation and inflection often make use of the same affixes. For instance, the Dutch suffix -s expresses both ‘3.sg.pres’ for verbs, ‘plural’ for nouns, and deadjectival nominalization as in goed-s ‘the good’, and English -er is both the comparative and the deverbal agentive suffix. It should be realized, however, that the fact that the choice of a particular inflectional form is determined by syntax does not necessarily imply that inflection is post-syntactic. One can also assume that inflection applies pre-syntactically, and that rules such as subject-verb agreement only have a checking function: they check whether the relevant morphosyntactic properties of words in a specific syntactic construction are compatible. For instance, since the English nouns people and books are marked as plural, the second due to an inflectional process, they both require a plural finite verb if they are the head of a subject noun phrase. That is, the presence of a singular finite verb will qualify such a sentence as ungrammatical. The position that all morphology is presyntactic is called strong lexicalism, and the position that only word-formation is pre-syntactic is called weak lexicalism. An additional argument for the split morphology hypothesis is that it predicts that inflection does not feed derivation, i.e. that we never find inflectional morphemes inside derivational morphemes. Thus, this model di-

rectly accounts for the peripherality of inflection with respect to derivation. Another organizational variant in which derivation and inflection are not completely separated, but distinguished within the lexical component, is the hypothesis of level-ordered morphology (Kiparsky 1985). In this model, a variant of strong lexicalism, morphological processes are assigned to different, ordered strata or levels in the lexicon. The idea then is that derivation is located at an earlier level (or earlier levels, if more than one derivation level is assumed) than (regular) inflection. This ordering predicts that inflection cannot feed derivation. On the other hand, such an organizational model maintains the possibility that derivational and inflectional processes induce the same phonological processes, which is often, but not always, the case (cf. Art. 35). The basic problem for the split morphology hypothesis is that inflection sometimes does feed derivation (Booij 1994; 1996). For instance, plural nouns occur in Dutch derived words with the collective suffix -dom such as scholierendom ‘set of pupils’. In most European languages past participles feed deadjectival word formation, as in Dutch gevreesd-heid ‘feared-ness’. Similar observations on Romance languages can be found in Rainer (1996). In Breton, the diminutive suffix is not only attached to singular nouns, but also to plural nouns such as bagou` ‘boats’ (Stump 1990: 104): (10) sg. dim. pl. pl. dim. bag bag-ig bag-ou` bag-ou`-ig-ou` Breton plural nouns also feed two other derivational processes, the formation of denominal verbs and of deverbal adjectives (Stump 1990: 108): (11) aval ‘apple’ aval-ou` ‘pl’ aval-ou`-a ‘to look for apples’ In sum, both the split morphology hypothesis and the level ordering hypothesis have problems with the types of interaction of inflection and word formation presented above. The discussion in this section up to now presupposed that derivation is always presyntactic. Even that presupposition is not shared by all linguists. Certain types of derivational morphology can be analysed as syntactic incorporation. For instance, in language with deverbal causative verb formation, the causative suffix might be analysed as the verbal head of a clause that is moved

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to a higher clause, and is adjoined to the verb of that higher clause, a case of Head Movement (Baker 1988). The movement is obligatory because the cause-verb is specified as a bound morpheme that has to be attached to another word in surface structure. In such analyses the difference between derivation and inflection cannot coincide with the distinction between pre-syntactic and post-syntactic morphology.

3.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1982), “Where’s Morphology?”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 571⫺612 Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Badecker, William & Caramazza, Alfonso (1989), “A Lexical Distinction between Inflection and Derivation”. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 108⫺116 Baker, Mark (1988), Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: Chicago University Press Beard, Robert (1994), Lexeme-morpheme-basemorphology. Albany/NY: State of New York University Press

Corbett, Greville (1987), “The Morphology/Syntax Interface: Evidence from Possessive Adjectives in Slavonic”. Language 63, 299⫺345 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989), “Prototypical Differences between Inflection and Derivation”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42, 3⫺10 Dyk, Janet (1994), Participles in Biblical Hebrew: A Computer-assisted Study of Old Testament Hebrew. Amsterdam: VU University Press Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar, with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Language. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 73⫺113 Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (1988, eds.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press Hankamer, Jorge (1989), “Morphological Parsing and the Lexicon”. In: Marslen-Wilson, William (ed.), Lexical Representation and Process. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press, 392⫺408 Haspelmath, Martin (1996), “Category-changing Inflection”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 54⫺66 Haspelmath, Martin & König, Ekkehard (1995, eds.), Converbs in Cross-linguistic Perspective: Structure and Meaning of Adverbial Verb Forms (Gerunds, Adverbal Participles). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

Bertinetto, Pier Marco (1995), “Compositionality and Non-compositionality in Morphology”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Burani, Cristina (eds.), Crossdisciplinary Approaches to Morphology. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 9⫺36

Kiparsky, Paul (1985), “Some Consequences of Lexical Phonology”. Phonology Yearbook 2, 85⫺ 138

Bleser, Ria de & Bayer, Josef (1988), “On the Role of Inflectional Morphology in Agrammatism”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 45⫺70

Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1964), The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Winter Universitätsverlag

Booij, Geert (1989), “Complex Verbs and the Theory of Level Ordering”. In: Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1989. Dordrecht: Foris, 21⫺30

Marle, Jaap van (1996), “The Unity of Morphology: On the Interwovenness of the Derivational and Inflectional Dimension of the Word”. In: Booij & Van Marle (eds.), 67⫺82

Booij, Geert E. (1994), “Against Split Morphology”. In: Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1993. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 27⫺49

Matthews, Peter H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [11974]

Booij, Geert E. (1996), “Inherent versus Contextual Inflection and the Split Morphology Hypothesis”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 1⫺16 Booij, Geert E. (1997), “Autonomous Morphology and Paradigmatic Relations”. In: Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1996. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 35⫺54 Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (1996, eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1995. Dordrecht: Kluwer Bybee, Joan (1985), Morphology: The Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: Benjamins

Klamer, Marian (1994), Kambera, a Language of Eastern Indonesia. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics (HIL Dissertations 11)

Morin, Yves-Charles (1995), “De l’acquisition de la morphologie: le cas des verbes morphologiquement de´fectifs du français”. In: Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, Hava & Kupferman, Lucien (eds.), Tendences Rećentes en Linguistique Française et Geńe´rale. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 295⫺310 Perlmutter, David (1988), “The Split Morphology Hypothesis: Evidence from Yiddish”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 79⫺100 Plank, Frans (1994), “Inflection and Derivation”. In: Asher, R. E. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol III. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1671⫺1678

38. Inflection and derivation Rainer, Franz (1996), “Inflection inside Derivation: Evidence from Spanish and Portuguese”. In: Booij & Van Marle (eds.), 83⫺92 Sanders, Gerald (1988), “Zero Derivation and the Overt Analogue Criterion”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 155⫺175 Scalise, Sergio (1986), “Inflection and Derivation”. Linguistics 22, 561⫺581 Stemberger, Joseph Paul & MacWhinney, Brian (1988), “Are Inflected Forms Stored in the Lexicon?”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 101⫺116

369 Stump, Gregory T. (1990), “Breton Inflection and the Split Morphology Hypothesis”. In: Hendrick, Randall (ed.), The Syntax of the Modern Celtic Languages. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press (Syntax and Semantics 23), 97⫺119 Williams, Edwin (1981), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’ ”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274


VI. Einheiten der morphologischen Struktur Units of morphological structure 39. Lexical, morphological and syntactic symbolization 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Introduction Symbolization types Reduction in phonetic content Fusion Grammatical factors Semantic factors Meanings possible for each type of expression References

1.

Introduction

Languages offer a variety of means of expression, especially for grammatical notions. Morphology, which is concerned with the combination of meaningful units into words, can only be fully understood in the context of the complete array of expression and combination types. In this article, similarities and differences among the major expression types or symbolization types ⫺ syntactic, free grammatical, inflectional, derivational, compositional and lexical ⫺ are described in terms of a series of continua with both diachronic and cognitive motivation (cf. 2). These continua involve phonetic, morphophonemic, grammatical and semantic criteria (cf. 3⫺6). The relation between the formal and semantic criteria is non-arbitrary, and thus part of the discussion will be directed toward explaining which meanings are expressed by which symbolization type (cf. 7).

2.

Symbolization types

Two or more meaningful units may be combined in different ways. The form of combination with the least fusion between the two units and fewest restrictions on possible cooccurrence is syntactic expression, in which two meanings are expressed in two independent words. For instance, the causative notion and an intransitive verbal notion are expressed separately in the phrases cause to die or make [something] fall. In morphological

expression, the two meaningful units are expressed in distinct morphemes, but they are combined into a single word. In English, the causative suffix -en on an adjective yields the meaning ‘cause to become …’, e.g. blacken, straighten. In Turkish, the causative suffix can be added to dynamic intransitive verbs, as in düs¸ürmek ‘[to] make fall, drop’ vs. düs¸mek ‘[to] fall’. Lexical expression involves the combination of various semantic features into a single indivisible morpheme which has lexical status, that is, functions as a noun, verb, adjective or other lexical category and has material content. For instance, walk and wade describe a similar type of movement, but wade includes the additional semantic specification that the movement be through shallow water. Lexical distinctions sometimes correspond to distinctions made grammatically elsewhere, such as the English distinction between die and kill (‘cause to die’) and fall and drop (‘cause to fall, allow to fall’). Within morphological symbolization it is customary to distinguish between inflectional and derivational morphology (cf. Art. 38). Inflectional morphemes are those bound grammatical morphemes that belong to obligatory categories, that is, categories from which one member must be chosen given the grammatical context. English inflections include the categories number (singular, plural) for nouns and tense (present, past) for verbs. Besides affixation, inflectional expression includes other formal processes, such as changes in the base, as in English ring vs. rang (cf. Ch. VIII). Derivational morphemes are also bound, that is, either affixal or expressed through stem changes, but they do not belong to obligatory categories. They also may change the lexical category of the stem, as when the adjective happy becomes the abstract noun happiness, or the noun reason becomes the adjective reasonable (cf. Art. 86, 89). Composition or compounding may also be considered a type of morpholog-

371

39. Lexical, morphological and syntactic symbolization

ical symbolization. It involves the juxtaposition in a single word of two lexical units ⫺ two morphemes that have lexical status and material content. Thus headache and typewriter are compounds (cf. Art. 37, 86⫺88). Syntactic expression may occur in more than one type. The words involved in syntactic expression may be lexical or grammatical. In the latter case we speak of free grammatical morphemes. Examples include non-bound grammatical morphemes such as articles, prepositions or verbal auxiliaries. Free grammatical morphemes are usually associated with a particular construction, which may also involve certain affixes, and which expresses grammatical meaning. English be going to, for example, uses the erstwhile lexical stem go, the grammatical morphemes -ing and to, and the copula be, whose status is somewhat intermediate between lexical and grammatical. This construction qualifies as free grammatical because although the component parts are fused (as in gonna) and the construction has a fixed position, it is not affixed to a lexical unit. The term periphrasis is sometimes appropriate for constructions involving non-bound morphemes in their expression (cf. Art. 68, 78). Clitics are also a subtype of free grammatical expression. Clitics are grammatical morphemes that behave as though they are non-bound in terms of their distribution ⫺ that is, they may change their position under different grammatical conditions (e.g. Spanish clitic object pronouns precede the finite verb, as in me lo dio´ ‘(s)he gave it to me’, but follow the imperative and nonfinite verbs, as in da´melo ‘give it to me!’), or they are in construction with a phrase or clause rather than a single lexical unit (e.g. the English possessive, as in the man next door’s car, where ’s attaches to the end of the noun phrase). Despite the distributional independence, however, clitics are unstressed and behave as though they are phonologically part of the preceding or following word (cf. Art. 41). Thus clitics represent an intermediate type between syntactic and morphological symbolization.

The boundaries between these different symbolization types are not discrete, but rather each type is a focal point on a continuum. Therefore the different phonetic, morphophonemic, grammatical and semantic properties of the types will be presented in terms of several continuous scales (cf. 3⫺7).

3.

Reduction in phonetic content

As a general rule, lexical morphemes tend to be longer than grammatical morphemes in terms of the number of constituent phonological segments. In addition, affixes, especially inflections, tend to use only a limited number of the phonological distinctions available in a language. For instance, English uses only coronal consonants and the reduced vowel in its inflectional suffixes. This correspondence creates a kind of iconicity (cf. Art. 30) in which the more specific, less predictable and perhaps contextually more important semantic content of lexical morphemes is expressed by the longer, less predictable phonological material (cf. Givoń 1990: 969). The actual mechanism that creates this iconicity is, however, diachronic. As lexical material erodes into grammatical material in the process of grammaticalization, semantic content and phonological content are eroded in parallel, producing a situation in which the units that have the least semantic content are also the phonologically most reduced (cf. Bybee et al. 1994; Art. 145). Since free grammatical expression evolves out of lexical units in syntactic combination, we can observe a difference in phonetic content between freely formed syntactic constructions and grammaticized periphrastic ones. Thus going to has its full phonetic realization in I am going to the library, while in its grammatical use, as in I think I’m gonna cry, both the vowels and the consonants are substantially reduced. Periphrastic constructions are in turn usually longer than inflections. This relationship is summarized in (1), where the arrow points in the direction of increasing reduction.

(1) Syntax Free grammatical expression Inflection ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ reduction

A similar relationship can be seen between compounds and derivational morphemes. Both elements of the compound are lexical and enter into the compound as unreduced, except that the stress may be reduced on one

element. If one element is frequently used in compounds it may begin to reduce in size. Thus the -ly suffix that is used on nouns to make adjectives (e.g. friendly) and on adjectives to make adverbs (e.g. quickly) derives

372

VI. Einheiten der morphologischen Struktur

from the Old English -liçe ‘having the appearance or form of’ which in turn derives from a noun meaning ‘body’. As this one element of the compound became frequently used in many different compounds, it lost its final consonant, unlike the independent form like which has a long vowel and final consonant. (2) shows this diachronic relation: (2) Composition Derivation ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ reduction

4.

Fusion

The degree of fusion of two elements can be determined by both grammatical and phonological criteria. The grammatical criteria include the extent to which the relative position of one is fixed with regard to the other, and

the extent to which other elements, particularly open class elements, are allowed to intervene between the two. Phonological criteria are applicable in some languages: two units are more fused if the combined unit is treated as a word by stress and by other rules, such as vowel harmony rules, whose domain is the word. Morphophonemic fusion is manifest in allomorphic variation that is conditioned in the combination. Such variation includes effects that the stem may have on an affix, either phonologically motivated or more arbitrary, as in the regular alternates of the English past tense (as in walked, played, and waited) or the more arbitrary alternates of the past participle (-ed vs. -en), and effects that the affix has on the stem, as in English past tense forms kept and left (cf. keep and leave). The continuum (3) shows how all of the expression types are ranked with regard to fusion:

(3) Syntax Free grammatical expression Composition Inflection Derivation ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ less fused

The freest type of combination and the one with the least fusion is the syntactic combination of lexical units, although there are some syntactic combinations, such as idioms, that are relatively fixed. Free grammatical expression is by definition not affixal, but some degree of fusion exists to the extent that relative positions are fixed and the construction as a whole has meaning that is not just derivable from the sum of the parts. Compounds also exhibit fusion since no lexical elements can come between the parts of a compound, and there is usually some prosodic feature of compounds that treats them as a single unit. Inflection and derivation (which derive diachronically from free grammatical expression and compounding respectively) are by definition affixal and thus more fused than any other expression types. Again by definition affixes allow no open class items to intervene between them and the stem. As to the degree of fusion, this can be further differentiated by the extent of allomorphy in stem and suffix, since the more the two units are phonetically compressed, the greater their effect on one other will be. The most extreme

more fused

degree of fusion in derivation and inflection is pure stem change with no affix. Inflection and derivation cover approximately the same formal range of expression, both allowing affixes and stem change, but there are probably more derivational categories that can have an effect on the stem than there are inflectional ones, since agreement, tense and mood are very infrequently expressed by stem change or even accompanied by stem change (cf. Bybee 1985: 36f.). Greater fusion in both compounding and derivation leads to lexical expression, although in both cases the process usually involves meaning as well as form. For instance, the fusion of breakfast involved the reduction of both vowels, and the loss of secondary stress on the second syllable. Derived words can also undergo similar fusion as when the productively formed highness, e.g. in the phrase Your Highness, loses secondary stress on the suffix and comes to rhyme with minus. The fusion criterion gives us two diachronic continua, one leading to inflectional expression (4) and one leading to lexical expression (5):

(4) Syntax Free grammatical expression Inflection ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ fusion

(5) Syntax Composition Derivation Lexical expression ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ fusion

373


5.

Grammatical factors

The major criterion that distinguishes lexical and grammatical morphemes is membership in open vs. closed classes, where class refers to a set of mutually exclusive forms and open vs. closed refers to the ease with which the class accepts new members. Even this criterion is scalar, since both parameters are continuous. First is the definition of classhood, which relies upon shared distribution, as this distribution may be more or less heavily governed by grammatical rules. Derivation and compounding are word-formation devices in the sense that they create new lexical words that then enter into grammatical structure according to the rules for their category, but their internal make-up is not influenced by properties of the clause. On the other hand, both bound and free grammatical morphemes are heavily restricted in their distribution. The second parameter is the size of the class: open classes are always large, but closed classes may be small or large. In inflection, we often find categories with only one overt member contrasting with a zero, while in a system that fuses the expression of person, number and gender of subject and object, one class may have dozens of members (e.g. Maung, of North Australia; cf. Capell & Hinch 1970: 66⫺85). Periphrastic classes can be larger also: while the class of English modal auxiliaries is heavily bound by grammatical rules, it still contains nine members ⫺ somewhat on the large side for a closed class in the languages of the world. Categories that are usually thought of as lexical may also be represented by closed classes. Adjectives and adverbs in some languages constitute closed classes (cf. Dixon 1977; Art. 74). Nouns that may be incorporated often constitute a fixed set, which nonetheless may have as many as a hundred members (e.g. in Tiwi; cf. Osborne 1974: 47⫺50; Art. 88). Another important grammatical criterion is the one that best distinguishes inflection from derivation: the criterion of obligatoriness (cf. Greenberg 1954; Matthews 21991: 43⫺54; Anderson 1982: 585⫺591). Obligatory categories are associated with the particular structure of the clause or phrase to such an extent that one member of the category must appear. Thus English noun phrases with count nouns require marking for number. Every Spanish finite verb must have an indication of tense or aspect (either present, future, preterite or imperfective), mood, person

and number. While inflectional categories are by definition obligatory, periphrastic categories may or may not be. An example of a non-bound obligatory category is the English determiner system, since a singular noun must have some type of determiner and the lack of a determiner is meaningful, signalling a non-specific noun (e.g. rabbits multiply quickly). On the other hand, derivation, compounding and lexical expression are never obligatory in this sense. A consequence of obligatoriness is that every stem must occur with some member of the obligatory category. Thus gaps in inflectional paradigms are relatively rare, and occur only where they are semantically motivated (e.g. the first person singular of the verb ‘to rain’ may be missing; cf. Art. 67). On the other hand, idiosyncratic gaps in the application of derivational morphology are common. Thus we have prevent, prevention but not *preventment and resent, resentment but not *resention.

6.

Semantic factors

The phonetic, morphophonemic, and grammatical parameters governing the expression types correlate to some extent with certain semantic parameters. Some of them are concerned with the type of semantic content found in the individual unit (cf. 6.1), while a second set is concerned with the semantic results of the fusion of two units (cf. 6.2). 6.1. Semantic content Lexical content may be characterized as basic or concrete, describing as it does objects, actions, and qualities, and grammatical content may be called relational: it constructs the fundamental form of the proposition by tying concrete concepts together (cf. Sapir 1921: 93). Relational concepts may be more or less concrete; the more concrete ones are expressed by derivation, and the less concrete ones by inflection and word order (cf. Art. 27). Lexical content is also more specific, with each unit being specified by multiple features, while relational content is highly generalized and sometimes fully described by a single feature, such as ‘before the moment of speech’ (for past tense), or ‘more than one’ (for plural). Of course, lexical items may be more or less specific, with a noun like cup being more specific than thing, and the verb calculate being more specific than do. Grammatical meaning may also be more or less specific; a dual is more specific than a plural, a completive, meaning ‘to do something thor-

374


oughly and completely, totally affecting the patient’ as in Tucano bapeóàmi ‘he ate all of it’, more specific than a simple past or perfec-

tive ‘he ate’ (cf. Sorenson 1969: 174). In general, however, the following scale holds for generality of meaning:

(6) Inflection Free grammatical expression Derivation Lexical expression ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ general relational

The degree of specificity or generality of the semantic content of a morpheme is directly related to the size of the class that morpheme belongs to. Inflectional morphemes such as those signalling tense tend to belong to small sets and to have very general meaning. Animate nouns tend to belong to very large sets and to have more specific meaning. A number of recent studies suggest that the range of meanings expressed inflectionally is characterizable as a small universal set (cf. Bybee 1985; Dahl 1985; Ch. XIII⫺XIV). The same can be said for some (perhaps all) areas of derivational morphology (cf. Comrie 1985; Comrie & Thompson 1985; Woodworth 1991), and for free grammatical expression (cf. Dahl 1985; Bybee et al. 1994). Lexical meaning may be somewhat more language-specific, especially the lexical content of verbs, which are more abstract and relational than concrete nouns (cf. Talmy 1985; Gentner 1981). 6.2. Semantic combination In addition to these criteria, which distinguish types of meaning expressed by individual morphemes, differences may be found in the way that meanings are combined in the various expression types. The first difference concerns the predictability versus idiosyncracy of the meaning resulting from the combination of two semantic units (cf. Art. 82). Meanings expressed by word order, such as grammatical relations of subject or object of verb tend to remain stable over different noun and verb categories. Periphrastic constructions and inflections also tend to have predictable meaning across a range of combinations, although there are some cases of inflections that have different interpretations with different stem classes, such as anteriors

specific concrete

or perfectives whose meaning is ‘present state’ with stative predicates. For instance, in Kanuri, the suffix -na` is used for ‘anterior’ (or ‘perfect’) with dynamic predicates, such as ´ısańa` ‘they have arrived’ but for ‘present state’ with stative predicates such as no`ngna` ‘I know’ or raà´kna` ‘I want to, I like to’ (cf. Hutchison 1981: 121f.). Derivational combinations have predictable meaning when they are formed and often retain such predictable meanings, as in English -able, in washable, or curable, but it is also common for derived combinations to take on unpredictable meaning over time. Thus awful no longer means ‘full of awe’ but rather can be used about the object or situation which inspired awe, and is further restricted as an adjective to describing the object or situation as bad, which was not part of the original meaning. As an adverb with -ly the negative sense is lost and it is just an intensifier: This is awfully good. Lexical elements forming a compound have predictable meaning only in the particular speech or cultural context because a variety of relations may hold between the two members of the compound. Thus in air condition the noun is the object, but in air flow it is the subject; in air brush, air is the means or instrument and in aircraft, it is the medium for travel. That compounds are not predictable in meaning becomes evident when one compares them to new or rare derivational combinations, such as ethnicness or ringable, whose parts have a predictable relationship regardless of the context of their use. Lexical expression represents the extreme pole of idiosyncracy, since there is no way to predict the meaning of the sum of the parts as there are no formal parts to be summed. Continuum (7) summarizes the degree of predictability of each symbolization type:

(7) Syntax Free grammatical expression Inflection Derivation Composition ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ predictable

The second parameter in semantic combination, relevance, concerns the extent to which the meaning of one unit directly affects

idiosyncratic

or modifies the meaning of the other (cf. Bybee 1985: 13). Degree of relevance predicts the likelihood that two meaningful elements


will occur together and the degree to which they will have fused expression. On the syntactic level, relevance predicts that the elements internal to the noun phrase and verb phrase will occur adjacent to one another and in general that the linguistic distance corresponds to the conceptual distance (cf. Haiman 1983: 814). With free grammatical and inflectional expression, the relevance principle predicts the ordering of grammatical elements with respect to the lexical stem according to the meaning of the grammatical elements and how relevant the meaning is to the stem. Thus since valence and aspect are the categories that are most exclusively relevant to the verb, they tend to be expressed by elements that are closest to the verb stem ⫺ either by periphrases or affixes that are close in, or by derivation or lexical expression (cf. Bybee 1985; Art. 77). For nouns, gender affects the meaning of the stem more than number or case, and thus tends to be closer to the stem, or to have derivational or lexical expression (cf. Art. 73). Verbal categories such as tense and mood are relevant to the verb, but have the whole proposition in their scope and thus are more commonly ex-

375 pressed by more external affixes and periphrasis, or even clitics. Derivational categories often have a high degree of relevance, evidenced by the fact that the combination of the affix with the stem produces a new word ⫺ that is, there is cohesion in the resulting concept. For instance, causatives may have periphrastic, derivational or lexical expression, but the degree of semantic cohesion of the concepts differs according to expression type. The Japanese periphrastic causatives sin ⫹ sase ‘die ⫹ cause’, and tomar ⫹ sase ‘stop ⫹ cause’ do not mean the same thing as the more fused causatives such as tome ‘stop’ or lexical causatives such as koros ‘kill’. The synthetic forms connote simultaneity of cause and result, with physical contact between causer and causee, while the periphrastic forms allow the inference that the cause was less direct and two events may have been involved (cf. Haiman 1983: 784). This example shows also that in lexical expression the units of meaning are so relevant to one another that they produce a coherent and discrete concept of their own. The scale of degree of relevance of two semantic features to each other is shown in (8):

(8) Syntax Free grammatical expression Inflection Derivation Lexical expression ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ less relevant

7.

Meanings possible for each type of expression

Because of the formal and semantic characteristics of each expression type, certain meanings have a tendency to be expressed in some of these ways but not others. For compounding the mere juxtaposition of lexical items is meaningful. This meaning does not derive from linguistic units with inherent semantic content as in the other expression types, but rather has its source in the inferences that can be made from the linguistic and non-linguistic context. The relationship between the two elements of a compound can be any of the relationships that may hold between the two elements in the categories represented, that is, two nouns, noun-verb, etc. (cf. 6.2). Which relation is intended depends upon the meanings of the two lexical items and the broader context in which the compound is used. Inflection, derivation and free grammatical symbolization express many similar semantic notions. Inflectional expression is

more relevant

used for the smallest, most constrained set of notions, because it must be semantically general enough to be applicable to all (or almost all) lexical stems (cf. Bybee 1985: 16⫺ 19). Derivation tolerates much more lexical idiosyncracy and specificity of meaning. Free grammatical expression is also often specific. Thus in the domain of tense and aspect the more specific and lexically restricted meanings ⫺ completives, inchoatives and iteratives ⫺ may be expressed either periphrastically or derivationally. Progressives are usually periphrastic, and futures are sometimes periphrastic and sometimes inflectional (cf. Dahl 1985: 184⫺189). The more generalized tenses, such as present and past are usually inflectional (although they may be periphrastic), but they are never derivational, as their content is deictic and has the whole proposition in its scope. The more generalized aspects, perfective and imperfective, are almost always inflectional. In the less usual circumstance that perfective and imperfective are expressed derivationally, as they are in Slavic languages, the sense is more specific, in that

376 the perfective expresses the attainment of a limit, and there is considerable lexical idiosyncracy (cf. Dahl 1985: 84⫺89; Art. 109 and 110). The moods and modalities that can be inflectional are again the most generalized ones, those which have a whole proposition in their scope ⫺ subordinating moods, imperatives and epistemic moods. Modalities expressing desire, obligation, or ability most often take free grammatical expression (cf. Bybee 1985: 166; Art. 111). Derivational or periphrastic expression is also possible for valence-changing constructions, such as causative, transitivizers and intransitivizers, and periphrastic expression is possible for voice functions, such as passive, reciprocal and reflexive (cf. Art. 107 and 108). Morphemes indexing person, number and gender agreement on verbs are almost always inflectional, but some languages have a derivational category of “plurality of action” that partially overlaps with number agreement (cf. Art. 100). Morphemes in construction with nouns such as numeral classifiers are usually not bound to the noun, but may have some internal fusion of their own (cf. Art. 75). While case markers are usually bound to the noun if they are postposed, preposed markers of grammatical and locative relations are usually not bound (cf. Art. 102). Definiteness markers may be bound or not bound, but neither case nor definiteness have any derivational counterparts. Plural, on the other hand, which is often inflectionally expressed on nouns, has a derivational counterpart in the collective, and plural in Indo-European languages in some ways resembles derivation (cf. Art. 100 and 101). Gender and similar noun classifications are lexically determined and thus more closely resemble derivational categories, even where the classification interacts thoroughly with case and number (cf. Art. 97). Diminutive and augmentative must also be considered derivational, even where their use is very productive and interacts with inflection (cf. Art. 99). Adjective comparison may be either derivational or periphrastic (cf. Art. 114). Agreement for gender and number in adjectives is inflectional, even though in nouns gender is derivational or lexical (cf. Kuryłowicz 1964). In adjectives gender and number are not inherent to the adjective, but rather an index of the same categories in nouns. Other common derivational processes are those which nominalize verbs and verbalize nouns. Occasionally these same processes


are accomplished periphrastically (cf. Woodworth 1991). Languages utilize the different symbolization types to varying degrees. The wellknown distinction between analytic and synthetic languages is based on the observation that some languages (e.g. Mandarin Chinese), termed analytic, make very little use of inflectional marking and rely instead on syntactic expression and composition, sometimes with derivational morphology as well. Typical synthetic languages (such as Latin), on the other hand, make use of inflectional morphology to a greater degree, while also using the other symbolization types. Since the distinctions between expression types involve both formal and semantic criteria, languages that use certain formal types of expression will express certain types of meaning, and languages that lack certain types of expression will lack certain types of meaning (cf. Sapir 1921). Thus languages without inflection will lack person and number categories and often also lack tense distinctions such as past and present, and the most generalized aspectual distinctions, such as perfective and imperfective (cf. Dahl 1985). On the other hand, if these languages have periphrasis, which they usually do, they may have completive, iterative and progressive aspects (cf. Dahl 1985; Bybee et al. 1994). Some languages have very rich derivational possibilities while others have none, again affecting the types of meaning that are overtly expressed (cf. Art. 115 and 116).

8.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1982), “Where’s Morphology?”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 571⫺612 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9) Bybee, Joan & Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William (1994), The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago, London: Chicago Univ. Press Capell, A[rthur] & Hinch, H. E. (1970), Maung Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Practica 98) Comrie, Bernard (1985), “Causative Verb Formation and Other Verb-Deriving Morphology”. In: Shopen (ed.), 309⫺348 Comrie, Bernard & Thompson, Sandra A. (1985), “Lexical Nominalization”. In: Shopen (ed.), 349⫺ 398

40. Word boundaries Dahl, Östen (1985), Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford, New York: Blackwell Dixon, R[obert] M. W. (1977), “Where Have All the Adjectives Gone?”. Studies in Language 1, 19⫺ 80 [reprinted in: Dixon, R[obert] M. W. (1982), Where Have All the Adjectives Gone? And Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax. Berlin etc.: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 107), 1⫺62] Gentner, Dedre (1981), “Some Interesting Differences between Verbs and Nouns”. Cognition and Brain Theory 4, 161⫺178 Givoń, Talmy (1990), Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction, Vol. II. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Greenberg, Joseph H. (1954), “A Quantitative Approach to the Morphological Typology of Language”. In: Spencer, Robert F. (ed.), Method and Perspective in Anthropology. Papers in Honor of Wilson D. Wallis. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 192⫺220 [reprinted 1960 in International Journal of American Linguistics 26, 178⫺194; also in: Greenberg, Joseph H. (1990), On Language: Selected Writings, ed. by Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer. Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 3⫺25] Haiman, John (1983), “Iconic and Economic Motivation”. Language 59, 781⫺819

377 Hutchison, John P. (1981), A Reference Grammar of the Kanuri Language. Madison: African Studies Program, Univ. of Wisconsin Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1964), The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Winter Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press [11974] Osborne, C[harles] R. (1974), The Tiwi Language. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (Australian Aboriginal Studies 55; Linguistic Series 21) Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace Shopen, Timothy (1985, ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Sorenson, Arthur P. (1969), The Morphology of Tukano. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univ. Talmy, Leonard (1985), “Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms”. In: Shopen (ed.), 57⫺149 Woodworth, Nancy L. (1991), From Noun to Verb and Verb to Noun: A Cross-linguistic Study of Classchanging Morphology. Ph.D. dissertation, State Univ. of New York at Buffalo

Joan Bybee, Albuquerque (U.S.A.)

40. Word boundaries 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Semantic criteria Distributional criteria Phonological criteria Word boundaries in phonological rules Concluding remarks References

1.

Introduction

The main problem to be discussed in this article can be illustrated by asking the question: How many words does its very title, viz. the sequence word boundaries, consist of? The answer obviously depends on what we mean by words (cf. 1.1 and Art. 26). And in order to clarify the notion of word boundaries (cf. 1.3), its relations to other linguistic boundaries should be considered (cf. 1.2). 1.1. Words Most ordinary people who have gone through an elementary school education undoubtedly identify the notion word with or-

thographical word, which can be informally defined as an unbroken sequence of letters, viz. a sequence which contains neither blanks, or spaces, nor commas, parentheses or the like. In that sense, the sequence word boundaries consists of two words. This is quite straightforward, but what if we add a hyphen: word-boundaries? Most people would probably agree that now there is only one word, although nothing else seems to have changed; this appears unproblematic, however, since the definition can easily be adjusted to the effect that a hyphen is allowed within the letter sequence of a single word. But there can be meaningful (as well as meaningless) discussions on this aspect of orthography: To take just one example, should both in so far and insofar be allowed? In such a discussion the argumentation transcends orthography, involving e.g. semantics (is the meaning composed of the meanings of in, so and far ⫺ as is the case with normal words forming syntactic phrases ⫺ or not? cf. 2),

378 morpho-syntax or distribution (can in, so and far occur in any other order, or can anything else be inserted into the sequence? cf. 3), or phonology (is the sequence pronounced with a common (“unifying”) accent, for example, or does it in some way depart from the normal phonological or phonetic makeup of normal single words? cf. 4). It is already clear from the few examples given up to now that different criteria need not give the same result: Sequences which are phonologically, stylistically and semantically indistinguishable (like word boundaries, wordboundaries) may be different orthographically with respect to the number of words they consist of, and sequences which are orthographically and/or phonologically alike may be semantically and/or syntactically different with respect to “wordness”. To take just one example: Danish I ga˚r (e.g. after a full stop), which means either ‘yesterday’ (normally written with a minuscle i, however) or ‘you (pl.) walk’ (written with majuscle I in standard orthography), are pronounced alike (with primary or “main” stress on the syllable ga˚r, and an unstressed first syllable except when the pronoun I has special emphasis), but the former is one word and the latter two words according to distributional criteria (cf. 3), and according to semantic criteria only the former is not obviously divisible (cf. 2). This incongruency between semantics, syntax, orthography and/or phonology can also be seen when one compares the sequence word boundaries with its German and French equivalents which consist of one and three orthographical words, respectively, although there is scarcely any systematic difference in meaning: Wortgrenzen and frontie`res de mot. In this article we shall concentrate on spoken rather than written language, which means that the word forms involved will be mainly phonological words (cf. 4 and 6.1), rather than orthographical words. The distributional criteria to be discussed in 3 also concern word forms and not grammatical words in the technical sense used in this work, although the criteria seem more closely related to syntax and morphology than to phonology. The perspective will be dominantly syntagmatic, and paradigmatic issues, like inflectional paradigms, and categories of lexical items, will only be dealt with in passing. 1.2. Boundaries As the name suggests, word boundaries can be considered a subclass of boundaries (or perhaps as manifestations of boundary phe-


nomena) in general. This class also contains e. g. phrase boundaries and morpheme boundaries (to mention two further types of sign boundaries, one “above” and one “below” word boundaries), as well as e.g. syllable boundaries (which are purely phonological). Boundary phenomena have something interesting in common regardless of the kinds of units they delimit, and sign boundaries can in principle be studied both semantically (cf. 2), grammatically or distributionally (cf. 3), and phonologically (cf. 4 and 5). Significant parts of the study of such boundary phenomena concern the interaction between different “levels” or “components”. 1.3. Word boundaries The topic of this article is word boundaries understood as the demarcation (or delimitation, or separation) between consecutive words in the speech chain. The term word boundary, however, has also been used in a more specific sense within Generative Phonology (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968: 366), viz. as the name of a specific juncture, symbolized as 쒙. The syntagmatic problem of delimiting adjacent words is relevant for word forms, which belong to the expression of language in the terminology of Hjelmslev, viz. in particular phonological words (see 4 and 6.1); for the content of language (see 2); and for words as signs (see 3); cf. Hjelmslev 1943. It must be emphasized, though, that the sign relation is also relevant for the study of the expression and content (otherwise, for example, the study of the expression would not be phonology but “pure phonetics”).

2.

Semantic criteria

It is clear from what was said in the preceding section that semantics alone cannot decide whether we are dealing with one word or a sequence of two words. Further examples of other kinds illustrate this point, e.g. when comparing German Ich esse ‘I eat (or: am eating)’ with Italian mangio, which has the same sense (at least in terms of what is relevant for word delimitation), nobody would deny that the German example consists of two words and the Italian of one word only. It is also clear that phrases can be lexicalized semantically, i.e. acquire or possess a special sense which cannot be derived exclusively from the sense of the constituents

40. Word boundaries

combined with the semantic contribution from the grammatical structure in question, e.g. kick the bucket in the sense of ‘die’. The whole question of lexicalization, involving idioms, iconicity and other complex matters, cannot be dealt with here at all (cf. Art. 30). A particularly clear case illustrating the impossibility of making word delimitation purely on semantic grounds can be seen in examples like the following: artificial florist, old maidish, French jemenfichisme (‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude, from the expression je m’en fiche ‘I don’t give a damn’), and German reitende Artilleriekaserne ‘barracks for riding artillery’ (Togeby 1949: 110). The point of these examples is that, semantically, the derivative ending, or (in the last example) second part of the compound, belongs to the preceding phrase as a whole, although, phonologically, it is just part of the last word of that phrase, the phrases in question being artificial flo(we)r, old maid, je m’en fiche, and reitende Artillerie. Syntactically, the constructions as a whole seem to be single words, according to the criteria of interruptability, movability, etc. (cf. 3). It is thus clear that semantics cannot offer the defining criteria for word delimitation. According to approaches prevalent in modern linguistics, such criteria must be sought in grammar, more specifically in syntax, or distribution.

3.

Distributional criteria

We are now moving from the content of signs to the signs themselves, considered as units of both content and expression. The criteria which come into play are distributional, in traditional linguistic terminology grammatical, i.e. syntactical and morphological: the tactics of signs (cf. the treatment of phonotactics in 4.5). 3.1. Minimum free forms According to a famous definition, words are the “smallest items which are spoken by themselves, in isolation” or “forms which occur as sentences” (Bloomfield 1933: 178), in short, minimum free forms or minimum utterances (cf. Harris 1947: 54). This is an influential characterization of the word, and it certainly hits something central. If one tries to apply the definition to difficult cases, however, problems immediately arise. We shall discuss a few of these

379 below, taking our point of departure in some of Leonard Bloomfield’s own examples. He asks whether e.g. the, a, is, and are ever spoken alone, and he (implicitly) answers in the affirmative: (1) “One can imagine a dialogue: Is? ⫺ No; was. The word because is said to be a woman’s answer. An impatient listener says And? We can imagine a hesitant speaker who says The …” (Bloomfield 1933: 179)

The problem is, obviously, that there are few limits on what one can imagine, and this is of course a grave weakness of the definition (cf. Togeby 1949: 105). For example, one could easily imagine a hesitant speaker saying He was un…, or someone asking (in French) Elle a dit redistribuer ou re´-? And it would clearly be erroneous to draw the conclusion from such examples that (English) un-, or (French) re´-, are words. In order to save the definition, one could resort to additions like “any fraction that can be spoken alone in normal speech” (Bloch & Trager 1942: 54, emphasis added), but the concept “normal” is too vague to make this an acceptable solution. Bloomfield does not consider word forms as merely observable entities “at the surface”, but includes the derivational history as well: (2) “The forms [z] in John’s ready, [m] in I’m hungry, or [nt] in Don’t! are unpronounceable in English, but we have to class them as words, for they are merely alternants of the pronounceable forms is, am, not. In French we have even the case of a single phoneme representing two words: au [o] in a phrase like au roi [o rwa] ‘to the king,’ arises by phonetic modification of the two words a` [a] ‘to’ and le [le] ‘the’; this [o] is homonymous with the words eau ‘water’ and haut ‘high.’ ” (Bloomfield 1933: 180)

This abstract view of word separation makes impossible a unique segmentation of a string of phonemes into a clearcut string of words. It seems preferable to have clear word separation and then account for the relation between au, a`, le by other (“processual”) means. A further difficulty stems from the fact that it is strictly speaking impossible to pronounce a word in absolute isolation, since there will always be some accompanying intonation, which is bound to the utterance, not to the word (cf. Hockett 1947: 277). One last problem with this definition of the word should be mentioned here: In the very many languages which have monosyllabic words,

380 and/or syllables consisting only of a vowel, is the “minimum utterance” not the syllable or the vowel? In a sense, the answer to this question could well be “yes, indeed!”; if the definition is taken seriously and literally, it seems fair enough to recognize that a single vowel, or a single syllable, can be a minimum utterance (or minimum free form), just like a single word (although, normally, utterances consist of several syllables and several words). A little more detailed answer to the question would have to take account of two points. First, the “minimum utterance” is not just the vowel, but the whole syllable, which only accidentally can have empty margins; secondly, not just any syllable can occur in isolation since in many languages there are restrictions on vowel quality, or length, etc. But it must be admitted that neither of these answers completely refute the original attack on the proposed definition of the word. Cf. further Art. 39 and 42, and ⫺ for the phonotactical aspects ⫺ Art. 44. 3.2. Uninterruptability The criterion of uninterruptability, viz. that “a word cannot be interrupted by other forms” (Bloomfield 1933: 180), is clearly related to the notion of minimal free form (cf. 3.1). Roman Jakobson characterizes words as the “minimal actually separable component” of the sentence (Jakobson 1949 [1971: 104]). Also this definition is not without its problems (cf. Togeby 1949: 106). There is a relation between the criterion of uninterruptability and the potential for pausing (cf. 4.1). A consequence of adhering to such a definition of the word would be that the infinitive marker in Swedish att ‘to’ would be a separate word, as opposed to its exact Danish parallel at, although Swedish and Danish are very closely related (both being East North Germanic): Swedish att ga˚, att icke ga˚ vs. Danish at ga˚, ikke at ga˚, cf. the corresponding phrases in English to go, not to go and German zu gehen, nicht zu gehen (cf. Hammerich 1935: 66). This should not be considered a problem for the definition, however, only a consequence; the requirement for any proposed definition must be that it gives the desired result in clear cases and can decide unclear cases (cf. 3.4). Another consequence worth noticing relates to verbs with separable prefixes in German. A “naked” infinitive form like anfangen ‘begin’ is “interruptable” as shown if one adds the infinitive marker zu ‘to’: anzufangen


‘to begin’. According to the definition of uninterruptability, an and fangen should thus be a sequence of two words. This conclusion is supported by the behaviour in finite forms like the present tense: er fängt an ‘he begins’, cf. the criteria discussed in 3.3 and 3.4. Also the preterite participle form angefangen ‘begun’, with inserted preterite participle marker between an and fangen, points to an analysis of an and fangen as separate words. On the other hand, from the semantic point of view these separable verbs behave like words: their meaning is not compositional (the meaning of anfangen cannot be determined on the basis of an and fangen, and such expressions can feed derivation, e.g., Anfanger ‘beginner’ (cf. Booij 1990, Stiebels & Wunderlich 1994). Another difficult case is the Portuguese future tense where the word farei ‘I shall do’ has the form farloei when the pronoun lo ‘it’ is added, i.e. far-lo-ei, with the pronoun inserted between the stem and the inflectional ending (Togeby 1949: 106). This is a special case (cf. the corresponding Italian form lo farei), but it must, of course, be taken into consideration when general definitions are being evaluated. Several logical possibilities present themselves when attempting to reconcile borderline cases of these and other types with different kinds of word definitions: The lexical unity of certain elements must be given up or relaxed (e.g. so that certain pronouns and particles have homonyms of which one is an independent word and the other is not); it must be recognized that the same lexical item can enter into different constructions both below and above the traditional word; and/or the existence of borderline cases must be recognized more generally, as is being done within certain so-called cognitive models operating with prototypes etc. 3.3. Fixed order of constituents An essential property of words is that the order of their constituents is fixed (cf. Hjelmslev 1943: 66). For most cases, this criterion seems unproblematic; for example, in the Danish word mand-lig-hed-en-s ‘man-lyhood-def-gen (of the manliness [manhood])’, no other order of the morphemes is possible. A consequence of such a definition is that whole phrases in a polysynthetic language like Eskimo (cf. Art. 128) be single words also. Something similar might apply to sequences of bound pronouns in Romance languages, e.g. no other order is possible in a French example like que je ne me le demande

40. Word boundaries

pas ‘that I do not ask myself about it’. The fact that there are still, in Modern French, a few restricted possibilities of permutation in sequences of bound pronouns, cf. je suis ‘I am’ vs. suis-je? ‘am I?’ (cf. Art. 120), may be used to defend the position that those bound pronouns are words, but the situation is not clear. It is obvious that, diachronically, a language may change its position in this respect. If we say that a word is the maximal sign with a fixed order in its constituents, it is implied that a word can be moved in the sentence; otherwise we would not be dealing with a word but only with part of the word, due to the defining criterion itself. Thus Otto Jespersen’s word criterion of movability is so to speak the other side of the same coin: The word is characterized in relation to larger units as being the smallest movable one, and in relation to smaller units as being movable (cf. Jespersen 1924: 92⫺95). A similar approach has been suggested in American structuralism: (3) “Whether or not two orders of the same words have different meanings, they serve to emphasize words as shiftable units; whereas order within the word (excepting compounds) is meaningless precisely because it is automatic.” (Wells 1947: 99)

The important thing is that the order of elements within the word is not contrastive (cf. Togeby 1949: 107), which solves the problem of Portuguese farloei (cf. 3.2). Compounds pose special problems with regard to the distributional definition of the word under consideration here. There is no space in this article for a detailed discussion of compounds (cf. Art. 87), but let us briefly signal some of their typical properties with respect to “wordhood” in a couple of well known European languages. Semantically, compounds can be formed productively but they can also be lexicalized, i.e. form separate lexical items (cf. 2). Syntactically, compounds are only movable as wholes, which speaks in favour of their being considered words according to a distributional definition; the other side of this coin, however, is the fact that the order of the elements of compounds is not always fixed, and can be contrastive (cf. tourist island, island tourist), which apparently points to a different conclusion. Morphologically, compounds also exhibit some Janus characteristics: its parts may have some independent morphology, but there are also cases where the compound has a quite different morphology than a cor-

381 responding phrase (e.g. in French grandroutes ‘highways’ where grand seems ⫺ synchronically speaking, of course ⫺ to lack inflection altogether, cf. the phrase grandes routes ‘large roads’ where grand has its normal inflection in agreement with the head noun routes). Phonologically, compounds in Germanic languages have the typical “compound stress pattern” (cf. 4.4) which both sets them apart from non-compounded words (except certain “heavy” derivatives) and from phrases; such a stress pattern does not generally occur in Romance languages, for example. The conclusion seems to be that compounds are single words in the syntactic sense, but may be sequences of words in the phonological sense, i.e. consist of more than one phonological word (cf. 4). A further question of levels often mentioned in connection with word definitions and word delimitation can be illustrated by means of the example The king of England’s daughter. It has been argued from such examples that ’s is added to the entire phrase without changing its character: “Obviously, -’s is no longer entirely a ‘bound form’ in Modern English” (Penzl 1943: 419). Of course, -’s is a bound form since it cannot occur alone, but there are bound forms at different levels (cf. Hall [Robert A.] 1946: 450). One can distinguish between four levels in West European languages like English and French: English -ize, -tion (and French -ment) are derivationally bound, English -s ‘plural’, -s ‘3.sg’, -ed, -ing (and French -ons) are inflectionally bound, English ’s (in The king of England’s daughter), the, a (and French le) are phrasally bound, and English atonic that (and French que) are clausally bound. It is interesting to compare this early suggestion from the great era of structuralism with much more recent proposals within Lexical Phonology and Morphology (cf. Art. 22). 3.4. Conclusion In order to test the different criteria for delimiting words discussed above, one isolates (3.1), breaks into (3.2), and moves around with (3.3) chunks taken out from the chain of speech (mentally speaking, normally not physically except for certain phonetic or “phonology laboratory” experiments); the new speech chain is then evaluated with respect to grammaticality (in the broadest sense) and compared to the original one to see whether semantic differences have occurred, or whether it is still “the same string” (apart from the change being tested, of

382


course). Such a criterion of (some sort of) constancy is commonplace in linguistic practice (although it is often not explicitly recognized in theoretical writings), for example, in syntactic work whether transformational, sentence-positional or other. The most interesting question with regard to such tests of word delimitation is the following: Are the operations of 3.1⫺3.3 all different in principle, or do they amount to the same thing in the end? It appears obvious that 3.2 (uninterruptability) and the two subcriteria of 3.3 (fixed order of constituents, and movability as a whole) are essentially the same: In all cases, the important thing is whether the chunk to be tested for “wordness” can be manipulated (in a natural way, of course) without involving its neighbouring chunk(s). This also suggests an essential identity with the criterion in 3.1 (isolability): Only a chunk which can be manipulated (still in a natural way) without involving its neighbouring chunk(s) can be isolated. This points to the position that we are dealing not (only) with a linguistic construct, but with an entity which has some “psychological reality” (cf. Art. 162), at least in the weak sense that it has behavioral consequences (which therefore can be tested).

4.

Phonological criteria

We have already seen (in 3) that the basic criteria for the delimitation of consecutive words in the speech chain are distributional. In this section we shall examine a range of phonological and phonetic manifestations of the boundaries between (distributionally defined) words. It is well known that different languages do not manifest word boundaries in the same way or to the same extent. For example, in Romance languages word boundaries are manifested less often and less clearly than in Germanic languages, at least as a general principle. Take French as an example: In a sequence /uro/ it is, under normal circumstances, not possible to hear whether there is a word boundary before /r/, after /r/, or none at all (cf. ou roˆter ‘or roast’, pour oˆter ‘for taking off’, bourreaux ‘hangman’). A particular technical term, viz. enchaıˆnement, has even been coined for the pronunciation of a word-final consonant as the onset of the following syllable when the following word begins with a vowel (thus ignoring the word boundary, e.g. with a syllable-initial /r/ in pour oˆter, quoted above).

The phenomenon of enchaıˆnement is particularly noteworthy for speakers of, for example, Germanic languages where word boundaries are manifested more often than in Romance. This is, however, only a difference of degree and not an absolute one: For instance, in French, some word boundaries are sometimes manifested in ways which are quite parallel to what we find in Germanic languages (there may thus be a distinction ⫺ quite apart from a slight possible difference in the quality of the first vowel ⫺ between cette roue ‘this wheel’ and ces trous ‘these holes’); and word boundaries are often not manifested at all in Germanic, as the following example will show. In Danish, two phrases like hans gæller ‘his gills’ and han skælder ‘he scolds’ are normally (but not invariably) indistinguishable and contain the identical sequence [sg] (where [g] is, as in Modern Danish generally, voiceless and distinct from Danish [k] only by being unaspirated). The phrase hans kælder ‘his cellar’ is in contrast with the above, normally pronounced with [sk] (with aspirated [k]), the rest of the example being pronounced identically (with main stress on the second syllable). According to normal phonemic principles, a different phoneme (viz. /k/) is involved here; but the sequence [sk] indicates that there must be a grammatical boundary (which is also a syllable boundary, cf. 5) before [k]. This situation is typical: Some word boundaries are manifested, others not; furthermore, some sounds or sequences of sounds indicate the position of a word boundary, or the lack of word boundary, cf. 4.2 and 4.5; and finally, fewer word boundaries are manifested with increasing speech rate, less formality, etc. The general situation concerning phonological criteria for word delimitation is thus the following (cf. Jespersen 1924: 92⫺95): Word boundaries are not obligatorily manifested; boundary signals are often not unique, but indicate that between X and Y, say, there must be a word boundary somewhere, or there cannot be any word boundary (in particular instances, such cases may lead to unique determination of word boundaries, of course); and the manifestation of word boundaries is sociolinguistically, stylistically etc. variable. Furthermore, it is obvious that word boundaries can have an important function for speech perception: The more word boundaries manifested, and the more saliently and uniquely so, the easier it be-

40. Word boundaries

comes for the receiver to decode the speech chain, i.e. to do the parsing. This fact is also important when dealing with foreign languages, of course. 4.1. Pauses Speakers make pauses more often between words than within words (and more often between phrases than within phrases, etc.). Thus the potential for pausing may be used as a criterion for delimiting words (cf. 3.4). But it can be doubted whether this is really a phonological criterion like the others mentioned in 4; not because the absence of sound is not part of the sound signal (for it is), but because the potential for pausing can be taken as a behavioral consequence of the structuring of the speech chain essentially identical with the criterion of uninterruptability (cf. 3.2); and common to uninterruptability and the potential for pausing is precisely their optional character. Furthermore, “filled pauses” or hesitations of all kinds could be mentioned parallel to pauses strictly speaking (i.e. absence of phonation). 4.2. Boundary signals (junctures) A whole range of phonetic phenomena may characterize word boundaries, from “lowlevel” automatic ones, like differences in duration between word-initial and word-final allophones of the same phoneme, to more phonological ones like a glottal attack if a word in German starts with a stressed vowel (e.g. ein Esel ‘a donkey’ where the glottal attack before /e:/ indicates the word boundary). Another well-known example is night rate, where the separate articulation of /t/ and /r/ distinguishes it from nitrate, where /tr/ together can be articulated as a kind of affricate. Daniel Jones gives a detailed typology illustrated with English examples, with the following main types (cf. Jones 1931): (a) incidence of stress (e.g. an aim, a name); (b) differences of sound without appreciable differences of length (with many subtypes, e.g. that’s tough, that stuff; missed eight, Miss Tate); (c) differences in length (with many subtypes combined with aspiration, voicing etc., e.g. selfish, shell-fish; make ill, may kill). The terms boundary signal (German Grenzsignal, cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 29) and open juncture (cf. Hockett 1947: 277) have been used in approximately this sense (cf. Hyman 1978 for a survey of the issue).

383 4.3. Sandhi Phonological changes (in the synchronic sense) occurring when words are juxtaposed are often termed sandhi (borrowing a term from Sanskrit grammar, cf. Art. 5). Most of the phenomena described in 4 could be called a kind of sandhi in the broadest sense (since they are conditioned by word boundaries); but more precisely, sandhi can be limited to changes which are not general phonological processes (thus excluding a general rule of word-final devoicing of obstruents, for example, cf. 5.1 and 5.2). Furthermore, internal sandhi (applying within words) is not relevant here, only external sandhi (applying across word boundaries). Typical examples of such sandhi phenomena are the different forms of the article in the man, the ape; a man, an ape; the “linking r” in (British) my dear aunt; French liaison in e.g. grand ami ‘great friend’ with [ta] (as against grand livre ‘great book’ where grand ends in the nasal vowel), cf. 5.1. Like many other phonological phenomena surveyed in 4, sandhi can be seen as a symptom of the speaker’s structuring (into words etc.) of the speech chain, rather than as peculiar changes in a restricted set of environments (cf. Andersen 1986). 4.4. Stress Stress is probably the most important phonological criterion for “wordness” in many languages, and in some theories stress is given a privileged position in characterizing the word phonologically (cf. 6.1). As Edward Sapir says: (4) “In many, perhaps in most, languages the single word is marked by a unifying accent, an emphasis on one of the syllables, to which the rest are subordinated” (Sapir 1921: 36)

An interesting and thorough attempt to define the word phonologically by means of stress has been made by Paul Garde. For him, a word is a kind of accentual “unite´ significative” (signifying unit) that is larger than “le morphe`me”, which is the minimal “unite´ significative”, and smaller than “la phrase” (corresponding to sentence in English, not phrase), which is the maximal “unite´ significative”. He defines the word as a “syntagme appartenant a` un type qui, dans la langue conside´reé, est normalement accentoge`ne” (‘phrase belonging to a type which, in the language in question, is normally accentable’; Garde 1968: 19⫺20); in addition, words can be either accentable or clitics.

384 There are at least two problems inherent in any attempt to define the word by means of stress. First, there is the problem of clitics (cf. Art. 41), and more generally, of words which do not have their own main stress (or in other words: of sequences of words with only one main stress). Examples of clitics were given in 3.3, and, according to different definitions of the word, clitics (as bound pronouns in Romance languages, for example) will be either separate words or only part of such words. This is not really a problem for most theories, since clitics can in principle be treated consistently under either view; one could rather call it a fact illustrating that structurings in phonology and grammar need not be, and typically are not, isomorphic. Cases of one word with two equal main stresses constitute a much more serious challenge to several linguistic theories and models of grammar; some would even consider this a contradictio in adjecto. Modern Standard Danish offers several kinds of just such problematic examples (which make it impossible to claim that there must always be a word boundary somewhere between two main stresses): juleaften ‘Christmas Eve’, pa˚skemorgen ‘Easter Morning’ have equal main stress on jule- ‘Christmas’, pa˚ske- ‘Easter’ and on -aften ‘evening’, -morgen ‘morning’; this stress pattern is in general characteristic of phrases in Danish, and not of compounds (which have the typical Germanic stress reduction on non-first components), but in no other respects do juleaften, pa˚skemorgen behave as phrases (neither semantically, syntactically nor morphologically); so-called emphatic compounds like stangdrukken ‘bloody drunk’, brandfarlig ‘bloody dangerous’ also have two equal main stresses, and are thus stress-wise different from normal compounds like brandfarlig ‘inflammable’ (cf. brand ‘fire’), but in no other respects do emphatic compounds behave like phrases (the two examples brandfarlig are segmentally identical; and notice that the isolated word brand would keep its stød when occurring under stress in a phrase, and not loose it as it does in both kinds of compounds). As illustrated in the case of brandfarlig just mentioned, other accents (or prosodies), like the stød, and not only stress (which is a dynamic or culminative accent) may be relevant for “wordness”. Tonal accents, for example, can be relevant in this context; e.g. the Swedish and Norwegian tonal (or “musical”) accents characterize a word as a whole, and can thus be used as a criterion for “wordness”.


4.5. Phonotactics As mentioned in the introduction to 4, phonological criteria for delimiting words, whether they are “positive” or “negative” (cf. 4.2), do not generally give a unique answer, rather they restrict the potential places of word boundaries to a few possibilities (sometimes only one). The same applies to phonotactics (cf. Art. 44). For example, a sequence like /rstr/ in Italian must contain a word boundary (before /s/): per stranieri ‘for foreigners’ because of the phonotactic constraints for Italian words (Basbøll 1974: 36). In general, there can be very complex interrelations between syllable structure (sensitive to sonority and so on) and grammatical structure. In some languages, there are more phonotactic possibilities at word edges than at syllable edges. Many Germanic languages, for instance, allow for so-called appendix consonants at the end of a word. These consonants are coronal obstruents, /s/ and /t/. In other languages, there are extra restrictions on possible consonants at word edges (cf. Booij 1983; Rubach & Booij 1990).

5.

Word boundaries in phonological rules

In 4, a number of different phonological criteria for delimiting words were considered; part of this section dealt with manifestations of word boundaries. We shall now examine a different but related issue, viz. the function of word boundaries in phonological rules. The boundaries in question are phonologically relevant grammatical boundaries typically occurring between (distributionally defined) words. There are two reasons why we cannot simply speak about “word boundaries” here in any precise sense. First, all boundaries delimiting distributionally defined words do not have the same effect (at least if we include a range of languages): There may, for example, be weaker and stronger word boundaries depending on the kind of words considered, the position in the utterance, accentual conditions, and so on. Secondly, if the boundaries are defined purely by their phonological consequences, one cannot pick out one specific boundary which delimits exactly distributional words (e.g. the boundary after prefixes, before certain suffixes, or between members of a compound, can have the same effect as some word boundaries). There are in Modern

40. Word boundaries

French, for example, certain phonological rules (such as glide formation) which are blocked by the presence of a word boundary or a boundary between a prefix and a stem, but are not blocked (within the same register) by the presence of a boundary between a stem and a suffix: e.g. biannuel with [i] vs. niant, normally pronounced with [j] (cf. Basbøll 1978: 151⫺166). By word boundary phonologists often mean a particular juncture, symbolized by 쒙; this is the case e.g. in the tradition of Generative Phonology (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968: 366). They operate with three different boundary symbols, viz. 쒙, ⫹ (called formative boundary or morpheme boundary) and ⫽ (a boundary occurring after foreign prefixes like in-). The three boundaries are cross-classified by means of particular distinctive features. Phonological rules are taken to ignore ⫹ in the input string (unless a ⫹ is indicated in the structural description of the rule, in which case the input string must contain a ⫹ at the relevant place), whereas a 쒙 or a ⫽ not indicated in the structural description blocks the application of the rule. Sequences of 쒙, but not of other boundaries, occur in phonological strings; syllable boundaries have no place in this theory. A much simpler system of boundaries in phonology was proposed by James McCawley at the same time (cf. McCawley 1968). He includes the syllable boundary in a complete ranking, i.e. syllable boundary, word boundary, etc., are of different strength but have phonological effects according to the same conventions (cf. 5.1⫺5.3; cf. Basbøll 1981). Thus the word boundary has been treated in phonological analysis either as one in a linearly ordered set of boundaries which in principle apply according to the same principles (McCawley and followers), or as a boundary entering into complex relations of very different sorts with other boundaries (Chomsky & Halle and followers). In the more recent model of Prosodic Phonology (Nespor & Vogel 1986), the word boundary used is the prosodic word boundary instead of the grammatical word boundary, which is thus made superfluous. In this framework, the potential asymmetry of grammatical and phonological structure, and thus the asymmetry between syntactic words and prosodic words is focused upon. For instance, compounds consist of at least two prosodic words. Clitics are then characterized as elements that form independent grammatical words, but not independent prosodic

385 words: prosodically, clitics form one prosodic word with the preceding or the following word (the host word); cf. Booij (1996). The relation between grammatical word boundaries and phonological word boundaries also plays a central role in the so-called theory of Generalized Alignment developed within the Optimality Theory of phonology (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1994). In this approach, the alignment of grammatical (morphological) edges and the phonological edges plays a central role in phonological and morphological analysis. But regardless of the differences in these approaches, some basic phonological functions of word boundaries (in the rather broad sense used in this article) can still be discerned, as will be attempted in the following sections 5.1⫺5.3. 5.1. Word boundaries in structural descriptions A word boundary can be properly included in the structural description of a phonological rule. This is the case if, for example, a particular rule applies to a word-final consonant when the following word begins with a particular segment, say a vowel. French liaison is a case in point, e.g. in an example like grand idiot ‘big idiot’ where the sequence across the word boundary is [ti]; compare the corresponding feminine form grande idiote with [di], and a derivative form also containing the morpheme grand: grandir ‘enlarge’ with [di] as well. The morpheme grand ends in [t] only in a liaison-context (which is also subject to certain syntactic/stylistic conditions which cannot be discussed here). The situation where a word boundary is properly included in the structural description of a phonological rule is often called sandhi (cf. 4.3). It is controversial at which level of abstractness such sandhi rules should be described. A different case which, however, would also normally be described as a word boundary occurring in the structural description is the one where a phonological rule applies to a segment in absolute word-final or absolute word-initial position; i.e. where the word boundary constitutes one of the edges of the structural description. An example could be devoicing of a word-final obstruent, or tensening of a word-initial vowel or glide. According to the convention proposed by Stanley (1973), such examples can be reduced to instances of the general case mentioned in 5.2.

386 5.2. Rules blocked by word boundaries According to McCawley’s (1968) proposals, every phonological rule is ranked by a certain boundary with the effect that weaker boundaries are irrelevant for the application (or non-application) of the rule, whereas boundaries stronger than, or as strong as, the rank block the application of the rule (i.e. prevent it from applying even though its structural description is otherwise met). Many segmental phonological rules are blocked by word boundaries (they could be called word-level rules). To take an example, the rule which makes a Danish short /a/ grave before a grave consonant does not apply if the grave consonant belongs to a following word, strong derivative, part of compound, or even syllable; e.g. plaf! ‘shoot!’ has grave /a/ but colaflaske ‘cola bottle’ has not because /a/ and /f/ are separated by a certain boundary. The principle treated in this section has particularly strong consequences for word delimitation in the case of phonological rules which apply to long phonological chains (in principle, to strings of unlimited length, i.e. “unbounded”); vowel harmony is an important case in point. But notice that vowel harmony as a rule will not uniquely determine the place of all word boundaries (cf. 4). Stanley (1973) proposed to introduce variables in the structural description of phonological rules, e.g. so that there would be, in the normal case, a variable X at the left edge, and a variable Y at the right edge of the structural description. Accepting this convention, phonological rules applying in absolute word-initial, or absolute word-final, position (cf. 5.1) could be stated simply by omitting the variable to the left or to the right, respectively, thus reducing all cases of 5.1 except genuine sandhi to instances of the general case (viz. that of 5.2). 5.3. Word boundaries delimiting domains Domains ranked by a certain boundary (i.e. phonological strings having this boundary, or a stronger one, on each side, but only containing weaker ones) not only define the “universe of application” for a phonological rule (cf. 5.2), but can also occur within the structural description. Domains ranked by the word boundary, i.e. approximately “words”, can themselves be referred to in the rules, e.g. in the rule for compound stress in Germanic.


6.

Concluding remarks

6.1. What might phonological word mean? A number of different senses can be given, and have been given, to phrases like phonological word. Some of these have already been mentioned, but let us end by briefly indicating three clearly different possibilities. Two types of proposals should be discarded right away as being very unpractical at best. One is the idea of a simple phonetic entity, as illustrated by the following quotation by Henri Frei: “J’entends par mot phonique toute partie de la chaıˆne parleé qui est e´mise d’un seul souffle” (‘I understand by phonic word each part of the speech chain which is made by one single breath of air’; Frei 1941: 51); such proposals would be very interesting if substantiated phonetically, but they cannot be recommended as definitions. Another non-recommendable proposal would be to let phonological word mean the phonological aspects of a lexical item; while such a notion may well be important (as suggested by studies on the “mental lexicon”, cf. Aitchison 1987), the idea of a lexical item is too far from what one normally means by a word (cf. 2) to be acceptable in the present context. This leaves us with at least three clearly different, and all interesting, kinds of proposals on what a phonological word could reasonably be: (a) the phonological aspect(s) of a distributionally defined word (cf. 3 and 4.2); (b) a stress group (cf. 4.4), in particular if its boundaries are not identified by phonetic criteria alone (cf. 5); (c) a certain phonological domain in the sense of 5. These different senses are not independent, of course. These different roles of the notion phonological word are discussed in detail in Hall & Kleinhenz (1999, eds.). 6.2. Final comment It has been argued in this article (cf. 3.4) that the distributionally defined word is a psychologically relevant unit, and that phonological criteria for the delimitation of words are merely consequences of the speaker’s structuring of the speech chain (cf. 4). For the receiver, such phonological criteria are clues to make the first analysis of the input, i.e. they help with the parsing. Distributional words are related to, but not identical with, inflected lexi-

40. Word boundaries

cal items. Diachrony tells us, finally, that the distinction between one word, and a sequence of two words, is not as absolute as most models of linguistic theory seem to indicate.

7.

References

Aitchison, Jean (21994), Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. Oxford, New York: Blackwell [11987] Andersen, Henning (1986, ed.), Sandhi Phenomena in the Languages of Europe. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 33) Basbøll, Hans (1974), “Structure consonantique du mot italien”. Revue Romane 9, 27⫺40 Basbøll, Hans (1978), “Schwa, jonctures et syllabification dans les repre´sentations phonologiques du français”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 16, 147⫺182 Basbøll, Hans (1981), “On the Function of Boundaries in Phonological Rules”. In: Goyvaerts, Didier (ed.), Phonology in the 1980s. Ghent: StoryScientia, 245⫺269 Bloch, Bernard & Trager, George L. (1942), Outline of Linguistic Analysis. Baltimore/MD: Linguistic Society of America Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt [British edition 1935: London: Allen & Unwin] Booij, Geert (1983), “Principles and Parameters in Prosodic Phonology”. Linguistics 21, 249⫺280 Booij, Geert (1990), “The Boundary between Morphology and Syntax: Separable Complex Verbs in Dutch”. In: Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1990. Dordrecht: Foris, 45⫺63 Booij, Geert (1996), “Cliticization as Prosodic Integration: The Case of Dutch”. The Linguistic Review 13, 219⫺242 Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York etc.: Harper & Row Frei, Henri (1941), “Qu’est-ce qu’un Dictionnaire de phrases?”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 1, 43⫺56 Garde, Paul (1968), L’accent. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (Le linguiste 5) Hall, Robert A. (1946), “A Note on Bound Forms”. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 45, 450 Hall, T. Alan & Kleinhenz, Ursula (1999, eds.), Studies on the Phonological Word. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Hammerich, Louis L. (1935), Indledning til tysk grammatik. Copenhagen: Gad

387 Harris, Zellig S. (1947), “Structural Restatements I”. International Journal of American Linguistics 13, 47⫺58 Hjelmslev, Louis (1943), Omkring sprogteoriens grandlæggelse. København: Munksgaard [also in: Festskrift udgivet af Københavns Universitet i anledning af Universitetets Aarsfest, November 1943; reprinted 1966 etc. [København]: Akademisk Forlag; English edition 21961: Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, transl. by Francis J. Whitfield. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press] Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 229⫺242] Hockett, Charles F. (1947), Review of: Nida, Eugene (1946), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. Language 23, 273⫺285 Hyman, Larry M. (1978), “Word Demarcation”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. II: Phonology. Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 443⫺470 Jakobson, Roman (1949), “The Phonemic and Grammatical Aspects of Language in Their Interrelation”. In: Lejeune, Michel (ed.), Actes du Sixie`me Congre`s international des Linguistes (Paris, 19⫺24 juillet 1948). Paris: Klincksieck, 5⫺18 [reprinted in: Jakobson, Roman (1971), Selected Writings, Vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 103⫺114] Jespersen, Otto (1924), The Philosophy of Grammar. London: Allen & Unwin Jones, Daniel (1931), “The ‘Word’ as a Phonetic Entity”. Le maıˆtre phone´tique 3e se´rie 36, 60⫺65 [reprinted in: Jones, W[illiam] E. & Laver, J[ohn] (1973, eds.), Phonetics in Linguistics: A Book of Readings. London: Longman (Longman Linguistics Library 12), 154⫺167] Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966 Readings in Linguistics, Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] McCarthy, John & Prince, Alan (1994), “Generalized Alignment”. In: Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1993. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 79⫺153 McCawley, James D. (1968), The Phonological Component of a Grammar of Japanese. The Hague: Mouton (Monographs on Linguistic Analysis 2) Nespor, Marina & Vogel, Irene (1986), Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris Penzl, Herbert (1943), Review of: Bloch & Trager (1942). Journal of English and Germanic Philology 42, 418⫺419 Rubach, Jerzy & Booij, Geert (1990), “Edge of Constituent Phenomena in Polish”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 427⫺463

388


Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace Stanley, Richard (1973), “Boundaries in Phonology”. In: Anderson, Stephen R. & Kiparsky, Paul (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle. New York etc.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 185⫺206 Stiebels, Barbara & Wunderlich, Dieter (1994), “Morphology Feeds Syntax: The Case of Particle Verbs”. Linguistics 32, 913⫺968 Togeby, Knud (1949), “Qu’est-ce qu’un mot?”. In: Recherches sturcturales 1949: Interventions dans le de´bat glosse´matique. Publieés a` l’occasion du cin-

quantenaire de M. Louis Hjelmslev. Copenhague: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Copenhague 5), 97⫺111 Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (1939), Grundzüge der ˇ eskoslovenskyćh Phonologie. Prague: Jednota C matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 7) [⫽ 21958 Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht] Wells, Rulon S. (1947), “Immediate Constituents”. Language 23, 81⫺117 [reprinted in: Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), 186⫺207]

Hans Basbøll, Odense (Denmark)

41. Clitics 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Identifying clitics Clitic types Special properties of clitics Clitic semantics Diachrony and clitics References

1.

Introduction

Theories of grammar make a basic distinction between words and affixes, but some formatives manifest analytic difficulties for this binary division of labor ⫺ these forms are known as clitics. Clitics reveal an intermediate status between inflectional affixes and independent words. However, it is not entirely clear that clitics constitute a unified class of elements; rather, the label clitic (from Greek ‘leaner’) covers a variety of phenom-

ena ranging from unstressed words to phonologically bound words and phrasally positioned affixes. Finnish -han, for instance, attaches suffixally and has a pragmatic function in the sentence conveying textual cohesion in spoken language. Although phonologically appended, it is unlike the affixes of the language in that it is not limited to a single word class (as, say, tense markers are restricted to verbs in Finnish); instead it attaches promiscuously to any word class, as illustrated in (1). There is no restriction on the word class of the phonological host for -han ⫺ it can be a noun, adjective, verb, or almost any word class except for certain complementizers and conjunctions. (1a) shows -han attached to olet ‘you are’; in (1b) it is suffixed to the adjective uuden ‘new’; and in (1c) it is attached to the noun auton ‘car’.

(1) (a) Olet-han itse-kin samaa mieltä be:pres.2.sg-foc self-too same:partit mind:partit ‘You are yourself of the same opinion, you know.’ (b) Uuden-han auton hän osti new:gen-foc car:gen s/he buy:past(3.sg) ‘It was a NEW car that he/she bought.’ (c) Uuden auton-han hän osti new:gen car:gen-foc s/he buy:past(3.sg) ‘It was a new CAR that he/she bought.’ The term host designates the unit a clitic attaches to. In (1c), for instance, -han is attached to the phonological host auton ‘car’, and at the same time to the host phrase uuden auton ‘a new car’, which is a noun phrase. With both promiscuous host selection and the possibility of phrasal attachment -han

does not behave like an affix. Although it is not a typical affix, -han cannot be an independent word either, as its vowel must agree in frontness or backness with the vowel harmony requirements of the host word, just as an affix must show such front/back agreement. Examples in (1) show -han with a back

41. Clitics

389

vowel after a host like auton, which contains only back vowels, but (2) reveals a front vowel version:

approach, a formative is a clitic to the extent it deviates from the accepted properties of affixes (2.1) or words (2.2).

(2) Mitä-hän tuolla tehdään? what-foc there do:pres.pass ‘What’s being done there, I wonder?’

2.1. Clitics vs. affixes Clitics may appear to be affixal because of their prosodic or phonological dependence on a neighboring word, but there are reasons to distinguish between inflectional affixes and clitics. Clitics are usually unstressed, typically show only a loose phonological incorporation into the host, and sometimes do not interact morphologically with the host at all. Clitics also commonly deviate from affixes most in their morphosyntax. One set of potential phonological differences are the internal and external sandhi rules that indicate either the connection of adjacent formatives within a word or across words or else they help to delineate an affix or word boundary that is useful for establishing the domain of a phonological or morphological word (cf. Art. 40). In their morphophonology clitics ordinarily lack morphological cohesion with their hosts; they attach only loosely (cf. Berendsen 1986: 23⫺25). By contrast, affixes may show greater fusion with their stems. This observation leads to several differences between affixes and clitics: First, inflectional affixes combine with stems whereas clitics combine with words (or phrases). Second, morphophonological idiosyncrasies are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitic sequences. Third, clitics are nearly always productive in their attachments, whereas affixes allow exceptions and arbitrary gaps; blocking affects stem-affix combinations, but it rarely affects host-clitic collocations. And fourth, semantic idiosyncrasies are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitic groups. According to such criteria, Finnish -han (cf. 1) has the status of a clitic: It is only loosely attached to its phonological host, but vowel harmony offers evidence that it is phonologically subordinated to its neighbor. It exhibits no morphophonological or semantic idiosyncrasies or arbitrary gaps when it combines with hosts; it is also extremely productive in attachment. By contrast, the Finnish tense system shows a number of idiosyncrasies ⫺ there is an unpredictable vowel change in the past tense (thus, final /a/ in laula- ‘sing’ is altered to /o/ before past tense -i in laulo-i ‘sing-past’); the third person present tense copula would be expected to be *olee according to the suffixation patterns of the language, but on is found instead; and the negative verb in Finnish per-

On the one hand we must distinguish between clitics and affixes on morphological and syntactic grounds and on the other hand we need to separate clitics from words due to phonological and morphological differences. Issues arising from this task include the discreteness or gradation of the word-affix distinction and the autonomy of grammatical components (for a comprehensive bibliography, cf. Nevis & al. 1994; see also Halpern 1998; Halpern & Zwicky 1996, eds.; Black & Motapanyane 1997, eds.): Must syntax be mixed with morphology and phonology? Do we need a separate module of grammar to handle cliticization? If the clitic is to be distinguished as a separate grammatical unit, then what are the essential properties of clitics (cf. 4⫺5)? Much of the discussion in the early literature on clitics took place on pretheoretical grounds as investigators struggled to understand the fundamentals of what a clitic really is (cf. 2) and which types of clitics there are (cf. 3). Later debates moved to particular theoretical frameworks within syntax or phonology with the result that little external evidence has been brought to bear on the controversies ⫺ there have been few studies of clitics from, say, the areas of psycholinguistic experimentation, language disorders, or language acquisition; more attention has been devoted to the role of clitics in language change (cf. 6).

2.

Identifying clitics

Because definitions of clitics are so varied and because the phenomenon itself appears to lack uniformity and cohesion, it may be difficult to provide clear, unambiguous, and theory-neutral definitions, so some investigators utilize pre-theoretical diagnostic tests for clitics (cf. Zwicky 1977: 1⫺9; 1985; Zwicky & Pullum 1983; Carstairs 1981: 1⫺44). Elements to be identified as clitics are compared with affixes on the one hand and with words on the other. Discrete properties of affixes or words are used to “diagnose” the affixhood or wordhood of a formative, and anything that does not fit tidily into one or the other category will be deemed a clitic. Under this

390


mits personal and number marking, but lacks tense marking altogether. A more dependable distinction between clitics and affixes comes from the syntactic behaviors of the two sets of phenomena. Clitics usually act like words with respect to syntax ⫺ showing a mobility within phrases or clauses, referring crucially to units greater than the word for positioning, or permitting conjunction reduction. Inflectional affixes combine with stems, whereas words and clitics are in construction with other words and entire phrases. The Finnish -han example in (1c) shows placement after the first constituent of the sentence; for comparison, Finnish affixes only refer to a stem for attachment, so

-han would not be considered affixal in this regard. Affixes in most languages are rigidly fixed in their morpheme order and clitics often are, too, but some clitics show a freedom of ordering that is found among independent words. The Finnish clitics show no free morpheme ordering possibilities and thus appear affixal by this test, but Tagalog exemplifies the observation in that its clitic particles are not always strictly ordered with respect to each other, as in (3) and (4), where daw and tuloy in (3) and lamang and po in (4) occur in either order (cf. Schachter 1973; Schachter & Otanes 1972: 411⫺415; see also Art. 135 for a sketch of Tagalog morphology and 4.5 for additional examples and discussion of clitic order).

(3) (a) Hindi daw tuloy na-kita ni Juan si Maria not report result obj-foc.perf.apt-see non-top Juan top Maria ‘They say that as a result Juan hasn’t seen Maria.’ (b) ⫽ Hindi tuloy daw na-kita ni Juan si Maria (4) (a) Tatlo lamang po sila three only polite they(top) ‘There are only three of them.’ (b) ⫽ Tatlo po lamang sila Syntactic rules can affect affixed words, but not clitic groups (cf. Zwicky & Pullum 1983: 504⫺506). Thus deletion and movement can be used to distinguish between clitics and affixes (cf. Zwicky 1977: 2f.). Because affixation operates word-internally and refers to stems, while cliticization has reference to words and phrases, individual affixes will not be expected to move from word to word in a phrase because affixes are thought not to move independently of their stems. It is debatable whether clitics are likewise not subject to movement rules. Clitics often do not move around within a phrase, but examples of cross-phrase movement have been documented. This is known as clitic climbing, and it occurs, for instance, in Spanish, where the object clitics are believed to belong semantically and syntactically with a lower infinitival verb, e.g. mandar ‘send:inf’ in (5a), but to be able to move upward in the clause to attach to the verb of a higher phrase, e.g. quiero ‘want:1.sg’ in (5b). (For details on how clitics “climb” into higher clauses, see 4.3.)

(5) (a) Quiero mandar-te-lo want:1.sg send:inf-2.sg-3.sg ‘I want to send it to you.’ (b) Te lo quiero mandar 2.sg 3.sg want:1.sg send:inf ‘I want to send it to you.’ A final syntactic difference is the possibility of deletion under identity, or conjunction reduction, for clitics but not for affixes. Syntactic rules normally affect entire grammatical words, which may or may not be equivalent to correspondent phonological words. Proper subparts of words, however, are immune to syntactic rules. An inflectional affix may not be deleted under identity in the syntactic component, as illustrated by the Finnish allative suffix -lle: (6) (a) linnu-i-lle ja pu-i-lle bird-pl-all and tree-pl-all ‘to the birds and to the woods’ (b) *linnu-i- ja pu-i-lle bird-pl and tree-pl-all ‘to the birds and woods’ In contrast, the clitic -han can be subject to conjunction reduction:

(7) (a) ?auto-lla-han ja bussi-lla-han he tulivat car-all-han and bus-all-han they come:impf:3.pl ‘By car and by bus they came, you know.’ (b) auto-lla ja bussi-lla-han he tulivat car-all and bus-all-han they come:impf:3.pl ‘By car and bus they came, you know.’

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41. Clitics

2.2. Clitics vs. words If clitics are not affixes, they are also not fully independent words. Clitics do not stand alone phonologically; instead they depend on neighboring words. In some instances dependent formatives do not interact phonologically with their hosts, yet they do not bear stress either. Stressless words, or leaners, are prosodically dependent. Leaners and clitics are generally sensitive to the prosodic structure of a sentence and may have additional restrictions when occurring next to a pause. Prosodically independent words do not inherently have such limitations.

Besides phonological and stress differences between clitics and words, there are grammatical distinctions which include ⫺ order requirements, ⫺ clitic doubling and ⫺ haplology. Word order is sometimes more flexible than clitic ordering. In free constituent order languages like Finnish and Warlpiri, clitics can show surprising rigidity in ordering. In (8), for instance, the Warlpiri words may be rearranged without apparently disturbing the denotative meaning of the sentence; the adjective and noun in what is normally considered a noun phrase can be separated (cf. Nash 1986: 159f.):

(8) (a) kurdungku witangku ka maliki wajilipinyi child:erg small:erg pres dog chase:non-past ‘The small child is chasing the dog.’ (b) ⫽ kurdungku ka maliki wajilipinyi witangku In comparison, the clitics ka ‘pres’, rna ‘1.sg’, ngku ‘2.sg’, lu ‘pl’, and rla ‘dat’ in (9a) must occur after the first word or constituent of the sentence and in a particular order (cf. Nash 1986: 102); (9b) is ungrammatical because the clitic group is in initial position, and in (9c) the order is incorrect.

Warlpiri clitics follow a rigid ordering template: tense markers and complementizers are placed first in the clitic sequence, then come subject clitics, then object clitics, and finally the dative clitic. In this regard, clitics are more like affixes than words (on clitic templates cf. 4.5).

(9) (a) Wangkami ka-rna-ngku-lu-rla speak:non-past pres-1-2.sg-pl-dat ‘We are speaking to you for it.’ (b) *ka-rna-ngku-lu-rla wangkami (c) *Wangkami ka-rna-lu-rla-ngku A second difference is the possibility of clitic doubling (cf. 4.4). Normally pronouns replace noun phrases rather than repeat them, but in certain South American Spanish varieties we may see a proclitic pronoun lo together with the direct object Juan: (10) Lo vimos a Juan him see:pret:1.pl to Juan ‘We saw Juan.’

This Spanish example shows some additional syntax associated with clitic doubling ⫺ the full noun phrase is always accompanied by a preposition. In Macedonian both direct and indirect objects may be doubled, as in (11) and (12), respectively, and the Polish subjects in (13) may be repeated by clitic pronouns as well (cf. Spencer 1991: 359f., 372).

(11) Dajte mu ja kosˇulata give:imp.pl 3.sg.dat.m 3.sg.acc.f shirt:def ‘Give him the shirt.’ (12) Nemu mu go dadov he(dat) 3.sg.dat.m 3.sg.acc.n give:aor.1.sg ‘It was to him that I gave it.’ (13) Ja-m to robi-ł I-1.sg that do-past(sg.m) ‘I did that.’

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Except for resumptive pronouns, full words rarely show this behavior: (14) (a) McMug you’ll really love (b) *Him you’ll really love McMug A third difference between words and clitics is the possibility of morphological haplology (cf. Stemberger 1981; Miller 1992: 142⫺ 147, 289f.). Like affixes, clitics may show only a single realization of two homophonous categories. In (15a) the negative clitic ne is required before the verb by personne ‘nobody’; in (15b) it is required by rien ‘nothing’; and in (15c) ne would be required separately by personne and rien, but only one manifestation of ne appears. This behavior is not expected for full words; if there is a haplology-like effect, it is typically an avoidance of repetition rather than a reduction manifestation. (15) (a) Personne ne voit la table nobody neg sees the table ‘Nobody sees the table.’ (b) Serge ne voit rien Serge neg sees nothing ‘Serge sees nothing.’ (c) *Personne ne ne voit rien nobody neg neg sees nothing ‘Nobody sees anything.’ (d) Personne ne voit rien nobody neg sees nothing ‘Nobody sees anything.’ Finally, there is the potential to distinguish between words and clitics on the basis of whether clitics can be heads for the purposes of phrasal and clausal syntax. If clitics can be heads, then they might behave like independent words by undergoing movement or extraction in syntax. If clitics cannot be heads, then another difference between clitics and words has emerged. 2.3. On diagnostic tests The diagnostic approach presented in 2.1⫺ 2.2 does not make clear how to rank tests when results are in conflict. And no work has been done on the potential interactions among the tests: Are there inherent dependencies among the symptoms such that certain test results can predict results for other tests? Are there limits on the combinations of tests to rule out incompatible results? Given the broad array of syntactic, morphological and

phonological tests, would it be at all possible to find a formative that is syntactically an affix, but morphophonologically more wordlike than affixal? It is likely that the tests will cluster together to supply consistent symptoms for diagnosis within a subfield: The syntactic tests could yield similar or at least compatible results. Morphological symptoms would probably unite in distinguishing morphemes that belong to one morphological word from those that belong to separate words. Phonological tests might show a similar unity, but are just as liable to present conflicting results. Some of the diagnostic properties are the result of historical change: generally, the longer formatives have been in the language, the more likely they are to take on idiosyncrasies and acquire gaps and to become affix-like. These aspects of grammaticalization and lexicalization (cf. Art. 145, 149) appear to be gradient and might lead to a view of clitics as filling out a range of intermediate forms between two poles ⫺ one at the full affix end, the other at the independent word end (cf. Taylor 21995: 171⫺183), but such a view is not inherent in the diagnostic test approach, and alternatives have been advanced proposing discrete units as well (cf. 3.3).

3.

Clitic types

Traditionally clitics are described by their phonological behavior ⫺ enclitics lean leftward onto a preceding host and proclitics lean rightward onto a following host. And just as affixes may be divided up among suffixes, prefixes, and infixes (cf. Art. 53⫺55), clitics show, in addition to enclitic and proclitic types, also a putative endoclitic possibility ⫺ word-internal location (cf. 4.2). Beyond potential parallels or contrasts with affix typology, the phonological typology of clitics may be superficial and usually plays no further role in general treatments of linguistic typology or theorizing about clitics. Due to the wide heterogeneity of clitics, many investigators have posited several clitic types. Arnold M. Zwicky offered a three-way typology, with “simple clitics”, “special clitics”, and “bound words” (cf. Zwicky 1977: 3⫺7). But there was a certain complementarity between special clitics and bound words ⫺ with pronominal clitics deemed special clitics and particle or adverb clitics labeled bound words

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41. Clitics

(cf. Klavans 1982: 26⫺35 [1995: 48⫺59]); so collapsing the distinction has been proposed, resulting in a two-way division. It is the simple vs. special clitic bifurcation that most scholars now adopt or adapt. 3.1. Simple and special clitics Simple clitics are forms that alternate contextually with independent words. The simple clitic is an unaccented or phonologically reduced version of a full word, sharing with it the same denotative meaning and a similar phonological shape (cf. Zwicky 1977: 5f.). English object pronouns illustrate this type. The full pronoun him in a sentence like we fed him is usually reduced in casual speech: ˜ ] The clitic form [m ˜ ] ‘him’ we fed ⬘im [wi fid m is phonologically related to the full form [him] and its syntactic distribution is a subset of the distribution of the full word: the clitic occurs in most places the non-clitic is found, with differences arising when the pronoun occurs under emphasis or in isolation: Which one did we feed? Him/ *[m ˜ ]. We fed ⬘him/ *[⬘m ˜ ]. Although simple clitics might be derivationally relatable to their free forms, they are not mere fast speech reductions. The English simple clitic object pronouns are used in slow speech as well. It is debatable whether a fast speech pronunciation [he] for English who [hu] should be considered a clitic (cf. Kaisse 1985: 62⫺70). Special clitics either resemble the independent form phonologically but deviate in syntactic distribution or else lack a free form with which to alternate. The former can be seen in the French object clitic te, which alternates with free pronoun toi, but is located immediately before the verb rather than after the verb, where regular nominal objects are positioned. An example of a special clitic showing no alternation with an independently occurring form is Latin -que, which is always unaccented (cf. Zwicky 1977: 6): (16) dua¯s-que ibi legione¯s co¯nscrı¯bit two-and there legions enrolls ‘and [he] enrolls two legions there’ The English possessive formative ’s is another instance of a special clitic (cf. Zwicky 1977: 7). It attaches to the last word in a noun phrase, regardless of the word class of that final word. In (17a)⫺(17c) that word is a noun (child, door, bicycle); in (17d) it is a

verb (adopt); and in (17e) it is a preposition (to). (17) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

the the the the the

child’s toy child next door’s toy child riding the bicycle’s toy child they want to adopt’s toy child we just talk to’s toy

The simple clitic / special clitic division has been called into question by two camps. One is the unified approach designed to capture distribution and attachment facts of all clitics using a single set of mechanisms, hence rendering the bipartite clitic typology moot (3.2). The other rejects the positing of clitics in the first place and attempts to understand clitics as either a type of affix or else as a kind of word or both (3.3). 3.2. A universal typology of clitics An alternative to the simple / special clitic division is a unified account involving a single set of mechanisms to handle the syntactic distribution and phonological attachment of clitics (cf. Klavans 1982: 62⫺90 [1995: 93⫺ 128]; 1985). The minimum apparatus requires three parameters and predicts eight distinct parametric combinations. Two of the parameters are syntactic in nature: The first identifies a node within the constituent tree structure, while the second further selects a location with respect to that node (either before or after it). The phonological parameter allows for either proclitic or enclitic attachment, i.e. the direction of clitic liaison (cf. Klavans 1985: 97f.). Each parameter has two values: ⫺ Domain: initial vs. final node of a constituent ⫺ Precedence: before vs. after a syntactic host ⫺ Liaison: proclitic or enclitic onto a phonological host This yields eight possible combinations, although there are some difficulties combining ⫺ at the sentential level ⫺ [initial] in the domain with [before] the initial host and [enclitic] onto a preceding word, as well as [final], [after] and [proclitic] (i.e. a clitic cliticizes onto a word in a neighboring sentence, out of its own sentence). A combination such as [initial] in the constituent noun phrase, [after] the first node, and [enclitic] attachment characterizes the English possessive ⫺ it is located in the noun phrase initial slot, before

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the head noun, but within the prenominal constituent it is placed after all other syntactic material: (18)

NP

SPEC

X

N

’s

This universal typology of clitics has proven to be a successful mechanism for the description of clitics, and though it was considered to be too powerful, it has been foundational for most subsequent investigations of cliticization. 3.3. Clitics as derived elements In view of the separation of syntactic and phonological aspects of cliticization along with the identification of the structural and linear location of clitics in syntax, the syntactic location of clitics need not be stated separately but can be handled alongside the syntax of regular words and affixes. What distinguishes the majority of clitics from independent words is the phonological behavior of clitics ⫺ this latter property to be treated as part of phonology or some other component of grammar rather than in syntax. Is it possible to eliminate clitics as theoretical construct by deriving them from other primitive units of grammar? Ridding linguistic theory of clitic constructs might allow for the elimination of the additional mechanisms needed to locate and attach putative clitics and is therefore an attractive aim. In Autolexical Grammar, for example, clitics are derived through the interface of components along with constraints within those components (cf. Sadock 1990: 60⫺68). Clitics, then, might well be derived bound words, which have regular syntax along with phonological (or morphological) attachment to a neighboring word. The domain and precedence properties (cf. 3.2) can therefore be placed back in the syntactic module. The only mechanism remaining is clitic liaison to handle the bound nature of the clitic words. Evidence for the syntactic handling of bound words is provided by at least two observations. First, clitics are assigned word classes just as independent words are ⫺ clitics

can be pronouns, adverbs, etc. (cf. 5), and second, clitics may serve as inflectable stems just as words may host inflections. Ngiyambaa offers a set of clitics that have regular part-of-speech classification (they are pronouns) and serve as the stem for inflectional affixes. Example (19) shows the clitic /-ndu/ inflected with the plural suffix /-gal/ (cf. Klavans 1979: 71⫺73). (19) /bara6-bara6j-ndu-gal/ indeterminate-quick-2.nom-pl ‘put some speed on, all of you!’ /-gal/ has to be considered an affix on /-ndu/ rather than on the verb /bara6-bara6j/ because verbal stems are not inflected for the nominal categories (*/bara6-bara6j-gal/). The clitic (-ndu/ behaves like the noun /bura6j/ in this regard and overall shares inflectional patterns with pronouns and nouns; thus, clitic pronouns in (20a), non-clitic pronouns in (20b), and nouns in (20c) inflect for duality: (20)

singular (a) ‘2.nom’ /-ndu/ (b) ‘you(nom)’ /nindu/ (c) ‘child(nom)’ /bura6j/

dual /-ndu-bula/ /nindu-bula/ /bura6j-bula/

On the other hand, the English possessive does not behave as a bound word, so reinterpreting clitics as derived bound words will not suffice for all clitics. Although the possessive attaches phrasally, as in (17), it interacts with other affixes and generally demands a morphological consideration. To begin with, the possessive marker exhibits haplology when combined with the homophonous plural marker; like the plural books in (21a) and the possessive book’s in (21b), the possessive plural books’ in (21c) is pronounced [bwks] with a single manifestation of the suffix [s] rather than both possessive ’s and plural s (i.e. *[bwksez]): (21) (a) the color of the books (b) the book’s cover (c) the books’ covers There are morphological idiosyncrasies associated with the English possessive as well ⫺ certain pronominal paradigms show special morphology: my, your, her, their, and our lack the regular possessive clitic. Under a blocking analysis, such lexicalized forms would block the regular formation of possessive morphology (my blocks *I’s or *me’s, your blocks *you’s, etc.). In fact the form my does not always block me’s, as shown in (22). Such

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41. Clitics

facts follow from neither a bound word analysis nor from the universal typology of clitics presented in 3.2. (22) (a) The reporter who interviewed me’s car was stolen (b) *The reporter who interviewed my car was stolen The affixal properties of ’s coupled with its phrasal attachment have led to “phrasal affix” or “edge inflection” analyses of clitics. There are three distinct uses of the possessive ’s in English (cf. Zwicky 1987): a prenominal possessive (21b); a doubled possessive (23a), in which ’s cooccurs with of; and a locative possessive (23b). (23) (a) a classmate of McMug’s (b) the party at McMug’s These possessives may cooccur, as in (24a), where the locative possessive at McMug’s is combined with a prenominal possessive that is required before a noun like toys. (24b) offers the doubled possessive in prenominal position. In neither instance is more than one possessive ’s manifested (*McMug’s’s); the predicted two suffixes haplologize to a single instance of ’s. If one of the possessives happens to be realized in another way, e.g. as lexicalized mine, then no haplology will take place, as in (24c). (24) (a) the children at McMug’s toys (b) a classmate of McMug’s books (c) a classmate of mine’s books To account for the haplology and phrasal properties of the various possessives in English, a featural approach to edge inflection has been adopted (cf. Lapointe 1992; Halpern 1995: 99⫺141). Representation strictly as features on words is typical of inflectional affixes rather than of words, so a bound word analysis is inappropriate here. The possessive would be an ordinary inflectional affix if it did not have the phrasal attachment. This edge inflection approach has given rise to a wider view of inflectional morphology, and several clitic phenomena have been reinterpreted as edge inflection. It has been argued that a number of French formatives previously considered clitics fit the phrasal affix archetype (cf. Miller 1992: 273f.); demonstrative -ci, for instance, can be affixed to the end of a noun phrase, as in (25), with the possibility of haplological realization of -ci in (25f)⫺(25g) when there are two sources

for -ci, one from ce garçon-ci ‘this boy’ and the other from cette ville-ci ‘this city’. (25) (a) ce garçon-ci ‘this boy’ (b) ce grand garçon-ci ‘this big boy’ (c) ce garçon intelligent-ci ‘this intelligent boy’ (d) ce garçon de Paris-ci ‘this boy from Paris’ (e) le garçon de cette ville-ci ‘the boy from this city’ (f) *ce garçon de cette ville-ci-ci ‘this boy from this city’ (g) ce garçon de cette ville-ci ‘this boy from this city’ A similar distinction between affixal clitics and word-like clitics has been motivated on phonological grounds (cf. Booij & Rubach 1987: 34⫺41). Polish offers support for this separation. The Polish first person marker -m attaches to the verb in the past tense or any word preceding it: (26) (a) ja to robi-ł-em I that do-past(sg.m)-1.sg ‘I did that.’ (b) ⫽ ja to-m robi-ł (c) ⫽ ja-m to robi-ł That -m is affixal is clear from its interaction with lexical phonological rules. Stress placement ⫺ a lexical rule ⫺ is affected by the attachment of -m, showing that the ending behaves as a regular affix by triggering penultimate stress placement: (27) (a) robił /⬘robjiw/ (b) robiłem /ro⬘bjiwem/ This is in sharp contrast with the behavior of conditional by in Polish, which triggers no stress change in the phonological host nor any other lexical phonological rule. It is a separate syntactic word that exhibits postlexical phonological attachment to a host (cf. Booij & Rubach 1987: 40). There is thus evidence for two fundamentally different sorts of clitics ⫺ bound words, which act like words but are not phonologically independent, and phrasal affixes, which are the phrase-level analog of inflectional affixes at the level of the word (cf. Anderson 1992: 198f.).

4.

Special properties of clitics

For the proponents of derived clitics, it is crucial that clitics have few or no special properties that require anything more than li-

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aison. But clitics have been attributed with unique properties. Such properties help us to understand the differences between clitics and words or affixes, or to account for unusual syntactic patterns in pronouns and other closed word classes. Special properties of clitics include the syntax known as Wackernagel’s Law (4.1), the possibility of clitic infixation (4.2), clitic climbing (4.3), clitic doubling (4.4), and clitic templates (4.5).

(28) (a) Silja osti talon Silja bought house:gen ‘Silja bought a house.’ (b) Silja talon osti ‘It was Silja who bought a house.’ (c) Talon Silja osti ‘It was a house that Silja bought.’ (d) Talon osti Silja ‘It was a house that was bought by Silja.’

4.1. Wackernagel’s Law At the end of the 19th century, the Swiss Indo-Europeanist Jacob Wackernagel observed that clitics or “pseudo-clitics” and some particles tend to appear in the second position of a clause in a number of ancient Indo-European languages (cf. Wackernagel 1892: 342, 371, 377). Now extended beyond Indo-European scholarship, Wackernagel’s Law refers to the restriction of formatives to a position immediately after the first word or constituent of a phrase, clause or even word (cf. Steele 1977 a). The Finnish examples in (1)⫺(2) and (7) illustrate Wackernagel’s Law: -han is second in the sentence despite the otherwise relatively free constituent order in the language for major sentential elements, as in (28). In these sentences, the denotative meaning of the sentences does not change, and in every instance, if a sentential clitic like -han is added, that clitic goes after the first constituent of the sentence.

Other examples include the Tagalog particle clitics (3)⫺(4), the Warlpiri auxiliary (8)⫺(9), Macedonian and Polish pronominal clitics (11)⫺(13), and the Latin clitic conjunction (16). The main issue in the study of Wackernagel’s Law is whether this phenomenon is syntactic in nature or phonological, or perhaps a mixture of the two. Those in favor of the pure syntax approach require mechanisms to restrict elements to second position in a phrase or clause. Support for this view comes from the word-like characteristics of second position clitics, as with Ngiyambaa clitic pronouns in (19), and from other “quasi-clitic”, or stressless, words that can be attracted to Wackernagel position (cf. Jansson 1976; Anderson 1993: 86⫺95). In Warlpiri, for example, certain modal particles, including mayi ‘presumably’ in (29), avoid sentence-initial position and prefer second position (cf. Nash 1986: 186f.); on the basis of word-level stress assignment and vowel harmony, such words are not clitics.

(29) Miirntajangka mayi kanpa kirijarrimi waninja flu:result presumably pres:you striped:inch.non-past throat ‘Presumably your throat is sore from the flu?’ Supporters of the phonological approach cite the prosodic properties of clitics and refer to certain prosodic characteristics of the phonological host of the clitic, such as the number of syllables. A second issue in determining sentential second position has been the distinction between second word and second constituent. In many languages, e.g. Finnish, clitics are located after the first constituent of the clause. But other languages have placement after the first word of the clause even if the

clitic position interrupts a syntactic constituent. Luisenõ allows both options: the clitic auxiliary follows the first syntactic constituent in the clause; in (30a) it is a noun phrase. But (30b) reveals that the clitic can intervene between the first word of the noun phrase and the rest of that noun phrase. If the clitic does not follow a sentential constituent, it cannot be located further than one prosodic word away from the left edge of the noun phrase, so that (30c) is ungrammatical (cf. Steele 1977 a: 602; Halpern 1995: 14⫺30):

(30) (a) /?awaal jawajwis po-pus up nej toow-wun/ dog beautiful 3.sg-eye non⫺1.ass me look⫺at-near-non-fut.pl ‘The beautiful dog’s eyes are looking at me.’ (b) ⫽ /?awaal up jawajwis popus nej toowwun/ (c) * /?awaal jawajwis up popus nej toowwun/

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41. Clitics

The mixed syntax-prosody approach resolves this indeterminancy by allowing both second and initial positioning of syntactic elements, but uses prosodic inversion to relocate a syntactically initial enclitic to the place after the following prosodic word if there is no appropriate host for an initially located enclitic (cf. Halpern 1995: 62⫺76; Fried 1994). Sentence (30b) would have (31) as its syntactic source, and prosodic inversion would have to relocate the enclitic /-up/ after the prosodic word /?awaal/. (31) /-up ?awaal jawajwis popus nej toowwun/ Another issue that has arisen from investigations of Wackernagel phenomena is the syntactic characterization of initial position in syntax. Two basic lines of thought have emerged ⫺ either constituents are located in initial position through movement (e.g. fronting around the second position clitics), or elements are base-generated in initial position and require some mechanism such as a feature [first] for correct placement of Wackernagel clitics. 4.2. Endoclitics Clitics typically attach externally, never internally in morphosyntactic words. While there are numerous examples of proclitics and enclitics, only a few reported instances of internally located clitics, or endoclitics, have come to light. An endoclitic is usually viewed as a clitic sandwiched between a stem and its affix, as in (32), or else infixed directly into a host without regard to morphological boundaries. (32) (a) stem-enclitic-suffix (b) prefix-proclitic-stem An example is the Ngiyambaa pronominal clitic /-ndu/ in (19), which occurs wedged between the verb /bara6bara6j/ and a plural suffix /-gal/ and exemplifies the linear sequence in pattern (32a). These internally positioned clitics would constitute a problem for the notion of lexical integrity, which holds that a syntactic element such as a clitic cannot interrupt a word, and more generally, that the rules of the syntactic component cannot make reference to or operate into the internal structure of words. Therefore some investigators of clitics propose that attachment of bound words is always external to the host, never internal as in endoclisis (cf. Klavans 1979: 70). There have been several proposals to ban endoclitcs from linguistic theory. Barring the clitic equivalent to infixation would

be attractive because it would allow for a more restrictive theory of cliticization if in fact the attachment possibilities of clitics can be suitably constrained to concatenation. In a restricted view of cliticization, direct endocliticization must not result from cliticization rules ⫺ that is, neither phonological liaison nor the syntactic positioning of clitics. If endoclitics are to be found, they should arise indirectly through other mechanisms. Proposed cases of endoclitics have been largely reanalyzable as phenomena other than direct endoclisis, and the reanalysis of the set of proffered endoclitics falls into one of five basic approaches: (a) The malordering is due to a morph metathesis that comes after external clitic attachment and is not part of liaison (cf. Haiman 1977: 315⫺322). (b) Some endoclitics are claimed not to be sandwiched between a stem and its affix, but are argued to have their own affixes (cf. Klavans 1979: 71⫺74 and the analysis of (19) in 3.3). (c) The putative endoclitic is not a clitic at all, but an affix (cf. Joseph 1988: 206⫺210; Nevis 1984). (d) The affix supposedly stranding the clitic internally can be reanalyzed as a clitic itself. (e) The putative endoclitics are completely lexicalized, and no active process of endoclisis should be invoked. The metathesis approach (a) has been questioned on both descriptive and theoretical grounds (cf. Klavans 1979; see also Art. 59). If a clitic is first attached externally, then an endoclitic would have to result from metathesis with a neighboring formative. This predicts that endoclitics appear no further than one morphological constituent from the edge of a word. This holds for /-ndu/ in (19), which has only one morpheme, namely /gal/, intervening between it and the end of the word. But (33) shows what happens when the Ngiyambaa word contains two clitics: /-nu/ is a single constituent away from the end of the word, whereas /-li6/ is three morphemes away from the edge of the word. (33) /na6-n˝ i-li6-na-nu-gal/ see-past-1.du.nom-excl-2.obl-pl ‘We two saw you all.’ That Ngiyambaa verbs like /na6/ ‘see’ fail to take nominal inflections like the exclusive and plural suffixes means that */na6-na-gal/ would be an impossible source for the metathesis of externally attached clitic pro-

398 nouns. Although clitic metathesis may be ruled out as descriptively inadequate, it can also be pointed out that this device adds transformational power to the grammar, and so should be avoided for theoretical reasons as well. Endoclitics are problematic only for the bound word type of clitic or for syntactic accounts of clitics, but phrasal affix analyses would not need to ban endoclisis ⫺ phrasal infixation is not ruled out by lexical integrity. 4.3. Clitic climbing Direct and indirect object clitics are believed to have a special ability to shift from a subordinated clause to a matrix clause, and this ability varies from language to language. Spanish and Italian permit it, as in (5) and (34), but (35) demonstrates that French does not, except in complex predicates like the causative (36): (34) Gianni li vuole vedere John them want:pres:3.sg see:inf ‘John wants to see them.’ (35) *Serge les veut voir Serge them want:pres:3.sg see:inf (36) Serge la fait manger Serge her make:pres:3.sg eat:inf ‘Serge makes her eat.’ Constraining clitic movement by exploring clitic syntax in comparison with the syntax of regular words has been prominent in the work done in the 1980s and 1990s. In head movement, exceptions to verb fronting do occur and head crossing might be allowed to occur in a limited way (by means of long head movement), but exceptions to long head movement might turn out to be clitics (cf. ´ avar 1994). Under the traditional Wilder & C transformational view, clitics originate in one place in the syntactic structure and move to their surface locations, and this accounts nicely for the complementarity between object clitics and full object noun phrases. The object clitics are base generated relatively high up in constituent structure (i.e. in C∞) rather than lower down in the syntactic tree; a verb moves to be with its object clitics and does not abandon its object clitics through movement out of the verb phrase (thereby losing the ability to assign case to the object). 4.4. Clitic doubling Despite the complementarity between pronominal clitics and full noun phrases, we also see the possibility of clitic doubling ⫺ a rendundant expression of the clitics alongside a


full noun phrase as in Macedonian (11)⫺(12). Redundant expression of grammatical information is typical of affixes and this makes clitics resemble inflectional affixes. One difficulty with clitic doubling is the uncertainty over the status of the clitic: Is the clitic a pronoun that has ousted the original noun phrase ⫺ making the noun phrase some sort of appositive or else bumped into to a prepositional phrase, as in the Spanish example (10) ⫺ or has the clitic moved out of the verb phrase, thereby allowing an object noun phrase to remain (but with the clitic pronoun now acting as affix-like agreement with that noun phrase)? A number of theories have been proposed to account for clitic doubling and the syntax of noun phrases. One observation is that a noun phrase may be doubled only if that noun phrase is preceded by a preposition (such as Spanish a in (10); cf. Jaeggli 1982: 14; 1986: 36f.). Known as Kayne’s Generalization, this is explained as necessary because the assignment of abstract case to the noun phrase is absorbed by the pronominal clitic, so the noun phrase must receive its case through some other means, such as a preposition. The Macedonian clitics in (11)⫺(12) falsify Kayne’s Generalization unless we are to interpret them differently from Romance clitics (cf. Joseph 1988). Clitic doubling has led to analyses of pronominal clitics as copies of noun phrases (cf. Klavans 1982: 38⫺57 [1995: 64⫺86]; Taylor 1990: 26⫺28). Languages without doubled clitics might simply copy noun phrases, pronominalize into a clitic in another location in the sentence, and then delete the original noun phrase. Copying with deletion is viewed as a convenient account of clitic climbing and other non-doubled clitics. Alternatives to clitic copying include clitic movement and base generation (cf. 4.1 and 4.3). It is not clear whether a special syntactic clitic location (a clitic node) is really required for base generation and movement analyses. 4.5. Clitic clusters A number of studies propose that clitic ordering must be accounted for by means of conditions on surface structure rather than transformations. Such surface structure constraints order clitics with respect to one another through reference to morphosyntactic properties (word class and person/number features) or phonological properties, or both, and thus raise questions about the separation of syntax and phonology.

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41. Clitics

Spanish has two homophonous clitics se (cf. Perlmutter 1971: 20⫺25, 34⫺38). One is the reflexive; the other is spurious se, occurring as a replacement for the first of two third-person clitics. The two pattern alike in the surface structure filter by preceding all other pronominal clitics: se ⫺ 2nd person ⫺ 1st person ⫺ 3rd person. The restrictions on the combination of object pronoun clitics in Spanish and restrictions on their order arguably cannot be accounted for either in deep structure or by constraints on the rules that introduce or move them. Therefore a transformational grammar must be supplemented by positive output constraints which act as a filter by accepting only sequences which match the clitic template. There are similar claims about French as well, according to which up to seven slots have to be created for clitic sequences in the language: The template

in (37) makes reference to particular clitics and to person and case; the clitics me ‘1.sg’, te ‘2.sg’, nous ‘1.pl’, vous ‘2.pl’, and reflexive se are both accusative and dative, but only one is allowed to fill the slot in a clause. (37) 1 2 3 subject ne me clitics te nous vous se

4 5 6 7 3.acc 3.dat y en

Tagalog offers another example of a clitic template. Its second position clitics show a certain amount of freedom with respect to one another, while remaining rigidly positioned immediately after the first constituent of the clause; nila and ako illustrate the two orders:

(38) (a) Hindi nila ako na-kita not they(non-top) I(top) obj-foc.perf.apt-see ‘They didn’t see me.’ (b) ⫽ Hindi ako nila nakita But not all clitics exhibit such freedom, e.g. ko, na and siya (cf. Schachter 1973; Schachter & Otanes 1972: 183⫺193): (39) (a) Na-kita ko na siya obj-foc.perf.apt-see I(non-top) already s/he(top) ‘I have already seen her/him.’ (b) *Nakita ko siya na (c) *Nakita siya ko na (d) *Nakita siya na ko (e) *Nakita na ko siya (f) *Nakita na siya ko The clitic filter in Tagalog seems to require monosyllabic pronouns to come first in the sequence of clitics, particle clitics second, and disyllabic pronouns last (cf. Schachter 1973; Schachter & Otanes 1972: 184, 412). With

these three general groupings, there is either free or fixed order ⫺ free order among disyllabic pronouns, as shown in (38). (40) demonstrates what happens when a monosyllabic pronoun cooccurs with a disyllabic pronoun:

(40) (a) Hindi ka niya kapatid not you(top) s/he(non-top) sibling ‘You aren’t his/her sibling.’ (b) *Hindi niya ka kapatid Within the particle clitics there are a number of ordering restrictions. Clitics na ‘already’ and pa ‘still’ precede the other sixteen particle clitics; then comes man ‘even’, followed by the rest, among which are still other sub-generalizations about clitic order.

Clitics in Pashto also obey a surface structure constraint making crucial reference to person-number information and to phonological shape (cf. Tegey 1975). The template (41) sequences the clitics xo ‘indeed’ and ba ‘will, might’ before the pronominal clitics

400


(first and second person plural clitics am and mo, first person singular me, second person singular de, and third person ye), but locates the modal clitic de ‘should’ in the same slot as the homophonous pronominal clitic de ‘2.sg’: (41) 兩 xo 兩 ba 兩 1/2.pl 兩 1/2.pl 兩 1.sg 兩 de 兩 3 兩 Thus the Pashto clitic filter includes both morphosyntactic and phonological information. Interestingly, two instances of de cannot occur in the same clause: (42) *tor de de wuwahi Tor should 2.sg hit ‘Tor should hit you.’ The clitic clusters in (37) and (41) show that clitic sequencing frequently makes reference to individual clitics, to phonological shape of clitics ⫺ especially homophonous formatives ⫺ and to morphosyntactic properties. Clitic templates have also been presented for Serbo-Croatian (Schütze 1994), Bulgarian (Halpern 1995: 213), Nitinaht (Klokeid 1978), Warlpiri (Nash 1986: 59f.), Lummi (Steele 1981: 62, 72), and Finnish (Karttunen 1975), among other languages, yielding similar results. Exactly how to incorporate clitic templates into grammatical theory has been the source of some controversy. Clitic sequencing constraints might be achieved by means of a postsyntactic filter (cf. Perlmutter 1970; 1971: 29⫺86). But clitic templates resemble inflectional affix templates, so a morphological approach might be more appropriate for clitic sequences (cf. Halpern 1995: 191⫺231). On the other hand, clitic order is not unlike word order and can be stated or derived as such (cf. Nevis 1988: 56⫺61; Sorin 1995). These standpoints can make different claims about the constituency of clitics and about the constituency of clitic-host sequences. It is not entirely clear, for instance, whether second position clitics form a constituent with their phonological host, syntactic host, or even with each other.

5.

Clitic semantics

There seem to be few limitations to the meanings that clitics can express. The range of clitic semantics stretches from pronouns to auxiliary verbs to negative, conjunctions and complementizers, as well as a huge variety of adverbial meanings ⫺ no grammatical cate-

gory seems to be excluded, as a small sampling demonstrates: ⫺ Beja: copula (cf. Klavans 1979: 73f.) ⫺ Luisenõ: subject markers and particles (e.g. quotative speech, supposition, interrogative; cf. Steele 1981: 23⫺59) ⫺ Lummi: interrogative, modality, tense, and subject markers (cf. Steele 1981: 59⫺ 73) ⫺ Macedonian: definite article, modals, auxiliaries, dative, accusative, reflexive (cf. Halpern 1995: 156, 170, 184) ⫺ Madurese: reduplication, expressing plurality (cf. Stevens 1986) ⫺ Tagalog: pronouns and particles, e.g. interrogative, politeness and other mood markers (cf. Schachter 1973) ⫺ Warlpiri: tense markers, conjunctions, complementizers (including negative), subject and object pronouns, and a number of particles (including contrast, topic, emphasis, epistemic adverbs, ‘also’ and the like; cf. Nash 1986: 55⫺57) ⫺ Yidiny: reflexive, topicalizer, comparison, adverbs marking contrast and emphasis, ‘only, all’, ‘still’, ‘now’ (cf. Dixon 1977: 236⫺246) This wide array of grammatical meanings expressed by clitics is to be expected under the view of clitics as bound words and phrasal affixes. In general, clitics signal grammatical meanings rather than lexical meanings, and in this sense, there may be no real limitation on the grammatical meanings a clitic can express. Usually clitics are distinguished from particles. If particles are considered words with grammatical meaning, then one kind of particle might be the bound word clitic, although phrasal affixes would have to be kept separate. However, in a traditional view of particles as uninflected invariable words, clitics might or might not be particles insofar as some clitics have the ability to be inflected (cf. 3.3), and if particles constitute a separate word class, clitics are again to be distinguished from particles, as clitics may express a large number of word classes and subclasses. Use of expressions such as particle clitic or clitic particle indicate that the two phenomena are customarily not conflated. In many treatments, clitic particles are contrasted with pronominal clitics and include clitic conjunctions, complementizers, and adverbs, as well as sentence and discourse markers. The only meanings not apparently

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41. Clitics

found for clitics are those associated with major word classes such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The reason for this is that when nouns become phonologically or prosodically dependent they usually also become semantically bleached and may grammaticize. Patterns of grammaticization are manifold, but perhaps the closest to clitic status is noun in-

corporation (cf. Art. 88). In Sora, incorporated nouns are phonologically shorter, bound formatives, resembling the phonological reduction typical of clitics. In (43), the incorporated nouns (dzil/ and /jc/ are contrasted with their free counterparts /dzilu/ ‘meat’ and /ejc/ ‘fish’ (cf. Donegan & Stampe 1983: 341):

(43) /Min ed-mel-dzom-dzil-jc-adz-t-en-aj/ I not-want-eat-meat-fish-all-pres-inter-1 ‘I don’t want to eat all the fish.’ Parallels between cliticization and compounding have been noted (cf. Zwicky 1977: 31f.; Nevis 1988: 139⫺145), but compounding is usually considered to be morphological in nature and cliticization is morphosyntactic (i.e. syntax plays a clear role in cliticization).

6.

Diachrony and clitics

Clitics can play a prominent role in grammaticalization (cf. Art. 145). According to the agglutination cycle, grammatical morphemes frequently develop from historically independent words which have lost their phonological independence and cliticized onto a neighbor and fused into the host as an affix (cf. Steele 1977 b; Jeffers & Zwicky 1980). If this change is unidirectional, then affix sequencing can be an indication of an earlier word order. In (44), the Southern Veps prolative suffix -mu is a development from a postposition *mö¯den ‘along’ (cf. Oinas 1961: 78⫺107). It now has typical affixal behavior such as adjective-noun concord, but related dialects and languages show cognate clitic and nonclitic postpositions (e.g. Votic möötä ‘along, according to’). (44) raha¯zˇ-ı¯-mu randa¯zˇ-ı¯-mu silver-pl-prolat slope-pl-prolat ‘on the silver slopes’ The agglutination cycle has played a large role in morphosyntactic reconstruction and has been expressed in the slogan “Today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax” (Givoń 1971: 413). According to this, an affix continues the positioning within the word that its word source has within the phrase, thus allowing suffix morphology to be reconstructed as earlier word syntax. The agglutination cycle is also the basis for work on grammaticalization, according to which morphophonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic/ pragmatic changes are correlated: Morpho-

syntactic change for a lexical item implies a corresponding change in function and phonology (cf. Hopper & Traugott 1993: 100⫺ 129). Grammaticalization need not be unidirectional and cyclic; it can apparently be arrested or even reversed. Some elements, such as second position clitics, resist completion of the agglutination cycle and do not end up as affixes (cf. Comrie 1980: 83⫺87), though some second position clitics do morphologize as affixes. The Lithuanian reflexive -si is one such Wackernagel affix (cf. Nevis & Joseph 1993). It attaches after the first morphological unit within a word; that unit is either a prefixless verb as in (45a) or the first prefix as in (45b) and (45c). Related Balto-Slavic languages reveal that the reflexive has developed from a clause-second position clitic. (45) (a) lenkiuó-si ‘I bow.’ (b) ne-si-lenkiu` ‘I don’t bow.’ (c) su-si-pa-zˇ`ınti ‘to become acquainted with’ Apparent exceptions to the direction of grammaticalization are to be accounted for by means of metanalytic reinterpretation, whereby clitics can be reanalyzed as words or affixes as clitics ⫺ if both of these happen, then former affixes may emerge as independent words. Although this is rare, it has apparently taken place in a number of languages (cf. Joseph & Janda (1988). For instance, Enontekiö Saame features an abessive postposition taga, which has its origins in the affixal sequence *-pta-k- (caritive *-pta ⫹ lative *-k). All of these elements are affixal in the other Finno-Permic languages and are to be reconstructed as suffixes in the proto-language. After fusion, this suffix sequence was first reanalyzed as a clitic (as is now the case in most Saame varieties), then it emerged as an independent word in some dialects such

402


as Enontekiö (cf. Joseph & Janda 1988 with further references). Clitics’ special attraction to second position may play a role in basic word order change. Sentential clitics perhaps have the propensity to migrate to clausal second position. If the sentential clitics include auxiliary verbs, a generalization of auxiliary secondposition syntax to non-auxiliary verbs can be one way for constituent order to shift from SOV to SVO (cf. Hock 1982; 21991: 330⫺ 336): (46) Stage I: Stage II: Stage III:

S-O-V-AUX S-AUX-O-V S-AUX-V-O

Many details remain to be worked out for agglutination and grammaticalization. The exact route which words take in becoming affixes is not clear. Words typically become bound, turning first into simple clitics, then further develop into special clitics or phrasal affixes before fusing as lexical affixes. The English negative contraction -n’t is an example of this. Presumably an accentless not produced a simple clitic and later acquired some idiosyncrasies and became a special clitic. In contemporary English, -n’t is affixal and does not have the same distribution as the full word not. Some stages may not be obligatory in this scenario ⫺ words might be able to skip certain intermediate stages when grammaticalizing. Thus French object clitics have been analyzed as verbal affixes in the modern language (cf. Miller 1992: 173⫺233), and clearly they originated as full pronouns, but there is no evidence that they followed all the stages of the agglutination cycle.

7.

References

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Comrie, Bernard (1980), “Morphology and Word Order Reconstruction: Problems and Prospects”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (ed.), Historical Morphology. The Hague etc.: Mouton (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 17), 83⫺96 Dixon, R[obert] M. W. (1977), A Grammar of YidiM. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 19) Donegan, Patricia Jane & Stampe, David (1983), “Rhythm and the Holistic Organization of Language Structure”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 19.2, 337⫺353 [Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax] Fried, Mirjam (1994), “Second-position Clitics in Czech: Syntactic or Phonological?”. Lingua 94, 155⫺175 Givoń, Talmy (1971), “Historical Syntax and Synchronic Morphology: An Archaeologist’s Field Trip”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 7.1, 394⫺415 Haiman, John (1977), “Reinterpretation”. Language 53, 312⫺328 Halpern, Aaron (1995), On the Placement and Morphology of Clitics. Stanford/CA: CSLI Publications [orig. 1992: Notes on the Placement and Morphology of Clitics, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford Univ.] Halpern, Aaron L. (1998), “Clitics”. In: Spencer, Andrew & Zwicky, Arnold M. (eds.), The Handbook of Morphology. Oxford, Malden/MA: Blackwell, 101⫺122 Halpern, Aaron L. & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1966, eds.), Approaching Second: Second Position Clitics and Related Phenomena. Stanford/CA: CSLI Publications (CSLI Lecture Notes 61) Hock, Hans Henrich (1982), “AUX-Cliticization as a Motivation for Word Order Change”. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 12.1, 91⫺101 Hock, Hans Henrich (21991), Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter [11986 (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 34)] Hopper, Paul J. & Traugott, Elisabeth Closs (1993), Grammaticalization. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Jaeggli, Osvaldo A. (1982), Topics in Romance Syntax. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Studies in Generative Grammar 12) Jaeggli, Osvaldo A. (1986), “Three Issues in the Theory of Clitics”. In: Borer, Hagit (ed.), The Syntax of Pronominal Clitics. Orlando/FL etc.: Academic Press (Syntax and Semantics 19), 15⫺42 Jansson, Tore (1976), “Placement of Enclitics in Latin and the Relation between Syntax and Phonology”. In: Karlsson, Fred (ed.), Papers from the Third Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Hanasaari, October 1⫺3, 1976. Turku: Text Linguistics Research Group, Academy of Finland, 237⫺ 244

41. Clitics Jeffers, Robert J. & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1980), “The Evolution of Clitics”. In: Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Labrum, Rebecca & Shepherd, Susan (eds.), Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics [Stanford 1980]. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 14), 221⫺231 Joseph, Brian D. (1988), “Pronominal Affixes in Modern Greek: The Case Against Clisis”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 24.1, 203⫺215 Joseph, Brian D. & Janda, Richard D. (1988), “The How and Why of Diachronic Morphologization and Demorphologization”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press, 193⫺210 Kaisse, Ellen M. (1985), Connected Speech: The Interaction of Syntax and Phonology. Orlando/FL etc.: Academic Press Karttunen, Frances (1975), “Functional Constraints in Finnish Syntax”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 11.2, 232⫺243 [Parasession on Functionalism] Klavans, Judith L. (1979), “On Clitics as Words”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 15.2, 68⫺80 [The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels] Klavans, Judith L. (1982), Some Problems in a Theory of Clitics. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club [orig. 1980: Ph.D. dissertation, University College London; reprinted 1995: On Clitics and Cliticization: The Interaction of Morphology, Phonology, and Syntax. New York, London: Garland] Klavans, Judith L. (1985), “The Independence of Syntax and Phonology in Cliticization”. Language 61, 95⫺120 Klokeid, Terry J. (1978), “Surface Structure Constraints and Nitinaht Enclitics”. In: Cook, EungDo & Kaye, Jonathan (eds.), Linguistic Studies of Native Canada. Vancouver: Univ. of British Columbia Press, 157⫺176 Lapointe, Steven G. (1992), “Life on the Edge: Arguments in Favor of an Autolexical Account of Edge Inflections”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 28.1, 318⫺332 Miller, Philip Harold (1992), Clitics and Constituents in Phrase Structure Grammar. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1991: Proefschrift, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht] Nash, David (1986), Topics in Warlpiri Grammar. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1980: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Nevis, Joel A. (1984), “A Non-endoclitic in Estonian”. Lingua 64, 209⫺224

403 Nevis, Joel Ashmore (1988), Finnish Particle Clitics and General Clitic Theory. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1985: Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State Univ.; reprinted 1986: Columbus: Ohio State Univ. (Working Papers in Linguistics 33)] Nevis, Joel A. & Joseph, Brian D. (1993), “Wackernagel Affixes: Evidence from Balto-Slavic”. Yearbook of Morphology 1992, 93⫺111 Nevis, Joel A. & Joseph, Brian D. & Wanner, Dieter & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1994), Clitics: A Comprehensive Bibliography 1892⫺1991. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Library and Information Sources in Linguistics 22) Oinas, Felix J. (1961), The Development of Some Postpositional Cases in Balto-Finnic Languages. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura (SuomalaisUgrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia 123) Perlmutter, David M. (1970), “Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax”. Linguistic Inquiry 1, 187⫺ 255 Perlmutter, David M. (1971), Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax. New York etc.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Sadock, Jerrold M. (1990), Autolexical Syntax: A Theory of Parallel Grammatical Representations. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press Schachter, Paul (1973), “Constraints on Clitic Order in Tagalog”. In: Gonzalez, Andrew B. (ed.), Parangal kay Cecilio Lopez. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines (Philippine Journal of Linguistics Special Monograph Issue 4), 214⫺231 Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe T. (1972), Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press Schütze, Carson T. (1994), “Serbo-Croatian Second Position Clitic Placement: Syntax Is Not Enough”. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 24, 389⫺402 [also in: Carnie, Andrew & Harley, Heidi (eds.), Papers on Phonology and Morphology. Cambridge/MA: Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 21), 373⫺473] Sorin, Carmen Dobrovie (1995), “Clitic Clusters in Rumanian: Deriving Linear Order from Hierarchical Structure”. In: Cinque, Guglielmo & Giusti, Giuliana (eds.), Advances in Roumanian Linguistics. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Linguistik aktuell 10), 55⫺81 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Steele, Susan (1977 a), “On the Count of One”. In: Juilland, Alphonse (ed.), Linguistic Studies Offered to Joseph Greenberg on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, Vol. III: Syntax. Saratoga/CA: Anma Libri (Studia Linguistica et Philosophica 4), 591⫺613 Steele, Susan (1977 b), “Clisis and Diachrony”. In: Li, Charles N. (ed.), Mechanisms of Syntactic Change. Austin, London: Univ. of Texas Press, 539⫺579

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Steele, Susan (1981), An Encyclopedia of AUX: A Study in Cross-linguistic Equivalence. Cambridge/ MA, London: MIT Press Stemberger, Joseph Paul (1981), “Morphological Haplology”. Language 57, 791⫺817 Stevens, Alan M. (1986), “Reduplication in Madurese”. In: Choi, Soonja & Devitt, Dan & Janis, Wynn & McCoy, Terry & Zhang, Zheng-sheng (eds.), Proceedings of the Second Eastern States Conference on Linguistics [Buffalo/NY 1985]. Buffalo: State Univ. of New York, 231⫺242 Taylor, Ann (1990), Clitics and Configurationality in Ancient Greek. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Pennsylvania Taylor, John R. (21995), Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford etc.: Oxford Univ. Press Tegey, Habibullah (1975), “A Study of Pashto Clitics and Implications for Linguistic Theory”. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 5.1, 154⫺196

Wackernagel, Jacob (1892), “Über ein Gesetz der indogermanischen Wortstellung”. Indogermanische Forschungen 1, 333⫺436 ´ avar, Damir (1994), “Long Head Wilder, Chris & C Movement? Verb Movement and Cliticization in Croatian”. Lingua 93, 1⫺58 Zwicky, Arnold M. (1977), On Clitics. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club Zwicky, Arnold M. (1985), “Clitics and Particles”. Language 61, 283⫺305 Zwicky, Arnold M. (1987), “Suppressing the Zs”. Journal of Linguistics 23, 133⫺148 Zwicky, Arnold M. & Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1983), “Cliticization vs. Inflection: English n’t”. Language 59, 502⫺513

Joel A. Nevis, Gainesville, FL (U.S.A)

42. Internal structure of words 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Segmentation of words into minimal signs Linear order Hierarchical structure Morphological and prosodic structure References

1.

Introduction

At the heart of the study of morphology in modern linguistics is the effort to segment words into smaller meaningful elements and to determine the rules according to which those elements combine. While it may seem intuitively obvious that a word like meaningful consists of mean, -ing and -ful, it is not always clear how to divide words into smaller morphologically relevant parts (cf. 2). Assuming that the segmentation process has been successfully completed, the arrangement of the resulting elements can be described either in terms of linear order (cf. 3) or in terms of more complex hierarchical structures (cf. 4). In practice, this is again easier said than done; moreover, the analysis of word structures raises a number of fundamental theoretical questions: ⫺ How are hierarchical structures motivated (cf. 4.1)? Are they needed in all languages (cf. 4.4)? ⫺ Does morphological structure follow the same organizational principles as syntac-

tic structure (cf. 4.1)? Does it reflect syntactic properties of the language (cf. 3.2)? ⫺ Does the morphological structure of words match their phonological (prosodic) structure (cf. 5)? ⫺ Is a model which describes words as a concatenation of smaller elements really adequate (cf. 4.2, 4.3.1)? ⫺ Is it necessary for word-internal structures to be “visible” to the syntax (cf. 4.3.2)? In other words, how do morphology and syntax interact (cf. Art. 34)?

2.

Segmentation of words into minimal signs

In American structuralism, a word was described as a form, i.e. a sequence of phonemes; its meaning was viewed as extralinguistic although it is perfectly clear that a form was recognized as such only by virtue of having a meaning (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 158). By contrast, Ferdinand de Saussure emphasized that these two aspects, which he called signifiant and signifie´, are not only inseparable but must also both be classified as mental representations rather than extralinguistic realities: they are the two sides of a linguistic sign (cf. Saussure 1916: 99⫺101 [97⫺99]; see Art. 23). Despite Saussure’s insistence on the “psychological” nature of lin-

405

42. Internal structure of words

guistic units, their defining characteristics are structural relations within the language system ⫺ just as in the writings of some of his contemporaries (cf. Mugdan 1984: 50⫺79 on Jan Baudouin de Courtenay). Thus, the essential property of a sign is that its expression and its content (to use a more easily distinguishable pair of terms) necessarily presuppose each other (cf. Hjelmslev 1943: 44f. [21961: 47⫺49]). Signs can be as large as an entire book (or even larger) or as small as a word, but words “are not the ultimate, irreducible signs, as the centering of conventional linguistics around the word might lead us to think” (Hjelmslev 1943: 40 [21961: 44]). Many words are complex (or composite) and can be decomposed into smaller signs, e.g. sleeping into sleep and -ing. Such a segmentation into morphological constituents may conflict with one into phonological syllables, and this fact was recognized long before the notion of the linguistic sign was developed. Thus, 19th century German school grammars spoke of Sprachsilben, e.g. kind-isch, as opposed to Sprechsilben, e.g. kin-disch (cf. Wurst 31837: 175), and Jan Baudouin de Courtenay expanded the distinction into two hierarchies of units, with and without meaning (cf. Baudouin de Courtenay 1881: 333 [1963: 121] and Mugdan 1984: 86). Procedures of morphological segmentation and the problems they pose have been described in greater or lesser detail in numerous textbooks and surveys (e.g. Baudouin de Courtenay 1912: 91⫺109 [1963: 224⫺235]; Bloomfield 1933: 158⫺169, 227⫺246; Nida 1948; 21949: 6⫺10, 58⫺61; Harris 1942; 1951: 156⫺196; Greenberg 1957: 18⫺27; Hockett 1947; 1958: 123⫺129; Matthews 1974: 9⫺16; 2 1991: 9⫺19; Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 38⫺47; Mugdan 1994: 2543⫺2545; see also Art. 43). But, contrary to the hopes of American structuralists, even the most rigorous methods cannot be applied mechanically; a certain amount of common sense is required that no algorithm can capture. This observation led generative grammarians to abandon attempts at spelling out what the linguist’s intuitive judgments are based on (cf. Chomsky 1959: 207⫺215). Apart from occasional discussions of specific cases (e.g. Aronoff 1976: 12⫺15 on receive etc.), they tended to take their analyses of selected examples for granted and focused on the design of formal models. Not surprisingly, some of the introductions to morphology published since the late 1980s tend to deal with segmentation very briefly and presuppose that the reader’s

intuitions coincide with the author’s (e.g. Bauer 1988: 10f., 40f.; Spencer 1991: 3⫺6). Experience shows, however, that the solutions to segmentation problems from “exotic” languages, which can be found in various textbooks and workbooks (e.g. Merrifield et al. 31965: 1⫺73), are often not as obvious as one might have thought. Other introductory works devote more space to the topic but do not present the issues in a very coherent fashion (e.g. Jensen 1990: 19⫺38; Katamba 1993: 19⫺38); moreover, inconsistencies in the use of terms are likely to confuse the student (cf. Art. 46). Despite their limitations, the structuralist classics are therefore still well worth reading. Morphological segmentation rests on comparisons between words, i.e. on “partial phonetic-semantic resemblances” (Bloomfield 1933: 160) which demonstrate that the same sign, with the same expression and the same content, occurs in different combinations. It is easy to show that two expressions are identical once they have been analyzed as sequences of segments, e.g. phonemes or graphemes (which is by no means a trivial task), and this is why the analysis normally starts from the expression of a potentially complex word: one tries to find a sequence of segments which is contained in it, such that (a) this sequence occurs in other contexts and (b) has the same content as in the word in question. In the ideal case, there are four words which satisfy a proportion of the type AC : BC :: AD : BD on both the expression side and the content side, e.g. sleeps : sleeping :: keeps : keeping; such a set of words forms a “square” (cf. Greenberg 1957: 20, 23): -s

(1) sleep- (A) keep- (B)

(C)

-ing

(D)

sleeps (AC) sleeping (AD) keeps (BC) keeping (BD)

One of the members of the square may be empty, e.g. C in sleep : sleeping :: keep : keeping. Further refinements might include discontinuous or suprasegmental expressions (cf. Art. 55⫺56 and 61) or the recognition of a certain amount of “variation” on the expression side (cf. Art. 46 and 50⫺51), e.g. so as to allow proportions such as sleep : slept :: keep : kept (cf. Greenberg 1957: 20⫺26). It may also be desirable to segment a word even if only one of the conditions (a) and (b) is

406


met. For instance, blueberry : cranberry :: blue : cran is not a valid proportion because cran- does not occur by itself. Nonetheless, cran- seems to have a content (which can be described as “whatever it is which differentiates cranberries from these other kinds of berries”; Hockett 1958: 126) and could therefore be recognized as a unique sign. (Other terms for such elements include remnant, cranberry morph and unifix.) In receive : conceive :: refer : confer, on the other hand, neither re- and con- nor -ceive and -fer have a clearly identifiable content although they occur in numerous other combinations as well. Elements of this kind are quasi-signs (also called pseudo-signs or submorphemic elements). Useful terms for words like cranberry and receive are defectively segmentable and conditionally segmentable, respectively (cf. Kubrjakova 1970; Art. 43), but for certain purposes one will have to decide whether the doubtful item should be split up or left unanalyzed. In other cases, it is obvious that a word consists of two smaller signs, but the exact position of the boundary is difficult to determine, e.g. in Ancient Greek: (2) nom. sg. gen. sg. acc. sg. nom. pl. gen. pl.

‘country’ cho¯ra cho¯ras cho¯ran cho¯rai cho¯ro¯n

‘victory’ nike¯ nike¯s nike¯n nikai niko¯n

‘opinion‘ doxa doxe¯s doxan doxai doxo¯n

Some of the squares contained in this array suggest that the first parts are cho¯r-, nik-, dox-, while others lead to cho¯ra-, nike¯-, doxa(and doxe¯-). Another possibility would be to isolate -a- or -e- as a third element in some forms, e.g. cho¯r-a-s or nik-e¯-s, but it is not clear what content it might have (cf. Art. 45 on “empty morphs”). Conversely, a segment at the border may appear to belong to both parts (cf. Wells 1949: 114; Hockett 1954: 216 [1957: 389] on “links”). However, many difficulties with boundaries are “surface” phenomena and disappear if one posits an “underlying” form which is subsequently modified by phonological rules (cf. Householder 1971: 218⫺220 on a Latin example analogous to (2); see also Art. 51). The decomposition of signs into smaller ones cannot go on indefinitely; there eventually comes a stage in the analysis when subdivisions on the expression side no longer match subdivisions on the content side ⫺ a transition from signs to non-signs (cf. Hjelmslev 1943: 41⫺43 [21961: 45⫺47] on

“figuræ”; Martinet 1960: 13⫺15 on “double articulation”). For example, the expression of kitten /k=ten/ contains phoneme sequences which recur elsewhere, but all the proportions that can be found, e.g. kitten : mitten :: kiss : miss and kitten : cotton :: kit : cot, are semantically incorrect. Conversely, kitten : cat :: calf : cow shows that the content of kitten contains the features ‘young’ and ‘feline’, but it is impossible to associate them with any parts of the expression. Consequently, kitten is a minimal sign. Some authors use elementary sign in a similar sense (cf. Art. 52⫺53), others simple form (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 161; Hockett 1954: 214 [1957: 388]), but the most popular terms are morph and morpheme. Both have other meanings as well (and it is not always clear which of them is intended) so that the transparent expression minimal sign can help to avoid confusion (cf. Art. 46). If a minimal sign can be a word by itself, e.g. sleep, it is potentially free; if it is always part of a word, e.g. -ing, it is obligatorily bound. The terms free and bound are often employed in the same sense but can also refer to the construction in which the sign actually occurs so that sleep is free in I want to sleep but bound in I was sleeping. This distinction is not identical with that between root and affix, which is based on the notions of lexical and grammatical meaning (cf. Art. 27) and on paradigms in which the root remains constant and the affixes vary (cf. Art. 62). In many languages, roots are typically bound, e.g. cho¯r(a)- etc. in the Ancient Greek example (2). Affixes are further subclassified as inflectional or derivational (cf. 3.1 and Art. 38), according to their position relative to the root (cf. 4.4 and Art. 54), and so on. The structure of words can then be described in terms of classes of minimal signs whose members are combinable according to certain rules. As proportions like man : men :: boy : boys show, this model has its limitations; they can be overcome either by redefining the sign, i.e. by allowing expressions which are not sequences of phonemes (cf. Art. 45, 53), or by returning to the word as the basic morphological building block (cf. Anderson 1992: 48⫺72; see also 4.3.1 and Ch. VIII).

3.

Linear order

3.1. Derivation and inflection It is generally observed to be the case that derivational affixes occur within inflectional affixes in complex words which have both

407


sorts of morpheme, although exceptions to this typical pattern have been discussed in the literature (e.g., Sherwood 1983: 351; Bochner 1984: 412⫺419; see also Art. 38 and 39). For instance, it is typical in the Athapaskan language Slave, which is heavily polysynthetic, for inflection and derivation to be interspersed, although it is not always clear in this language which morphemes should be counted as inflectional and which as derivational (cf. Rice 1993: 145, 149). As to further determinants of the linear order of morphemes in complex words, there is little discussion. It has been suggested that the order of morphemes is in some way iconic: “If linguistic expression is iconic, then we would predict that the categories that are more relevant to the verb will occur closer to the stem than those that are less relevant.” (Bybee 1985: 24)

In other words, the more the meaning of a derivational or inflectional morpheme affects the meaning of the stem, the more relevant that morpheme is, and the closer to the stem that morpheme should occur. We would expect, for example, that aspectual morphemes would occur closer to a verb stem than person-number affixes, as the former bear more directly on the nature of the verbal meaning. Although a survey of fifty languages suggests that this hypothesis is generally correct (cf. Bybee 1985: 33⫺35), further work clearly needs to be done in this area. Another proposal concerning the linear order of morphemes within a word is the Mirror Principle (cf. Baker 1985: 375). It states that the order of certain affixes in a word reflects the order of related syntactic operations. At issue here are morphemes associated with grammatical function-changing syntactic operations such as passivization, causativization, formation of reciprocals, reflexives, and applicatives as well as certain agreement operations. According to the Mirror Principle, the morphological structure in (3) must correspond to a syntax in which plural agreement occurs before causativization: (3) [caus [pl [eat]]] What is at issue here is the nature of the syntactic operations, that is, whether they are bona fide syntactic operations, or operations on lexical entries of verbs (cf. Grimshaw 1986: 747). 3.2. Relationship between order of morphemes and syntactic word order The position of morphemes ⫺ specifically, whether they occur as prefixes or suffixes in a given language (cf. Art. 54) ⫺ has also been

related to the order of constituents in supralexical syntax. In what has become an often quoted linguistic aphorism, Talmy Givoń has proposed that “today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax” (Givoń 1971: 413; cf. also Art. 145). Independent words may become fossilized, undergo phonological reduction, and eventually become bound morphemes; if they precede their hosts, they become prefixes, if they follow they become suffixes. For example, some postpositions have become suffixes in certain Balto-Finnic languages, which is supported by the fact that they undergo vowel harmony as typical suffixes do (cf. Comrie 1980: 84). Nevertheless, it is not in general possible to reconstruct an earlier stage of word order in a language from the order of morphemes within words; Mongolian languages, for example, typically have subject person-number suffixes, yet historically, there is no evidence that the subject, pronouns included, has ever followed the verb (these languages are SOV or SVO).

4.

Hierarchical structure

4.1. Descriptive devices The idea that the components of a complex word like unhappiness can be organized hierarchically as well as linearly as in (4) goes back at least to the American structuralists who speak of immediate constituent (IC) analysis within words (cf. Nida 21949: 86⫺ 94; on the restriction to binary branching, see also Scalise 1984: 146⫺151). (4)

un

happy

ness

The hierarchy in (4) is determined on the basis of the categorial requirements of each of the affixes. Un- attaches to adjectives and forms adjectives. If -ness, which creates nouns, has first attached to the base happy, the resulting form is no longer a candidate for the attachment of un-. Hence, the hierarchical organization of unhappiness must be as in (4). IC analysis of words is of course more consistent with Item and Arrangement frameworks of morphology, as opposed to Item and Process frameworks (cf. Hockett 1954: 214, 228f. [1957: 388, 396]; see 4.2).

408 It is within the generative tradition in morphology that the notion of developing the hierarchical structure of words has received most attention. While early treatments of generative morphology are more processoriented (e.g. Chomsky & Halle 1968; Aronoff 1976; cf. also 4.2), work in the 1980s began to concentrate on the parallels between the internal organization of words and the internal organization of sentences; the development of theories of word structure in fact closely follows that of phrase structure theory. After context-free rewrite rules had become ubiquitous in the 1970s, it was only a small step to translate non-generative accounts of word structure into this format (for an attempt outside the American mainstream, cf. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 116⫺125 on German). In descriptions of English, the distinction between affixes that shift stress and/or trigger other phonological processes, e.g. -ity in passı´vity, and those that do not, e.g. -ness in pa´ssiveness (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968: 84f.) often played a major role, for instance in the following rule schema for forming complex words, where X and Y range over lexical categories N, A, and V, r stands for “root” and af for “affix” (cf. Selkirk 1982: 95; see also Williams 1981): (5) (a) X J Yaf X X J Y Xaf (b) Xr J Yaf Xr Xr J Yr Xaf (c) X J Xr These rules distinguish as sublexical units “root” and “word”; those affixes which affect stress (non-neutral or Level I affixes) attach to and form roots, and those which do not affect stress (neutral or Level II) attach to and form words. The rule in (5c) ensures that words can be formed from roots with no affixation. Like the phrase structure rules of standard theory transformational grammar, these word structure rules generate trees into which roots, words, and affixes are inserted. Affixes are assumed to have lexical entries just as free forms do. In other rule systems, no distinction is made between root affixes and word affixes, and trees are projected from lexical entries and labelled via percolation conventions which copy features from lower to higher nodes in the tree (cf. Lieber 1990: 82⫺89; see also Art. 83). More recent phrase structural treatments of the internal syntax of complex words have


sought to capitalize on advances in X-bar theory in syntax by proposing that there are bar-levels in words just as there are in phrases and that word structure must follow the basic X-bar constraint (Xn J … Xn⫺1 …) as in syntax (cf. Scalise 1984: 186⫺191). Assuming the levels X1 (complex words), X0 (simple words), and X⫺1 (affixes), the structure of a complex word like happiness would be (cf. Scalise 1984: 188): N1

(6) A0 兩 happy

N⫺1 兩 ness

However, there are a number of problems that arise with this system (cf. Lieber 1987 b). First, it equates all complex words with phrases that consist of head plus complement (e.g., a V1 like devour the apple). Second, as soon as we seek to analyze words which have more than one affix, it becomes unclear what the labelling of nodes should be. For example, if happiness is an N1, is unhappiness an N2, that is, the equivalent of a maximal phrase in syntax? And what is the structural effect of further affixation? Thus it is not clear that X-bar theoretic principles can be applied in this way to word structure. A further attempt to apply X-bar theory to the internal structure of words tries to reduce the two to a single set of principles within the “Government and Binding” or “Principles and Parameters” framework of generative grammar (cf. Lieber 1992: 26⫺76 and Chomsky 1981; 1986). It suggests that complex words are projected on the basis of a schema such as that in (7), with parameters determining the order of elements set once for each language (cf. Lieber 1992: 38): (7) (a) Xn J … X{n⫺1, n} … where recursion is allowed for n ⫽ 0 (b) Licensing Conditions (b1) Heads are initial/final with respect to complements ⫺ Theta-roles are assigned to left/right ⫺ Case is assigned to left/right (b2) Heads are initial/final with respect to specifiers (b3) Heads are initial/final with respect to modifiers (c) Pre- or post-head modifiers may be Xmax or X0


Within this view, direction of affixation is predicted to parallel word order in the supralexical syntax, with complements preceding or following their sublexical heads in words as they would in sentences. This proposal depends on the assumption that components of a complex word can be treated as heads, complements, specifiers, or modifiers (adjuncts), just as the elements making up phrases can. This idea has a certain amount of prima facie plausibility. In Tagalog, for example, the second element of the compound pamatid-uhaw ‘cutter-thirst (thirst quencher)’ functions as a complement. Similarly, in the compound matang-lawin ‘eyes-hawk (keen eyes)’, the stem lawin functions as a modifier to its head (cf. Lieber 1992: 46). This order follows if sublexical order is set by the same parameters as supralexical order; complements and modifiers typically follow their heads in Tagalog phrasal syntax. Critics have pointed out a number of problems with this proposal, however, among them that it is not at all clear in what way morphemes within words can act as specifiers (cf. Spencer 1993: 583). Another attempt to apply principles of Xbar theory to the internal structure of words proposes the rule schema in (8) for both the internal structure of words and of phrases (cf. Ackema 1995: 6): (8) Xmax J Ymax, Xmax⫺1 Xmax⫺1 J Zmax, Xmax⫺2 where max ⫽ 0 or 2 Again, morphological heads are assumed to have complements and specifiers, just as syntactic heads do. The value of a maximal projection for sublexical syntax is assumed to be 0 in this framework, which does not attempt to account for the order of sublexical elements in structures of this sort. A word like lilyless would have the following structure (cf. Ackema 1995: 7): A0 兩 A⫺1

(9)

N0 兩 N⫺2 兩 lily

A⫺2

less

Although this application of X-bar theory to word structure has the advantage of main-

409 taining a precise parallel between the domains of morphology and syntax (heads are two bar-levels below their specifiers and one level below their complements in both syntax and word structure), it goes no further than earlier ones in clarifying how we determine which sublexical constituents are specifiers, modifiers, or complements. 4.2. Alternative frameworks It is thus clearly possible to ascribe internal structure to words and to develop ways of producing that structure within the generative tradition. Still, it has remained an open issue whether such internal structure is in fact necessary, and whether it is appropriate to describe the internal organization of words in such structural terms. Discussion of the appropriateness of ascribing internal structure to complex words goes back at least as far in the literature as Charles Hockett’s classic statement of the differences between Item and Arrangement (IA) and Item and Process (IP) theories of word formation. In the former sort of theory, “[t]he pattern of the language is described if we list the morphemes and the arrangements in which they occur relative to each other in utterances” (Hockett 1954: 212 [1957: 387]). In the latter theory, a grammar consists of a list of processes and the sorts of roots they apply to; “[a] derived form consists of one or more underlying forms to which a process has been applied” (Hockett 1954: 227f. [1957: 396]). A third theoretical model is known as Word and Paradigm (WP); it was “the traditional framework” for the discussion of the classical languages (Hockett 1954: 210 [1957: 386]) and has been developed in more detail in the 1970s (cf. Matthews 1972: 104⫺197; 1974: 136⫺153). This framework takes the unsegmented word as central; in this theory, “the so-called ‘morphemes’ are not sequentially organised but are properties of each word as a whole. Hence the contrasts too are drawn within the word-form as a whole” (Matthews 1974: 144). In other words, words are not analyzed into pieces, or even into roots and processes, but are compared with one another within a matrix of intersecting and cross-classifying characteristics ⫺ Person, Number, Tense, and so on. The theories of word structure described in 4.1 fall squarely within the IA tradition. IP and WP frameworks of analysis have both had proponents within the generative tradi-

410 tion as well (cf. Aronoff 1976; Anderson 1992). In the field of derivational word formation, Word Formation Rules (WFRs) consistent with an IP framework have been proposed; they specify a phonological operation on a base, as well as the category and subcategorization of the resulting form (cf. Aronoff 1976: 22). For instance, the rule in (10) accounts for the formation of negative adjectives in un- (cf. Aronoff 1976: 63): (10) [X]Adj J [un쒙[X]Adj]Adj semantics (roughly) un쒙X ⫽ not X The internal structure of a complex word within this sort of theory amounts in effect to its derivational history, that is, the order in which processes have been applied. Even in theories which favor an approach to inflection inspired by WP, the treatment of derivation may be similarly processual (cf. Anderson 1992: 72). 4.3. Difficulties with structural accounts of word formation There are two ways in which theories which attribute internal hierarchical structure to words have been challenged by proponents of IP frameworks. The first concerns the treatment of types of word formation that are nonaffixational and nonconcatenative in nature, among them reduplication (cf. Art. 57), apophony (cf. Art. 58), morphological metathesis (cf. Art. 59), truncation and subtractive morphology (cf. Art. 60), and root and pattern types of word formation (cf. Art. 56). The issue here is primarily mechanical in nature: how can we segment words and display their hierarchical structure if they do not consist of obviously discrete pieces (cf. 4.3.1)? The second challenge is a more fundamental one, that is, whether the internal structure that we ascribe to words in fact does any work, whether it needs to be “visible” for any reason, in effect, whether it is anything more than a sometimes useful heuristic for the linguist (cf. 4.3.2). 4.3.1. Nonconcatenative word formation American structuralists who worked with IA theories of word formation in the 1940s and 1950s were well aware of the difficulties that nonconcatenative word formation raises for this model. Among other issues, they discussed a number of possible analyses of the past tense verb form took in English. In a


strictly IA treatment of morphology it is necessary to treat took in one of the following ways (cf. Hockett 1954: 223f. [1957: 393f.]): (a) as a portmanteau form consisting of the morphemes take and ed, (b) as an allomorph of take which occurs with a zero past tense morpheme, (c) as a discontinuous allomorph /t … k/ with an infixed vocalic past tense allomorph, or (d) as the present tense take concatenated with a “replacive morph” /ei/ J /w/ Each of these is problematic in some way, and the last, in fact, directly counter to the spirit of IA, as it in effect encodes a process as a morpheme. Similarly problematic for theories of word formation that treat words as hierarchically organized complexes of discrete pieces are phenomena of reduplication, truncation, and root and pattern word formation. Nevertheless, starting in the early 1980s, there have been a number of attempts to treat such nonconcatenative processes within IA frameworks. Such attempts capitalize on advances in nonlinear phonology. For example, the root and pattern word formation patterns in the Semitic languages have been treated by segmenting morphemes on different autosegmental “tiers” or “planes” (cf. McCarthy 1982; see also Art. 56). Triconsonantal roots which bear the basic lexical meaning of the verb occupy one tier, vocalic melodies a separate tier; the two are organized or synchronized by association with a “template” or “skeleton” consisting of syllables (on prosodic structure within words, cf. 5): (11)

m k

C

V

t C

C

b

‘write’

V

C Binyan XX

a

perfective active

m = kattab ‘caused to write’

Thus the interdigitation of consonants and vowels in Semitic verb formation can be seen

411


in terms of morphemes in a particular arrangement. Similarly, reduplication can be reduced to affixation ⫺ and therefore accommodated within an IA framework ⫺ if the reduplicative morpheme is conceived of as a sequence of consonants and vowels whose segmental melody must be supplied on the basis of the base of the word (cf. Marantz 1982). Further work on reduplication has refined the proposal so that the reduplicative morpheme is always some sort of unit of prosodic structure, typically a syllable, foot, or prosodic word. This sort of analysis can be extended to phenomena of consonant mutation and umlaut (cf. Lieber 1984: 329⫺345; 1987 a: 72⫺129 and Art. 58). Even apparent morphological metathesis has been treated in IA terms, including the formation of the “actual” aspect in the Saanich dialect of Straits Salish (cf. Stonham 1994: 161⫺180). In the non-actual, a form like /tqwe/ ‘X tightens something’ consists of two consonants and a

vowel arrayed on different autosegmental planes and mapped to a single mora:

冋册

(12) CCV CC V 1m

Formation of the actual aspect consists of the concatenation of a second mora, resulting in an arrangement of consonants that appears to be the result of metathesis: /teqw/ ‘X is tightening something’. Still, there are morphological phenomena which have proven resistent to reanalysis within an IA framework. Especially problematic are those that concern vowel quantity. The Philippine language Tagalog, for example, has a number of types of derivation in which affixation is accompanied by a change in the length of the stem vowel. Among them is a nominalization which creates place names that consists of the addition of the suffix -an plus one of a number of changes in vowel length:

(13) /gu:laj/ ‘vegetables’ /gulajan/ ‘vegetable garden’ /hiram/ ‘borrow’ /hi:ra:man/ ‘place for borrowing’ /hala:man/ ‘plant’ /ha:lamanan/ ‘garden’ Along with suffixation of -an, an underlying long vowel in a bisyllabic stem is shortened. If all stem vowels are short, however, they lengthen in bisyllabic stems. And in longer stems, length in a penultimate vowel is shifted one syllable to the left (for further discussion, cf. Lieber 1988: 211). It is not clear that such perturbations of vowel length can be accounted for within a strictly IA framework of word formation.

words in effect behave in the same way as simplex words with respect to further affixation. This observation has been encoded in morphological theory in a number of ways, e.g. in a principle which has come to be known as the Adjacency Condition (cf. Allen 1979: 49; cf. Siegel 1978):

4.3.2. Visibility of internal structure The need for attributing internal structure to complex words has been challenged for reasons even more fundamental than those associated with difficulties analyzing nonconcatenative types of word formation. The literature on generative morphology has long noted that locality conditions similar to those discussed in syntax obtain as well in word formation. That is, it seems generally not to be necessary for rules of word formation to have access to any but the outermost layer of word formation (cf. also Art. 84). So, for example, it is claimed that there are no rules of word formation that require a particular affix to attach only to nouns that have previously been derived from verbs. Derived

Within the theory of Lexical Phonology and Morphology, the same principle is encoded as the Bracket Erasure Convention (cf. Kaisse & Shaw 1985: 9):

(14) No Word Formation Rule can involve X and Y, unless Y is uniquely contained in the cycle adjacent to X

(15) Internal brackets are erased at the end of a level Both principles ensure that internal structure is in fact inaccessible to further layers of word formation, the former by declaring internal structure off limits, and the latter by obliterating it entirely. A number of cases have been discussed, however, which suggest that direct reference to the internal structure of a word is sometimes necessary. For example, it has been claimed that there are a significant number

412 of suffixes in English which seem to attach only to words which are not already suffixed, including deverbal -age and denominal -ful (cf. Fabb 1988: 532). This generalization must be called into question, however, as forms like readerage, meaningful, and the like can be easily enough found (cf. Anderson 1992: 281). Similarly, handbooks of German and Dutch frequently point out that the past participle-forming prefix ge- does not attach to verbs already formed with certain prefixes (be-, er-, ge-, her-, ont-, and verin Dutch). This again suggests that we must be able to tell whether a word is internally complex or not. Here also, another interpretation is possible (cf. Kiparsky 1966; Anderson 1992: 282). All such prefixes are unstressed and it may be the noninitial stress rather than the prefixal nature of the initial syllable of the verb that prevents prefixation with ge-. The conclusion that there is little real evidence to support the internal structure of complex words (cf. Anderson 1992: 291) may be too drastic. One argument in favor of maintaining internal structure concerns the comparatives of such adverbs as quickly and softly (cf. Aronoff 1976: 92f.). In addition to the periphrastic construction with more, it is possible in English to form morphological comparatives as well. Significantly, these show truncation of the adverb-forming suffix -ly: He ran quicker, etc. It is specifically the adverb-forming suffix that is in question here, as the comparative of adjectives that end in -ly, whether it is suffixal or not, do not require or allow truncation, e.g. friendlier, earlier. Compelling evidence of a rather different sort comes from psycholinguistic work (cf. also Art. 162). Experiments testing reaction time in a lexical decision task provide evidence that at least for productive, transparent derivational morphology in English, words are represented in lexical entries “in decomposed morphemic form” (cf. MarslenWilson et al. 1994: 26). That is, in the mental lexicon, words are divided into stems and affixes, rather than listed as unanalyzed wholes. There thus seems to be at least some evidence that grammars must be able to refer to the internal structure of words. 4.4. Position-class morphology One type of morphology that presents interesting questions for any theory of the internal structure of words is so-called position-class morphology, e.g. in the Athapaskan lan-


guages (cf. Kari 1989; Rice 1993) or Quechua (cf. Muysken 1986; 1988). Many prefixes and/ or suffixes may be added to a single stem and word structure is often said to consist of a series of numbered “slots” into which morphemes can be inserted, and morphemes are lexically coded as to which slot they can fill. It is typically assumed that each slot may contain no more than one affix, and that the order of positions is fixed. Discontinuous dependencies may occur, where an affix which is positioned closer to the stem may appear only in the presence of a noncontiguous affix that comes later. These properties imply that words in languages with position-class morphology have a flat rather than a nested hierarchical structure (cf. Muysken 1986: 635): (16)

Although a great deal of work remains to be done on position-class morphology, there is some initial indication that internal word structure in languages with such morphology is not radically different from that in other languages. In Quechua, for example, three affixes can occur in variable order. They are na ‘reciprocal’, chi ‘causative’, and ku ‘reflexive’ (cf. Muysken 1986: 636): (17) (a) riku-na-chi-ku-n-ku see-rec-caus-refl-3-pl ‘theyi caused them to see each otheri’ (b) riku-chi-na-ku-n-ku see-caus-rec-refl-3-pl ‘theyi caused each otheri to see them’ (c) riku-na-ku-chi-n-ku see-rec-refl-caus-3-pl ‘they caused them1 to see each other1’ The difference in interpretation that results from the difference in ordering is compatible only with a framework in which positionclass morphology too has hierarchical structure; scope differences in the semantics of the various affixes must attributed to differences in the position of an affix in a tree. Similarly, the complex position-class morphology of the Athapaskan language Slave can be best represented as a syntactic tree structure containing a number of functional projections (cf. Rice 1993: 154⫺161).

413


5.

Morphological and prosodic structure

In addition to the internal structure which can be ascribed to words on the basis of their segmentation into morphemes and the arrangement of those morphemes into trees, words may be said to have another kind of structure ⫺ the organization of prosodic constituents within the word. Prosodic constituents such as syllables, feet, and phonological words are arranged hierarchically such that feet typically dominate syllables and words dominate feet (cf. Nespor & Vogel 1986). A monomorphemic word such as happy might have the following prosodic structure: (18)

Wd F

A consideration of the prosodic structure of words leads naturally to an issue that has been much discussed in the literature on generative morphology of the 1980s and 1990s, that of bracketing paradoxes. In the typical bracketing paradox, we apparently find two different and conflicting ways of structuring a word. For example, in the English word ungrammaticality, we might postulate the bracketing in (20), on the basis of the syntactic/semantic requirements of each affix; unattaches to adjectives and forms adjectives, -ity attaches to adjectives and forms nouns: (20) [[un[grammatical]]ity] However, in terms of phonological considerations, this places a stress neutral or Level I affix inside of a nonneutral or Level II affix. Rather, the bracketing that the phonology would demand is: (21) [un[[grammatical]ity]]

s h

s a

p

y

Further, affixation clearly has the result of building prosodic structure in addition to lexical “syntactic” structure. A complex word like kinder might be characterized structurally in two ways: (19)

Wd F

Similarly, the semantics of the word unhappier demands the bracketing in (22); unhappier clearly means ‘more unhappy’ rather than ‘not happier’: (22) [[un[happy]]er] With respect to phonological considerations, however, it is well known that the comparative suffix in English attaches only to words of one syllable or words of two syllables where the second syllable is light (purer, happier, *directer, *intelligenter). For this requirement to be met in unhappier, the bracketing must be: (23) [un[[happy]er]]

s

s

k i n d

e r

A A

On the one hand, the “syntactic” word consists of the adjectival stem kind plus the comparative suffix -er. On the other hand, the prosodic or phonological word consists of a single foot which itself consists of two syllables; the final consonant of the stem is syllabified with the affix. In other words, the prosodic structure of a complex word need not be isomorphic with its “syntactic” structure.

There has been much discussion of how to accommodate the need for two such distinct bracketings, and some of the solutions depend upon the internal structure of such words. A number or proposals make use of a process of mapping from one structure to another (cf. Sproat 1985: 66⫺87; 1988; Marantz 1988), for instance: “if A and B are sisters in syntactic structure, then the phonological representation of the syntactic bracketing [AB] is simply one in which the phonological representation of A is adjacent to the phonological representation of B.” (Sproat 1988: 344)

That is, in phonological representation, A and B need not be sisters, but linear order must be maintained (for technicalities of this and similar solutions, cf. Spencer 1991: 417⫺420).

414


In another approach to mapping, a movement rule ostensibly similar to the rule of Quantifier Raising (QR) in Logical Form applies to derive the syntactic bracketing of the word from the phonological bracketing (cf. Pesetsky 1985). This solution has been criticized in a number of works (cf. Spencer 1991: 405⫺409; Lieber 1992: 147⫺149). Still, one of the earlier solutions to certain bracketing paradoxes still seems most plausible, namely a solution that is couched in terms of prosodic structure (cf. Booij & Rubach 1984; see also Aronoff & Sridhar 1983). It assumes that words like ungrammaticality and unhappier constitute two phonological words; the prefix un- in fact forms a phonological word distinct from that of grammaticality or happier (cf. Booij & Rubach 1984: 13): (24) Wd

Wd

F

s

s

un

F s

gram ma

ti

s ca

References

Ackema, Peter (1995), Syntax Below Zero. Utrecht: LEd; Onderzoeksinstituut voor Taal en Spraak, Universiteit Utrecht Allen, Margaret Reece (1979), Morphological Investigations. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Connecticut Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 62)

s

Aronoff, Mark & Sridhar, S[hikaripur] N. (1983), “Morphological Levels in English and Kannada; or Atarizing Reagan”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 19.2, 3⫺16 [Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax]

ty

Baker, Mark (1985), “The Mirror Principle and Morphosyntactic Explanation”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 373⫺415

F s

6.

Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 1)

F F

often called bracketing paradoxes. The paradox here depends upon the observation that such words seem to be derived from more complex counterparts: theoretical linguistics, southern Denmark. The solution to these paradoxes does not seem to depend upon multiple structures, and so stands outside of the scope of this article (cf. Spencer 1991: 413⫺417 for further discussion).

s li

Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan ⫽ Bodue˙n-de-Kurtene˙, I[van] (1881), “Neˇkotorye otdeˇly ‘sravnitel’noj grammatiki’ slovjanskich jazykov”. Russkij filologicˇeskij veˇstnik 5, 265⫺344 [excerpts reprinted in: Bodue˙n de Kurtene˙, Ivan A. (1963), Izbrannye trudy po obsˇcˇemu jazykoznaniju, Vol. I. Moskva: Izd. AN SSSR, 118⫺126]

A A N

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415 lag; English edition 21961, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, transl. by Francis J. Whitfield. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press] Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 229⫺242] Hockett, Charles F. (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 386⫺399] Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Householder, Fred W. (1971), Linguistic Speculations. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Jensen, John T. (1990), Morphology: Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 70) Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966, Readings in Linguistics, Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] Kaisse, Ellen M. & Shaw, Patricia A. (1985), “On the Theory of Lexical Phonology”. Phonology Yearbook 2, 1⫺30 Kari, James (1989), “Affix Positions and Zones in the Athapaskan Verb Complex: Ahtna and Navajo”. International Journal of American Linguistics 55, 424⫺454 Katamba, Francis (1993), Morphology. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan Kiparsky, Paul (1966), “Über den deutschen Akzent”. In: Untersuchungen über Akzent und Intonation im Deutschen. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag (Studia grammatica 7), 69⫺98 Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1970), “O tipach morfologicˇeskoj cˇlenimosti slov, kvazi-morfach i markerach”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1970.2, 78⫺90 Lieber, Rochelle (1984), “Consonant Gradation in Fula”. In: Aronoff, Mark & Oehrle, Richard T. (eds.), Language Sound Structure. Studies in Phonology Presented to Morris Halle by His Teacher and Students. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press, 329⫺345 Lieber, Rochelle (1987 a), An Integrated Theory of Autosegmental Processes. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press Lieber, Rochelle (1987 b), Review of: Scalise (1984). Canadian Journal of Linguistics 32, 398⫺405 Lieber, Rochelle (1988), “Configurational and Nonconfigurational Morphology”. In: Everaert et al. (eds.), 187⫺215 Lieber, Rochelle (1990), On the Organization of the Lexicon. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1980, Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of

416 Technology; reprinted 1981, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club] Lieber, Rochelle (1992), Deconstructing Morphology: Word Formation in Syntactic Theory. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press Marantz, Alec (1982), “Re Reduplication”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 435⫺482 Marantz, Alec (1988), “Apparent Exceptions to the Projection Principle”. In: Everaert et al. (eds.), 217⫺232 Marslen-Wilson, William & Tyler, Lorraine & Waksler, Rachelle & Older, Lianne (1994), “Morphology and Meaning in the English Mental Lexicon”. Psychological Review 101, 3⫺33 Martinet, Andre´ (1960), E´le´ments de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Colin Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 6) Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press. McCarthy, John J. (1982), Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1979, Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; reprinted 1982, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club] Merrifield, William R. & Naish, Constance M. & Rensch, Calvin R. & Story, Gillian (31965), Laboratory Manual for Morphology and Syntax. Santa Ana/CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics Mugdan, Joachim (1984), Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845⫺1929): Leben und Werk. München: Fink Mugdan, Joachim (1994), “Morphological Units”. In: Asher, R. E. & Simpson, J. M. Y. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 1⫺10. Oxford etc.: Pergamon Press, 2543⫺2553 Muysken, Pieter (1986), “Approaches to Affix Order”. Linguistics 24, 629⫺643 Muysken, Pieter (1988), “Affix Order and Interpretation: Quechua”. In: Everaert et al. (eds.), 259⫺279 Nespor, Marina & Vogel, Irene (1986), Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht, Riverton/NJ: Foris (Studies in Generative Grammar 28) Nida, Eugene A. (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 255⫺271]

VI. Einheiten der morphologischen Struktur Nida, Eugene (21949), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Pesetsky, David (1985), “Morphology and Logical Form”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 193⫺246 Rice, Keren D. (1993), “The Structure of the Slave (Northern Athapaskan) Verb”. In: Hargus, Sharon & Kaisse, Ellen M. (eds.), Studies in Lexical Phonology. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press (Phonetics and Phonology 4), 145⫺171 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale, publie´ par Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye, Albert Riedlinger. Lausanne, Paris: Payot [later editions with different pagination] Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Studies in Generative Grammar 18) Selkirk, Elizabeth O. (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 7) Sherwood, David (1983), “Maliseet Verbs of Possession”. Linguistic Inquiry 14, 351⫺356 Siegel, Dorothy (1978), “The Adjacency Condition and the Theory of Morphology. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society 8, 189⫺197 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Spencer, Andrew (1993), Review of: Lieber (1992). Language 69, 580⫺587 Sproat, Richard (1985), On Deriving the Lexicon. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sproat, Richard (1988), “Bracketing Paradoxes, Cliticization and Other Topics: The Mapping between Syntactic and Phonological Structure”. In: Everaert et al. (eds.), 339⫺360 Stonham, John T. (1994), Combinatorial Morphology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 120) Wells, Rulon S. (1949), “Automatic Alternation”. Language 25, 99⫺116 Williams, Edwin (1981), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274 Wurst, Raimund Jakob (31837), Praktische Sprachdenklehre für Volksschulen und die Elementarklassen der Gymnasial- und Realanstalten. Reutlingen: Mäcken [⫽ 11836]

Rochelle Lieber, Durham/NH (U.S.A.) Section 2: Joachim Mugdan, Münster (Germany)

43. Submorphemische Einheiten

417

43. Submorphemische Einheiten 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

1.

Motive für die Annahme submorphemischer Einheiten Aus der Forschungsgeschichte Methodische Fragen Zur Typologie submorphemischer Elemente Zur Diskussion um submorphemische Einheiten Zitierte Literatur

Motive für die Annahme submorphemischer Einheiten

Für die Linguistik ist seit langem das Bestreben charakteristisch, im Sprachsystem die kleinsten Einheiten zu ermitteln, aus denen es aufgebaut ist und mit denen es sich adäquat beschreiben läßt. Eine der bekanntesten Grundeinheiten ist das Wort: “From Plato to Baudouin, the word was taken to be the smallest linguistic sign” (Beard 1995: 1). Aber in vielen Sprachen ist es offensichtlich aus kleineren Bestandteilen (wie Wurzeln und Affixen) zusammengesetzt, die ebenfalls die Eigenschaften sprachlicher Zeichen aufweisen, d. h. einen gewissen Inhalt mit einem gewissen Ausdruck verbinden. Die Ermittlung solcher Bausteine von Wörtern spielte im Strukturalismus bei der morphologischen Analyse eine zentrale Rolle; den Status der minimalen Einheit mit Bedeutung bekam dabei nicht das Wort, sondern sein kleinster Bestandteil, das Minimalzeichen, oft Morph oder Morphem genannt (vgl. Art. 42; zur Terminologie s. Art. 46 sowie Mugdan 1986). In Verbindung mit der Vorstellung, daß das Sprachsystem aus mehreren Schichten bestehe (Stratifikation), verbreitete sich allerdings die Einschätzung, daß die Grenzen zwischen den einzelnen Klassen von Einheiten nicht scharf seien. Man hat daher entweder diese Klassen als sogenannte “fuzzy sets” (unscharfe Mengen) mit prototypischem “Kern” und weniger prototypischer “Peripherie” betrachtet (vgl. 5.1) oder zusätzliche Zwischen-Einheiten eingeführt (die ihrerseits neue Abgrenzungsprobleme aufwerfen). Aus semiotischer Sicht bedeutet das, daß verschiedene sprachliche Einheiten die Eigenschaft der Zeichenhaftigkeit in unterschiedlichem Maße haben, wobei der Grad der Zeichenhaftigkeit auch vom Beobachter oder Interpreten abhängt (vgl. Stepanov 1971: 111f.). Das betrifft auch die morphologische Ebene: Es gibt Schwierigkeiten bei der Abgrenzung zwischen Wörtern und

Nicht-Wörtern, zwischen freien und gebundenen Zeichen, zwischen verschiedenen funktionalen Klassen von Zeichen ⫺ und auch zwischen Zeichen und Nicht-Zeichen (s. auch Art. 23, 26⫺27, 40⫺42). Zeichenähnliche Elemente, die keine vollgültigen Minimalzeichen sind, werden als submorphemisch bezeichnet. Ein Submorph ist also ein Element, das die Eigenschaften eines Zeichens nicht im gleichen Maß aufweist, wie es für vollgültige, kanonische, prototypische Minimalzeichen charakteristisch ist. Insbesondere betrifft dies die Wiederkehr in anderen Kontexten mit derselben, klar erkennbaren Bedeutung. Submorphemische Elemente sind vor allem für die Frage interessant, wie die durch ein komplexes Wort übermittelte Information sich auf seine Bestandteile verteilt. So wie ein Satz sich in Thema und Rhema gliedert, gibt es in der morphologischen Struktur eines komplexen Wortes einen Gegensatz zwischen seiner Wurzel (dem Thema) und allen Kennzeichen, die diese Wurzel modifizieren, d. h. Affixen und anderen Wurzeln (dem rhematischen Teil des Wortes). Während die Wurzel die lexikalische Kernbedeutung des Wortes festlegt, dienen alle anderen Zeichen, die die Wurzel umgeben, dazu, diese Bedeutung in lexikalischer und/oder grammatischer Hinsicht abzuwandeln oder zu subkategorisieren. Der Beitrag eines Zeichens zur Semantik des Wortes hängt davon ab, in welcher Hinsicht es die Wurzel konkret modifiziert und welche Eigenschaften oder Prädikate es seinem “Thema” zuschreibt. Submorphemische Elemente unterscheiden sich von morphemischen dadurch, daß unklar bleibt, welches semantische Merkmal mit ihnen in der Wortstruktur verbunden ist, oder zu welchem Thema sie gehören. Submorphemische Elemente treten vor allem als Bruchstücke von Wörtern auf, deren Beitrag zur Wortbedeutung oder deren Inhalt schwer zu interpretieren ist, obwohl offensichtlich ist, daß sie dennoch im Aufbau des Wortes irgendeine Rolle spielen. Wenn man submorphemische Elemente analysiert, gilt es auch zu zeigen, warum sie als Wortteile beschrieben werden müssen, welche Kriterien es für die Zerlegung gibt, worin die Interpretationsschwierigkeiten bestehen und worin genau sie von minimalen sprachlichen Zeichen abweichen.

418

2.


Aus der Forschungsgeschichte

Jeder Versuch, Wörter vollständig in kleinere Teile zu zerlegen, führt rasch zu der Beobachtung, daß es bei manchen reihenbildenden, im Ausdruck verwandten Bestandteilen von Wörtern aus dem einen oder anderen Grund schwer ist, eine sich wiederholende Bedeutung zu erkennen und ihre Beteiligung an synchron relevanten Wortbildungs- und Flexionsprozessen festzustellen. Bestrebungen, in der morphologischen Analyse zumindest manchen dieser Bestandteile einen gewissen Platz zu geben, findet man bei Vertretern des amerikanischen Strukturalismus (vgl. 2.1), zuweilen auch bei westeuropäischen Autoren (vgl. z. B. Kandler 1971: 122⫺126). Freilich kam man dabei selten über die Erörterung von Einzelfällen hinaus, während eine intensivere Auseinandersetzung mit der Thematik vor allem in der russischen Linguistik stattgefunden hat (vgl. 2.2). 2.1. Der amerikanische Strukturalismus Obwohl es bei der Segmentierung englischer Wörter zahlreiche Probleme gibt, hat sich die Diskussion auf wenige Typen von Beispielen konzentriert, die sich bereits bei Leonard Bloomfield finden ⫺ insbesondere die in (1) genannten Verben lateinischen Ursprungs (und weitere dieser Art), Geräte- oder Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen auf -er wie die in (2) sowie die Wortserien in (3) und ähnliche Fälle von Lautsymbolik (s. Bloomfield 1933: 240⫺246; vgl. zu (2b) und (3) schon 1914: 132⫺134, 150⫺155). (1) receive retain refer conceive contain confer deceive detain defer (2) (a) hammer, rudder, ladder … (b) father, mother, brother, sister, daughter (3) (a) flash, flare, flame, … (b) flash, bash, crash, dash, … Bloomfield selbst tendierte dazu, in all diesen Fällen eine Segmentierung in “Morpheme” vorzunehmen, obwohl er ausdrücklich auf die Vagheit der Bedeutungen von -ceive in (1), -er in (2a) und fl- usw. in (3) hinwies und einräumte, daß solche Analysen unsicher seien, weil man die semantische Ähnlichkeit lautlich ähnlicher Formen nicht messen könne (s. Bloomfield 1933: 154, 240, 244⫺246). Andere Autoren äußerten sich dagegen bei (2) und (3) skeptisch zu einer Zerlegung, weil sie zu einer Fülle von Konstituenten führt, die sonst

nicht vorkommen, also unikal sind (vgl. Nida 1949: 60f.; Hockett 1958: 125). Daneben gab es Versuche, verschiedene Typen von Wortbestandteilen aufzustellen. So wurden z. B. Phonästheme wie fl- und -ash in (3) von “neutralen Morphemen” abgegrenzt und beide wiederum von “submorpheme differentials” wie -ist in twist, das nur dazu dient, dieses Wort von ähnlichen mit tw- (z. B. twirl, twiddle, tweed) zu unterscheiden (s. Bolinger 1950: 130⫺135). Allerdings konnte sich keine einheitliche Terminologie herausbilden. Beispielsweise gab es die Anregung, “aktiv” in neuen Kombinationen verwendbare Elemente als formative zu bezeichnen und morpheme in weiterem Sinn zu benutzen, auch für nur etymologisch identifizierbare Bestandteile, wie -cept in concept oder Reststücke wie cranin cranberry (s. Bolinger 1948: 21). Andererseits wurde der Terminus formative auch auf -er in hammer u. ä. bezogen (s. Nida 1948: 417 [1957: 257]) oder allgemein auf Wortteile, die in einer Matrix von Formen wiederholt auftreten, z. B. beim deutschen Verb sein in (4), wobei herkömmliche “Morpheme” zu einem Spezialfall wurden (s. Pike 1965: 195, 203; 1963: 3, 16). 2

(4) b b z z z z

ist ist in in in ai ai

t t t n

3. Person Singular 2. Person Singular 1. Person Singular 1. Person Plural 3. Person Plural 2. Person Plural Infinitiv

Bei den Verben in (1) war es wegen der systematischen Kombinierbarkeit ihrer Bestandteile leichter, eine reguläre morphologische Segmentierung zu befürworten (vgl. Nida 21949: 59; Harris 1951: 161). Daß sich hier die Bedeutung des Ganzen aus den Teilen nicht klar ermitteln läßt (vgl. Art. 82), konnte man als ein auch sonst anzutreffendes Phänomen einstufen (s. Hockett 1958: 173 zu “idioms”; vgl. Di Sciullo & Williams 1987: 3⫺10 zu “listedness”). Ein weiteres Argument für eine Zerlegung von receive usw. lieferte die Tatsache, daß die zugehörigen Substantive mit -tion regelmäßig /sep/ statt /si6v/ aufweisen (reception, conception, deception), ohne daß es dafür eine phonologische Erklärung gäbe (s. Greenberg 1957: 22; vgl. auch Bloomfield 1933: 154). Das hat später im Kontext


der Generativen Grammatik zu dem Vorschlag geführt, den Terminus Morphem auf jede Lautfolge anzuwenden, die mit einer sprachlichen Größe außerhalb ihrer selbst verknüpft ist ⫺ ob nun mit einer konstanten Bedeutung oder z. B. mit einer phonologischen Regel; receive besteht danach aus zwei “Morphemen”, ist aber ein einziges minimales Zeichen (s. Aronoff 1976: 12⫺15; vgl. mit deutschen Beispielen Kloeke 1982: 156⫺161, 169⫺172). 2.2. Die moderne russische Linguistik Der Terminus Submorph kam Ende der sechziger Jahre in der russischen Linguistik auf. Anfangs bezog er sich auf solche phonologischen Ketten, die im Ausdruck gewöhnlichen Affixen gleichen, aber sich von diesen durch das Fehlen einer “selbständigen Bedeutung” unterscheiden (s. Mel’cˇuk 1967: 354f. [1976: 67f.]; das gilt etwa für -er in (2) im Vergleich zu Derivata wie Bohrer oder Bäcker. Allerdings konnten als Argument für die Annahme von Submorphen auch andere Überlegungen dienen: sie wurden als morphonologisch relevante Wortteile definiert, die im Prozeß der Derivation den gleichen formalen Alternationen unterliegen und das Allomorph eines benachbarten Morphems bestimmen. So sah man in russ. zubeć ‘Zahn [an Geräten], Zacke’ und cˇepeć ‘Haube’ dasselbe Submorph -ec, weil Wörter diesen Typs ihre Formen gleich bilden (z. B. den Genitiv Singular zubca´, cˇepca´ mit Elision von -e-) und das Auftreten des Diminutivsuffixes in der Form -cˇ-ik erfordern, mit der Alternation ˇ urganova -ec / -cˇ, z. B. zu´bcˇik, cˇe´pcˇik (s. C 1967: 366f.; 1973: 11, 37f.). Allerdings haben die Partner des Submorphs unterschiedlichen morphologischen Status: der Vergleich von zubeć mit dem zugehörigen Wort zub ‘Zahn’ zeigt eine frei vorkommende Wurzel, während die Wurzel *cˇep nicht in autonomer Verwendung und mit eigener Bedeutung existiert. Wenn im Wort also ein Teil aus irgendwelchen Gründen als potentielles Submorph isoliert wird, muß man auch seinen Partner betrachten. Ähnlich kann man z. B. Armut nicht mit arm in Verbindung bringen, ohne die Funktion von -ut zu klären (vgl. Kandler 1971: 123). Die weitere Entwicklung des Begriffs der submorphemischen Einheit war mit der Vorstellung verbunden, daß Wörter in natürlichen Sprachen verschiedene Grade der Segmentierbarkeit aufweisen: Neben den eindeutig nicht zerlegbaren holistischen Bildungen

419 und den ebenso eindeutig zerlegbaren gibt es auch Zwischenstufen mit schwerer bestimmbaren Teilen. Da die Segmentierungsprobleme durch unterschiedliche Faktoren bedingt sind, wurden zwei Gruppen von Zweifelsfällen eingeführt (vgl. Kubrjakova 1970; 1974: 61f.). (a) Als defektiv segmentierbar gelten solche Wörter, bei denen die Segmentierungsprobleme formaler Art sind, d. h. ein Bestandteil nicht in anderen Umgebungen wiederkehrt (z. B. bei Armut, russ. stekljarus, s. 3.4). (b) Formal segmentierbar ist ein Wort, wenn alle Teile in anderen Umgebungen auftreten. Wird die Zerlegung durch semantische Faktoren erschwert, ist es jedoch nur bedingt segmentierbar (z. B. receive). Bei defektiver und bedingter Segmentierung treten Quasimorphe auf, wobei sich Quasi-Wurzeln wie engl. -ceive und QuasiAffixe wie engl. re- und dt. -ut unterscheiden lassen. Man kann den Terminus Quasimorph auch auf Elemente beschränken, die aus formalen Gründen nicht an Morphe “heranreichen”, und Elemente mit schwer oder gar nicht bestimmbarer Bedeutung als Submorphe bezeichnen. Die verbreitete Forderung nach Übereinstimmung mit einem bestehenden Morph (vgl. Zemskaja 1973: 81; Lopatin 1977: 57f.; Mel’cˇuk 1982: 108f.) wird dabei nicht erhoben, und wenn man auch Phonästheme zu den Submorphen zählt, so kann man diesen nicht immer das Fehlen einer Bedeutung zuschreiben. Nach einer weiteren Auffassung sind Submorphe Teile von Morphen, die in manchen Fällen in verkürzter, in anderen in voller Form auftreten; sie können deshalb als (rechte oder linke) Stammerweiterungen gelten (s. Lopatin 1977: 57f.). Wenn man z. B. Kosmos mit kosmisch vergleicht, muß man kosm- isolieren. Der verbleibende Teil -os läßt sich dann als Submorph der Wurzel ansehen, eine rechte Erweiterung. (Andere Morphologen betrachten jedoch -os als gewöhnliches Morph, da es sich in einer beträchtlichen Zahl von Entlehnungen wiederholt.) Im Deutschen ist -en in Faden gegenüber Fädchen, zweifädig usw. ein entsprechender Fall (vgl. Kandler 1971: 124; Kloeke 1982: 160, 169f.); ein analoges Beispiel für eine initiale Erweiterung ist o- in dem russischen deverbalen Substantiv ocho´ta ‘Lust’ zu chote´t’ ‘wollen’ (s. Lopatin 1977: 61). Wenngleich man eine solche Lösung aus der Sicht der Wortbildung verstehen kann, verletzt sie das mor-

420


phologische Prinzip, daß Wörter in ihre kleinsten Konstituenten zerlegt werden sollen. Im Zusammenhang damit ist zu fragen, inwieweit die Annahme submorphemischer Elemente von den Prämissen der morphologischen Analyse und von ihrer konkreten Durchführung abhängt (vgl. Bogdanov 1997: 5⫺84).

3.

Methodische Fragen

3.1. Materialbasis Eine erste Vorentscheidung bei der morphologischen Analyse betrifft die Festlegung des Sprachmaterials, das für sie herangezogen werden soll. Vor allem geht es um die Frage, ob z. B. dialektale, fachsprachliche oder umgangssprachliche Formen zulässig sind. Dieses Problem und einige andere traten bei der Arbeit an einem Korpus der russischen Sprache auf (vgl. Gerd 1990: 5). Offenkundig hängt von solchen Entscheidungen die Datenbasis ab und insbesondere die Gesamtzahl der Elemente, die angemessen beschrieben werden müssen. So führen z. B. bei der Untersuchung der Struktur russischer Wörter rein literatursprachliche Daten zu anderen Ergebnissen als solche, die auch dialektale Bildungen einschließen. Ein Wort wie russ. vzba´lmosˇnyj ‘unvernünftig, unbesonnen’ ist in der Literatursprache nur defektiv segmentierbar, weil ein eigenständiges *balmosˇ- fehlt; es ist also eine Konstruktion aus einer QuasiWurzel mit Affixen (vz- ‘auf-’ wie in vzvyt’ ‘aufheulen’ zu vyt’ ‘heulen’; -n zur Bildung von Adjektiven; -yj ‘nom.sg.m’). Wenn man jedoch das dialektale ba´lmosˇ’ ‘Unsinn’ hinzuzieht, kann man es in gewöhnliche Morphe zerlegen. Auch die Einbeziehung von Fachoder Fremdwörterbüchern kann die Ergebnisse verändern, z. B. bei solchen Wortreihen wie chrysalid, cyprinid, ichtyopsid (vgl. Ivanova 1987: 76). Analoge Erwägungen betreffen die Frage, inwieweit es wünschenswert ist, die Geschichte und Etymologie eines Wortes zu berücksichtigen (s. 3.3). 3.2. Intuitionen der Sprecher Bei der fremden Lexik stellt sich auch die Frage nach dem Wissen der Sprecher und danach, inwieweit der Morphologe die Intuitionen und Meinungen der Sprecher berücksichtigen darf. Diese gehen aber oft weit auseinander und können selbst bei gängigen Formen widersprüchlich sein (vgl. Baudouin de Courtenay 1912: 104⫺109; Bloomfield 1933:

208; Derwing 1976; Augst 1975: 158⫺186, 202⫺220; Plank 1981: 186⫺192). Beispielsweise ist in russ. praćˇka ‘Wäscherin’ die unikale (nur in Verbindung mit -acˇka auftretende) Wurzel pr- als ein Morph bezeichnet worden, das zu stir- in stir-at’ ‘waschen’ in suppletiver Beziehung steht (s. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 66). Dagegen hat keiner meiner Informanten sie erkannt, und nur manche haben analog zu zˇeva´t’ ‘kauen’ und zˇvaćˇka ‘Wiederkäuen; Kautabak’ ein Derivationsmorph identifiziert. Somit blieb pr- für sie eine Quasi-Wurzel. Die Strategien von Sprechern bei der Zerlegung von Wörtern hängen nicht nur davon ab, welche verwandten Wörter ihr mentales Lexikon enthält, sondern auch davon, wie schnell sie sie zueinander in Beziehung setzen können. Sprecher des Deutschen werden z. B. Wörter wie Faden für holistisch halten, wenn sie nicht sogleich an zweifädig oder einfädeln denken, ähnlich wie bei russ. pa´lec ‘Finger’ im Vergleich mit bespa´lyi ‘fingerlos’ usw. Wenn das mentale Lexikon Wörter wie Rhododendron enthält und der Sprecher es zu Dendrologie stellen kann, wird er die Wurzel dendr- ‘Baum’ ermitteln, aber die übrigen Bestandteile wird er dennoch eher als Quasimorphe empfinden. Noch schwieriger ist die Frage, ob der Sprecher sich sofort an eine ganze Wortbildungsserie mit demselben Suffix erinnern kann und ob für ihn die Elemente dieser Serie die gleiche Bedeutung haben, z. B. engl. raucous, virtuous, contemptuous oder dt. Kessel, Kübel, Scheffel, Seidel. Dabei geht es nicht nur darum, ob solche Formen segmentierbar sind oder nicht, sondern auch darum, ob alle ermittelten Bestandteile den gleichen Status haben. Leider muß man konstatieren, daß es an Experimenten zur Erkennung submorphemischer Elemente fehlt und daß diesbezügliche Überlegungen daher vorläufig bleiben müssen. Einige Untersuchungen weisen jedoch indirekt darauf hin, ⫺ daß mehrsilbige Wörter in der Tendenz als polymorphematisch betrachtet werden; ⫺ daß die Sprecher sich bei der Zerlegung oft auf einen beliebigen ihnen bekannten Wortteil stützen (selbst wenn der Rest unsinnig ist); ⫺ daß Sprachspiele und Volksetymologie von dem Bestreben zeugen, Bedeutungen mit solchen Wortteilen zu verknüpfen, die in ihrer prototypischen Form Morphen ähneln. Daß die Erkennung “langer” Wörter mehr Zeit braucht, läßt sich damit erklären, daß


die Sprecher nach Wortteilen suchen, wenn das Wort als Ganzes keine Entsprechung in ihrem Lexikon hat. Aufschlußreich sind in diesem Zusammenhang Versuche zur Erkennung komplexer Wörter und Pseudokomposita, z. B. engl. butterfly, boycott, mushroom sowie *footmilge, *trowbreak (vgl. Sandra 1988: 27f.). Die Untersuchung des vorliegenden Materials zeigt, daß aus der Perspektive der Sprecher in der Struktur eines Wortes ein bis zwei bekannte Morphe erkennbar sein können, ohne daß die übrigen Teile identifiziert würden. Möglicherweise sollte man deshalb als submorphemische Elemente auch solche Wortteile betrachten, die (a) Partner oder Gegenstücke normaler Morphe sind; (b) in zerlegbaren Formen wiederkehren, aber nicht als Elemente erkannt werden, die an lebendigen, synchron relevanten morphologischen Ableitungsbeziehungen beteiligt sind. Die Lösung (a) entspricht psycholinguistischen Beobachtungen, wonach Elemente, die beim Erkennen und Verstehen eingesetzt werden, nicht mit den bei der Sprachproduktion benutzten übereinstimmen: Die Strategien der Sprecher/Hörer sind in diesen beiden Situationen verschieden, wie auch die operativen Einheiten, die bei ihrer Umsetzung aus dem Gedächtnis geholt werden (vgl. Kubrjakova 1991: 125⫺128). Die Lösung (b) lenkt die Aufmerksamkeit auch auf die zeitlichen Grenzen des benutzten Materials. 3.3. Synchronie und Diachronie Zweifellos kann sich die diachrone Entstehung eines Wortes von seiner morphologischen Struktur unterscheiden. Bei letzterer geht es um die kleinsten Bestandteile des Wortes ⫺ und zwar solche, die synchron auch in anderer Umgebung auftreten. Diese Bedingung zieht der morphologischen Analyse enge Grenzen, die sich erheblich ändern, wenn man den Rückgriff auf historische und insbesondere etymologische Daten zuläßt. Wenn man z. B. engl. kin zu kindred in Beziehung setzen darf, kann man -dred als submorphemisches Element anerkennen; andernfalls ist die Segmentierung fragwürdig. Im Russischen verbinden nur Sprachhistoriker das Wort koleso´ ‘Rad’ mit o´kolo, das als Präposition ‘um … herum, neben; ungefähr’ bedeutet, als Adverb ‘rings umher’. Dabei ist die Annahme eines submorphologischen Elements -o in o´kolo insofern nicht unbegründet,

421 als sie eine Parallele zu den zahlreichen Adverbien auf -o herstellt. Eine Extremposition besteht darin, alle verwandten Formen zu zerlegen und aus derselben Wurzel herzuleiten, wie stark sie auch historisch umgewandelt worden sein mögen (vgl. Lightner 1975: 617f. zu engl. generate, generic, cognate, kin, kindred usw.). Sie hat unter Morphologen keinen Anklang gefunden und führt zu einer wenig sinnvollen Vermehrung unikaler Submorphe. Bei der Suche nach angemessenen Lösungen hat man sich häufig auf das Prinzip gestützt, daß Minimalzeichen in anderen Kontexten wiederkehren müssen, um als solche identifiziert werden zu können. Es kommt daher darauf an, wie dieser Faktor bei der Bestimmung morphologischer Elemente konkret interpretiert wird. 3.4. Wiederkehr in anderen Kontexten Für die Segmentierung in Minimalzeichen ist es unerläßlich, daß sie in verschiedenen Umgebungen auftreten ⫺ aber wieviele verschiedene müssen es sein? Sind die diesbezüglichen Anforderungen für verschiedene funktionale Klassen von Minimalzeichen (wie Wurzeln und Affixe) identisch? Wenn eine mutmaßliche Wurzel mit nur einem anderen Element kombinierbar ist, so handelt es sich offensichtlich um ein unteilbares Ganzes, wie bei engl. content, comfort, message usw. Falls sie jedoch auch allein, also frei vorkommt, ist eine Segmentierung möglich, wie bei dt. Armut (zu arm), russ. steklja´rus ‘bunte Glasperlen’ (zu stekl-o´ ‘Glas-nom.sg’), engl. compile (zu pile), compatriot (zu patriot) usw. Bei gebundenen Wurzeln ist die Kombinierbarkeit ebenfalls wesentlich, z. B. bei engl. present / presence, absent / absence oder datum / data. Hier scheinen die finalen Elemente gewöhnliche Morphe zu sein, aber ihre Partner sind “zweifelhafte” Wurzeln. Noch schwieriger ist es bei der Wiederkehr von Affixen, die ja per Definition mit einer großen Zahl von Basen kombinierbar sein müssen. Wie soll man aber einen Wortbestandteil interpretieren, den man intuitiv als Affix abtrennen würde, der jedoch unikal ist? Das gilt z. B. für die initialen Elemente in russ. ra´duga ‘Regenbogen’ (vgl. duga´ ‘Bogen’) und kurno´syj ‘stupsnasig’ (vgl. nos ‘Nase’) oder für die finalen in pocˇta´mt ‘Postamt’ (vgl. pocˇt-a ‘Post-nom.sg’) und popad’ja´ ‘Popenfrau’ (vgl. pop ‘Pope’) usw. Manche Autoren nennen ein solches unikales Element Unifix und stellen es damit auf dieselbe Stufe wie gewöhnliche Affixe (vgl. Zemskaja 1973: 53), während andere das für

422 paradox halten und lieber von Quasi-Affixen, also submorphemischen Elementen sprechen. Wie sind nun mutmaßliche Affixe einzuschätzen, die sich nur mit zwei oder drei Basen verbinden lassen? Ein bekanntes Beispiel sind die deutschen Bezeichnungen der Himmelsrichtungen, Ost, West, Nord, Süd. Handelt es sich bei -t (oder -st) und -d um Morphe oder um submorphemische Elemente? Das Kriterium der Wiederkehr in anderen Kontexten wird manchmal nicht nur quantitativ interpretiert. So ist z. B. eine Segmentierung von engl. horrid mit der Begründung abgelehnt worden, daß die Beziehung von horrid oder horrible zu horror im Sprachgebrauch nicht reproduzierbar sei: Wenn man Muttersprachler etwa nach der Bedeutung von *terrid fragt, verbinden sie es nicht mit terror, sondern mit terrestrial o. ä., und ein zu candor gebildetes *candible wird nur mit cannibal assoziiert (s. Christie 1978: 421). Dieses Experiment belegt, daß erstens -id und -ible nicht beliebig mit gebundenen Wurzeln kombiniert werden können (und somit als Quasi-Suffixe zu bewerten sind) und daß zweitens bei jeder Segmentierung in erster Linie semantische Faktoren ausschlaggebend sind. 3.5. Bestimmung der Bedeutung Die Definition des Minimalzeichens als Verknüpfung eines bestimmten Inhalts mit einem bestimmten Ausdruck wirft keine Segmentierungsprobleme auf, wenn man den Bestandteilen leicht diese oder jene Bedeutung zuschreiben kann. So lassen sich russ. zˇen-a´ ‘Ehefrau-nom.sg’ / zˇenıćh ‘Bräutigam’, pet’ ‘singen’ / petućh ‘Hahn’, pastı´ ‘weiden [trans.]’ / pastućh ‘Hirt’ unschwer zerlegen, und wenn man -ich und -tuch als submorphemisch betrachtet, so geschieht das nur deshalb, weil sie die für Affixe geltende Bedingung der Reihenbildung nicht erfüllen. Sobald aber die ermittelten Teile semantisch unklar sind, muß man zu mehr oder minder willkürlichen Lösungen greifen. Dabei können drei Grundsätze helfen: (a) Bestandteile, die überhaupt keine Bedeutung haben, werden nicht abgetrennt. Wenn man russ. stol ‘Tisch’ und stul ‘Stuhl’ segmentieren und dem Teil st- die Bedeutung ‘Möbelstück’ zuschreiben würde, so ließen sich für die jeweiligen Reste keine Bedeutungen finden, so daß sie nicht einmal als submorphemische Elemente anerkannt werden können; auch bei st- wäre somit die Annahme einer Bedeutung seltsam.


(b) Das Fehlen jeglicher Bedeutung ist nicht dasselbe wie eine unklare, unbestimmte oder auch nur schwer bestimmbare Bedeutung. Bei der morphologischen Analyse kann man solche Unklarheiten aber nur dann vernachlässigen, wenn die zu vergleichenden Bestandteile sich hinsichtlich ihrer Bedeutung nicht widersprechen. So ist es unmöglich, engl. hammer mit Verweis auf ham zu zerlegen, während bei receive und conceive eine Segmentierung zulässig ist, wie auch bei russ. ljubo´v’ ‘Liebe’ im Vergleich mit ljubit’ ‘lieben’ (obwohl analoge Ableitungen mit -ov’ fehlen) usw. (c) Der Bedeutungsgehalt kann unterschiedlich sein. So hat es bei Komposita griechisch-lateinischer Herkunft wie Elektrotechnik einen Sinn, die Fuge zwischen den Wurzeln (meist -o-) zu isolieren, weil sie eine Verknüpfung ausdrückt; ebenso lassen sich stammbildende Elemente, Themavokale und dergleichen abtrennen, weil sie reihenbildend sind und die Funktion einer grammatischen Klassifizierung haben (z. B. bei den Konjugationsklassen in romanischen und slavischen Sprachen; vgl. auch Art. 65 und 121⫺122). Wenn man jedoch die Kriterien für die morphologische Analyse strenger faßt und derart allgemeine Bedeutungen nicht zuläßt, muß man solche Bausteine als submorphemisch ansehen.

4.

Zur Typologie submorphemischer Elemente

Zur Klassifikation der Fälle, in denen die Annahme von Submorphen wünschenswert ist, dienen drei Parameter: ⫺ die Position des abzutrennenden Wortteils, ⫺ die Opposition zwischen Wurzeln und Affixen sowie ⫺ die Unterscheidung zwischen Affixen und Markern (hier definiert als Träger kategorialer Bedeutungen bei defektiver oder bedingter Segmentierbarkeit; vgl. Kubrjakova 1970: 86). Dabei wendet man Prozeduren zur restfreien Segmentierung von Formen an: Auf der ersten Analysestufe zerlegt man alle Wörter der zu untersuchenden Sprache nach dem Prinzip der “pattern congruity”, das auch das Prinzip der Segmentierung aufgrund von Analogie genannt wird (vgl. Bogdanov 1987: 17; Miloslavskij 1980: 31⫺40; Art. 42). Die wichtig-


ste Grundlage der Klassifikation sind nun die Strategien des Morphologen, der sich bei der vorläufigen Segmentierung teils an der Wurzel orientiert, teils an den Affixen, teils an der morphologischen Struktur des Wortes, d. h. an ihm bekannten Elementen. Daraus können sich folgende fünf Situationen ergeben: (a) Nach der Ermittlung einer klar abgrenzbaren Wurzel bleiben im Wort Teile übrig, die Affixen ähneln. Steht ein solcher Teil mit unklarem Status rechts von der Wurzel, kann man ihn als Quasi-Suffix einstufen, z. B. dt. Arm-ut, russ. zˇen-ıćh (s. 3.5), koz-e¨l ‘Ziegenbock’ (zu koz-a´ ‘Ziege-nom.sg’), zˇi-zn’ ‘Leben’ (zu zˇi-t’ ‘leb-inf’), engl. memor-andum usw. Sofern die Funktionen eines solchen Bestandteils oder sogar sein semantischer Beitrag zur Gesamtbedeutung des Wortes erkennbar sind, wird ein solches Element oft als ungewöhnliches (möglicherweise unikales) Morph betrachtet. Steht ein derartiges Element links von der Wurzel, kann man ihm den Status eines Quasi-Präfixes zuschreiben, z. B. russ. ra´-duga, kur-no´syj, usw. (s. 3.4). Wegen der unklaren Bedeutung ist diese Einordnung subjektiv, denn man könnte auch von Quasi-Wurzeln sprechen (so daß hier Komposition und nicht Derivation vorliegt). Durch die Verwendung des Terminus Submorph läßt sich eine Entscheidung zwischen den beiden Möglichkeiten umgehen, so auch z. B. bei engl. kind-red, russ. pocˇt-a´mt u. a. (b) Nach der Ermittlung einer klar erkennbaren Wurzel bleibt ein wurzelähnlicher Bestandteil übrig, wie in engl. cran-berry, dt. Brom-beere. In diesem Fall kann man von Quasi-Wurzeln sprechen. Solche Elemente können reihenbildend sein, wie -bol in russ. futbo´l ‘Fußball’, gandbo´l ‘Handball’ usw. in der Sportsprache. (c) In einer Serie gleichartiger Formen findet man am Anfang oder am Ende Bestandteile, die mit produktiven Affixen der betreffenden Sprache korrelieren; in gewissen Wörtern ist der verbleibende Rest jedoch nicht ohne weiteres als Wurzel identifizierbar, z. B. engl. sol- in solid (vgl. liquid, candid, horrid, deren Wurzeln z. B. in liquor, candor, horror wiederkehren), russ. artr- in artrı´t ‘Arthritis’ (vgl. plevrı´t ‘Pleuritis’ zu ple´vra ‘Rippenfell’, bronchı´t ‘Bronchitis’ zu brońchi ‘Bronchien’ usw.). In der Gegenwartssprache findet man ganze Serien solcher Formen mit analogen Bedeutungen, in denen nur gebundene Wurzeln oder vielleicht Quasi-Wurzeln vorkommen. Typische Beispiele im Deutschen (mit direkten Parallelen in anderen Sprachen) sind

423 Bezeichnungen für Materialien (Nylon, Perlon), Medikamente (Aspirin, Insulin) oder technische Geräte (Shredder, Printer). Allen hier auftretenden finalen Elementen kann man eine bestimmte Bedeutung zuschreiben, zumindest eine kategoriale, und die morphologischen Strukturen der mit ihnen gebildeten Wörter entsprechen typischen Wortbildungsmustern vollkommen. Daher kann man auf eine Segmentierung nicht verzichten. Da die wurzelähnlichen Bestandteile keine klare Bedeutung haben, muß man jedoch von Konstruktionen aus zwei Submorphen, einer Quasi-Wurzel und einem Quasi-Affix, sprechen. Zu den vergleichbaren Fällen mit Quasi-Präfixen zählen die in (1) genannten englischen Verbreihen (vgl. Aronoff 1976: 12⫺15; Liddell & Johnson 1986: 497f.). (d) Nach der Identifizierung klar erkennbarer Wurzeln und Affixe verbleiben dazwischen interfixartige Elemente mit unklarem Status, z. B. russ. -z- in burzˇua´znyj ‘bourgeois’ (zu burzˇua´ ‘Bourgeois’), -l- in rı´mljanin ‘Römer’ (zu Rim ‘Rom’), -j- in kofe´jnyj ‘Kaffee-’ (zu ko´fe ‘Kaffee’) oder dt. -s- in desorganisieren (gegenüber deformieren), engl. -n- in trinity, -et- in energetic. Das Fehlen klarer Bedeutungen zwingt hier zu Notlösungen. Einige dieser Bestandteile kann man vielleicht als gewöhnliche Morphe anerkennen; in anderen Fällen kann man auf eine Segmentierung verzichten und allomorphische Variation annehmen, z. B. russ. burzˇua- ⬃ burzˇuaz-, dt. de- ⬃ des- und -er ⬃ -ner ⬃ -ler, engl. -ion ⬃ -tion usw. (e) In einer Serie von Wörtern mit ähnlichem Inhalt gibt es auch gewisse lautsymbolische Ähnlichkeiten im Ausdruck wie bei engl. flash usw. in (3). Die sich hier wiederholenden Phonästheme wie fl- sind jedoch semantisch schwer beschreibbar und die verbleibenden Reste völlig sinnlos. Solche Phänomene sind natürlich einer Untersuchung wert (vgl. Bolinger 1950; Zˇuravlev 1974; Blust 1988), aber es ist fraglich, ob sie in die Morphologie gehören. Das wäre nur dann der Fall, wenn entweder experimentell nachgewiesen wird, daß Sprecher Wörter aus solchen Reihen tatsächlich miteinander assoziieren (was vielfach noch nicht einmal bei poetischer Alliteration der Fall ist) oder aber Forschungsarbeiten zum Unbewußten zeigen, daß hier eine Verknüpfung zwischen Inhalt und Ausdruck vorliegt, und die angebliche Motiviertheit der Zeichen bestätigen. Phonästheme sind das deutlichste Beispiel für die Schwierigkeiten bei einer konsequenten Seg-

424


mentierung auf der Basis gleicher Bedeutungen und sich wiederholender Phonemfolgen; sie zeigen, wie unscharf das Kriterium der Bedeutungsgleichheit in der Praxis ist. Es ist auch nicht klar, was gewonnen wäre, wenn man sie als submorphemische Elemente anerkennen würde. Falls sie jedoch für die Beschreibung der Evolution einer Sprache oder für die Charakterisierung des Wissens von Sprechern wesentlich sind (vgl. Blust 1988: 66⫺68), wenn Lautsymbolik nicht nur für poetische Zwecke und dergleichen wichtig ist, kann man Phonästhemen auch einen Platz in der Morphologie einräumen, als spezifische Art von Submorphen.

5.

Zur Diskussion um submorphemische Einheiten

Die Annahme besonderer submorphemischer Einheiten ist mit verschiedenen Argumenten ˇ urganova 1967; Kubegründet worden (vgl. C brjakova 1970; Zemskaja 1973: 81f.; Lopatin 1977: 58f.; Mel’cˇuk 1982: 108f.; Bosa´k & Buza´ssyova 1985: 49⫺51; s. auch 2.2) ⫺ unter anderem damit, daß Submorphe ⫺ bestimmte morphophonemische Alternationen aufweisen; ⫺ die gleichen syntagmatischen Verbindungen eingehen wie Affixe; ⫺ die Allomorphe anderer Morpheme bestimmen; ⫺ kategoriale Bedeutungen beitragen und Wortbildungsmuster erkennen lassen und ⫺ als Partner unzweifelhafter Minimalzeichen auftreten. Beachtung verdienen neben solchen deskriptiven Aspekten auch allgemeine Erwägungen zur Kategorisierung in der Linguistik (s. 5.1; vgl. Taylor 21995) sowie psycholinguistische Daten (s. 5.2). 5.1. Prototypentheorie Minimalzeichen erweisen sich als eine schwer abgrenzbare sprachliche Kategorie, wenn man Fälle betrachtet, in denen sich submorphemische Elemente ansetzen lassen (einschließlich Markern, die im Vergleich mit entsprechenden gewöhnlichen Affixen semantisch reduziert sind, wie bei engl. solid oder dt. Nylon unter (c) in 4). Wie andere “natürliche” Kategorien haben auch sie ihre “idealen” Vertreter, und daneben gibt es Elemente, die davon in diesem oder jenem Parameter abweichen. Die Aufweichung der Grenzen er-

folgt bei allen Parametern oder Kriterien, d. h. bei jedem Kennzeichen, das ein kanonisches oder prototypisches Minimalzeichen aufweist. So fehlt bei Nullzeichen die Eigenschaft, als Ausdruck eine bestimmte Phonemfolge zu haben (vgl. Art. 45), bei diskontinuierlichen Zeichen ist diese Phonemfolge unterbrochen (vgl. Art. 53⫺56), asemantische Interfixe und dergleichen haben keinen Inhalt, und viele affixale Elemente verletzen das Kriterium der Gebundenheit (d. h. sie kommen in bestimmten Umgebungen frei vor wie bei Diese Ismen bin ich leid). Keine vollgültigen Minimalzeichen sind auch submorphemische Elemente, deren Benennung bereits auf ihre Stellung in der Hierarchie morphologischer Einheiten hinweist: Sie können als solche Abweichungen vom prototypischen Minimalzeichen betrachtet werden, bei denen die Grenzen hinsichtlich der Wiederkehr in anderen Kontexten (s. 3.4) und der klaren Bedeutung (s. 3.5) unscharf sind (vgl. Dressler 1990 zu Kontinua zwischen Morphen und diversen Typen von Submorphen). 5.2. Psycholinguistische Ansätze Für die Annahme submorphemischer Elemente sprechen gewichtige psycholinguistische Gründe. (a) Wenn Sprecher/Hörer die Bedeutung eines Wortes aus seinen Teilen ermitteln (vgl. Kubrjakova 1987: 91), nehmen sie als Signale für Bedeutungen Teile am Anfang und am Ende des Wortes wahr, unabhängig von ihrer morphologischen Segmentierbarkeit. Unter anderem gilt das für Phonästheme. Andererseits sind für den Sprecher/Hörer manche Bestandteile bedeutungslos, wie Themavokale, Interfixe und vielleicht andere “leere” Zeichen (vgl. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 51, 69; Dressler 1984; Art. 45). Somit müssen klar segmentierbare Elemente für den Sprecher/Hörer nicht immer eine Bedeutung haben, und umgekehrt ist das, was sich nicht segmentieren läßt, nicht unbedingt bedeutungslos. Es ist jedoch unerläßlich, Signale für Bedeutungen (darunter auch morphophonemische) zu ermitteln. (b) Aus Submorphen können neue Zeichen entstehen; sie werden also wie Affixe aufgefaßt. So kommt nach dem Muster von russ. ruka´v ‘Ärmel’ zu ruka´ ‘Arm, Hand’ in der Kindersprache auch noga´v zu noga´ ‘Bein, Fuß’ vor; umgekehrt entstehen “Wurzeln” durch Abtrennung von Submorphen, z. B. ogu´r zu ogureć ‘Gurke’, oder l’zja zu nel’zja´ ‘es ist unmöglich, nicht erlaubt’ (mit vermeintlichem Negationspräfix ne-).


425

(c) Schwankungen in der Segmentierbarkeit von Wörtern sind wohlbekannt und damit die reale Existenz von Grenzfällen, die deutlich belegen, daß nicht alle von Sprechern/Hörern erkannten Elemente für sie gleichrangig sind. Submorphe sind nicht so lebendig und semantisch nicht so durchsichtig wie Minimalzeichen. In der wissenschaftlichen Beschreibung sollten die Gründe und Grade solcher Rangunterschiede zwischen sprachlichen Bausteinen zum Ausdruck kommen.

Augst, Gerhard (1975), Untersuchungen zum Morpheminventar der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Narr (Forschungsberichte des Instituts für deutsche Sprache Mannheim 25)

5.3. Ausblick Submorphemische Elemente entstehen infolge der Verwischung morphologischer Grenzen (vgl. Art. 149) und vor allem durch Entlehnungen mit unterschiedlichen Graden der Anpassung an das System der Nehmersprache. Sie sind also Relikte der Vergangenheit. Aber die maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung macht es erforderlich, sich mit ihnen erneut zu befassen. Natürlich braucht man dafür in erster Linie neue experimentelle Daten, die bestätigen oder widerlegen, daß es nützlich ist, in den theoretischen Apparat der Morphologie submorphemische Einheiten als relevante Größen für die Sprachrezeption und -produktion aufzunehmen. Auch unabhängig von den Ergebnissen entsprechender Versuche sind solche Elemente aber zum Verständnis der inneren Struktur von Wörtern wichtig. Aus allgemeinlinguistischer Sicht bestätigen sie viele Prinzipien der Zeichentheorie und generelle Grundsätze für die Aufstellung sprachlicher Kategorien. Aus morphologischer Sicht machen sie besser verständlich, wie ein prototypisches Wort aufgebaut ist und welche Abweichungen von diesem Prototyp in natürlichen Sprachen vorkommen. In kognitiver Hinsicht fixiert das Wort einen bestimmten Typ von Information und führt eine ganze Reihe von Einzelbedeutungen in einem Zeichen zusammen. Deren Repräsentation, die Gruppierung der Konzepte zu einer einheitlichen Gestalt, die Verteilung der Bedeutung auf einzelne Bestandteile des Wortes ⫺ das ist eine wichtige typologisch relevante Eigenschaft des Wortes, hinsichtlich derer sich Sprachen voneinander unterscheiden können.

Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt

6.

Zitierte Literatur

Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 1)

Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan ⫽ Bodueń-de-Kurtene´, I[van] A. (1912), Ob otnosˇenii russkogo pis’ma k russkomu jazyku. S.-Peterburg: Obnovlenie sˇkoly Beard, Robert (1995), Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology: A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press Bloomfield, Leonard (1914), An Introduction to the Study of Language. London: Bell; New York: Holt

Blust, Robert A. (1988), Austronesian Root Theory: An Essay on the Limits of Morphology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Studies in Language Companion Series 19) Bogdanov, Sergej I. (1987), “Morfemnye struktury v sisteme morfologicˇeskich form”. In: Gerd & Bondarko (Hrsg.), 16⫺26 Bogdanov, Sergej I. (1997), Forma slova i morfologicˇeskaja forma. Sankt-Peterburg: Izd. Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta Bolinger, Dwight L. (1948), “On Defining the Morpheme”. Word 4, 18⫺23 Bolinger, Dwight L. (1950), “Rime, Assonance, and Morpheme Analysis”. Word 6, 117⫺136 Bosa´k, Jań & Buza´ssyova, Kla´ra (1985), Vyćhodiska´ morfe´movej analy´zy (Morfematika, Slovotvorba). Bratislava: Veda (Jazykovedne´ sˇtu´die 19) Christie, William M. (1978), “On the Limits of Derivational Morphology in English”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Meid, Wolfgang (Hrsg.), Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists Vienna, August 28⫺September 2, 1977. Innsbruck: Inst. für Sprachwiss., 420⫺422 ˇ urganova, Valerija G. (1967), “O predmete i ponC jatijach fonomorfologii”. Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR, Serija literatury i jazyka 26, 363⫺373 ˇ urganova, Valerija G. (1973), Ocˇerk russkoj morC fonologii. Moskva: Nauka Derwing, Bruce L. (1976), “Morpheme Recognition and the Learning of Rules for Derivational Morphology”. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 21, 38⫺66 Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria & Williams, Edwin (1987), On the Definition of Word. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 14) Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1984), “Zur Wertung der Interfixe in einer semiotischen Theorie der natürlichen Morphologie”. Wiener slawistischer Almanach 13, 35⫺45 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1990), “Sketching Submorphemes within Natural Morphology”. In: Meńdez

426 Dosuna, Juliań & Pensado, Carmen (Hrsg.), Naturalists at Krems. Papers from the Workshop on Natural Phonology and Natural Morphology (Krems, 1⫺7 July 1988). Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca (Acta Salmanticensia, Estudios Filologicos 227), 33⫺41 Gerd, Aleksandr S. (1990), “Morfemika v ee otnosˇenii k leksikologii”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1990.5, 5⫺11 Gerd, A[leksandr] S. & Bondarko, L[ija] V. (1987, Hrsg.), Morfemika: Principy i metody sistemnogo opisanija. Leningrad: Leningradskij Universitet Greenberg, Joseph H. (1957), Essays in Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press [spätere Nachdrucke unter dem Titel Structural Linguistics] Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Ivanova, Irina P. (1987), “Zametki o ierarchii markerov (na materiale anglijskogo jazyka)”. In: Gerd & Bondarko (Hrsg.), 73⫺77 Kandler, Günther (1971), “Dogmatismus und Empirie in der Sprachforschung. In: Schweisthal, Klaus Günther (Hrsg.), Grammatik, Kybernetik, Kommunikation. Festschrift für Alfred Hoppe. Bonn: Dümmler, 116⫺131 Kloeke, Wus van Lessen (1982), Deutsche Phonologie und Morphologie: Merkmale und Markiertheit. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Linguistische Arbeiten 117) Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1970), “O tipach morfologicˇeskoj cˇlenimosti slov, kvazi-morfach i markerach”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1970.2, 78⫺90 Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1974), Osnovy morfologicˇeskogo analiza. Moskva: Nauka Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1987), “Stratifikacija znacˇenij v morfologicˇeskoj strukture slova”. In: Gerd & Bondarko (Hrsg.), 88⫺97 Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1991), “Osobennosti recˇevoj dejatel’nosti i problemy vnutrennego leksikona”. ˇ elovecˇeskij fakIn: Kubrjakova, Elena S. (Hrsg.), C tor v jazyke: Jazyk i porozˇdenie recˇi. Moskva: Nauka, 125⫺133 Liddell, Scott & Johnson, Robert E. (1986), “American Sign Language Compound Formation Processes, Lexicalization, and Phonological Remnants”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4, 445⫺513 Lightner, Theodore M. (1975), “The Role of Derivational Morphology in Generative Grammar”. Language 51, 617⫺638 Lopatin, Vladimir V. (1977), Russkaja slovoobrazovatel’naja morfemika: Problemy i principy opisanija. Moskva: Nauka

VI. Einheiten der morphologischen Struktur Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1967), “K ponjatiju slovoobrazovanija”. Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR, Serija literatury i jazyka 26, 352⫺362 [deutsche Übers.: “Zum Begriff der Wortbildung (Derivation)”. In: Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1976), Das Wort: Zwischen Inhalt und Ausdruck. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 9), 63⫺88] Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44) Miloslavskij, Igor’ G. (1980), Voprosy slovoobrazovatel’nogo sinteza. Moskva: Moskovskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet Mugdan, Joachim (1986), “Was ist eigentlich ein Morphem?”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 29⫺43 Nida, Eugene A. (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441 [Nachdruck in: Joos, Martin (1957, Hrsg.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966, Readings in Linguistics, Bd. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 255⫺271] Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Pike, Kenneth L. (1963), “Theoretical Implications of Matrix Permutation in Fore (New Guinea)”. Anthropological Linguistics 5.8, 1⫺23 Pike, Kenneth L. (1965), “Non-linear Order and Anti-redundancy in German Morphological Matrices”. Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 32, 193⫺221 Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir)regularitäten: Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 13) Sandra, Dominiek (1988), “The Effect of Morphology on Compound Word Recognition”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Luschützky, Hans Ch. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. & Rennison, John R. (Hrsg.), Discussion Papers of the Sixth International Phonology Meeting and Third International Morphology Meeting, Bd. III: Morphology. Wien: Inst. für Sprachwiss. der Univ. Wien (Wiener linguistische Gazette, Supplement 8), 27⫺30 Stepanov, Jurij S. (1971), Semiotika. Moskva: Nauka Taylor, John R. (21995), Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford usw.: Oxford Univ. Press [11989] Zemskaja, Elena A. (1973), Sovremennyj russkij jazyk: Slovoobrazovanie. Moskva: Prosvesˇcˇenie Zˇuravlev, Aleksandr P. (1974), Foneticˇeskoe znacˇenie. Leningrad: Izd. Leningradskogo Universiteta

Elena S. Kubrjakova, Moskau (Rußland) Übersetzung und Bearbeitung: Joachim Mugdan, Münster (Deutschland)

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44. Phonotactic properties of morphological units

44. Phonotactic properties of morphological units 1. 2. 3.

6.

Introduction Phonotactic constraints and their problems Phonotactic constraints: phonology or morphology? Morphologically relevant phonological information The interplay between phonology and morphology References

1.

Introduction

4. 5.

Phonotactics as part of phonology deals with ways in which segments ⫺ vowels and consonants ⫺ can be combined in a given language. The principles delimiting possible combinations of consonants in clusters, of vowels in vowel sequences, and the mutual dependencies of vowels and consonants are jointly referred to as phonotactic constraints. For instance, the consonants /s, z, k, g/ occur in English as well as in Polish. Word-initially we find /sk/ in both languages (e.g. sky, scholar and sko´ra ‘skin’, skała ‘rock’), but the combination /zg/, while perfectly possible in Polish (e.g. zgaga ‘heartburn’, zgon ‘demise’), is inadmissible in English. Thus while individual segments are found to exist in both languages, English phonotactics admits only voiceless sequences of fricatives and plosives word-initially. Although phonotactic regularities belong primarily to phonological descriptions of languages, it is legitimate to ask whether morphological units such as words, roots, stems, affixes etc. (cf. Art. 40, 42, 46) display any phonotactic constraints of their own. Some traditional grammars took an interest in the syllable structure of words and in the clustering possibilities of consonants, which were sometimes related to morphological structure (cf. Kruisinga 1943). Likewise, the realisation that regularities and constraints control the segmental make-up of morphological units was present in structural linguistics, but even the phonologists of the Prague School said rather little on the phonotactic properties of roots and affixes in their descriptions of individual languages (cf. Trubetzkoy 1934: 16f. on Russian; see also 4.3). Similarly, some awareness of the relevance of phonotactic restrictions can be detected in post-Bloomfieldian linguistics (cf. Hockett 1958: 271f.), but it was the emergence of generative phonology

that set the stage for a clear articulation of the issues (cf. Halle 1959: 19⫺75). Generative grammar has played a crucial role in the development of linguistics in the second half of the 20th century and generative phonology has made explicit claims affirming the significance of phonotactic constraints in morphology. For these reasons proposals emerging from this framework are worth surveying in greater detail. Phonotactic constraints are unquestionably phonological in nature; whether they also have a role to play in characterising morphological units is an open question which cannot be decided in advance and independently of a specific phonological model. Phonotactic generalisations in generative grammar depend on the level of representation and the admissible degree of phonological abstractness that a given framework recognises (cf. 2); it is therefore advisable to consider theoretical positions before offering data in their support. A major theoretical issue is that of the relation between static regularities and the application of rules producing the same effects (cf. 2.2). Certain phonotactic constraints which have been claimed to be morphological in nature can be shown to be basically phonological (cf. 3). Cases of this sort provide no direct support for the existence of phonotactic properties restricted exclusively to morphology, but there appear to be genuine constraints which do pertain to words, roots and affixes (cf. 4). The essential question is whether and to what extent phonotactic regularities determine the shape of morphological units independently of the role of the regularities in phonology; this has theoretical implications for the relationship between phonology and morphology (cf. 5). The literature on the subject is predominantly phonological; this may explain the use of the term morpheme in various combinations (e.g. morpheme structure rules, morpheme structure constraints) where, from the morphological point of view, morph might be more appropriate (cf. Art. 46).

2.

Phonotactic constraints and their problems

2.1. Level-dependent phonotactic constraints The crucial notion which in various guises is present in the phonological studies of the period 1960⫺1990 is that of the redundancy

428 or predictability of certain properties, i.e. their dependence on other properties in the segment or in the string. The intrasegmental or simultaneous dependencies are captured by statements (rules) referring to the underlying inventory of phonological segments; likewise, the intersegmental dependencies and constraints refer to the underlying composition of morphemes in terms of consecutive segments. These underlying segments can differ significantly from their systematic phonetic “descendants” on the surface due to the operation of phonological rules which, apart from modifying underlying segments, can also insert or delete them. These phonological rules are intended to account for morpheme alternants and distributional restrictions on individual segments (cf. Art. 51). For example, within the classical generative model the English present participle suffix -ing /=n/ (as in walking, baking) would normally be represented as 兩 ing 兩, i.e. it would end in a voiced velar plosive preceded by a dental nasal. Phonological rules assimilate the place of articulation of the nasal and subsequently delete the velar so that phonetically no English morpheme can end with * [ng]. The non-appearance of [ng] morpheme-finally, however, finds no specific independent reflection anywhere in English phonology: the velar nasal does not appear at all in underlying representations where a contrast is recognised between 兩 nk 兩 and 兩 ng 兩 (e.g. wink vs. wing). The surface impossibility of morpheme-final * [ng] would result from the interaction between underlying representations and existing phonological rules. No surface phonetic constraints are allowed in classical generative phonology (cf. Postal 1968: 208⫺ 216); whatever surface restrictions can be observed, these are invariably derivative of underlying restrictions coupled with the operation of phonological rules. The distance between phonological and phonetic representations (known also as the “abstractness issue”) means that phonotactic properties of roots and affixes cannot be read off directly from their phonetic forms but rather can only be properly appreciated within a specific theoretical model. 2.2. Morpheme structure rules: the duplication problem Features, the ultimate building blocks of phonological expressions, tend to be combined in a limited number of ways. It has therefore been suggested that all predictable


features should be removed from phonological representations and should be supplied by Morpheme Structure Rules (MSRs), which apply prior to the phonological rules proper (cf. Halle 1959: 30⫺32, 55f., 62f.). Apart from conditions on feature combinations within segments, redundancies can also be effected by considering possible sequences of segments (which are sometimes thought to constitute the proper domain of phonotactics). The standard case used to illustrate such sequential constraints comes from consonantal clusters. In English, three-member initial sequences invariably consist of /s/ followed by a voiceless plosive and non-nasal sonorant (e.g. /spl/, /str/, /skw/ in spleen, strong, square), leaving aside an occasional exception (e.g. sphragistics with the fricative /f/ in second position). In terms of redundancy-free phonological representations, this would require that /s/ be specified for consonantality only, the second consonant for plosiveness and place of articulation and the third segment for the required sonorant properties. All the omitted features would be supplied prior to phonology proper. This view of the placement of Morpheme Structure Rules produces numerous problems, the most disturbing of which is the duplication issue. In brief, some of the Morpheme Structure Rules which insert features into the phonological representations of individual morphemes seem to be repeated in the form of phonological rules applying when morphemes are concatenated. Typical here is the case of place-of-articulation agreement between a nasal and a following stop consonant which holds morpheme-internally and hence has to be stated as a Morpheme Structure Rule, but which is also enforced when a morpheme ending in a nasal comes to stand before one beginning with an obstruent. In Polish the nasal is invariably homorganic with the following non-continuant morpheme-internally; the nasal ⫹ stop clusters comprise (a) bilabial [mp], [mb] (e.g. [sempÈ] ‘vulture: nom.pl’, [zembÈ] ‘tooth:nom.pl’); (b) dental [nt], [nd] (e.g. [kontÈ] ‘corner: nom. pl’, [kendÈ] ‘whither’); (c) alveolar [nts] (e.g. [tentsa] ‘rainbow: nom. sg’, [psewents] ‘(mountain) pass: nom.sg’); (d) palatal [MtC], [MdZ] (e.g. [xeMtCi] ‘intention:nom.pl’, [peMdZi] ‘rush (pres):3.sg’); (e) prevelar [njkj] (e.g. [dZenjkji] ‘thanks’); (f) velar [nk], [ng] (e.g. [renka] ‘hand: nom. sg’, [prenga] ‘stripe:nom.sg’).


429

These facts, combined with the morphemeinternal absence of nonhomorganic sequences point to the existence of a Morpheme Structure Rule which supplies the place feature(s) for the nasal on the basis of the specification for the following stop. Many morphemes display alternations involving the nasal and stop sequence depending on the segmental structure of the following morphemes. The nasals involved in the alternations can be:

tations, Morpheme Structure Constraints can be used as quasi-rules since they force the output of phonological rules to conform to them. The duplication problem (cf. 2.2) disappears as both types of phenomena are driven by the same constraint. In the development of generative phonology, these ideas came to be widely accepted, by the tension between the underspecification approach and the constraint approach did not die out and the conflict was never satisfactorily resolved. One of the standard problems is connected with vowel harmony in Turkish: most morphemes harmonise in having either front or back vowels, e.g. salıncak ‘swing’, dokuz ‘nine’ vs. çekingen ‘shy’, sekiz ‘eight’. This fact could easily be reflected in a Morpheme Structure Constraint requiring uniformity in backness across a morpheme’s vowels. In addition, a number of suffixes display front and back variants. Thus the plural morpheme appears in two shapes, -lar and -ler, whose distribution is determined by the backness of the preceding vowel, e.g. göz ‘eye’ ⫺ gözler vs. kız ‘girl’ ⫺ kızlar (where ı represents a high, back unrounded vowel [X]). These facts can be described neatly if the underlying suffix is specified for height and roundedness, i.e. if it is [⫺ high, ⫺ round] and remains unspecified for backness, which could come through spreading from the preceding vowel. This interpretation is impossible on the assumption that morphemes are fully specified for all features in their underlying representations. To derive the correct phonetic forms one would need the plural suffix to be either /lar/ or /ler/: in the former case, spreading of the feature [⫺ back] from the preceding vowel would have to be accompanied by the deletion of the vowel’s [⫹ back] specification, while in the latter case the situation would be reversed. Thus vowel harmony would be a feature changing operation subject to the same arbitrariness as other operations of this sort, i.e. the feature-changing formulation would be just as (un)revealing if ⫺ counterfactually ⫺ front vowel stems required a back vowel suffix. The possibility of having roots controlled by a vowel harmony Morpheme Structure Constraint with affixes obtaining harmony effects through spreading amounts to duplicating the same regularity within the grammar. In later generative phonology, attempts were made to present a constrained version of the underspecification theory (cf. Kenstowicz 1994 for a survey of some results and

(a) labial ⬃ dental ⬃ palatal (e.g. [dme] ‘blow (pres):1.sg’ ⬃ [dentÈ] ‘blow:part. pass: nom.sg.m’ ⬃ [deMtCi] ‘blow:part. pass: nom.pl.m.hum’); (b) dental ⬃ palatal (e.g. [kont] ‘corner: nom.sg’ ⬃ [koMtCe] ‘corner:loc.sg’); (c) velar ⬃ prevelar (e.g. [wonka] ‘meadow: nom.sg’ ⬃ [wonjkji] ‘meadow:gen.sg’); (d) velar ⬃ prevelar ⬃ alveolar ⬃ dental (e.g. [renka] ‘hand:nom.sg’ ⬃ [renjkji] ‘hand: gen.sg’ ⬃ [rontska] ‘hand:dimin: nom.sg’ ⬃ [rentse] ‘hand:loc.sg’). No matter what nasal segment we select as underlying in such morphemes, it is clear that its place of articulation has to be converted by rule to that of the following non-continuant. The results are again homorganic clusters, but this time they emerge not as a result of filling blanks in representations but due to a phonological rule which changes certain feature specifications. The need to capture the same generalisation in two different places in the grammar was seen as a serious shortcoming of the theory which stressed the concept of “linguistically significant generalisations” and their reflection in the statement of rules (cf. Anderson 1974: 282⫺296). An attempt to rectify this difficulty by interspersing redundancy rules among ordinary phonological rules created new problems and was abandoned. 2.3. Morpheme structure constraints: issues and problems An alternative to Morpheme Structure Rules is based on the assumption that the purpose of redundancy rules is not to remove predictable features from underlying structures but rather to supply descriptive, static generalisations over the lexical representations (cf. Stanley 1967). Such Morpheme Structure Constraints (MSCs), rather than insert features, operate on fully specified representations and define what is and what is not a licit segment combination. In addition to constraining the class of underlying represen-

430


problems and Steriade 1995 for a critical assessment of the attempt). The replacement of the derivational approach by a variety of non-derivational models brought about a further loss of interest in the questions of Morpheme Structure Rules, Morpheme Structure Constraints and their interactions with phonological rules proper. It is perhaps remarkable that Morpheme Structure Constraints, allegedly concerned with properties of the central concept of morphology, the morpheme, seem to have evoked practically no interest among morphologists. The reasons for this should presumably be sought in the partial conflation of phonology and morphology, which led to purely phonological regularities being formulated with reference to morphology.

3.

Phonotactic constraints: phonology or morphology?

The various approaches to phonotactic constraints presented in 2 grew out of a model of phonology that was morpheme-oriented, i.e. the different surface phonetic shapes were seen as resulting from the application of phonological rules to invariant underlying shapes of morphemes. In this context it was natural to assume that the most important phonological unit should display phonological properties. However, the view that different phonetic shapes of morphemes reveal live, synchronic phonological processes is an assumption, since alternations can be and have been described in a variety of ways, not necessarily those involving abstract representations, ordered rules and distinctive features. Support for the assumption came mostly from the descriptive success it led to, and here the impressive number of large chunks of different languages described within the derivational framework starting in the mid-1960’s seemed to argue most convincingly for the validity of the approach. Dissenting voices came loud and clear but were paid little heed; one of them predicted: “the tradition of abstract analysis and phonology/ morphophonemics conflation will be seen as an aberrant episode in the history of the discipline, and MP [morphophonemic] alternations will stay firmly in morphology, where they belong.” (Lass 1984: 233)

An equally significant and not unrelated contributing factor was the absence of the notion of the syllable in classical generative phonol-

ogy; it only became firmly established as a phonological construct in the late 1970’s. In point of fact, a significant number of the putative Morpheme Structure Constraints can easily be expressed as Syllable Structure Constraints (SSCs). For example, the English sequences of three consonants (cf. 2.2) have nothing to do with morphology but are subject to restrictions on consonant combinations within and across syllables. The same applies to the occurrence of the English velar nasal, and the nasal-obstruent homorganicity; harmony processes indicate the need to recognise nuclear interaction. Clearly the syllable is not a primitive notion, hence a number of very different approaches to the syllable have been put forward. Naturally enough, the theoretical potential of a specific syllable theory determines what is expressible in its terms. One relevant example concerns the validity of Morpheme Structure Constraints (cf. Davis 1991: 56f.). In English the two consonants appearing in the context sCVC (where C stands for a consonant and V for a vowel) may not be homorganic noncoronals. This accounts for the absence (and impossibility) of forms such as * spap, * skik, * smum etc. The constraint against such sequences appears to be a Morpheme Structure Constraint rather than a Syllable Structure Constraint; otherwise one should expect to find words like * spapoon, * skikanda where the second of the two identical consonants clearly belongs to a syllable different than the first, i.e. spa-poon, ski-kan-da. Since such words are not found, the contraint against homorganic noncoronals seems to hold for morphemes rather than syllables. However, this reasoning presupposes that the final plosive of spap, skik etc. belongs to the same syllable as the first one, a view which is not held universally. Word final consonants may be onsets of syllables whose nucleus is phonetically zero (cf. Kaye 1990; Harris 1994). If so, the impossibility of * spap etc. would show little relevance to the issue: successive onsets, just like successive nuclei, can influence each other, as amply evidenced by haplological phenomena of all sorts. Similarly, a ban on the occurrence of two coronal fricatives in adjacent syllables can account for the contrast among some adjectival derivatives, e.g. sheepish, piggish vs. * fishish, * drudgish (cf. Aronoff 1976: 82). While a significant number of Morpheme Structure Constraints are ex-


431

pressible as Syllable Structure Constraints, some phenomena call for a more subtle theoretical apparatus.

also Art. 56). The canonical shape of a particular root is defined in terms of a CV template, while the phonological segments (melodies) occupy slots on separate tiers. “The templatic target may be imposed on an entire stem, word, or other morphological base” (McCarthy & Prince 1995: 325). Among other types of non-concatenative processes analysed by prosodic morphology are phenomena like reduplication and truncation (the latter frequently used in hypocoristic formation; cf. Art. 60). It should be pointed out, however, that the phonological information required by such phenomena relates to very general skeletal organisation in terms of vocalic and consonantal segments or even in terms of unspecified units (cf. Hayes 1989: 255⫺260; Brockhaus 1995: 215⫺218). Thus no recourse is taken to such properties as sonority, stridency, plosiveness or the like. If indeed there are some phonotactic properties definable exclusively in relation to such morphological categories as the root and not to such phonological categories as the syllable, then the following three questions are legitimate: (a) Are there any phonotactic constraints that hold specifically for other types of meaning-bearing elements, e.g. affixes and (phonological) words and, if so, are they different cross-linguistically from those imposed on roots? (b) Are there any systematic differences between the phonotactics of suffixes as opposed to prefixes? (c) Are there any phonotactic principles that hold for specific subclasses of entities of either type, i.e. of suffixes and prefixes, no matter whether they are defined functionally or in some other way?

4.

Morphologically relevant phonological information

4.1. Phonotactics of roots It has been argued that the phonotactic generalisations valid for a particular language may depend on the kind of minimal sign that is taken into account. For instance, “[if] a language distinguishes systematically between grammatical and lexical morphemes, then the principle of optimal size […] tends to have longer lexical than grammatical morphemes. Thus an optimal solution is to have monosyllabic grammatical and disyllabic lexical morphemes.” (Dressler 1985: 226)

Accordingly, for a variety of languages, the major phonotactic properties have been expressed in relation to the root (lexical) morpheme exclusively. For example, every such morpheme in Mixteco consists of one of the following bisyllabic sequences (n represents nasalization of the final vowel): “CVCV, CV?CV, CVV, CV?V; CVCVn, CVVn, CV?Vn” (Pike 1947: 164). Moreover, there are specific restrictions concerning the vowels that may appear in these sequences: the vowels /i/, /a/ and /u/ are relatively unrestricted, while the distribution of the remaining vocalic segments /e/, /e/, /o/ is heavily constrained. Additionally, the operation of certain phonological processes is sensitive to the position of a particular segment within the root: only medial consonants undergo optional lengthening and only vowels of the first syllable are optionally stressed. In a similar vein, one can characterise the optimum size of the root in Russian: although, strictly speaking, the maximum number of syllables per root is unlimited, roots of more than three syllables are normally found only in loan words (Trubetzkoy 1934: 17). The insights of prosodic morphology also seem to suggest that, for a variety of nonconcatenative morphological processes, it is the root, rather than the syllable, that constitutes the proper domain for valid generalisations and constraints concerning phonological structure. Such is the case, for instance, with Arabic root-and-pattern morphology (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1990: 211⫺224; 1995: 353; Kenstowicz 1994: 636⫺640; see

4.2. The phonological word and its implications It appears that, for each of the three questions, the answer may well be “yes”, although evidence presented in the relevant studies is rather inconclusive. Thus, it has been suggested by some scholars that simpler and more general phonotactic constraints can be arrived at when the morpheme rather than the word is taken as the unit of reference (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 225). And, conversely, the phonotactic significance of the phonological (prosodic) word is argued for within the framework of prosodic morphology, which operates with the notion of the “Minimal

432


Word”: It is claimed that in many languages words of one mora or one syllable are avoided; a minimal requirement of two moras or two syllables is imposed. This condition is said to affect so-called content words (major-class lexical items) in particular; it is often relaxed in the case of grammatical (function) words and such marked niches within the lexicon as kinship terms and names of inalienably possessed body-parts (cf. Kenstowicz 1994: 640). The impact of the minimal word requirement may be detected, if only indirectly, in the structure of a derivational system. A productive affixation process may be blocked from applying to extremely short potential base-forms or else “intermorphic extensions” may be called for (cf. Art. 43 and 45), particularly in cases where the attachment of a given affix to the bare base would trigger phonological processes at the junctures, thus reducing the transparency of the derivative and possibly endangering the recoverability of the base in the derived form (cf. Cutler 1981). In Polish, for instance, the productive adjectival suffix -sk/-ck (followed by a case/number/gender marker such as -i ‘nom.sg.m’) derives, among other things, relational adjectives from the majority of personal (masculine) common

nouns, inducing various phonological processes affecting the base-final consonant(s), viz. palatalisation, depalatalisation, assimilation and deletion: (1) błazen nauczyciel malarz prezydent katolik

‘clown’ ‘teacher’ ‘painter’ ‘president’ ‘Catholic’

błazen´-sk-i nauczyciel-sk-i malar-sk-i prezyden-ck-i katoli-ck-i

If the base is monosyllabic (and monomorphemic), a semantically empty “intermorph” -ow- appears between the base and the suffix: (2) szpieg stro´z˙ wuj klown mistrz

‘spy’ ‘caretaker’ ‘uncle’ ‘clown’ ‘champion’

szpieg-ow-sk-i stro´z˙-ow-sk-i wuj-ow-sk-i klown-ow-sk-i mistrz-ow-sk-i

This helps to preserve the transparency of the derivative, due to the fact that there is no modification of the base-final consonants (as in * szpie-sk-i). The same type of Polish adjectives illustrates a tendency which goes in the opposite direction: certain nominal bases which are relatively long (polysyllabic) get shortened when combining with -sk/-ck; thus, the base final sequence -in is regularly truncated:

(3) dominikanin ‘Dominican friar’ dominikan´-sk-i muzułmanin ‘Muslim’ muzułman´-sk-i poganin ‘pagan’ pogan´-sk-i The “minimal word” condition appears to have as its analogue a loosely defined “optimal word” requirement. The generalisations about phonotactics evidenced here clearly take as their scope the derived word, while the syllable plays a role only as a unit of measure and no reference is made to the syllableinternal constituents. More specific conditions defining the permissible segmental and syllabic structure of words have been discovered in relation to a number of languages or whole language groups. Thus, “[i]n most Australian languages all words must begin with a consonant and must be of at least two syllables” (Dixon 1970: 273). 4.3. Phonotactics of affixes The distributional symmetry of suffixes and prefixes is not reflected by other, grammatically more significant, properties of these two types of units (cf. Sapir 1921: 67). For a given language, its suffixes may differ enormously from its prefixes in terms of productivity, ori-

gin, typical functions, not to mention processing strategies. The phonotactic properties likewise often exhibit a considerable degree of asymmetry. There are, for instance, some characteristic differences in the phonological make-up of Russian suffixes and prefixes (cf. Trubetzkoy 1934: 16⫺20). Although both types share a condition on length (they cannot be longer than two syllables), they differ in admissible segmental configurations. Thus, prefixes cannot end in either a palatalised consonant or a consonantal cluster. The phonotactic principles governing the structure of suffixes are more complex; for instance, consonantal clusters are avoided suffix-initially. Phonotactic generalisations of this kind are frequently relativised and expressed as tendencies rather than strict principles, unlike Morpheme Structure Constraints and Syllable Structure Constraints (cf. 2⫺3). One can go a step further and ask whether there are any systematic differences in the phonotactic configurations associated with


433

some particular subclasses of affixes in a given language. In Russian, for instance, a phonotactic distinction correlates with one of the most basic divisions within morphology, viz. that between inflection and derivation: The phonotactic patterns of Russian inflectional affixes are much simpler than those of derivational formatives; according to one analysis, they fall into four basic types, V, C, VC and CV (cf. Trubetzkoy 1934: 16). Potential phonotactic differences can also be uncovered for certain functionally delimited classes of suffixes (or prefixes) in a language. Thus, for instance, native (simplex) nounforming suffixes in Polish are ⫺ in surface terms ⫺ either asyllabic or, at most, monosyllabic (cf. Laskowski 1973: 137). Every such suffix contains at least one consonant in final position, i.e. a consonant or a consonantal cluster is an obligatory element. The maximum number of segments is three. Since a few of these suffixes are vowelless (have empty nuclei), whatever significant generalisation is to be made about their phonological make-up is not expressible as a Syllable Structure Constraint. The phonotactics of nominal (noun- and adjective-forming) suffixes contrast sharply with those of verbforming suffixes (cf. Laskowski 1973: 137). In formatives of the latter type, a vocalic segment is obligatory while a consonantal one is optional. Evidence for and against the phonotactic significance of different types of morphological units has also been adduced for other languages (cf. Dressler 1985: 219⫺ 245; Basbøll 1974; Golston 1996; Wurzel 1986).

However, the tendency of lexicalist morphology in the 1970s to account for limitations on the productivity of word-formation processes in terms of phonological conditions is not convincing. One frequently cited limitation concerns the productivity of the English nominalizing suffix -al (cf. Aronoff 1976: 80; Siegel 1979: 165f.). The existing verb/noun pairs like try / trial, refuse / refus-al, rehearse / rehears-al, arrive / arriv-al, are said to demonstrate that the suffix in question may attach only to verbs whose final vowel is stressed and followed by an optional sonorant which in turn is followed by an optional anterior consonant (except: bu´ry / bu´rial). It could be claimed that in cases of this kind a particular affix selects only those stems which are phonotactically appropriate. However, this would result in a very broad notion of phonotactic conditions, heavily subordinated to the needs of morphology. In particular, making affixation sensitive to stress presupposes a model of linguistic organisation where at least some phonology must be done prior to morphology (a morpheme like try cannot have lexical stress and can only acquire it by rule before the suffix -al is attached to it). This programme has been advocated in Lexical Phonology (cf. Kiparsky 1982; Booij & Lieber 1993; Hargus 1993), but by allowing more options for the phonology/morphology interface we broaden the class of possible grammars and thus weaken the predictive power of the theory. Moreover, alternative analyses are available: The distribution of the suffix -al can be based on certain morphological rather than phonological properties of the base-verbs (cf. Malicka-Kleparska 1988: 153⫺163). The Latinate verbs that combine with -al are (normally) of the structure prefix ⫹ root (where both constituents have no fixed meaning) and, additionally, these verbs must meet a requirement on their thematic structure: agent, theme. The phonological properties (final stress, optional consonants base-finally) may be largely coincidental and irrelevant. It is preferable to leave it for the phonology to describe, wherever possible, phonotactic properties in phonological terms, i.e. to invoke this notion in the context of phonological entities par excellence like the syllable or the prosodic word, and to study the morphotactics (productivity, motivation, etc.) and a host of other morphological phenomena in relation to morphological units.

5.

The interplay between phonology and morphology

The phonotactic properties of morphological units may also reveal themselves, indirectly, through the phenomenon of phonological conditions on morphological (word-formation) rules (cf. Szymanek 1980). In cases of straightforward affixation, these may be instances where the attachment of a particular formative is conditioned by the presence or absence of specific phonological segments in the base-form. For instance, the productive English adjectival suffix -ful cannot be added to nouns ending in labio-dental spirants /f/, /v/; thus, * love-ful, * grief-ful, * leaf-ful are impossible (cf. love-less, grief-less, leaf-less).

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Viewed from this perspective, “phonotactics of morphological units” emerges as a problematic notion. More cross-linguistic evidence in its favour is called for before it is accepted as a genuine manifestation of the interplay between phonology and morphology.

6.

References

Harris, John (1994), English Sound Structure. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Hayes, Bruce (1989), “Compensatory Lengthening in Moraic Phonology”. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 253⫺306 Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Kaye, Jonathan (1990), “ ‘Coda’ Licensing”. Phonology 7, 301⫺330

Anderson, Stephen R. (1974), The Organization of Phonology. New York etc.: Academic Press

Kenstowicz, Michael (1994), Phonology in Generative Grammar. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell

Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 1)

Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “Lexical Morphology and Phonology”. In: Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Selected Papers from SICOL-1981. Seoul: Hanshin, 3⫺91

Basbøll, Hans (1974), “Structure consonantique du mot italien”. Revue Romane 9, 27⫺40 Booij, Geert & Lieber, Rochelle (1993), “On the Simultaneity of Morphological and Prosodic Structure”. In: Hargus & Kaisse (eds.), 23⫺44 Brockhaus, Wiebke (1995), “Skeletal and Suprasegmental Structure within Government Phonology”. In: Durand & Katamba (eds.), 180⫺221 Cutler, Anne (1981), “Degrees of Transparency in Word Formation”. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 26, 73⫺77 Davis, Stuart (1991), “Coronals and the Phonotactics of Nonadjacent Consonants in English”. In: Paradis, Carole & Prunet, Jean-François (eds.), The Special Status of Coronals: Internal and External Evidence. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press (Phonetics and Phonology 2), 49⫺60 Dixon, Robert M. W. (1970), “Olgolo Syllable Structure and What They Are Doing about It”. Linguistic Inquiry 1, 273⫺276 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma (Linguistica Extranea, Studia 12) Durand, Jacques & Katamba, Francis (1995, eds.), Frontiers of Phonology: Atoms, Structures, Derivations. London, New York: Longman Goldsmith, John A. (1995, ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Cambridge/MA, Oxford: Blackwell (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics 1) Golston, Chris (1996), “Prosodic Constraints on Roots, Stems and Words”. In: Kleinhenz, Ursula (ed.), Interfaces in Phonology. Berlin: Akademie Verlag (Studia grammatica 41), 172⫺193 Halle, Morris (1959), The Sound Pattern of Russian. ’s Gravenhage: Mouton (Description and Analysis of Contemporary Standard Russian 1) Hargus, Sharon (1993), “Modeling the PhonologyMorphology Interface”. In: Hargus & Kaisse (eds.), 45⫺74 Hargus, Sharon & Kaisse, Ellen M. (1993, eds.), Studies in Lexical Phonology. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press (Phonetics and Phonology 4)

Kruisinga, E[tsko] (1943), The Phonetic Structure of English Words. Bern: Francke (Bibliotheca anglicana 2) Laskowski, Roman (1973), “Budowa morfonologiczna polskich przyrostko´w rzeczownikowych”. Je˛zyk Polski 53, 132⫺141 Lass, Roger (1984), Phonology: An Introduction to Basic Concepts. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Malicka-Kleparska, Anna (1988), Rules and Lexicalisations: Selected English Nominals. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. (1990), “Foot and Word in Prosodic Morphology: The Arabic Broken Plural”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 209⫺283 McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. (1995), “Prosodic Morphology”. In: Goldsmith (ed.), 318⫺366 Pike, Kenneth L. (1947), “Grammatical Prerequisites to Phonemic Analyses”. Word 3, 155⫺172 Postal, Paul M. (1968), Aspects of Phonological Theory. New York etc.: Harper & Row Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace Siegel, Dorothy (1979), Topics in English Morphology. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1974: Ph. D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Stanley, Richard (1967), “Redundancy Rules in Phonology”. Language 43, 393⫺436 Steriade, Donca (1995), “Underspecification and Markedness”. In: Goldsmith (ed.), 114⫺174 Szymanek, Bogdan (1980), “Phonological Conditioning of Word Formation Rules”. Folia Linguistica 14, 413⫺425 Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj S.] (1934), Description phonologique du russe moderne, Vol. II: Das morphonologische System der russischen Sprache. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 5.2)

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45. Nullelemente in der Morphologie Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (1939), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 7) [⫽ 21958 Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht] Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1986), “Zur formalen Variabilität der deutschen Morpheme”. In: Kastovsky, Dieter & Szwedek, Aleksander (eds.), Linguis-

tics across Historical and Geographical Boundaries. In Honor of Jacek Fisiak on the Occasion of His Fiftieth Birthday, Vol. II: Descriptive, Contrastive and Applied Linguistics. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 32), 1077⫺1098

Edmund Gussmann, Lublin (Poland) Bogdan Szymanek, Lublin (Poland)

45. Nullelemente in der Morphologie 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Zur Motivation von Nullelementen Abgrenzungen Aus der Wissenschaftsgeschichte Nullallomorphe und Nullmorpheme Nullableitung Leere Morphe Zitierte Literatur

1.

Zur Motivation von Nullelementen

Auf verschiedenen sprachlichen Ebenen wird in linguistischen Beschreibungen oft von Bezeichnungen wie Null (engl. zero, null; frz. ze´ro) und/oder dem Symbol π Gebrauch gemacht. (Meistens wird eine durchgestrichene Null der gewöhnlichen Ziffer 0 vorgezogen; der Buchstabe ø, das griechische Phi oder das mathematische Durchschnittszeichen dienen gelegentlich als Behelf.) Hinzu kommen verwandte Ausdrücke wie leer oder latent (engl. empty, covert) und dergleichen. Ähnlichkeiten in Terminologie und Notation verdecken allerdings, daß es dabei um eine Reihe recht unterschiedlicher Phänomene und Konzepte geht (vgl. Meier 1961: 87⫺137; Schifko 1973; Reeves 1992: 5⫺42 mit Überblicken). Selbst wenn man nur sprachliche Elemente betrachtet und die Verwendung von Null in Verbindung mit Merkmalen, Operationen u. v. a. außer acht läßt, kann man eine beträchtliche Vielfalt feststellen. Der mathematischen Null als Platzhalter in einem Stellenwertsystem kommen jene Fälle am nächsten, in denen Null lediglich darauf hindeutet, daß an der betreffenden Position auch ein explizites Element stehen könnte. In diesem Sinne ließen sich z. B. bei dt. /wm/ aufgrund des Vergleichs mit /strwmpf/ drei “Nullphoneme” am Anfang und zwei am Ende ausmachen, während /stwmpf/ eines an dritter Stelle hätte (s. Frei 1950: 162, 167⫺172 mit französischen Beispielen). Soweit man derlei Nullen über-

haupt anerkennt, müssen sie in Bezug auf eine größere Einheit definiert werden, die eine bestimmte Zahl zu besetzender Stellen aufweist. So kommt man z. B. auf /πππwmππ/ nur dann, wenn man sich auf Ausdrücke von Minimalzeichen beschränkt; auf beliebige Wörter bezogen, müßte man mit weit mehr Nullen rechnen. Wenn sprachliche Einheiten durch eine Beziehung zwischen zwei (oder mehr) Größen definiert sind, so wird zur Bewahrung einer einfachen Relation oft zugelassen, daß eine dieser Größen “Null” sein darf. Das Verhältnis zwischen Schreibung und Lautung bietet dafür ein Beispiel: mitunter haben Phoneme kein schriftliches Gegenstück, z. B. /?/ in dän. ros /ro6?s/ ‘Lob’ (mit der definiten Form rosen /ro6?sn/ gegenüber homographem rosen /ro6sn/ ‘Rose:def’), oder Grapheme keine lautliche Entsprechung, z. B. *n+ in engl. damn /dæm/ (gegenüber homophonem dam). Damit nun doch jedes Element einen Partner hat, mag man dän. /?/ ein “Nullgraphem” bzw. engl. *n+ ein “Nullphonem” zuweisen (vgl. Althaus 1971: 152, 237): (1) *r+ *o+ *π+ *s+ /r/ /o6/ /?/ /s/

*d+ *a+ *m+ *n+ /d/ /æ/ /m/ /π/

Wieder andere Nullelemente werden damit gerechtfertigt, daß sie bestimmte Effekte auslösen oder (abhängig von theorie-internen Prämissen) gewisse Regularitäten erklären helfen, ohne selbst in Erscheinung zu treten. Auf sie würde daher die Bezeichnung latent passen. Ein klassisches Beispiel aus der englischen Phonologie ist der Gegensatz zwischen dem längeren Diphthong in shyness und dem kürzeren in minus. Da ansonsten eine Abhängigkeit der Vokallänge vom nachfolgenden Kontext besteht (z. B. bei side / site), wäre es nicht wünschenswert, eine phonologische

436 Opposition anzusetzen; offenkundig ist es die morphologische Grenze in shyness, die den längeren Diphthong (wie bei shy) bedingt. Einige Vertreter des amerikanischen Strukturalismus ließen nun in der phonologischen Repräsentation keine grammatischen Informationen zu und führten daher eine auch als zero phoneme bezeichnete “Junktur” ein (s. Harris 1951: 79⫺89; das dafür benutzte Symbol 쒙 hat sich für Wortgrenzen eingebürgert, kommt aber vereinzelt statt π vor). In der Syntax bieten etwa Konstruktionen vom Typ mich friert Anlaß, ein Nullelement als Subjekt anzusetzen, das wegen der Verbkongruenz Merkmale für Person/Numerus tragen muß. Noch allgemeiner sind die Eigenschaften syntaktischer Nullelemente ⫺ die meist empty genannt werden ⫺ in diversen Varianten der Generativen Grammatik (zur Analyse und Kritik vgl. Reeves 1992). Ein ebenfalls nur partiell spezifiziertes Element etwas anderer Beschaffenheit heißt in manchen phonologischen Theorien null segment (s. Steriade 1995: 128⫺140; vgl. schon Jakobson & Lotz 1949: 155 zu frz. /e/ als “zero-phoneme”). Typischerweise handelt es sich um epenthetische Vokale, deren Qualität durch Regeln festgelegt wird; Null verweist hier also auf das Fehlen relevanter Merkmale auf einer bestimmten Ebene der Analyse. In der Morphologie beziehen sich Komposita mit Null- primär auf sprachliche Zeichen ohne expliziten Ausdruck und die zugehörigen Morpheme und Allomorphe (s. 4) sowie auf den entsprechenden Prozeß der Wortbildung (s. 5); Zeichen ohne erkennbaren Inhalt werden leer genannt (s. 6). Termini wie Nullmorph und leeres Morph bilden demnach ein Gegensatzpaar (s. z. B. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 69; Katamba 1993: 37f.) und sind keineswegs synonym, wie das mehrere deutschsprachige Lexika linguistischer Termini behaupten (s. Lewandowski 61994; Bußmann 21990; Conrad 1985 s. v. Nullmorphem). Ein Ausdruck “Null” kann beispielsweise dem Inhalt ‘plural’ in [die] Arbeiter zugeschrieben werden, parallel zu [die] Bauern, wo sich n als Träger dieses Inhalts ausmachen läßt. Als “leer”, also inhaltslos, ist dagegen z. B. das s in Kalbskeule aufgefaßt worden, das in analogen Bildungen wie Kalbfleisch und Lammkeule fehlt. Somit hat die Erweiterung des Zeichenbegriffs die Funktion, gewisse Asymmetrien in der Ausdrucks-Inhalts-Relation zu vermeiden: es handelt sich um relational definierte Nullelemente, wobei bisweilen die Grenzen zu Platzhaltern oder latenten Grö-


ßen unscharf werden (vgl. 4.1 und 5 zu Nullmorphem bzw. Nullableitung). Solche Elemente sind sowohl von verwandten Prozessen als auch von “nichts” zu unterscheiden (s. 2). Nicht zuletzt ist das eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die Erforschung der in manchen Details noch ungeklärten Begriffsgeschichte (s. 3).

2.

Abgrenzungen

2.1. Null und nichts Zahlreiche Autoren setzen das Vorhandensein von Null mit dem Nichtvorhandensein von etwas gleich; charakteristisch sind Formulierungen wie: (2) (a) “Formen mit der Endung Null oder ohne jede Endung” (Baudouin de Courtenay 1902: 245 [1963: 27]) (b) “Nullplural oder endungsloser Plural” neben “π-Plural” (Duden-Grammatik 41984: 238)

Hier dürften Null und π lediglich als elegantere Rede- und Schreibweisen dienen. Es ist jedoch (zumindest im Rahmen bestimmter Grammatikmodelle) ein wesentlicher Unterschied, ob in einer gegebenen Position ein Element besonderer Art angenommen wird oder keines. Beispielsweise wird bei deutschen Substantiven vom Typ Arbeiter durch ein Suffix π mit dem Inhalt ‘plural’ eine Parallele zu den Flexionsklassen mit explizitem Suffix hergestellt. Geht man hingegen davon aus, daß in diesem Fall keinerlei Suffix vorliegt, läßt sich die Pluralform Arbeiter nicht als Abfolge zweier Zeichen interpretieren (vgl. 4.1). Daher sollten Null, Zero usw. nicht bloß als stilistische Alternativen zu Fehlen, ohne, -los, un- und dergleichen verwendet werden. 2.2. Elemente und Operationen Die Null als Element ist von der Operation der Tilgung zu trennen. Hierbei wird ein Element, das auf einer bestimmten Analysestufe ⫺ etwa in einer “zugrundeliegenden Repräsentation” oder “Tiefenstruktur” ⫺ noch vorhanden ist, auf dem Weg zur “Oberfläche” gelöscht (wenngleich die übliche Notation X J π seine Ersetzung durch ein Nullelement suggeriert; vgl. auch Schifko 1973: 49). Tilgungsoperationen und Nullelemente sind zum einen an verschiedene theoretische Prämissen geknüpft; zum anderen stimmen die Phänomene, zu deren Beschreibung sie sich

437

45. Nullelemente in der Morphologie

eignen, nur partiell überein. So läßt sich beim Beispiel Arbeiter die Annahme eines zugrundeliegenden Pluralsuffixes -e wie in Tag-e durch die Analogie zu -en (vgl. Bauer-n und Staat-en) stützen: das e /e/ im Suffix wird genau dann getilgt, wenn die vorangehende Silbe bereits ein unbetontes e /e/ enthält. Demgegenüber wäre es bei engl. sheep ziemlich willkürlich, im Plural irgendein Suffix anzusetzen, das dann entfällt. In einem Modell von Flexion, in dem an die Stelle von Affixen Operationen treten, die Phonemfolgen verändern, ist das Gegenstück zum Nullzeichen keine Tilgung, sondern eine Identitätsoperation oder Nulloperation (s. Matthews 1974: 121; Crystal 41997 s. v. zero; vgl. Bloch 1947: 399 [1957: 243] zu “zero change”). Dabei stimmt die Ausgabe mit der Eingabe überein, d. h. es wird keine Veränderung vorgenommen. Unter besonderen Umständen mag für dergleichen Bedarf bestehen, doch genügt es normalerweise, gar keine Operation auszuführen, wenn eine grammatische Bedeutung nicht durch eine Differenz auf der Ausdrucksseite signalisiert wird (s. Janda & Manandise 1984: 232; Anderson 1992: 86, 169; vgl. dagegen Matthews 1974: 121; 21991: 130). Somit können die genannten Arten von Operationen bei der Erörterung morphologischer Nullelemente außer Betracht bleiben.

3.

Aus der Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Die erste Verwendung von Nullelementen wird weithin und oft ungeprüft dem altindischen Grammatiker Pa¯nø ini zugeschrieben. Dazu hat wohl eine Bemerkung von Leonard Bloomfield zu engl. sheep wesentlich beigetragen: (3) “Here the Hindus hit upon the apparently artificial but in practice eminently serviceable device of speaking of a zero element: in sheep : sheep the plural-suffix is replaced by zero ⫺ that is, by nothing at all.” (Bloomfield 1933: 209)

Gemeint ist offenbar der Lehrsatz (su¯tra) 1.1.60 in Pa¯nø inis Grammatik, adarsánam ø lopahø , den Bloomfield in einer im Manuskript erhaltenen Übersetzung durch “disappearance is called zero” wiedergab (Rogers 1987: 134; vgl. Bloomfield 1926: 160 [1957: 29; 1970: 135] mit Verweis auf su¯tra 1.1.61). Vorbild könnte eine ältere englische Edition gewesen sein: “The substitution of a blank (lopa) signifies disappearance”; in den Erläuterungen dazu wird lopa als “grammatical zero” bezeichnet und als real existierende

Größe beschrieben (s. Vasu 1891: 55f.). Einen etwas anderen Eindruck vermittelt die deutsche Übertragung: “Das nicht zur Erscheinung Kommen heisst Lopa (Schwund)” (Böhtlingk 1887: 9). Neuere Darstellungen erläutern lopa ebenfalls teils als Tilgungsprozeß, teils als eine Ersetzung durch Null, und manche schwanken zwischen diesen Auffassungen (s. Renou 1957: 267; Allen 1955: 112; Meier 1961: 140⫺143; Ruegg 1978: 177; Rogers 1987: 118⫺120; vgl. auch Art. 5). Was diese “Null” genau sein soll, bleibt unklar; ist sie nur “nothing at all”, handelt es sich aber nicht um ein wirkliches Nullelement (s. 2.1). Zudem benutzt Pa¯nø ini kein Wort, das man mit Null identifizieren dürfte, denn die mathematische Null und Termini dafür sind erst rund ein Jahrtausend später dokumentiert (s. Allen 1955: 113; Ruegg 1978: 174f.; Ifrah 1986: 485⫺511). Eindeutige Belege für eine “Endung Null”, freilich ohne weitere Erörterung, finden sich in frühen Schriften von Jan Baudouin de Courtenay und Ferdinand de Saussure, wobei man über etwaige Abhängigkeiten zwischen ihnen oder von Pa¯nø inis Methode nichts Sicheres weiß (s. (2 a), bereits 1870 verfaßt; Saussure 1879: 170 [1922: 182]). Beide haben in späteren Werken die Annahme derartiger Elemente explizit begründet. Ein “besonderes Morphem ‘Null’ ” ermittelte Baudouin bei der 3. Person Singular Präsens polnischer Verben durch Gegenüberstellung mit anderen Formen, z. B. bei niesć´ ‘tragen’: (4) 2. Person 3. Person 1. Person 2. Person

Singular Singular Plural Plural

/MeCe-C/ /MeCe/ /MeCe-mi/ /MeCe-tC e/

Ein weiteres Morphem “Null” mit der Bedeutung ‘nominativ singular maskulinum’ ergab sich bei poln. /vjilk/ wilk ‘Wolf’, /sin/ syn ‘Sohn’ usw. aus einem doppelten Vergleich: erstens mit anderen Kasus dieser Substantive, zweitens mit dem Nominativ Singular von Feminina und Neutra (s. Baudouin de Courtenay 1915: 168 [1983: 42]): (5) (a) Nom. Sg. /vjilk/ Gen. Sg. /vjilk-a/ Dat. Sg. /vjilk-ovji/ (b) Mask. Fem. Neutr.

/vjilk/ /koz-a/ /okn-o/

‘Ziege’ ‘Fenster’

Saussure führte in seiner Vorlesung 1910/11 ein anderes slavisches Beispiel an, tschech.

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slovo ‘Wort’ und zˇena ‘Frau’ mit dem Genitiv Plural slov bzw. zˇen: (6) “Ici le geńitif (slov, zˇen) a pour exposant ze´ro. On voit donc qu’un signe mate´riel n’est pas nećessaire pour exprimer une ideé; la langue peut se contenter de l’opposition de quelque chose avec rien; ici, par example, on reconnaıˆt le geń. pl. zˇen simplement a` ce qu’il n’est ni zˇena ni zˇenu, ni aucune des autres formes.” (Saussure 1916: 127 [123f.])

Die von den Herausgebern ausformulierte Bemerkung über die Opposition zwischen etwas und nichts hat Berühmtheit erlangt und zu weiterer Beschäftigung mit dem Thema angeregt. So hat Roman Jakobson sie aufgegriffen und mit der aus der Phonologie stammenden Theorie der Markiertheit verknüpft (s. Jakobson 1939; 1940; Art. 29). In dieser Traditionslinie stehen unter anderem Überlegungen zur morphologischen “Natürlichkeit” und Arbeiten zur Universalienforschung (vgl. 4.3). Dagegen haben amerikanische Strukturalisten nach Bloomfield nicht sprachtheoretische Erklärungen gesucht, sondern geeignete Grundsätze für die Verwendung von Nullelementen in grammatischen Analysen (s. 4.2). Das Ergebnis war ein genereller Konsens, daß gewisse Beschränkungen sinnvoll seien, doch ist es in der Morphologie allgemein üblich geworden, ohne bestimmte theoretische Ansprüche und methodische Prinzipien mit solchen Elementen ⫺ oder mit dem in vielerlei Weise deutbaren Symbol π ⫺ zu operieren, wenn das gerade nützlich scheint (oder auch nur chic, wie bei Nullmorphem in Schulbüchern; s. Fritz 1982).

4.

Nullallomorphe und Nullmorpheme

Ein minimales sprachliches Zeichen mit dem Ausdruck Null ist ein Nullzeichen, z. B. dt. π ‘plural’ in [die] Arbeiter. Dieses Zeichen ist ein Nullallomorph des Morphems {plural}, zu dem auch alle anderen Minimalzeichen mit dem Inhalt ‘plural’ gehören, z. B. /er/ ‘plural’ in Geist-er oder /e/ ‘plural’ in Tage. Wenn es keine anderen Minimalzeichen mit demselben Inhalt gibt, ist das zugehörige Morphem ein Nullmorphem. Das trifft z. B. auf {3.sg} in (4) zu, denn alle polnischen Verben folgen in den angeführten Formen dem gleichen Muster. (Die 1. Person Singular und die 3. Person Plural sind wohlweislich ausgespart; sie werfen die Frage auf, ob man nicht eher /MeC-eC/, /MeC-e/ usw. segmentieren sollte.) Demgemäß kann man Nullzeichen als allomorphisch oder morphemisch bezeichnen

(s. Nida 21949: 46). Aufgrund der verbreiteten Unklarheiten im Gebrauch von Morph und Morphem (s. Art. 46) werden allerdings diese terminologischen Unterscheidungen nicht immer gemacht. Während die Benennung Nullmorph anstelle von Nullzeichen bei einer geeigneten Definition von Morph vertretbar ist (s. z. B. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 63f., 69), muß es Verwirrung stiften, wenn Nullmorphem in diesem Sinn benutzt wird, denn es gibt wesentliche Unterschiede zwischen allomorphischen und morphemischen Nullen bezüglich der Frage, warum man sie annehmen sollte und wie man ohne sie auskommen könnte (s. 4.1), sowie bei möglichen Einschränkungen für die Verwendung dieser Elemente (s. 4.2). Zumindest in der Gewichtung nicht gleich sind ferner die potentiellen Ursachen für die Existenz der entsprechenden Phänomene (s. 4.3). In diesen Punkten liefern Flexionsparadigmen die klarsten Beispiele. Grundsätzlich sind sie auf den Bereich der Wortbildung übertragbar, doch treten dort weitere Probleme auf, die eine getrennte Erörterung erfordern (s. 5). 4.1. Begründungen und Alternativen Wenn man die Beziehung zwischen der Ausdrucks- und der Inhaltsseite einer Äußerung als Verkettung kleinster Zeichen zu beschreiben versucht, stößt man manchmal auf Inhaltsmerkmale, die sich nicht ohne weiteres Ausdruckssegmenten zuordnen lassen, wie z. B. ‘plural’ in engl. sheep. Ein Nullallomorph gestattet es, diese Form in Analogie zu cow-s usw. auf der Ausdrucks- wie auf der Inhaltsseite in zwei Komponenten zu zerlegen, die jeweils durch die Zeichenbeziehung verbunden sind: (7) ‘sheep’

‘PLURAL’ +

sheep

0

Da definitionsgemäß in einem Zeichen ein Ausdruck und ein Inhalt verknüpft sind, erscheint es widersinnig, Zeichen anzunehmen, denen einer dieser konstituierenden Bestandteile fehlt. Will man das Paradox vermeiden, stehen zwei Alternativen zur Wahl: (a) Man läßt die Inhaltsseite ‘sheep(plural)’ ebenso wie die Ausdrucksseite unzerlegt. Singular- und Pluralform sind dann zwei homonyme Zeichen, die getrennt ins Lexikon aufgenommen werden müssen und in einem schwach suppletiven Verhältnis zueinander

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stehen (vgl. Art. 52). Das mag bei einem Ausnahmefall wie sheep noch angehen, wird jedoch z. B. bei der regelmäßigen Flexionsklasse Arbeiter höchst unbefriedigend. (b) Man segmentiert den Inhalt, aber nicht den Ausdruck, d. h. sheep wird als sogenanntes Portmanteau-Morph einer Folge aus zwei Morphemen, {sheep} und {plural}, zugeordnet (s. Hockett 1947: 333, 339f. [1957: 236, 239f.]). Damit wird freilich das Konzept vom sprachlichen Zeichen als Einheit von Ausdruck und Inhalt so stark modifiziert, daß es des Zeichenbegriffs kaum noch bedarf: die mit ihm beschriebene 1 : 1-Beziehung zwischen einem Ausdruck und einem Inhalt ist dann bloß ein (wenngleich häufiger) Grenzfall, während prinzipiell komplexere Typen von Relationen vorzusehen sind (s. Art. 64). Obwohl manches für den Verzicht auf den Zeichenbegriff sprechen mag (vgl. z. B. Anderson 1992: 48⫺72), hat das mit ihm verbundene agglutinierende Ideal “ein Inhalt ⫺ ein Ausdruck” (vgl. Art. 30) doch seine Attraktivität und ist in vielen Sprachen oder Teilsystemen so weitgehend verwirklicht, daß es durchaus wünschenswert und u. a. für praktische und pädagogische Zwecke hilfreich sein kann, gewisse Abweichungen davon durch einen kleinen Kunstgriff zu beseitigen. Im Falle von Nullmorphemen wird dieses Ideal jedoch noch ausgedehnt: in einem Flexionsparadigma soll jede Ausprägung der beteiligten morphosyntaktischen Kategorie(n) ihren Ausdruck haben (vgl. Art. 28 und 62). So definieren bei karaimischen Substantiven, z. B. kaz ‘Gans’, die Kategorien Numerus und Kasus mit zwei bzw. sieben Ausprägungen ein Raster mit 14 Stellen, in dem den Inhalten ‘nominativ’ und ‘singular’ nie ein wahrnehmbarer Ausdruck entspricht (vgl. Musaev 1964: 124f., 140⫺145): (8) Nominativ Genitiv Akkusativ Instrumental Dativ-Allativ Lokativ Ablativ

Singular kaz kaz-nyn kaz-ny kaz-ba kaz-gˇa kaz-da kaz-dan

Plural kaz-lar kaz-lar-nyn kaz-lar-ny kaz-lar-ba kaz-lar-gˇa kaz-lar-da kaz-lar-dan

Setzt man jeweils ein Nullmorphem an, hat dennoch jede Form die gleiche Struktur, Stamm ⫹ Numerussuffix ⫹ Kasussuffix: (9) Nominativ Genitiv …

Singular kaz-π-π kaz-π-nyn

Plural kaz-lar-π kaz-lar-nyn

Dieses Verfahren führt in manchen Sprachen zu sehr langen Ketten von Nullen, was wie beim phonologischen Beispiel /πππwmππ/ (s. 1) befremdlich wirken mag. Überdies signalisieren die an der gleichen Stelle auftretenden Affixe nicht immer Ausprägungen derselben Kategorie, so z. B. im Georgischen (vgl. Tschenke´li 1958: 357): (10) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

vxatøav xatøav xatøavs gxatøav gxatøavs

‘ich male’ ‘du malst’ ‘er malt’ ‘ich male dich’ ‘er malt dich’

Nehmen der Objektmarker der 2. Person gund der Subjektmarker der 1. Person v- denselben Platz ein, so daß (10 d) keine Null enthält? Oder gibt es getrennte Präfixstellen für Subjekt- und Objektmarker, von denen eine mit π besetzt ist? Und in welcher Reihenfolge stehen sie? Andererseits wird bei den Subjektmarkern die 1. Person durch ein Präfix und die 3. Person Singular durch ein Suffix ausgedrückt. Wenn (10 b) ein Nullmorphem enthält, wohin gehört es? Fragen wie diese müssen nicht immer unbeantwortbar sein, zeigen aber, daß die methodischen Probleme nicht unerheblich sind. Wer die Vorbehalte gegen Nullmorpheme teilt, kann zu einer simplen Alternativlösung greifen: wo es keinen Inhalt gibt, ist kein Ausdruck zu erwarten. Wenn man also glaubhaft machen kann, daß an den betreffenden Stellen im Paradigma (8) kein Inhalt ‘nominativ’ oder ‘singular’ vorliegt, erübrigt sich die damit verbundene Null (s. 4.2.3, 4.3). Darstellungen wie (9) sind dennoch bei nicht allzu umfangreichen Paradigmen zur Veranschaulichung geeignet, sofern man die Nullen nicht als sprachliche Elemente, sondern als Platzhalter für eine potentiell mit einem Affix zu füllende Position begreift (s. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 69f.; vgl. Art. 54); Nominativ und Singular dienen dann nicht zur Angabe von Inhalten, sondern nur als bequeme Etiketten für bestimmte Formen (vgl. Olmsted 1951: 165). Diese Sichtweise läßt sich dadurch unterstreichen, daß man statt π eine andere Notation wählt, z. B. eine öffnende und eine schließende Kammer (vgl. Borgstrøm 31963: 52): (11) Nominativ Genitiv …

Singular kaz-( )-( ) kaz-( )-nyn

Plural kaz-lar-( ) kaz-lar-nyn

440 4.2. Leitlinien Ein verbreitetes Unbehagen gegenüber Nullzeichen hat zu einer Reihe von ⫺ sich teilweise ergänzenden ⫺ Empfehlungen geführt, wie man sie unter Kontrolle halten könnte. Einige gelten speziell für Nullmorpheme (s. 4.2.3), andere ebenso für Nullallomorphe. Jede der vorgeschlagenen Spielregeln ist einleuchtend, schließt aber hin und wieder Analysen aus, die intuitiv plausibel und angemessen sind. Man kann versuchen, die Kriterien demgemäß zu verfeinern, doch wird man sie letztlich “cum grano salis” nehmen müssen (s. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 50), unter Hinzuziehung von Metaprinzipien wie z. B. dem, jeweils das häufigere oder produktivere Flexionsmuster zu verallgemeinern (vgl. Saporta 1964 sowie Art. 62, Abschnitt 5.4 zu Stamm- und Grundformflexion). 4.2.1. Fehlen offener Unterschiede In einem Modell, das als Ausdrücke sprachlicher Zeichen lediglich Folgen von Phonemen (oder Graphemen) und Null zuläßt, kann man engl. /sæn/ sang nur dann in zwei Minimalzeichen zerlegen, wenn man ein Nullallomorph des Präteritum-Morphems ansetzt sowie /sæn/ und /sin/ als Allomorphe von {sing} auffaßt (s. Bloch 1947: 403⫺405 [1957: 245f.]; vgl. Bloomfield 1933: 216). Der Inhalt ‘pr‰teritum’ wird damit einer nicht greifbaren Null zugewiesen, während der reale Ausdrucksunterschied, /æ/ gegenüber /i/, als bedeutungslose Variation gilt. Im Englischen läßt sich das auf die elegante Formel bringen, man behandle “overt distinctions as meaningless and covert distinctions as meaningful” ⫺ anscheinend ein krasser Widerspruch (Nida 1948: 256 [1957: 415]; vgl. Haas 1957: 39 zu “ ‘quid pro quo’ zero”). Man wird deshalb lieber ⫺ unter Revision des Modells ⫺ Substitutionen wie /i J æ/ als Ausdrücke anerkennen (s. Harris 1942: 172f. [1957: 110]; Hockett 1947: 339f. [1957: 239f.]; vgl. Art. 53 und 58). Es gilt jedoch, die Daten im größeren Kontext zu betrachten. So besteht bei tschech. slovo / slov in (6) eine lautliche Differenz zwischen dem Genitiv Plural /slof/ und dem Stamm der anderen Formen, /slov/. Die Substitution /v J f/ zum Ausdruck von ‘genitiv plural’ zu erklären, ist aber nicht überzeugend, wenn man berücksichtigt, (a) daß im Auslaut Obstruenten immer stimmlos sind, (b) daß in anderen Fällen keine analoge Alternative zur Null existiert (z. B. bei zˇena / zˇen) und


(c) daß ansonsten Substitutionen in der Nominalflexion nur in Verbindung mit Affixen vorkommen. Man kann deshalb vereinbaren, daß ein offener Ausdrucksunterschied jedenfalls dann der Annahme eines Nullzeichens nicht entgegenstehen soll, wenn er eine für die betreffende Sprache typische automatische Begleiterscheinung ist (s. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 50). Es mag sogar genügen, wenn er in der überwiegenden Mehrzahl der Fälle auf komplementärer Verteilung beruht (s. Pickett 1953: 295f.). Manchmal sind die Verhältnisse aber schwer einzuschätzen, wie bei den Pluralformen deutscher Maskulina (vgl. Mugdan 1977: 79f., 108f.): (12)

Suffix -e ohne Umlaut Tag-e mit Umlaut Schläg-e

kein Suffix Schlager Schwäger

Im Gesamtzusammenhang muß eine Null in Schwäger nicht absurd sein, obwohl der Plural nur am Umlaut zu identifizieren ist. Erstens wird oft dafür plädiert, bei Paaren wie Schlag / Schläge, wo dem Inhaltsunterschied zwei Unterschiede im Ausdruck entsprechen, nur einen davon als Bedeutungsträger zu wählen (vgl. Art. 46 und 53). Dabei haben Affixe normalerweise Vorrang vor Substitutionen. Indizien für einen sekundären Status des Umlauts im Plural sind ferner, daß er ⫺ bei Stämmen mit vorderem Vokal nicht auftreten kann (Bsp. Wege) und ⫺ beim Suffix -er stets auftritt, sofern möglich (Bsp. Ränder). Zweitens läßt sich ein Suffix π beim Typ Schlager damit gut begründen, daß sich π zu -e genauso verhält wie -n zu -en, mit der gleichen Abhängigkeit von unbetontem e /e/ in der Silbe davor (s. 2.2). Wenn man bei Schwäger dasselbe Pluralsuffix π vorsieht und den Umlaut als Nebeneffekt deutet, wahrt man die Kompatibilität mit diesen Analysen von Schläge und Schlager. Eine so aufgebaute Verteidigung der Null steht und fällt natürlich mit der Vergleichsbasis. Kaum haltbar ist sie etwa in jenen Varietäten des Deutschen, in denen der Schwund von -e dazu geführt hat, daß der Umlaut außer in Verbindung mit -er nur noch allein als Pluralmarker erscheint und daß die Identität von Singular und Plural nicht mehr auf eine phonologisch definierte Gruppe von Substantiven beschränkt bleibt.

441


4.2.2. Erkennbarkeit Wenn man schon Elemente postuliert, die man nicht wahrnehmen kann, so sollen sie nach Auffassung vieler Autoren wenigstens erschließbar sein. Im Rahmen eines Flexionsparadigmas bedeutet das, daß eine Form mit Nullzeichen nicht doppeldeutig sein darf. Das ist, wie Saussure hervorhebt, z. B. bei tschech. zˇen in (6) gegeben ⫺ doch auch Nullmorpheme wie im karaimischen Beispiel (8)⫺(9) genügen diesem Kriterium. Ausgeschlossen ist hingegen, daß ein Lexem zwei oder mehr Formen mit Nullzeichen ver(13)

Nominativ (a) dom-π okn-o dom-y (b) wilk-π syn-π syn-owie

Genitiv dom-u okn-a dom-o´w wilk-a syn-a syn-o´w

Doppeldeutigkeiten entstehen ferner, wenn in einem Paradigma das Vorhandensein einer Null mit ihrem Fehlen kontrastiert (vgl. Haas 1957: 41). Das ergibt sich z. B. im Deutschen, wenn man Nullmorpheme {singular} und {nominativ} ablehnt, aber Nullallomorphe von {plural} und {dativ} zuläßt: (14) (a) (b) (c) (d)

Nominativ Singular Tag Geist Bauer Park Arbeiter Wagen

Nominativ Plural Tag-e Geist-er Bauer-n Park-s Arbeiter-π Wagen-π

Dativ Plural Tag-e-n Geist-er-n Bauer-n-π Park-s-π Arbeiter-π-n Wagen-π-π

Obwohl in (14 d) sogar die gleiche Wortform auf dreierlei Weise interpretiert wird, ist zu bedenken, daß das Auftreten der Nullallomorphe phonologisch bedingt ist (s. 4.2.1; im Dativ Plural kommt -n nach auslautendem -e, -er, -el vor und π sonst). Das mag ein Grund sein, doch einen Kontrast zwischen Null und nichts zu erlauben (vgl. Kastovsky 1980: 230), aber wie in anderen Einzelfällen ist ungewiß, ob die ad hoc eingebrachten Argumente Anlaß zu einer allgemeineren Ausnahmeregelung geben sollten. Die Forderung nach Erkennbarkeit läßt sich auch auf die syntagmatische Achse beziehen: “A zero-element must be identifiable in its own environment” (Haas 1957: 39). Das gestattet im Englischen z. B. beim Partizip cut ein Nullallomorph (weil die homonymen Präsens- und Präteritumformen nicht in dersel-

schiedenen Inhalts hat. So dürfte man z. B. bei poln. wilk in (5) eine Null im Nominativ Singular annehmen, nicht aber bei dom ‘Haus’, weil der Akkusativ genauso lautet. Dieser Synkretismus tritt allerdings im Singular systematisch bei unbelebten Maskulina und bei Neutra auf, während der Akkusativ belebter Maskulina mit dem Genitiv identisch ist; im Plural verteilen sich diese beiden Muster nach dem Merkmal [⫾ menschlich]. Unter diesen Umständen mag man eher geneigt sein, die Ambiguität einer Null bei dom zu tolerieren: Akkusativ dom-π okn-o dom-y wilk-a syn-a syn-o´w

‘Haus’ ‘Fenster’ ‘Häuser’ ‘Wolf ‘Sohn’ ‘Söhne’

ben Umgebung vorkommen, z. B. I’ve cut it), nicht dagegen beim Präteritum cut (weil I cut it ebensogut Präsens sein könnte; s. Harris 1951: 213⫺215). Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt dürfte gegen die Analyse der polnischen Substantive in (13) nichts einzuwenden sein, und Ambiguitäten wie die in (14) lösen sich im Satzzusammenhang meist durch Kongruenz und Rektion auf (z. B. der kleine Wagen, die Wagen fahren, mit Wagen). Da dann die Kasus/Numerusoppositionen neutralisiert sind, ist kritisiert worden, daß eine so erkennbare Null nicht distinktiv und folglich wertlos sei, eine potentiell distinktive ⫺ wie in engl. the sheep / sheep-π grazed (Singular / Plural) ⫺ wiederum nicht erkennbar (s. Haas 1957: 40 zu “ ‘stopgap’ zero”). Erwägungen dieser Art stehen jedoch für gewöhnlich hinter dem Wunsch zurück, mehr Symmetrie im Paradigma zu erzielen. 4.2.3. Zulässigkeit von Nullmorphemen Während Nullallomorphe in der Regel selbst von Skeptikern unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen akzeptiert werden, ist eine kategorische Ablehnung von Nullmorphemen weit verbreitet: “One of the alternants of a given morpheme may be zero; but no morpheme has zero as its only alternant” (Bloch 1947: 402 [1957: 245]; vgl. Hockett 1947: 340 [1957: 240]; Nida 1948: 427 [1957: 263]; Haas 1957: 49; Levin 1986: 243). So herrscht ein breiter Konsens, daß z. B. im Englischen, im Deutschen oder in Turksprachen (s. (8)) Substantive keinerlei Singularsuffix haben. Rela-

442


tiv groß ist im Vergleich dazu die Bereitschaft, für die 3. Person (Singular) eines Verbparadigmas ein Nullmorphem zuzulassen, wie schon das polnische Beispiel (4) belegt; ähnliche Muster zeigen z. B. die Subjektmarker in mongolischen Sprachen und der NahuatlGruppe (s. Poppe 1960: 56f.; Campbell 1985: 54): (15) 1. Singular 2. Singular 3. Singular 1. Plural 2. Plural 3. Plural

Burjätisch /-b/ /-s/ /-π/ /-bdi/ /-t/ /-d/

Pipil /ni-/ /ti-/ /π-/ /ni- …-t/ /ti- …-t/ /π- …-t/

Was aber eigentlich in derlei Fällen Nullmorpheme vernünftiger macht als im Singular englischer Substantive, wird selten klar genug ausgesprochen (vgl. z. B. Nida 21949: 46 zum Totonac; Sanders 1988: 163 zum Dakota; Vincent 1994: 5081 zum Bretonischen). Wahrscheinlich sind mehrere Faktoren im Spiel. Erstens hat die Kategorie Person (oder Person/Numerus) mindestens drei Ausprägungen, so daß dem Nullmorphem zwei oder mehr andere Morpheme im Paradigma gegenüberstehen; bei Numerus im Englischen usw. wäre es nur eines. Diese Zahlenverhältnisse sind tatsächlich als Maßstab empfohlen worden (s. Elson & Pickett 1983: 46). Ob es wirklich auf sie ankommt, ist aber zu bezweifeln, denn in Paradigmen wie dem karaimischen (8) oder dem deutschen (14) ist ein Nullmorphem {nominativ} keineswegs naheliegender als {singular}. Diese Beobachtung läßt vermuten, daß zum zweiten syntaktische Gegebenheiten relevant sind. Weil bei Substantiven der Nominativ Singular als Zitierform dient (vgl. Art. 62), kann man sich wohl leichter vorstellen, daß in dieser Form einfach fehlt, was in den anderen hinzukommt. Die Kennzeichen für Person (und/oder Numerus und/oder Genus) am Verb erscheinen demgegenüber gleichrangig, wenn sie durch Kongruenz mit dem Subjekt bedingt sind. In manchen Sprachen können solche Personenmarker allerdings den Charakter von gebundenen (etwas unglücklich auch inkorporiert genannten) Pronomina haben, die selbst als Subjekt fungieren. Verbformen der 3. Person (Singular) mit einer mutmaßlichen Null verhalten sich dabei entweder auch so, als enthielten sie ein Pronomen, oder aber sie erfordern ein externes Subjekt ⫺ und dann bedarf es keines Nullmorphems (s. Mithun 1988). Oft ist aber

schwer zu entscheiden, welcher Analyse der Vorzug gegeben werden soll (vgl. Stump 1984 zum Bretonischen). Ferner braucht die Kategorie der Person in verschiedenen Funktionen nicht den gleichen Status zu haben. So zeigen Objektmarker in der Tendenz stärker die Eigenschaften gebundener Pronomina. Geht man nicht davon aus, daß es sich um Kongruenz handelt, ist es z. B. im Georgischen nicht nötig, analog zu mxatøavs ‘er malt mich’ und gxatøavs ‘er malt dich’ (mit den Objektpräfixen m- bzw. g-) in xatøavs ‘er malt ihn/sie/es’ ein Kennzeichen “Null” für das Objekt in der 3. Person zu postulieren (vgl. Tschenke´li 1958: 355; Anderson 1992: 143), zumal diese Form auch nur ‘er malt’ bedeuten kann (s. (10)). Bei Possessivmarkern am Substantiv findet man ebenfalls nicht selten eine Ungleichheit zwischen 1./2. und 3. Person (s. Mel’cˇuk 1968), die gegen ein Nullmorphem bei letzterer spricht. Ein dritter und besonders wichtiger Gesichtspunkt ist die Bedeutung der einzelnen Ausprägungen innerhalb der morphosyntaktischen Kategorie. Signalisiert z. B. der Singular das Gegenteil des Plurals oder macht er lediglich keine Angabe zum Numerus? Ist also die Opposition äquipollent oder privativ (vgl. Trubetzkoy 1939: 67)? Im zweiten Fall hätte er sozusagen eine “Nullbedeutung” (s. Jakobson 1939: 145 [1971: 213]; 1940: 13 [1971: 221]) ⫺ und dazu würde das Fehlen jeglichen Ausdrucks bestens passen (s. 4.3; vgl. Art. 29 und 63). Besonders einsichtig ist diese These bei Sprachen, in denen Singularformen u. a. in Verbindung mit Zahlwörtern verwendet werden; im Deutschen oder Englischen ist die Neutralität des Singulars weniger deutlich und wird daher nicht allgemein anerkannt (s. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 49; vgl. Plungjan 1997: 208⫺210 mit der These, Oppositionen in der Flexion seien im Gegensatz zur Derivation stets äquipollent). Im Bereich von Tempus und Aspekt wird man von Fall zu Fall zwischen formal nicht gekennzeichneten Formen mit neutraler und solchen mit spezifischer Bedeutung trennen müssen, je nachdem ob sie mit den semantischen Merkmalen kontrastierender Formen kompatibel sind oder nicht (s. Bybee 1994: 238f. mit den etwas verwirrenden Termini open meaning bzw. zero meaning). In einigen anderen morphosyntaktischen Kategorien mag eine der Ausprägungen überwiegend semantisch neutral sein, während das z. B. von der 3. Person nicht so leicht zu behaupten ist.


Was auch immer die Intuitionen über die Akzeptabilität von Nullmorphemen beeinflußt, wären präzisere Grundsätze wünschenswert, falls man einen gangbaren Mittelweg zwischen völligem Verbot und unbegrenzter Willkür sucht. Das ⫺ gerade mit Blick auf die zur Debatte stehenden Verbparadigmen aufgestellte ⫺ Overt Analogue Criterion ist da noch zu vage; es verlangt, in einer Menge sprachlicher Elemente könne es eine Null (nur) geben, wenn die Menge auch weitere Elemente enthält (darunter mindestens ein von Null verschiedenes) und wenn die Null zu den anderen Elementen in der gleichen Beziehung steht wie diese zueinander (s. Sanders 1988: 164f.). Das setzt, wörtlich genommen, neben der Null mindestens zwei Elemente voraus ⫺ bei Nullallomorphen, die ebenfalls unter das Kriterium fallen sollen, wird das aber offensichtlich gemäß allgemeiner Praxis nicht erwartet. Klärungsbedürftig ist außerdem, welche Beziehungen zwischen den Elementen gleichartig sein sollen und worin die Gleichartigkeit bestehen muß. Um Nullmorpheme wie {nominativ} im Deutschen usw. auszuschließen, genügt es jedenfalls nicht, daß sich in Paradigmen vom Typ (15) die Null und die regulären Zeichen in Ausdruck und Inhalt genauso voneinander unterscheiden wie die Suffixe in lat. amo¯, amas, amat (s. Sanders 1988: 164) ⫺ und das wäre im übrigen ja erst einmal nachzuweisen. 4.3. Universalien und Ursachen Wenn Sprachen sich zum Ausdruck von Bedeutungen mit einem Gegensatz zwischen “etwas” und “nichts” begnügen können (s. (6)), so stellt sich die Frage, ob es völlig beliebig ist, an welcher Stelle in Flexions- oder auch Derivationsparadigmen “nichts” erscheint. In seinem auf 30 Sprachen beruhenden Katalog von Universalien kommt Joseph Greenberg zu dem Ergebnis, daß Nullelemente ganz im Gegenteil höchst systematisch verteilt seien: (16) “Universal 35. There is no language in which the plural does not have some nonzero allomorphs, whereas there are languages in which the singular is expressed only by zero. […] Universal 38. Where there is a case system, the only case which ever has only zero allomorphs is the one which includes among its meanings that of the subject of the intransitive verb.” (Greenberg 1963: 74f. [21966: 94f.; 1990: 58f.])

Zu den Kategorien des Verbs sind Daten aus einer Stichprobe von 50 Sprachen verfügbar;

443 unter anderem wurde Null als Ausdruck beobachtet: ⫺ bei Kongruenz in der Person mit dem Subjekt (die in 28 der Sprachen erfolgt) in 15 Sprachen in der 3. Person, in 4 in der 1. Person und nur im Georgischen in der 2. Person (s. (10)); ⫺ im Präsens in 12 von 19 Sprachen, im Präteritum oder Perfekt (“anterior”) in 3, im Futur in keiner; ⫺ im Indikativ in 15 und im Imperativ in 8 von 25 Sprachen (s. Bybee 1985: 52⫺54). Diese Ergebnisse hängen nicht nur von der Auswahl der Sprachen ab (die prinzipiell nicht statistisch repräsentativ sein kann), sondern auch von zugrundegelegten Zählweisen, morphologischen Analysen, semantischen Interpretationen und Definitionen von “Null”. Es muß daher kein Widerspruch sein, wenn z. B. eine jüngere Studie aufgrund einer anders konstituierten Stichprobe von 76 Sprachen berichtet, nur 11 von 136 grammatischen Morphemen mit imperativischer Bedeutung seien Null und man habe überhaupt keine Sprachen mit Nullmarkierung im einfachen Präteritum gefunden (s. Bybee & Perkins & Pagliuca 1994: 92, 153, 210; vgl. Bybee 1994: 243). Etwas Vorsicht, insbesondere gegenüber absoluten Aussagen, ist aber angebracht. So gilt Universale 38 in (16) nicht ausnahmslos (vgl. Dixon 1979: 77f.), und das Itelmenische bietet ein Gegenbeispiel für das Präteritum: es bleibt gegenüber Präsens und Futur ohne Kennzeichen, ebenso wie der resultative Aspekt gegenüber dem durativen, wobei alle sechs Kombinationen von Tempus und Aspekt möglich sind (s. Volodin 1976: 240f.). Einzelne Vorbehalte ändern jedoch nichts an dem Befund, daß manche grammatischen Bedeutungen weit häufiger durch “nichts” signalisiert werden als andere ⫺ und das verlangt nach Erklärungen. Mehrere Ansätze weisen in eine ähnliche Richtung: (a) Ausgehend von der Theorie der Markiertheit ist im Rahmen von Überlegungen zur morphologischen “Natürlichkeit” das semiotische Prinzip des konstruktionellen Ikonismus aufgestellt worden, wonach die Komplexität des Ausdrucks der Komplexität des Inhalts entsprechen sollte (s. Mayerthaler 1981: 11⫺25; vgl. Art. 29⫺31). Insbesondere wäre demnach das Fehlen eines Ausdrucks bei einer “Nullbedeutung” ideal (s. 4.2). (b) Unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Ökonomie ist es vorteilhaft, auf redundante Kennzeichnungen zu verzichten, was z. B. Univer-

444 sale 38 in (16) betrifft: wenn ein Kasussystem im transitiven Satz zwischen Agens und Patiens unterscheiden hilft, so kann eines der beiden Argumente des Verbs ohne formale Markierung bleiben (Agens im Nominativ oder Patiens im Absolutiv) ⫺ und der einzige Mitspieler im intransitiven Satz ebenso (s. Dixon 1979: 69). (c) Diachron kann ein Paradigma mit einem Gegensatz zwischen “etwas” und “nichts” dadurch aufkommen, daß eine spezifische grammatische Bedeutung zunächst nur bei Bedarf explizit signalisiert wird, aber im Laufe der Zeit obligatorisch ausgedrückt werden muß, wann immer sie gemeint ist (vgl. auch Art. 145). Das Fehlen der entsprechenden Kennzeichnung bekommt dadurch selbst eine bestimmte Bedeutung: diejenige, die in dem betreffenden semantischen Bereich als default gilt, d. h. sofern nichts anderes angegeben ist (s. Bybee 1994). Welche Bedeutung als unmarkiert, neutral, default usw. gelten soll, ist nicht immer leicht zu bestimmen. So sprechen die möglichen Verwendungen von Verbformen der zweiten Person Singular zumindest im Russischen dafür, sie als semantisch unmarkiert anzusehen (s. Jakobson 1932: 78f. [1971: 9]); vgl. Art. 63). Wenn man aber davon ausgeht, daß semantisch weniger markierte Bedeutungen den prototypischen Eigenschaften des Sprechers (einschließlich Gegebenheiten seiner Wahrnehmung) entsprechen, so müßte es die erste Person sein; daß de facto jedoch die dritte Person am häufigsten formal unmarkiert bleibt, kann man mit Prinzipien aus der Pragmatik vorhersagen (s. Mayerthaler 1981: 11⫺13, 29⫺34). Im Nachhinein lassen sich freilich oft unschwer Argumente finden, warum eine Bedeutung, die nicht explizit ausgedrückt wird, auch semantisch in gewisser Weise unmarkiert ist ⫺ sogar in einem Fall wie dem Genitiv Plural in slavischen Sprachen (s. Levin 1986: 240f.; vgl. (6)). Hier, wie auch z. B. bei der zweiten Person Singular im Georgischen (s. (10)) oder der ersten Person Singular Präsens in manchen germanischen und romanischen Sprachen (u. a. Westfriesisch und Engadinisch sowie in bestimmten Verbklassen Isländisch und Rumänisch), weiß man jedoch, daß durch phonologischen Schwund ein in früheren Sprachstadien vorhandenes Affix verlorengegangen ist. Vor allem allomorphische Nullen sind häufig so entstanden. Da Lautwandel seinen eigenen Regularitäten folgt und Nebeneffekte haben kann, die der optimalen Struktur des mor-


phologischen Systems zuwiderlaufen, können dadurch an ungewöhnlicher Stelle im Paradigma Markierungen fehlen. Anscheinend geschieht das aber nicht allzu oft, und so bliebe zu untersuchen, welche Faktoren das Entstehen solcher Verhältnisse begünstigen und inwieweit es vermieden oder nachträglich korrigiert wird.

5.

Nullableitung

Im Bereich der Wortbildung gilt der Nullableitung besonderes Interesse. Sie wird typischerweise zwischen Lexemen angenommen, die verschiedenen Wortarten angehören, aber denselben Stamm haben, z. B. das Adjektiv grün, das Verb grünen und das Substantiv Grün. (In grünen ist das Flexionssuffix -en abzuziehen; zur Diskussion darüber, ob es derivierende Funktion habe, vgl. Pennanen 1971: 22⫺24; Olsen 1990: 189f.) Innerhalb einer Wortart kann es keine Nullableitungen geben, die vergleichbare semantische Modifikationen bewirken wie etwa -lich in grünlich, aber doch solche, die den Übergang in eine andere Flexionsklasse mit sich bringen (vgl. Mel’cˇuk 1973: 25⫺28 [1976: 307⫺314]; 1982: 102⫺104). Ein Beispiel ist die Movierung, d. h. die Ableitung von Bezeichnungen weiblicher Lebewesen aus solchen männlicher (oder umgekehrt), bei Mustern wie ital. ragazzo ‘Junge’ J ragazza ‘Mädchen’, wo (wie die Plurale ragazzi bzw. ragazze zeigen) -o und -a Flexionssuffixe sind. Im Bereich des Verbs könnte man z. B. hängen nennen, das intransitiv stark und transitiv schwach flektiert (hing gegenüber hängte), analog zu Paaren wie sitzen J setzen, liegen J legen usw. mit expliziter Derivation. Schließlich wird manchmal Nullableitung bei einem Kompositum AB angenommen, für das “AB ist (eine Art von) B” mit A als determinierendem und B als determiniertem Element (z. B. Gewächshaus ‘Haus für Gewächse’) nicht gilt, das also exozentrisch und nicht endozentrisch ist: “A pickpocket is neither a pick nor a pocket, a hunchback is neither a hunch nor a back” (Marchand 1960: 11). Wenn man diese Einordnung vermeiden will, so kann man in Fällen wie bootblack eine Ableitung vom Adjektiv black zu einem (sonst nicht vorkommenden) Substantiv black voraussetzen, so daß das Kompositum endozentrisch wird (s. Bloomfield 1933: 236), und pickpocket kann man vom Kompositum zur Ableitung umdeuten, mit einem nominalisierenden Null-

445


suffix, das ‘someone who’ in der Paraphase ‘someone who picks pockets’ entspricht (s. Marchand 21969: 15). In all diesen Fällen wird ein Derivationsprozeß mit einer bestimmten Richtung vorausgesetzt, z. B. von grün zu grünen oder genauer vom Lexem gr¸nA zum Lexem gr¸nV ⫺ eine durchaus umstrittene Prämisse (vgl. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 155⫺165; Art. 84). Autoren, die sich ihr anschließen, sprechen in solchen Fällen oft unterschiedslos von Nullableitung (engl. zero derivation) oder von Konversion (und ⫺ z. T. in etwas anderer Bedeutung ⫺ Transposition). Hinter diesen Termini stehen jedoch verschiedene theoretische Konzepte: Konversion verändert lediglich die (syntaktischen) Eigenschaften eines Zeichens, wogegen Nullableitung ihm ein weiteres Zeichen mit einem bestimmten Inhalt (aber ohne Ausdruck) anfügt. Konversion und Nullzeichen können auch innerhalb eines morphologischen Modells koexistieren, wobei manche Autoren letztere auf die Flexion beschränken (vgl. Plungjan 1997: 206; Art. 53, Abschnitt 4). Andere dagegen unterscheiden in der einen oder anderen Weise zwischen Nullableitung und Konversion als zwei nebeneinander bestehenden Verfahren der Wortbildung (s. 5.2). Für die Entscheidung zwischen den verschiedenen Lösungen ist von wesentlicher Bedeutung, welche Eigenschaften Nullzeichen in der Derivation haben sollten (s. 5.1).

5.1. Zum Inhalt derivativer Nullelemente Wenn man das Verb grünen mittels eines Nullsuffixes aus dem Adjektiv grün herleiten will, so muß die Null zumindest genauso wie andere Derivationsuffixe eine bestimmte Wortart festlegen, in diesem Fall Verb. Das Lexikon enthält demnach für jede Zielwortart ein anderes Nullelement. Die Struktur von grünen läßt sich dann mit Klammern als [[grün]A πV]V angeben oder in einem äquivalenten Baumdiagramm als: (17) V A 兩 grün

Wenn solche Nullen als Kopf (engl. head) des Wortes fungieren und ihre Eigenschaften im Baum nach oben weitergeben (sog. percolation; vgl. Lieber 1981: 166⫺170), müssen sie aber auch für weitere Merkmale spezifiziert sein. Anstelle eines einzigen Suffixes πN wäre im Deutschen für jedes Genus und jede Flexionsklasse ein anderes nötig. Das für Treff (aus treffen) müßte etwa die Merkmale [Maskulinum] und [s-Plural] haben, das für Grab (aus graben) dagegen [Neutrum] und [er-Plural] (vgl. Lieber 1981: 175). Außerdem gibt es noch die (ebenfalls umstrittene) Auffassung, daß jedes Derivationssuffix nur an Basen einer bestimmten Wortart antritt (sog. Unitary Base Hypothesis; vgl. Art. 84). Sie impliziert, daß jeder Wortartrelation eine andere Null entspricht, z. B.

(18) πN⫺V (Substantiv J Verb) πA⫺V (Adjektiv J Verb) πA⫺N (Adjektiv J Substantiv) πV⫺N (Verb J Substantiv) In der Literatur gibt es verschiedene Vorschläge, welche Wortarten (z. B. auch Präpositionen und Adverbien) und welche Relationen zwischen ihnen vorzusehen sind (vgl. Pennanen 1971: 41⫺45). Aber selbst wenn man sich auf sehr wenige produktive Typen beschränkt (vgl. Olsen 1986: 121f.), erhöht sich die Zahl der derivativen Nullsuffixe auf diese Weise weiter. Zudem mögen mehrere Nullableitungen nacheinander nötig sein, um z. B. vom Adjektiv clean über das Verb cleanπA⫺V zum Substantiv clean-πA⫺V-πV⫺N (wie in the windows need a clean) zu gelangen. Vor allem bei ad-hoc-Bildungen vom Typ He wristed the ball over the net (s. Clark [E. V.] & Clark [H. H.] 1979: 767) kann man argumentieren, daß die Nullableitung nicht

Vaf 兩 π

Schule J schulen locker J lockern grün J Grün treffen J Treff

mehr als eine Umkategorisierung von Substantiv zu Verb bewirkt und daß deshalb die Bedeutung so derivierter Verben nicht genauer festgelegt ist als “an activity which has some connection with the noun” (Aronoff 1980: 747). Üblicherweise wird aber angenommen, daß die Nullableitung auch semantische Merkmale einführt, z. B. “action noun” gegenüber “agent noun” (vgl. Bloomfield 1933: 236 zu keep in upkeep bzw. black in bootblack). Insbesondere wird oft Synonymie mit einem expliziten Derivationssuffix postuliert. Beispielsweise soll bei den Verben clean, dirty, tidy ein Nullsuffix die gleiche Bedeutung ‘make A’ haben wie -ize in legalize, nationalize, sterilize (s. Marchand 21969: 359). Daraus muß man wohl folgern, daß es

446


ein Nullelement für jede in Frage kommende Derivationsbedeutung gibt ⫺ und deren Zahl ist in der einschlägigen Literatur beträchtlich (vgl. u. a. Marchand 1960: 293⫺308; 1963; 1964; 21969: 359⫺389; Preuss 1962; Irmer 1972; Rathay 1980; Karius 1985). Ferner ist demnach π in clean-π ein Allomorph desselben Morphems wie -ize. Nun ist es schon schwer zu entscheiden, ob z. B. bei -er in Gerätebezeichnungen wie Bohrer und in Personenbezeichnungen wie Fahrer ein oder zwei Morpheme vorliegen und ob z. B. -ess in stewardess und -ette in usherette verschiedene Movierungssuffixe sind oder Allomorphe eines einzigen (vgl. Art. 81). Noch komplizierter wird die Bestimmung von Morphemen, wenn Nullelemente hinzukommen. So sind wohl die denominalen Verben mit π und -ize in (19 a) und (19 b) synonym, in (19 c) und (19 d) aber nicht; überdies ist für die Nullableitung auch keine andere explizite Parallele zu finden, wie es das Overt Analogue Criterion fordert (s. Sanders 1988: 170f.; vgl. 4.2.3): (19) (a) (b) (c) (d)

I sectioned the article I sectionized the article She charactered the novel very well She characterized the novel very well

Weitere Synonymiereihen können für die Präfigierung aufgestellt werden. Zum Beispiel findet sich neben dünn J verdünnen ‘dünn machen’ auch trüb J trüben ‘trüb machen’, wo demzufolge ein Nullpräfix anzusetzen wäre. Dagegen ergäbe sich aus dem Vergleich mit neutral J neutralisieren ‘neutral machen’ ein Nullsuffix. Wenn man beide Parallelen zugleich berücksichtigt, enthält trüben sogar ein Präfix π und ein Suffix π, die dieselbe Funktion ausüben (vgl. Olsen 1986: 118f.). Insgesamt erweisen sich die Versuche, durch die Gegenüberstellung mit expliziter Derivation wortbildende Nullelemente in ihrem Inhalt näher zu bestimmen, als recht problematisch. 5.2. Nullableitung vs. Konversion Die Auffassung, daß Termini wie Nullableitung u. ä. für Beziehungen vom Typ grün J grünen geeigneter seien als die ältere Benennung Konversion (vgl. schon Jespersen 1942: 85), wurde in der Wortbildungsforschung seit den 60er Jahren damit begründet, daß nicht ein bloßer Wechsel der Funktion, sondern eine Modifizierung der Bedeutung stattfinde; es entstehe ein neues Wort mit einem Determinatum, dem in vergleichbaren Fällen ein explizites Affix entspreche (s. z. B.

Marchand 1960: 293f.; 21969: 359⫺361; Dokulil 1968; Kastovsky 1969: 8; vgl. auch Lipka 1990: 85f.). Von dieser Derivation wurden Phänomene abgegrenzt, die man als rein syntaktisch einstufte und eher Konversion nennen mochte, u. a. die Verwendung eines Adjektivs in substantivischer Funktion (z. B. die Armen) oder umgekehrt (z. B. government in government job). Es gab aber auch Skepsis gegenüber dem Konzept der Nullableitung, weil es sich bei stärker flektierenden Sprachen nicht bewähre (s. Dokulil 1968: 62⫺64) oder allgemein unbefriedigend sei (s. Pennanen 1971: 55⫺61). Allzu wichtig war die Frage der Bezeichnung aber nicht (vgl. Preuss 1962: 97f.), solange es primär um die Typologie der Wortbildungsprozesse ging. Größere Bedeutung bekam sie mit der Entwicklung von Theorien der Wortstruktur im Kontext der generativen Grammatik. Die entscheidende Frage lautet, ob sich Nullaffixe tatsächlich so wie explizite Affixe verhalten. Für die Fälle mit Wortartwechsel ist sie mit der Begründung verneint worden, daß man eine Vielzahl von Nullen mit unterschiedlichen Merkmalen brauche (s. 5.1), die aber anders als gewöhnliche Homonyme in diesen Merkmalen partiell übereinstimmen; außerdem müsse bei jeder Basis im Lexikon vermerkt werden, mit welcher Null sie verknüpfbar ist (vgl. Lieber 1981: 172⫺180). Es könne aber prinzipiell Affixe mit dem Ausdruck Null geben, z. B. zur Ableitung adjektivierter Partizipien wie given in a recently given talk (vgl. Lieber 1981: 195⫺199). Wenn man darauf bestehen will, daß es eine gerichtete Derivation von grün zu grünen gibt, und wenn Regeln zur Änderung der Wortart den Fakten nicht gerecht werden (vgl. Olsen 1990: 200⫺202), kann man nur versuchen zu zeigen, daß die dann nötigen Nullelemente doch nicht so zahlreich sind und sich nicht wesentlich von anderen Affixen unterscheiden. Zu einer solchen Einschätzung können Modifikationen des morphologischen Modells ebenso beitragen wie die Auswahl und Interpretation der zu erklärenden Daten, z. B. der Ausschluß unproduktiver Muster (vgl. Don 1990; Olsen 1990: 205⫺213). Ein anderes Argument für Nullaffixe ist die Behauptung, daß sie weitere Derivationsprozesse ausschließen können. So soll -bar nur an primäre Verben antreten können und nicht an solche, die mit π aus Substantiven abgeleitet sind (s. Ogulnick 1983: 6⫺20): (20) (a) [[lieb]V bar]A (b) *[[[rauch]N π]V bar]A


Die Annahmen über die Grammatikalität der einzelnen Bildungen halten aber einer empirischen Überprüfung nicht stand (s. Meder & Mugdan 1990: 100⫺102).

6.

Leere Morphe

Ein minimales sprachliches Zeichen ohne Inhalt ist ein leeres Zeichen oder ⫺ etwas ungenau (vgl. Art. 46) ⫺ ein leeres Morph (engl. empty morph; vgl. Hockett 1947: 333 [1957: 236]). Zu den am häufigsten zitierten Beispielen zählen Fugenelemente, die Teile eines Kompositums verbinden, z. B. in Tag-eslicht, Tag-e-buch, Auge-n-braue, Herz-ens-lust (vgl. Grube 1976), sowie Themavokale in der Konjugation, z. B. in ital. mand-a-re ‘schikken’, vend-e-re ‘verkaufen’, dorm-i-re ‘schlafen’. Im Unterschied zu Nullzeichen wirft diese Analyse jedoch kaum theoretische Fragen auf. Sie ist eher ein Versuch, eine klare Entscheidung darüber zu vermeiden, wie segmentiert werden soll (vgl. Art. 43). Zwei Möglichkeiten stehen zur Wahl: (a) Das Nebeneinander verschiedener Fugenelemente und die Existenz vieler Komposita ohne sie, z. B. Tag-traum, Aug-apfel, Herz-chirurgie, sprechen dafür, diesen Elementen einen morphologischen Status zu geben. Das gleiche gilt für die italienischen Themavokale, die z. B. in der 1. Person Singular Präsens mand-o, vend-o, dorm-o nicht auftreten. Statt nun gar keinen Inhalt anzugeben, kann man einen etwas abstrakteren wie ‘fuge’ wählen und hat dann vollgültige Zeichen. (b) Wenn man zu große Bedenken gegen Inhalte wie ‘fuge’ hat, kann man die fraglichen Elemente als Bestandteile benachbarter Zeichen deuten, also Aufteilungen wie Tagebuch und manda-re (oder auch mand-are) vornehmen; sie implizieren, daß Tag und Tageoder mand- und manda- (oder -are und -ire) jeweils Allomorphe desselben Morphems sind.

7.

Zitierte Literatur

Allen, William Sidney (1955), “Zero and Pa¯nø ini”. Indian Linguistics 16, 106⫺113 Althaus, Hans Peter (1971), Die Cambridger Löwenfabel von 1382. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter (Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker N. F. 42 [166])

447 Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge usw.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 62) Aronoff, Mark (1980), “Contextuals”. Language 56, 744⫺758 Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan ⫽ Bodue˙n-de-Kurtene˙, Ivan A. (1902), “Zameˇtka ob izmeˇnjaemosti osnov sklonenija, v osobennosti zˇe ob ich sokrasˇcˇenii v pol’zu okoncˇanij”. Russkij Filologicˇeskij Veˇstnik 48, 234⫺248 [Nachdruck in: Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1963), Izbrannye trudy po obsˇcˇemu jazykoznaniju, Bd. II, red. V[iktor] P. Grigor’ev & A[leksej] A. Leont’ev. Moskva: Izd. Akademii Nauk SSSR, 19⫺29] Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1915), “Charakteristyka psychologiczna je˛zyka polskiego“. In: Jez˛yk polski i jego historya, cze˛sć´ I. Krako´w: Akademia Umieje˛tnosći (Encyklopedya Polska 2.3), 145⫺226 [Nachdruck in: Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan Niecisław (1983), Dzieła wybrane, Bd. V, red. Stanisław Skorupka. Warszawa: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 28⫺98] Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1979), Einführung in die Morphologie. Stuttgart usw.: Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbücher 296) Bloch, Bernard (1947), “English Verb Inflection”. Language 23, 399⫺418 [Nachdruck in: Joos (1957, Hrsg.), 243⫺254] Bloomfield, Leonard (1926), “A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language”. Language 2, 153⫺ 164 [Nachdruck in: Joos (1957, Hrsg.), 26⫺31; auch in: Hockett, Charles F. (1970, Hrsg.), A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Bloomington, London: Indiana Univ. Press, 128⫺138] Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt [britische Ausgabe 1935, London: Allen & Unwin] Böhtlingk, Otto (1887), Paˆnø ini’s Grammatik [Edition und Übersetzung]. Leipzig: Haessel Borgstrøm, Carl Hj. (31963), Innføring i sprogvidenskap. Oslo, Bergen: Universitetsforlaget; Lund: Gleerup [11958] Bußmann, Hadumod (21990), Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Kröner (Kröners Taschenbuchausgabe 452) [11983] Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9) Bybee, Joan L. (1994), “The Grammaticization of Zero: Asymmetries in Tense and Aspect Systems”. In: Pagliuca, William (Hrsg.), Perspectives on Grammaticalization. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 109), 235⫺254 Bybee, Joan & Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William (1994), The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago, London: Chicago Univ. Press

448 Campbell, Lyle (1985), The Pipil Language of El Salvador. Berlin usw.: Mouton (Mouton Grammar Library 1) Clark, Eve V. & Clark, Herbert H. (1979), “When Nouns Surface as Verbs”. Language 55, 767⫺811 Conrad, Rudi (1985), Lexikon sprachwissenschaftlicher Termini. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut Crystal, David (41997), A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell [11980, A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. London: Deutsch] Dixon, Robert M. W. (1979), “Ergativity”. Language 55, 59⫺138 Dokulil, Milosˇ (1968), “Zur Frage der sog. Nullableitung”. In: Brekle, Herbert E. & Lipka, Leonhard (Hrsg.), Wortbildung, Syntax und Morphologie. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Hans Marchand am 1. Oktober 1967. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 36), 55⫺64 Don, Jan (1990), “Tegen, ‘Against Any Directional Rule of Conversion’ ”. De nieuwe taalgids 83, 97⫺ 110 Duden-Grammatik (41984) ⫽ Duden: Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, hrsg. und bearb. von Günther Drosdowski. Mannheim usw.: Bibliographisches Institut (Duden 4) [11959] Elson, Benjamin & Pickett, Velma (1983), Beginning Morphology and Syntax. Dallas/TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics Frei, Henri (1950), “Ze´ro, vide et intermittent”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 4, 161⫺191 Fritz, Helmut (1982), “Das Nullmorphem”. Der Sprachdienst 26, 169⫺174 Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (Hrsg.), Universals of Language. Report of a Conference Held at Dobbs Ferry, New York, April 13⫺15, 1961. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 58⫺90 [21966, 73⫺113; Nachdruck in: Greenberg, Joseph H. (1990), On Language: Selected Writings, ed. by Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer. Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 40⫺70] Grube, Henner (1976), “Die Fugenelemente in neuhochdeutschen appellativischen Komposita”. Sprachwissenschaft 1, 187⫺222 Haas, William (1957), “Zero in Linguistic Description”. In: Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, 33⫺53 Harris, Zellig S. (1942), “Morpheme Alternants in Linguistic Analysis”. Language 18, 169⫺180 [Nachdruck in: Joos (1957, Hrsg.), 109⫺115] Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press [spätere Nachdrucke unter dem Titel Structural Linguistics] Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [Nachdruck in: Joos (1957, Hrsg.), 229⫺242]

VI. Einheiten der morphologischen Struktur Ifrah, Georges (1986), Universalgeschichte der Zahlen. Frankfurt, New York: Campus [orig. frz. 1981] Irmer, Roland (1972), Die mit Nullmorphem abgeleiteten deverbalen Substantive des heutigen Englisch. Tübingen: Eberhard-Karls-Universität Jakobson, Roman (1932), “Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums”. In: Charisteria Guilelmo Mathesio quinquagenario a discipulis et Circuli Linguistici Pragensis sodalibus oblata. Pragae: Prazˇsky´ Linguisticky´ Krouzˇek, 74⫺84 [Nachdruck in: Jakobson (1971), 3⫺15] Jakobson, Roman (1939), “Signe ze´ro”. In: Me´langes de linguistique offerts a` Charles Bally. Gene`ve: Georg, 143⫺152 [Nachdruck in: Jakobson (1971), 211⫺219] Jakobson, Roman (1940), “Das Nullzeichen”. Bulletin du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 5, 12⫺14 [als Teil von “Proce`s-verbaux des seánces pleńie`res: Seánce du 25 mai 1939”; Nachdruck in: Jakobson (1971), 220⫺222] Jakobson, Roman (1971), Selected Writings, Bd. II: Word and Language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton Jakobson, Roman & Lotz, John (1949), “Notes on the French Phonemic Pattern”. Word 5, 151⫺158 Janda, Richard D. & Manandise, Esme´ralda (1984), “Zero Really Is Nothing: Basque Evidence against ‘π-Morphemes’ (And Also against ‘Morphologically-Conditioned Phonological Rules’)”. In: Proceedings of the First Eastern States Conference on Linguistics [Columbus/OH 1984]. Columbus: Ohio State Univ., 222⫺237 Jespersen, Otto (1942). A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Part VI: Morphology. Copenhagen: Munksgaard Joos, Martin (1957, Hrsg.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966, Readings in Linguistics, Bd. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] Karius, Ilse (1985), Die Ableitung der denominalen Verben mit Nullsuffigierung im Englischen. Niemeyer: Tübingen Kastovsky, Dieter (1969), “Wortbildung und Nullmorphem”. Linguistische Berichte 2, 1⫺13 Kastovsky, Dieter (1980), “Zero in Morphology: A Means of Making Up for Phonological Losses?”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (Hrsg.), Historical Morphology. The Hague usw.: Mouton (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 17), 213⫺250 Katamba, Francis (1993), Morphology. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan Levin, Saul (1986 [1985]), “The Fiction of the Zero Morpheme and the Validity of the Zero Allomorph”. The LACUS Forum 12, 236⫺245 Lewandowski, Theodor (61994), Linguistisches Wörterbuch, Bd. 1⫺3. Wiesbaden: Quelle & Meyer

45. Nullelemente in der Morphologie (UTB 1518) [⫽ 51990; 11973⫺1975 (UTB 200/201/ 300)] Lieber, Rochelle (1981), “Morphological Conversion within a Restrictive Theory of the Lexicon”. In: Moortgat, Michael & Hulst, Harry van der & Hoekstra, Teun (Hrsg.), The Scope of Lexical Rules. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Linguistic Models 1), 161⫺288 Lipka, Leonhard (1990), An Outline of English Lexicology: Lexical Structure, Word Semantics, and Word-formation. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Forschung & Studium Anglistik 3) Marchand, Hans (1960), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Marchand, Hans (1963), “Die Ableitung desubstantivischer Verben mit Nullmorphem im Französischen und die entsprechenden Verhältnisse im Englischen und Deutschen”. Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 73, 164⫺179 Marchand, Hans (1964), “Die Ableitung desubstantivischer Verben mit Nullmorphem im Englischen, Französischen und Deutschen“. Die Neueren Sprachen 10, 105⫺118 [Nachdruck in: Marchand, Hans (1974), Studies in Syntax and Word-formation, ed. by Dieter Kastovsky. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 18), 252⫺275] Marchand, Hans (21969), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation. München: Beck Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge usw.: Cambridge Univ. Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge usw.: Cambridge Univ. Press Mayerthaler, Willi (1981), Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion (Linguistische Forschungen 28) Meder, Gregor & Mugdan, Joachim (1990), “Alle reden von Häufigkeit …: Anmerkungen zum Thema ‘Frequenz’ in der Morphologie”. In: Bassarak, A[rmin] & Bittner, D[agmar] & Bittner, A[ndreas] & Thiele, P[etra] (Hrsg.), Wurzel(n) der Natürlichkeit: Studien zur Morphologie und Phonologie IV. Berlin: Zentralinst. für Sprachwissenschaft (Linguistische Studien A 208), 87⫺108 Meier, Georg Friedrich (1961), Das Ze´ro-Problem in der Linguistik. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag (Schriften zur Phonetik, Sprachwiss. und Kommunikationsforschung 2) Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1968), “O pritjazˇatel’nych formach vengerskogo susˇcˇestvitel’nogo”. In: Sˇaumjan, S[ebastian] K. (Hrsg.), Problemy strukturnoj lingvistiki 1967. Moskva: Nauka, 326⫺343 [engl. Übers.: “Possessive Endings in Hungarian”. In: Mel’cˇuk (1976), 138⫺161] Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1973), “Konversija kak morfologicˇeskoe sredstvo”. Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR, Serija literatury i jazyka 32, 15⫺28 [dt.

449 Übers.: “Die Konversion als morphologisches Mittel”. In: Mel’cˇuk (1976), 288⫺318] Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1976), Das Wort: Zwischen Inhalt und Ausdruck. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 9) Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44) Mithun, Marianne (1988), “When Zero Isn’t There”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 12, 195⫺211 Mugdan, Joachim (1977), Flexionsmorphologie und Psycholinguistik. Tübingen: Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 82) Musaev, Kenesbaj M. (1964), Grammatika karaimskogo jazyka. Moskva: Nauka Nida, Eugene A. (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441 [Nachdruck in: Joos (1957, Hrsg.), 255⫺271] Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Ogulnick, Karen A. (1983), Allomorphy in Linguistic Theory. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club [orig. 1981, Ph. D. dissertation, Univ. of Connecticut] Olmsted, David L. (1951), “Covert (or Zero) Morphemes and Morphemic Juncture”. International Journal of American Linguistics 17, 163⫺166 Olsen, Susan (1986), Wortbildung im Deutschen. Stuttgart: Kröner (Kröners Studienbibliothek 660) Olsen, Susan (1990), “Konversion als ein kombinatorischer Wortbildungsprozeß”. Linguistische Berichte 127, 185⫺216 Pennanen, Esko V. (1971), Conversion and Zeroderivation in English. Tampere: Tampereen Yliopisto Pickett, Velma (1953), “Isthmus Zapotec Verb Analysis I”. International Journal of American Linguistics 19, 292⫺296 Plungjan, Vladimir A. (1997), “K probleme morfologicˇeskogo nulja”. In: Bogdanov, S[ergej] I. & Gerd, A[leksandr] S. (Hrsg.), Morfemika: Principy segmentacii, otozˇdestvlenija i klassifikacii morfologicˇeskich edinic. S.-Petersburg: Izd. S.-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 204⫺211 Poppe, Nicholas N. (1960), Buriat Grammar. Bloomington: Indiana Univ.; The Hague: Mouton (Uralic and Altaic Series 2) Preuss, Fritz (1962), “Konversion oder Zero-Derivation”. Lebende Sprachen 97⫺105 Rathay, Wilfried (1980), “Zu einigen Fragen der Analyse von Nullableitungen im Englischen”. In: Hansen, Klaus & Neubert, Albrecht (Hrsg.), Studien zur Lexik und Grammatik der englischen Sprache der Gegenwart. Martin Lehnert zum 70. Geburtstag. Berlin/DDR: Zentralinst. für Sprachwissenschaft (Linguistische Studien A 67), 27⫺38

450 Reeves, Jennifer Elaine (1992), Zero Elements in Linguistic Theory. Ph. D. dissertation, Univ. of Minnesota Renou, Louis (1957), Terminologie grammaticale du Sanskrit. Paris: Champion (Bibliothe`que de l’Ećole des Hautes E´tudes 280⫺282) [zuerst 1942 in Heften] Rogers, David E. (1987), “The Influence of Pa¯nø ini on Leonard Bloomfield”. In: Hall, Robert A. (Hrsg.), Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on His Life and Work. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 47), 89⫺138 Ruegg, David Seyfort (1978), “Mathematical and Linguistic Models in Indian Thought: The Case of Zero and sú¯nyata¯”. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 22, 171⫺181 Sanders, Gerald (1988), “Zero Derivation and the Overt Analogue Criterion”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (Hrsg.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego/CA usw.: Academic Press, 155⫺175 Saporta, Sol (1964), “On the Use of Zero in Morphemics”. In: Lunt, Horace G. (Hrsg.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, Cambridge, Mass., August 27⫺31, 1962. The Hague usw.: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 12), 228⫺231 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1879), Me´moire sur le syste`me primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-europeénnes. Leipzig: Teubner [Nachdruck in: Saussure, Ferdinand de (1922), Recueil des publications scientifiques. Gene`ve: Droz, 1⫺268] Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale, publie´ par Charles Bally, Albert Se-

VI. Einheiten der morphologischen Struktur chehaye, Albert Riedlinger. Lausanne, Paris: Payot [spätere Auflagen mit anderer Paginierung] Schifko, Peter (1973), “Zero in der Allgemeinen und Romanischen Sprachwissenschaft”. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 89, 1⫺51 Steriade, Donca (1995), “Underspecification and Markedness”. In: Goldsmith, John A. (Hrsg.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Cambridge/ MA, Oxford: Blackwell (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics 1), 114⫺174 Stump, Gregory T. (1984), “Agreement vs. Incorporation in Breton”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2, 289⫺348 Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (1939), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 7) [⫽ 21958 Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht] Tschenke´li, Kita (1958), Einführung in die georgische Sprache, Bd. I: Theoretischer Teil. Zürich: Amirani Vasu, S´rı¯sá Chandra (1891), The Ashtøa¯dhya¯yı¯ of Pa¯nø ini [Edition und Übersetzung]. Allahabad: Indian Press Vincent, Nigel (1994), “Zero”. In: Asher, R. E. & Simpson, J. M. Y. (Hrsg.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Bd. 1⫺10. Oxford usw.: Pergamon Press, 5081⫺5083 Volodin, Aleksandr P. (1976), Itel’menskij jazyk. Leningrad: Nauka

Henning Bergenholtz, A˚rhus (Dänemark) Joachim Mugdan, Münster (Deutschland)

VII. Allomorphie Allomorphy 46. Morphem, Morph und Allomorph 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Einleitung Terminologie und Begriffsgeschichte Komponenten der Begriffsbestimmung Minimalität Semantische Wertigkeit Substantialität Rekurrenz Unähnlichkeit Zitierte Literatur

1.

Einleitung

Analyse als Rückführung komplexer Entitäten auf elementare Einheiten ist ein Grundprinzip wissenschaftlicher Methodik auch dort, wo sich die Materie dieser Zergliederung zuweilen widersetzt. In der Sprachwissenschaft stellt sich der analytischen Vorgehensweise aber nicht nur die Flüchtigkeit des zu untersuchenden Materials in den Weg. Dieses erste Hindernis kann überwunden werden: mit Aufzeichnungsmethoden aller Art können sprachliche Zeichengestalten kodifiziert und systematisiert werden, obwohl sie in ihrer primären Erscheinungsform als Schallwellen ontologisch gesehen Ereignisse sind und keine Objekte. Der Zeicheninhalt jedoch ist weder das eine noch das andere, sondern ⫺ zumindest im Rahmen der denotativen Semantik ⫺ rein kategorialer Natur und steht somit ontologisch auf derselben Stufe wie das Denken, das auf ihn gerichtet ist. Aus diesem Umstand resultiert eine jeder morphologischen Analyse innewohnende Problematik, die durch die Operationalisierung von Begriffen wie Morphem, Morph und Allomorph zwar präzisiert, aber eben darum auch weniger beseitigt als viel eher verschärft werden kann. Morphem, Morph und Allomorph sind also in einem Handbuch der Morphologie weniger deshalb zu behandeln, weil es so etwas wie Morpheme, Morphe und Allomorphe in den Sprachen der Welt objektiv gibt,

sondern weil man in der Sprachwissenschaft seit vielen Jahrzehnten mit diesen Konzepten gearbeitet hat. Im Hinblick auf die Breite der Gesamtkonzeption des vorliegenden Bandes (und anderer Gesamtdarstellungen, wie Spencer & Zwicky 1998, Hrsg.) kann auf eine ausführliche Erörterung allgemeiner Aspekte der morphologischen Analyse im folgenden weitgehend verzichtet werden (vgl. Kap. IV und VI). Da jedoch von den hier behandelten Begriffen vor allem der des Morphems zum Grundwortschatz der linguistischen Metasprache gehört und nicht nur außerhalb der Systemlinguistik, sondern auch außerhalb des sprachwissenschaftlichen Fachbereichs rezipiert wird (z. B. Städtler 1998: 697), ist eine Berücksichtigung der interdisziplinären Berührungsflächen dieser analytischen Konstrukte, insbesondere in Richtung Psycholinguistik und Kognitionswissenschaft, ein vorrangiges Anliegen (vgl. Kap. XIX).

2.

Terminologie und Begriffsgeschichte

Die Morphologie ist in ihrer Eigenschaft als “Gestaltlehre” bzw. “Lehre von den Bauformen und ihrer Beschreibung” als deskriptiver Kanon seit langem in vielen wissenschaftlichen Fächern integriert (vgl. Art. 1). Vor allem der Sprachwissenschaft war es jedoch vorbehalten, aus dem griechischen Wortstamm für ‘Form, Gestalt’ neue Ausdrücke zur Erfassung ihres spezifischen Gegenstandsbereiches zu bilden: Morphem, Morph und Allomorph. Zuerst geprägt und definiert findet sich der Begriff Morphem ab etwa 1880 bei Baudouin de Courtenay (Mugdan 1986: 30), offenbar in Anlehnung an den in Baudouins Kasaner Schule verwendeten Begriff Phonem. In der Tat ist Morphem eine vom Standpunkt des Griechischen gar nicht vertretbare Reimanalogie auf Phonem (pho˘ -

452 ne¯ma). Im Griechischen ist nur mo´rpho¯ma bezeugt, aber kein *mo´rphe¯ma. Substantive auf -ma (“besonders in der Sprache der ionischen Bildung aufgekommen und Liebling der hellenistischen Gelehrsamkeit”, Debrunner 1917: 157) sind Verbalabstrakta (resultative Nomina actionis), das Verbum zu morphe˘ ‘Form’ lautet aber morphoó¯ und nicht *morpheó¯ oder *morphaó¯ ⫺ es heißt ja auch Metamorphose und nicht *Metamorphese. Somit ist also bereits der elementarste Terminus der linguistischen Morphologie mit einem morphologischen Geburtsfehler behaftet. Der zuerst bei dem italienischen Romanisten Ugo Angelo Canello (1878) belegte Terminus allotropo für ‘Nebenform’ oder ‘Dublette’ im etymologischen Sinn (z. B. diatopische oder diachronische Varianten wie kriechen ⬇ kreuchen ⬇ krauchen) bzw. allotropia für die entsprechende Erscheinung blieb in seinem (immer noch andauernden) Gebrauch auf die italienischsprachige Linguistik beschränkt (Loporcaro 1994). In diesem Zusammenhang ist erwähnenswert, daß Allotropie und Allomorphie in der physikalischen Chemie und in der Kristallographie seit langem als Synonyme für chemisch gleich geartete Substanzen verwendet werden, die keinerlei Ähnlichkeit in ihrer Kristallform aufweisen (z. B. Kohlenstoff als Diamant oder als Graphit). Daß von den zahlreichen in der Kasaner Schule geprägten und später wieder vergessenen Termini gerade der des Morphems in das linguistische Grundvokabular unbefristet Eingang gefunden hat, liegt nur zum Teil an seiner äußerlichen und inhaltlichen Parallelität zu Phonem, Graphem, Lexem, Sem(ant)em und ähnlichen sich Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts in systematischen Entwürfen (z. B. Noreen & Pollak 1923) etablierenden Ausdrücken, die von den strukturalistischen Schulen aufgegriffen und weiterentwickelt wurden (Mugdan 1986: 30⫺32). Nicht erst seit den breit angelegten historisch-vergleichenden Darstellungen der Junggrammatiker war die Sprachwissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts besonders an morphologischer Beschreibung und Systematik interessiert gewesen, zumal weder Etymologie noch synchrone Grammatik ohne morphologische Analyse auskommen können. Doch fehlte ein allgemeiner Begriff für bedeutungstragende Sprachelemente schlechthin, bis sich die Baudouinsche Definition des Morphems als Sammelbegriff für Wurzeln, Affixe und Endungen durchzusetzen begann, die in einer ihrer maß-

VII. Allomorphie

geblichen Formulierungen folgendermaßen lautete: “Morphem ⫽ jeder, mit dem selbstständigen [sic!] psychischen Leben versehene und von diesem Standpunkte (d. h. vom Standpunkte eines selbständigen psychischen Lebens) aus weiter unteilbare Wortteil. Dieser Begriff umfasst also: Wurzel (radix), alle möglichen Affixe, wie Suffixe, Praefixe, als Exponenten syntaktischer Beziehungen dienende Endungen, u.s.w.” (Baudouin de Courtenay 1895: 10 [ohne Sperrungen des Originals])

Den Hauptbeitrag zur Akzeptanz dieser definitorischen Grundlegung leistete rezeptionsgeschichtlich der zu einem überwiegenden Teil in russischen Traditionen wurzelnde strukturalistische Ansatz des Prager Kreises (vgl. Barbe 1986: 129f. und Art. 14); doch brachte die Hinwendung zur synchronen deskriptiven Linguistik, wie sie sich vor allem in der amerikanischen Tradition vollzog, überhaupt eine Parallelität der sprachwissenschaftlichen Terminologie zu anderen strukturell-beschreibenden Wissenschaften mit sich, ohne daß interdisziplinäre Begriffsentlehnung immer nachweisbar wäre. So existierte der Ausdruck Allomorphie, wie erwähnt, bereits längst in der Naturwissenschaft, als das Allomorph von Eugene A. Nida in der Sprachwissenschaft eingeführt wurde (Nida 11946: 6; 1948: 420). Nida war es auch, der im Anschluß daran als Entsprechung auf der semantischen Ebene den Terminus Allosem vorschlug (Nida 21949: 174). Die Kreation von Morph als Terminus für bedeutungstragende Einheiten der konkreten Analyseebene (Hockett 1947: 322; Wells 1949: 99) ergab sich nachfolgend in Analogie zu Phon, Graph, Sem und ähnlichen Bildungen gewissermaßen von selbst. Daß die dieser Terminologie innewohnende Systematik erst zwei Generationen nach der Schöpfung des Ausdrucks Morphem in der taxonomischen Methodik zum Tragen kam, bleibt als theoriegeschichtliches Faktum bemerkenswert (vgl. Kap. III). Die Verabsolutierung des begrifflich-terminologischen Prinzips emisch versus etisch (vgl. Swadesh 1934) erfolgte um die Mitte dieses Jahrhunderts chronologisch parallel einerseits in der Glossematik Louis Hjelmslevs und Hans J. Uldalls (Hjelmslev 1938; Uldall 1957), deren Terminologie in der Morphologie nachwirkte (vgl. den Gebrauch von Plerem für Minimalzeichen bei Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979), andererseits in der Tagmemik Kenneth L. Pikes (Pike 1943; 21967 [11954⫺1960], vgl. Art. 21). Diese Phase der taxonomischen Systembegründungen war jedoch von kurzer Dauer

453

46. Morphem, Morph und Allomorph

und hat in den morphologischen Theorien der Moderne wenig Spuren hinterlassen. Manche Systeme, wie das von Albert M. Gessmann, der im Rahmen seiner Morphotics und Morphology, die er zusammen mit Rhematics, Lexicology und Lexicography als Teilgebiete von Onomatics denen der Phonistics und Syntax gegenüberstellte, eine differenzierte Typologie morphologischer Einheiten entwarf (Gessmann 1964: 45⫺59), sind nicht einmal zu allgemeiner Bekanntheit gelangt. Andere, wie das an terminologischen Prägungen reiche und explizit auf die Morphologie hin konzipierte System Mel’cˇuks (Mel’cˇuk 1982), wurden zwar zur Kenntnis genommen, doch der logisch-normative Ansatz einer “language of linguistics” verhält sich gegenüber dem historisch gewachsenen und vielfach unreflektiert eingebürgerten metasprachlichen Fundus wie das Esperanto zum Englischen: jenes wird von einer kleinen Minderheit propagiert, dieses wird von der breiten Masse verwendet. Auch vereinzelte terminologische Neubildungen wie Alloflex (‘Allomorph einer Flexionsendung’, Mayerthaler & Fliedl & Winkler 1998: 44) haben wenig Aussicht, von der Fachgemeinschaft angenommen zu werden. Fachsprachliche Dialektbildung erfolgt nicht allein durch Neuprägungen, sondern auch durch idiosynkratischen Gebrauch des überlieferten Vokabulars (vgl. Mugdan 1986). In dem Maße, wie sich die sprachwissenschaftliche Forschung ins Interdisziplinäre erweiterte, nahm auch die theoretische Morphologie Themen aus der Psycholinguistik, der Kognitionswissenschaft, der künstlichen Intelligenz usw. in ihren Diskursrahmen auf, wodurch sich das Interesse von der Axiomatik zur Operationalität hin verlagerte (vgl. Hall 1992). Mit diesem Perspektivenwechsel ging auch teilweise der Primat von Einheiten als Theorieelementen zu Prozessen über (vgl. Carstairs-McCarthy 1992). Morphem, Morph und Allomorph sind in der Folge als historisch überlieferte Konzepte zu betrachten, die Grundtatsachen der Sprachstruktur zum Inhalt haben, welche von jedem morphologischen Beschreibungsmodell in irgendeiner Weise zu erfassen sind. Zweifel an der allgemeinen Gültigkeit dieser Konzepte sind in neueren Theorien vornehmlich dort angemeldet worden, wo die Morphologie an sich als autonome Komponente des Sprachsystems in Frage gestellt wird (vgl. Anderson 1992). In den folgenden Abschnitten wird daher im

Lichte dieser Entwicklungen auch auf die inhärente Problematik des Morphembegriffs besonderes Augenmerk gelegt.

3.

Komponenten der Begriffsbestimmung

Gängige Definitionen von Morphem als “kleinste bedeutungstragende Gestalteinheit in der Sprache, kleinstes sprachliches Zeichen”, Morph als “kleinstes bedeutungstragendes Bauelement der gesprochenen Sprache” und Allomorph als “Variante eines Morphems, die in einer bestimmten phonemischen, grammatikalischen oder lexikalischen Umgebung vorkommt” (Duden Fremdwörterbuch sub vocibus) vermitteln in ihrer Konzinnität und Bündigkeit dem Publikum eine Konsensfähigkeit, die in der Fachwelt zu keiner Zeit gegeben war (vgl. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1985). Weder die Minimalität noch die semantische Wertigkeit noch die in den obigen Kurzdefinitionen suggerierte Körperlichkeit des Zeichenträgers sind unumstrittene Eigenschaften dieser postulierten Einheiten. In den als klassisch zu bezeichnenden Begriffsbestimmungen Bloomfields kommen als weitere Kriterien noch die Rekurrenz und die Unähnlichkeit hinzu: “A morpheme is a recurrent (meaningful) form which cannot in turn be analyzed into smaller recurrent (meaningful) forms.” (Bloomfield 1926: 155) “A linguistic form which bears no partial phoneticsemantic resemblance to any other form, is a simple form or morpheme. […] Morphemes may show partial phonetic resemblances, as do, for instance, bird and burr, or even homonymy, as do pear, pair, pare, but this resemblance is purely phonetic and is not parallelled by the meanings.” (Bloomfield 1933: 161)

Nach Maßgabe dieses Morphembegriffs, der von einigen Vertretern des amerikanischen Strukturalismus wie Zellig S. Harris, Bernard Bloch, Charles F. Hockett, George L. Trager, Eugene A. Nida übernommen und modifiziert wurde (vgl. Hamp 1957 sub vocibus; Matthews 1993: 51⫺86), sind Morpheme homogene und unteilbare, gleichsam atomare lexikalische bzw. grammatische Einheiten. Weitere Untergliederungen richten sich nach der strukturellen Autonomie (freie Morpheme wie z. B. Buch, in versus gebundene Morpheme wie z. B. les-, -er) und nach der Funktion (lexikalische Morpheme wie Buch oder les- versus grammatische Morpheme wie

454 in oder -er ⫺ vgl. Art. 27 ⫺ letztere wiederum teilen sich in Derivations- und Flexionsmorpheme), wobei Übergangsphänomene nicht ausgeschlossen sind. Irreführend und ständig im Auge zu behalten ist die Einschränkung des Begriffs Morphem auf grammatische Morpheme (gegenüber Lexemen), wie sie von manchen Autoren gepflogen wird (vgl. Beard 1995). Martinets Begriff Monem (mone`me, kondensiert aus monomorphe`me, Hyperonym für Lexeme und Morpheme) wird außerhalb der französischen Linguistik kaum verwendet und bleibt hier unberücksichtigt (vgl. Martinet 1963; 71969: 245⫺251). In der Konzeption des amerikanischen Strukturalismus ist die Wortstruktur morphologisch homogen: Wörter bestehen demnach ausschließlich aus Morphemen, d. h. es gibt keine anderen lexikalischen und grammatischen Elemente als eben Morpheme. Jedes Morphem ist notwendigerweise phonologisch durch mindestens ein Allomorph repräsentiert. Allomorphe sind Morphe, die bestimmten Morphemen eindeutig, aber nicht notwendigerweise eineindeutig zugeordnet sind: das Suffix -chen /-çen/ ist im Standarddeutschen Allomorph des Morphems {deminutiv}, aber dieses Morphem wird auch durch ein anderes Allomorph -lein (/-lajn/) repräsentiert. Die Morphe /-çen/ und /-lajn/ können nicht verschiedenen Morphemen zugeordnet werden, weil es auf Grund des Unähnlichkeitskriteriums nicht statthaft ist, zwei Morpheme mit identischer Bedeutung anzusetzen (vgl. 8). Morphe sind wiederum eindeutig, aber nicht notwendigerweise eineindeutig phonologischen Einheiten zugeordnet: die phonologische Sequenz /çen/ ist im Deutschen ein Morph (Allomorph des Morphems {deminutiv}), aber nicht jede Okkurrenz dieser Lautfolge ist eine Manifestation dieses Allomorphs (z. B. /çen/ in Wällchen versus /çen/ in welchen). Bei deduktiver Vorgangsweise (von einem axiomatischen Satz ausgehend) finden sich unzählige Beispiele für die Praktikabilität dieser Begriffe, doch bei induktiver Vorgangsweise (von konkretem Sprachmaterial ausgehend) ergeben sich Komplikationen. Wo immer linguistische Analyse mittels Segmentierung betrieben wird, kommt es zu Paradoxa und Aporien, deren Ursachen, wie sich zeigen wird, in der vorgefaßten Definition des zu Segmentierenden verborgen liegen. Eine theorieunabhängige Betrachtungsweise ist aber nicht möglich, weil jede Beschreibung auf Gliederung und Zergliederung hinausläuft und wenn

VII. Allomorphie

nicht bewußt, dann eben unbewußt von theoretischen Annahmen und vorgefaßten Kategorien geleitet ist. Hinzu kommt erschwerend das sprachtypologische Präjudiz (Luschützky 1997: 2): die chinesische Linguistik, die auf eine ebensolange Tradition zurückblickt wie die abendländische, hat keine dem Morphembegriff entsprechenden Konzepte entwickelt (bu shou ‘Radikale’ sind etwas ganz anderes) und die mittelalterliche arabische Grammatik kommt in der Morphologie (at-tasørıˆf ) durch das antonomastische Prinzip zu einer ganz eigenständigen Begrifflichkeit (vgl. Art. 7). Hingegen ist der Einfluß der altindischen Grammatik auf die frühe morphologische Theoriebildung unverkennbar. Daß die geniale Art und Weise, in der Pa¯nø ini die Morphologie des Sanskrit formalisierte, auf manche Sprachen nur sehr schwer und auf die meisten gar nicht übertragen werden kann, ist ebenso evident wie die Tatsache, daß mit Termini wie dha¯tu (allgemein: ‘Schicht, Lage, Bestandteil, Element’, in der Grammatik: ‘Wurzel’) hier bereits im technischen Sinn ein Morphembegriff impliziert ist (vgl. Art. 5), auf den sich Baudouin de Courtenay zwar nicht explizit beruft, der ihm als hervorragendem Kenner der altindischen Grammatik aber wohl nicht entgangen sein dürfte. Die im folgenden einzeln diskutierten Komponenten der Begriffsbestimmung von Morphem, Morph und Allomorph sind naturgemäß auf vielfältige Weise miteinander verflochten und werden hier nur aus expositorischen Gründen künstlich auseinandergehalten.

4.

Minimalität

Zu den grundlegenden Verhaltensreflexen im wissenschaftlichen Leben scheint es zu gehören, daß man, wann immer eine Unteilbarkeit von Einheiten postuliert wird, Phänomene und Indizien beizubringen versucht, die beweisen sollen, daß es doch noch eine Segmentierungsebene unterhalb der postulierten gibt. Wie das Beispiel Atom in der Elementarphysik beweist, ändert die Widerlegung eines Unteilbarkeitspostulats aber nichts an dessen Popularität. So besteht auch in der Morphologie zwar allgemein Einhelligkeit über die Existenz submorphemischer Einheiten, doch wird unbeschadet dessen bei der Definition von Morph und Morphem am Minimalitätskriterium festgehalten. In den redaktionellen Richtlinien, die den Verfassern von den Herausgebern dieses Handbuchs vorgegeben


wurden, findet sich dementsprechend folgende Definition: “Morphem: Eine Menge von Minimalzeichen mit demselben Inhalt (aber möglicherweise verschiedenen Ausdrücken), wobei z. B. distributionelle Kriterien ergänzend herangezogen werden können, um Synonyme vom Typ Sonnabend/Samstag auszuschließen; im Deutschen gehören also u. a. -e, -er, -en, -s, -ta zum Morphem {plural}.”

Der Ausdruck Minimalzeichen ist seinerseits folgendermaßen bestimmt: “ein Zeichen, das nicht in kleinere zerlegt werden kann; der Terminus Morphem sollte nicht in dieser Bedeutung benutzt werden.”

Die so verstandene Minimalität des Morphems erscheint auf den ersten Blick insofern unanfechtbar, als jeder sich als segmentierbar erweisende Bestandteil eines Morphems seinerseits wiederum allen Definitionskriterien unterliegen muß, um selbst als Morphem anerkannt zu werden. Man könnte etwa behaupten, daß die Konsonantenverbindung /fl-/ in Wörtern wie flimmern, flirren, Flitter, flitzen, flunkern, flutschen, flackern, flattern, bedeutungstragend ist: in allen diesen Wörtern ist eine semantische Komponente von rascher Bewegung oder optischen Reflexen solcher Bewegung enthalten. Daher sei /fl-/ im Deutschen die Realisierung eines Morphems, weil bedeutungstragend und segmentierbar. Dieses so postulierte Morphem genügt dem Kriterium der Minimalität, denn von seinen formalen Exponenten /f/ und /l/ kann ja nicht behauptet werden, daß sie selbst bedeutungstragend sind. Ferner genügt es den Kriterien der semantischen Wertigkeit (vgl. 5), weil seine Bedeutung mittels semantischer Kategorien erfaßbar ist, und der Substantialität (vgl. 6), weil es aus Phonemen besteht. Das Kriterium der Rekurrenz (vgl. 7), ist ebenfalls erfüllt, weil /fl-/ in einer ganzen Reihe von Wörtern mit dieser Bedeutungskomponente vorkommt. Daß die überwiegende Mehrzahl der auf /fl-/ anlautenden Wörter keinerlei semantischen Bezug zu rascher Bewegung oder optischen Reflexen solcher Bewegung aufweisen und daß es Wörter mit dieser Semantik gibt, die nicht mit /fl-/ anlauten, tut der Forderung nach morphologischem Status für /fl-/ keinen Abbruch, denn bei Morphen wie /er-/ oder /be-/ verhält es sich ja ebenso, ohne daß deshalb ihr morphologischer Status angezweifelt wird. Letztlich ist auch das Kriterium der Unähnlichkeit erfüllt (vgl. 8), weil kein zweites Morphem gefunden werden kann, bei dem sich die Frage

455 stellt, ob es getrennt von dem hier argumenti causa postulierten anzusetzen ist. Bei Wörtern auf /gl-/ wie glitzern, glänzen, gleißen usw. könnte man argumentieren wie bei /fl-/, aber die Bedeutung überschneidet sich nur hinsichtlich der “optischen Reflexe”: Wörter auf /gl-/ mit dieser Bedeutungskomponente haben keinen Bezug zu rascher Bewegung. Obwohl nun /fl-/ (wie auch /gl-/ und manche andere Lautverbindungen) alle Kriterien erfüllt, um als Allomorph eines Morphems analysiert zu werden, ist es ganz unsinnig, diese Analyse zuzulassen. Das liegt jedoch nicht am /fl-/, sondern an dem, was bei der Segmentierung übrig bleibt: -immer-, -irr-, -itter-, -itz-, -unker-, -utsch-, -acker-, -atter- (mit bereits abgetrennten Infinitivendungen) können keinen Morphemen zugeordnet werden, die einen semantischen Beitrag zur Gesamtbedeutung der Wörter flimmern, flirren, Flitter, flitzen, flunkern, flutschen, flackern, flattern leisten. Auf diese Weise zeigt sich, daß nicht alles, was den definitorischen Anforderungen an ein Morphem genügt, darum auch schon eines ist. Die Definition kann allerdings nicht abgeändert werden, um Analysen wie die obige auszuschließen, ohne daß dabei interessante und sinnvolle Verallgemeinerungen verloren gehen: alle dargelegten Beobachtungen zu /fl-/ sind ja faktisch zutreffend ⫺ nur die daraus resultierende Konsequenz ist vom Standpunkt des klassischen Morphembegriffs aus gesehen unerwünscht. Daß es submorphemische Einheiten gibt, die wie Morpheme wirken, aber im Sinne der zitierten Definitionen keine Morpheme sind, kann nicht bestritten werden (vgl. Art. 43). Auch wenn diese submorphemischen Einheiten in ihrer Eigenschaft als Phonästheme (vgl. Firth 1930) nur bestimmte semantische Bereiche betreffen, mancherlei distributionellen Beschränkungen unterliegen und noch andere diskussionswürdige Eigenschaften aufweisen (vgl. Dressler 1990), so ist zu berücksichtigen, daß es sich hierbei oftmals um produktive Bildungsmittel handelt, die bei der Neuschöpfung von Lexemen und in der Spontansprache eine bevorzugte Rolle spielen können (vgl. Ronneberger-Sibold 1997). In einer linguistischen Theorie, die nicht nur das Verhalten der Sprachbenutzer im kognitiven Kontinuum zwischen unbewußter Kodierung und gezieltem Einsatz von Ausdrucksmitteln untersucht, sondern auch die Fähigkeit der Sprecher und Hörer zur Schaffung und Deutung solcher Mittel in ihren Gegenstandsbereich einbezieht, scheint die Minimalität als stren-

456

VII. Allomorphie

ges Kriterium für die Bestimmung von Morphemen, Morphen und Allomorphen nicht haltbar zu sein. Es gibt morphologische Techniken, die bei der Markierung regelhaft Allomorphie involvieren, wie z. B. der Umlaut im Deutschen (vgl. Art. 58). An sich ist eine Deminutivform im Deutschen durch die eindeutigen Suffixe -chen und -lein hinreichend markiert. Der an ein Suffix gekoppelte Umlaut wird daher in der Morphonologie als “Kosignal” bezeichnet (Dressler 1985: 172 und passim), das zeichentheoretisch eine indexikalische Funktion erfüllt. Die Unterscheidung zwischen augenscheinlich funktionsloser Allomorphie und multipler Markierung (“leere” und “volle Alternation” in der Terminologie Mel’cˇuks, Mel’cˇuk 1982: 58⫺63) führt zu der Annahme, daß solche Allomorphie ursprünglich phonologisch konditioniert gewesen sein muß, was sich gerade am deutschen Umlaut gut demonstrieren läßt, denn hier steht neben Formen, die den ursprünglich umlautauslösenden Palatalvokal noch aufweisen, wie -lich, phonologisch Unkonditioniertes vom Typ Mutter : Mütter. Alle Grade der Morphologisierung finden sich auch bei den Umlauterscheinungen in italienischen Dialekten (vgl. Maiden 1991). Umlaut und diskontinuierliche Morphe (bei Kuryłowicz “morphemes bipartis”, “bipartite markers”, vgl. Kuryłowicz 1958) wie z. B. Zirkumfixe (vgl. Art. 54) gehören zu den “classical problems with morphemes” (Anderson 1992: 51⫺56), so wie auch die Technik der Infigierung, deren Resultat eine diskontinuierliche Wurzel ist (vgl. Art. 55). Was für syntaktische Konstituenten der Normalfall ist, wird bei morphologischen Konstituenten problematisiert, da für diese zum Unterschied von jenen das Minimalitätskriterium gelten soll. Darüber hinaus werden semiotische und kognitionspsychologische Argumente für die Dysfunktionalität diskontinuierlicher Morphe ins Treffen geführt (vgl. Art. 162).

5.

Semantische Wertigkeit

Elemente der morphologischen Komponente des Sprachsystems sind komplexer aufgebaut als die des phonologischen Systems, da sie Form, Funktion und Bedeutung haben, während Phoneme nur Form (als phonetisch manifeste Allophone) und Funktion (als kontrastbildende Diakritika) haben, aber keine Bedeutung. Morphologische Elemente neigen

daher dazu, einander auf Grund der vielfältigen Zuordnungsbeziehungen zwischen Form, Funktion und Bedeutung paradigmatisch zu beeinflussen, zum Unterschied von den phonologischen Elementen, die auf Grund ihrer Koppelung an realzeitliche physikalische Ereignisse eher zur syntagmatischen gegenseitigen Beeinflussung neigen (vgl. Art. 24). Diese paradigmatische Beeinflussung, die unter dem Sammelbegriff Analogie einen weitläufigen Bereich von Phänomenen umfaßt (vgl. Becker 1992), ist ein wichtiger Indikator für die Ermittlung der mentalen Realität deskriptiver Konzepte wie Morph, Allomorph und Morphem auch in der Diachronie (vgl. Zager 1979 und Art. 147). Wenn ein Dichter wie Christian Morgenstern unter Ausnutzung der poetischen Lizenz (vgl. Dressler 1981) den Vogelnamen Nachtigall als Kompositum interpretiert und dazu per analogiam ein antonymisches Tagtigall bildet, so zeigt sich, wie die Kriterien der formalen Segmentierung mit der semantischen Wertigkeit der segmentierten Elemente in Konflikt geraten können: Die analogische Bildung Tagtigall ist durch das Vorderglied Nacht- inspiriert, das die Existenz eines Hintergliedes -igall impliziert. Durch das resultierende Tagtigall ist jedoch eine Segmentierung Nach-tigall impliziert, die nach Maßgabe der antonymischen Semantik eher zu einem analogischen Vor-tigall hätte führen müssen. Das Beispiel mag bizarr erscheinen ⫺ das Phänomen an sich ist in der spontanen Sprachverwendung ganz normal. Wenn etwa in der Wirtschaftsberichterstattung von Analysten gesprochen wird (‘Börsenfachleute, die berufsmäßig die Lage und Tendenz an der Wertpapierbörse beobachten und analysieren’, < engl. analyst ‘Analytiker’ (allgemein), ‘Psychoanalytiker’, ‘Statistiker’), so liegt ebenfalls ein Konflikt zwischen Segmentierung und semantischer Wertigkeit des Segmentierten vor. Dieses Beispiel kann nicht als einfache Haplologie abgetan werden (etwa engl. /æn1ælisist/ J [1ænælist]), denn der Wortakzent beweist, daß engl. analyst vom Verbum to analyse abgeleitet ist und nicht vom Substantiv analysis. Im Deutschen sorgt die Lautung [ana1lyst] für zusätzliche Komplikationen, denn es entsteht somit entweder ein unikales Allomorph /-yst/ des Agentivsuffixes /-ist/ und zudem ein Allomorph /anal-/ zum Stamm /analy-/, oder man muß das /-t/ als neues Agentivsuffix (Allomorph von /ist/) in die Grammatik des Deutschen aufnehmen (/ana1lys-t/). Da die Sprachgemeinschaft aller


Wahrscheinlichkeit nach nicht zu unproblematischem Analytiker übergehen wird oder zu Analyt (in Analogie zu Elektrolyt ‘den elektrischen Strom leitende und sich durch ihn zersetzende Lösung’ oder, wegen des geringen Bekanntsheitsgrads des Ausdrucks Ästhese weniger naheliegend, Ästhet), ist das einfachste Mittel, sich solcher Probleme zu entledigen, sie für lexikalisiert zu erklären und damit von jeder weiteren morphologischen Zerlegung und kompositionellen Sinndeutung zu suspendieren (vgl. Art. 82 und 149). Wäre dies schon im Fall von dt. Analyst eine unwissenschaftliche Entscheidung, so kann sie für das Englische noch viel weniger akzeptiert werden, wo analyst phonologisch mit den unzähligen produktiv auf -ist gebildeten Nomina reimt (von denen allerdings die wenigsten eindeutig als Nomina agentis klassifizierbar sind). Die in analyst vorliegende Homonymie scheint übrigens ⫺ omnia munda mundis ⫺ in den anglophonen Sprachgemeinschaften nicht als geˆnante empfunden zu werden. Bei jeder morphologischen Segmentierung sprachlicher Formen ist darauf zu achten, daß die so gewonnenen Einheiten semantisch interpretierbar sind: in (4) hat sich gezeigt, daß die Segmentierung von dt. glitzer- unter anderem daran scheitert, daß -itzer- semantisch nicht interpretierbar ist. Es gibt aber keine Garantie dafür, daß sich die Sprecher und Hörer, deren Äußerungen und Interpretationen die Sprachwissenschaft untersucht, immer an diese Kriterien halten. Wie man am Beispiel des Suffixes -ist erkennen kann, wäre es zuviel verlangt, daß die Bedeutung morphologischer Einheiten immer in semantischen Termini exakt beschreibbar sein muß. Hätte man diese Forderung zu erfüllen, wäre es unmöglich, für -ist zu sagen, was man z. B., mutatis mutandis, für engl. -less oder dt. -los ohne weiteres sagen kann; nämlich daß es ein Allomorph eines Morphems (in diesem Fall {privativ}) ist. Die begriffliche Unschärfe und der terminologische Wirrwarr der derivationellen Kategorien ist allerdings eher ein Problem der Semantik als der Morphologie (vgl. Wierzbicka 1988: 391⫺555), so daß man sich faute de mieux damit begnügt, für die Zuerkennung des Morphemstatus die semantische Interpretierbarkeit einzufordern, so vage diese (und dieser Ausdruck) auch immer sein mag: “es ist im allgemeinen leicht festzustellen, was eine Bedeutung ist” (Hammarström 1966: 40), aber schon viel weniger leicht, sie wissenschaftlich zu beschreiben. Um das theoreti-

457 sche Konstrukt Morphem möglichst allgemein anwendbar zu machen, bedarf es nicht nur dieser Konzession, sondern es ist zudem erforderlich, den Begriff Bedeutung so weit wie möglich zu fassen, damit er auch die abstraktesten grammatischen Relationen einschließt (vgl. Art. 27). Dort, wo selbst diese Toleranz überschritten ist, liegt das vor, was in der englischsprachigen Literatur als empty morph (nicht zu verwechseln mit zero morph: jenes ist semantisch leer, dieses formal), in der deutschsprachigen manchmal als Quasi-, Pseudo- oder Halbmorphem bezeichnet wird. Der Begriff Interfix wird bei verschiedenen Autoren entweder für semantisch leere Morphe zwischen Stämmen in Komposita (Mel’cˇuk 1982: 86) oder zwischen Stamm und Suffix (z. B. /-s-/ in frz. doucement) oder beides verwendet (Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1986; 1989; 1991). Gilt für Morpheme das Kriterium der semantischen Wertigkeit, so ist etwa der Themavokal, wie er in der Verbalflexion zahlreicher indogermanischer Sprachen vorkommt, z. B. ital. port-a-re, par-e-re, parti-re (mit im Infinitiv betontem Themavokal), prend-e-re (mit im Infinitiv unbetontem Themavokal), allem Anschein nach ein Morph, das nicht als Realisierung irgendeines Morphems agnosziert werden kann, aber ebensowenig als bloß euphonisches Element, weil es dann nicht in Form von verschiedenen, kontextuell nicht determinierten Phonemen auftreten dürfte. An seinem morphologischen Status kann in Sprachen wie dem Altgriechischen nicht gezweifelt werden, da er dort auch dem Ablaut unterliegt: leı´p-o-men ‘wir lassen’, leı´p-e-te ‘ihr laßt’. Ein euphonisches Element ist etwa das e muet im Französischen (z. B. porte-monnaie [pcrtmcni] gegenüber portefeuille [pcrtefœj]) oder das intrusive r in nichtrhotischen Varietäten des Englischen (z. B. law and order [1lc:uen1dc:de]), das jeweils nur in einer einzigen phonologischen Erscheinungsform auftritt. Nach Maßgabe des Unähnlichkeitskriteriums (vgl. 8) ist es nicht statthaft, etwa für den italienischen Infinitiv mehrere Morpheme anzusetzen, da deren Bedeutung ja vollkommen identisch wäre. Morphe wie der Themavokal haben die paradigmatische Funktion der Klassenbildung (vgl. Art. 65). Das Fugen-s im deutschen Kompositum hat die syntagmatische Funktion der Haupt-Dependent-Markierung. In beiden Fällen ist eine gleichzeitige euphonische Motivierung nicht ausgeschlossen, wie ja überhaupt der ontologische Reduktionismus, der jedem Phänomen immer nur eine

458

VII. Allomorphie

einzige raison d’eˆtre zugestehen will, in der Sprachwissenschaft, ou` tout se tient, besonders fehl am Platz ist. Die Haupt-Dependentmarkierende Funktion des Fugenelements im Deutschen läßt sich an einem Kompositum wie Uranerzaufbereitungsanlage demonstrieren: das -s- zeigt als indexikalischer relationaler Marker das bloße Vorhandensein einer Konstruktion an, ohne diese genau zu spezifizieren (die erste Stufe der Markierung nach Nichols 1986: 57 [Segmentierungen im Original]): “Morphology can signal syntactic dependency in four ways. First, the morphological marker may simply register the presence of syntactic dependency ⫺ as does the Persian and Tadzhik ‘izafet’ or the Semitic ‘status constructus’: Tadzhik kuˆh-i baland ‘high mountain’, Persian kuˆh-e boländ, Hebrew b-e-t sefer ‘school’ (lit. ‘book house’).”

Zusätzlich erfüllt das Fugen-s eine Funktion, die bei Nichols gar nicht vorgesehen ist: Es zeigt, als eine Art morphologisches Grenzsignal, auch den Ort an, wo die dependente Konstituente endet und das Konstruktionshaupt beginnt (was für den semitischen Status constructus nicht gilt, wohl aber für die iranische ezafe). Da diese Deutung der Funktionalität sogenannter “leerer Morphe” wie jede funktionale Deutung nicht zwingend ist, bleibt die Frage weiterhin offen für psycholinguistische Forschungen (vgl. Fuhrhop 1998). Wenn nicht alles, was eine Bedeutung hat, ein Morphem ist und nicht alles, was man segmentieren kann, eine Bedeutung hat, ist der Ruf nach psycholinguistischer Bestätigung des Morphembegriffs nicht zu unterdrücken (vgl. Art. 162). Daß im Italienischen nur das -aals Themavokal in Neologismen produktiv ist, könnte damit zu tun haben, daß den anderen Themavokalen vielleicht doch intuitiv eine semantische Nuancierung beigemessen wird. So heißt z. B. die Betätigung der Maustaste eines Computers im Italienischen cliccare und nicht *clicchire oder *clicchere /kli1k:ere/ bzw. /1klik:ere/; im Französischen cliquer und nicht *cliquir. Sprecher des Französischen geben in vom Verfasser durchgeführten Experimenten zu erkennen, daß *cliquir für sie eher die ornative Bedeutung (‘etwas mit einem “Klick” versehen’) hat als die der reinen Verbalhandlung (‘einen “Klick” machen’).

6.

Substantialität

Das Kriterium, daß formale Exponenten von Morphemen eine phonologische Substanz aufweisen müssen, um als Zeichengestalten

wahrgenommen zu werden, hat in der Morphologietheorie schon zu Diskussionen von geradezu eleatischer Spitzfindigkeit geführt. Welche Arten von phonologischer Realisierung vorkommen bzw. vorkommen können (konkatenativ ⫺ z. B. Affixe, substitutiv ⫺ z. B. Ablaut, prosodisch ⫺ z. B. engl. record [r=1kc:d] ‘aufnehmen’ versus record [1rekc:d] ‘Aufnahme’), ist eine Frage der morphologischen Sprachtypologie (vgl. Luschützky 1997) bzw. der Typologie morphologischer Techniken oder Prozesse (vgl. Kap. VIII). Grundsätzlich sind alle nichtkonkatenativen Prozesse für statische Item-and-ArrangementModelle problematisch (vgl. Hockett 1954). Man behilft sich verschiedentlich mit Ausdrücken wie virtuelles Morphem (versus reales Morphem, Tagliavini 71969: 166⫺168) oder schwebendes Morph. Einen formalen Neuansatz, inspiriert durch semitisches Sprachmaterial, versucht die nonlineare Morphologie (vgl. McCarthy 1981). Das Neuhochdeutsche hat durch das Zusammentreffen von Ablaut, Umlaut, grammatischem Wechsel und Präteritopräsentien (z. B. mögen, mag, mochte, Macht, mächtig u. dgl.) unter den lebenden indogermanischen Sprachen das reichste Repertoire an substitutiven morphologischen Techniken (vgl. Art. 58). Eine im Deutschen weniger ausgeprägte Technik, die Konversion (vgl. Art. 90), tangiert allerdings das Kriterium der Substantialität im Kern, denn hier geht es um Morpheme, die durch kein phonologisches Element, sei es ein Segment oder auch nur ein einziges Merkmal, phonetisch implementiert sein können (vgl. Kettemann 1988: 258). Daß in engl. walk die Kategorien Nomen oder Verbum morphologisch nicht signifiziert werden, ist für den klassischen Morphembegriff ein Problem, denn es ist mit morphologischen Mitteln sowenig möglich, ein Wort walk semantisch als Nomen zu interpretieren, wenn in seiner zugrundeliegenden Repräsentation das Morphem {plural} nicht vorhanden ist, wie es sinnhaft erscheint, ein Morphem {plural} anzusetzen, wenn kein wie immer geartetes Morph auf die Anwesenheit dieses Morphems schließen läßt. Die sich aus solchen Analysen logisch ergebende Unterscheidung zwischen der Anwesenheit von Nichts und der Abwesenheit von Etwas ist aus philosophischen Erwägungen als unsinnig abzulehnen (vgl. Art. 45). Zielführender erscheint die Auffassung der Konversion als morphologischer Metapher (vgl. Crocco Galeàs 1997). Die Grammatik mancher Sprachen scheint es zuzulassen, daß

459


manche Kategorien in manchen Fällen morphologisch nicht kodiert werden, so wie die deutsche Grammatik es etwa zuläßt, daß die Kategorie der Belebtheit (vgl. Art. 97) beim Personalpronomen nur in jenen Fällen zum Ausdruck kommt, wo sich das Pronomen mit einer Präposition verbindet: mit ihm (m./n. belebt), mit ihr (f. belebt) versus damit (m./f./ n. unbelebt); in ihm (m./n. belebt), in ihr (f. belebt) versus darin (m./f./n. unbelebt), auf ihm (m./n. belebt), auf ihr (f. belebt) versus darauf (m./f./n. unbelebt) usw. Dennoch wird in keiner grammatischen Beschreibung des Deutschen für jene Fälle, wo die Belebtheit oder Unbelebtheit auf der formalen Ebene nicht zum Ausdruck kommt, ein entsprechendes Morphem mit dem Allomorph /-/ (“Null”) angesetzt. Wie schon bei der Besprechung des Minimalitätskriteriums (vgl. 4) und des Kriteriums der semantischen Wertigkeit (vgl. 5) zeigt sich auch hier, daß ein Morphembegriff sich ad absurdum führt, wenn er eindimensional und gleichsam mikroskopisch angewendet wird, ohne die Vielschichtigkeit des durch Faktoren des Gebrauchs in seiner historischen Entwicklung manchmal differenzierten, manchmal nivellierten Sprachsystems zu berücksichtigen. So wie Aristoteles zur allgemeinen Natur der Wahrscheinlichkeit bemerkt, es sei wahrscheinlich, daß manchmal etwas Unwahrscheinliches passiert, so ist es auch um die semiotischen Funktionen der morphologischen Elemente bestellt: kategoriale Ambiguität durch Abwesenheit von morphologischer Markierung kann auch ein gewollter, jedenfalls aber geduldeter Zustand sein, auch dort, wo Mittel zur Disambiguierung zur Verfügung stehen.

7.

Rekurrenz

Die Rekurrenz, also das wiederholte Vorkommen, bezieht sich nicht auf die bloße lexikalische Vorkommenshäufigkeit segmentierbarer Einheiten, sondern auf ihr Vorkommen in verschiedenen Kontexten. Deshalb kann unikalen Morphen (Morphen, die nur in einer einzigen gebundenen Erscheinungsform vorkommen) wie /-ges-/ in vergessen, /-gcjd-/ in vergeuden, /-lcjmd-/ in verleumden usw. der Morphemstatus nicht zuerkannt werden. Der antonomastische englische Terminus cranberry morph (und nicht cranberry morpheme) bringt zum Ausdruck, daß Elemente wie die obigen für sich allein genommen bedeutungs-

lose Lautfolgen sind. Das Verbum verleumden ist allerdings ein Grenzfall, da es auch die Form beleumden gibt. Verleumden und beleumden sind semantisch jedoch keineswegs parallel zu Paaren wie verspotten und bespotten, denn das verin verspotten ist ornativexhaustiv (‘jemanden oder etwas in erschöpfendem Ausmaß mit Spott versehen’, wie verdreschen ‘jemanden in erschöpfendem Ausmaß mit Dresche versehen’), das verin verleumden hingegen nicht. Das bein bespotten ist ornativ ohne exhaustive Komponente (‘jemanden oder etwas mit Spott versehen’), das bein beleumden kann es nur dann sein, wenn /-lcjmd-/ eine Bedeutung hat. Eine positive Bestimmung der Semantik von verin verleumden kann ohne Hypothese darüber, was /-lcjmd-/ bedeuten könnte, ebenfalls nicht vorgenommen werden. Erst wenn /-lojmd-/ mit Leumund identifiziert wird, ist eine Interpretation ‘jemandes Leumund schädigen’ möglich. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die Funktion des verin diesem Fall relativ idiosynkratisch ist: man könnte sie als “detrimental” bezeichnen und ein entsprechendes Morphem postulieren, doch würde damit eine Kategorialität vorgetäuscht, die keine empirische Basis hat.

8.

Unähnlichkeit

Die Beobachtungen zur Semantik der Verbalpräfixe ver- und bein 7 haben bereits das Problem aufgeworfen, das in vielen Sprachen bei der Zuordnung von Morphen zu Morphemen zutage treten kann: Das Kriterium der semantischen Wertigkeit bzw. semantischen und grammatischen Funktionalität besagt zunächst nur, daß ein segmentierbares Element des Wortkörpers mit einer semantisch interpretierbaren Bedeutung oder einer grammatischen Funktion verknüpft werden kann (vgl. 5). Was dann noch zu entscheiden bleibt, ist die Individualität dieser Bedeutung oder Funktion auf der Ebene der sprachlichen Signifikate. Für moderne Morphologietheorien, die nicht dogmatisch an einen bestimmten Morphembegriff als deskriptives Prokrustesbett gefesselt sind, sondern Morphe, Allomorphe und Morpheme als mögliche Analyseebenen betrachten, die einem Sprecher zur Verfügung stehen, wenn er sie braucht, ist es wesentlich, herauszuarbeiten, daß produktive Bildungen (die der Sprecher offensichtlich braucht, denn sonst wären sie ja nicht produktiv) eine präziser faßbare Se-

460 mantik bzw. Funktion aufweisen als unproduktive (vgl. Art. 33). In Neologismen wie beampeln, begasen, beschallen, beschottern, bespiken u. dgl. (alle in diesem Abschnitt gegebenen Beispielwörter kommen im einbändigen Duden Universalwörterbuch vor) hat das Präverb eine relativ konstante und vorhersagbare semantische Funktion, mag sie nun ornativ genannt werden oder anders: Wer weiß, was Schotter heißt, wird auch beschottern semantisch interpretieren können, während die Kenntnis der Bedeutung von stechen in keiner Weise zu einer richtigen Deutung von bestechen führt. Das Unähnlichkeitskriterium ist auch auf der Ebene der phonologischen Implementierung von Relevanz. Die Einwort-Definition von Allomorph als ‘Morphemvariante’ läßt zwar offen, inwieweit sich solche Varianten in ihrer lautlichen Erscheinungsform voneinander unterscheiden dürfen, doch hat es sich eingebürgert, weitere Kriterien zur Ausschaltung intuitiv unerwünschter Analyseergebenisse heranzuziehen. Um bloße Synonymie, wie sie vorwiegend bei freien Morphemen in Erscheinung tritt (z. B. Vetter und Cousin) vom morphologischen Selektionsmechanismus fernzuhalten, wird komplementäre Distribution eingefordert. Demnach wäre es ausgeschlossen, die deutschen Suffixe /-çen/ und /-lajn/ als Allomorphe des Morphems {deminutiv} zu bestimmen. Nun sind diese zwar auf den ersten Blick synonym (Tischchen ⫽ Tischlein), in einigen phonologischen Kontexten aber sehr wohl in einer für Allomorphe ganz typischen Weise komplementär verteilt (Büchlein ⫺ *Büchchen, Teilchen ⫺ *Teillein). Übergangsphänomene dieser Art kommen häufig vor, und die Synonymie ist als Phänomen an sich umstritten. In der Tat sind Paare wie Männlein und Männchen nicht synonym, wenn man die zoologische Verwendungsweise von Männchen in Betracht zieht. Es wirkt eine allgemeine Tendenz der semantischen Ausnutzung formaler Distinktionen, die sich auch in den Bereich der Pragmatik erstrecken kann (vgl. Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994). Die Domäne der Allomorphie kann auf Grund solch vielfältiger Unwägbarkeiten nicht klar begrenzt werden (vgl. Carstairs 1984; 1987; Mugdan 1994: 2547). Kernbereich ist jedenfalls die phonologisch und morphologisch konditionierte Alternation (vgl. Art. 47 und 48). Das Spektrum der Realisationsvarianten reicht, in schwacher Abhängigkeit vom jeweiligen konditionierenden Faktor, von der

VII. Allomorphie

Alternation auf allophonischer Ebene bis zur vollständigen Suppletion (vgl. Art. 52). Auf die Skalierung von semiotischen Parametern wie morphotaktischer und morphosemantischer Transparenz und die Gegenüberstellung von prototypischen Komplexen morphologischer Eigenschaften wie derivationell ⫺ flexional wird in der Natürlichen Morphologie besonderer Wert gelegt (vgl. Crocco Galeàs 1998 und Art. 31), einer Theorie, die versucht, die statische Betrachtungsweise zu überwinden, ohne damit gleich die ganze Morphologie in Bereiche anderer Komponenten des Sprachsystems (Phonologie, Syntax, Lexikon) abzuschieben. Daß die Morphologie “amorph” ist, wie Stephen Anderson schon im Titel eines seiner Bücher andeuten will (Anderson 1992), ist nicht die ganze Wahrheit: Sie ist es und sie ist es nicht, je nachdem, von wem sie auf welche Weise und zu welchem Zweck in Anspruch genommen wird. Als zentraler Bereich des Sprachsystems hat sie Anteil an allen drei Popperschen Welten. Die Forschung hat seit den Pionierleistungen Baudouin de Courtenays zumindest ein sicheres Ergebnis erbracht, auf dem für die Zukunft aufgebaut werden kann: Die Zusammenhänge zwischen Form, Funktion und Bedeutung auf der Ebene der Wortstruktur, wie sie sich im Morphembegriff kristallisieren, sind mit reduktionistischen Methoden nicht adäquat erfaßbar. Das Problem der statischen Modellierung dynamischer Vorgänge wird aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach die Sprachwissenschaft in Zukunft noch mehr beschäftigen als bisher. Für die Morphologie bringt dies einen Reformulierungsbedarf mit sich, dem ursprünglich statische Konzepte wie Morphem, Morph und Allomorph zum Opfer fallen könnten, auch wenn sie im Übergang von Item-and-Arrangement- zu Item-and-Process- und Word-and-ParadigmModellen bereits Reformulierungen unterzogen worden sind (vgl. Matthews 21991). Das Desideratum der Anpassung an psycholinguistisch fortgeschrittene Modellierungstendenzen bleibt bestehen.

9.

Zitierte Literatur

Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Barbe, Katharina (1986 [1985]), “19th Century Forerunners of Morpheme Theory”. The LACUS Forum 12, 121⫺131

46. Morphem, Morph und Allomorph Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan N[iecisław] (1895), Versuch einer Theorie phonetischer Alternationen. Straßburg: Trübner [Nachdruck in: Mugdan, Joachim (1984, Hrsg.), Jan Baudouin de Courtenay: Ausgewählte Werke in deutscher Sprache. München: Fink, 51⫺180] Beard, Robert (1995), Lexeme-morpheme Base Morphology: A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation. New York: State University of New York Press Becker, Thomas (1992), Analogie und morphologische Theorie. München: Fink Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1979), Einführung in die Morphologie. Stuttgart usw.: Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbücher 296) Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1985), “Linguistic Terms in German and English Dictionaries”. Lexicographica 1, 3⫺23 Bloomfield, Leonard (1926), “A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language”. Language 2, 153⫺ 164 Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt [21935, London: Allen & Unwin] Canello, Ugo Angelo (1878), “Gli allotropi italiani”. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 3, 285⫺419 Carstairs, Andrew (1984), Constraints on Allomorphy in Inflexion. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London usw.: Croom Helm Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (1992), Current Morphology. London & New York: Routledge Crocco Galeàs, Grazia (1997), Metafora morfologica: Saggio di morfologia naturale. Padova: Unipress Crocco Galeàs, Grazia (1998), The Parameters of Natural Morphology. Padova: Unipress Debrunner, Albert (1917), Griechische Wortbildungslehre. Heidelberg: Winter Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1981), “General Principles of Poetic License in Word Formation”. In: Dietrich, Wolf & Geckeler, Horst (Hrsg.), Logos Semantikos: Studia linguistica in honorem Eugenio Coseriu. Berlin: de Gruyter, 423⫺431 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor/MI: Karoma Press Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1990), “Sketching Submorphemes within Natural Morphology”. In: Meńdez Dosuna, Juliań & Pensado, Carmen (Hrsg.), Naturalists at Krems: Papers from the Workshop on Natural Phonology and Natural Morphology (Krems, 1⫺7 July 1988). Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 33⫺41 Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1986), “How to Fix Interfixes? On the Structure and Pragmatics of Italian (and Spanish, Rus-

461 sian, Polish) Antesuffixal Interfixes and of English ‘Intermorphic Elements’ ”. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 36, 53⫺67 Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1989), “Interfissi e non-interfissi antesuffissali nell’italiano, spagnolo e inglese”. In: L’italiano tra le lingue romanze. Roma: Bulzoni (Pubblicazioni della SLI [⫽ Societa` di Linguistica Italiana] 27), 243⫺252 Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1991), “Interradical Interfixes: Contact and Contrast”. In: Ivir, Vladimir & Kalogjera, Damir (Hrsg.), Languages in Contact and Contrast: Essays in Contact Linguistics [⫽ Festschrift für Rudolf Filipovic´]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 133⫺145 Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1994), Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and Intersifiers in Italian, German, and Other Languages. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter Duden Fremdwörterbuch (1997) ⫽ Duden: Das Fremdwörterbuch. CD-ROM, Version 2.0. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut; Brockhaus Duden Universalwörterbuch (31996) ⫽ Duden ⫺ Deutsches Universalwörterbuch A⫺Z. 3. neu bearbeitete Auflage. CD-ROM. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut Firth, J[ohn] R[upert] (1930), Speech. London: Benn Fuhrhop, Nanna (1998), Grenzfälle morphologischer Einheiten. Tübingen: Stauffenburg (Studien zur Deutschen Grammatik 57) Gessmann, Albert M. (1964), The Codes of Language: An Introduction to General Linguistics. Tampa/FL [Selbstverlag des Autors] Hall, Christopher J. (1992), Morphology and Mind: A Unified Approach to Explanation in Linguistics. London, New York: Routledge Hammarström, Göran (1966), Linguistische Einheiten im Rahmen der modernen Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: Springer (Kommunikation und Kybernetik in Einzeldarstellungen 5) Hamp, Eric P[ratt] (1957), A Glossary of American Technical Linguistic Usage 1925⫺1950. Utrecht, Antwerp: Spectrum (C.I.P.L. [Comite´ International Permanent de Linguistes], Publications of the Committee for Terminology) Hjelmslev, Louis (1938), “Essai d’une theórie des morphe`mes”. In: Actes du IVe Congre`s International de Linguistes. Copenhague, 140⫺151 [Nachdruck in: Hjelmslev, Louis (1959), Essais linguistiques. København: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 12), 152⫺162] Hockett, Charles F[rancis] (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 Hockett, Charles F[rancis] (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231

462 Kettemann, Bernhard (1988), Die Phonologie morphologischer Prozesse im Amerikanischen Englisch. Tübingen: Narr Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1958), “Allophones et Allomorphes”. In: Omagio lui Iorgu Iordan cu prilejul ˆımplinirii a 70 de ani. Bucures¸ti: Ed. Acad. RPR, 495⫺ 500 [Nachdruck in: Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (21973), Esquisses linguistiques, hrsg. v. Eugenio Coseriu, Bd. I. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für Allgemeine Linguistik 16.1), 27⫺34] Loporcaro, Michele (1994), “Allotropia”. In: Beccaria, Gian Luigi & Barbero, Valentina (Hrsg.), Dizionario di linguistica. Torino: Einaudi, 43 Luschützky, Hans Christian (1997), “Sprachtypologie”. In: Ernst, Peter (Hrsg.), Einführung in die synchrone Sprachwissenschaft. Wien: Edition Praesens, Kapitel 15 Maiden, Martin (1991), Interactive Morphonology: Metaphony in Italy. London: Routledge Martinet, Andre´ (1963), Grundzüge der Allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Übers. v. Anna Fuchs. Stuttgart usw.: Kohlhammer (Urban Taschenbücher 69) [⫽ orig. französisch (1960), E´lements de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Colin] Martinet, Andre´ (71969), La linguistique: Guide alphabe´tique. 7e e´dition, sous la direction de Andre´ Martinet, avec la collaboration de Jeanne Martinet et Henriette Walter. Paris: E´ditions Denoe¨l Matthews, Peter H[ugo] (21991), Morphology: An Introduction to the Theory of Word-structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Matthews, Peter H[ugo] (1993), Grammatical Theory in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 67) Mayerthaler, Willi & Fliedl, Günther & Winkler, Christian (1998), Lexikon der natürlichkeitstheoretischen Syntax und Morphosyntax. Tübingen: Stauffenburg McCarthy, John J. (1981), “A Prosodic Theory of Non-concatenative Morphology”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 373⫺418 Mel’cˇuk, I[gor] A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44) Mugdan, Joachim (1986), “Was ist eigentlich ein Morphem?”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 29⫺43 Mugdan, Joachim (1994), “Morphological Units”. In: Asher, Robert E. & Simpson, J. M. Y. (Hrsg.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics,

VII. Allomorphie Bd. 1⫺10. Oxford usw.: Pergamon Press, 2543⫺ 2553 Nichols, Johanna (1986), “Head-marking and Dependent-marking Grammar”. Language 62, 56⫺ 119 Nida, Eugene A[lbert] (1946), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor/MI: University of Michigan Press [21949] Nida, Eugene A[lbert] (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441 Noreen, Adolf & Pollak, Hans W. (1923), Einführung in die wissenschaftliche Betrachtung der Sprache. Halle/S.: Niemeyer Pike, Kenneth L[ee] (1943), “Taxemes and Immediate Constituents”. Language 19, 65⫺82 Pike, Kenneth L[ee] (21967), Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. The Hague: Mouton [11954⫺60, 3 Bde.] Ronneberger-Sibold, Elke (1997), “Sprachökonomie und Wortschöpfung”. In: Thomas Brinkmann & Heinz Klingenberg & Damaris Nübling & Elke Ronneberger-Sibold (Hrsg.), Vergleichende und germanische Philologie und Skandinavistik [Festschrift für Otmar Werner]. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 249⫺261 Spencer, Andrew & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1998, Hrsg.), The Handbook of Morphological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Städtler, Thomas (1998), Lexikon der Psychologie: Wörterbuch⫺Handbuch⫺Studienbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner (Kröners Taschenausgabe 357) Swadesh, Morris (1934), “The Phonemic Principle”. Language 10, 117⫺129 Tagliavini, Carlo (71969), Introduzione alla glottologia, Bd. II: Preliminari fonetici ⫺ Preliminari morfologici. Bologna: Pa`tron Uldall, Hans Jørgen (1957), An Outline of Glossematics, Bd. I: General Theory. København: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 10) Wells, Rulon S. (1949), “Automatic Alternation”. Language 25, 99⫺116 Wierzbicka, Anna (1988), The Semantics of Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Studies in Language Companion Series 18) Zager, David (1979), “Changes in Inflectional Paradigms: In Pursuit of the Morphic Beast”. In: Clyne, Paul R. et al. (Hrsg.), The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 285⫺295

Hans Christian Luschützky, Wien (Österreich)

463

47. Phonologische Konditionierung

47. Phonologische Konditionierung 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

1.

Formale und distributionelle phonologische Konditionierung Primäre und sekundäre phonologische Konditionierung Phonologische Prozesse Phonologisch konditionierte Suppletion Interaktion verschiedener Arten der Konditionierung Theoretische Perspektiven Zitierte Literatur

Formale und distributionelle phonologische Konditionierung

Morpheme verfügen häufig über mehr als eine Formvariante. Bei der Analyse dieser Allomorphe (vgl. Art. 46) ergeben sich zwei wesentliche Fragestellungen: ⫺ Wie lassen sich die Formunterschiede zwischen den Allomorphen erklären? ⫺ Wie kann die Distribution der Allomorphe beschrieben werden? In beiden Problembereichen können phonologische Gegebenheiten eine determinierende Rolle spielen. Wenn sich die Form eines Allomorphs aus den phonologischen Eigenschaften der Umgebung ergibt, in der es auftritt, spricht man davon, daß die Formunterschiede der Allomorphe eines Morphems phonologisch konditioniert (oder phonologisch bedingt) sind. Wenn sich dagegen die Distribution der verschiedenen Allomorphe aus den Eigenschaften der phonologischen Umgebung ergibt, spricht man davon, daß die Distribution der Allomorphe phonologisch konditioniert ist. Gelegentlich wird die phonologische Konditionierung auch als “phonetische” (Hudson 1980: 97; Bauer 1988: 240) oder “phonemische” Konditionierung (Hockett 1958: 281; Matthews 21991: 116) bezeichnet. Der Terminus der phonologischen Konditionierung ist dabei doppeldeutig (vgl. Carstairs 1987: 157). Manche Autoren reservieren ihn allerdings für die engere Lesart, sprechen von phonologischer Konditionierung also nur, wenn die Form der Allomorphe phonologisch erklärt werden kann (vgl. Bußmann 21990: 71). Typischerweise löst eine Beantwortung der Frage nach den formalen Unterschieden zugleich das Distributionsproblem. Insofern ist es nicht verwunderlich, daß im Rahmen der generativen Linguistik, die

nach Möglichkeit für jedes Morphem nur eine einzige zugrundeliegende Form annimmt (vgl. Art. 51), phonologische Konditionierung zumeist als homogenes Phänomen gesehen wird. Allerdings kann umgekehrt die Verteilung zweier Allomorphe phonologisch konditioniert sein, ohne daß sich die Formunterschiede aus der phonologischen Umgebung erklären lassen. In diesem Sinne wird der Terminus der phonologischen Konditionierung auch im Rahmen der generativen Morphologie von einigen Autoren verstanden (vgl. Carstairs 1988; Spencer 1991: 6), und so wurde er im Kontext des amerikanischen Distributionalismus (vgl. Art. 20) in die linguistische Diskussion eingebracht (Nida 1948: 429, 440), auch wenn bald bereits eine phonologische Konditionierung der Form von Allomorphen in Erwägung gezogen worden ist (Nida 21949: 16) ⫺ wenngleich als untergeordnete Fragestellung. Wenn man phonologische Konditionierung mit anderen Arten der Konditionierung konfrontiert, z. B. mit morphologischer oder syntaktischer (vgl. Art. 48), dann steht das auf die Distribution bezogene Verständnis im Vordergrund und nicht das auf die Form bezogene, denn die Form eines Allomorphs kann immer nur durch eine phonologische Umgebung determiniert werden, nicht durch eine morphologische oder syntaktische. Wenn man andererseits überlegt, welche Arten phonologischer Prozesse an der phonologischen Konditionierung beteiligt sind, so steht eher das auf die Formunterschiede bezogene Verständnis im Vordergrund, denn phonologische Prozesse sind geeignet, Formvarianten herzuleiten. Die folgenden Ausführungen berücksichtigen beide Lesarten des fraglichen Terminus, die als distributionelle phonologische Konditionierung bzw. formale phonologische Konditionierung voneinander geschieden werden.

2.

Primäre und sekundäre phonologische Konditionierung

Während gelegentlich Alternationen, die von der phonologischen Umgebung abhängen, durchweg als “automatisch” bezeichnet werden (Bloomfield 1933: 211), findet sich häufiger die Ansicht, daß diesbezüglich zwei Arten der phonologischen Konditionierung zu un-

464

VII. Allomorphie

terscheiden sind (vgl. Hockett 1958: 281). Eine automatische Alternation liegt danach vor, wenn ihr Ausbleiben zu ungrammatischen Phonemsequenzen führen würde, im andern Fall ist sie nicht-automatisch. Diese Unterscheidung wird auch als “enge statische Alternation” gegenüber “weiter statischer Alternation” bezeichnet (Wells 1949: 105⫺ 107). Ein Beispiel für eine automatische Alternation in diesem Sinne findet sich im Fox, das zur algonkischen Sprachfamilie gehört. In dieser Sprache haben Wörter typischerweise zwei Allomorphe: Ein Allomorph endet mit einem Vokal, im anderen fehlt dieser Vokal. So verfügt das Wort für ‘und’ über die Allomorphe mina und min. Im Hinblick auf externes Sandhi zeigt sich, daß vor konsonantinitialen Wörtern das vokalfinale Allomorph erscheint, vor einem vokalinitialen Wort aber das kürzere Allomorph. Die Auswahl der Allomorphe ist damit phonologisch konditioniert, weil die phonologische Umgebung die Wahl bestimmt, und sie ist automatisch, weil die Wahl des jeweils anderen Allomorphs zu einer im Fox unzulässigen Phonemsequenz führen würde, nämlich zum Aufeinandertreffen zweier Vokale respektive zweier Konsonanten über eine Wortgrenze hinweg. Häufig kann eine Alternation nur dann als automatisch eingeschätzt werden, wenn ein bestimmtes Allomorph als Basisform angesetzt wird. Dies zeigt sich am Verhalten des Pluralmorphems im Englischen. Dieses verfügt über drei regelmäßige Allomorphe, deren Distribution in phonologischen Termini beschrieben werden kann: (1) (a) {lag} ⫹ {plural} (b) {lack} ⫹ {plural} (c) {lass} ⫹ {plural} {lash} ⫹ {plural}

J J J J

[lægz] [læks] [læsez] [læsez]

Offensichtlich hängt die Verteilung der Pluralallomorphe vom stammfinalen Phonem ab, mithin von einer phonologischen Umgebung: Nach Sibilanten folgt das Allomorph [ez], nach anderen stimmlosen Konsonanten das Allomorph [s] und nach anderen stimmhaften Phonemen (einschließlich Vokalen) [z]. Im Strukturalismus ist es üblich, phonologische Konditionierung mit dem Symbol ⬃ zu markieren, so daß die vorliegende Allomorphie formelhaft als -ez ⬃ -z ⬃ -s zusammengefaßt werden kann (Nida 1948: 422). Wenn das Allomorph [z] als Basisform angesetzt wird, läßt sich die Alternation als automatisch charakterisieren, weil das Phonem /z/

aus phonologischen Gründen weder nach Sibilanten noch nach stimmlosen Konsonanten auftreten darf. Wenn dagegen das Allomorph [s] als Basisform gewählt wird, ist die Alternation nicht mehr automatisch, weil dieses aus phonologischen Gründen nach stimmhaften Sonoranten erscheinen dürfte, wo es tatsächlich aber nicht auftritt. So ist zwar fence [fins] ein mögliches Wort des Englischen, aber keine mögliche Pluralform. Ebenso wäre die Alternation als nicht-automatisch zu charakterisieren, wenn das Allomorph [ez] als Basisform angenommen wird, weil die Phonologie des Englischen die Distribution dieser Form gänzlich unbeschränkt läßt. Tatsächlich sind alle drei Allomorphe als mögliche Basisformen in der Literatur diskutiert worden (zu einem Überblick vgl. Zwicky 1975). Ob eine Alternation als automatisch zu charakterisieren ist, hängt folglich nicht nur von den sprachlichen Daten ab, sondern insbesondere von der theoretischen Bewertung. Das gleiche gilt für die Scheidung von formaler und distributioneller phonologischer Konditionierung: Während die englische Pluralallomorphie zumeist als formal phonologisch konditioniert gesehen wird, wird sie gelegentlich als lediglich distributionell phonologisch konditioniert analysiert (Hudson 1980: 104). In diesem Zusammenhang ist eine Terminologie vorgeschlagen worden, die ohne die Bestimmung einer Basisform auskommt (Lipka 1969: 165). Von den drei Allomorphen des englischen Pluralmorphems ist danach [ez] “rein phonologisch konditioniert”, da es in einer phonologischen Umgebung auftritt, in der die anderen beiden Allomorphe prinzipiell ausgeschlossen sind, nämlich nach Sibilanten. Damit bestimmen generelle Regularitäten der Lautverbindungsmöglichkeiten des Englischen die Distribution des Allomorphs [ez]. Die Wahl der Allomorphe [z] und [s] ist dagegen “teilweise morphologisch konditioniert”. Der Grund hierfür liegt darin, daß die phonologischen Umgebungen, in denen sie auftreten, nicht genau nur eines der drei Allomorphe zulassen, sondern mehrere. Daß bei der Pluralbildung beispielsweise nach Vokalen nur das Allomorph [z] möglich ist, folgt nicht aus Regularitäten der englischen Phonologie, sondern liegt an Bedingungen der Kombination der fraglichen Morpheme. Freilich kann die Distribution der Allomorphe dieser beiden Typen der Konditionierung trotz der konstatierten Unterschiede in rein phonologischen Termini beschrieben wer-

465


den. Insofern handelt es sich auch bei der teilweisen morphologischen Konditionierung eigentlich um eine Form der phonologischen Konditionierung. Diese ist deshalb auch als sekundäre phonologische Konditionierung bezeichnet worden, während die reine phonologische Konditionierung hiervon als primäre phonologische Konditionierung geschieden worden ist (Kastovsky 1971: 16).

3.

Phonologische Prozesse

Fälle von phonologisch konditionierter Allomorphie können danach klassifiziert werden, welche phonologischen Prozesse an ihnen beteiligt sind. Steht bei der Analyse die formale phonologische Konditionierung im Vordergrund, werden die phonologischen Prozesse dann dafür verantwortlich gemacht, die Allomorphe aus einer Basisform abzuleiten, bei der es sich um eines der existierenden Allomorphe handeln kann, aber auch um eine abstrakte Form (vgl. Art. 51). Steht dagegen die distributionelle Konditionierung im Vordergrund, beschreiben phonologische Prozesse die formalen Beziehungen der Allomorphe, die als in einer Liste enthalten angesetzt werden. Häufig haben diese phonologischen Prozesse natürlichen Charakter (vgl. dazu Art. 31) bzw. sind phonetisch motiviert und spielen im phonologischen System der fraglichen Sprache auch anderweitig eine wichtige Rolle. Dies ist jedoch nicht notwendig der Fall. Immerhin finden sich Fälle von phonologisch konditionierter Suppletion (vgl. 4 und Art. 52), bei denen die entsprechenden Allomorphe in keiner vernünftigerweise als phonologisch zu erklärenden Beziehung zueinander stehen. Außerdem ist zu bedenken, daß die Natürlichkeit (vgl. Art. 31) der beteiligten phonologischen Prozesse auch von einer geschickten Wahl der Basisform des Morphems abhängen kann. Deshalb ist als Argument für die Bestimmung eines solchen Basisallomorphs vorgeschlagen worden, diejenige Form zu wählen, bei der die Distribution der Alternanten mit möglichst natürlichen phonologischen Prozessen beschrieben werden kann (Nida 1948: 426). 3.1. Assimilation und Dissimilation Die distributionelle phonologische Konditionierung der Pluralallomorphe des Englischen ist als Assimilation und Dissimilation beschrieben worden (Lipka 1969). Wenn dem

Pluralmorphem ein Sibilant vorausgeht, bestimmt der Prozeß der Dissimilation, daß das Allomorph [ez] auftreten muß, weil die Wahl eines der anderen beiden Allomorphe zu einer Abfolge zweier im wesentlichen gleicher Laute führen würde. Geht dem Pluralmorphem ein anderer Laut voraus, dann überträgt dieser sein Merkmal für Stimmhaftigkeit auf das Pluralmorphem, was einen Fall (progressiver) Assimilation darstellt. Assimilation ist derjenige phonologische Prozeß, der am häufigsten an phonologischer Konditionierung beteiligt ist. Dies liegt unter anderem daran, daß es sich hierbei um einen Oberbegriff handelt, unter dem zahlreiche spezifischere Prozesse subsumiert werden können (vgl. Lass 1984: 171). Besonders häufig von Assimilation betroffen sind Nasale. Das englische Präfix in- verfügt über drei Allomorphe, nämlich [=m], [=n] und [=n]. Die Distribution ist phonologisch konditioniert: Das Allomorph mit labialem Nasal erscheint vor labialen Konsonanten (impossible), das Allomorph mit velarem Nasal erscheint vor velaren Konsonaten (incomplete, ausgesprochen [=nkempli:t]), das Allomorph mit alveolarem Nasal erscheint vor alveolaren Konsonanten (intolerable), aber auch vor glottalen Konsonanten (inhibited) und vor Vokalen (inactive). Dieses letztere Allomorph bildet als Default-Fall die Basisform, womit die phonologische Konditionierung als regressive Assimilation des Artikulationsorts beschrieben werden kann. Die gleiche Art phonologischer Konditionierung findet sich in einer gänzlich unverwandten Sprache, nämlich dem in Sierra Leone gesprochenen westatlantischen Temne. Das definite Pluralpräfix einer bestimmten Nominalklasse (vgl. Art. 98) weist hier dasselbe Allomorphieverhalten auf (am-baj ‘def.pl-Oberhaupt’, an-tik ‘def.plFremder’, an-kabi ‘def.pl-Hufschmied’). Für phonologische Konditionierung gilt generell eine Adjazenzbeschränkung, die die unmittelbare lineare Nachbarschaft der relevanten phonologischen Einheiten fordert (Plank 1984: 341). Einzuschränken ist diese Bedingung dahingehend, daß phonologische Konditionierung über andere phonologische Einheiten hinweg möglich ist, wenn das konditionierte Segment das nächstgelegene der fraglichen phonologischen Klasse ist. Ein vieldiskutiertes Beispiel für eine hierunter fallende Distanzassimilation liefert das Türkische: (2)

Singular (a) köy (b) son

Plural köyler sonlar

‘Dorf’ ‘Ende’

466 Das Pluralmorphem verfügt über zwei Allomorphe, nämlich -ler und -lar. Die Distribution dieser Allomorphe ist ausschließlich phonologisch konditioniert; sie richtet sich nach den Vokalen der Basis, also des Nominalstamms. Handelt es sich bei diesen Stammvokalen um vordere Vokale, so wird das Allomorph -ler ausgewählt, das selbst über einen vorderen Vokal verfügt; sind die Stammvokale dagegen nicht-vordere, so erscheint das Allomorph -lar mit nicht-vorderem Vokal. Dieses Phänomen wird als Vokalharmonie (vgl. Art. 58) bezeichnet: Innerhalb eines phonologischen Worts gleichen sich alle Vokale hinsichtlich bestimmter Merkmale, in diesem Fall hinsichtlich des Merkmals [⫾ vorn]. Der Vokal des Pluralmorphems wird also hinsichtlich dieses Merkmals an den vorangegangenen Vokal assimiliert. Da innerhalb eines phonologischen Worts (im nativen türkischen Wortschatz) alle Vokale über denselben Wert bezüglich des Merkmals [⫾ vorn] verfügen müssen, handelt es sich hierbei um primär phonologisch konditionierte Allomorphie. Diese Bewertung ist im übrigen unabhängig von der Bestimmung einer Basisform. Wird für das Pluralmorphem eine abstrakte zugrundeliegende Form angesetzt, in der der Vokal als [⫺ hoch, ⫺ rund] spezifiziert ist, leistet die Vokalharmonie die Bestimmung der Form der Allomorphe, also die Festlegung des unterspezifizierten Merkmals [⫾ vorn]. Assimilation kann auch über Wortgrenzen hinaus erfolgen. Im Russischen haben Nomina, die auf einen Obstruenten enden, typischerweise zwei Allomorphe. So kann das Wort für ‘Zwiebel’ sowohl luk als auch lug lauten. Im Normalfall erscheint die Variante mit stimmlosem Obstruenten. In manchen Konstellationen würden sich dann aber Obstruentenverbindungen mit unterschiedlichen Werten für Stimmhaftigkeit ergeben, beispielsweise wenn das Konditionalmorphem by folgt. Solche Verbindungen sind im Russischen ausgeschlossen, weshalb hier das Allomorph lug gewählt werden muß, das folglich primär phonologisch konditioniert ist. Die regressive Stimmhaftigkeitsassimilation überschreitet damit also eine Wortgrenze. Phonologisch gesehen ist by freilich ein Klitikum (vgl. Spencer 1991: 55 und Art. 41), so daß zwar Assimilation über die Grenzen zweier grammatischer Wörter zu konstatieren ist, aber doch innerhalb eines phonologischen Worts. Während Assimilation trotz aller Vielfaltigkeit als homogener phonologischer Prozeß

VII. Allomorphie

beschrieben werden kann, bei dem Laute sich hinsichtlich bestimmter Merkmale aneinander angleichen (zu einem Fall von Totalassimilation vgl. 3.2), handelt es sich bei Dissimilation um einen Terminus, der die Motivation bestimmter Allomorphieerscheinungen klärt, nicht aber um einen einheitlichen phonologischen Prozeß. So kann das in 2 besprochene Beispiel aus dem Fox als Dissimilation interpretiert werden: Die Wahl der Allomorphe ist dadurch bestimmt, daß aufeinandertreffende Segmente möglichst unähnlich sind, insbesondere, daß nicht zwei Vokale aufeinandertreffen. Der phonologische Prozeß, der in diesem Fall die Dissimilation gewährleistet, ist allerdings die Tilgung eines finalen Elements (Apokope). Die beim englischen Pluralmorphem zu beobachtende Dissimilation dagegen wird durch einen entgegengesetzten phonologischen Prozeß bewirkt, nämlich durch Epenthese eines Vokals (jedenfalls wenn das Allomorph [z] als Basis genommen wird). Epenthetisch können auch Konsonanten genutzt werden, um Dissimilation zu bewirken, und dies auch über Wortgrenzen hinweg. Der indefinite Artikel des Englischen erscheint als [e] vor Konsonanten und als [en] vor Vokalen. Der Nasal hat hier die Funktion, das Aufeinandertreffen zweier Vokale zu vermeiden. Dabei ist die Wortart des auf den Artikel folgenden Worts unerheblich, entscheidend für die Distribution der Allomorphe ist allein die phonologische Umgebung. Diese Allomorphie ist sekundär phonologisch konditioniert, weil das Aufeinandertreffen von Vokalen (bzw. eingeschränkter das Aufeinandertreffen von Schwa mit einem weiteren Vokal) über Wortgrenzen hinweg im Englischen nicht prinzipiell ausgeschlossen ist, wie das Beispiel idea is [ajdi:e =z] zeigt. Nicht erlaubt ist diese Konstellation aber beispielsweise in der Standardvariante des britischen Englisch, in der zur Dissimilation nach mittleren und tiefen Vokalen ein Vibrant eingefügt wird: [ajdi:eu=z]. Schwierig ist es in diesem Falle allerdings, Morphemgrenzen zu ziehen: Gehört der Vibrant zum ersten oder zum zweiten Morphem oder repräsentiert er ein eigenes Morphem? Je nach Entscheidung ergeben sich ungewöhnliche Allomorphieverhältnisse, die es nahelegen, diese Alternation als rein phonologische Erscheinung anzusehen, die nicht auf der Morphemebene zu analysieren ist (vgl. Ortmann 1998: 53⫺57). Dies impliziert allerdings einen Verzicht auf eine


vollständige Zuordnung segmentalen Materials zu Morphemen. Dissimilation kann auch mit gänzlich anderen Mitteln bewirkt werden. In der Tschadischen Sprache Hausa existiert ein Morphem, dessen Allomorphe sich lediglich auf tonaler Ebene unterscheiden: Das Stabilisierungsmorphem nee verfügt entweder über einen hohen oder einen tiefen Ton, und zwar abhängig von der phonologischen Umgebung, genauer dem vorangehenden Ton. Folgt es einem Wort, das mit einem tiefen Ton endet, trägt es selbst hohen Ton und umgekehrt. Der Effekt dieser Allomorphie ist also eine tonale Alternation. Diese Art der Dissimilation ist wiederum sekundär phonologisch konditioniert, weil die Folge zweier gleicher Töne im Hausa ansonsten möglich ist. 3.2. Andere natürliche phonologische Prozesse Reduplikation (vgl. Art. 57) stellt den Paradefall formaler phonologischer Konditionierung dar. In der australischen Sprache Yidiny bilden Nomina ihre Pluralformen so, daß die ersten beiden Silben des Basisnomens an das Nomen präfigiert werden (gindalba ‘Eidechse’, gindal-gindalba ‘pl-Eidechse’). Demnach verfügt das Pluralmorphem über annähernd soviele Allomorphe, wie es Nomina in dieser Sprache gibt. Die Form dieser verschiedenen Allomorphe ist in offensichtlicher Weise phonologisch konditioniert, weil sie sich vollständig nach der phonologischen Form des Basisnomens richtet. Natürlich ist auch die Distribution (sekundär) phonologisch konditioniert, obwohl dies gewöhnlich nicht so ausgedrückt wird (zu einer Ausnahme vgl. Nida 21949: 15), denn dies würde die Verfügbarkeit einer Liste aller existierenden Allomorphe voraussetzen. Hier zeigt sich, daß das Konzept der distributionellen phonologischen Konditionierung von Allomorphen an Grenzen stößt, weil hier die Distribution einer prinzipiell nicht-endlichen Liste von Allomorphen bestimmt werden muß. Für die formale phonologische Konditionierung stellt diese Art der Reduplikation kein Problem dar, weil ein zugrundeliegendes Präfix angenommen werden kann, bei dem lediglich ein Silbenskelett vorgegeben ist, während die Segmentpositionen unspezifiziert sind (Marantz 1982: 454⫺456). Allerdings existieren auch Fälle reduplikativer Allomorphie, bei denen der Reduplikant, also die teilweise oder vollständige Kopie der Basis, über keine konstante prosodi-

467 sche Form verfügt. Hierbei lassen sich dann Dissimilationseffekte beobachten. In der malaiopolynesischen Sprache Ponape (Mikronesien) gibt es ein Präfix, das einsilbige Basen redupliziert, dabei aber in spezifischer Weise modifiziert, und zwar dergestalt, daß das resultierende Wort aus einer leichten und einer schweren Silbe besteht. (Eine leichte Silbe endet mit einem kurzen Vokal, eine schwere mit einem langen Vokal oder einer Folge von Kurzvokal plus Konsonant, wobei allerdings wortfinale Konsonanten bei der Berechnung der Silbenschwere in dieser Sprache nicht mitzählen.) Besteht die Basis aus einer schweren Silbe, erscheint das Präfix als leichte Silbe (du-duup ‘tauchen’), besteht die Basis aus einer leichten Silbe, hat das Präfix die Form einer schweren Silbe (paa-pa ‘flechten’ und lal-lal ‘ein Geräusch machen’). Eine einheitliche prosodische Form läßt sich allerdings dann aufrechterhalten, wenn nicht die Form des Präfixes allein, sondern der gesamte Stamm, also Reduplikant plus Basis, in Betracht gezogen wird (McCarthy & Prince 1995: 334f.). Gelegenheit kann der phonologische Prozeß der Metathese (vgl. Art. 59) als phonologisch konditioniert charakterisiert werden. Ein Beispiel liefert die ostkuschitische Sprache Kambata. In dieser Sprache ist innerhalb von Wörtern die Sequenz von Obstruent plus Sonorant ausgeschlossen. Folgt ein sonorantinitiales Suffix einem Stamm, der auf einen einfachen Obstruenten endet, tauschen die Phoneme an der Morphemgrenze ihre Plätze (it-neemmi J inteemmi ‘wir haben gegessen’). Problematisch ist im Fall der Metathese die Notation der Allomorphe, denn alle Verbstämme, die mit einem Obstruenten enden, müßten lexikalisch hierfür markiert sein, wenn die Allomorphie als distributionell phonologisch konditioniert analysiert werden soll. Ein Ausweg hieraus bietet die Annahme einer generellen Suffigierungsregel, die die Abfolge von Stamm und Suffix dergestalt festlegt, daß an der Morphemgrenze die Reihenfolge der betroffenen Segmente prinzipiell frei ist und erst durch bestimmte phonologische Regeln festgelegt wird (Hudson 1980: 109). Zwei Allomorphe können sich weiterhin dadurch unterscheiden, daß eine Form über einen Vollvokal verfügt, während in der anderen Form der Vokal in reduzierter Form vorliegt. Bei einem solchen Reduktionsvokal handelt es sich häufig um das Schwa. Im Niederländischen erscheint das Pronomen für die 2. Person Singular Nominativ in zwei For-

468 men, nämlich als [jij] unter Betonung und als [je] in unbetonter Position. Da Schwa-Silben nicht in betonter Stellung auftreten können, ist das letztere Allomorph primär phonologisch konditioniert, während das erstere sekundär phonologisch konditioniert ist. Eine ähnliche Allomorphie findet sich auch im Deutschen. Unbetonte Vollvokale, die von rhythmisch prominenten Silben umgeben sind, können zu Schwa abgeschwächt werden wie etwa die jeweils zweiten Vokale in Apparat, Aspirin und Känguruh. Die Art der Konditionierung ist jedoch fundamental verschieden von der des niederländischen Beispiels, denn welches Allomorph gewählt wird, hängt primär nicht von der phonologischen Umgebung, sondern von der Stilebene ab: Die vollvokalische Form ist typisch für die Explizitlautung, die schwahaltige für die Umgangslautung (vgl. Vennemann 1991: 212). Die Beziehungen zwischen phonologischer Konditionierung und dieser stilistischen Konditionierung sind wenig untersucht. Eine größere Gruppe von phonologisch konditionierter Allomorphie ist mit verschiedenen Formen der Tilgung verbunden. Hierbei kann danach unterschieden werden, ob ein initiales, ein internes oder ein finales Segment getilgt wird oder ob ein explizites Allomorph mit einer Nullform alterniert. Für letzteres gibt das Partizip II des Deutschen ein Beispiel. Auf der Präfixseite verfügt dieses Morphem über zwei Allomorphe, nämlich geund ø. Im Normalfall wird ge- präfigiert (gekaúft, ge-heíratet); wenn aber der Hauptakzent des Partizips dadurch nicht auf der zweiten Silbe liegt, wird es wieder getilgt bzw. das Nullallomorph gewählt (ver-kaúft, diskutiért; vgl. Neef 1996: 233⫺237). Die beiden Allomorphe sind sich phonologisch sehr unähnlich, via Tilgung aber dennoch auseinander ableitbar, jedenfalls in dieser Richtung. Über die Akzentstruktur ist die Distribution phonologisch konditioniert, und zwar sekundär, weil ansonsten im Deutschen das Aufeinandertreffen zweier unbetonter Silben durchaus möglich ist (vergese´llschaften). Häufiger betrifft Tilgung als erklärender Faktor phonologischer Konditionierung einzelne Segmente. Das Morphem für die 2. Person Singular Präsens Indikativ Indefinit im Ungarischen verfügt u. a. über die Allomorphe -asz und -sz (zu einem dritten Allomorph vgl. 4). Da das [a] als Epenthesevokal im Ungarischen nicht motiviert werden kann, ist es sinnvoll, die vokalhaltige Form als Basisallomorph anzusetzen. Dieser Vokal wird in einer phonologisch charakterisierbaren Umgebung

VII. Allomorphie

getilgt, nämlich wenn es ansonsten zu einem Aufeinandertreffen zweier Vokale kommen würde. Die initiale Tilgung (Aphärese) ist folglich formal phonologisch konditioniert und dient der Dissimilation. Tilgungsphänomene können auch unter die Oberbegriffe Assimilation und Dissimilation fallen. Wie in 3.1 am Beispiel des Fox illustriert, kann eine Apokope der Dissimilation dienen. Genauso kann eine Apokope aber auch mit Assimilation verbunden sein. Im Deutschen verfügt das Morphem für die 2. Person Singular Präsens über drei phonologisch konditionierte Allomorphe. Während im Normalfall das Allomorph -st an den Verbstamm angefügt wird (kauf-st, plan-st), erscheint nach alveolaren Plosiven das Allomorph -est (bad-est, reit-est) und nach alveolaren Sibilanten -t (ras-t, beiß-t). Dieser letzte Fall kann als phonologisch konditionierte Tilgung beschrieben werden, aber auch als Assimilation in dem Sinne, daß beim Aufeinandertreffen zweier gleicher Laute diese zu einem verschmelzen. Letztere Deutung wird durch umgangssprachliche Daten unterstützt, denn auch nach postalveolaren Sibilanten läßt sich diese Verschmelzung beobachten (wäsch-t neben wäsch-st). Damit handelt es sich bei dieser Allomorphie um progressive Totalassimilation. 3.3. Unnatürliche Prozesse Die zuletzt besprochenen Daten liefern zugleich ein Beispiel für eine Allomorphie, die nicht ohne weiteres als natürlicher phonologischer Prozeß beschrieben werden kann. Zwar läßt sich die Distribution des Allomorphs -est in phonologischen Termini beschreiben, aber es kann kein einschlägiger phonologischer Prozeß hierfür verantwortlich gemacht werden. Die Schwa-Epenthese läßt Dissimilation als Grund erwarten, aber warum sollte das Aufeinandertreffen von alveolarem Plosiv und alveolarem Sibilanten zu Dissimilation führen, während bei analogen Morphemverbindungen das Aufeinandertreffen zweier alveolarer Sibilanten zu Totalassimilation führt? Zudem ist diese Allomorphie nicht primär phonologisch konditioniert, sondern nur sekundär, weil Konsonantencluster aus alveolarem Plosiv und alveolarem Sibilanten durchaus möglich sind, auch in Formen der 2. Person Singular Präsens (reizt). Erklärbar wird dieses Allomorphieverhalten, wenn als Basis nicht der Verbstamm, sondern die Form der 3. Person Singular Präsens angesetzt wird. In dieser Form erscheint das Schwa tatsächlich zur Dissimilation, um das

469


Aufeinandertreffen zweier alveolarer Plosive zu verhindern. In der 2. Person Singular Präsens ist das Schwa genau dann vorhanden, wenn es auch in der 3. Person Singular Präsens vorhanden ist (Neef 1996: 173). Ein Fall, der sich zwar mit Blick auf die diachrone Entwicklung erklären läßt (Kenstowicz 1994: 75⫺78), der sich synchron aber als unnatürliche Alternation präsentiert, findet sich im Polnischen. Hier verfügen viele Nomina über zwei Allomorphe, die sich in ihrem Stammvokal voneinander unterscheiden, der im einen Allomorph [o] lautet, im anderen [u]. Diese Allomorphie zeigt sich z. B. im Vergleich von Singular- und Pluralformen (sul ‘Salz’, sole ‘Salze’). Die Alternation läßt sich so beschreiben, daß der Stammvokal [u] lautet, wenn ihm ein (zugrundeliegend) stimmhafter nicht-nasaler wortfinaler Konsonant folgt, in allen anderen Fällen aber [o]. Merkwürdig an dieser phonologisch konditionierten Vokalhebung ist, daß sie phonologisch nicht motiviert ist: Die phonologische Umgebung liefert keinen Grund dafür, warum der Vokal in diesem spezifischen Kontext angehoben werden muß.

4.

Phonologisch konditionierte Suppletion

Wenn phonologische Konditionierung in die zwei prinzipiell voneinander unabhängigen Phänomenbereiche der formalen und der distributionellen Konditionierung aufgespalten werden kann, ist zu erwarten, daß es Allomorphieerscheinungen gibt, die unter keinen Umständen als formal phonologisch konditioniert erklärt werden können, deren Distribution aber eindeutig von der phonologischen Umgebung abhängt. Tatsächlich existieren eine Reihe solcher Fälle von Suppletion (vgl. Art. 52), die als distributionell phonologisch konditioniert zu erklären sind (vgl. Carstairs 1987: 18⫺21; 1988). Da die fraglichen Allomorphe formal nicht aufeinander zu beziehen sind, ist anzunehmen, daß sie lexikalisch gespeichert vorliegen, sie also formal lexikalisch konditioniert sind (vgl. Art. 48). Dies gilt für alle Allomorphe, die sekundär distributionell phonologisch konditioniert sind. Im Ungarischen wird das Morphem für die 2. Person Singular Präsens Indikativ Indefinit nicht nur durch die formal phonologisch konditionierten Allomorphe -asz und -sz ausgedrückt (vgl. 3.2), sondern auch durch das

Allomorph -ol, dessen Form als suppletiv zu kennzeichnen ist. Dennoch läßt sich die Distribution mit phonologischen Termini erklären: -ol tritt nach Stämmen auf, die auf Sibilanten enden, ansonsten erscheint die Form -(a)sz. Ein ähnliches Beispiel hierfür liefert die Bantu-Sprache Fang. Die Nominalklasse 5 dieser Sprache verfügt über zwei unterschiedliche Klassenmarker, nämlich a- und dz-, die offensichtlich nicht auf eine gemeinsame zugrundeliegende Form zurückgeführt werden können. Dennoch sind diese Alternanten phonologisch konditioniert: a- tritt vor konsonantinitialen Stämmen auf, dz- vor vokalinitialen. Diese Fälle lassen sich immerhin so motivieren, daß hier dissimilatorischen Tendenzen Rechnung getragen wird, denn die Allomorphie im Ungarischen dient dazu, Sibilantencluster zu vermeiden, während im Fang das Aufeinandertreffen von Konsonanten bzw. Vokalen vermieden wird. Allerdings findet sich phonologisch konditionierte Suppletion auch in Fällen, bei denen natürliche phonologische Prozesse offensichtlich keine Rolle spielen. In der australischen Sprache Warlpiri verfügt das Ergativmorphem über zwei Allomorphe. Die Form -ngku tritt an zweisilbige Stämme, die Form -rlu an längere Stämme. Im Italienischen erscheint der Verbstamm ‘gehen’ in zwei Formen, und zwar als va(d)unter Betonung und als and- in unbetonter Stellung. Diese Beispiele phonologisch konditionierter Suppletion zeigen, daß auch das Konzept der formalen phonologischen Konditionierung begrenzt ist und daß sich durchaus Fälle finden lassen, die nur als distributionell phonologisch konditioniert charakterisiert werden können. Insofern handelt es sich bei phonologischer Konditionierung tatsächlich um zwei distinkte Phänomenbereiche, auch wenn es einen breiten Überlappungsbereich gibt.

5.

Interaktion verschiedener Arten der Konditionierung

In der australischen Sprache Warumungu findet sich ein Beispiel für ein besonders komplexes Allomorphieverhalten, bei dem verschiedene Formen phonologischer Konditionierung interagieren. Grammatische Kasus werden in dieser Sprache durch Suffixe am Nomen markiert. Das Ergativsuffix verfügt über eine große Anzahl von Allomorphen, deren Distribution mit wenigen Ausnahmen

470

VII. Allomorphie

phonologisch erklärt werden kann. Die folgende Aufstellung zeigt einen Teil der anzutreffenden Allomorphe (vereinfacht nach Simpson 1998: 718f.): AlloFinales morph Stammsegment

Beispiel

Übersetzung

(a)

/ngV/

[V]

(b)

/V/

[J]

(c) (d) (e) (f)

/dV/ /dø V/ / V/ /iMci/

[n] [nø ] [M] [l]

[maløa-nga] [gadø i-ngi] [abaJ-a] [lunø guJ-u] [gayin-di] [gaJinø -dø i] [ auaM- a] [yinal-iMci]

‘Blatt’ ‘Mann’ ‘Sprache’ ‘Rippe’ ‘Bumerang’ ‘Blut’ ‘Zunge’ ‘ängstlich’

f

f

f

Tab. 47.1: Ergativ-Allomorphie im Warumungu, bimoraische Basen

Drei verschiedene Formen phonologischer Konditionierung interagieren hier: Zum einen sind die Ergativallomorphe sensitiv für das Silbengewicht. Die Allomorphe bilden zwei distinkte Klassen in Abhängigkeit davon, ob der Nominalstamm bimoraisch ist oder ob er über drei oder mehr Moren verfügt. Im Warumungu zählen nur Vokale für die Berechnung des Silbengewichts, so daß bimoraische Stämme entweder über zwei kurze Vokale verfügen oder über einen langen. In Tabelle 47.1 sind nur diejenigen Allomorphe aufgeführt, die bimoraische Stämme selegieren. Für schwerere Basen gibt es eine etwa gleich umfangreiche Liste von Allomorphen, deren Distribution z. T. von komplexeren und weniger eindeutigen Bedingungen abhängt als die der Allomorphe für bimoraische Basen. Prinzipiell ist die Frage, aus welcher Klasse eine Basis das Allomorph auswählt, distributionell phonologisch konditioniert, und zwar sekundär in dem Sinne, daß die aufgrund des Silbengewichts nicht in Frage kommenden Allomorphe nicht deshalb ausgeschlossen sind, weil sie zu phonologisch unzulässigen Strukturen führen würden. Weiterhin zeigen einige Allomorphe Vokalharmonie derart, daß der Vokal vieler Allomorphe identisch ist mit dem letzten Vokal des Nominalstamms. Da das Warumungu drei Vokale besitzt (/i/, /a/ und /u/), handelt es sich bei den ersten fünf aufgeführten Allomorphen folglich jeweils um drei verschiedene Allomorphe. Diese formale phonologische Konditionierung ist als sekundär zu charakterisieren, weil Vokalharmonie kein generelles Merkmal des phonologischen Systems des Warumungu ist, wie das Beispiel unter (f) belegt.

Schließlich hängt die Wahl des Allomorphs vom stammfinalen Segment ab. Hier kommen nur Vokale und Sonoranten vor, während Halbvokale und Plosive in dieser Position fast gänzlich fehlen (wie alle PamaNyunga-Sprachen besitzt das Warumungu keine Frikative). Alle Allomorphe sind unter dieser Perspektive als sekundär phonologisch konditioniert zu charakterisieren. Zwar kann das Allomorph unter (a) aus phonotaktischen Gründen nur auf vokalfinale Stämme folgen, weil sich sonst Folgen von drei Konsonanten ergeben würden, aber auch die Allomorphe unter (c), (d) und (e) könnten in dieser Umgebung auftreten. Weitere rein phonotaktische Einschränkungen läßt das Inventar der Ergativallomorphe nicht erkennen, weil insbesondere das Aufeinandertreffen zweier Vokale im Warumungu nicht ungrammatisch ist (auch wenn dies typischerweise zu Vokalkoaleszenz führt). In geringem Umfang gibt es auch morphologisch konditionierte Ergativallomorphe im Warumungu, und zwar in zweierlei Hinsicht: Einige bimoraische Stämme selegieren ein Ergativallomorph, das eigentlich nur für schwere Basen verfügbar ist, und das Allomorph -ul markiert nur dann den Ergativ, wenn es dem Dualmorphem folgt. Insgesamt zeigt dieser komplexe Fall aber, daß Allomorphie auch dann zum überwiegenden Teil als phonologisch konditioniert analysiert werden kann, wenn die Anzahl der Allomorphe beträchtlich ist (in diesem Fall mehr als zwei Dutzend) und verschiedene Arten der Konditionierung interagieren.

6.

Theoretische Perspektiven

6.1. Eingabeorientierte Ansätze Phänomene, die als formale oder distributionelle phonologische Konditionierung charakterisiert werden können, haben je nach theoretischem Ansatz unterschiedliche Analysen erfahren und unterschiedliche Probleme aufgeworfen. Im amerikanischen Distributionalismus (vgl. Art. 20) führte phonologisch konditionierte allomorphische Variation zur Ansetzung einer intermediären Analyseebene zwischen Phonologie und Morphologie, nämlich der Morphophonemik, um Neutralisationsphänomene wie Auslautverhärtung zu handhaben. Diese Annahmen verlangten aber z. B., daß die Generalisierung, wonach im Russischen Obstruenten vor stimmhaften Obstruenten selbst stimmhaft werden, als zwei voneinander geschiedene Aussagen er-


scheint: Daß z. B. [k] und [g] alternieren (vgl. 3.1), ist eine morphophonemische Angelegenheit, weil diese Laute unterschiedliche Phoneme repräsentieren, während es sich bei der Alternation von [ts’] und [dz’] um eine allophonische Regel handelt, weil diese Laute komplementär verteilt sind (vgl. Halle 1959). Für die SPE-Phonologie (Chomsky & Halle 1968) haben Morpheme im Normalfall eine einzige (möglicherweise hochgradig abstrakte) zugrundeliegende Repräsentation (vgl. Art. 51). Insofern ist dieses Modell geeignet, formale phonologische Konditionierung zu analysieren. In der Tat wird in diesem Rahmen Allomorphie immer als formal phonologisch konditioniert verstanden oder als suppletiv in dem Sinne, daß manche Morpheme ausnahmsweise über mehr als eine zugrundeliegende Form verfügen. Problematisch in diesem Ansatz sind Fälle formaler phonologischer Konditionierung, bei denen ein abgeleitetes Allomorph aufgrund phonologischer Kriterien gewählt wird oder selbst phonologische Bedingungen stellt. Der Grund hierfür liegt darin, daß im SPE-Modell die Morphologie vollständig der Phonologie vorausgeht. Nicht zu analysieren sind dann solche Fälle phonologisch konditionierter Suppletion wie die in 4 erwähnte Allomorphie im Italienischen: Ob in der morphologischen Komponente das Allomorph va(d)oder das Allomorph and- gewählt wird, hängt von den Betonungsverhältnissen ab. Betonung wird aber erst in der phonologischen Komponente generiert und ist damit am Derivationspunkt der Allomorphieselektion nicht verfügbar. Solche Problemfälle sind im Rahmen der Lexikalischen Phonologie (Kiparsky 1982) analysierbar, weil hier eine Interaktion von Phonologie und Morphologie vorgesehen ist. Die Konzeption der Grammatik in diesem Modell schließt allerdings aus, daß ein abgeleitetes Allomorph bereits auf dem ersten phonologischen Zyklus phonologisch selegiert wird. Dies liegt daran, daß der erste Zyklus zunächst morphologisch gespeist werden muß, um die strikte Zyklizität zu bewahren. In der Morphologie des Tschechischen existiert ein komplexer Fall, der genau diese Analyse notwendig macht (Spencer 1991: 122⫺125). Eine Reihe anderer Phänomene macht in der Lexikalischen Phonologie (wie auch im SPE-Modell) das problematische Konzept extrinsischer Regelordnung notwendig. Dies läßt sich an der Pluralallomorphie des Eng-

471 lischen erläutern (vgl. 2). Aus der zugrundeliegenden Form /z/ lassen sich die anderen beiden Allomorphe mit Hilfe zweier einfacher phonologischer Regeln ableiten, nämlich Schwa-Epenthese einerseits und Stimmhaftigkeitsassimilation andererseits. Allerdings müssen diese beiden Regeln genau in dieser Reihenfolge applizieren, denn die umgekehrte Reihenfolge würde bei einer Reihe von Fällen zu falschen Ergebnissen führen, nämlich bei Basen, die mit einem stimmlosen Sibilanten enden. Die Konkatenation der Morpheme {lass} und {plural} beispielsweise würde die passende Umgebung für die Applikation der Regel der Stimmhaftigkeitsassimilation liefern, womit über die Zwischenstufe [læs-s] nach Anwendung der Epentheseregel die falsche Form *[læses] erzeugt werden würde. Als Kompetenzmodell ist dieser Ansatz damit ungeeignet, insofern als extrinsische Regelordnung gemäß Spencer (1991: 125) dazu führt, daß das phonologische System nicht lernbar ist. 6.2. Ergebnisorientierte Ansätze Diesen Problemen begegnet die Optimalitätstheorie (Prince & Smolensky 1993), die in den 90er Jahren die Phonologiediskussion beherrschte, indem sie in ergebnisorientierter Weise Constraints (Beschränkungen) formulierte, die nicht in einer derivationellen Abhängigkeitsbeziehung zueinander stehen, sondern die Wohlgeformtheit von Oberflächenformen betrachten. Weil phonologische und morphologische Constraints hier gleichzeitig applizieren, ist diese Theorie für die Analyse von phonologisch konditionierter Allomorphie besonders geeignet. Problematisch wären allerdings Allomorphieerscheinungen, die sich nur unter Bezug auf morphemspezifische Constraints erklären lassen. Dies liegt daran, daß Constraints in dieser Theorie als verletzbar konzipiert werden, d. h. daß auch grammatische Formen prinzipiell Constraints verletzen können. Damit sind diese nicht-oberflächentreuen Constraints aus den bloßen Sprachdaten nicht ablesbar, weshalb sie als universell verankert angesehen werden müssen, um der Frage der Lernbarkeit zu begegnen. Auf bestimmte Morpheme bezogenes Wissen dagegen ist typischerweise sprachspezifisch. Für die phonologische Konditionierung der englischen Pluralallomorphie ist eine solche Analyse mittels morphemspezifischer Constraints vorgeschlagen worden (Russell 1997: 121⫺123). Allerdings ist es vorstellbar, daß die weitere For-

472 schung gerade in diesem Phänomenbereich zu einer Analyse vordringen kann, die ausschließlich mit universell motivierten Constraints arbeitet, z. B. in der Theorievariante der Direkten Optimalitätstheorie (Golston 1996). A priori gibt es keine Gründe für die Annahme, daß es Phänomene in den phonologischen Systemen der Welt gibt, die nur mit Bezug auf sprachspezifische Constraints erklärbar sind. Der Preis für dieses sehr mächtige Grammatikmodell ist freilich, daß relativ viel Wissen als genetisch determiniert angesehen werden muß und damit ein wesentlicher Bereich sprachlichen Wissens aus der Erklärungsdomäne der Linguistik verbannt wird. Als Alternative bietet sich ein deklaratives Grammatikmodell wie das Wortdesign-Modell (Neef 1996) an, das ausschließlich mit oberflächentreuen Constraints operiert, die dann als lernbar angesehen werden können und nicht als im Erbgut verankert stipuliert werden müssen. Dies setzt allerdings eine gegen die Tradition laufende Grenzziehung zwischen Phonologie und Morphologie voraus, die entscheidende Konsequenzen für die Analyse phonologisch konditionierter Allomorphie hat. In diesem Ansatz gelten phonologische Constraints nämlich oberflächentreu nur für phonologische Kategorien wie Segmente und Silben, morphologische Constraints dagegen oberflächentreu für morphologische Kategorien. Eine solche morphologische Kategorie ist der Plural des Englischen. Für diese Kategorie gelten zwei morphologische Constraints: Zunächst muß eine Pluralform mit dem Segment /Z/ enden. Hierbei handelt es sich um einen alveolaren Sibilanten, der hinsichtlich seiner Stimmhaftigkeit unterspezifiziert ist. Die phonologische Grammatikkomponente stellt sicher, daß dieser Sibilant an der Oberfläche über einen Wert für Stimmhaftigkeit verfügt, und zwar ist dieser identisch mit dem Wert des unmittelbar vorausgehenden Segments. Daraus ergeben sich die beiden Oberflächenformen [z] und [s]. Die zweite Bedingung besagt, daß Pluralformen nicht identisch mit der Singularform bzw. mit dem Stamm lauten dürfen. Diese Bedingung kann dadurch erfüllt werden, daß Schwa als von der Phonologie bereitgestellter Epenthesevokal den Segmenten der Basis folgt, und diesem Schwa folgt die notwendige segmentale Endung. Daraus ergibt sich die Oberflächenform [ez]. Die Aufteilung der Allomorphie auf zwei morphologische Constraints korre-

VII. Allomorphie

liert mit Ergebnissen der Spracherwerbsforschung, wonach die monosegmentalen Allomorphe vor dem bisegmentalen Allomorph erworben werden (Zwicky 1975: 153). Die formale phonologische Konditionierung der Allomorphe des englischen Plurals wird damit durch die Interaktion phonologischer und morphologischer Constraints rekonstruiert. Assimilation ergibt sich aus der unterspezifizierten Repräsentation des Pluralmorphems und stellt eine phonologische Bedingung dar, weil in jedem Wort des Englischen Obstruentencluster über einen einheitlichen Wert für Stimmhaftigkeit verfügen müssen. Dissimilation dagegen ist die Konsequenz einer morphologischen Bedingung, die gerade nicht von allen Wörtern des Englischen erfüllt werden muß. Homonymie von Stamm und Repräsentanten einer morphologischen Kategorie ist ein Kennzeichen der englischen Morphologie, besonders ausgeprägt im Verbparadigma (mit Ausnahme der 3. Person Singular). Damit können nur die in 2 als sekundär phonologisch konditionierten Allomorphe als phonologisch konditioniert bewertet werden, während das dort als primär phonologisch konditioniert charakterisierte Allomorph -ez tatsächlich (formal) morphologisch konditioniert ist.

7.

Zitierte Literatur

Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt Bußmann, Hadumod (21990), Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Kröner (Kröners Taschenausgabe 452) [11983] Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London usw.: Croom Helm Carstairs, Andrew (1988), “Some Implications of Phonologically Conditioned Suppletion”. Yearbook of Morphology 1, 67⫺94 Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York usw.: Harper & Row Golston, Chris (1996), “Direct Optimality Theory: Representation as Pure Markedness”. Language 72, 713⫺748 Halle, Morris (1959), The Sound Pattern of Russian. The Hague: Mouton Hockett, Charles (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Hudson, Grover (1980), “Automatic Alternations in Non-transformational Phonology”. Language 56, 94⫺125

473

48. Morphologische und syntaktische Konditionierung Kastovsky, Dieter (1971), Studies in Morphology: Aspects of English and German Verb Inflection. Tübingen: Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 18) Kenstowicz, Michael (1994), Phonology in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA, Oxford: Blackwell

Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946]

In: Kehrein, Wolfgang & Wiese, Richard (Hrsg.), Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Linguistische Arbeiten 386), 51⫺76 Plank, Frans (1984), “Romance Disagreements: Phonology Interfering with Syntax”. Journal of Linguistics 20, 329⫺349 Prince, Alan S. & Smolensky, Paul (1993), Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Piscataway: Rutgers Univ. Russell, Kevin (1997), “Optimality Theory and Morphology”. In: Archangeli, Diana & Langendoen, D. Terence (Hrsg.), Optimality Theory: An Overview. Oxford: Blackwell, 102⫺133 Simpson, Jane (1998), “Warumungu (Australian ⫺ Pama-Nyungan)”. In: Spencer, Andrew & Zwicky, Arnold M. (Hrsg.), The Handbook of Morphology. Oxford, Malden/MA: Blackwell, 707⫺736 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Vennemann, Theo (1991), “Syllable Structure and Syllable Cut Prosodies in Modern Standard German”. In: Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Kenstowicz, Michael & Loporcaro, Michele (Hrsg.), Certamen Phonologicum II. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 211⫺243 Wells, Rulon S. (1949), “Automatic Alternation”. Language 25, 99⫺116 Zwicky, Arnold M. (1975), “Settling on an Underlying Form: The English Inflectional Endings”. In: Cohen, David & Wirth, Jessica R. (Hrsg.), Testing Linguistic Hypotheses. Washington: Hemisphere, 129⫺185

Ortmann, Albert (1998), “Consonant Epenthesis: Its Distribution and Phonological Specification”.

Martin Neef, Köln (Deutschland)

Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “Lexical Phonology and Morphology”. In: Yang, I. S. (Hrsg.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin, 3⫺91 Lass, Roger (1984), Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press Lipka, Leonhard (1969), “Assimilation and Dissimilation as Regulating Factors in English Morphology”. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 17, 159⫺173 Marantz, Alec (1982), “Re Reduplication”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 483⫺545 Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press [11974] McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. (1995), “Prosodic Morphology”. In: Goldsmith, John A. (Hrsg.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Cambridge/MA, Oxford: Blackwell, 318⫺366 Neef, Martin (1996), Wortdesign: Eine deklarative Analyse der deutschen Verbflexion. Tübingen: Stauffenburg (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 52) Nida, Eugene A. (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441

48. Morphologische und syntaktische Konditionierung 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

1.

Typen morphologischer Konditionierung Typen lexikalischer Konditionierung Typen grammatischer Konditionierung Beschränkungen für morphologische Konditionierung Phonologische vs. morphologische Analyse morphologischer Konditionierung Komplex konditionierte Morpheme: Der deutsche Plural Syntaktische Konditionierung Zitierte Literatur

Typen morphologischer Konditionierung

Wenn verschiedene Morphe als Allomorphe eines Morphems klassifiziert werden können (vgl. Art. 46), muß es einen Faktor geben, der

die komplementäre Distribution dieser Allomorphe erklärt. So kann beispielsweise die Verteilung der Allomorphe [z], [s] und [ez] des Pluralmorphems des Englischen mit phonologischen Termini geklärt werden. Während diese Allomorphe also phonologisch konditioniert sind (vgl. Art. 47), gilt dies nicht für die Allomorphe [en] und [ø], die in Pluralwörtern wie ox-en bzw. sheep-ø vorkommen, da Nomina mit analoger phonologischer Struktur die sibilantischen Allomorphe wählen (z. B. box-es und cheep-s). Offensichtlich hängt die Wahl eines der nicht-sibilantischen Allomorphe vom jeweiligen Stammorphem ab, also von einer morphologischen Umgebung. Insofern ist die Distribution dieser

474 Allomorphe morphologisch konditioniert. Die Alternation des englischen Pluralmorphems kann in strukturalistischer Tradition (unvollständig) als (-z ⬃ -s ⬃ -ez) ⬁ -en ⬁ ø notiert werden, wobei morphologische Konditionierung mit ⬁ symbolisiert wird (Nida 1948: 422). Gelegentlich wird statt von morphologischer Konditionierung auch von “morphemischer” (Matthews 21991: 116) oder “morpholexikalischer” (Spencer 1991: 100) Konditionierung gesprochen. Häufig wird das Konzept der morphologischen Konditionierung in zwei distinkte Subtypen aufgespalten. Zum einen kann der konditionierende Faktor ein individuelles Morphem sein. Hierunter fallen die gegebenen Beispiele des englischen Plurals: Wenn das Pluralmorphem in der Umgebung des Morphems ox erscheint, nimmt es die Form -en an. Dieser Subtyp der morphologischen Konditionierung, der durchweg unregelmäßige Alternationen umfaßt, wird als lexikalische Konditionierung bezeichnet (Bauer 1988: 14, 240). Daneben kann morphologisch konditionierte Allomorphie auch durch einen größeren Ausschnitt des Vokabulars bedingt sein. Insofern solche Teilausschnitte grammatisch relevante Klassen darstellen, können morphosyntaktische Merkmale angesetzt werden, die die Mitglieder dieser Klassen verbinden. Ein solches Merkmal ist Genus (vgl. Art. 98). Im Hebräischen unterscheiden sich Nomina nach den zwei Genera Femininum und Maskulinum. Das Genusmerkmal manifestiert sich dabei in Kongruenzphänomenen und im Flexionsverhalten. Im Plural enden Feminina auf -ot und Maskulina auf -im. Das Pluralmorphem verfügt folglich über die beiden Allomorphe -ot ⬁ -im. Bei diesem Untertyp morphologischer Konditionierung handelt es sich um grammatische Konditionierung (Bauer 1988: 14, 240). Allerdings gibt es auch etwa 80 Maskulina und 30 Feminina im Hebräischen, die das “falsche” Pluralsuffix wählen. Diese müssen als lexikalische Ausnahmen angesehen werden; das Pluralsuffix ist in diesen Fällen lexikalisch konditioniert. Gelegentlich werden die Termini lexikalische Konditionierung und grammatische Konditionierung auch als Synonyme von morphologischer Konditionierung verstanden (vgl. Mugdan 1994: 2547). Die Abgrenzung von lexikalischer und grammatischer Konditionierung ist nicht immer eindeutig. Schwierig zu bewerten sind solche Fälle, wo ein Allomorph von mehreren anderen Morphemen gefordert wird, ohne

VII. Allomorphie

daß diese Morpheme aber sinnvollerweise in eine grammatisch natürliche Klasse zusammengefaßt werden können. Ein Beispiel hierfür bietet die ostkuschitische Sprache Kambata. Verbstämme, die im Präsens mit einem alveo-dentalen Obstruenten enden, verfügen in dieser Sprache über ein Allomorph, bei dem der fragliche Obstruent alveo-palatal (und zugleich gelängt) vorliegt. Diese letztere Form erscheint nur vor bestimmten Morphemen wie etwa der 1. Person Singular Imperfekt (has ⫹ ommi J hasˇsˇommi ‘ich suchte’), wobei die phonologische Umgebung hier nicht entscheidend ist, wie andere vokalinitiale Suffixe belegen (z. B. has ⫹ aammi J hasaammi ‘ich werde suchen’). Die Kategorien, die diese Allomorphie konditionieren, nämlich die 1. und 3. Person Singular Imperfekt, die 2. Person Plural Imperativ sowie Perfekt und Konjunktiv, bilden unter grammatischer Perspektive keine homogene Klasse, weshalb die Allomorphie eher als lexikalisch konditioniert zu werten ist (Hudson 1980: 111f.). Das bedeutet, daß für jede der genannten Kategorien einzeln zu vermerken ist, daß sie die fragliche Stammallomorphie konditioniert, was allerdings eine gewisse Redundanz in der Beschreibung mit sich bringt. Zugleich fordert diese Analyse, daß das nicht-palatalisierte Stammallomorph lexikalisch als Normalfall oder Default markiert ist: Dieses Allomorph erscheint in allen Kontexten außer in solchen, die explizit das andere Allomorph verlangen.

2.

Typen lexikalischer Konditionierung

Lexikalische Konditionierung kann sich in unterschiedlichen Konstellationen zeigen, die sich anhand des englischen Plurals skizzieren lassen. So kann die Verbindung eines Stammmorphems mit einem Affix dazu führen, daß der Stamm in Form eines Allomorphs realisiert wird, dessen Distribution von diesem bestimmten Affix abhängt. Während wife normalerweise mit einem stimmlosen Frikativ endet, erscheint dieser stimmhaft, wenn ihm das Pluralmorphem folgt (wive-s). Die Stammallomorphie ist folglich lexikalisch konditioniert, denn sie tritt nur im Kontext des Pluralmorphems auf und beispielsweise nicht in Possessivkonstruktionen (wife’s). Zugleich ist die Allomorphie keine automatische Konsequenz des Pluralmorphems, denn Wörter mit analoger phonologischer Struktur weisen sie z. T. nicht auf (fife-s).

48. Morphologische und syntaktische Konditionierung

Weiterhin kann die Verbindung eines Stammorphems mit einem Affix dazu führen, daß das Affix eine besondere Form annimmt, die unmittelbar an die Nachbarschaft dieses individuellen Stammorphems geknüpft ist. Dies belegt die Kombination des Morphems ox mit dem Pluralmorphem, die nicht zur erwartbaren Realisierung *ox-es führt, sondern zu ox-en. Daß das Morphem ox das Pluralallomorph -en verlangt, ist eine idiosynkratische Eigenschaft des Lexems ox und mit dem Wissen zu diesem Lexem verknüpft. Weniger plausibel wäre die Annahme, das Wissen über die Distribution des Pluralallomorphs -en sei mit dem Pluralmorphem selbst verbunden, denn dieses Allomorph läßt sich nur in Verbindung mit dem Lexem ox lernen. Schließlich kann ein Wort auch ausschließlich aus lexikalisch konditionierten Allomorphen bestehen. Der Plural von child lautet children, wobei das Stammallomorph sich phonologisch durch einen monophthongierten Vokal vom außerhalb der Pluralform gewählten Allomorph unterscheidet. Diese Art der Allomorphie wird auch als reziproke Konditionierung bezeichnet (Wells 1949: 109). Unklar ist hier freilich, ob der wortmediale Vibrant eher dem Stamm oder eher dem Suffix zuzurechnen ist (vgl. Hockett 1947: 340). Daß die Zerlegung in Morphe problematisch ist, ist eine typische Situation für Wörter, in denen zwei unregelmäßige Allomorphe aufeinanderstoßen. Als durchweg reziproke Konditionierung sind unter distributioneller Perspektive Fälle von Metathese (vgl. Art. 59) zu klassifizieren, denn dieser phonologische Prozeß führt dazu, daß zwei adjazente Morpheme Formen annehmen, die sich gegenseitig bedingen. Ein Beispiel hierfür findet sich im Hebräischen. Hier werden reflexive Formen durch das Präfix hit- markiert (paø el ‘anziehen’ J hit-paø el ‘sich anziehen’). Beginnt der Verbstamm allerdings mit [s], dann tauscht dieser Laut mit dem finalen Plosiv des Präfixes seinen Platz in der reflexiven Form (silek ‘entfernen’ J histalek ‘sich entfernen’). Das Präfix verfügt also über die beiden als phonologisch konditioniert zu bewertenden Allomorphe hit- ⬃ hi…t. Die Distribution des diskontinuierlichen Stammallomorphs s…alek dagegen ist als lexikalisch konditioniert zu charakterisieren, weil die Metathese nur in Verbindung mit dem Präfix hit- auftritt; in anderen morphologischen Umgebungen führen Sequenzen aus alveolarem Plosiv plus [s] nicht zu Metathese (Hock 1985: 530).

475 Als lexikalisch konditioniert kann ein Allomorph auch bewertet werden, wenn als konditionierendes Morphem ein Nullallomorph (vgl. Art. 45) anzusetzen ist. In der ostsibirischen isolierten Sprache Nivkh unterscheiden sich Paare von transitiven und intransitiven Verben häufig nicht affixal, sondern nur durch initale Konsonantenmutation. So ist das intransitive Verb [pvkzK] ‘verloren gehen’ verwandt mit dem transitiven Verb [vvkzK] ‘verlieren’. Das fragliche Verblexem verfügt folglich über zwei Allomorphe, die sich nur im initialen Segment unterscheiden. Während normalerweise die plosivinitiale Form gewählt wird, wird das mutierte Allomorph vom Transitivierungsmorphem verlangt, wobei dieses Morphem selbst als Nullallomorph auftritt. Analog können Metatheseformen in der pazifischen Sprache Rotuman analysiert werden: Das Wort für ‘Mond’ verfügt hier über zwei Allomorphe, die in metathetischer Beziehung zueinander stehen, nämlich hula und hual. Erstere Form markiert z. B. den Singular, letztere den Dual (hual rua ‘zwei Monde’). Die Distribution des letzteren Stammallomorphs kann folglich als lexikalisch konditioniert durch das Dualmorphem angesehen werden, das selbst als Nullallomorph auftritt. Häufig interagieren Aspekte lexikalischer und phonologischer Konditionierung. In einigen hessischen Dialekten unterscheiden sich manche Pluralformen von den dazugehörigen Singularformen durch Subtraktion (vgl. Art. 60) wie z. B. in dem Paar hond (sg.) ⫺ hon (pl.) ‘Hund’. Das kürzere Stammallomorph hon tritt demgemäß lexikalisch konditioniert vom Pluralmorphem auf, welches selbst als Nullallomorph vorliegt. In diesem Fall (wie auch bei den besprochenen Metathesebeispielen) führt allerdings die Annahme lexikalischer Speicherung jeweils beider Stammallomorphe zu Redundanz, weil sich die Subtraktion als regelmäßiger Prozeß beschreiben läßt. Dieses Problem ist lösbar in einer Analyse, die die Generierung lexikalisch konditionierter Allomorphe ermöglicht. In einem solchen Absatz zeigt sich, daß das Pluralmorphem im Hessischen über verschiedene lexikalisch konditionierte Allomorphe verfügt, wobei es ein Allomorphpaar gibt, das untereinander in einer phonologisch konditionierten Beziehung steht, nämlich das Nullallomorph und dasjenige Allomorph, das die Subtraktion eines Stammsegments bewirkt. Letzteres erscheint genau dann, wenn der Stamm auf eine homorgane Sequenz aus So-

476

VII. Allomorphie

norant plus Obstruent endet ([hcndj ] J [hcn]), ansonsten wird das Nullallomorph gewählt ([ke:s] ‘Käse (sg./pl.)’, [jo:r] ‘Jahr (sg./pl.)’ (Golston & Wiese 1996: 151f.). Unter dieser Analyse ist das subtraktive Stammallomorph formal lexikalisch konditioniert, weil sich die Form dieses Stammallomorphs aus Eigenschaften des konditionierenden Affixes ergibt.

3.

Typen grammatischer Konditionierung

Während lexikalische Konditionierung immer mit dem Wissen zu einzelnen Lexemen verbunden ist, kann sich grammatische Konditionierung sowohl auf Lexemwissen als auch auf Affixwissen beziehen. So kann ein Allomorph eines Lexems dafür markiert sein, daß es in der Umgebung eines bestimmten morphosyntaktischen Merkmals auftritt. In der Standardaussprache des Französischen verfügt ein Teil der Adjektive über zwei phonologisch distinkte Allomorphe, die sich in vielen Fällen dadurch unterscheiden, daß ein Allomorph um ein Segment länger ist als das andere ([so] vs. [so:d] ‘warm’, [klo] vs. [klo:z] ‘verschlossen’), so daß aus der längeren Form die kürzere gewonnen werden kann. Dies gilt aber nicht durchgängig (z. B. [bo] vs. [bil] ‘schön’). Die Distribution dieser Stammallomorphe richtet sich nach dem morphosyntaktischen Merkmal Genus: Adjektive, die mit femininen Nomina kongruieren, haben die jeweils längere Form, maskuline Adjektive dagegen die kürzere. Die formal unterschiedlichen Allomorphe sind folglich grammatisch konditioniert durch das Genusmerkmal (das den adjektivischen Stämmen freilich nicht inhärent ist, sondern über Kongruenz erworben wird). Allerdings kann die grammatische Konditionierung überschrieben werden: Wenn ein maskulines Adjektiv einem vokalinitialen Wort vorausgeht, wird immer die “feminine” Form gewählt (un bel ami ‘ein schöner Freund’). Das adjektivische Allomorph ist dann zwecks Hiatusvermeidung primär phonologisch konditioniert. (1) orkest ‘Orchester’ gymnasium ‘Gymnasium’ horizon ‘Horizont’ Auch wenn die Allomorphe jeweils miteinander verwandt sind, ist der theoretische Aufwand, sie als lexikalisch gespeicherte Allomorphe anzusehen, geringer, als wenn

Ob bei grammatischer Konditionierung die Allomorphie den Stamm oder das Affix betrifft, ist nicht immer unmittelbar ersichtig. In der algonkischen Sprache Potawatomi existiert eine Possessivkonstruktion, bei der Nomina mit dem Possessor kongruieren und zugleich für Numerus markiert sind. Die Singularform des possedierten Nomens /os:/ ‘Vater’, dessen Possessor in der 2. Person Plural steht, lautet [kos:wa], die entsprechende Form zu /tsiman/ ‘Kanu’ lautet [ktsimanmewa]. In diesen Formen läßt sich ohne weiteres ein Präfix /k/ und ein Suffix /wa/ segmentieren, wobei das Präfix den Possessor und das Suffix die possessive Relation markiert. Unklar ist aber die Stellung des Formativs [m] (unter der Annahme, daß das Auftreten des Schwas in diesem Zusammenhang phonologisch konditioniert ist; vgl. Anderson 1992: 160): Gehört es zum Stamm oder zum Suffix? Für eine Suffixallomorphie spricht, daß diese Sequenz nur in Possessivkonstruktionen erscheint. Allerdings gibt es im Potawatomi sechs verschiedene Suffixe, die diese Funktion kennzeichnen können (in Abhängigkeit von Person und Numerus des Possessors und Numerus des possedierten Nomens), und alle enthalten das Formativ /m/ in Verbindung mit dem Nomen /os:/, nicht aber in Verbindung mit dem Nomen /tsiman/. Dies spricht dafür, daß für die Allomorphie wesentlich ist, welches Lexem an der Konstruktion beteiligt ist. Insofern ist es ökonomischer, das Formativ /m/ dem Stamm zuzuschlagen, so daß manche Nomina über zwei Stammallomorphe verfügen, von denen eins durch das Possessivmerkmal grammatisch konditioniert ist (Anderson 1992: 158⫺163). Eine andere Art morphosyntaktisches Merkmal bezieht sich auf eine stratale Gliederung des Wortschatzes, die häufig mit Erbwortschatz versus Lehnwortschatz korreliert. Im Niederländischen verfügen viele nicht-native Stammorpheme über zwei Allomorphe, wobei die Verteilung so konditioniert ist, daß ein Allomorph von nicht-nativen Suffixen gewählt wird, während in allen anderen Fällen das andere Allomorph erscheint: orkestr-eer ‘orchestrieren’ gymnasi-ast ‘Gymnasiast’ horizont-aal ‘horizontal’ eine Abhängigkeit mittels morpho-phonologischer Regeln angesetzt werden würde (Booij 1996: 279f.). Die Allomorphe in der linken Spalte in (1) stellen somit den Default-Fall

477


dar, die in der rechten sind grammatisch konditioniert durch das Merkmal [⫺ nativ], das suffixal repräsentiert sein muß. Der andere Typ grammatischer Konditionierung zeichnet sich dadurch aus, daß ein Affix im Kontext eines bestimmten morphosyntaktischen Merkmals ein spezifisches Allomorphieverhalten zeigt. Gewöhnlich wird dieses Merkmal durch Stammorpheme realisiert. Nomina in der Bantusprache Chichewa fallen in eine Reihe von Nominalklassen (vgl. Art. 98), die zum Teil semantisch, zum Teil formal und zum Teil arbiträr definiert sind (Mchombo 1998: 516⫺519). Sowohl im Singular als auch im Plural tragen Nomina bestimmte Präfixe in Abhängigkeit von ihrer Klassenzugehörigkeit. Diese Präfixe können als Singular- bzw. Pluralmorphem angesehen werden. Das bedeutet, daß z. B. das Pluralmorphem im Chichewa über neun Allomorphe verfügt, die grammatisch konditioniert sind, nämlich in Abhängigkeit von der Nominalklasse, in die das jeweilige Nomen fällt. So nehmen Nomina der Klasse 1/2 das Pluralallomorph a- (a-kaˆzi ‘pl-Frau’), Nomina der Klasse 3/4 mi- (mi-kaˆngo ‘pl-Löwe’) und Nomina der Klasse 5/6 ma- (ma-luwa ‘plBlume’). Während Genus bzw. Nominalklasse als arbiträres Merkmal sich häufig an mehreren Stellen im Satz manifestiert, handelt es sich bei Flexionsklassen (vgl. Art. 65) um Entitäten, die nur für bestimmte Flexionskategorien relevant sind. Nomina im Russischen fallen in drei Flexionsklassen, die zum Teil mit Genera koinzidieren, zum Teil hiervon autonom sind (Aronoff 1994: 72⫺74). Das DativSingular-Morphem hat dementsprechend drei Allomorphe, nämlich -u, -e und -i, die grammatisch konditioniert sind durch die Zugehörigkeit des Nomens zu einer der Flexionsklassen. Morphosyntaktische Merkmale können auch in direkter Weise mit semantischen Kategorien korrelieren. Im Slovakischen verfügt das Morphem {dativ} im Singular über mehrere Allomorphe, die zunächst genussensitiv sind. Für Maskulina gibt es dabei zwei verschiedene Allomorphe, deren Distribution durch das semantische Merkmal der Belebtheit gesteuert wird: Belebte Maskulina verlangen das Allomorph -ovi (leka´r-ovi ‘Doktor-dat.sg’), unbelebte Maskulina das Allomorph -u (strom-u ‘Baum-dat.sg’). Diese Bedingtheit der Allomorphe kann auch als semantische Konditionierung bezeichnet werden (vgl. Mugdan 1994: 2547).

Schließlich kann sich grammatische Konditionierung auch darin zeigen, daß ein Affix ein bestimmtes Allomorphieverhalten im Kontext eines morphosyntaktischen Merkmals zeigt, das in einem anderen Affix realisiert wird. Im Ungarischen wird der Plural bei Verben entweder mit den untereinander phonologisch konditionierten Allomorphen -k ⬃ -ok ⬃ -ak markiert oder mit den ebenfalls untereinander phonologisch konditionierten Allomorphen -i ⬃ -ai ⬃ -jai. Diese beiden Allomorphgruppen stehen in einer grammatisch konditionierten Relation, und zwar tritt ein Allomorph aus der letzteren Gruppe immer dann auf, wenn dem Pluralmorphem ein Possessivsuffix folgt, während die erste Gruppe den Default darstellt. Da alle Possessivsuffixe die fragliche Allomorphie auslösen, ist es sinnvoll, das Pluralmorphem als dafür markiert anzusehen, daß die Distribution der zweiten Allomorphgruppe vom Merkmal [⫹ possessiv] konditioniert ist.

4.

Beschränkungen für morphologische Konditionierung

Die bisher betrachteten Fälle morphologischer Konditionierung legen nahe, daß diese Art der Bedingtheit von Allomorphen auf den Kontext adjazenter Morpheme beschränkt ist. Allerdings lassen sich vereinzelt Daten finden, die zeigen, daß lineare Adjazenz nicht prinzipiell gegeben sein muß. In der Paleo-Sibirischen Sprache Chukchee weisen transitive Verben sowohl Subjekt- als auch Objektkongruenz auf. Das Präfix, das Subjektkongruenz ausdrückt, verfügt über zwei Allomorphe, wenn das Subjekt in der 3. Person Singular steht (ø- / ne- im Indikativ und im Futur, n- / ? en- im Imperativ und n- / nen- im Konjunktiv). Diese Allomorphie ist konditioniert durch das Objektsuffix: Markiert dieses die 3. Person Singular oder Plural, dann wird das jeweils erste Subjektkongruenzallomorph gewählt, ansonsten das jeweils zweite (Muravyova 1998: 533). Linear sind diese beiden Affixe offensichtlich nicht adjazent, wenn auch für eine hierarchische Adjazenz plädiert werden kann. Ähnliches gilt für die in 3 besprochenen Daten des Potawatomi, da auch hier der suffixale Numerusmarker des possedierten Nomens über Allomorphe verfügt, die grammatisch vom Possessivkongruenzmerkmal konditioniert sind, das präfixal realisiert wird. Möglicherweise widersprechen diese Daten einer in der Literatur diskutierten Beschrän-

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VII. Allomorphie

kung für morphologische Konditionierung, dem Peripherality Constraint (Carstairs 1987: 193). Danach kann die Allomorphie eines Affixes nur durch ein morphosyntaktisches Merkmal konditioniert sein, das der Wurzel linear näherstehend realisiert wird (mit bestimmten wohldefinierten Ausnahmen). Wenn eine Wortform nur aus der Verbwurzel sowie den beiden Kongruenzaffixen besteht, kann nicht eins dieser Affixe als der Wurzel linear näherstehend bewertet werden. Tatsächlich sind Verbformen im Chukchee aber komplexer, denn zwischen die genannten Morpheme treten Marker für Tempus, Modus und Aspekt. In komplexen Verbformen zeigt sich, daß das Subjektpräfix tatsächlich linear näher an der Wurzel stehen kann als das Objektsuffix. Offen ist allerdings, ob diese Daten in den Bereich der definierten Ausnahmen fallen. Als weitere Einschränkung wird vermutet, daß morphologische Konditionierung nicht über die Grenzen grammatischer Wörter applizieren kann (Plank 1985: 205). Hierzu können allerdings Daten angeführt werden, die eine Modifizierung der vorgeschlagenen Beschränkung nahelegen. Im Walisischen wie in allen keltischen Sprachen verfügen Stämme häufig über verschiedene Allomorphe, die sich durch die Form der initialen Konsonanten voneinander unterscheiden. Diese Allomorphie ist synchron nicht phonologisch konditioniert, wie das Beispiel pen ‘Kopf’ belegt: (2) (a) (b) (c) (d)

fy mhen ei ben ei phen eu pen

j in] [vem [ibin] [ifin] [ipin]

‘mein Kopf’ ‘sein Kopf’ ‘ihr (sg.) Kopf’ ‘ihr (pl.) Kopf’

Diese Konsonantenmutation ist eine reguläre Erscheinung des Walisischen und tritt in verschiedenen Formen auf. In (2a) findet sich ein Beispiel für nasale Mutation, in (2b) für weiche Mutation (bzw. Lenisierung) und in (2c) für spirantische Mutation, während in (2d) die unmutierte Form vorliegt. Die Stammallomorphie ist folglich lexikalisch konditioniert: Das Personalpronomen für die 1. Person Singular wählt das nasal-mutierte Stammallomorph etc. Im Fall der homophonen Pronomina in (2b⫺d) dient die Allomorphie zugleich zur Disambiguierung, denn welches Pronomen jeweils gemeint ist, läßt sich hier nur an der Form des Stamms erkennen. Die Orthografie legt nahe, daß diese Konditionierung im Walisischen als die Grenzen von Wörtern überschreitend interpretiert

werden muß. Allerdings ist dafür argumentiert worden, daß phonologisch gesehen Folgen von Personalpronomina (bzw. funktionalen Kategorien generell) plus Nomina eine einheitliche Domäne bilden, so daß die Konditionierung innerhalb eines phonologischen Worts stattfindet (Willis 1986: 46). Eine solche Modifikation der Internalitätsbeschränkung für morphologische Konditionierung von der Domäne des grammatischen Worts auf die Domäne des phonologischen Worts hat empirische Konsequenzen, denn sie ist nicht nur weiter, nämlich insofern sie den walisischen Daten entspricht, sondern sie ist auch enger, nämlich insofern sie morphologische Konditionierung innerhalb von Komposita ausschließt. Die Tragfähigkeit dieser Annahme bleibt zu untersuchen.

5.

Phonologische vs. morphologische Analyse morphologischer Konditionierung

In der Literatur gibt es keinen Konsens darüber, wie morphologisch konditionierte Allomorphie zu analysieren ist. Prinzipiell lassen sich zwei entgegengesetzte Analysestrategien erkennen. Besonders in der generativen Linguistik wird der unausgesprochene Imperativ verfolgt, eine Alternation nach Möglichkeit nicht morphologisch, sondern phonologisch zu erklären. Dies hat seit dem SPE-Modell (Chomsky & Halle 1968) zu zahlreichen Ansätzen geführt, Allomorphe mit Hilfe phonologischer Regeln aus einer einzigen zugrundeliegenden Repräsentation abzuleiten (vgl. Art. 51). In diesem Sinne kann die in 2 erwähnte Allomorphie [wajf] ⫺ [wajv] so erklärt werden, daß als finales Element zugrundeliegend ein abstraktes Phonem /F/ angesetzt wird. Dies entspricht im wesentlichen der morphophonemischen Analysemethode des amerikanischen Distributionalismus (Harris 1951: 225). Eine generelle phonologische Regel macht dieses Phonem immer dann stimmhaft, wenn es vor dem Pluralmorphem auftritt. Eine solche Analyse führt allerdings zu absoluter Neutralisation, denn das Phonem /F/ ist lediglich zugrundeliegend unterschieden von den anderen labialen Frikativen /v/ und /f/. Eine weniger abstrakte Analyse markiert phonologische Regeln dafür, für welche Lexemklassen sie einschlägig sind, bzw. umgekehrt, welche phonologische Regeln für ein bestimmtes Lexem gelten. Im gegebenen Bei-

479


spiel kann eine phonologisch natürliche Regel der Stimmhaftigkeitsveränderung angesetzt werden, und das Lexem wife ist dafür markiert, dieser Regel im Kontext des Pluralmorphems zu unterliegen. Freilich muß diese Regel, extrinsisch geordnet, vor derjenigen Regel applizieren, die das Stimmhaftigkeitsmerkmal des Pluralmorphems regelt, weil andernfalls die ungrammatische Form *[wajvs] erzeugt werden würde. Diese Konzeption kann so weit getrieben werden, daß formal drastische und im Vokabular seltene Alternationen wie die Allomorphie think/thought mittels phonologischer Regeln beschrieben werden, deren Wirkungsbereich durch lexikalische Merkmale eingegrenzt wird (Halle & Mohanan 1985: 109). Demgegenüber stehen Ansätze, die morphologisch konditionierte Allomorphie mit morphologischen Mitteln zu erklären versuchen. So können morphologische Allomorphieregeln angesetzt werden, die für lexikalisch markierte Teilklassen gelten. Insofern diese Regeln vor allen phonologischen Regeln applizieren, können die angesprochenen Ordnungsprobleme überwunden werden (Aronoff 1976: 105). Allerdings ist die Annahme, daß beide Allomorphe [wajf] und [wajv] regulär durch eine (phonologische oder morphologische) Regel aufeinander bezogen seien, unter Ökonomiegesichtspunkten problematisch: Gelernt werden muß danach nämlich zum einen die fragliche Regel, zum anderen aber auch jedes einzelne Nomen, das dieser Regel unterliegt. Von daher scheint es einfacher, die Allomorphe als lexikalisch gegeben anzusetzen und lediglich die Distribution regelhaft zu beschreiben (Lieber 1982: 34f.; Plank 1985: 214). Auch diese Konzeption kann relativ weit getrieben werden. So ist im Rahmen der Natürlichen Generativen Phonologie vorgeschlagen worden, auch die regelmäßigen Allomorphe des englischen Pluralmorphems, die zumeist als formal phonologisch konditioniert angesehen werden (vgl. Art. 47), als lexikalisch gegeben anzusetzen (Hudson 1980: 104).

6.

Komplex konditionierte Morpheme: Der deutsche Plural

Während im einfachen Fall ein Morphem über zwei Allomorphe verfügt, die über den gleichen Modus konditioniert sind, existieren weitaus komplexere Allomorphieerscheinungen, bei denen verschiedene Arten der Konditionierung interagieren. Ein gut untersuchtes

Beispiel hierfür ist das Pluralmorphem im Deutschen (vgl. Carstairs 1987: Kap. 7; Köpcke 1993; Neef 1998; Wurzel 1998). Neben einer Reihe lexikalisch konditionierter Einzelfälle lassen sich hier neun regelmäßige Allomorphe identifizieren: (3) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

ø ¨ø e ë n en er ër s

Wagen, Anker, Kabel Äpfel, Klöster, Mütter Hunde, Jahre, Schicksale Höfe, Flöße, Hände Muskeln, Augen, Rosen Staaten, Betten, Frauen Schier, Felder Wälder, Hühner Opas, Deltas, Omas; Portraits, Meiers, LKWs

Diese Pluralallomorphe stehen allerdings nicht im gleichen Verhältnis zueinander. So handelt es sich bei den Allomorphen (3g) und (3h) im Grunde nur um einen einzigen Typ: Alle Stämme, die über einen umlautbaren Stammvokal verfügen, werden im Plural umgelautet, wenn sie den /r/-Marker wählen. Die vereinigende Bedingung dieses Pluraltyps ist folglich, daß der letzte Stammvokal ein vorderer sein muß (Neef 1998: 252). Überdies zeichnen sich die Pluralformen (3a⫺h) dadurch aus, daß sie mit genau einer SchwaSilbe bzw. Reduktionssilbe enden. Sie konstituieren damit eine einheitliche Makroallomorphklasse, nämlich den Reduktionssilbenplural (Neef 1998). Die Allomorphpaare (3a/c), (3b/d) und (3e/f) lassen sich dadurch als untereinander phonologisch konditioniert erklären: Wenn die Singularform schon mit einer Reduktionssilbe endet, wird das jeweils kürzere Allomorph gewählt, ansonsten das längere. Inwieweit die Konditionierung der verbleibenden Allomorphe als lexikalisch oder grammatisch zu charakterisieren ist, hängt z. T. von der gewählten Analysemethode ab. Ansätze, die nur ein Defaultallomorph zulassen, argumentieren dafür, daß der s-Typ den Default darstellt, während die anderen Marker lexikalisch konditioniert sind (Marcus et al. 1995). Diese Annahme bewertet allerdings die Pluralzuweisung beinahe des gesamten Kernvokabulars als unregelmäßig und verkennt überdies die Produktivität des Reduktionssilbenplurals. So wählt das rezente Fremdwort Computer nicht den danach erwartbaren s-Marker, sondern den Nullmarker. In einem Modell, das mehrere grammatisch konditionierte Defaults erlaubt, kann die Konditionierung der Pluralallomorphe wie folgt dargestellt werden:

480

VII. Allomorphie

peripheres Lexikon

Typ (3i) finales Segment [s] finales Segment unbetonter Vollvokal

Nomen Nom. Sg. Maskulina Neutra

Kernlexikon

Typ (3a/c)

schwache Maskulina Typ (3e/f) Feminina

Abb. 48.1: Defaultsystem der Zuweisung von Nomina zu Pluraltypen im Deutschen

Der wesentliche konditionierende Faktor ist hiernach die stratale Unterteilung des Vokabulars in ein peripheres und ein Kernlexikon. Zum peripheren Wortschatz gehören u. a. unassimilierte Fremdwörter, Eigennamen und Abkürzungen (Köpcke 1993: 153; Marcus et al. 1995: 229). Der s-Marker ist der grammatisch konditionierte Default für das periphere Lexikon. Überschrieben werden kann dieser Default vom Null/Schwa-Plural ohne Umlaut, und zwar in (sekundär) phonologisch konditionierter Weise für periphere Nomina, die auf [s] enden (Jonas J Jonasse). Der Default für Nomina des Kernlexikons richtet sich nach dem Genus: Für Feminina ist der n-Marker der Default, ebenso wie für sogenannte schwache Maskulina. Hierbei handelt es sich um eine Untergruppe der Maskulina wie Bote, Hydrant und Mensch, die sich durch ein besonderes Flexionsverhalten auszeichnen. Der Umfang dieser Gruppe kann zum Teil regelhaft bestimmt werden, zum Teil ist er lexikalisch zu markieren (Köpcke 1995). Die übrigen Maskulina sowie die Neutra haben als grammatisch konditionierten Default den Schwa/Null-Plural ohne Umlaut. Daneben tritt in diesem Bereich der s-Marker (primär) phonologisch konditioniert auf, näm-

lich für Maskulina und Neutra, die mit einem unbetonten Vollvokal enden. Der Schwaplural würde hier zu einem phonologisch unmöglichen Ergebnis führen (Auto J *Autoe; vgl. Neef 1998: 254). Alle Fälle, die durch das Defaultsystem in Abb. 48.1 nicht abgedeckt werden, sind danach als lexikalisch konditioniert zu bewerten. Dies betrifft generell den r-Plural sowie den Schwa/Null-Plural mit Umlaut, dazu das Pluralallomorph für einige zum Kernvokabular zu rechnende Maskulina (Muskel J Muskeln), Neutra (Bett J Betten) und Feminina (Mutter J Mütter).

7.

Syntaktische Konditionierung

7.1. Strittige Fälle Da Allomorphe durch ihre phonologische und morphologische Umgebung konditioniert sein können, ist zu vermuten, daß auch die syntaktische Umgebung ausschlaggebend sein kann. In der Literatur ist allerdings umstritten, welche Bedingungen erfüllt sein müssen, um eine Allomorphie als syntaktische Konditionierung zu bewerten. So wird gelegentlich jegliche Konditionierung, die die Grenzen von Wörtern überschreitet, als “syntak-


tisch” charakterisiert (Spencer 1991: 127f.). Dies ist allerdings mit einer derivationellen Grammatikkonzeption verbunden, die davon ausgeht, daß morphologische Regeln durchweg vor syntaktischen applizieren. Damit kann beispielsweise die Distribution der Allomorphe a und an des unbestimmten Artikels im Englischen nicht morphologisch gesteuert sein, weil das korrekte Allomorph erst dann bestimmt werden kann, wenn syntaktische Regeln die relevante Umgebung erzeugt haben. In einem oberflächenbezogenen Grammatikmodell oder einem derivationellen, das die Applikation von syntaktischen vor phonologischen und morphologischen Regeln vorsieht, ist diese Allomorphie jedoch als phonologisch konditioniert anzusehen, weil die Distribution vom folgenden phonologischen Segment, also von einer phonologischen Umgebung abhängt (vgl. Art. 47). Entsprechend kann die Wortgrenzen überschreitende Konsonantenmutation im Walisischen als morphologisch konditioniert analysiert werden (vgl. 4). Als syntaktisch konditioniert kann ein Allomorph angesehen werden, wenn seine Distribution von einer syntaktischen Funktion abhängt, die nicht mit einem morphosyntaktischen Merkmal korreliert. Wenn lediglich distributionelle Faktoren berücksichtigt werden, lassen sich beispielsweise die Formen I und me des englischen Personalpronomens für die 1. Person Singular als Allomorphe eines Morphems analysieren, deren Distribution dann als syntaktisch konditioniert zu bewerten ist: Wenn das fragliche Morphem die syntaktische Funktion des Subjekts hat, wird das Allomorph I gewählt, in der Funktion des direkten Objekts das Allomorph me. Unter Einbeziehung der Kategorie Kasus (vgl. Art. 102) läßt sich syntaktische Konditionierung in diesem Fall allerdings eliminieren. Voraussetzung hierfür ist eine Unterscheidung von Kasus als grammatischer Kategorie gegenüber Kasusformen als Realisierungen der grammatischen Kategorie (Mel’cˇuk 1986: 37). Unter der Annahme, eine Sprache besitzt dann zwei unterschiedliche Kasus Ki und Kj, wenn es zumindest eine nominale Subklasse gibt, die diese Kasus formal unterscheidet (Goddard 1982: 169; Comrie 1986: 91f.), können für das Englische die Kasus Nominativ und Akkusativ angesetzt werden. Damit stellen I und me unterschiedliche Morpheme dar und erweisen sich als für das Phänomen syntaktischer Konditionierung nicht einschlägig. Daß Pronomina über

481 feinere Kasusdistinktionen verfügen als andere Nomina, ist eine häufig anzutreffende Situation. Ähnlich läßt sich die Kasusdistribution in Ergativsprachen analysieren. Nach einer traditionellen Analyse verfügen solche Sprachen über zwei Kasus, nämlich den Ergativ, der das Subjekt transitiver Verben markiert, und den Absolutiv, der das Subjekt intransitiver Verben und das Objekt transitiver Verben markiert. In einigen hierzu zählenden Sprachen wie der australischen Pama-NyunganSprache Dyirbal existieren aber lexikalische Subklassen, die nach dieser Analyse über zwei Absolutivallomorphe verfügen. So lautet das Pronomen für die 1. Person Singular Absolutiv ngaja oder ngajaguna. Diese Allomorphe sind syntaktisch konditioniert: Die erste Wortform tritt auf als Subjekt intransitiver Verben, die zweite als Objekt transitiver Verben. Die Distribution läßt sich jedoch auch so analysieren, daß das Dyirbal tatsächlich über drei Kasus verfügt, nämlich über den Ergativ, der das Subjekt transitiver Verben markiert, den Akkusativ, der das Objekt transitiver Verben markiert, und den Nominativ, der das Subjekt intransitiver Verben markiert (Goddard 1982: 169). Wiederum repräsentieren die vorgeblichen Allomorphe aus dieser Sicht zwei verschiedene Morpheme. Eine merkmalsbasierte Möglichkeit, scheinbar syntaktisch konditionierte Allomorphie zu vermeiden, wird in Bezug auf das Russische vorgeschlagen (Comrie 1986: 101f.). Manche Nomina im Russischen wie syr ‘Käse’ selegieren zwei verschiedene Genitivallomorphe, nämlich -a und -u. Um die Distribution dieser Allomorphe zu klären, kann Bezug auf die syntaktische Kategorie der Partitivität genommen werden: Das erste Allomorph erscheint in nicht-partitiven Konstruktionen, das letztere in partitiven. Dies legt die Unterscheidung zweier distinkter Genitivkasus nahe, die freilich nur von einer Minderheit der Nomina im Russischen nachvollzogen wird. Zudem sind sich beide Genitivkasus funktional sehr ähnlich. Insofern ist es sinnvoll, Kasuskategorien nicht als atomare Einheiten anzusehen, sondern in Merkmale aufzuspalten. In diesem Fall kann ein Merkmal [genitiv] angesetzt werden, das ein abhängiges Merkmal [⫾ partitiv] besitzt. Während die meisten Nomina sich hinsichtlich dieses Untermerkmals neutral verhalten, existieren für einige Nomina wie syr unterschiedliche Realisierungen dieses Untermerkmals. Da auch Unterkasus verschiedene Kasus dar-

482 stellen, müssen die Morphe -a und -u unterschiedlichen Morphemen zugerechnet werden und fallen damit nicht in den Bereich der Konditionierung. 7.2. Einschlägige Fälle Neben den im letzten Abschnitt diskutierten strittigen Datenbereichen gibt es einige Fälle, bei denen die Annahme syntaktischer Konditionierung unausweichlich zu sein scheint. Dies sind Fälle, deren Konditionierung sich nicht auf morphosyntaktische Merkmale zurückführen läßt, sondern von syntaktischen Faktoren wie phrasaler Komplexität oder Wortstellung abhängen. Im Jiddischen hat der feminine definite Artikel im Dativ zwei Allomorphe, nämlich der und ø. Dies zeigt sich in Lokativkonstruktionen der folgenden Art: (4) (a) in der sˇul bay der gas ‘in der Schule an der Straße’ (b) af der gas lebn sˇul ‘auf der Straße neben der Schule’ In beiden Beispielen ist das feminine Nomen sˇul definit zu verstehen, aber nur in (4a) ist der definite Artikel explizit ausgedrückt. Der wesentliche Unterschied zwischen den beiden Vorkommen von sˇul besteht darin, daß das Nomen in (4a) durch eine weitere Phrase modifiziert wird, während es in (4b) unmodifiziert ist (Zwicky 1984: 120, 125). Die Komplexität einer Phrase ist ein Faktor, der nur syntaktisch zu betrachten ist. Damit ist diese Allomorphie syntaktisch konditioniert. Überdies ist sie auch phonologisch konditioniert, denn die Nullform des definiten Artikels findet sich nur nach solchen Präpositionen, die mit einem Nasal enden. Eine ebenfalls mit phrasaler Komplexität verbundene Alternation findet sich im Deutschen. Eigennamen (außer solchen, die auf [s] enden) wählen hier zwei unterschiedliche Genitivallomorphe, nämlich -s oder -ø (vgl. Art. 62): (5) (a) die Schönheit Veras (*Vera) (b) die Schönheit der Vera (*Veras) (c) die Schönheit meiner geliebten Vera (*Veras) (d) die Schönheit Veras aus Köln (*Vera) (e) die Schönheit Veras, meiner besten Freundin (*Vera) Die Daten zeigen, daß die Distribution der beiden Genitivallomorphe davon abhängt, ob die Nominalphrase, deren Kopf der Eigenname ist, über einen kongruierenden Modifi-

VII. Allomorphie

zierer verfügt oder nicht (Mel’cˇuk 1986: 54f.). Allerdings muß dieser Modifizierer linear dem Kopfnomen vorausgehen (vgl. (5e)). Die Allomorphie ist also syntaktisch konditioniert durch den Umstand, ob das Genitivmerkmal linear vor dem Kopfnomen explizit ausgedrückt ist oder nicht. Im pränominalen Bereich wird dagegen das s-Allomorph immer gewählt, unabhängig von der Komplexität (meiner besten Freundin Veras Schönheit). Die Unterscheidung pränominal gegenüber postnominal ist somit ein weiterer syntaktischer Faktor der Konditionierung. Wortstellung als entscheidender Faktor bei der Allomorphbestimmung findet sich im Niederländischen. Die 2. Person Singular wird hier entweder durch -t oder durch -ø am Verb markiert, und zwar in Abhängigkeit von der linearen Abfolge von Verb und Pronomen. Geht das Pronomen dem Verb voraus, ist das Allomorph -t obligatorisch (je heb-t ‘du hast’), im anderen Fall das Nullallomorph (heb-ø je). Ein ähnlicher Fall zeigt sich im Walisischen. Hier hängt die Form eines Nomens wie ci ‘Hund’ davon ab, ob es in der Funktion des direkten Objekts linear dem Verb vorangeht (dann erscheint die Basisform) oder ob es dem Verb folgt (dann erscheint die weich mutierte Form gi; vgl. 4). Unabhängig davon, ob dies als Konditionierung in unmittelbarer Abhängigkeit von der syntaktischen Funktion (Willis 1986: 68) oder als Kasusallomorphie gesehen wird (Fife & King 1998: 482), hängt die Distribution der Allomorphe von der Wortstellung ab und muß mithin als syntaktisch konditioniert bewertet werden. Ein gänzlich anders gelagerter und zugleich schwer einzuschätzender Fall findet sich in der kaukasischen Sprache Archi, die durch eine überaus reichhaltige Verbmorphologie charakterisiert ist. Zu den infiniten Verbformen, die Prädikate abhängiger Propositionen ausdrücken, gehört der Absolutiv, der die Simultaneität zweier Propositionen bezeichnet. Das Verb der kommunikativ im Hintergrund stehenden Phrase erscheint dabei im Absolutiv. Im Perfektiv hat die positive Form des Absolutivsuffixes zwei Allomorphe, nämlich -li und -na. Die Distribution hängt vom Modus der Proposition des Hauptsatzes ab: Steht der Hauptsatz im Realis, nimmt das Absolutivsuffix des Nebensatzes die Form -li, wenn der Hauptsatz im Irrealis steht, dagegen -na (Kibrik 1998: 463⫺ 466). Je nach grammatischer Stellung modaler Kennzeichnung im Archi kann diese Allo-


morphie als morphologisch oder syntaktisch, möglicherweise sogar als semantisch konditioniert angesehen werden. Daß syntaktische Konditionierung in der Literatur relativ wenig Beachtung gefunden hat, hängt z. T. mit der derivationellen Ausrichtung generativer Linguistik zusammen. In solchen Ansätzen wird von einer linearen Hintereinanderschaltung einzelner Grammatikmodule ausgegangen. Je nach Konzeption ist dann die Interaktion von syntaktischen und morpho-phonologischen Aspekten schwer zu modellieren. In den 90er Jahren entwikkelte deklarative Ansätze, die in oberflächenbezogener Sicht von einer parallelen Applikation aller Grammatikkomponenten ausgehen, lassen erhoffen, daß als syntaktisch konditioniert zu bewertenden Allomorphiefällen mehr Beachtung geschenkt werden wird.

8.

Zitierte Literatur

Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 62) Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 1) Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 22) Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Booij, Geert (1996), “Non-derivational Phonology Meets Lexical Phonology”. In: Roca, Iggy (Hrsg.), Derivations and Constraints in Phonology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 261⫺288 Brecht, Richard D. & Levine, James S. (1986, Hrsg.), Case in Slavic. Columbus: Slavica Publishers Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London usw.: Croom Helm Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York usw.: Harper & Row Comrie, Bernard (1986), “On Delimiting Cases”. In: Brecht & Levine (Hrsg.), 86⫺106 Fabri, Ray & Ortmann, Albert & Parodi, Teresa (1998, Hrsg.), Models of Inflection. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Linguistische Arbeiten 388) Fife, James & King, Gareth (1998), “Celtic (IndoEuropean)”. In: Spencer & Zwicky (Hrsg.), 477⫺ 499 Goddard, Cliff (1982), “Case Systems and Case Marking in Australian Languages: A New Interpretation”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 2, 167⫺196

483 Golston, Chris & Wiese, Richard (1996), “Zero Morphology and Constraint Interaction: Subtraction and Epenthesis in German Dialects”. Yearbook of Morphology 1995, 143⫺159 Halle, Morris & Mohanan, K[aruvannur] P. (1985), “Segmental Phonology of Modern English”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 57⫺116 Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press Hock, Hans Henrich (1985), “Regular Metathesis”. Linguistics 23, 529⫺546 Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 Hudson, Grover (1980), “Automatic Alternations in Non-transformational Phonology”. Language 56, 94⫺125 Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (1998), “Archi (Caucasian ⫺ Daghestanian)”. In: Spencer & Zwicky (Hrsg.), 455⫺476 Köpcke, Klaus-Michael (1993), Schemata bei der Pluralbildung im Deutschen: Versuch einer kognitiven Morphologie. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 47) Köpcke, Klaus-Michael (1995), “Die Klassifikation der schwachen Maskulina in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 14, 159⫺180 Lieber, Rochelle (1982), “Allomorphy”. Linguistic Analysis 10, 27⫺52 Marcus, Gary F. & Brinkmann, Ursula & Clahsen, Harald & Wiese, Richard & Pinker, Steven (1995), “German Inflection: The Exception That Proves the Rule”. Cognitive Psychology 29, 189⫺256 Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press [11974] Mchombo, Sam A. (1998), “Chichewa (Bantu)”. In: Spencer & Zwicky (Hrsg.), 500⫺520 Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1986), “Toward a Definition of Case”. In: Brecht & Levine (Hrsg.), 35⫺85 Mugdan, Joachim (1994), “Morphological Units”. In: Asher, R. E. (Hrsg.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. V. Oxford usw.: Pergamon Press, 2543⫺2553 Muravyova, Irina A. (1998),“Chukchee (Paleo-Siberian)”. In: Spencer & Zwicky (Hrsg.), 477⫺499 Neef, Martin (1998), “The Reduced Syllable Plural in German”. In: Fabri et al. (Hrsg.), 244⫺265 Nida, Eugene A. (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Languages 24, 414⫺441 Plank, Frans (1985), “The Interpretation and Development of Form Alternations Conditioned across Word-boundaries: The Case of wife’s, wives, and wives’”. In: Eaton, Roger (Hrsg.), Papers from the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 41), 205⫺233

484

VII. Allomorphie

Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Spencer, Andrew & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1998, Hrsg.), The Handbook of Morphology. Oxford, Malden/MA: Blackwell Wells, Rulon S. (1949), “Automatic Alternation”. Language 25, 99⫺116 Willis, Penny (1986), The Initial Consonant Mutations in Welsh and Breton. Bloomington/IN: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club

Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1998), “Drei Ebenen der Struktur von Flexionsparadigmen”. In: Fabri et al. (Hrsg.), 225⫺243 Zwicky, Arnold M. (1984), “ ‘Reduced Words’ in Highly Modular Theories: Yiddish Anarthrous Locatives Reexamined”. In: Zwicky, Arnold M. & Wallace, Rex E. (Hrsg.), Papers on Morphology. Columbus/OH: Dept. of Linguistics, Ohio State Univ. (Working Papers in Linguistics 29), 117⫺126

Martin Neef, Köln (Deutschland)

49. Fluctuation and free variation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Definition of free variation Free variation as a morphological phenomenon Definition of fluctuation Examples of fluctuation Fluctuation as an indicator of instability References

1.

Definition of free variation

Among variation in form which alter the signifiers of meaningful units without changing their identity (i.e. allomorphic variations, cf. Art. 46), some seem to defy precise definition because they cannot be recognised by means of the usual identification criteria. In fact, these variations in form are neither conditioned by the context, be it phonetic or semantic, nor shared by all the speakers of the same language at a given time. Furthermore, they do not affect all the units in which interchanging phonemes appear. As they seem to occur in a haphazard fashion, they have been given the vague label of free variants (cf. Pike 21967: 164) or optional variants (fr. variantes libres/facultatives, Germ. freie/fakultative Varianten) as opposed to obligatory or conditioned variants of a moneme (cf. Art. 47⫺48; in the French functionalist tradition, the term moneme is used for what is called morpheme elsewhere; morpheme is restricted to elements with grammatical meaning; cf. Art. 46). In English, for example, the plural moneme of the noun has obligatory variants in form: /-s/ in cats, /-z/ in dogs, /-=z/ in boxes, /-en/ in oxen or children. On the other hand, the moneme either also has two variants: the first syllable may be pronounced either with the diphthong /a=/ or the long vowel /i6/. As in the previous case, the presence of one or

other phoneme does not alter the identity of the moneme, which means that one may speak of variants of the signifier. However, whereas one may not choose between the different possible plural forms (only the /-en/ variant is possible with ox to the exclusion of the three others, just as only the /-=z/ variant is acceptable for the plural of box, etc.), the moneme either has no obligatory form and may just as well, without the slightest change in identity, be pronounced with the /a=/ diphthong as with the long vowel /i6/. It is in this sense that the term free variant is used. Nevertheless, the presence of one or other phoneme is not entirely fortuitous. It may depend upon a variety of factors (social background, age, sex, register, etc.). While it is true that one may hear one or other variant in Great Britain as well as in the United States, the frequency with which they occur is totally different in the two countries, and the use of one or other phoneme carries information about the speaker: the /a=/ diphthong provides an indication of the British origin of a speaker, and the long /i6/ vowel is more likely to be characteristic of the inhabitants of the United States. A survey of 275 speakers of different social backgrounds, carried out in Great Britain, confirmed that for this word, the pronunciation with the diphthong was preferred by 88% of the informants (cf. Wells 1990: 237). Another instance of variation of the same type may be noted for the pronunciation of other English monemes. The same survey showed, for example, that the first syllable of zebra was pronounced with an /e/ in Great Britain by 83% and with an /i6/ by 17%, whereas in the United States, /i6/ constituted the most common pronunciation. Another example, of

49. Fluctuation and free variation

which there is no shortage, is the verb to assume which in Great Britain was pronounced /e’sju6m/ by 84%, /e’su6m/ by 11% and /e’su6m/ by 5%, but /e’su6m/ by the vast majority in the United States. This differentiation on the geographical level may also be noted between different regions of Great Britain, for example for the moneme Celt, whose first consonant is usually the occlusive /k/ in England and Wales, but the fricative /s/ in Scotland (cf. Wells 1990: 43, 118, 800). In these cases, the variants are not strictly speaking free, but geographically conditioned.

2.

Free variation as a morphological phenomenon

2.1. Free variation and allophony In all examples of the type assume, the hypothesis that the different pronunciations are realisations of the same phoneme may be rejected. In fact, the [ju6] sequence, for example, may not be analysed as an optional phonetic realisation of the phoneme /u6/. While the single segment [u6] may freely replace the sequence [ju6] in assume (or new, or tune), this is not possible in use, which could only be pronounced with [ju6], or in goose (or food, or true) in which, on the contrary, only [u6] is possible, both in Great Britain and in the United States. The same reasoning may be applied to [a=] and [i6] in either, to [e] and [i6] in zebra and to [k] and [s] in Celt. It should be noted that the distinction between allophonic and allomorphic variation depends on the phonological theory one adopts. A theory which allows different phonemes to have phonetically identical allophones can regard more phenomena as allophonic than a model which requires a oneto-one correspondence between the phonetic and the phonemic levels. For instance, some speakers of German (especially in the Rhineland) pronounce the word dort ‘there’ either as [dcRt] as in Standard German, or as [dcxt]; similarly, Konzert ‘concert’ has the pronunciations [kcn’tseRt] and [kcn’tsext] (data from Joachim Mugdan). One could therefore assume that in this variety the phoneme /r/ has the allophones [R] and [x], which are freely interchangeable in certain contexts (e.g. between a short vowel and /t/). But [dcxt] is also the (only) phonetic representation of Docht ‘wick’, and in this case [x] is customarily regarded as an allophone of /x/ (with [x] after

485 back vowels, [ç] after front vowels and consonants, cf. the diminutive Döchtchen [’dœçtçn˜ ] ‘little wick’. Classical structuralist phonology therefore forces us to treat dort as having two allomorphs in free variation, /dort/ and /doxt/, whereas other approaches (e.g. generative phonology) permit an optional phonetic rule to convert underlying /r/ into [x], despite the fact that underlying /x/ can have the same surface representation. 2.2. Free variation and neutralisation As free variation occurs between related phonemes, one could be tempted to confuse it with neutralisation, but this would be a mistake. Neutralisation is assumed each time an opposition fails to occur in certain positions or in certain contexts, whereas it is clearly documented elsewhere. Now, what is called free variation differs in relation to two main points: (a) morphological variation which is said to be free is not conditioned by the phonetic context (whereas neutralisation always is and is always described solely in phonetic terms); (b) neutralisation affects all occurrences of the phonemes in question, in a given position or context, without exception, but free variation only affects them in certain monemes of the language. 2.3. Free variation and morphophonemic alternation Distinct both from phonemic variation and neutralisation, “free” variation is thus outside the realms of phonology in the strict sense (cf. Martinet 1983) and is dealt with in morphology (cf. Walter 1984). Within this field, it is distinguished from alternation, i.e. from morphophonemics or morpho(pho)nology (cf. Martinet 1965; Dressler 1985; Art. 50⫺ 51), in which the conditioning of variation is partly phonetic, but only for some of the units of meaning. Wellknown cases of mophophonemic alternation include the different forms of the plural moneme in English (cf. 1), and the German Umlaut so often cited; further examples of alternation in Spanish, Italian and French illustrate how this phenomenon differs from free variation. In Spanish, unstressed /o/ and stressed /we/ alternate in poner ‘[to] put, place’ and puesto ‘put, placed’, in morir ‘[to] die’ and muerto ‘dead’, in doler ‘[to] hurt’ and me duele ‘[it] hurts me’, but in the present-day language,

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one may hear the vowel /o/ in the stressed syllable (toma ‘[he] takes’) as well as the diphthong /we/ in the unstressed syllable /cuestioń ‘question’). In Italian, /k/ and /ts/ alternate for the moneme ‘friend’ in amico ‘friend’ with /k/ and amici ‘friends’ with /ts/, or for the moneme ‘doctor’ in medico in the singular and medici in the plural. (Again, it should be noted that synchronically the presence of the affricate /ts/ is not conditioned by the presence of the /i/ which follows it, since the plural of valico ‘mountain pass’ is valichi with a /k/ just as the plural of buco ‘hole’ is buchi, also with a /k/, and not with the affricate /ts/.) Similarly, in French, the moneme with the signified ‘horse’ is represented by a form containing /s/ in cheval ‘horse’, chevalin ‘equine’, chevaucher ‘[to] ride, straddle’, but /k/ in cavalier ‘horseman’, cavalerie ‘cavalry’ and cavalcade ‘cavalcade’. In this example, the phonetic context cannot, in synchrony, be held responsible for the change in consonant either, since one may find quenouille ‘distaff’ or querelle ‘quarrel’ (with a /k/) in the same context as that in which we had the fricative in cheval ‘horse’ and also fricatives before /a/, in chapeau ‘hat’ or charger ‘[to] charge, load’ ⫺ in other words in the same context in which cavalier ‘horseman’ took a /k/.

3.

Definition of fluctuation

All the examples in 2.3 are of alternation, which must not be confused with the type of variation which may be noted, for example, in the French pachyderme ‘pachyderm’ or acheuleén ‘Acheulean’. These words occur either with the fricative /s/ or the occlusive /k/: in the Dictionnaire de la prononciation française dans son usage reél (Martinet & Walter 1973), there are 13 instances of /s/ and 4 of /k/ for the ch of pachyderme ‘pachyderm’, for 17 informants. But the term acheuleén ‘Acheulean’, with 16 instances of /k/ and two of /s/ for the same 17 informants, shows that one of the informants in the survey hesitated and sometimes pronounced the word with a /k/ and sometimes with a /s/. This specific type of free variation is called fluctuation. The term fluctuation refers to the haphazard variation “in the form of the signifiers of meaningful units and, in particular, to the cases in which the same moneme is pronounced with one phoneme or another by members of the community, but also, and

this is more problematic, by the same speaker” (Walter 1982: 138). Whereas alternation is necessarily the same for the whole of a speech community at a given time, fluctuation is more often than not dependent upon individual speakers, and its presence in a corpus is more difficult to analyse because its conditioning is extra-linguistic.

4.

Examples of fluctuation

4.1. Fluctuation in Arabic Spoken by tens of millions of people around the world, Arabic has become divided into numerous varieties over the centuries, with a unifying force, for Muslims ⫺ who constitute the majority of these Arabic-speaking communities ⫺ due to the common reference to the Koran and to the form of language in which it is written. For the spoken word, various phonological systems have evolved which have mutual influences when the different populations come into contact. The result is the existence in Arabic of a large number of monemes with varying signifieds. Furthermore, the occurrence of a particular phoneme in these morphemes provides information about the speaker. In the Arabic spoken in Tunis, for example, the same moneme ‘dead’ may be pronounced /mawt/, with the diphthong /aw/, or /mu6t/, with the long vowel /u6/. Similarly, ‘room’ may be pronounced /bajt/, with the diphthong (aj/, or /bi6t/, with the long vowel /i6/. The forms with the diphthong, which are the oldest forms and which are found in classical Arabic, are traditionally characteristic of the usage of women, as well as that of Jewish speakers of Arabic (male and female), whereas male Muslims pronounce the same monemes with the long vowel. This male-female distinction (among Muslims), which has been valid for centuries, has recently undergone changes: the fact that girls are staying in education longer leads them to align their speech with that of the men and so to use long vowels as they do (cf. Cohen 1973: 218⫺220). Certain extra-linguistic circumstances interfere in the evolution of usage. In addition, because of the way Arabic spread, a distinction may also be drawn between the usage of nomadic varieties status of the opposition between /g/ (voiced velar plosive) and /q/ (glottalised uvular plosive) has been brought about by these historic circumstances. In fact, in the varieties of Arabic spoken in the Magh-

49. Fluctuation and free variation

reb, there are numerous monemes which may be pronounced with /q/ or with /g/, without a change in meaning. In theory, the sound which is recorded by the letter qaf in classical Arabic is pronounced /g/ in nomadic varieties and /q/ in urban varieties. This is the case in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, where the /q/ of classical Arabic is indeed represented by /q/, particularly for the vocabulary relating to religion or administration as in /qanun/ ‘law’ or /qur?an/ ‘Koran’. However, some rural usages have crept into the towns, and in the vocabulary relating to rural matters nowadays there is a preference for the phoneme /g/ (for example /garøa/ ‘courgette’). But there are several monemes whose pronunciation is not stable, some speakers opting for /g/, others preferring /q/. It inevitably follows that speakers hesitate and there is fluctuation in the speech of the individual, who will pronounce the same moneme sometimes with a /g/ and sometimes with a /q/. Yet, not all monemes are subject to this uncertainty, and the complete list of all these forms is still to be drawn up. Here are, nevertheless, some examples provided by Abderrahim Youssi, a professor at the University of Rabat: (1) /qelb/ or /gelb/ /qenfud/ or genfud/ /marqa/ or /marga/ /fuq/ or /fug/ /quddam/ or /guddam/

‘heart’ ‘hedgehog’ ‘sauce’ ‘above, on’ ‘in front (of)’

Hesitations of the same kind may be found in the three countries of the Maghreb (Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco), and these make the /g/⫺/q/ opposition unstable so that its relevance could be threatened as a result. As if to resist this threat, this situation has paradoxically led to new distinctions. The same /g/⫺/q/ oposition nowadays enables residents of Tlemcen (Algeria) to distinguish between /bagra/ ‘cow’ with /g/ and /baqra/ ‘the Cow chapter of the Koran’, with a /q/. In the Jewish community of Tunis, /bagra/ ‘cow’ with /g/ is distinct from /baqri/ ‘bovine meat’, with /q/ (cf. Cohen 1973: 233). 4.2. Fluctuation in French Once fluctuations have been identified, a systematic study, idiolect by idiolect, should be undertaken. The first study attempting to establish the extent of the fluctuation in each of the different individuals of a community, and no longer simply in the community as a whole, was undertaken on the French spoken in the Mauges, a region in the west of France,

487 between Angers and Cholet (cf. Walter 1980). Fluctuations among three phonemes (/e¨/, /e/, /e/) were noted for a certain number of monemes, among inhabitants of the region who were for the most part working in agriculture and born before 1933. For these speakers, there is a phoneme which is realised as a central vowel /e¨/ (the final vowel of fumer ‘smoke-inf’, fum-e´ ‘smoke-part.perf’ or fum-ait ‘smoke-impf.3.sg’), which is distinct from /ø/ (fumeux ‘smoky’), from closed /e/ (fumeé ‘smoke [noun]’) and from open /e/ (fum-ais ‘smoke-impf.1.sg’, fum-aient ‘smokeimpf.3.pl’). A systematic study of the idiolects, one by one, led to the discovery that only the monemes containing the central vowel /e¨/ were subject to fluctuation, with considerable frequency for forms of the third person singular imperfect (of the type fumait) and for those of the past participle in the masculine (of the type fume´), whereas nouns ending in -e´ (of the type cure´ ‘priest’) and the forms in -et (of the type fumet ‘smell’) were more stable. Two other studies of French were subsequently carried out, more specifically on the /e/⫺/e/ opposition in final position (as in pre´ ⫺ preˆt or chanter ⫺ chantais), first in Paris in 1980 and then in Rennes in 1991 (cf. Walter 1981; Walter 1992 a). For the survey carried out in Rennes, a specific questionnaire was designed to assist in establishing the distribution of the two phonemes in a large number of units of meaning which could have contained the open /e/ vowel (122 lexical or grammatical forms). Analysis of the data provided by 50 informants of both sexes, aged between 16 and 72 years, was in the first instance able to confirm the healthy state of the opposition in the region: the vast majority of informants (82%) did in fact pronounce the open /e/ phoneme in 115 words (i.e. 93% of the possible occurrences). Fluctuation was nevertheless noted among 16 informants (a third of the survey sample), but for nine of them, this only occurred in one word (of the 122 included in the survey). The forms most likely to be subject to fluctuation are the following: a majority of forms in -et (as in alphabet, buffet or filet), grammatical monemes such as ces ‘these’, des ‘some’, mes ‘my’, tes ‘your’, ses ‘his, her’, de`s que ‘as soon as’, some verb forms such as je creé ‘I create’, il est ‘he is’, je hais ‘I hate’, j’irai ‘I shall go’, fait ‘made, done’, il met ‘he puts’, as well as the moneme quai ‘platform, bank’ already noted as being subject to variation and studied in a 1941 survey (cf. Martinet 1945).

488

5.

VII. Allomorphie

Fluctuation as an indicator of instability

There is a certain number of specific studies on fluctuation, particularly within the framework of functional theory (cf. Martinet 1960), the first of which is devoted to Chama (also known as Ese’ejja), an Indian language in Bolivia (Key 1968). Another Amerindian language turned out to be particularly interesting on the subject because it constitutes an extreme case: Qawasqar in southern Chile, in which fluctuation affects almost all parts of the phonological system (cf. Clairis 1981; 1985: 411⫺423). More recently, studies have been carried out on Canadian French (cf. Martin 1988). Finally, it is under the name of polymorphism that the same type of phenomenon has been analysed in Gascon (Allie`res 1954; 1962; 1982; 1985). In all the descriptions which highlight hesitation over the form of monemes, it emerges that the situation is the result of contact between speakers with partially different phonological systems. This brings about fluctuation for the same moneme in the same speaker, who, having often heard the same moneme pronounced in different ways, will in turn hesitate and may unsystematically opt for one or other phoneme for the same moneme. In synchronic descriptions of languages, it is desirable to collect all possible data on seemingly univerifiable and unpredictable variation, such as fluctuation (cf. Clairis 1991; Key 1979; Walter 1982; 1992 a), to pave the way for future diachronic studies (cf. Key 1976; 1979; Walter 1988; 1992 b; 1993). If these phenomena become more widespread, speakers might become accustomed to neglecting oppositions which are subject to free variation and fluctuation and this could in the fullness of time lead to their disappearance and a reorganisation of the whole phonological system.

6.

References

Allie`res, Jacques (1954), “Un exemple de polymorphisme phone´tique: Le polymorphisme de l’ -s implosif en gascon garonnais”. Via Domitia 1 [⫽ Annales publieés par la Faculte´ des lettres de Toulouse 3.4], 70⫺107 Allie`res, Jacques (1962), “Aspects geógraphiques et diachroniques de la phone´tique: le polymorphisme”. In: Sovijärvi, Antti & Aalto, Pentti (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Held at the University of Hel-

sinki, 4⫺9 September 1961. The Hague: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 10), 524⫺532 Allie`res, Jacques (1982), “Polymorphisme en gascon”. In: Actes du 8e Colloque de linguistique fonctionelle, Toulouse, 6⫺11 juillet 1981. Toulouse: Service des publications de l’Universite´ de ToulouseLe Mirail (Cahiers du Centre interdisciplinaire des sciences du langage 4; Trauvaux de l’Universite´ de Toulouse-Le Mirail 18), 123⫺125 Allie`res, Jacques (1985), “Statut et limites du polymorphisme morphologique: Le verbe dans la grammaire cantabrique basque de Pierre d’Urte (1712)”. In: Melena, Jose´ L. (ed.), Symbolæ Ludovico Mitxelena Septuagenario Oblatæ. Victoriaco Vasconum [Vitoria]: Instituto de Ciencias de la Antigüedad, Universidad del Paı´s Vasco, 899⫺919 Clairis, Christos (1981), “La fluctuation de phone`mes”. Dilbilim 6, 99⫺110 Clairis, Christos (1985), El qawasqar, linguistica fueguina: Teoria y descripcion. Valdivia: Facultad de Filosofıá y Humanidades, Univ. Austral de Chile (Estudios filolo´gicos 12) Clairis, Christos (1991), “Identification et typologie des fluctuations”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 86.1, 19⫺35 Cohen, David (1973), “Variantes, varie´te´s dialectales et contacts linguistiques en domaine arabe”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 68.1, 215⫺248 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor/MI: Karoma (Linguistica Extranea, Studies 12) Key, Mary Ritchie (1968), “Phonemic Pattern and Phoneme Fluctuation in Bolivian Chama (Tacanan)”. La linguistique 4.2, 35⫺48 Key, Mary Ritchie (1976), “La fluctuacioń de fonemas en la teoria fonologica”. Signos: Estudios de lengua y literatura 9, 137⫺143 Key, Mary Ritchie (1979), “Phoneme Fluctuation and Minimal Pairs in Language Change”. In: Mahmoudian, Morte´za (ed.), Linguistique fonctionnelle: De´bats et perspectives. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 305⫺310 Martin, Pierre (1988), “Fluctuations et flottements vocaliques en franco-canadien”. In: Actes du 14e Colloque international de linguistique fonctionelle [Elseneur 1987] ⫽ Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain 14.1⫺2, 223⫺228 [reprinted 1989 in: Dilbilim 8, 87⫺100] Martinet, Andre´ (1945), La prononciation du français contemporain. Paris: Droz (Socie´te´ de publications romanes et françaises 23) [⫽ 21971 Gene`ve: Droz (Langue & cultures 3)] Martinet, Andre´ (1960), E´le´ments de linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Colin Martinet, Andre´ (1965), “De la morphonologie”. La linguistique 1.1, 15⫺30

50. Generalized representations Martinet, Andre´ (1983), “Ce que n’est pas la phonologie”. Langue française 60, 6⫺13 Martinet, Andre´ & Walter, Henriette (1973), Dictionnaire de la prononciation française dans son usage reél. Paris: France-Expansion Pike, Kenneth L. (21967), Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 24) [preliminary ed. in 3 parts 1954, 1955, 1960 Glendale/CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics] Walter, Henriette (1980), “La voyelle centrale et son e´volution: Une e´tude syste´matique de la fluctuation“. In: Walter, Henriette (ed.), Les Mauges: Pre´sentation de la re´gion et e´tude de sa prononciation. Angers: Centre de Recherche en litte´rature et en linguistique sur l’Anjou et le Bocage de l’Universite´ d’Angers, 79⫺136 Walter, Henriette (1981), “En phonologie, peut-on toujours distinguer entre opposition et variation?” Bulletin de la section de linguistique de la Faculte´ des lettres de Lausanne 4, 39⫺42 Walter, Henriette (1982), “Le concept de synchronie dynamique”. In: Actes du 8e Colloque de linguistique fonctionnelle, Toulouse, 6⫺11 juillet 1981. Toulouse: Universite´ de Toulouse-Le Mirail (Cahiers du Centre interdisciplinaire des sciences

489 du langage 4; Travaux de l’Universite´ de ToulouseLe Mirail 18), 98⫺148 Walter, Henriette (1984), “Entre la phonologie et la morphologie: Variantes libres et fluctuations”. Folia Linguistica 18, 65⫺72 Walter, Henriette (1988), “Les changements phone´tiques ‘vrais’ et les autres, ou les fluctuations sont-elles ine´vitables?” In: Ducos, Gise`le (ed.), Actes du 13e Colloque International de Linguistique Fonctionnelle [Corfou 1986]. Athe`nes: Organismos Ekdoseos Didaktikon Biblion, 49⫺51 Walter, Henriette (1992 a), “Poids phonologique, phone`mes recessifs et dynamique”. In: Actes du 18e Colloque international de Linguistique Fonctionnelle [Prague 1991]. Prague: Univ. Charles, 139⫺142 Walter, Henriette (1992 b), “Les fluctuations mettent-elles en danger une opposition phonologique?” La linguistique 28.1, 59⫺68 Walter, Henriette (1993), “Phonologie et lexique: La propagation de changements venus d’ailleurs”. French Language Studies 3, 95⫺106 Wells, J[ohn] C. (1990), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow/Essex: Longman

Henriette Walter, Paris and Rennes (France) Translation: Marie Landick, Egham/Surrey (Great Britain)

50. Generalized representations 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Morphophoneme Archiphoneme Prosody and phonematic unit Archi-segment References

1.

Introduction

Many morphemes have two or more phonologically related allomorphs (cf. Art. 46), as in the case of Russian {god} ‘year’: (1) (a) (b) (c) (d)

/god/ in go´d-y ‘year-nom.pl’ /got/ in god ‘year(nom.sg)’ /gad/ in god-o´v ‘year-gen.pl’ /gat/ in god-k-a´ ‘year-dim-gen.sg’

These allomorphs exhibit a correspondence or alternation between stressed /o/ in (1a)⫺ (1b) and unstressed /a/ in (1c)⫺(1d), which recurs in the allomorphs of other morphemes, e.g. /dom/ vs. /dam/ as in dom ‘house (nom.sg)’ and dom-a´ ‘house-nom.pl’. The alternation between final /d/ and /t/ can also be

observed in many parallel cases, e.g. /prud/ vs. /prut/ as in prud-a´ ‘pond-gen.sg’ and prud ‘pond(nom.sg)’. If the differences between a group of allomorphs can be reduced to such systematic alternations, it is desirable to set up a single representation from which the individual allomorphs can be inferred. For this purpose, two types of descriptive models have been proposed in the context of different phonological theories (cf. Elson & Pickett 1983: 47⫺58; Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 82⫺102; Spencer 1991: 53⫺57; for historical surveys, see also Fischer-Jørgensen 1975; Kilbury 1976; Anderson 1985): (a) In dynamic models, an underlying form or basic form, which may or may not be identical with one of the observable allomorphs, is posited at a linguistic level “deeper” or more “abstract” than that of the “surface” allomorphs; the latter are derived from the underlying representation by rules which replace, delete, insert or permute phonemes under specified conditions (cf. Art. 51).

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(b) In static models, the allomorphs relate non-derivationally to each other and are posited at the same linguistic level. To account for the alternations, specific units are introduced. Morphophonemes (cf. 2) constitute a distinct level of representation which is compatible with a variety of phonological theories; however, not all linguists recognize the morphophonemes or operate with them. Other units ⫺ archiphonemes (cf. 3), prosodies and phonematic units (cf. 4) and archi-segments (cf. 5) ⫺ belong to the basic level of representation in specific “schools” of phonology. What these approaches have in common is that some segments are not specified for certain features whose values depend on the context (cf. also Steriade 1995 on underspecification in dynamic models).

2.

Morphophoneme

The morphophoneme is a linguistic unit which corresponds to a phonological alternation in the allomorphs of a morpheme. Although the term looks like a compound in which morpho- modifies phoneme, morphophonemes and phonemes are different types of linguistic units which are posited at separate linguistic levels and have different functions. The morphophonemic level is intermediate between the phonological or phonemic level (that of the phoneme) and the morphological or morphemic level (that of the morpheme). This is in keeping with the tenet that morphophonemics is a linguistic discipline situated between phonology and morphology (cf. Art. 35; see also Martinet 1965 b; Dressler 1985). 2.1. The concept of the morphophoneme The term morphophoneme ⫺ or morphoneme for short ⫺ was defined by Nikolaj S. Trubetzkoy and other phonologists of the Prague School as (2) “image complexe de deux ou plusieurs phone`mes susceptibles de se remplacer mutuellement, selon les conditions de la structure morphologique, a` l’inte´rieur d’un meˆme morphe`me.” (The`ses 1929: 11; cf. Trubetzkoy 1929: 85; 1934: 30; Projet 1931: 322f.)

The standard example is the Russian morphophoneme k/cˇ in ruka´ ‘hand’ and the corresponding adjective rucˇno´j (as in rucˇno´j baga´zˇ ‘hand luggage’); it is equivalent to an alternation between /k/ and /tsj/ in the allo-

morphs ruk- and rucˇ-. This alternation is morphologically motivated, and not phonetically or phonologically: the form *rukno´j, instead of rucˇno´j, is morphologically impossible in Russian. All Russian morphemes which have an allomorph in -k (with the exception of those in -sk) appear with one in -cˇ before adjectival -n (cf. brak ‘matrimony’ and braćˇnyi ‘matrimonial’, jazy´k ‘tongue’ and jazyćˇnyi ‘lingual’). The term morphophoneme was actually antedated by the shorter Polish form morfonema, which was employed in the context of alternations ⫺ apparently for an underlying segment, although this is not entirely clear ⫺ by one of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay’s students (cf. Ułaszyn 1927: 406; also 1931: 58f.). The spelling morpho-phoneme with a hyphen was first used in America in connection with the observation that the f of leaf changes to v in the plural whereas that of cuff does not (cf. 2.2): (3) “The f of cuff is therefore morphologically different from the f of leaf, though phonemically it is the same entity. […] Morphologically distinct phonemes are called morpho-phonemes. A morpho-phoneme is one of a class of like phonemes considered as components of actual morphemes which behave alike morphologically […].” (Swadesh 1934: 129 [1957: 37; 1973: 45])

The term morphophoneme was also employed by Leonard Bloomfield and his followers to designate an underlying segment (which necessarily requires rules and derivation) rather than a set of alternating phonemes (cf. Bloomfield 1939: 106 [1970: 353]; see also Art. 51). 2.2. Morphophonemes in the description of allomorphy The purpose of using morphophonemes in accounting for alternations is (4) “to define elements, as constituents of morphemic segments, in terms of which all the segment members of a given morpheme would be identical” (Harris 1951: 219);

the advantage of this approach (5) “becomes apparent when we realize […] that there may be many morphemes whose members differ from each other identically.” (Harris 1951: 226)

For instance, the English morpheme {leaf} has two allomorphs, /li6f/ in leaf and /li6v/ in leaves, which share the first two segments, /l/

491

50. Generalized representations

and /i6/, and differ in the third. From a morphological point of view, however, the set of alternating phonemes /f/ ⬃ /v/ (where the symbol ⬃ stands for “alternates with”) constitutes a unitary element, a morphophoneme which is typically symbolized by //F//. The notational distinction between morphophonemes (with double slashes //…//) and phonemes (with single slashes /…/) reflects the different linguistic levels at which these units are posited. Because of this separation of levels, the aim stated in (4) requires an extension of the original concept of the morphophoneme (cf. also Matthews 1970: 100f. on analogous proposals in Stratificational Grammar): in order to achieve a single representation of {leaf}, morphophonemes must be set up even where there is no alternation between a set of phonemes at corresponding points in the allomorphs of a morpheme. Thus, the first two segments in the allomorphs /li6f/ and /li6v/ are identified as the morphophonemes //l// and //i6//. (Often, upper-case letters or small capitals are used for morphophonemes that correspond to an alternation and lower-case letters for those that do not; cf. Harris 1951: 225.) Now the morpheme {leaf} can be given a morphophonemic representation //li6F//, in which each symbol stands for a morphophoneme. As indicated in (5), there are other English morphemes which exhibit the same alternation /f/ ⬃ /v/, e.g. {wolf}, {calf} and {life}, so that one can simply identify them as //wwlF//, //ka6F// and //la=F// with the same morphophoneme //F// instead of repeating the description of the alternation for each morpheme. However, there are also morphemes like {cuff} and {cliff} which exhibit no alternation between /f/ and /v/; they must be (6) Morpheme

Allomorphs

represented with a different morphophoneme (cf. 3)), e.g. as //kvf//, //kl=f//, etc. with lowercase //f//. (Alternatively, one can use indices to distinguish the two morphophonemes, e.g. //li6f1// vs. //kvf2//; cf. Swadesh 1934: 129 [1957: 37; 1973: 45].) A number of English morphemes, such as {hoof}, {roof}, {scarf} and {wharf}, have either //F// or //f// as the final morphophonemes, depending on individual speakers’ usages (cf. Art. 49). Another famous example is that of the German morphemes {Rad} ‘wheel, bicycle’ and {Rat} ‘advice, council’. {Rad} has two allomorphs, /ra6t/ (e.g. in Rad, Radweg ‘cycle path’, Radstand ‘wheelbase’, etc.) and /ra6d/ (e.g. in Rad-es ‘wheel-gen’, Radler ‘cyclist’, etc.), while {Rat} has only one allomorph /ra6t/ (e.g. in Rat, Rat-es ‘advice-gen’, Rathaus ‘town hall’, etc.). {Rad} can be represented morphophonemically as //ra6T// (where //T// is equivalent to the alternation /t/ ⬃ /d/) and {Rat} as //ra6t// (where //t// stands for non-alternating /t/). This morphophonemic difference is essentially the same as that between {leaf} and {cliff}. Moreover, {Rad} and {Rat} fall together phonologically as /ra6t/ in some contexts. In some types of English, a similar case is that of the morphemes {ride} and {write}, both of which have an allomorph with the alveolar flap [J] before a vowel so that riding and writing are pronounced identically. A morphophonemic representation such as //li6F// must be accompanied by specifications as to which allomorph occurs in what context (cf. Art. 47⫺48). Diagram (6) shows the relationships between the different representations in the case of the alternating morpheme {leaf} in contrast to the non-alternating morpheme {cuff}:

Morphophonemes

Context

/li6v/ ⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺ before {plural} ∑ ∂ {leaf} ∂ //li6F// ∑ /li6f/ ⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺ elsewhere {cuff} — /kvf/——–—— //kvf// ⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺⫺ everywhere 2.3. Subtypes of morphophonemes Morphophonemes can be subclassified according to various criteria, including ⫺ the number of members or alternants, ⫺ the complexity of the members and ⫺ the factors which condition the choice between the members (cf. Art. 47⫺48). Morphophonemes with a single member (a non-alternating phoneme) are a limiting case;

they are needed only because all the segments that occur in the allomorphs of a morpheme must be represented on the morphophonemic level, whether or not an alternation between phonemes is involved (cf. 2.2). Many alternations have two members, the logical minimum, e.g. English /f/ ⬃ /v/ or German /t/ ⬃ /d/, but three or four are quite common, too. In Czech, for instance, the /k/ of ruka ‘hand(nom.sg)’ alternates not only with /ts/ in

492 the adjective rucˇny´ but also with /ts/ in ruc-e ‘hand-dat.sg’, and Turkish has a four way alternation /i/ ⬃ /y/ ⬃ /X/ ⬃ /u/ (cf. 4.3). Alternations are not restricted to correspondences between single phonemes (cf. Baudouin de Courtenay 1894: 268⫺270 [1990: 186⫺189]; 1895: 37⫺40). Thus, Romanian /dorm/ ‘[I] sleep’ and /dwarme/ ‘[s/he] sleeps’ exemplify an alternation between the phoneme /o/ and the sequence /wa/, i.e. a morphophoneme //O// equivalent to /o/ ⬃ /wa/. Bulgarian /den/ ‘day’ and /dn-i/ ‘day-pl’ show that {den} has one allomorph with the vowel /e/ and one without it. In such cases, it is common to speak of an alternation with “zero”, e.g. /e/ ⬃ π. (This phonological zero should not be confused with morphological zero elements; cf. Art. 45). The corresponding Russian example /djenj/ ‘day(nom.sg’) vs. (dnj-i/ ‘day-nom.pl’ appears to involve two alternations, /dj/ ⬃ /d/ and /e/ ⬃ π, but analogous pairs such as /pjenj/ ‘stump(nom.sg)’ vs. /pnj-i/ ‘stump-nom.pl’ suggest that it might be more appropriate to assume a single alternation /je/ ⬃ π, where one member consists of a vowel plus part of the preceding consonant, viz. the feature palatalization. The choice between the alternants of a morphophoneme may depend on purely morphological (or grammatical) factors, as in the Russian alternation /k/ ⬃ /tsj/ in ruka and rucˇnoj (where /tsj/ is required by the suffix -n) and the English alternation /f/ ⬃ /v/ in leaf and leaves (where the morpheme {plural} is the relevant factor). There are cases, however, where the phonetic nature of the context is decisive. This is true of the “regular” allomorphs of the English morpheme {plural} ⫺ /=z/ occurs after sibilants (as in horses), /s/ after voiceless non-sibilants (as in cats) and /z/ elsewhere, i.e. after voiced nonsibilants and vowels (as in dogs). However, a grammatical factor plays a role, too. This is evident from the fact that sin, ell and play take /z/ although since, else and place with /s/ also exist in English. Similarly, * /kæt=z/ and * /dAg=z/ instead of /kæts/ and /dAgz/, respectively, would be phonetically acceptable. Furthermore, there are “irregular” allomorphs of {plural} such as zero in sheep and /en/ in oxen; the forms * sheeps and * oxes are phonetically perfectly possible but disallowed in the case of specific lexemes. Some authors restrict the use of morphophonemes to situations in which there is some “irregularity” of this kind so that either the morphemes exhibiting a given alternation or

VII. Allomorphie

the environments in which the alternants occur cannot be identified in purely phonological terms (cf. also Harris 1951: 219⫺222); some or all types of “regular” or predictable alternations may be accounted for in a different way (cf. 3.4; see also Dressler 1985: 57⫺167 on the distinction between morphophonemic and phonological rules).

3.

Archiphoneme

While the concept of the morphophoneme is based on the notion of alternation, that of the archiphoneme arose in a theoretical framework in which major emphasis was placed on phonological oppositions and their neutralization (cf. 3.1). The term archiphoneme is generally connected with the Linguistic Circle of Prague, which flourished from the mid-1920s to the end of the 1930s. Subsequently, the term and the concept were abandonded, and it is primarily Andre´ Martinet and linguists influenced by him who continue to espouse them. 3.1. Neutralization According to Nikolaj S. Trubetzkoy’s classification, a phonological opposition is bilateral (or unidimensional) if its two members are the only phonemes in the phonological system to share their common base, i.e. the sum of the distinctive properties common to them; this combination of features therefore does not recur in any other phoneme of the same phonological system (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 60f.). In English, for instance, the opposition between /p/ and /b/ is bilateral because these phonemes are the only labial plosives in the language. A phonological opposition is privative if one of its members possesses a feature, the mark, which the other member lacks (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 67). For example, English /b/ has the feature “voice” but /p/ does not; /b/ is called marked (German merkmaltragend) with regard to /p/ (cf. Art. 29). Some bilateral privative oppositions are valid in all contexts or constant (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 69f.), e.g. /p/ vs. /b/ in the speech of some but not all French speakers. Others are valid in some contexts but not in others. For example, English has an opposition between /p/ and /b/ in word-initial position (cf. /pi6k/ peak vs. /bi6k/ beak) but not after word-initial /s/, where there is no opposition between, say, /spi6k/ and /sbi6k/. In this context, the feature “voice” loses its phonological validity and

493


the phonological opposition /p/ vs. /b/ is neutralized (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 70). According to this definition, a neutralizable opposition consists of two phonemes only. Other linguists work with a somewhat different concept of neutralization, based on the notion of exclusive opposition (cf. Akamatsu 1988: 58⫺63), which is not entirely identical with a bilateral opposition. A phonological opposition is exclusive if the common base of its two or more phonemes, i.e. the sum of the relevant features common to them, is exclusively shared by these phonemes and not by any other phoneme in the system. A relevant feature is a complex of multiple indissociable distinctive phonic features (cf. Martinet 1965 a: 138⫺140; Akamatsu 1988: 99⫺103) and is not binary. Examples of exclusive oppositions include /p/ vs. /b/ in English and /m/ vs. /n/ vs. /M/ in Spanish. The neutralization of /p/ vs. /b/ occurs after word-initial /s/, consequent on the cancellation of the opposition between the relevant features “voiceless” and “voiced”. This approach assumes neither the concept of markedness nor that of privative opposition (cf. Akamatsu 1988: 111). The product of a neutralization of a phonological opposition is a phonological unit called archiphoneme; it corresponds to the “common base” of the member phonemes of a neutralizable opposition. 3.2. The concept of the archiphoneme The term archiphoneme appeared for the first time at the end of the late 1920s and was defined without any reference to the concept of neutralization (cf. Jakobson 1929: 8f.). According to the most widely known version, an archiphoneme is the sum total of the distinctive properties common to the two members of a neutralizable bilateral privative phonological opposition (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 71); the marked member of the opposition is equivalent to “archiphoneme ⫹ mark” and the unmarked one to “archiphoneme ⫹ zero” (cf. Trubetzkoy 1939: 73). A somewhat different concept of the archiphoneme (ultimately Trubetzkoyan in spirit) is that of a distinctive unit which consists in the common base of the two or more member phonemes of a neutralizable exclusive opposition (cf. Akamatsu 1988: 199); here, the formula “archiphoneme ⫹ mark” does not apply. In both approaches, archiphonemes are distinct from phonemes. Sometimes, however, an “incomplete phoneme” is assumed in such situations (cf. Jakobson & Waugh 1979: 28; see also

5.2⫺5.3 on the archi-segment). There is no generally accepted way to symbolize archiphonemes: In the usage of individual linguists, the archiphoneme associated with the neutralisation of /p/ vs. /b/ after word-initial /s/ in English may be written /P/, /p-b/, /p/b/ or the like. In 3.3, capital letters between slashes are used, even if this may not be the best option from a theoretical point of view. 3.3. Archiphonemes in the description of allomorphy In contrast to morphophonemes (cf. 2.2⫺ 2.4), archiphonemes can be used in describing an alternation between the allomorphs of a morpheme only in those cases where a phonological opposition is neutralized. In a classical example, that of Russian ry´ba ‘fish’ with the diminutive ry´bka, the allomorphs are /rib/ and /riP/, respectively, because the opposition between /p/ and /b/ is neutralized before a voiceless consonant (cf. Trubetzkoy 1934: 21). In contrast to the morphologically conditioned alternations in ruka/rucˇnoj or leaf/ leaves (cf. 2.1⫺2.2), which do not involve archiphonemes, this is a matter of phonology (cf. Martinet 1965 b: 17 [1973: 92]). The archiphoneme having been established, no attempt is made to set up a single representation for the two allomorphs, /rib/ and /riP/. Similarly, German {Rad} has the allomorphs /ra6d/ (in Rades) and /ra6T/ (in Rad); the latter coincides with one of the allomorphs of {Rat} (in Rat), the other being / ra6t/ (in Rates). On this analysis, both morphemes have two allomorphs each, whereas {Rat} has only one, /ra6t/, in a model of phonology that does not recognize neutralization (cf. 2.2). The allomorphs of the English plural morpheme are also interpreted differently in the two models (cf. 2.3): (7) example without neutralization cats /s/ dogs /z/ plays /z/

with neutralization /S/ /S/ /z/

According to one view, the allomorphs /riP/ and /rib/ in ry´bka and ry´ba exhibit a phonological alternation between /P/ and /b/ (cf. Avram 1960: 277; Akamatsu 1988: 326) ⫺ two distinctive units which differ in their phonological contents, i.e. the sums of the relevant features (cf. Akamatsu 1988: 199). In Russian, the phonological content of /b/ is “voiced non-palatalized labial non-nasal” and that of /P/ is “labial non-nasal”. Others

494

VII. Allomorphie

reject this position since the choice of /P/ or /b/ is phonologically conditioned and automatic, lying outside the speaker’s choice (cf. Martinet 1983: 10). In their opinion, the term alternation should be reserved for morphologically conditioned and non-automatic alternations, for which the speaker has a choice, e.g. between /k/ and /tsj/ in ruka ⬃ rucˇnoj or between /f/ and /v/ in leaf ⬃ leaves. 3.4. Archiphoneme and morphophoneme The archiphoneme and the morphophoneme are sometimes confused with each other. Although both units share the property of not being phonemes, they differ in important respects: (a) The archiphoneme is the sum of phonologically relevant features, whereas the morphophonemes is a set of alternating phonemes. (b) The archiphoneme is posited at the same linguistic level as the phoneme, but the morphophoneme is posited at a different level. (c) The morphophoneme is associated with the discipline of morphophonemics; the archiphoneme, being a phonological unit, is not. (d) The definition of the archiphoneme is derived from that of neutralization, while the morphophoneme is independent of it. Depending on one’s theoretical stance, archiphonemes may or may not be compatible with morphophonemes; thus, Nikolaj S. Trubetzkoy operates with both, Zellig S. Harris only with morphophonemes and Andre´ Martinet only with archiphonemes.

4.

Prosody and phonematic unit

4.1. Prosodic phonology Prosodic Phonology or Prosodic Analysis is a phonological theory which was developed by John R. Firth in reaction to the European and American frameworks current in the 1930s (cf. Firth 1935 a; 1935 b; 1935 c; 1949). It has a number of characteristics which distinguish it from these approaches: (a) Prosodic Phonology is staunchly opposed to what it dubs “phonemic phonology”, i. e. any type of phonology that operates with some concept of the phoneme. (b) It rejects the concept of the morphophoneme and hence also the distinction be-

tween a phonemic and a morphophonemic level (e.g. Firth 1957 b: 22; cf. Kilbury 1976: 64). The term alternance (or its equivalent substitution) is used here and there (e.g. Firth 1935 c: 177 [1957 a: 48]), but it does not refer to the concept of alternation; rather, it corresponds to that of “opposition” in approaches associated with the Linguistic Circle of Prague or to that of “contrast” as used by Bloomfieldians. (c) Prosodic Phonology operates with paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations (cf. Art. 24); the two axes are generally referred to as system and structure, respectively. They are often illustrated as in (8) in order to emphasize that there are separate subsystems at different places in structure (cf. (d)): (8)

s y s structure e m

Prosodic Phonology stresses syntagmatic relations and blames “phonemic phonology” for what prosodists regard as an over-emphasis on paradigmatic relations. In particular, it disapproves of segmentation and classification of paradigmatic units as the first step in phonological analysis. (d) Prosodic Phonology rejects the monosystemic principle, i.e. the assumption of one overall phonological system for a given language, and operates instead with a polysystemic approach (cf. Firth 1949: 127f. [1957 a: 121]), i.e. different sub-systems which are valid at different places in structure. This should be taken in a very broad sense, not limited to different phonetic contexts. For example, English [n] in word-initial position (e.g. nice) and [n] in word-final position (e.g. ten) belong to different sub-systems despite their physical similarity. [d] in rowed should not be identified with [d] in road because the former is associated with the grammatical category ‘past’ or ‘past participle’ while the latter is not, i.e. the places in structure are different. [s] in the noun house and [z] in the verb house also belong to different sub-systems; this example illustrates “phonetic exponence” of grammatical categories (noun and verb).

495


4.2. Prosody and phonematic unit A prosody is any phonetic feature that characterizes a unit larger than a single segment. A phonematic unit, on the other hand, is an element which is sequential and segmental. Given the greater importance of syntagmatic relations in Prosodic Phonology, the prosody is primary in relation to the phonematic unit; this is reflected in the name of the theory. Prosodies always characterize a particular phonological structure such as a syllable or syllable group, or a grammatical structure such as a word, phrase or utterance. In the analysis of an utterance, prosodies associated with the largest structure are abstracted first and then prosodies which characterize successively smaller structures; what remains after all prosodies have been extracted is segmented into phonematic units. For example, sentence intonation is a prosody which characterizes a whole sentence. In French mont [mo˜] ‘mountain’, nasality characterizes a syllable; it may be symbolized as N and referred to as the “N-prosody”. In German, the glottal plosive usually signals the boundary of a morpheme, e.g. acht in verachten [fB1?axtn0 ] ‘despise’; here, [?] characterizes the whole morpheme {acht}. Phonematic units have a fixed place in sequence (i.e. structure) relative to each other. They are usually symbolized as C (consonant) or V (vowel), but further specifications are possible, e.g. H and L for high and low vowels, respectively (cf. 4.3 on Turkish vowels). Each phonological structure is a combination of prosodies and phonematic units. For instance, mont [mo˜] can be represented as CV with the N-prosody extending over both phonematic units (as indicated by the horizontal line):

sodic Phonology in terms of a static relationship such that [s] and [z] are phonematically identical (i.e. C) but prosodically different (A or B), without any alternation. In the case of {Rad}, [t] in Rad and [d] in Rades are also phonematically identical but prosodically different, and the same applies to [b] in ry´ba and [p] in ry´bka or to [f] in wife’s and [v] in wives, where the prosodies of voicelessness and voicing extend over CC as in cats and dogs. Thus, Prosodic Phonology treats all of these cases alike, no matter whether or not they exemplify, in the eyes of non-prosodists, either neutralization (e.g. /S/ in cats and dogs, /T/ in Rad and Rat, /P/ in ry´bka) or a set of alternating phonemes (e.g. /s/ ⬃ /z/ in cats and dogs, /f/ ⬃ /v/ in leaf and leaves). This is because Prosodic Phonology never starts with segmentation, which would otherwise yield phonemes and archiphonemes, and also because the concept of neutralization is incompatible with polysystemicness. Furthermore, it is irrelevant whether there is an alternation between the allomorphs of a morpheme, because the objective of Prosodic Phonology lies elsewhere. An analysis in terms of prosodies and phonematic units probably does not yield much in cases such as ruka and rucˇka with a morphologically conditioned alternation. On the other hand, it is particularly appropriate for data in which specific phonetic features characterize the whole of the phonological structure in question. In goose and geese, for instance, the prosodies W (lip-rounding) and Y (lip-spreading) extend over CVC:

(9) N— CV

The essential fact that the two forms have an identical sequence of phonematic units (CVC) does not become obvious if they are represented in terms of phonemes. Among the most impressive examples of Prosodic Analysis are those involving vowel harmony (e.g. in Hungarian, Turkish, Manchu and Ancient Japanese), whereby a given phonetic feature, e.g. frontness, must prevail throughout a word, so that a front vowel and back vowel cannot co-occur within the same word. The objective of Prosodic Phonology is to show that words which non-prosodists describe as having different allomorphs contain the same sequence of phonematic units and that the so-called allomorphs merely result from different prosodies. In Turkish, for ex-

4.3. Prosodies and phonematic units in the description of allomorphy In Prosodic Phonology, /ts/ and /gz/ in cats and dogs may not be segmented into the sequences /t/ ⫹ /s/ and /g/ ⫹ /z/, respectively, before the prosodies of voicelessness (A) and voicedness (B), which extend over the whole of CC, are extracted: (10) A— CVCC kæt s

B— CVCC dAgz

What other theories describe as an alternation between /s/ and /z/ is analyzed in Pro-

(11) W—— Y—— CVC CVC g u6 s g i6 s

496

VII. Allomorphie

ample, the vowel qualities in the initial syllable (front vs. back, rounded vs. unrounded) determine the vowel qualities in the non-initial syllable(s) of the word. The eight vowels are traditionally classified according to three parameters: (12)

front unrounded rounded i y e ø

high low

back unrounded rounded X u a o

Four prosodies can be abstracted from these vowels: f (front), b (back), r (rounded) and u (unrounded). This leaves two phonematic units which are H (high) and L (low): (13) [i] ⫽ fuH [y] ⫽ frH [X] ⫽ buH [u] ⫽ brH [e] ⫽ fuL [ø] ⫽ frL [a] ⫽ buL [o] ⫽ brL Words with a low vowel all contain the same phonematic unit L and differ in the prosodies: (14)

fu

Ll /el/ ‘hand’

fr

gLz /gøz/ ‘eye’

bu

bLs /bas/ ‘head’

br

kLl /kol/ ‘arm’

According to some theories (e.g. American structuralism), the morpheme {1.sg.poss} has four allomorphs, /im/, /ym/, /Xm/ and /um/; from the point of view of Prosodic Phonology, it is always represented by a constant sequence of identical phonematic units, namely Hm, and the different vowel qualities are determined by the combination of prosodies which characterizes the whole word: (15)

fuLlHm

frgLzHm bubLsHm brkLlHm /elim/ /gøzym/ /basXm/ /kolum/ ‘my hand’ ‘my eye’ ‘my head’ ‘my arm’

Using a slightly different notation (with capital letters for the prosodies and “a” and “i” for the phonematic units L and H), the advantage of such an analysis has been summarized as follows: (16) “[…] the prosodic representation […] does away with the need for morphophonemics. […] thus what is morphophonemically gözlx2rx4mx4zdx2n [where x4 and x2 stand for morphophonemes representing the alternations /i⬃y⬃X⬃u/ and /a⬃e/] and phonemically /gözlerimizden/, is prosodically FRgazlarimizdan. That is to say, both stems and suffixes have everywhere the same phonological form.” (Lyons 1962: 131 [1973: 196])

Outside of the small circle of British linguists who applied the theory to phonological

problems in a number of languages, Prosodic Phonology has received little attention. But somewhat similar ideas were expressed by American structuralists (cf. Harris 1951: 125⫺149 on “long components”), and since the late 1970s the fundamental assumption of Autosegmental Phonology that phonological features should be assigned to two or more interrelated tiers (including a skeletal tier with segments classified as C or V) has become widely accepted (cf. Goldsmith 1979; 1990). In Turkish, for instance, each of the features [⫾ low], [⫾ back] and [⫾ round) occupies its own autosegmental tier; the links to the skeleton are indicated by association lines. However, Autosegmental Phonology operates with underlying representations which contain only a minimum of association lines. These are then modified according to certain conventions until each C or V has the necessary associations with features on the other tiers. Thus, in /gøzym/ only the first V is underlyingly associated with backness and roundness features; the second is merely prespecified for [⫺low]: (17) [⫺back] [⫹round] gVz

⫺

[⫹low]

Vm [⫺low]

Then [⫺back] and [⫹ round] “spread” to the V in the suffix, i.e. new association lines are created from these features to the segment on the skeletal tier. Although this approach is a dynamic one, it resembles Prosodic Phonology inasmuch as the suffix is given a single representation with a low vowel.

5.

Archi-segment

5.1. Natural generative phonology Natural Generative Phonology, another approach proposed in the 1970s, has some characteristics of a static model but it also allows for underlying forms and rules that derive surface forms from them, which is typical of dynamic approaches (cf. Art. 51). It claims to be a new theory of generative morphophonology or morphophonemics (cf. Hooper 1976: xii). Although operating within the generative framework, it diverges from classical Generative Phonology, among other things,


in its objection to “abstract” underlying forms which need not correspond to any attested surface form in the language and may even contain segments that never appear on the surface. Natural Generative Phonology claims not only that the surface allomorphs of a morpheme are listed as such in the lexicon but also that one of them should be chosen as the underlying form from which the other(s) are “generated” (cf. Hooper 1976: 13, 21). 5.2. Archi-segment Archi-segments are associated in particular with Natural Generative Phonology, though they were used earlier by other generative phonologists (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968: 64). An archi-segment is defined as a “partially unspecified segment” in which “there are blanks instead of pluses and minuses for some of the [distinctive] feature values” (Hooper 1975: 551). Such redundant or predictable features are either never distinctive (e.g. [voice] in English /l/) or reflect neutralization (e.g. [voice] associated with the neutralization of /p/ vs. /b/ after word-initial /s/ in English). Natural Generative Phonology (like other generative theories) does not recognize phonemes; instead, it operates with a phonological entity which is a bundle of binary distinctive features. 5.3. Archi-segments in the description of allomorphy In Natural Generative Phonology, the underlying form of a morpheme is entered in the lexicon as a sequence of archi-segments which specify only the values of unpredictable features. For example, the representation of the non-alternating morpheme ski [ski6] consists of three archi-segments. In the first, all distinctive features are left blank, except for [⫹ consonantal]. The second and third archi-segments are unspecified for [voice]; the former, because a plosive is automatically voiceless after /s/ and the latter because a vowel is necessarily voiced. Non-alternating morphemes are governed by phonetic rules or “P-rules” which account for automatic phonetic processes that are exceptionless in a given language; an example is the lengthening of English vowels before a voiced syllable-final consonant (e.g. mid [m=5d] vs. mitt [m=t]). The voicelessness of the plosive in ski is also described in terms of an automatic phonetic process rather than a neutralization of the

497 phonological opposition between /k/ and /g/. Alternating morphemes are of several types: (a) In the case of {leaf}, the lexical representation of the morpheme is identical with one of the allomorphs, say /li6f/, with the third archi-segment specified as [-voice]. The relation between /li6f/ and /li6v/ is accounted for by morphophonemic rules or ‘MP-rules”, which apply when the choice between the allomorphs of a morpheme is linked to lexical or grammatical rather than phonetic contexts. Here, both the lexical and the grammatical contexts are relevant because there are non-alternating morphemes such as {cliff} or {cuff} and because the alternation occurs before {plural} but not before {possessive} (cf. wives vs. wife’s). Thus, one and the same morpheme may be alternating or non-alternating, depending on the context in which it occurs. (b) Other morphemes exhibit a phonetic alternation. In the case of {write} and {ride} in those varieties of English which have an alveolar flap [J] in both writing and riding, it is a neutralizing alternation. The underlying forms of the two morphemes are identical with those allomorphs which do not involve neutralization, i.e. /ra=t/ and /ra=d/; the final archi-segments are speficied as [-voice] and [⫹ voice], respectively. German {Rat} and {Rad} would be treated similarly. The Spanish morpheme {dedo} ‘finger’ illustrates a non-neutralizing phonetic alternation (cf. Hooper 1976: 21). In mutually exclusive phonetic contexts, the initial voiced obstruent /d/ surfaces as a stop [d] (e.g. in postpausal position or after /n/, as in dedo [dedo], un dedo [un dedo] ‘a finger’) or as a spirant [d] (e.g. intervocalically, as in cinco dedos [sinkodedos] ‘five fingers’. The predictable feature [continuant] can therefore be left unspecified and is filled in by a P-rule. It should be noted that phoneme-based theories would not assume two alternating allomorphs here because they treat [d] and [d] as contextually determined allophones of a single phoneme. (c) Some alternations are regarded as nonautomatic and non-generative; they are morpholexically conditioned, i.e. by specific morphemes, morphological classes or words. Examples include English electric with [k] and electricity with [s] or

498

VII. Allomorphie

provide with [a=] and provision with [=], Russian ruka with [k] and rucˇnoj with [ts] and German Apfel ‘apple’, with [a] and Äpfel ‘apples’ with [e]. The allomorphs involving alternations of this type are listed separately in the lexicon and are related by via-rules (cf. Vennemann 1972). These alternations come closest to those for which the term morphophoneme was originally introduced (cf. 2.1); it is often said that MP-rules and via-rules together correspond to pre-generative morphophonemics.

6.

References

Akamatsu, Tsutomu (1988), The Theory of Neutralization and the Archiphoneme in Functional Phonology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 43) Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), Phonology in the Twentieth Century. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press Avram, Andrei (1960), “Neutralization and Phonological Alternations”. Revue roumaine de linguistique 5, 273⫺278 Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1894), “Pro´ba teorji alternacyj fonetycznych”. Rozprawy Akademii umieje˛tnosći, Wydział filologiczny 20 (⫽ Ser. II, 5), 219⫺364 [reprinted in: Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan Niecisław (1990), Dzieła wybrane, Vol. IV, ed. by Adam Heinz. Warszawa: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 140⫺278] Baudouin de Courtenay, J[an] (1895), Versuch einer Theorie phonetischer Alternationen: Ein Kapitel aus der Psychophonetik. Straßburg: Trübner [reprinted in: Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan (1984), Ausgewählte Werke in deutscher Sprache, ed. by Joachim Mugdan. München: Fink] Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1979), Einführung in die Morphologie. Stuttgart etc.: Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbücher 296) Bloomfield, Leonard (1939), “Menomini Morphophonemics”. In: E´tudes phonologiques de´dieés a` la me´moire de M. le Prince N. S. Trubetzkoy. Prague: Jednota cˇeskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8), 105⫺115 [reprinted in: Hockett, Charles F. (1970, ed.), A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Bloomington, London: Indiana Univ. Press, 351⫺362]

Elson, Benjamin & Pickett, Velma (1983), Beginning Morphology and Syntax. Dallas/TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics Firth, John R. (1935 a), “The Technique of Semantics”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1935, 36⫺72 [reprinted in: Firth (1957 a), 7⫺33] Firth, John R. (1935 b), “The Use and Distribution of Certain English Sounds”. English Studies 17, 8⫺18 [reprinted in: Firth (1957 a), 34⫺46] Firth, John R. (1935 c), “Phonological Features of Some Indian Languages”. In: Jones, Daniel & Fry, D[ennis] B. (eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Phonetic Sciences Held at University College, London, 22⫺26 July 1935. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 176⫺182 [reprinted in: Firth (1957 a), 47⫺53] Firth, John R. (1949), “Sounds and Prosodies”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1948, 127⫺ 152 [reprinted in: Firth (1957 a), 121⫺138] Firth, J[ohn] R. (1957 a), Papers in Linguistics 1934⫺1951. London etc.: Oxford Univ. Press Firth, John R. (1957 b), “A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930⫺1955”. In: Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, 1⫺32 Fischer-Jørgensen, Eli (1975), Trends in Phonological Theory. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag Fudge, Erik C. (1973, ed.), Phonology: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin Goldsmith, John A. (1979), Autosegmental Phonology. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1976: Ph. D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Goldsmith, John A. (1990), Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press [later printings entitled Structural Linguistics] Hooper, Joan B. (1975), “The Archi-Segment in Natural Generative Phonology”. Language 51, 536⫺560 Hooper, Joan B. (1976), An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York etc.: Academic Press Jakobson, Roman (1929), Remarques sur l’e´volution phonologique du russe compareé a` celle des autres langues slaves. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 2)

Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York etc.: Harper & Row

Jakobson, Roman & Waugh, Linda (1979), The Sound Shape of Language. Brighton: Harvester Press

Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), Morphonology: The Dynamics of Derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma (Linguistica Extranea, Studies 12)

Kilbury, James (1976), The Development of Morphophonemic Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Studies in the History of Linguistics 10)

51. Underlying forms Lyons, John (1962), “Phonemic and Non-Phonemic Phonology: Some Typological Reflections”. International Journal of American Linguistics 28, 127⫺133 [reprinted in: Fudge (1973, ed.), 190⫺199] Martinet, Andre´ (1965 a), La Linguistique synchronique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (Le linguiste 1) Martinet, Andre´ (1965 b), “De la morphonologie”. La linguistique 1.1, 15⫺30 [excerpt translated in: Fudge (1973, ed.), 91⫺100] Martinet, Andre´ (1983), “Ce que n’est pas la phonologie”. Langue française 60, 6⫺13 Matthews, Peter H. (1970), “Recent Developments in Morphology”. In: Lyons, John (ed.), New Horizons in Linguistics. Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin, 96⫺114 Me´langes (1929) ⫽ Me´langes linguistiques de´die´s au premier congre`s des philologues slaves. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 1) Projet (1931) ⫽ “Projet de terminologie phonologique standardiseé“. In: Reúnion, 309⫺323 Reúnion (1931) ⫽ Reúnion phonologique internationale tenue a` Prague (18⫺21/XII 1930). Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4) Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Steriade, Donca (1995), “Underspecification and Markedness”. In: Goldsmith, John A. (1995, ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Cambridge/

499 MA, Oxford: Blackwell (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics 1), 114⫺174 Swadesh, Morris (1934), “The Phonemic Principle”. Language 10, 117⫺129 [reprinted in: Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966 Readings in Linguistics, Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press], 32⫺37; also in: Fudge (1973, ed.), 35⫺46] The`ses (1929) ⫽ “The`ses”. In: Me´langes, 5⫺29 Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (1929), “Sur la ‘morphonologie’ ”. In: Me´langes, 85⫺88 Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (1934), Description phonologique du russe moderne, Deuxie`me Partie: Das morphonologische System der russischen Sprache. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 5.2) Trubetzkoy, N[ikolaj] S. (1939), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 7) [⫽ 21958 Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht] Ułaszyn, Henryk (1927), “Kilka uwag terminologicznych”. Prace Filologiczne 12, 405⫺415 Ułaszyn, Henryk (1931), “Laut, Phonema, Morphonema”. In: Reúnion, 53⫺61 Vennemann, Theo (1972), “Rule Inversion”. Lingua 29, 209⫺242

Tsutomu Akamatsu, Leeds (Great Britain)

51. Underlying forms 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Introduction Representations and rules in Generative Phonology Reasons for underlying representations Rule interaction and rule generality Abstractness Phonological irreversibility Domains of phonological regularities A historical perspective References

1.

Introduction

It is generally agreed that words exhibiting a degree of formal and semantic similarity should be treated as potentially related. Their relatedness, if established, should in some way be reflected in a linguistic description. In particular, the allomorphs of a morpheme,

which are semantically related by definition, often exhibit phonetic similarity as well (cf. Art. 46 and 50). Dynamic models of phonology try to capture this similarity by setting up a basic form, underlying form or underlying representation (often enclosed in vertical lines 兩 … 兩); the “surface” allomorphs are created from it in a step-by-step derivation by applying a series of phonological rules. These rules thus provide an exact definition of “phonetic relatedness”. All other instances of relatedness of forms fall outside the purview of phonology; this does not deny the reality of the relationship but removes them from the domain of phonology. Non-phonological relatedness comes in the form of lexical statements, if at all. The most important dynamic model is undoubtedly Generative Phonology (for surveys, cf. Anderson 1974; Kensto-

500 wicz & Kisseberth 1979; Durand 1990; Goldsmith 1990; Kenstowicz 1994; see also Art. 22 on morphology in Generative Grammar). Since it does not recognise the level of the autonomous phoneme, it treats allophonic and phonemic variation as fundamentally homogeneous and subject to largely identical conditions. It has claimed, in fact, that a distinction between allophonic and morphophonemic alternations is without foundation (cf. Anderson 1974: 30⫺50). Thus, tell and teller comprise two allomorphs of the same root morpheme {tell}: in tell [te¢] the final lateral is velarised whereas in teller [tele] it is not, and the vowel in tell is perceptibly longer and more retracted than in teller. What counts as genuine alternation beyond such uncontroversial cases is largely determined by the power of the phonological model rather than the specific nature of the data. A variety of models have been developed within the generative framework, but key concepts have remained relatively stable across the different approaches, namely representations and rules (cf. 2). In Generative Phonology, theoretical principles and controversial problems are typically discussed on the basis of specific examples rather than in the abstract, and this is also the method chosen here. English l-velarisation as in tell demonstrates why one needs single underlying representations corresponding to surface allomorphs (cf. 3). Weak preterites of Modern Icelandic and consonant lenition in Modern Irish are more complex cases which raise two fundamental issues: the interaction between phonological rules (cf. 4) and the abstractness of underlying representations, i.e. their remoteness from attested surface forms (cf. 5). As the schwa vowel [e] in English shows, surface forms can be unambiguously derived from underlying representations but not necessarily vice versa (cf. 6), and the status of the English velar nasal [n] illustrates that it may be difficult to specify when a certain phonological rule applies (cf. 7). Since the classical works of the 1960s (notably Chomsky & Halle 1968), Generative Phonology has grappled with numerous theoretical and empirical questions, developing concepts, constraints and formal notations of considerable complexity. This distinguishes it from historical predecessors of processual phonology in prestructural and structural linguistics (cf. 8).

VII. Allomorphie

2.

Representations and rules in Generative Phonology

Underlying representations and phonological rules are strictly interdependent: underlying representations make sense only if there are rules which convert them into phonetic forms; conversely, phonological rules can only exist if they have work to do, i.e. if there are representations that they affect. If in the course of an analysis of a body of data we postulate a certain representation which departs from what is found on the surface, we must be able to justify phonological rules which relate the two representations. Deciding upon representations and deciding upon rules is then fundamentally the question of providing arguments for or justifying a given solution. In other words, the fact that [lAn] and [lAng] are allomorphs appearing in long, longer, longest is simply a trivial statement that they are formally and semantically related; as such it is theory-independent. It becomes significant only when a decision is made that the two allomorphs are realisations of one and the same underlying form. Remote representations are a hypothesis about how a language combines its phonological segments and how it organises its phonological processes. Underlying forms are selected in such a way as to be maximally general and allow for the simplest derivation of the existing surface variation. The basic assumption of the framework is that a single representation suffices for all the derivation of all phonologically related allomorphs; alternatively it can be said that all phonologically related allomorphs are reducible to a single representation. This assumption lies behind a whole spectrum of questions, such as, for instance: Which of the two members, [lAn] and [lAng], is the underlying form, if any? How is the other derived from it (what rules are involved)? On the more general level, the number of such questions increases: (a) What are the criteria for choosing an underlying form? (b) How different can an underlying form be from its surface reflexes? (c) Apart from allomorphs themselves, are there any other factors influencing the selection of underlying forms? Are we restricted to system-internal considerations or is it legitimate to take into account socalled external evidence? (d) What is the role of the phonological system in deciding individual cases?

51. Underlying forms

(e) Are there restrictions on the power of phonological rules? (f) Are there any relations between and among phonological rules? Potential answers can be found by inspecting phonological phenomena of significant complexity, with a view to isolating the theoretical assumptions involving the nature of underlying representations and their relations with phonological rules.

3.

Reasons for underlying representations

The facts about the English velarised “dark” [¢] and the non-velarised “clear” [l] illustrate very eloquently the need for underlying representations. The distribution of these sounds is complementary: clear [l] occurs before vowels and the semivowel [j], e.g. silly, volume, and dark [¢] before consonants (except for [j]) and word-finally, e.g. silk, sill. In a number of words alternants emerge with a clear and a dark lateral, e.g. sail ⬃ sailor, fool ⬃ fooling. There is no a priori reason why these alternants should not be listed with the required variant of the lateral, as is the case in a detailed (narrow) phonetic transcription. In other words, what we really have to do is justify the need for departures from the phonetic representation in the first place: Why should we say that one of the laterals is derived from the other rather than simply admit that both of them co-exist? One can provide several answers for doubts like these. First of all, if the two lateral consonants were to be regarded as separate underlying units, then their involvement in alternations would have to be accidental, i.e. the fact that [l] alternates with [¢] would be as natural, plausible and frequent as if [l] were to alternate with [dz], [g] or [ij]. This is never the case: alternations found in languages are highly constrained in the sense that the alternating sounds display a significant degree of phonetic relatedness. The derivational framework will capture a basic intuition behind alternations if operations modifying segments ⫺ phonological rules ⫺ can be constrained to embrace the phenomena found in natural languages and nothing else. Establishing what may qualify as a possible phonological rule is a difficult but coherent task: phonological rules involve distinctive features, hence an explicit theory of feature

501 organisation will go a long way towards providing a theory of possible phonological processes. Advances in so-called feature-geometry provide a striking confirmation of this way of thinking (cf. McCarthy 1988). Another motivation for deriving one lateral from the other is connected with a general assumption that phonological representations should contain only unpredictable information. Whatever depends on the context or on other features should be taken out of a representation and recast as a rule or rules. Approached from this point of view, underlying representations are maximally economical and redundancy-free ⫺ English laterals are specified in underlying representations for laterality only, all other features are supplied by rules. The representation is then abstract but it is important to stress that abstractness involves thoroughly transparent, surfacy phonological relations. The argument for underspecification can be further strengthened: front vowels before a velarised lateral are retracted (and lowered). The vowel [i6] is fully front in feeling, feasting, feeding; it appears retracted in feel but not in feast and feed. If the dark [¢] and the retracted vowel were entered phonologically, one would have to account for the full frontness of the preceding vowel in all other contexts; since the frontness is the general case and the retraction restricted to the context of the following velarised lateral, both vowel retraction and lateral velarisation must be rule-derived. What poses an interesting problem is the relationship between the processes deriving the velarised lateral and the retracted vowel. Two options are available: we could require that one process velarises the sonorant and retracts as well as lowers the preceding vowel, an option difficult to state within the traditional rule formalism. Alternatively one rule might velarise the lateral in the rhyme and a subsequent process would retract and lower a vowel before a velarised sonorant. This is the traditional generative view of rule interaction: in our particular case the velarisation rule precedes the retraction rule which could not apply before it. The order “velarisation ⫺ retraction” is the only possible one where both rules get a chance of applying. The ordering relation in phonology has been one of the more controversial issues but there can be no doubt that within a derivational framework some variety of interaction must be recog-

502

VII. Allomorphie

nised (cf. Anderson 1974: 137⫺218; Kenstowicz & Kisseberth 1979: 291⫺327; Kenstowicz 1994: 90⫺114; see also 4). This leads to another observation pertaining to the cumulative effect of rules: comparing again the laterals in healing and health, we find here an alternation between a clear alveolar [l] and a dental velarised one. The rule of velarisation is responsible for the dark-clear alternation; the difference between dental and alveolar place of articulation must be due to a separate process which adjusts the place of articulation of a sonorant depending on place of the following obstruent (the same place alternation occurs in moon ⬃ month). In health, the processes of velarisation and place-of-articulation assimilation work jointly to produce a dental velarised lateral. This shows that alternating sounds may be the cumulative results of several processes; taking this point as an analytic guideline, we observe the necessity of breaking up alternations into more elementary processes. If a few rules affect a given underlying representation there emerge intermediate stages which are not confirmed phonetically. Assuming for the sake of discussion that placeof-articulation assimilation applies prior to velarisation, the derivation of health will con(1) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

kemba [khempa] senda [senta] y´lda [ilta] hringja [hrj=njkja] hefna [hepna] nefna [nepna] rigna [r=kna] signa [s=kna]

tain a stage with a clear dental lateral ⫺ something which does not exist in British English phonetics (to be dental it has to be followed by a dental consonant, and if a lateral is followed by a consonant it cannot be in the onset). Intermediate representations are a direct outcome of the dynamic view of phonology where individual rules apply to representations in an ordered way.

4.

Rule interaction and rule generality

The case of l-velarisation in English would be regarded as an allophonic process by models recognising a phonemic level of representation, but from the generative point of view the intermediate representations and ordering relations it requires make it no different from classical allomorphic alternations (cf. 1). For instance, the rules accounting for nonallophonic alternations in the regular preterite formation in Modern Icelandic must also be ordered. One of the allomorphs used for forming the preterite is 兩 t 兩; the final consonantal cluster of the infinitive (before the suffix -a) is modified when combined with the dental suffix (and the inflectional ending of the first person singular, -i):

kembdi [khemt=] sendi [sent=] y´ldi [ilt=] hringdi [hrj=nt=] hefndi [hemt=] nefndi [nemt=] rigndi [r=nt=] signdi [s=nt=]

Examples (1a)⫺(1d) point to the existence of a rule which simplifies consonantal clusters: a plosive is deleted if preceded by a sonorant and followed by another plosive. Given the representation 兩 khempt= 兩, the cluster simplification rule derives the surface from [khemt=]. The forms (1e)⫺(1h) also display a loss of a consonant in the preterite but that cannot result from a simple application of the cluster simplification rule. In hefndi 兩 hepnt= 兩, for example, there is no context for deletion as the middle consonant is not a plosive; additionally, the dental nasal of the infinitive emerges as bilabial in (1e)⫺(1f) and as velar in (1g)⫺(1h). The rule of cluster simplification clearly applies not to the underlying but rather some intermediate representation; this intermediate representation must be derived from the underlying one by means of

‘comb’ ‘send’ ‘putrefy’ ‘ring’ ‘avenge’ ‘name’ ‘rain’ ‘cross oneself’

additional rules. For one thing, the underlying order of consonants in (1e)⫺(1h) must be changed: in place of the sequence “plosivesonorant-plosive” we need to derive the sequence “sonorant-plosive-plosive”. This is a rule of metathesis which does not apply to the forms in (1a)⫺(1d) since these conform to the required output at the underlying level, e.g. 兩 nkt 兩 of hringdi. It does transform the order of consonants in (1e)⫺(1h) by placing the nasal as the first element of the sequence. Metathesis interacts with cluster simplification in that the former rule prepares the ground for the latter to apply. This interaction translates into an ordering relation of metathesis preceding cluster simplification. The examples require an additional adjustment: the dental nasal of the infinitive emerges as bilabial in (1e)⫺(1f) and as velar

503


in (1g)⫺(1h); in the former group the plosive deleted by the cluster simplification is bilabial while in the latter it is velar. It thus seems that the nasal assimilates the place of articulation of the following plosive before the plo(2) metathesis assimilation deletion

兩 khempt= 兩 ⫺ ⫺ [khemt=]

Any other order of the rules would produce ungrammatical forms in at least some forms. The mechanism of rule ordering allows also for a simple formulation of the relevant processes. While one could posit rules turning 兩 mpt 兩 into 兩 mt 兩 or 兩 knt 兩 into [nt], they would have to be seen as random and unrelated phenomena. Rule ordering reflects a claim that phonological processes, rather than being isolated and unrelated regularities, interact closely in the phonological derivation.

5.

Abstractness

Irish, in line with other Celtic languages, systematically modifies word-initial consonants in a number of contexts. One type of modification is called lenition (cf. Gussmann 1983; ´ Siadhail 1989: 111⫺121 for further 1986; O details which are ignored here). The most salient property of the phenomenon in the modern language is the absence of any possible connection between the changes and the phonological environments where they can take place. In other words, the context is (3) (a) [p ⬃ F]: (b) [pj ⬃ Fj]: (c) [b ⬃ b]: (d) [bj ⬃ bj]: (e) [m ⬃ b]: (f) [mj ⬃ bj]: (g) [F ⬃ π]: (h) [Fj ⬃ π]: (i) [t ⬃ h]: (j) [tj ⬃ h]: (k) [tj ⬃ xj]: (l) [d ⬃ ¥]: (m) [dj ⬃ j]: (n) [s ⬃ h]: (o) [s ⬃ h]: (p) [s ⬃ xj]: (q) [k ⬃ x]: (r) [kj ⬃ xj]: (s) [g ⬃ ¥]: (t) [gj ⬃ j]:

sive is deleted ⫺ but after it has been metathesised into the second position in the cluster. This means that the three rules need to be ordered sequentially as “metathesis-assimilation-deletion”: 兩 sentt= 兩 ⫺ ⫺ [sent=]

兩 hepnt= 兩 henpt= hempt= [hemt=]

兩 r=knt= 兩 r=nkt= r=nkt= [r=nt=]

grammatical. For example, the masculine singular article an [en] evinces lenition in the genitive but not in the nominative, e.g. an mhadra [badere] ‘of the dog’ ⫺ an madra [madere] ‘the dog’. The possessive pronoun a [e] causes lenition when denoting the third person singular masculine but has no effect whatsoever when serving as the feminine pronoun: a ghort [¥ort] ‘his field’, a gort [gort] ‘her field’. Any comprehensive grammar of Irish will provide a list of contexts requiring lenition although it must be added that apart from grammatical conditioning of the process, lexical factors must be invoked (there exist affixes and lexical constructions that enforce it). Whatever the exact nature of these rules, they are not part of the phonology of the language and what they do is mark consonants in appropriate contexts for the susceptibility to the process. One could imagine these rules as distributing the diacritic “Lenition”, which would be subsequently interpreted by the rules of the phonology. The alternations that the latter will have to account for are exemplified in (3).

pota ⬃ phota peann ⬃ pheann bord ⬃ bhord bean ⬃ bhean madra ⬃ mhadra mı´ ⬃ mhı´ farraige⬃fharraige fear ⬃ fhear Toma´s ⬃ Thoma´s tigh ⬃ thigh tiu´s ⬃ thiu´s doras ⬃ dhoras Dia ⬃ Dhia sagart ⬃ shagart seans ⬃ sheans seomra ⬃ sheomra cos ⬃ chos ceist ⬃ cheist gort ⬃ ghort ge´ ⬃ ghe´

‘pot’ ‘pen’ ‘table’ ‘woman’ ‘dog’ ‘month’ ‘sea’ ‘man’ ‘Thomas’ ‘house’ ‘thickness’ ‘door’ ‘God’ ‘priest’ ‘chance’ ‘room’ ‘leg’ ‘question’ ‘field’ ‘goose’

504 The alternation [tj ⬃xj] (3k), just like [s⬃xj] (3p), takes place before a back vowel but the former case is evidenced in some dialects only, whereas the latter is cross-dialectal. Even a cursory glance at the list of alternating segments makes it clear that more than one rule must be involved in their derivation: no single rule could both delete the bilabial spirants (3g)⫺(3h) and change, say, the voiceless dental obstruents into glottal fricatives (3i)⫺(3j), (3n)⫺(3o). The objective of a phonological description is to provide an account of these alternations by means of the smallest number of rules which will be as general and as phonetically plausible as possible. There are no problems with the choice of underlying structures since the unlenited forms can be taken as phonological. What needs care and attention are the ways in which the lefthand segments in (3) emerge as their congeners on the right-hand side. On inspecting the phonetic correspondences, one notices that spirantisation is the dominant characteristic. This suggests that the process consists primarily in specifying the consonants marked with the diacritic “Lenition” as [⫹ continuant]; (4) ⫹consonantal ⇒ [⫹continuant] Lenition Rule (4) provides the required output for bilabial plosives (3a)⫺(3d), bilabial nasals (3e)⫺(3f), velars and palato-velars (3q)⫺(3t): in all these cases underlying consonants preserve their place of articulation but become spirants (change their manner of articulation). The only possible addition would be to ensure that lenited nasals become obstruents (3e)⫺(3f). Underlying alveolar spirants 兩 s, s 兩 also meet the structural description of the rule (being consonants marked for lenition) and undergo it vacuously (i.e. remain unchanged). Rule (4) in fact covers over half of all cases of lenition in Modern Irish; the bilabial spirants 兩 F, Fj 兩, which are deleted in leniting contexts, can be handled by ordering the deletion prior to spirantisation, as it is only underlying and not derived spirants which are erased. The deletion rule can be stated as: (5) F, Fj ⇒π Lenition The ordering (5)⫺(4) ensures that bilabial spirants resulting from lenition, as in (3a)⫺ (3b), are not subject to deletion.

VII. Allomorphie

Alveolar obstruents evince the highest degree of diversification. As a result of the application of rule (4), there are only cases of alveolar spirants in leniting contexts corresponding to underlying alveolar plosives: the inputs 兩 t, tj, d, dj 兩 are now [u, uj, d, dj], i.e. segments which do not exist in Irish either at the phonetic or at the phonological level. In other words, at intermediate stages in the derivation we are forced to recognise segments (feature combinations) which do not appear elsewhere in the phonology or phonetics of the language. At first sight this might seem a questionable procedure and indeed many phonologists would object to it, claiming that non-existing entities are created in order to preserve the generality of a phonological rule. Such objections, while understandable, are not very forceful unless they also exclude non-existing segments of much shallower nature (cf. 3 on an underlying segment with just one feature, laterality, and on intermediate stages in the derivation of health). Thus, the Irish non-strident alveolar spirants [u, d] merely provide more evidence for a general view of phonological representations and derivations: although made up of phonetically characterisable properties (features), underlying and intermediate segments are necessarily entities which can in no way be directly identified with sounds as physical events. The existence of intermediate units which are not found phonetically merely indicates that more rules are involved. In the Irish case, all alveolar spirants must be converted into back consonants. This can be accomplished by means of three additional rules applying to the output of rule (4): palatalised alveolar spirants, both underlying and derived, are made palato-velars; otherwise, a voiceless alveolar becomes the glottal spirant [h] and the voiced alveolar [d] becomes a velar spirant. Informally, the appropriate rules would read as follows: (6) [xj] ——–— V ⫺voiced ⫹back [s, uj, dj] ⇒ [j] ——–— ⫹voiced

再

Rule (4) is in a feeding relationship with (6), i.e. it creates some inputs to which (6) can apply; jointly they account for the alternations (3k), (3m) and (3p). The remaining voiceless alveolar spirants emerge as the glottal spirant by rule (7), while the voiced alveo-


lar spirant coalesces with leniting reflexes of the voiced velar plosive by rule (8): (7) [s, s, tj, u] ⇒ [h] (8) [d] ⇒ [¥] Rules (7) and (8) are again fed by (4) in the sense that as a result of the application of rule (4) their scope of applicability is larger (rule (7)) or is there at all (rule (8)). Conversely, the scope of F-deletion is curtailed by rule (5) being ordered prior to (4); these rules are in a bleeding relationship. Thus, lenition comprises a basic process turning consonants into continuants and a few rules further interpreting the output of this central change. Obviously, the interpretation rules must follow the focal change; each of the rules is in itself a phonetically minor modification such as spirantisation and place-ofarticulation shift. It is only their joint action that produces the phonetic distances between alternants such as that between [d] and [¥]. Irish lenition is a case where underlying segments are completely transparent units which in relevant respects can be identified with those found on the surface. The changes introduced by rules are not very far-reaching even if intermediate representations arise for which there is only indirect motivation. On the other hand, there are no phonological contexts for the rules to apply. The environments where lenition operates have to be specified grammatically and lexically ⫺ in other words, we have natural changes in arbitrary contexts. If there is no necessary connection between the context and the change(s) introduced by phonological rules, the descriptive power of the model is substantially increased while its explanatory potential is concomitantly weakened. This creates the possibility of indeterminate or totally arbitrary representations. For example, Irish surface [h] may result from lenition of either 兩 t, s 兩 or, before a front vowel, 兩 tj, s 兩, as in (3i)⫺(3j), (3n)⫺(3o). [h] does occur in a number of words syllable-initially, e.g. athair [aherj] ‘father’, ma´thair [ma6herj] ‘mother’, bo´thar [bo6her] ‘road’, feitheamh [fjehibj] ‘wait [verbal noun]’, maitheamh [mjehibj] ‘forgive [verbal noun]’ etc.; hence one could be naturally tempted to derive these occurrences of phonetic [h] from some underlying source, say, 兩 t, s 兩 marked [Lenition]. By doing so one would not be extending either the inventory or the number or scope of phonological rules. In actual fact, the solution would reduce the underlying inventory since [h] could be disallowed as a phonological segment. The derivation of word-internal [h] would be taking a

505 “free ride” on the existing system. But since the lenition reflex of both 兩 t 兩 and 兩 s 兩 is [h], what is the underlying segment in each individual case and, crucially, why? Since these words show no alternations and since spelling, history and similar considerations are regarded as an illicit source of evidence we can do nothing more than plead ignorance. The only available option is to claim that the underlying segment is not completely specified but is merely a cluster of voicelessness and alveolarity. By doing that we would, in effect, be introducing a new segment into the segment inventory, namely a [⫹alveolar, ⫺voiced] obstruent marked [Lenition]. It is an open question whether this interpretation genuinely reduces the number of underlying segments or whether it merely disguises them. The same sort of ambiguity would arise if we tried to interpret the final [b] of featheamh, meitheamh: since the segment could be derived from either 兩 m 兩 or 兩 b 兩, we could settle on an underspecified representation [⫹bilabial, ⫹voiced], with the same doubts as before. Supporters of the approach which reduces the inventory of segments would be quick to point out, however, that [¥] and [j] appear practically exclusively in leniting contexts, never in the middle or at the end of the word; also it must be conceded that [x, xj] which do appear in other positions can be unambiguously taken back to underlying 兩 k, kj 兩. Thus, outputs of lenition show a markedly restricted distribution, and therefore it seems justified to remove them altogether from underlying representations, in particular as underspecified representations and free rides are a commonplace in phonology. Questions like these underlie the so-called “abstractness debate” which centres round the problem of how far the phonological representations of a morpheme can depart from its phonetic surface (cf. Kiparsky 1973; Gussmann 1980). Fundamentally, admitting grammatical and lexical conditioning of phonological rules can result in underlying representations of morphemes and words which are very different from their attested phonetic realisations. While the surface forms can be derived by sequentially ordered rules, the rules tend to become extremely powerful devices, and given a certain amount of ingenuity one can derive, if not everything from everything, then at least far more than appears to be found in natural languages. If the derivational framework is to contribute fruitfully to the understanding of phonological mechanisms, fundamental revisions must be introduced.

506

6.

VII. Allomorphie

Phonological irreversibility

The pervasive English vowel schwa [e] presents a classical case of multiple neutralisation in the sense that it can derive from several distinct phonological sources (cf. also Art. 50 on a somewhat different notion of neutralisation). This is clearly revealed through alternations: (9) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

[e ⬃ e] [æ ⬃ e] [A ⬃ e] [v ⬃ e] [ew ⬃ e] [=e ⬃ e] [c6 ⬃ e] [f6 ⬃ e] [a6 ⬃ e]

torrential ⬃ torrent morality ⬃ moral symbolic ⬃ symbol autumnal ⬃ autumn colonial ⬃ colony mysterious ⬃ mystery memorial ⬃ memory modernity ⬃ modern drama ⬃ dramatic

In all these examples, some stressed vowel or diphthong is realised as schwa when unstressed. This is a case of an irreversible relation: given the phonetic representation with the reduced vowel, one clearly cannot predict the underlying full vowel; in fact, several different underlying segments have to be assumed to correspond to the same phonetic entity. In individual cases, this will require representations of forms which in interesting ways depart from their surface reflexes. For instance, the morpheme atom has the allomorph [1ætem] in isolation but [e1tAm] before the suffix -ic in atomic. Schwa alternates with [æ] in the first syllable but with [A] in the second, and it is these full vowels which must be entered phonologically. The representation 兩 ætom 兩 is the simplest base from which the existing alternants can be derived even if we never find a phonetic representation of the morpheme which would contain two full (unreduced) vowels. It has been argued that this so-called vowel reduction is not a single process as traditionally assumed but a twostage operation consisting of the removal (“delinking”) of the underlying feature complex which is followed by inserting the “melody” for [e] into the empty nuclear position (cf. Gussmann 1991). The word atom clearly shows the irreversibility of alternations and the need for representations which constitute a kind of resultant of various surface forms. On the other hand, this particular example and the other alternations with schwa are quite exceptional since most cases of phonetic schwa show no alternations of any kind, e.g. in about, oblong, arrive, veranda, opera, capacity, lemon, scandalous, parrot and hundreds of other ex-

amples. Since they display no alternations and since the schwa vowel can be derived in English from several phonological sources, it is impossible to find non-arbitrary representations for them. An alternative could be suggested whereby non-alternating schwas are phonologically entered without any specific distinctive features (merely as empty slots) and the rule supplying the melody for [e] to delinked (reduced) vowels will also apply to empty vocalic slots. This procedure allows us to make use of (get a free ride on) an already existing rule and also frees us from the need to make an arbitrary decision in the case of every non-alternating schwa as to its underlying feature specification. Admitting segments without any content amounts to taking underspecification to its logical conclusion: if we can have segments consisting of just one feature, we can go one step further and admit a segment without any features at all. This broadens even further the power of the phonological theory since if we can have vowels without features we could also have featureless consonants (e.g. the so-called h-aspire´ in French, to mention just one example; for more discussion, cf. Clements & Keyser 1983: 107⫺114; Goldsmith 1990: 57⫺66; Charette 1991: 88⫺96). In the particular instance of the English schwa, an empty segment solution is open to criticism because it merely disguises what it purports to describe more effectively: while doing away with underlying schwa, it introduces another phonological segment. No matter how we finally analyse the particular problem at hand, its relevance to phonological theory is unquestionable: morphological alternations and distributional restrictions can unambiguously determine the phonological representations in a portion of the vocabulary of the language only. Questions of indeterminate representations can be solved by resorting to some general theoretical principle such as, for example, the reduction in the number of underlying segments or the reduction of the computation necessary to obtain the surface forms. The validity of such principles should be tested through the description they lead to. Part of the critical assessment of the dynamic model of phonology is connected with the virtual absence of any independent evidence corroborating the reality of rules and representations arrived at by applying the principles of phonology. The various modes of so-called external evidence pertaining to the “psychological reality” of phonological structures (language errors, language games, metrical data, historical change, spelling etc.; cf. Fischer-Jørgensen 1975:


290⫺296; Lass 1984: 214⫺222) have been found wanting or controversial in various ways (cf. Dressler 1979; Fromkin 1979; Gussmann 1979). For this reason, the status of dynamic phonology has often been called into question and criticised from various quarters (cf. Linell 1979: 223⫺256; Lass 1984: 232f.).

7.

Domains of phonological regularities

The English velar nasal [n] has been treated by the derivational tradition as a segment which does not appear in underlying representations but is due to rules. The position, which goes back to Edward Sapir (cf. Sapir 1925: 49 [1949: 43; 1957: 24]), has been adopted, expanded and justified by a number of researchers (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968: 234; Wells 1982: 60⫺64; Halle & Mohanan 1985: 62; Anderson & Ewen 1987: 61⫺63). It can be assumed that the velar nasal always appears before a velar plosive from which it acquires its velar place of articulation. Furthermore, the voiced velar plosive after a velar nasal is deleted in certain cases: our task is to formulate exactly the contexts for deletion. The viability of the bisegmental interpretation of the velar nasal as underlying 兩 ng 兩 crucially depends upon our ability to provide an adequate formulation of the appropriate rules. An obvious position where 兩 g 兩 is deleted is the end of the word: while [ng] regularly occurs word-internally, the same cluster is totally impossible word-finally, e.g. finger vs. tongue. It is immediately apparent, however, that we cannot identify “word-final position” with what is commonly taken to be the end of the word, as deletion also takes place within units called “words”, e.g. singer, songster, longish, bringing, strength, diphthongise, slangy, thingy etc. All these words are morphologically complex and one might restrict the rule to apply at the end of morphologically simple units. Although this step succeeds in handling the examples singer etc., it clearly fails to account for deletion in words such as angma, anxiety, wellington, Ingvar, tungsten etc., as there is no evidence of any morphological complexity here. This might suggest that deletion occurs in the syllablefinal position or rhyme within a simple morphological unit. For instance, 兩 g 兩 appears in the rhyme both in the monomorphemic word angma and in sing- of singer; the revised deletion rule will derive the required velar nasal without the following plosive.

507 There are further difficulties, namely place names ending in -ham like Birmingham, Wordingham, Wrangham. Since there are alternative pronunciations, in particular in American English, where -ham is pronounced [hem] or even [hæm], one might assume that the final syllable begins with 兩 h 兩 phonologically, which would put the preceding 兩 ng 兩 in the rhyme and hence in the right context for deletion. Alternatively, one could claim that the -ham element in place names constitutes its own phonological domain; hence the nasalplus-velar sequences are treated in the same way as in simple morphological units. The same device might be applied to the word gingham, although here no alternative pronunciation with [h] is recorded. The words dinghy and hangar are also problematic but might be reanalysed as morphologically complex (cf. the suffix -y in thingy, and -ar is homophonous with the very frequent -er). It might be said that such ad hoc devices are motivated by a desire to maintain a unified phonological account of the phenomenon in question. Such charges must be taken seriously: there are frequent examples, mostly names, where the velar nasal can not be followed by [g], e.g. Langan, Lange, Singapore, Ringen, Langley, Dingley, Bingley etc. An interesting difference can be observed in the pair Dingle ⫺ Dingley: in Dingle, the syllable division [d=n.g¢] prevents the deletion of 兩 g 兩, which is in syllable-initial position or in the onset. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not happen in Dingley since 兩 gl 兩 is a well-formed branching onset in English (cf. glad), and the name should be pronounced *[d=ngli]. In order to derive the correct forms of words like [d=nli], an artificial morphological division would have to be introduced into underlying representations, i.e. [[Lang]an], [[Lang]e], [[Sing]apore], [[Ring]en], [[Lang]ley], [[Ding]ley], [[Bing]ley]. Although the analysis works, it does so at the price of both tolerating and encouraging morphological arbitrariness. However, it must be admitted that the interaction of phonology and morphology is one of the areas that has not been sufficiently explored (cf. also Art. 35). It is certainly not the case that morphemes invariably constitute the domain of phonological generalisations; for instance, stress, vowel harmony, palatalisations, assimilations etc. most often operate cross morphological boundaries. The opposite should also be admitted as a possibility, namely that phonology identifies certain morpheme-chunks as domains for its regularities even if these chunks have no morphological support.

508

8.

VII. Allomorphie

A historical perspective

The dynamic approach to phonological regularities has always been present in modern linguistics (cf. Fischer-Jørgensen 1975; Anderson 1985 for historical surveys). While it is relatively easy to find precursors for current views by pointing to some scholars in the past who postulated dynamic changes of some basic units into phonetic elements or assumed ordered rules, the value of such observations is limited since their significance can only be appreciated in the context of the phonological model as a whole. What may seem to be central from our current perspective might have been of only secondary importance in some particular framework, and by stressing a particular issue one could create the false impression that it was equally important in the past: “precursors are a dime a dozen unless one has very stringent criteria for what is to count as a precursor” (McCawley 1979: 248). For example, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay considered certain phonetic units to be, in modern parlance, derived from more abstract segments, as in the case of terminal devoicing in Polish, which he described as a collision between the “intention” to pronounce voiced consonants and (language-specific or general) “conditions” which force the speaker to substitute a voiceless one (cf. Baudouin de Courtenay 1895: 18⫺21 [1972: 158⫺160]). But the scope of such productive derivation was restricted to phonetically conditioned alternations, and Baudouin’s descriptive practice is closer to classical (European) structuralism than to any variety of generative grammar. For instance, his study of the history of Polish phonology contains a “table of the autonomous independent phonemes of Polish linguistic thinking” (“tablica samoistnych niezalez˙nych fonem mys´lenia je˛zykowego polskiego”, Baudouin de Courtenay 1922: 56 [1983: 128; 1972: 342f.]), which differs only in minor ways from classical structural descriptions: alternations play an insignificant role both in the establishment of the inventory and in the study of the historical development of the language. Although some of Baudouin’s statements make it tempting to consider him as a precursor of dynamic phonology as understood today, this would be an inappropriate over-simplification (for more detailed accounts, cf. Häusler 21976; Mugdan 1984: 61⫺79, 175⫺182; 1996: 266⫺271, 293⫺ 297). Similarly, certain elements of a dynamic

approach can be found in the works of the Moscow School (cf. Fischer-Jørgensen 1975: 331⫺335; Reformatskij 1955), but they do not go beyond phonetically conditioned neutralisations. Derivational approaches were also favoured by some American scholars. Leonard Bloomfield’s masterly study of Menomini operates with “basic forms” consisting of “morphophonemes” (not to be confused with the morphophonemes of static models, cf. Art. 50) and ordered “statements” or rules which are purely descriptive rather than historical (cf. Bloomfield 1939: 105f. [1970: 352]). In this sense, it resembles Pa¯nø ini’s technique (cf. Joshi & Kiparsky 1979), but for Bloomfield and his followers the morphophonemic representation was a means of arranging complex data, with the output of rule application being the phonemic form of a word. From this point of view, elements appearing in morphophonemic representations are significant only in so far as they make it possible to derive phonemic structures and they have no role outside the morphophonemic system. This presumably explains why some morphophonemic descriptions resort to arbitrary segments, e.g. a voiced glottal stop ⫺ something which is phonetically impossible ⫺ to account for alternations of vowel length in Tübatulabal (Swadesh & Voegelin 1939; cf. McCawley 1969). When comparing such approaches with the generative framework, these fundamental philosophical differences must be taken into consideration. Edward Sapir, who is often regarded as the direct predecessor of contemporary derivational phonology, seems to have recognised just two levels (phonetic and phonological) and the rules which relate them. In other respects, his approach differs significantly from that of the generativists (cf. McCawley 1967). Thus, Sapir’s underlying “organic segments” constituted a subset of the phonetic elements, a position that classical Generative Phonology rejects. Furthermore, he did not admit underspecified representations as he generally operated with complete, indivisible segments rather than with classes of features, and abstractness was severely constrained in his framework since underlying segments could not change their class membership (a situation which is very common in generative phonology). Finally, although Sapir’s rules were ordered, the order was not fixed: rules applied whenever the conditions on their application were satisfied, but the conditions were sometimes global in nature (cf. Kenstowicz 1975).


9.

References

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Lass, Roger (1984), Phonology: An Introduction to Basic Concepts. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Linell, Per (1979), Psychological Reality in Phonology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 25) McCarthy, John J. (1988), “Feature Geometry and Dependency: A Review”. Phonetica 45, 84⫺108 McCawley, James D. (1967), “Sapir’s Phonologic Representation”. International Journal of American Linguistics 33, 106⫺111 [reprinted in: McCawley (1979), 3⫺9] McCawley, James D. (1969), “Length and Voicing in Tübatulabal”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 5.1, 407⫺ 415 [reprinted in: McCawley (1979), 30⫺40] McCawley, James D. (1979), Adverbs, Vowels, and Other Objects of Wonder. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press Mugdan, Joachim (1984), Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845⫺1929): Leben und Werk. München: Fink Mugdan, Joachim (1996), “Die Anfänge der Phonologie”. In: Schmitter, Peter (ed.), Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit, II: Von der Grammaire de Port-Royal (1660) zur Konstitution moderner linguistischer Disziplinen. Tübingen: Narr (Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 5), 247⫺318

´ Siadhail, Mıćhea´l (1989), Modern Irish: GramO matical Structure and Dialectal Variation. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1955), “O sootnosˇenii fonetiki i grammatiki (morfologii)”. In: Vinogradov, V[iktor] V. & Baskakov, N[ikolaj] A. (eds.), Voprosy grammaticˇeskogo stroja. Moskva: Akademija Nauk SSSR, 92⫺112 [reprinted in: Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1970, ed.), Iz istorii otecˇestvennoj fonologii: Ocˇerk; chrestomatija. Moskva: Nauka, 398⫺421] Sapir, Edward (1925), “Sound Patterns in Language”. Language 1, 37⫺51 [reprinted in: Sapir, Edward (1949), Selected Writings in Language, Culture and Personality, ed. by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press, 33⫺45; also in: Joos (1957, ed.), 19⫺25] Stankiewicz, Edward (1972, ed.), A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology. Bloomington, London: Indiana Univ. Press Swadesh, Morris & Voegelin, Charles F. (1939), “A Problem in Phonological Alternation”. Language 15, 1⫺10 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 88⫺92] Wells, J[ohn] C. (1982), Accents of English, Vol. 1⫺3. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Edmund Gussmann, Lublin (Poland)

52. Suppletion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introductory remarks The notion of suppletion Typology of suppletion Theoretical aspects Diachronic change Pseudo-suppletion References

1.

Introductory remarks

The notion of suppletion and the term itself may be traced back to Hermann Osthoff (cf. Osthoff 1899); it refers to series of irregular forms, such as the following: (1) (a) Lat. bon[-us] ‘good’ ⬃ mel[-ior] ‘better’ ⬃ optim[-us] ‘best’ (b) Lat. fer[-o¯] ‘[I] carry’ ⬃ tul[-ı¯] ‘[I] have carried’ ⬃ la¯t[-um] ‘[in order to] carry’ (c) Eng. good ⬃ bett[-er] ⬃ be[-st] (d) Eng. [I] am ⬃ [you] are ⬃ [he] is ⬃ be (e) Germ. viel ‘much’ ⬃ mehr ‘more’ ⬃ mei[-st-] ‘most’.

These irregularities stand out against the background of thousands of perfectly regular parallel formations. ⫺ From these series, one readily concludes that suppletion is neither a linguistic entity nor a linguistic operation; in particular, it is not a linguistic sign or a component of a sign. It is a relation between two segmental linguistic signs X and Y. Formally, suppletion is a binary relation of the same kind that holds for synonyms or antonyms. In an explicit form, it should be referred to as X is suppletive with respect to Y; *X is suppletive is meaningless. Substantively, suppletion is a relation between signs X and Y such that the semantic difference ‘d’ between X and Y is maximally regular in language L (‘d’ is grammatical in L; e.g. ‘plural’, ‘past’, ‘action of …’, etc.), while the formal (i.e. phonological) difference d between them is maximally irregular (d is not an alternation of L; e.g. Eng. go ⬃ wen[-t] or am ⬃ was). Being in fact a limiting case of irregular alternations, suppletion entails the least iconic

511

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(i.e. the most opaque) formal relation between two semantically related signs (cf. Art. 30). This is why it tends to be a relatively marginal phenomenon. Yet it is of considerable interest: (a) as a theoretical challenge (it is necessary for defining such crucial concepts as morpheme and lexeme); (b) as a source of historical evidence (it often reflects older features, representing discontinuities in the development of a language: cf. Markey 1985); and (c) as a source of serious problems for language learners. Therefore, suppletion has received an extensive treatment in the literature (cf. Beard & Szymanek 1988).

2.

The definition of suppletion in 2.1.3 is based on the following thirteen notions (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1982; 1993; 1996: 53⫺117; 1997: 201⫺224 for details):

(c) (d)

(e)

(f)

(g) (h) (i)

In the classification of suppletive signs and the discussion of the examples, eight further notions have to be used: (n)

The notion of suppletion

2.1. Definition 2.1.1. Underlying notions

(a) (b)

quasi-elementary (cf. Art. 23, 42); morph: an elementary segmental sign (cf. Art. 46 for other uses of the term); (k) morpheme: a set of synonymous morphs distributed according to sufficiently general rules contingent on word-internal context; (l) allomorph: different morphs belonging to the same morpheme are its allomorphs (cf. Art. 47⫺48); (m) grammatical meaning: roughly speaking, inflectional or derivational meaning (cf. Art. 53); syntactic meanings, which are, of course, grammatical as well, are ignored here. (j)

linguistic unit: anything found in language L; linguistic sign (cf. Art. 23): a triplet consisting of a signified, a signifier and syntactics (the set of all combinatorial properties of the sign: part of speech, inflectional/agreement class, government pattern, restricted lexical cooccurrents, etc.); segmental: a sign is segmental if its signifier is a string of phonemes; linguistic union 丣: an operation that unites linguistic units, including signs, according to their nature (thus, 丣 amalgamates signifieds, concatenates phonemic strings, applies alternations to strings, etc.); represent; representable: linguistic unit X can be represented (is representable) in terms of units Y1, Y2, …, Yn and operation 丣 if and only if X ⫽ 丣 {Y1, Y2, …, Yn}; quasi-representable: a sign is quasi-representable if and only if it is not representable in terms of other signs but either its signified or its signifier is representable in terms of other signifieds or signifiers, respectively (thus, Eng. am is representable only in its signified: ‘am’ ⫽ ‘be’ 丣 ‘indic’ 丣 ‘pres’ 丣 ‘1.sg’, but not in its signifier; kick the bucket, on the contrary, is representable only in its signifier, but not in its signified); elementary sign: a sign which is not representable and not quasi-representable; quasi-elementary sign: a sign which is quasirepresentable; minimal sign: a sign which is elementary or

(o) (p) (q) (r)

(s) (t)

(u)

strong megamorph: a quasi-elementary sign which is representable in its signified but not in its signifier and which manifests a sequence of morphemes (e.g. Eng. am ⇔ {be} ⫹ {pres.ind} ⫹ {1.sg}; cf. “fused exponence” and “portmanteau” in Art. 64); root and affix (cf. Art. 27); lexeme and lex: an element of a lexeme, i.e. a word-form or a phrase manifesting an inflectional form of the lexeme in question (eats, ate, has been eating, etc., are lexes of the lexeme eat; see Art. 62 for a definition which excludes periphrastic forms ⫺ cf. Art. 68); idiom: a quasi-elementary sign which is representable in its signifier but not in its signified; alternation: a substitution of phonemic strings or prosodemic complexes such that, if applied to an appropriate signifier, it produces another signifier; apophony (in the wider sense): a meaningful alternation (e.g. in foot ⬃ feet; cf. Art. 58).

2.1.2. Two auxiliary notions Linguistic units (not necessarily signs) X and Y are said to be corepresentable if and only if they can both be represented in terms of the same unit Z and perhaps some other units: X ⫽ 丣(Z, P1, …, Pm) and Y ⫽ 丣(Z, Q1, …, Qn) Thus, the signifiers *laughing+ and *laughed+ are corepresentable in terms of the signifiers *laugh+ [⫽ Z], *ing+ and *ed+, while the signifiers *wife+ and *wive+ are corepresentable in terms of the signifier *wife+ [⫽ Z] and the alternation *f+ ⇒ *v+. Any two identical units are corepresentable by definition. If two linguistic signs are corepresentable, then their signifieds, signifiers and syntactics are corepresentable. Corepresentability of two linguistic units means that one of them can be

512 derived from the other or both can be derived from a common source by rules of L (the rules themselves can be non-standard, nonproductive, etc., but there are rules). The notion of grammatical corepresentability applies only to signifieds and, by extension, to signs. Two corepresentable signifieds of L⫺ ‘X’ ⫽ 丣(‘Z’, ‘P1’, …, ‘Pm’) and ‘Y’ ⫽ 丣(‘Z’, ‘Q1’, …, ‘Qn’) such that ‘X’ ⫽ ‘Y’ ⫺ are said to be grammatically corepresentable if and only if the semantic differences between ‘X’⫺‘Z’ and ‘Y’⫺‘Z’ can be represented in terms of grammatical meanings of L. For instance, the signs laughing and laughed are grammatically corepresentable, as are laughing and laughter: their signifieds differ only by English grammatical meanings. 2.1.3. Definition of suppletion For the sake of simplicity, it is required that the notion of suppletion be applicable to minimal segmental signs only, i.e. to morphs, megamorphs and idioms (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1972: 405; 1976: 52; 1982: 110; 1994: 369⫺392). (2) Two minimal segmental signs X and Y of language L are said to stand in a relation of suppletion (or to be suppletive with respect to each other) if and only if conditions (a) and (b) are simultaneously satisfied: (a) The signifiers of X and Y are not corepresentable; (b) the signifieds of X and Y are corepresentable and: (b1) either the signifieds ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are identical and X and Y are allomorphs of the same morpheme; (b2) or the signifieds ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are not identical and they are grammatically corepresentable. From the definition it follows that the suppletive signs X and Y are, loosely speaking, either “within” one lexeme (X and Y are inflectionally related), or “within” two different, but derivationally related lexemes (X and Y are derivationally related). Thus the notion of suppletion is contingent upon inflectional and derivational meanings of the language in question. ⫺ Like synonymy, suppletion is symmetrical: if X is suppletive with respect to Y, Y is necessarily suppletive with respect to X. Unlike synonymy, however, suppletion is anti-reflexive (no sign can be suppletive with respect to itself) and nontransitive (if X is suppletive with respect to Y

VII. Allomorphie

and Y with respect to Z, then X can either be or not be suppletive with respect to Z). However, expressions of the type “to be a suppletive (allo-)X of the X-eme {A}” are widely used, as in “Eng. am is a suppletive allolex of the lexeme be” or “Fr. i- is a suppletive allomorph of the morpheme {all-}” (cf. (3)). Such expressions denote a different, anti-symmetrical relation and should be interpreted as ‘to be suppletive with respect to the basic, or underlying, (allo-)X of the Xeme {A}’. 2.2. Examples In (3)⫺(6), two typical examples of suppletion and two typical examples of non-suppletion (that could be mistaken for suppletion) are quoted and checked against the definition. If signs X and Y are not suppletive, this can mean either that they are “less than” suppletive (i.e. they are formally related in a regular way) or that they are “more than” suppletive (i.e. they are semantically not related in a regular way). (3) Fr. all- [⫽X] ⬃ i- [⫽ Y] in all-ons ‘go-1.pl (we go)’ ⬃ i-r-ons ‘go-fut-1.pl (we will go)’ The signifiers *all+ and *i+ are not corepresentable in French (neither of them can be derived from the other according to the rules of French), so that condition (a) in (2) is satisfied. The signifieds ‘all’ and ‘i’ are corepresentable ⫺ they are identical (both mean ‘go’), so that subcondition (b1) applies. Since the signs all- and i- are in fact allomorphs of the same morpheme, the subcondition is satisfied; therefore all- and i- stand in a relation of suppletion: they are suppletive allomorphs of the same morpheme {all-}. (4) Eng. am [⫽ X] ⬃ was [⫽ Y] The signifiers *am+ and *was+ are not corepresentable: condition (a) in (2) is satisfied. The signifieds ‘am’ and ‘was’ are different, so that subcondition (b2) applies. They are indeed grammatically corepresentable, ‘Z’ being ‘be’ (‘X’ ⫽ ‘am’ ⫽ ‘be’ 丣 ‘pres’ 丣 ‘indic’ 丣 ‘1st person’ 丣 ‘sg’; ‘Y’ ⫽ ‘was’ ⫽ ‘be’ 丣 ‘past’ 丣 ‘indic’ 丣 ‘sg’); the semantic difference between ‘X’⫺‘Z’ and ‘Y’⫺‘Z’ is fully reducible to inflectional meanings: ‘pres’, ‘past’, ‘1st person’. Thus, subcondition (b2) is satisfied and the signs am and was stand in a relation of suppletion: they are suppletive

52. Suppletion

513

strong megamorphs, allolexes of the lexeme be.

(7b), the difference between /fjar/ and /irj/ is reducible to three regular alternations:

(5) Fr. un /œ ˜ / (indefinite article, masculine singular) [⫽ X] ⬃ une /yn/ (indefinite article, feminine singular) [⫽ Y]

⫺ /f/ ⇒ π, cf. feoil /fjo6lj/ ‘meat(nom.sg)’ ⬃ [an] fheoil /o6lj/ ‘[the] meat(gen.sg)’, ⫺ /a/ ⇒ /i/, cf. cearc /kjark/ ‘hen(nom.sg)’ ⬃ circ-e /kjirjkj-e/ ‘hen-gen.sg’, and ⫺ /C/ ⇒ /Cj/ (cf. gasu´r /gasu6r/ ‘child(nom. sg)’ ⬃ gasuír /gasu6rj/ ‘child(gen.sg)’.

The signifiers /œ ˜ / and /yn/ share no phonemes, yet they are corepresentable: they are related by the regular alternation /œ ˜ / ⬃ /yn/ (cf. /brœ ˜ / ⬃ /bryn/ ‘brown’, /kcmœ ˜/ ⬃ /kcmyn/ ‘common’, etc.). Condition (a) in (2) is not satisfied; therefore, the signs un and une do not stand in a relation of suppletion: they are less than suppletive, being regular allolexes of the lexeme un. (6) Russ. syn ‘son’ ⬃ zjat’ ‘son-in-law’ docˇ’ ‘daughter’ ⬃ snocha ‘daughter-inlaw’ In these (and other similar) pairs, the corresponding signifiers are not corepresentable: condition (a) in (2) is satisfied. The signifieds ‘son’ [⫽ ‘X’] and ‘son-in-law’ [⫽ ‘Y’] differ, so that subcondition (b2) applies. Although these signifieds are corepresentable (with the common part ‘Z’ ⫽ ‘son’), they are not grammatically corepresentable since the semantic difference between ‘X’⫺‘Z’ and ‘Y’⫺‘Z’ is not reducible to grammatical meanings: the meaning ‘in-law’ (‘through marriage’) is not inflectional or derivational in Russian, having no separate morphological expression. Thus, subcondition (b2) is not satisfied and the signs syn and zjat’, etc., do not stand in a relation of suppletion: they are more than suppletive, being lexes of different lexemes which are not derivationally related. 2.3. Comments 2.3.1. The rationale for the conditions Condition (a) in (2) excludes from suppletion all pairs of signs with a (relatively) regular formal relation between them, even if the signifiers share no phonemes, as in (5) and (7). (7) (a) Span. y /i/ ⬃ e /e/ ‘and’ (/e/ occurs before /i/: e hijos ‘and sons’); o /o/ ⬃ u /u/ ‘or’ (/u/ occurs before /o/: u otros ‘or others’) (b) Ir. fear /fjar/ ‘man(nom.sg)’ ⬃ [an] fhir /irj/ ‘[the] man(gen.sg)’ In (7a), /i/ ⇒ /e/ and /o/ ⇒ /u/ are alternations of Spanish, since they are related to those found in conjugation, e.g. in ped-ir ‘requestinf’ ⬃ pid-o ‘request-ind.pres.1.sg’ or pod-er ‘can-inf’ ⬃ pud-e ‘can-ind.pret.1.sg’. In

The condition “the members of a suppletive pair have no shared phonemes in their signifiers”, which one sees frequently, is neither necessary nor sufficient (cf. 3.2.3). It is not necessary since, for instance, Eng. much ⬃ more, little ⬃ less, or Ukr. bahato ‘much’ ⬃ bil’sˇe ‘more’ are obviously suppletive, although they do share one phoneme in the initial position. It is not sufficient since the pairs in (5) and (7), for example, are not suppletive although their members share no phonemes. Subcondition (b1) protects us against synonymous morphs which belong to different morphemes, i.e. against lexical synonymy. Without it, all synonyms would be suppletive: Fr. ve´lo ⬃ bicyclette ‘bicycle’, Russ. ogromn[-yj] ⬃ gromadn[-yj] ‘huge’, Germ. Verb ⬃ Zeitwort ‘verb’, etc. This would empty the notion of suppletion of all positive content. ⫺ In some approaches, especially in that of the Moscow Phonological School, it is maintained that the allomorphs of a morpheme should always be linked by (mor)phonological alternations, so that allomorphs cannot stand in a relation of suppletion; on this view, suppletion involves “different morphemes which have identical meaning and function” (Reformatskij 1955: 110f. [1970: 419]). This whole issue concerns the definition of morpheme (see Art. 46). ⫺ Subcondition (b2) bars lexical hyponymy and lexical pairs with shared semantic components, such as table ⬃ desk ‘table designed to write upon’, where the differentiating semantic components are not grammatical meanings. 2.3.2. Deviations from traditional definitions The definition of suppletion in (2) is different from most traditional definitions in four respects: (a) Suppletion is often placed among morphological processes, such as affixation, modification, etc. (cf. Reformatskij 41967: 311⫺313 vs. Sapir 1921: 57⫺81 and Ch. VIII); definition (2) precludes such a treatment. A morphological process is an application ⫺ to a linguistic sign ⫺ of a specific type

514 of linguistic sign. But suppletion is neither a sign nor an operation on signs: it is a relation between two signs (cf. 1). Statements of the type “the 2nd person singular of this verb is formed through/by suppletion” should be understood in the sense that the form in question is a separate sign suppletive with respect to some other forms of the verb. It would be more expedient to say “the 2nd person singular form of this verb is suppletive with respect to such and such other form”. (b) According to many definitions, suppletion applies exclusively to roots; definition (2) does not so restrict the nature of signs that can be suppletive (cf. 3.1) and covers relations between roots and between affixes, between morphs and between megamorphs, and even between two forms of an idiom. There is no a priori reason to limit a general theoretical notion to one specific class of signs (cf. Bally 41965: 178). (c) Traditionally, suppletion applies exclusively to etymologically unrelated signs (actually, to roots; cf. Rudes 1980: 660); in (2), etymology is not even mentioned ⫺ etymological considerations should play no role in defining a theoretical notion. Thus, the pairs of morphs in (8) are considered to be suppletive although they are etymologically identical: (8) (a) Pol. tn-e˛ /tn-e˜/ ‘cut(pres)-l.sg’ ⬃ cia˛c´ /tCon-tC/ ‘cut-inf’ (tn- and cia˛- are regular reflexes of Proto-Indo-European *tem-) (b) Rom. ia-u /jaw/ ‘take(pres)-1.sg’ ⬃ lu-am /luém/ ‘take(pres)-1.pl’ (iaand lu- are regular reflexes of ProtoRom. *lewa-) (d) Typically, suppletion applies exclusively to different inflectional forms of the same lexeme (cf. Wurzel 1987: 492); definition (2) is broader and admits any grammatical differences, inflectional as well as derivational. Thus, such pairs as Eng. father ⬃ patern[-al] or one ⬃ first are suppletive. (On suppletive derivation, cf. Mel’cˇuk 1972: 413⫺419; 1977; Apresjan 1974: 168⫺175 [1992: 183⫺194]; Dressler 1985; Carstairs 1988; also Osthoff 1899: 15⫺19 and Bally 41965: 178⫺185.) However, there is a price to pay for such broadmindedness. Inflectional meanings, or grammemes, are obligatory; an inflectional category (such as number, case, tense, etc.) is valid for all the elements of the word class for which this category is defined (with the obvious exception of defective paradigms; cf. Art. 67). Therefore, grammemes are by defi-

VII. Allomorphie

nition fully semantically regular. Not so derivational meanings, or derivatemes: not being obligatory, they are not necessarily valid for all or even the majority of elements in the corresponding word class. As a result, for two formally unrelated lexemes, it is not obvious whether they are derivationally related ⫺ even if their semantic difference does correspond to a derivateme of L. (Thus, child and [little] girl are not derivationally related, although their semantic difference ⫺ ‘female’ ⫺ is a derivateme in English, cf. tiger ⬃ tigress, actor ⬃ actr-ess, etc.; the reasons is that in English the derivateme ‘female’ does not apply to basic human nouns and kinship terms.) Here, statistical factors come into play ⫺ and with them, the gradual character of semantic regularity; this leads, in turn, to the semantic gradability of suppletion. 2.3.3. The gradual character of suppletion Suppletion is a gradable notion: two signs can be more or less suppletive. This is so because the definition makes use of the notions “to be corepresentable” and “to be grammatically corepresentable”, which are based on the notion of regularity, semantic as well as formal; and regularity is unavoidably gradual (cf. Art. 32). First, regularity of a phenomenon F depends on its frequency (an absolute measure). Second, regularity of F depends on the proportion of units that feature F among all units that in principle could feature it (a relative measure). Third, regularity of F depends on the presence of other phenomena similar to F: relatedness of F to something else in L diminishes its isolation and makes it more regular. For example, is the correspondence /ø/ ⬃ /uv/ that relates the French signs /pø/ peux ‘[I] can’ and /puv/ in pouv[-ons] ‘[we] can’ regular? At first glance, no. Yet this correspondence is not quite unique: it is found in another verb, meux ‘[I] move’ ⬃ mouv[-ons] ‘[we] move’; it applies to two of the three verbs in French to which it could apply (the third is veux ‘[I] want’ ⬃ voul[-ons] ‘[we] want’, and there is no other such verb); and it is formally related to other verbal alternations: /ø/ ⬃ /ul/ (veux ⬃ voul-), /o/ ⬃ /al/ (vaux ‘[I] am worth’ ⬃ val[-ons] ‘[we] are worth’), /e/ ⬃ /av/ (sais ‘[I] know’ ⬃ sav[-ons] ‘[we] know’), etc. Thus, these correspondences are slightly regular and can be considered alternations of French. As a result, a pair of morphs of the type peux- ⬃ pouv- is, strictly speaking, not suppletive (cf. Schwarze 1970). However, if the researcher decides to

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exclude non-standard rules from his description and bars the above alternations from the grammar of French, peux- and pouv- have to be put into the lexicon as suppletive allomorphs of the morpheme {pouv-}. But, since there is some regularity in their formal relation, they still will be less suppletive than, say, i- and all- of {all-}: the formal relation between these latter morphs is absolutely unique in French. The decision whether a given formal difference is a legitimate alternation of L crucially affects the description of some signs as suppletive. Thus, it has been proposed that the grammar of Modern English include alternations relating star to stellar and astral (cf. Lightner 1979). If one accepts this, stell[-ar] and astr[-al] are not suppletive with respect to star: they are regular derivatives of the latter.

3.

Typology of suppletion

Pairs of suppletive signs can be classified (a) according to the types of signs standing in a relation of suppletion (3.1); (b) according to the degree of suppletion between two suppletive signs (3.2). 3.1. Types of suppletive signs To characterize the type of suppletion which links signs X and Y, the following three features should be considered: (a) The type of grammatical relation between X and Y: derivational vs. inflectional suppletion (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1976: 60⫺65; Dressler 1986); (b) the morphological type of X and Y (do they involve roots or only affixes?): radical vs. affixal suppletion; (c) the major class of signs to which X and Y belong: morph vs. strong megamorph vs. idiom suppletion. These parameters produce 2 ⫻ 2 ⫻ 3 ⫽ 12 logically possible classes of suppletive pairs. Of these, only eight are actually attested. The following four are improbable and no examples are known for them: derivational radical idiom suppletion, derivational affixal megamorph suppletion, derivational affixal idiom suppletion, and inflectional affixal idiom suppletion. 3.1.1. Derivational radical morph suppletion In (9), suppletion links the radical allomorphs stir- and pr-, whose distribution is morphologically conditioned: pr- before -acˇ-

k, and stir- elsewhere; -acˇ-k is a derivational marker of female agent (cf. skripka ‘violin’ ⬃ skripacˇka ‘female violinist’, etc.). (9) Russ. stir-at’ ‘launder-inf’ ⬃ pr-acˇ-k-a ‘launder-agent-fem-nom.sg (laundress)’ Examples of the same class from English include, for instance, father ⬃ patern[-al], earth ⬃ terrestr[-ial], root ⬃ radic[-al], sun ⬃ sol[-ar], etc., which contrast with such regularly derived adjectives as equator-ial, capsul-ar, education-al, etc. 3.1.2. Derivational radical megamorph suppletion In the Russian pair of numerals (10a), suppletion links a morph of a radical morpheme and a strong megamorph manifesting the same morpheme plus a second morpheme whose meaning ‘times ten’ is derivational, as parallel examples with suffixes in (10b) show. (10) (a) cˇetyre ‘four’ ⬃ sorok ‘forty’ (b) dva ‘two’ ⬃ dva-dcat’ ‘twenty’ tri ‘three’ ⬃ tri-dcat’ ‘thirty’ pjat’ ‘five’ ⬃ pjat’-desjat ‘fifty’ This type of suppletion also occurs with hypocoristic forms of English given names, e.g. Richard ⬃ Dick, Robert ⬃ Bob, Margaret ⬃ Peggy, etc. The meaning ‘hypocoristic’ is derivational in English: it is expressed either by the suffix -ie/-y (Ann ⬃ Ann-ie), by truncation (Benjamin ⬃ Ben), or by a combination of both (Rebecca ⬃ Beck-y). Another typical example are French verbs and the corresponding deverbal nouns in (11), which contrast with numerous regular derivatives in -ment, -age, -tion, etc. (see also Mel’cˇuk 1977 for a case of recent suppletion of this type, embrasser ‘[to] kiss’ ⬃ baiser ‘[a] kiss’). (11) tomber ‘fallV’ ⬃ chute ‘fallN’ dormir ‘sleepV’ ⬃ sommeil ‘sleepN’ croire1 ‘believe, think’ ⬃ avis ‘opinion’ croire2 ‘have faith’ ⬃ foi ‘faith’ Similarly, the suppletive Russian male-female noun pairs in (12a) stand out against dozens of regular formations, of which (12b) illustrates a few (the difference in the nominative singular, -π vs. -a, is immaterial here). (12) (a) byk ‘bull’ ⬃ korov[-a] ‘cow’ petuch ‘rooster’ ⬃ kuric[-a] ‘hen’ (b) tigr ‘tiger’ ⬃ tigr-ic[-a] ‘tigress’ slon ‘elephant’ ⬃ slon-ich[-a] ‘elephant cow’

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3.1.3. Derivational affixal morph suppletion In Russian, -e¨nok/-e¨nk and -jat are (etymologically related) suppletive allomorphs of a derivational suffix meaning ‘the young one of’: (13) l’v-e¨nok ‘lion-cub(nom.sg)’ ⬃ l’v-jat-a ‘lion-cub-nom.pl’ medvezˇ-onok ‘bear-cub(nom.sg)’ ⬃ medvezˇ-at-a ‘bear-cub-nom.pl’ In Dutch, -er ⬃ -der ⬃ -aar are suppletive allomorphs of a derivational agentive suffix, distributed according to the phonological composition of the stem, e.g. strijd-er ‘fighter’ ⬃ spaar-der ‘sav-er’ ⬃ trommel-aar ‘drumm-er’ (cf. Carstairs 1988: 84f.). 3.1.4. Inflectional radical morph suppletion There are numerous instances of suppletive radical allomorphs distributed as a function of an inflectional meaning. The nominal categories involved include number as in Lak (14), possession as in Jacaltec (15), and case as in Tabassaran (16). Again, the suppletive pairs in (a) contrast with regular ones in (b); affixes, irrelevant to the discussion, are bracketed. (18) Maasai (a) (b)

positive sok /sok/ hosszu´ /hossu6/ magas /mAgAs/

comparative tö[-bb] hosszu´[-bb] magas[-abb]

singular cˇu sˇsˇarssa ka cˇcˇan

(15) Jacaltec

nonpossessed (a) ‘house’ näh /nah/ ‘tortilla’ wah (b) ‘foot’ oje /oxe/ ‘name’ b¤i

(16) Tabassaran (a) ‘girl’ ‘heart’ ‘who’ (b) ‘eye’ ‘face’

nominative risˇ juk¤ fuzˇ ul masˇ

plural ducrˇ[-i] qam[-i] ka[-ru] cˇcˇan[-nu] ‘my’ [w-]atut [w-]och /ots/ [w-]oj [hin-]b¤i ergative sˇur[-u] kw ¤ [-a] sˇl[-i] ul[-i] masˇ[-i]

Verbs can have, for instance, suppletion according to tense, as in Albanian second person plural indicative forms (17), or according to number of subject, as in Maasai indicative present forms (18, tones omitted): (17) Albanian (a) ‘give’ ‘see’ (b) ‘wash’ ‘open’

singular [a-]lo ‘I go’ [e-]lo ‘(s)he goes’ [a-]jo ‘I say’ [e-]jo ‘(s)he says’

Some adjectives exhibit suppletion according to gender, e.g. the Ancient Greek numeral ‘one’ with the masculine nominative singular eıˆs and the feminine counterpart mıá. Suppletion according to degree is very common (cf. Wurzel 1987: 487⫺502). Several examples have already been cited in (1) and 2.3.1 (cf. also (26)); an instance from a nonIndo-European language, Hungarian, is illustrated in (19): (19) Hungarian (a) ‘much’ (b) ‘long’ ‘high’

(14) Lak (a) ‘horse’ ‘woman’ (b) ‘hand’ ‘foot’

present jep[-ni] shih[-ni] la[-ni] hap[-ni]

aorist dha[-te¨] pa[-te¨] la[-te¨] hap[-e¨t]

plural [ki-]puo ‘we go’ [e-]puo ‘they go’ [ki-]jo ‘we say’ [e-]jo ‘they say’

morph manifesting the same morpheme plus an inflectional morpheme, e.g. in (20); (b) a strong megamorph manifesting a radical morpheme plus an inflectional morpheme is suppletive with respect to another strong megamorph manifesting the same radical morpheme plus a different inflectional morpheme, e.g. in (21). In nouns, suppletion according to number as in Breton (20) or in French œil /œj/ ‘eye(sg)’ ⬃ yeux /jø/ ‘eye(pl)’ is widely attested.

3.1.5. Inflectional radical megamorph suppletion Two subtypes of inflectional radical megamorph suppletion can be distinguished:

(20) Breton (a) ‘man’ ‘dog’ ‘cow’ (b) ‘boy’ ‘thing’

singular den ki buoc’h /b}ox/ paotr tra

plural tud /tyt/ chas /sas/ saout /saut/ paotr[-ed] tra[-ou`]

(a) a morph of a radical morpheme is suppletive with respect to a strong mega-

Some verbs exhibit suppletion according to person and number as in am ⬃ is ⬃ are or

517

52. Suppletion

the corresponding German example bin ⬃ ist ⬃ sind; other inflectional categories involved are aspect as in Old Slavonic (21) or mood as in Lezgi (22). (21) Old Slavonic imperfective (a) ‘throw’ met[-ati] ‘say’ glagol[-ati] (b) ‘flee’ beg[-ati] ‘smear’ maz[-ati]

perfective vreˇsˇ[-ti] resˇ[-ti] beg-na˛[-ti] po-maz[-ati]

(22) Lezgi (a) ‘eat’ ‘come’ ‘go’ (b) ‘sleep’ ‘fall’

indicative tß‘ü- /t‘y/ atufiksuavatu-

Adjectival suppletion includes pairs differing in gender as in French (23) and in degree as in Irish (24).

(23) French (a) ‘beautiful’ ‘old’ (b) ‘happy’ ‘nice’

masculine beau /bo/ vieux /vjø/ joyeux /zwajø/ gentil /za˜ti/

feminine belle /bil/ vielle /vjij/ joyeuse /zwajøz/ gentille /za˜tij/

(24) Irish (a) ‘good’ ‘bad’ ‘small’ (b) ‘white’ ‘tall’

positive maith /mah/ olc /olk/ beag /bjeg/ bań /ba6n/ ard /a6rd/

comparative fearr /fja6r6/ measa /mjase/ lu´ /lu6/ baín[-e] /ba6nje/ aird[-e] a6rdje/

3.1.6. Inflectional idiom suppletion Two set phrases can be suppletive inflectional forms of the same idiom, as in Russ. sukin syn ‘son of a bitch’ ⬃ sukiny deti, lit. ‘children of bitches’; the “normal” plural of syn ‘son’ is ⫺ outside of this phraseme ⫺ synov’ja, never deti ‘children’ (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1983). 3.1.7. Inflectional affixal morph suppletion An inflectional affixal morpheme can have suppletive allomorphs. Typically, they occur in different inflection classes (cf. Art. 65), as in the case of the English plural suffixes -s ⬃ -i ⬃ -a ⬃ -ta (cf. alumn-i, fulcr-a, schema-ta) or the Spanish imperfect suffixes -ba ⬃ -ıá (e.g. in trabaja-ba ‘[I] worked’, dorm-ıá ‘[I] slept’). Another instance of morphological conditioning in the distribution of suppletive allomorphs is found in Hungarian, where the choice between the plural suffixes -k and -i depends on whether a possessive suffix follows (e.g. hajo´-k ‘ships’ ⬃ hajo´-i-π ‘his ships’, hajo´-i-m ‘my ships’; cf. hajo´-m ‘my ship’). However, phonologically conditioned suppletion is also possible (cf. Carstairs 1988: 70⫺ 72 and the Dutch example in 3.1.3). 3.1.8. Inflectional affixal megamorph suppletion Suppletion between a morph of an affixal inflectional morpheme and a strong megamorph manifesting the same morpheme plus

imperative ne? sˇa alad ksu-s avat

some other morpheme is attested in Dakota, where the verbal subject-object cumulative prefix cˇhi- ‘1.sg.subj & 2.sg.obj (I ⫺ thee)’ is suppletive with respect to the separate prefixes wa- ‘1.sg.subj (I)’ and ni- ‘2.sg.obj (thee)’. As the forms of the verb kte ‘kill’ in (25) show, cˇhi- is equivalent to the non-occurring combination wa- 丣 ni-: ‘I kill thee’ (25) (a) cˇhi-kte´ (b) π-wa-kte´ ‘I kill him’ wicˇha´-wa-kte ‘I kill them’ π-ni-kte´ ‘he kills thee’ π-ni-kte´-pi ‘they kill thee’ 3.2. Degrees of suppletion An important aspect of suppletion as defined in 2.1.3 is that it is a gradient: the suppletive signs X1 and Y1 can be more/less suppletive with respect to each other than the suppletive signs X2 and Y2. Three types of factors are responsible for this: ⫺ regularity of the semantic relation between X and Y; ⫺ irregularity of the formal relation between X and Y; ⫺ similarity of the signifiers of X and Y. Regularity/irregularity and similarity are gradable notions; unavoidably, they make suppletion gradable. 3.2.1. Regularity of semantic relation Given suppletive signs X and Y, the less regular the semantic difference between them, the lower is the degree of their suppletion. Since

518

VII. Allomorphie

a “regular” semantic difference is a grammatical one (see 1), an inflectional difference is always absolutely regular. Problems arise only in connection with derivational differences, e.g. the meaning ‘times ten’ in numerals. In German, all names of tens are built with the same suffix: zwei ⬃ zwan-zig, drei ⬃ drei-ßig, vier ⬃ vier-zig, etc. Therefore, there is no suppletion between names of units and names of tens (apart from minor irregularities in zwan- and -ßig): these names are less than suppletive, i.e. regularly related derived lexemes. In sharp contrast, in Hausa, all names of tens are completely irregular: biyu ‘2’ ⬃ ashirin ‘20’, uku ‘3’ ⬃ talatin ‘30’, huHu ‘4’ ⬃ arba’in ‘40’, etc. There is no suppletion here either, but for a different reason: the names of units and the names of tens in Hausa are more than suppletive ⫺ they are derivationally unrelated lexemes. But the pair dos ‘2’ ⬃ veinte ‘20’ in Spanish is suppletive, since all the other names of tens are derived by obvious suffixes (tres ‘3’ ⬃ tre-inta ‘30’, cuatro ‘4’ ⬃ cuar-enta ‘40’, cinco ‘5’ ⬃ cincuenta ‘50’, etc.; cf. example (10) for a parallel case in Russian). And, finally, Tatar has completely irregular formations for the first four names of tens: ike ‘2’ ⬃ egerme ‘20’, öcˇ ‘3’ ⬃ utyz ‘30’, dürt ‘4’ ⬃ kyryk ‘40’, bisˇ ‘5’ ⬃ ille ‘50’; however, the names for 60 and on are quasi-regularly derived: alty ‘6’ ⬃ alt-mysˇ ‘60’, zˇide ‘7’ ⬃ zˇit-mesˇ ‘70’, sigez ‘8’ ⬃ sik-sen ‘80’, and tuguz ‘9’ ⬃ tuk-san ‘90’. Given this background, the first four pairs are suppletive ⫺ but they are much less so than, for example, the respective pairs in Spanish or Russian: the derivateme ‘times ten’ is less regularly expressed in Tatar. Thus, two polar semantic degrees of suppletion can be distinguished:

pletion is a limiting case of alternation ⫺ as it were, an “absolutely irregular alternation”. Alternations are more or less regular by definition; if the substitution of phonemic strings /x/ ⬃ /y/ is unique in the language and is not related to any other substitution, then it is not an alternation. Provided the semantic relation between ‘X’ and ‘Y’ is regular (i.e. grammatical), if there is no alternation relating /X/ and /Y/, then X and Y are suppletive. If, however, /X/ and /Y/ are related by an alternation which is extremely irregular (without being absolutely irregular), the researcher can still consider X and Y as suppletive ⫺ but they will be less than fully suppletive.

⫺ semantically strong, or “genuine”, suppletion (inflectional suppletion); ⫺ semantically weak, or “quasi-”, suppletion (several cases of derivational suppletion).

(a) the degree of irregularitly of the formal difference between /X/ and /Y/, measured (a1) by the relative quantity of pairs in which this distinction (i.e. alternation) appears, and (b2) by the degree of similarity between this alternation and other alternations of L; (b) the degree of similarity between /X/ and /Y/, measured by the ratio of shared phonemes occurring in the same order and in the same position (cf. Dressler 1990: 36f.).

The semantic degree of suppletion of X and Y can be characterized in terms of the degree of regularity of the semantic (in this case, derivational) difference between X and Y measured by the proportion of pairs in which this difference (the derivateme) is explicitly expressed by a separate sign, with respect to all the pairs where it could be semantically plausible. 3.2.2. Irregularity of formal relation Given suppletive signs X and Y, the less irregular the formal difference between them, the lower is the degree of their suppletion. Sup-

3.2.3. Similarity of the signifiers Given suppletive signs X and Y, the more similar their signifiers, the lower is the degree of their suppletion. Even if the relation /X/ ⬃ /Y/ is quite unique in L ⫺ i.e. not even similar to any other such relation ⫺ and therefore totally irregular, there can still be an important difference from the viewpoint of suppletion, namely with respect to the phonological similarity between /X/ and /Y/. Thus, both Russ. cˇelovek ‘human being’ ⬃ ljud[-i] ‘people’ and Eng. child ⬃ childr[-en] are suppletive: the formal relation between the members of each pair is unique in the respective language. Yet cˇelovek and ljud[-i] bear no resemblance to each other, while child and childr[-en] are rather similar; therefore, the latter pair is perceived as less suppletive. The formal degree of suppletion of X and Y can thus be characterized in terms of two parameters:

On this basis, two polar formal degrees of suppletion can be distinguished: ⫺ formally strong, or “genuine”, suppletion; ⫺ formally weak, or “quasi-”, suppletion.

52. Suppletion

While formally strong suppletion is well defined (“no formal regularity, no formal similarity”), formally weak suppletion cannot be fixed rigidly: as it gets formally weaker, suppletion gradually shades into sufficiently regular alternations. There is a continuum of decreasing formal suppletivity ⫺ from formally strong suppletion down to zero suppletion, with an infinity of intermediate cases.

4.

Theoretical aspects

4.1. Typical zones of suppletion Suppletion seems to be more widespread in derivation than in inflection and more common in roots than in affixes; the specific meanings, derivational and inflectional, which favor suppletion have been illustrated in 3.1. In derivation, the apparent absence of suppletive diminutives and augmentatives is striking (and probably not accidental). In inflection, cases of suppletion are present in most of the categories ⫺ with the notable exception of voice (for example, no suppletive morphs or megamorphs are known to be used in passive forms). Suppletion can be expected in certain semantic domains (cf. already Osthoff 1899): it is typical of the most frequent and, so to speak, basic words (cf. Markey 1985; Wurzel 1985: 119; 1990). Among nouns, these include: ‘God’ (and names of particular gods), human beings (e.g. ‘human’, ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘child’, ‘boy’, ‘girl’), kinship terms (e.g. ‘spouse’, ‘daughter’), domestic animals (e.g. ‘dog’, ‘horse’, ‘cow’, ‘ox’), body parts (e.g. ‘eyes’, ‘heart’), divisions of time (e.g. ‘year’, ‘month’), objects of everyday life (e.g. ‘house’, ‘tortilla’). Verbs that tend to supplete include, in the first place, ‘be’, ‘become’ and ‘have’, and then basic human actions such as ‘do’, ‘see’, ‘eat’, ‘say’, ‘fall’, ‘hold’, ‘throw’, ‘kill’, ‘die’, ‘stand’, ‘sit’, ‘lie’, ‘go’, ‘come’, etc. Adjectives and adverbs which often exhibit suppletion are ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘young’, ‘old’, ‘much/ many’, ‘a little/few’ and all dimensions adjectives. The first two ordinal numerals (‘first’ and ‘second’) and the first two or three names of tens are also very often suppletive. And last, but not least, articles and pronouns show a very high degree of suppletion in their declension. ⫺ The question remains open as to which languages favor suppletion. It is clear, however, that in agglutinating languages, with their predominant tendency

519 towards formal regularity, suppletion is rarer and more restricted than in inflectional languages. 4.2. Suppletion and phraseologization Suppletion is a manifestation of an extremely typical feature of natural languages: noncompositionality of its complex signs. Two opposite tendencies are constantly at work within a language. On the one hand, any language L aims at maximum compactness and maximum expressivity of speech: this is a speaker-determined tendency, which interferes with compositionality. On the other hand, L strives for maximum semantic transparency of its complex signs: this is a tendency which the addressee favors and which maintains compositionality. Both these tendencies are quite natural in a natural language (cf. Art. 30, 82). ⫺ The compositionality of a complex sign can be violated in two ways: either in the signified or in the signifier. That is, either the meaning of a complex sign is not a regular composition of the meanings of its constituent signs, or its form is not a regular composition of their forms. The first case results in phrasemes (of all types, including idioms), the second ⫺ in suppletive units. According to one opinion, an idiom can been defined as a phraseologism whose meaning is suppletive with respect to the sum of the meanings of its components, i.e. as suppletion in the domain of meaning (Weinreich 1969: 43). Inversely, one can say that suppletion is phraseologization in the domain of form. These close ties between suppletion and phraseologization are theoretically very important. 4.3. Naturalness of suppletion The question as to whether suppletion is a natural phenomenon in human language has been the subject of lively debate (cf. Bittner 1988; Werner 1989; see also Art. 31). However, as is very often he case, everything hinges on the meaning of the term natural. If it is taken to mean ‘semiotically natural’ (i.e. maximally simple and convenient for production and perception), then suppletion is very unnatural, since it makes the sign less transparent and the sign system more complex; it runs counter to formal regularity, which is the main advantage of any communication device. (In a formal language, suppletion would hardly be tolerated.) But if natural is interpreted as ‘linguistically/communicatively natural’ (i.e. appearing sponta-

520

VII. Allomorphie

lable. As a result, while maiza and maizta were regularly related, mehr and meist are suppletive. Second, irregular phonological change can be triggered by high frequency of usage, as in Germ. hab-en ‘have-inf’ ⬃ ha-st ‘have(pres)2.sg’ and ha-t ‘have(pres)-3.sg’. Third, suppletion can result from lexical change, i.e. interaction of two different lexemes in order to create a full (“mixed”) paradigm:

neously to fill some needs of the language as a communication tool), then suppletion is absolutely natural: it is never imposed on a language, but develops, as it were, “from within”. This is understandable: first, suppletion ensures more individualized and therefore more expressive marking of some very basic semantic distinctions (“individualisierende Symbolisierung im Bereich des Nächstliegenden”, Wurzel 1985: 121); second, it produces more compact expressions for entities with high token frequency (cf. Wurzel 1990).

5.

(27) (a) Germ. gern ‘with pleasure’ ⬃ lieb-er ‘with more pleasure’ (b) Fr. vais ‘[I] go’ (from Lat. vad[-ere]) ⬃ i[-r-ai] ‘[I] will go’ (from Lat. i[-re])

Diachronic change

5.1. Emergence of suppletion Suppletion comes about in three ways (cf. Bally 41965: 185; Ronneberger-Sibold 1988): First, regular phonological change which ceases to be valid at some point in time or does not occur in a particular environment can lead to an irregular formal relation between two forms that at the beginning were regularly related: (26)

5.2. Maintenance and loss of suppletion In accordance with the two contradictory tendencies mentioned in 4.3 (to enhance the compactness/expressivity of speech and to maintain the semantic transparency of complex signs), suppletion can develop in two directions (cf. Gorbacˇevskij 1967: 17): it is either preserved (which contributes to higher compactness and expressivity) or it is lost (thus yielding to the pressure of semantic transparency). Suppletion is often retained through centuries, manifesting extremely old phenomena. Typically, suppletion patterns are maintained although the specific forms get replaced. Thus, in most Slavic languages the adjective pairs ‘good’ ⬃ ‘better’ and ‘bad’ ⬃ ‘worse’ are suppletive, although materially the respective morphs have changed:

Proto-Germanic Modern German (a) ma-iz-a ⇒ mehr ‘more’ (b) ma-iz-t-a ⇒ meist ‘most’

Two historical changes occurred in (26a), /z/ ⇒ /r/ (i.e. rhotacism in intervocalic position) and /ai/ ⇒ /e6/ (i.e. contraction of a diphthong); in (26b), devoicing /z/ ⇒ /s/ took place before a voiceless consonant and the diphthong was not contracted in a closed syl(28) Old Slavonic Polish Ukrainian Serbo-Croat Russian

‘good’ blagdobrdobrdobrchorosˇ-

Moreover, new cases of suppletion are developing even in modern times. For instance, the regular Common Slavic pair *ovı˘nu˘ ‘ram’ ⬃ *ovı˘ca ‘ewe’ (with augmentative and diminutive suffixes, respectively) has been replaced by baran ⬃ owca in Polish (and baran ⬃ ovca in Russian). Another example is Russ. mozˇno ‘one is allowed’ ⬃ nel’zja ‘one is not allowed’ (both *nemozˇno and *l’zja are ungrammatical). No less often suppletion undergoes analogical leveling. Thus, Bulgarian has regularized the pairs in (28) to dobu˘r ‘good’ ⬃ po-dobu˘r ‘better’ and losˇ ‘bad’ ⬃ po-losˇ ‘worse’. In Tajik, the pair jak ‘one’ ⬃

⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃

‘better’ lucˇlepszkrasˇcˇboljlucˇsˇ-

‘bad’ ⬃ zuˇl⬃ zł⬃ pohan- ⬃ losˇ⬃ ploch- ⬃

‘worse’ pusˇtgorszhirsˇgorchuzˇ-

jak-um ‘first’ goes back to the Old Persian (Avestan) suppletive forms aiva¯ (> aiva-ka > e¯vak > jak) ⬃ fratara, where fratara was replaced by jak-um.

6.

Pseudo-suppletion

Genuine suppletive pairs should be carefully distinguished from pairs of lexemes which, due to the defective character of their paradigms (cf. Art. 67), may borrow forms from other lexemes. Two cases are to be distin-

521

52. Suppletion

guished: semantic and formal deficiency of a paradigm. The first can be illustrated by the Georgian verbs ˇzd[-oma] ‘sit down [of one person]’ and sxd[-oma] ‘sit down [of several people]’. In actual speech, both verbs supplement each other since only the first can be used for a single person. (Georgian has a few other pairs of lexemes of the same type.) However, the signs ˇzd- and sxd- are not suppletive since they are not grammatically corepresentable (cf. Durie 1986: 359). Verbs similar to sxd- can take grammatically singular subjects denoting several people (with a numeral, which requires the singular of the quantified noun) and thus have singular forms; similarly, verbs like ˇzd- can take grammatically plural subjects denoting a single person (a polite ‘you’, which is grammatically plural) and have plural forms. The actual semantic difference ⫺ real (rather than grammatical) singularity/plurality ⫺ is not a grammatical meaning in Georgian. Therefore, subcondition (b2) of definition (2) is violated. (On similar phenomena in Amerindian languages, cf. Mithun 1988; Hale et al. 1991.) Formal deficiency of a paradigm occurs in the Russian verb vern[-ut’] ‘give back, return’, which has no past passive particle *ve¨rnutyj. The past passive participle of the quasi-synonymous vozvrat[-it’] is used instead; e.g. Pora vernut’ knigu v biblioteku ‘It is time to return the book to the library’ ⬃ Kniga byla vozvrasˇcˇena v biblioteku ‘The book has been returned to the library’. The signs vern- and vozvrat- are not suppletive since even if they are considered fully synonymous they do not belong to the same morpheme (their distribution cannot be stated in purely morphological terms), and subcondition (b1) of the definition (2) is thus violated. The verb chot[-et’] ‘want’ has no present active participle *chotjasˇcˇij and no verbal adverb *chotja; the corresponding forms of the quasi-synonymous zˇela[-t’] are used instead, e.g. vse, kto chocˇet ‘everyone who wants’ ⬃ vse zˇelajusˇcˇie ‘all those wishing’. The signs chot- and zˇela- are not suppletive since they are not synonymous and not grammatically corepresentable: subcondition (b2) is violated. Similar pairs occur in Romance languages (cf. Jaberg 1959): for instance, It. pigliare ‘seize’ with the past particle preso ‘seized’; Rheto-Romance tour ‘take’ with the present-tense forms pigl, piglasˇ, etc.; French dialectal fou ‘mad(masc)’ ⬃ sotte ‘mad(fem)’ or fou ⬃ daube, etc. All such correlations between different lexemes must be explicitly in-

dicated in a full-fledged description of the language, namely in its lexicon. The phenomenon in question could be called pseudo-suppletion. Such forms as vozvrasˇcˇe¨n, etc., are pseudo-suppletive with respect to the forms of the lexemes they are supplementing. Although pseudo-suppletion holds, as a rule, between quasi-synonymous lexemes, the semantic differences are all but ignored in the contexts where pseudo-suppletive forms have to be used, so that the lexemes in question behave as if they were fully synonymous. In other words, for quasi-suppletives the language is much more tolerant of semantic “fuzziness” or imprecision than ordinarily.

7.

References

Apresjan, Jurij D. (1974), Leksicˇeskaja semantika: Sinonimicˇeskie sredstva jazyka. Moskva: Nauka [English transl. 1992: Lexical Semantics: User’s Guide to Contemporary Russian Vocabulary. Ann Arbor/MI: Karoma] Bally, Charles (41965), Linguistique geńe´rale et linguistique française. Berne: Francke [11932 Paris: Leroux] Beard, Robert & Szymanek, Bogdan (1988), Bibliography of Morphology 1960⫺1985. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Library & Information Sources in Linguistics 18) Bittner, Andreas (1988), “Reguläre Irregularitäten: Zur Suppletion im Konzept der natürlichen Morphologie”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 41, 416⫺ 425 Carstairs, Andrew (1988), “Some Implications of Phonologically Conditioned Suppletion”. Yearbook of Morphology 1988, 67⫺94 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), “Suppletion in Word Formation”. In: Fisiak, Jerzy (ed.), Historical Semantics, Historical Word-Formation. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter, 97⫺112 (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 29) Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1986), “Inflectional Suppletion in Natural Morphology”. In: Elson, Benjamin F. (ed.), Language in Global Perspective. Dallas/ TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 97⫺111 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1990), “Sketching Submorphemes within Natural Morphology”. In: Meńdez Dosuna, Juliań & Pensado, Carmen (eds.), Naturalists at Krems. Papers from the Workshop on Natural Phonology and Natural Morphology (Krems, 1⫺7 July 1988). Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca (Acta Salmanticensia, Estudios Filolo´gicos 227), 33⫺41 Durie, Mark (1986), “The Grammaticization of Number as a Verbal Category”. Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics

522 Society February 15⫺17, 1986. Berkeley: Berkeley Ling. Soc., 355⫺370 Gorbacˇevskij, Anton A. (1967), K voprosu o putjach vozniknovenija suppletivnych form v slavjanskich jazykach. Dusˇanbe: Tadzˇikskij gosud. universitet Hale, Kenneth & Jeanne, LaVerne Masayesva & Pranka, Paula M. (1991), “On Suppletion, Selection, and Agreement”. In: Georgopoulos, Carol & Ishihara, Roberta (eds.), Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language. Essays in Honor of S.-Y. Kuroda. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer, 255⫺270 Jaberg, Karl (1959), “Suppletivita`”. In: Ioanni Dominico Serra ex munere laeto inferiae [Festschrift Giandomenico Serra]. Napoli: Liguori, 25⫺38 Lightner, Theodore M. (1979), “On the English Etymology of Star”. Lingvisticæ Investigationes 3, 285⫺293 Markey, Thomas L. (1985), “On Suppletion”. Diachronica 2, 51⫺66 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1972), “O suppletivizme”. In: Sˇaumjan, S[ebast’jan] K. (ed.), Problemy strukturnoj lingvistiki 1971. Moskva: Nauka, 396⫺438 Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1976), “On Suppletion”. Linguistics 14.170, 45⫺90 Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1977), “Suppletivologicˇeskie e˙tjudy I: Ob odnom leksikokoitonematicˇeskom kazuse v sovremennom francuzskom”. International Review of Slavic Linguistics 2, 313⫺328 [English transl. 1983 in: Wiener slawistischer Almanach 11, 421⫺439] Mel’cˇuk, I[gor] A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44) Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1983), “Suppletivologicˇeskie e˙tjudy II: O ponjatii suppletivizma i ob odnom frazeologicˇeskom kazuse v russkom jazyke”. Russian Linguistics 7, 207⫺218 Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1993), Cours de morphologie geńe´rale (theórique et descriptive), Vol. I: Introduction et Premie`re partie: Le mot. Montreál: Presses de l’Universite´ de Montreál; [Paris]: CNRS Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1994), “Suppletion: Toward a Logical Analysis of the Concept”. Studies in Language 18, 339⫺410 Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1996), Cours de morphologie geńe´rale (theórique et descriptive), Vol. III: Troisie`me partie: Moyens morphologiques; Quatrie`me partie: Syntactiques morphologiques. Montreál: Presses de l’Universite´ de Montreál; [Paris]: CNRS Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1997), Cours de morphologie geńe´rale (theórique et descriptive), Vol. IV: Cinquie`me partie: Signes morphologiques. Montreál: Presses de l’Universite´ de Montreál; [Paris]: CNRS

VII. Allomorphie Mithun, Marianne (1988), “Lexical Categories and the Evolution of Number Marking”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press, 211⫺234 Osthoff, Hermann (1899), Vom Suppletivwesen der indogermanischen Sprachen. Heidelberg: Hörning Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1955), “O sootnosˇenii fonetiki i grammatiki (morfologii)”. In: Vinogradov, V[iktor] V. & Baskakov, N[ikolaj] A. (eds.), Voprosy grammaticˇeskogo stroja. Moskva: Akademija Nauk SSSR, 92⫺112 [reprinted in: Reformatskij, Aleksandr A. (1970, ed.), Iz istorii otecˇestvennoj fonologii: Ocˇerk; chrestomatija. Moskva: Nauka, 398⫺421] Reformatiskij, Aleksandr A. (41967) Vvedenie v jazykovedenie. Moskva: Prosvesˇcˇenie [11947 Moskva: Ucˇpedgiz] Ronneberger-Sibold, Elke (1988), “Entstehung von Suppletion und Natürliche Morphologie”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 41, 453⫺462 Rudes, Blair A. (1980), “On the Nature of Verbal Suppletion”. Linguistics 18, 655⫺676 Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace Schwarze, Christoph (1970), “Suppletion und Alternanz im Französischen”. Linguistische Berichte 6, 21⫺34 Weinreich, Uriel (1969), “Problems in the Analysis of Idioms”. In: Puhvel, Jaan (ed.), Substance and Structure of Language. Berkeley, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 23⫺81 Werner, Otmar (1989), “Sprachökonomie und Natürlichkeit im Bereich der Morphologie”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42, 34⫺47 Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1985), “Zur Suppletion bei den Dimensionsadjektiven”. In: Wurzel, W[olfgang] U[llrich] (ed.), Studien zur Morphologie und Phonologie, Vol. I. Berlin/DDR: Zentralinst. für Sprachwissenschaft (Linguistische Studien A 126), 114⫺143 Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1987), “Zur Morphologie der Dimensionsadjektive”. In: Bierwisch, Manfred & Lang, Ewald (eds.), Grammatische und konzeptuelle Aspekte von Dimensionsadjektiven, Berlin/ DDR: Akademie-Verlag (Studia grammatica 26⫺ 27), 459⫺516 Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1990), “Gedanken zu Suppletion und Natürlichkeit”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 43, 86⫺91.

Igor Mel’cˇuk, Montreál (Canada)

VIII. Formale Prozesse Formal processes 53. Morphological processes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introductory remarks The notion of morphological process Typology of morphological processes Zero processes Problems of delimitation Non-uniqueness of solutions References

1.

Introductory remarks

1.1. Informal characterization of morphological processes A morphological process is, roughly speaking, an action by the speaker of a language: using a particular type of linguistic sign in order to express, within the boundaries of a wordform, a meaning applied to the meaning of the stem of this word-form. Morphological processes are defined by the following three oppositions: First, a morphological process is the use of a linguistic sign, and therefore a morphological process is meaningful. As such, morphological processes are opposed to the use of morphological means, one-sided, meaningless entities that are “building blocks” for morphological signifiers. Second, a morphological process is a morphological (i.e. word-internal) phenomenon involving a sign which, together with other signs, is part of a word-form. As such, morphological processes are opposed to non-morphological, or syntactic, processes (see 2.1.2, (b); cf. Art. 34, 39). Third, a morphological process is an action, namely the action of using a linguistic sign. As such, morphological processes as events are opposed to morphological signs as entities (cf. Art. 23). Thus, morphological processes should be distinguished from (a) morphological non-significative events (i.e. using morphological means), (b) non-morphological significative events (i.e. non-morphological processes) and (c) morphological entities (i.e. morphological signs).

1.2. Alternative terminology Two terms compete in the literature with morphological process in the intended meaning: formal process and grammatical process. The term formal process is infelicitous, since, first, there is no opposed term *informal process or *meaningful process; and, second, socalled “formal processes” are meaningful by their nature. The term grammatical process is better (it is opposed to lexical process) but, according to its literal meaning, it seems more appropriate for the subclass of linguistic processes that express any grammatical meaning, including those that function outside the word-form. Therefore, the term morphological process is preferred here.

2.

The notion of morphological process

2.1. Definition 2.1.1. Underlying notions The definition of morphological process is based on the following four notions (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1982; 1993; 1997 a: 59⫺195 for details) plus a special auxiliary notion of linguistic expressive process (see 2.1.2): (a) Linguistic sign (cf. Art. 23): a triplet consisting of a signified, a signifier and syntactics (cf. Art. 52); (b) elementary linguistic sign: roughly, a sign which cannot be represented in terms of “smaller” signs (cf. Art. 52 for a definition); (c) word-form: a sufficiently autonomous sign, which is not necessarily elementary (all signs that appear in the representation of the word-form w are said to be components of w); (d) stem: the part of a word-form that includes the root and perhaps other components, but is not a complete word-form (cf. also Art. 62).

524 In the typology of morphological processes and the discussion of the examples, six further notions are used: (e) grammatical meaning: roughly, inflectional meaning (grammeme) or derivational meaning (derivateme); syntactic meanings, which are of course grammatical as well, are ignored here; (f) segmentals: morphological means involving strings of phonemes; (g) suprasegmentals: morphological means involving complexes of prosodemes; (h) linguistic union 丣: an operation that unites linguistic units according to their nature (cf. Art. 52); (i) root and (j) affix (cf. Art. 27). 2.1.2. Auxiliary notions A method or a technique used by speakers of a natural language to express something is called a (linguistic) expressive process. Expressive processes are subdivided with regard to two parameters: (a) Depending on the nature of the meaning expressed, an expressive process can be grammatical (i.e., it expresses a grammatical meaning) or non-grammatical. The majority, or, more precisely, all but two expressive processes are grammatical; the only non-grammatical processes are lexicalization (selecting lexical units for a given meaning in a sentence) and composition, this latter being a special case of lexicalization ⫺ lexicalization within the boundaries of a word-form. (Lexicalization and composition can both involve other expressive ⫺ i.e. grammatical ⫺ processes.) (b) Depending on the textual limits within which the meaning is expressed, an expressive process can be morphological (i.e., the expression takes place within the boundaries of a word-form) or non-morphological (syntactic, i.e., the expression takes place within the boundaries of a sentence). These parameters intersect, giving four classes of expressive processes: (i) Grammatical morphological processes: affixation, modification, etc. (see 3.2; linguistic signs used by these processes could be called grammatical signs ⫺ cf. dependent morphemes, Langacker 1987: 336);

VIII. Formale Prozesse

(ii) grammatical non-morphological processes: use of auxiliary words (which mark syntactic constructions or express grammatical meanings in so-called analytical forms ⫺ cf. Art. 68, 78), agreement and government (roughly, transferring features from one word-form to another), meaningful word order permutations, sentence prosodization, etc.; (iii) non-grammatical morphological process: composition (see 3.2.1); (iv) non-grammatical non-morphological process: lexicalization. Since expressive processes are actions (in particular, of applying linguistic signs to other signs), their names should be deverbal nouns, e.g., nouns in -(a)tion/-sion, derived from the names of signs used: X-ation from X, such as affixation from affix, replication from replica, etc. All expressive processes are strictly synchronic linguistic phenomena. 2.1.3. Definition of a morphological process Let there be a stem R and an elementary sign X whose signified ‘X’ bears on the signified ‘R’ of R. (1) An expressive process P of language L is said to be a morphological process if and only if the sign X that P uses in order to express ‘X’ for ‘R’ is a component of the same word-form as R. A morphological process P is an operation ⫺ a particular case of the operation of linguistic union 丣; P joins a sign X to its “target”-stem R for which X expresses the meaning ‘X’; and P does so within a wordform that includes R. 2.2. Examples Two typical examples of morphological processes and two typical examples of phenomena which are not morphological processes (but could be mistaken for such) are quoted and checked against the definition (see 3 for the types of morphological processes). The first example shows that different types of morphological processes can express the same grammeme. In the Tsimshian language Nass of Canada, the nominal plural is expressed by one of four morphological processes (cf. Sapir 1921: 60): suffixation (2a), prefixation (2b), modification (2c) and reduplication (2d): (2) (a) (b) (c) (d)

waky ‘brother’ an? on ‘hand’ gwula ‘cloak’ gyat ‘person’

⬃ waky-kw ‘brothers’ ⬃ ka-an? on ‘hands’ ⬃ gwila ‘cloaks’ ⬃ gyi-gyat ‘people’

525

53. Morphological processes

Conversely, the same type of morphological process can express different grammemes; this is the most current case. In English, for instance, suffixation expresses a large variety (3) (a) ‘plural’ ‘past’ ‘comparative’ ‘adverbializer’ ‘one who …’ ‘cause to be …’ (b) ‘plural’ ‘past’ ‘past.participle’ (c) ‘one who …’ ‘cause to …’ ‘quantum of …’ ‘address as …’ In Russian, the subjunctive-conditional mood is expressed by the clitic by accompanying the past form of the verb: (4) plyl ‘swam’ ⬃ plyl by ‘would swim’ zˇil ‘lived’ ⬃ zˇil by ‘would live’ By is a separate word-form, not a component of the word-form that includes the root ply[v]- or zˇi[v]-; therefore, the condition of the definition (1) is not satisfied: using by is not a morphological process. It is, however, a grammatical process of Russian, since the auxiliary word by expresses a grammeme, ‘subjunctive-conditional’. In (5), quadruplets of Chinese word-forms are shown which differ in tone (¯ flat, ´ rising, ` falling and ˇ falling-rising): (5) ma¯ ‘mother’ ⬃ ma´ ‘flax’ ⬃ ma` ‘curse’ ⬃ maˇ ‘horse’ yı¯ ‘one’ ⬃ yı´ ‘stranger’ ⬃ yı` ‘town’ ⬃ yıˇ ‘chair’ fu¯ ‘husband’ ⬃ fu´ ‘support’ ⬃ fu` ‘rich’ ⬃ fuˇ ‘ax’ Here and in all similar cases, which are extremely numerous in Chinese, tones play an important semantic role: they oppose the corresponding signifiers. Therefore, Chinese tones are a linguistic means, and they are used within word-forms. However, they do not mean anything by themselves, each tone being an integral part of a signifier rather than an independent signifier. It is impossible to associate a specific tone with a specific meaning; therefore, using tones is by no means a morphological process in Chinese.

of grammemes and derivatemes (3a), modification expresses three grammemes (3b), and conversion expresses numerous derivatemes (3c): book want smart smart sing sharp tooth sing sing [to] gossip burnintr [to] kiss Sir

⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃

book-s want-ed smart-er smart-ly sing-er sharp-en teeth sang sung [a] gossip burntrans [a] kiss [to] sir

2.3. The inherently additive character of morphological processes The proposed definition of a morphological process essentially presupposes that the construction of a complex word-form w by the speaker happens in two major steps: first, the speaker selects a stem R, which expresses the lexical meaning ‘R’ he needs, and then he adds to it other word-form components, i.e., he applies to R various morphological processes in order to express meanings (grammatical and non-grammatical) which modify ‘R’ within the boundaries of w. Therefore, morphological processes, as well as the signs they use, are strictly additive ⫺ although the signified or the signifier of the sign added can be subtractive or replacive. Thus, a subtractive signified is a “command” to delete a component in the signified or the syntactics of the target sign, as in the Russian decausativizing suffix -sja in serdit’ ‘to cause to be angry’ ⬃ serdit’sja ‘to be angry’, where -sja, added to a verbal stem, deletes the component ‘cause to’ in its signified. A subtractive signifier is the operation of truncation, as found, for instance, in the French plural formations œuf /œf/ ‘egg’ ⬃ œufs /ø/ ‘eggs’, bœuf /bœf/ ‘ox’ ⬃ bœufs /bø/ ‘oxen’ (cf. Art. 60). Yet, in spite of the subtractive character of its signified or its signifier, the corresponding sign is additive: it is always joined as a whole to its target. There are no subtractive signs (in the sense of “signs that are substracted from other signs”) and, consequently, no subtractive morphological processes (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1991: 279⫺285). From this it follows that there are no replacive signs (in the sense of “signs that replace other

526


signs”) and, therefore, no replacive morphological processes either, replacement being reducible to subtraction plus addition. However, replacive signifieds and replacive signifiers do exist. Thus, a replacive signified (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1990: 301f.) can be illustrated by socalled parasitic formations (cf. Matthews 1972: 86): a meaningful affix a1 is added to the target word-form after another meaningful affix a2 such that the signified ‘a1’ replaces ‘a2’ rather than being added to the signified of the stem along with ‘a2’. This situation obtains in so-called secondary grammatical cases of some Daghestanian languages, e.g. in the Dargwa noun zˇuz ‘book’ with the ergative zˇuz-li and the dative zˇuz-li-s, where the signified ‘dative’ of -s replaces the signified ‘ergative’ of -li. A replacive signifier occurs, for example, in the apophony foot ⬃ feet. Once again, all the corresponding signs and morphological processes are strictly additive. A morphological process is by definition an application, or addition, of a linguistic sign to another sign. This addition should not be construed simplistically as strict concatenation or set-theoretical union; it could be a much more complex operation. Yet it is addition: signs as such are never subtracted or replaced, only their signifieds or signifiers can be.

3.

Typology of morphological processes

One finds inventories of morphological processes in all major morphological manuals and reference books (cf. Sapir 1921: 61⫺81 and Anderson 1990: 284⫺286; Nida 21949: 62⫺77 under “Types of Morphemes”; Reformatskij 41967: 263⫺310; Bulygina 1972; Matthews 1974: 116⫺135; 21991: 122⫺144; Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 58⫺73 under “Morphological Constructions”; Mel’cˇuk 1982: 77⫺105; Majewicz & Pogonowski 1984: 57⫺64 under “Moods [sic] of Expression; Anderson 1985: 165⫺174; Bauer 1988 a: 19⫺42; Szymanek 1989: 32⫺105). All these inventories are more or less identical; basic facts about morphological processes seem to be well known. Yet this is an empirical achievement, while what seems more attractive is a theoretical calculus of morphological processes ⫺ in order to have a logical justification for a given inventory, which would also allow for a better understanding of relationships among various processes. Proposals

for such a calculus have been made before (cf. Mugdan 1977: 47⫺50); here, another attempt is made to elaborate it and make it more precise. 3.1. Major types of morphological processes To establish the major types of morphological processes, two features are needed: (a) The meaning to be expressed can be grammatical or non-grammatical; this leads to a distinction between grammatical and non-grammatical morphological processes. (b) The sign X which the given morphological process uses can belong to one of six major types that are relevant in this respect. The number six is arrived at as follows: Let there be a stem R ⫽ *‘R’; /R/; SR+ and a meaning ‘s’ that is to be expressed for R, i.e. ‘s’ has ‘R’ as its target; the resulting sign w should be a single word-form or a part thereof (since only morphological processes are considered here). The sign w must thus have the signified ‘R丣s’. What about its signifier? In other words, how can one express ‘s’ with R? To do this, one can either add something to R (without changing anything in R) or change a component of R: this addition or change will constitute the signifier of the sign s of which ‘s’ is the signified. One cannot limit oneself to changing ‘R’ only: the result will present no observable difference and thus one obtains polysemy, i.e., two homophonous signs, R1 ⫽ *‘R’; /R/; SR+ and w ⫽ R2 ⫽ *‘R丣s’; /R/; SR+. This case is irrelevant here; therefore, the two other possibilities must be considered: changing the signifier /R/ or the syntactics SR of R (or both). Looking for a possible signifier of s, one finds that natural languages have exactly two types of signifiers: ⫺ entities, which can be segmentals or suprasegmentals, and ⫺ operations (substitutions), which can be applicable to signifiers or to syntactics. As a result, one can distinguish six major types of linguistic signs and, accordingly, of morphological processes, which are susceptible of further subdivision (cf. 3.2 and Art. 54⫺61). In what follows, subscripts distinguish senses of polysemous terms. Thus, “reduplication3” denotes a morphological process which uses a sign of the type “redu-


plication2”; a reduplication2 has as its signifier an operation called “reduplication1”. First, if the meaning ‘s’ is expressed by affecting the signifier /R/, this can be done in two ways only: ‘s’ is expressed either (a) by an entity added to /R/ or (b) by an operation applied to /R/ and modifying it. If ‘s’ is expressed by an added entity, this entity can be (a1) a segmental signifier ⫺ a segment /s/ ⫺ that is joined to /R/ or (a2) a suprasegmental / x / on a particular syllable ⫺ that is superposed onto /R/. Depending on whether the sign s ⫽ *‘s’; /s/; Ss+, whose signifier is a segment, is a root or an affix, the corresponding morphological process is called composition or affixation. (A particular case of composition is known as incorporation, cf. Art. 88.) The existence of so-called “combining forms” (pseudo-, astroor -cracy, -burger, etc.) does not change the picture: they can be identified partly with roots and partly with affixes. The sign s ⫽ *‘s’; / x /; Ss+, whose signifier is a suprasegmental, is a suprafix. The corresponding morphological process is suprafixation. If ‘s’ is expressed by an operation that modifies /R/, this operation can be either (b1) a substitution /R/ ⇒ f(/R/), where f is an operation called replication1, which consists in copying /R/ or a part of it and joining the copy to /R/, or (b2) a substitution /X/ ⇒ /Y/, called alternation, which does not copy anything but substitutes a string of phonemes or a configuration of prosodemes for another such string or configuration. The sign s ⫽ *‘s’; /R/ ⇒ f(/R/); Ss+, whose signifier is a replication1, is a replica. The corresponding morphological process is replication2. The sign s *‘s’; /X/ ⇒ /Y/; Ss+, whose signifier is an alternation, is an apophony. The corresponding morphological process is modification. Second, if the meaning ‘s’ is expressed by changing the syntactics SR, this can be done just in one way: through a substitution si ⇒ sj which replaces some feature(s) sj; such a substitution is called a conversion1. The sign s ⫽ *‘s’; si ⇒ sj; Ss+, whose signifier is a conversion1, is a conversion2. The corresponding morphological process is conversion3.

527 Fig. 53.1 summarizes the classification of morphological processes (with some subdivisions introduced in 3.2); for the sake of brevity, it specifies only the signifiers of the signs used by each type. 1. Entity as signifier 1.1 Segmental entity 1.1.1 Root: composition, including incorporation 1.1.2 Affix: affixation 1.2 Suprasegmental entity: suprafixation 2. Operation as signifier 2.1 Operation on signifier 2.1.1 Substitution that copies the operandum: replication2 2.1.2 Substitution that does not copy the operandum: modification 2.1.2.1 Segmental modification 2.1.2.1.1 Replacement 2.1.2.1.2 Truncation 2.1.2.1.3 Permutation 2.1.2.2 Suprasegmental modification 2.2 Operation on syntactics: conversion3 Fig. 53.1: Hierarchy of morphological processes in Art. 53

The classification that lies behind the structure of Ch. VIII is shown in Fig. 53.2; it is based on a somewhat different hierarchy of criteria and limits itself to processes that involve a single base (which excludes composition, cf. Art. 87⫺88) and a difference in the signifier only (which excludes conversion, cf. Art. 90). 1. Segmental processes 1.1 Addition 1.1.1 Addition of a constant string: affixation (Art. 54⫺56) 1.1.2 Addition of a variable string (copy of the base): reduplication (Art. 57) 1.2 Replacement: substitution (Art. 58) 1.3 Permutation: metathesis (Art. 59) 1.4 Deletion: subtraction (Art. 60) 2. Suprasegmental process (Art. 61) 2.1 Addition 2.2 Replacement Fig. 53.2: Hierarchy of morphological processes in Ch. VIII

3.2. Brief survey of morphological processes The definitions of morphological processes considered are not explicitly stated here, since most of them are trivial: “X is the mor-

528


phological process which uses signs of type X”. (For the two morphological processes which are not like this ⫺ composition and incorporation ⫺ the definitions are given in Art. 87⫺88.) 3.2.1. Composition Composition is the only non-grammatical morphological process (cf. 2.1.2). Regular composition of the noun⫹noun type is typi-

cal of German; (6b) and (6c) exhibit interfixation as well (cf. (10) in 3.2.2): (6) (a) Gemeinde-wald community-forest (b) Zeitung-s-aufsatz newspaper-link-article (c) Phrase-n-struktur phrase-link-structure Regular incorporation of the noun⫹verb type is typical of Chukchi:

(7) (a) /ekke-te tekits‹-en ren-π-nin-π/ son-instr.sg meat-nom.sg bring-aor-3sg.subj-3sg.obj ‘[My] son brought meat.’ (b) /ekek-π tekits‹e-ret-π-‹?i/ son-nom.sg meat-bring-aor-3sg.subj ‘[My] son was bringing meat.’ While (7a) refers to specific meat, brought on specific occasions, (7b) refers to meat in general and describes the son, so to speak, as a meat-bringer. In (7b), incorporation makes the verb intransitive, which entails switching from an ergative to a nominative construction ⫺ in (7b), the grammatical subject is not in the instrumental, as in (7a), but in the nominative ⫺, as well as changes in the personal suffixes. 3.2.2. Affixation Affixes are classified according to two features: ⫺ Do they interrupt roots? ⫺ Are they interrupted themselves? These features define four classes of affixes and hence four major types of affixation (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1963; 1982: 82; 1997 a: 148). (a) In the case of confixation, affixes do not interrupt roots and are not interrupted themselves (cf. Art. 54). Depending on the position of the affix, three subtypes can be destinguished. Suffixation, with affixes following the root, is common in Turkish: (8) gör-mü-yor-du-k see-neg-prog-past-1.pl ‘We were not seeing.’ Prefixation, with affixes preceding the root, can be illustrated by subject and tense markers in Koryak: (9) (a) /te-ku-lle-‹i/ 1sg.subj-pres-lead-2.sg.obj ‘I lead thee.’

(b) /π-ku-lle-n-et/ 2sg.subj-pres-lead-3.sg.obj-dual ‘Thou leadest them two.’ Interfixation, with affixes that are positioned between two roots, often marks compounding, as in German (6) or Russian (10): (10) (a) naucˇn-o-technicˇesk[-ij] scientific-link-technlogical (b) voenn-o-promysˇlenn[-yj] military-link-industrial (c) krasn-o-bel[-yj] red-link-white (b) Infixation uses affixes which interrupt roots but are not interrupted themselves (cf. Art. 55). For example, the Tagalog verbs pataý ‘kill’ and sulat ‘write’ (which form the present by reduplication1 of the first syllable of the root) take the infixes -um- and -in- in the active and passive, respectively: (11) active passive

past p-um-ataý s-um-ulat p-in-ataý s-in-ulat

present p-um-a´pataý s-um-usulat p-in-a´pataý s-in-usulat

(c) Circumfixation, where affixes do not interrupt roots but are interrupted themselves (cf. Art. 54), occurs in Malay ke-cinacina-an ‘to be like a Chinese’, ke-anak-anakan ‘to be like a doll’, etc., with the circumfix ke-…-an ‘to be like …’, which derives verbs from nouns. (d) Transfixation, where affixes interrupt roots and are interrupted by elements of roots themselves (cf. Art. 56), is typical of Arabic; thus, the roots r-s-m ‘draw [a drawing]’

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and dø -r-b ‘hit’ combine with the transfixes -a-a- ‘active perfective’, -u-i- ‘passive perfective’, etc.:

right continuous reduplication3 expresses the meaning ‘rather lousy X and things related to it’:

(12) (a) r-a-s-a-m[-a] ‘He has drawn.’ r-u-s-i-m[-a] ‘He/it has been drawn.’ (b) dø -a-r-a-b[-a] ‘He has hit.’ dø -u-r-i-b[-a] ‘He/it has been hit.’

(14) ‘tea’ ‘book’ ‘bread’

3.2.3. Suprafixation Theoretically, there are two major subtypes of suprafixation. Accentual suprafixation could be assumed in English pairs of the type cońflict and conflıćt (with an unstressed root and two different superimposed accentual suprafixes), but one could also argue that the noun is derived from the verb by a process of stress shift, i.e. accentual modification (3.2.5; cf. Matthews 1974: 133, 21991: 142f.). Clear examples of tonal suprafixation are easier to find. In Banda-Linda and other Ubangi languages of central Africa, for instance, tones express temporal-aspectual distinctions in the verb (cf. Cloarec-Heiss 1986: 223⫺234): (13)

imperative ‘arrive’ gu¯ ‘vomit’ ndza¯ ‘guard’ ba¯ta`

perfect gu´ ndza´ ba´ta`

past perfect guˆ ndzaˆ baˆta`

progressive gu` ndza` ba`ta`

3.2.4. Replication Replication2 produces a segmental unit (a string of phonemes) that is a copy of (a part of) the base (a root plus perhaps other signs) and is placed to the right, to the left or inside of it (cf. Art. 57). Replications2 can be classified according to the following seven features: (a) Number of iterations (reduplication3 ⫺ one copy, triplication3 ⫺ two copies, quadruplication3 ⫺ three copies, etc.); (b) simple vs. complex (the domain of copying consists of one / of more than one sign); (c) total vs. partial; (d) exact vs. non-exact; (e) contiguous vs. distant (the copy is / is not in contact with the base); (f) left vs. right; (g) continuous vs. discontinuous (the copy interrupts / does not interrupt the base). As a result, there are numerous theoretically possible types of replications2. The most widespread are reduplications3, as in Kazakh, where a simple total non-exact continuous

sˇaj kitap nan

⬃ ⬃ ⬃

sˇaj-paj kitap-mitap nan-pan

Triplication3 (of the simple partial non-exact contiguous left continuous type) occurs in the Australian language Mayali and expresses the meaning ‘ecological zone where many Xs are found’, e.g. in /gu-be?-be-berrk/ from /guberrk/ ‘dry place’ and /an-bo?-bo-bowk/ from /an-bowk/ ‘seasonal swamp’. 3.2.5. Modification The sign type used by modification is apophony. Apophonies are first classified according to the nature of signifiers transformed: they are segmental or suprasegmental. Segmental apophonies are further subdivided depending on the nature of the alternation which is their signifier: replacement (of phonemic strings or phonemic features; cf. Art. 58), truncation (cf. Art. 60) and permutation (cf. Art. 59). In spoken Romanian, many nominal plurals are formed by replacement, viz. palatalization: (15) ‘tree’ ‘man’ ‘wolf’ ‘bear’

singular copac /ko1pak/ ba˘rbat /ber1bat/ lup /lup/ urs /urs/

plural copaci /ko1pats j/ ba˘rbatœi /ber1bats j/ lupi /lup j/ ursœi /urs j/

Perjorative/augmentative formation in Polish has been cited as a case of truncation (cf. Szymanek 1989: 95f.); in (16c), the loss of -k is accompanied by a “reverse” alternation cz /ts/ ⇒ k, since the final /k/ of a stem normally alternates with /ts/ before /k/, as in rzek[-a] ‘river’ ⬃ rzecz-k[-a] ‘small river’: (16)

base form (a) ‘bread roll’ bułk[-a] (b) ‘vodka’ wo´dk[-a] (c) ‘barrel’ beczk[-a]

augmentative buł[-a] wo´d[-a] bek[-a]

A classical example of permutation as a linguistic sign is the metathesis that expresses the incompletive aspect in Rotuman: (17) ‘decide’ ‘pull’ ‘sweep’

completive [pure] [futi] [tcfi] /tafi/

incompletive [puer] [fyt] /fuit/ [tœf] /taif/

Suprasegmental apophonies are subdivided depending on the nature of the suprasegmen-

530


tals involved. Accentual apophony occurs in Tagalog “passive” adjective formation: (18) noun a´lam ‘knowledge’ ´ınit ‘heat’ ka´lat ‘dispersion’

“passive” adjective ala´m ‘known’ inı´t ‘heated’ kala´t ‘dispersed’

Tonal apophony can be exemplified by oblique case formation in Maasai (on the case labels, cf. Mel’cˇuk 1997 b: 132⫺143; the symbols ´, ` and ˆ denote high, low and falling tones, while mid tone is not marked): (19) ‘horse’ ‘weapon’ ‘dogs’ ‘fork’

nominative /imba´rta´/ /inari´ t/ /ildıé´`ın/ /iw´ ma`/

oblique /imbarta´/ /ina´ri` t/ /ildıé´ˆın/ /iw´ maˆ/

3.2.6. Conversion3 Conversions3 are classified according to the type of the feature of syntactics that is replaced: part of speech (categorial conversion3), inflection/derivation type (paradigmatic conversion3) and government/agreement (rectional conversion3). Pure types are rare; in most cases, several different features of syntactics are changed simultaneously. Categorial conversion3 is widespread in English; thus, by changing a noun denoting an artifact or substance ‘X’ into a verb, one expresses the meaning ‘to submit Y to the action of X for which X is designed’: (20) noun verb bomb [to] bomb ‘attack with bombs’ hammer [to] hammer ‘strike with a hammer’ salt [to] salt ‘season with salt’ oil [to] oil ‘lubricate with oil’ In Kirundi (and the majority of Bantu languages), the plural of a noun is formed by paradigmatic conversion3, namely a change in its noun class, e.g. from Class XI to Class XII: (21) ‘river’ ‘needle’ ‘piece of wood’

Class XI, sg. Class XII, pl. ur-uzi inz-uzi uru-shinge in-shinge uru-sate

in-sate

Similarly, a change from Class XVI to Class XI can express singulative as in ubu-dede ‘necklace’ ⇒ uru-dede ‘bead of a necklace’; other class conversions3 express diminutive, augmentative, pejorative augmentative, etc. A case of rectional conversion3 is shown in

(22): by changing the gender of a feminine noun meaning ‘X’ to masculine (and hence the agreement pattern, e.g. from the article la to el), Spanish expresses the meaning ‘agent essentially related to X’: (22) policıá defensa espada

feminine ‘police’ ‘defense’ ‘sword’

masculine ‘policeman’ ‘full-back [soccer]’ ‘matador [bull-fighting]’

3.3. Hierarchy of morphological processes Based on semiotic considerations ⫺ the degree of their naturalness from the viewpoint of linguistic communication, i.e. being transparent and diagrammatic, so that addition of meaning is paralleled by addition of sound, etc. (cf. Art. 30⫺31; Dressler 1987: 101) ⫺, the grammatical morphological processes form the approximate hierarchy (23a); composition, being of a completely different semantic nature, does not belong to it. Within each major class of morphological processes, the subclasses form a hierarchy of their own, e.g. (23b) for affixation or (23c) for modification: (23) (a) affixation + suprafixation + replication2 + modification + conversion3 (b) suffixation + prefixation + infixation + transfixation (c) replacement + truncation + permutation These hierarchies are not very strict, especially on the boundaries of major classes. Thus, affixation as a whole is semiotically better than suprafixation; but it is far from clear whether transfixation is superior to suprafixation (rather the opposite seems to be true). Similarly, it is difficult to say whether truncation is semiotically better than permutation, whether truncation should really precede conversion3, etc. Overlapping in border areas is widespread; in any event, much more study is needed. The main problem is that some semiotic properties can be in conflict. Thus, conversion3 is highly abstract and not transparent, therefore semiotically wanting. But at the same time, it is an extremely economical process, therefore semiotically valued. Such contradictions explain the existence of so-called “Devil’s cases” (Dressler 1985: 327): linguistic phenomena that, at first glance, seem semiotically unviable, like suppletion (cf. Art. 52). The hierarchies in (23) have a certain predictivity. The higher a morphological process

531


is in such a hierarchy, the higher are the chances that it will be (a) more likely (more frequent) in the languages of the world and in a given language; (b) diachronically more stable; (c) learnt earlier by children; (d) lost later in aphasia; (e) more favored by pidgins; (f) more productive (cf. Dressler 1982: 74f.). Thus, suffixation is by far more common than other types of affixation and all the other morphological processes; suffixes are better retained in the history of language, they are used by children at earlier stages of speech development, stay longer under aphatic disturbances, prevail in pidgins and are more productive. Being segmental units, affixes, and especially suffixes, are perceived as grammatical signs par excellence, all the others being somehow “secondary”. 3.4. Morphological processes and language types The distribution of morphological processes in languages is related to language types (cf. Dressler 1985: 324): roughly speaking, the more pronounced the agglutinating character of L, the higher is the probability that L will use, predominatly or exclusively, the morphological processes closer to the left edge of the relevant hierarchy in (23). For fusional languages the opposite is true. Thus, rather agglutinating Turkic languages capitalize on suffixation, admitting a little reduplication3 and a little conversion3, but no modification at all. On the other hand, Modern Germanic languages, being rather fusional, make extensive use of modification. But, as almost always in natural language, these links are statistical correlations and by no means strict logical implications.

4.

Zero processes

When an inflectional meaning (i.e. a grammeme), which is obligatory, is to be expressed, this can be done by the absence of the expected morphological process: the non-application of a morphological process, in a position where a grammeme is obligatorily present, can be contrasted with its application. Given the tendency of languages to economize speakers’ efforts, this will often be the case. A meaningful absence is called zero; all

morphological processes can use zero signs (cf. Art. 45), and those that do are zero morphological processes. For a zero sign, its type is determined by the type of its non-zero counterpart; thus, the meaningful absence of a suffix is a zero suffix, a meaningful absence of an apophony is a zero apophony, etc. Zero suffixation occurs in the genitive plural of Russian feminine nouns such as ‘wall’: (24) nominative genitive dative

singular sten-a´ sten-y´ sten-e´

plural steń-y steń-π steń-am

In English, the plural of foot is expressed by the apophony oo ⇒ ee; it can be argued that the singular is expressed by the meaningful absence of any modification of the basic form, i.e. a zero apophony. Similarly, the singular of the Kirundi nouns in (21) is expressed by the meaningful absence of any change in the syntactics of the root (it remains in its inherent Class XI); this is a zero conversion2. ⫺ Since zero processes are an extremely powerful descripitive device, we need stringent principles governing the use of zeroes (cf. Art. 45); among other things, since derivatemes are never obligatory, the typology of morphological processes developed here does not allow for derivational zeroes.

5.

Problems of delimitation

5.1. Suppletion One often sees an extra item on a list of morphological processes: suppletion. However, suppletion is not a linguistic sign but a relation between two signs; therefore it cannot be used by a morphological process (cf. Art. 52). When, in order to express the meaning ‘s’ bearing on the sign X, the language L uses a sign Y suppletive with respect to X, this is done precisely because ‘s’ cannot be expressed by any morphological process: L does not have a separate sign with the signified ‘s’ which could be combined with X. Being entirely irregular by its very nature, suppletion cannot be a morphological process, the latter being typically regular. 5.2. Word-manufacturing techiques Languages have a number of techniques used to construct new lexical units: clippling (advertisement ⇒ ad, telephone ⇒ phone; cf. Art. 92), blending (breakfast ⫹ lunch ⇒ brunch; cf. Art. 93), acronymization (Aquired

532 Immune Deficiency Syndrome ⇒ aids; cf. Art. 92), analogical formation (Russ. sovok ‘Homo Soveticus’, using sov- from sovetskij and homophonous with sovok ‘dust pan’; cf. also Art. 93), and the like. Aptly dubbed “word-manufacturing methods” (Szymanek 1989: 33), these phenomena, in sharp contrast to genuine morphological processes, are strictly diachronical: they expand lexical stock by creating new words, but they do not express meanings. Back-formation (of the type vacuum cleaner ⇒ [to] vacuum-clean) is less obvious, but it is a diachronical phenomen, too, even if it is highly productive and produces semantically predictable results. As soon as a verb of the type [to] vacuum-clean is formally derived by backformation, it becomes semantically primary; thus, vacuumcleaner means ‘appliance designed to vacuum-clean with’; therefore, viewed synchronically, it is derived from the verb [to] vacuum-clean. (Before the appearance of the verb, the noun vacuum cleaner was synchonically a semantic simplex; vacuum, clean and -er were no more than etymology, however transparent.) Being diachronical by their very nature, word-manufacturing techniques cannot be morphological processes, the latter being typically synchronical. 5.3. Combinations of morphological processes It has been suggested that two or more morphological processes can be used simultaneously to express one grammatical signified. The two major types of such combinations are (a) different kinds of confixes used simultaneously and (b) a confix used simultaneously with a modification. Other combinations (e.g. confix ⫹ suprafix, confix ⫹ conversion3, etc.) are logically equivalent to one of them. An example of type (a) is the claim that in the Mayan language Tzutujil, a transitive verb can be detransitivized by a process that involves “simultaneous suffix and infix”, -o7m (where 7 stands for /?/) and -j-, as in loq’ ‘buy [trans]’ ⬃ lo-j-q’-o7m ‘buy [intr], item bought’ (Bauer 1988b: 21). But -o7m does not occur without -j-, and -j-, when it occurs without -o7m, marks the passive rather than the detransitive. Therefore, a single morph can be postulated here ⫺ the transfix -j-o7m (whose component -j- is, in all probability, diachroni-


cally related to the passive infix -j-). In cases of this kind, the alleged combination can be analyzed as a single elementary linguistic sign. ⫺ The Welsh nouns in (25) are a typical example of type (b). Here, it has been suggested that “one of the ways of forming the plural is vowel change plus a suffix” (Bauer 1988 b: 21). (25) ‘garden’ ‘giant’ ‘hour’

singular gardd cawr awr

plural gerdd-i cewr-i or-iau

Yet the internal change in (25) can be viewed as a meaningless alternation accompanying the plural-marking suffix (in spite of the fact that in some Welsh nouns, which have no plural suffix, such alternation is a morphological process, e.g. alarch ‘swan’ ⬃ elyrch ‘swans’, paladr ‘ray’ ⬃ pelydr ‘rays’, etc.). This description follows from the Principle of the Single Morphological Process (cf. 6.1.), according to which only one component of the combination should be admitted to the status of a signifier, so that only one sign is present; the other components can be viewed as contextually-induced morphological means, expressing no meaning. Nevertheless, situations in which a grammeme can be simultaneously expressed by more than one morphological process do exist, although such situations are probably rather infrequent. One example can be found in Alutor (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1973): The conditional mood has a prefix /?-/ and a special set of personal markers, which are different from the personal markers of the two other moods, the indicative and the imperative. At the same time, these moods, unlike the conditional, have no separate marker, so that their personal markers must be taken to express mood cumulatively, together with person and number. Considerations of symmetry require the inclusion of the grammeme of mood into the signified of the conditional personal markers as well; as a result, ‘conditional’ is expressed in Alutor verbal forms twice: by the conditional prefix /?-/ and by a conditional personal marker. ⫺ Duplication (repeated expression) of information is typical of natural languages. No doubt similar duplication should be present equally among morphological processes. But subtler analyses and more accurate descriptions are needed in order to find reliable facts.


6.

Non-uniqueness of solutions

Identifying specific morphological processes that have been applied in an actual utterance can be a tricky business: one often has to distinguish between a morphological process and the use of a (meaningless) morphological means or between two or more different morphological processes. 6.1. Morphological process or morphological means? In Germ. Vater ‘father’ ⬃ Väter ‘fathers’, the alternation a ⇒ ä marks the plural, which has not other explicit mark; therefore, this is a morphological process, namely a modification (which uses an “Umlaut” apophony). But what about Nacht ‘night’ ⬃ Nächt-e ‘nights’? Here the plural is marked by the suffix -e, which sometimes is and sometimes is not accompanied by the alternation of the type a ⇒ ä in the stem (cf. Tag ‘day’ ⬃ Tag-e ‘days’, etc.) On the other hand, the Umlaut in Nacht- is not necessarily connected with plural either, as the adjective nächt-lich ‘nightly’ and the diminutive Nächt-chen show. Is then the alternation a ⇒ ä in Nächt-e also a plural marker, or more precisely, is it an apophony whose signifier is a ⇒ ä and which marks the plural together and simultaneously with the suffix? The answer depends on the methodological principle posited for morphological description. Either any observable phenomenon related to the expression of a meaning is taken to be its marker (“maximalist” approach; cf. Bauer 1988 b), or only one of the observable phenomena related to the expression of a meaning is taken to be its marker, all the others being considered as meaningless accompaniers (“minimalist” approach). The latter principle contributes to the simplicity of morphological descriptions. This is the Principle of a Single Morphological Process: (26) Among several morphological phenomena related to the expression of a meaning, try to choose only one as a marker for the meaning in question, relegating all the others to the status of conditioned accompaniers. According to (26), the only marker of the plural in the word-form Nächte is the suffix -e; the substitution a ⇒ ä is then considered to be a meaningless accompanying alternation. Such a treatment implies that one and the same linguistic phenomenon can be described in similar circumstances in two dif-

533 ferent ways. Thus, the substitution a ⇒ ä is taken to be a sign, namely an apophony (and thus an operandum of a morphological process), in Vater ⬃ Väter, but a meaningless alternation in Nacht ⬃ Nächte (and thus not a result of a morphological process). Yet the fact that the same or very similar phenomena may play very different roles in different contexts is well known in natural languages. 6.2. Which morphological process? Very often a given morphological phenomenon can be described, from a purely logical viewpoint, in terms of more than one alternative morphological processes. For example, the Arabic passive forms in (12) can also be interpreted in terms of multiple modification (apophonies a ⇒ u and a ⇒ i) applied to the unanalyzable stems rasam- and dø arab- (cf. Kilani-Schoch & Dressler 1984). The Romanian plurals in (15) could be said to have a suffix /j/ which triggers an empty alternation (e.g. /k/ ⇒ /ts j/ in copac ⬃ copaci) and then “disappears”, so to speak, fused with the stem; and the English examples of conversion in (20) can be reanalyzed as zero affixation, where the meaning ‘to submit to the action of X for which X is designed’ is expressed byπSUBMIT. These are situations of non-uniqueness of morphological solutions, so typical of natural languages. To resolve them, the researcher needs to proceed from a series of methodological principles, similar to (26). Only four such principles will be stated here to serve as an illustration. The Principles of Internal Linguistic Consistency is a very general one: (27) Everything else being equal, prefer the description in terms of the morphological process that is more consistent with other phenomena observed in the language. Clearly, this trivial principle requires a special in-depth study for every difficult case. The other three principles are more specific: (28) Everything else being equal, prefer the description in terms of the morphological process that is (a) higher in the relevant hierarchy (23); (b) “more visible” in the relevant form; (c) the most general one, i.e. applicable in most, if not all, cases of the same type. According to the Principle of the Higher Morphological Process (28a), transfixation

534


should be preferred over modification in Arabic verbs (12). The restriction “everything else being equal” is important for all these principles. Thus, in the case of Engl. foot ⬃ feet, modification (apophony oo ⇒ ee) is preferred over infixation of -oo- and -ee- into the discontinuous root f-t although infixation is higher in the hierarchy (23), because everything else is not equal: other infixes do not massively occur in English and f-t is not related to the meaning of ‘foot’ (cf. fat, feat, fit, fort, fought, fart, etc.). The Principle of the “More Visible” Morphological Process (28b) means that one should not postulate an abstract process when there is a candidate which is actually observable. Therefore, modification (apophony) should be preferred over suffixation of /j/ in Romanian noun plurals (15), since the phonemic substitution is directly observable while the suffix has to be postulated as an abstract entity. A particular case of this principle is the rule that zero should be postulated only as a last resort (cf. Art. 45; Haas 1957); thus, conversion3 should be preferred over zero affixation in the English noun-verb pairs (20). The Principle of the Most General Morphological Process (28c) can be applied to the Russian abstract nouns sˇir’ ‘wide space’, derived from the adjective sˇir[-ok-ij] ‘wide’, rvan’ ‘torn things’ from rvan[-yj] ‘torn’, etc. Here, two morphological phenomena are observable: a categorialparadigmatic conversion3 (Adj ⇒ Noun) and a modification of palatalization (r ⇒ r’, n ⇒ n’). In the hierarchy (23), modification is higher than conversion3, but despite (28a) it is not preferred here because conversion3 is more general: it is used also for nouns derived from adjectives whose roots end in a palatalized consonant and where palatalization is thus impossible, e.g. ran’ ‘early hours’ from rann[-ij] /ranj/ ‘early’. Therefore, in conformity with (28c), all such Russian formations are described in terms of conversion3, while palatalization (where it occurs) is taken to be an accompanying meaningless alternation. This shows that different methodological principles can be in conflict, so that more principles are needed to guide our choices. Of course, the principles themselves have to be justified, and this can be done only by reference to the generality, simplicity and elegance of the resulting description.

7.

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Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1991), “Subtraction in Natural Language”. In: Grochowski, Maciej & Weiss, Dan-

Igor Mel’cˇuk, Montreál (Canada)

Majewicz, Alfred F. & Pogonowski, Jerzy (1984), “On Categorial Marking in Natural Languages”. Lingua Posnaniensis 26, 56⫺68 Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 6) Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press. Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press. Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1963), “O ‘vnutrennej fleksii’ v indoevropejskich i semitskich jazykach”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1963.4, 27⫺40 [German transl.: “Zur ‘inneren Flexion’ in den indoeuropäischen und semitischen Sprachen”. In: Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1976), Das Wort: Zwischen Inhalt und Ausdruck. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 9), 258⫺287] Mel’cˇuk, Igor’ A. (1973), Model’ sprjazˇenija v aljutorskom jazyke. I⫺II. Moskva: Institut russkogo jazyka AN SSSR (Predvaritel’nye publikacii Problemnoj gruppy po e˙ksperimental’noj i prikladnoj lingvistike 45⫺46) Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44)

54. Prefixation, suffixation and circumfixation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Terminology Formal properties Common functions Distribution of affix position Theoretical issues References

1.

Terminology

Prefixation, suffixation and circumfixation are the non-intrusive types of affixation, i.e. those which add affixes to the margins of a lexical base, as opposed to infixation (Art. 55) and transfixation (Art. 56). A prefix is an affix which is bound before the base. A suffix is an affix which is bound after the base. A circumfix is an affix of which one part is

bound before, and the other part after, the base. The term affix is also commonly used to refer to “zero” or “empty affixes” (cf. Art. 45), which are ignored here. Although the terms prefix, suffix and circumfix (and their translation equivalents) are the most widely accepted, a variety of other terms have been employed historically and/or are found in contemporary work. In German, Vorsilbe and Nachsilbe are frequently employed, especially by school grammarians, for prefixes and suffixes, respectively. These terms suggest that affixes are always (single) syllables, which is not always the case, even in German (cf. 2). Ending (French de´sinence, German (Flexions)endung, Russian okoncˇanie) is often used as a synonym for inflec-

536


tional suffix, especially for case-marking on nominal elements and person-marking on verbal elements (cf. Pei & Gaynor 1954 on ending; Dubois et al. 1973 on de´sinence; Conrad 1985 on Endung; Rozental’ & Telenkova 21976 on okoncˇanie). This usage reflects the Indo-European focus of most earlier linguists (and of many contemporary scholars), who worked with a family of languages in which inflectional functions were commonly marked exclusively by suffixes (cf. 3). Where these special terms for inflectional suffixes are employed, the term suffix and its translation equivalents (Fr. suffixe, Ger. Suffix, Russ. suffiks) are generally used for derivational categories only (although German also makes the distinction Flexionssuffix ‘inflectional suffix’ and Derivationssuffix or Ableitungssuffix ‘derivational suffix’). In this case, Russ. postfiks and Ger. Postfix are used to cover both inflectional “endings” and derivational “suffixes”, but Eng. postfix is used only rarely (for example, in Mayan glyph studies). In Chinese, two terms are used for suffix: hoùzhuı`, meaning ‘something attached after’ and cı´wei, meaning ‘word-tail’. Similarly, Japanese uses setsubigo or setsubiji, meaning ‘join-tail-word’. Prebase is an alternative, but rare, English form for prefix (Fr. pre´fixe, Ger. Präfix, Russ. prefiks) as is Russian pristavka for prefiks. Pre´verbe is used by some French linguists for verbal (usually valence-changing) prefixes. In Chinese, again, two terms are used: qiańzhuı`, meaning ‘something attached before’ and cı´toú, meaning ‘word-head’. And, again, Japanese uses settogo or settoji, ‘joinhead-word’. Ambifix and confix are used as synonyms for circumfix, although for some scholars ambifix is used to refer to an affix that can appear on either side, rather than both sides, of the root (cf. Malkiel 1978: 145). Similarly, confix has also been proposed as a term for nonintrusive affixes consisting of a single phonological unit, i.e. for prefixes and suffixes, excluding circumfixes (Mel’cˇuk 1982: 84; cf. Mugdan 1990: 51).

2.

Formal properties

Unless otherwise indicated, the statistical data in this and subsequent sections come from the GRAMCATS database at the University of New Mexico, which records information on grammatical (inflectional) morphemes from a geneticallybalanced survey of 94 languages (cf. Bybee et al. 1994; Art. 77).

One of the most basic characteristics of nonintrusive suffixes is that they tend to be short; indeed, it seems that they rarely extend beyond a single syllable. The most widely attested phonological shape for prefixes and suffixes (and the elements that make up circumfixes) appears to be a single syllable with a CV sequence, which has been established as the phonologically unmarked (and only universally attested) syllable structure (cf. Jakobson 1941): (1) (a) Chichewa plural prefix /ma-/, e.g. /bwe´6zi/ ‘friend’, /ma-bwe´6zi/ ‘friends’ (b) Kiwai iterative suffix -ti, e.g. arigi ‘[to] scratch’, arigi-ti ‘[to] scratch repeatedly’ Beyond this canonical structure, the preferences seem to change depending on position before or after the root: after CV, the next most preferred shape for prefixes appears to be a single consonant, followed again by simple syllables of the form CVC, VC, and V; bisyllabic prefixes appear to be relatively uncommon. (2) (a) Maasai negative prefix m-, e.g. a-rany ‘I sing’, m-a-rany ‘I do not sing’ (b) English privative prefix dis-, e.g. arm, dis-arm (c) Kekchi 1st person possessive prefix in-, e.g. ci ‘dog’, in-ci ‘my dog’ (d) Huichol locative prefix e-, e.g. nep-e-i-nanai ‘1.sg.subj-indic-another— place-3.sg.obj-buy(completive) (I bought it in another place)’ It is likely, of course, that data on derivational affix shape preferences will yield different patterns; thus, derivational prefixes of bisyllabic structure, such as Latin mono-, para-, circum-, may be more common than their inflectional counterparts. Such distributional data are, however, currently unavailable, and so further claims would be impressionistic only. Beyond the preferred CV structure, inflectional suffixes, unlike prefixes, show a continuing preference for full syllables, including monosyllables CVC, VC, V, and bisyllables CVCV, VCV. Much less preferred than in prefix position, but still widely attested, is the single consonant C. (3) (a) German diminutive -lein, e.g. Kind ‘child’, Kind-lein ‘little child’ (b) Ket plural -an, e.g. am ‘mother’, aman ‘mothers’

537


(c) Siberian Yupik possessive -a, e.g. anjaq ‘boat’, anja-a ‘his boat’ (d) Malayalam plural -kalø, e.g. parawa ‘dove’, parawa-kalø ‘doves’ (e) Coos ‘kinship’ -ıˆni, e.g. sla’atc ‘cousin’, sla’tc-ıˆni ‘mutual cousins’ (f) Siberian Yupik possessive -n, e.g. anjaq ‘boat’, anja-n ‘your boat’ Generalising, then, it seems that CV is the most common shape for inflectional affixes (over a third in the GRAMCATS sample), and that most affixes are monosyllables (around two thirds), but that prefixes show a much stronger tendency to appear as single consonants or pairs of consonants and that suffixes show a greater toleration for bisyllables. Consonant clusters are not common. Tab. 54.1 shows figures from the GRAMCATS sample (⬍1 indicates that the affix is sub-syllabic, i.e. it consists of a single consonant or consonant cluster). No. of syllables

Prefix (%)

Suffix (%)

⬍1 1 2 3⫹

17.70 65.64 15.02 1.64

6.87 53.49 25.72 3.92

Tab. 54.1: Canonical shape of inflectional affixes

Of monosyllabic prefixes in the sample, 41% are of CV structure; of suffixes, 27.5%. Affixes of up to four syllables may be identified (e.g. Garo -nabadona ‘uncertain future’; cf. Bybee 1985: 179f.), but this seems to be the upper limit, and, in many cases (perhaps including Garo -nabadona), such forms are further analysable (if only diachronically) into strings of two or more separate affixes. An account of the canonical phonological shape of affixes must also address the issue of phonological strength or formal stability, in terms of degree of allomorphy, susceptibility to reduction or loss, and degree of fusion with the base. One of the most fundamental factors to be taken into account in such an assessment is the diachronic source of affixes as free lexical morphs. Non-intrusive affixes not only tend to be short; they also tend to be phonologically weak, being typically unstressed, and are generally more prone than free grammatical morphemes to assimilate to the base (i.e. to undergo phonologically conditioned allomorphy). They also

show more variation from the canonical form in terms of non-phonologically conditioned allomorphy (cf. Bybee et al. 1990: 12, 18). Figures from the GRAMCATS sample (Tab. 54.2) show how free morphs with grammatical functions exhibit greater phonological strength than affixes on these measures. Phonologically conditioned allomorphy Affixes 17.7 Free morphs 6.0

All allomorphy 56.0 28.5

Tab. 54.2: Allomorphy in affixes vs. free grammatical morphs (% affixes)

Moreover, it seems that of affixes which exhibit allomorphy, most (56.3%) have more than two allomorphs. Clearly, then, affixes tend to be phonologically weaker and formally less stable than free grammatical morphs. Free grammatical morphs, in turn, tend to be phonologically weaker and formally less stable than full lexical morphs, and indeed, it has been suggested that this gradient from free lexical expression to bound grammatical expression reflects a diachronic process, whereby free lexical items progressively lose their formal integrity until they become formally dependent on adjacent items, i.e. they become affixes. The postulation that processes of semantic generalisation and phonological attrition and fusion explain the origins of affixes has a long history (cf. Bopp 1820). It has been proposed that bound morphs, both inflectional as well as derivational, were originally free lexical items which underwent semantic generalisation, and consequently reduction of form, until they fused with habitually contiguous free items, to become prefixes or suffixes (cf. Meillet 1912; Givoń 1971; Bybee & Pagliuca 1985; Hall 1992: 84⫺111; for the genesis of circumfixes, cf. Greenberg 1980). For example, the English causative suffix -(i)fy, as in purify, simplify (and its cognates in related languages) derives ultimately from Latin facere ‘to make’, a semantically general free lexical verb. In habitual contiguity with adjectives like purus ‘pure’ and simplus ‘simple’, the verb gradually became reanalysed as a bound morpheme on adjective bases to give Latin purificare, simplificare etc. Auxiliary verbs constitute a particularly rich source of inflec-

538


tional affixation: In Romance languages, for instance, suffixes marking future have arisen from Late Latin periphrastic forms using habeo ‘have’. The verb habeo underwent semantic change, becoming progressively more general, from its original full lexical meaning of possession, through modal meaning of obligation, to auxiliary status as tense marker (cf. Art. 145, 156; also, Bybee & Pagliuca 1985 for a similar analysis of Eng. have). It has been suggested that the most common sources of affixes are words in the syntax which constitute heads of the phrases in which they occur (cf. Givoń 1984: 228⫺237; Hall 1992: 74⫺77; see also 4).

3.

Common functions

Most cross-linguistic or typological work has concentrated on affixes expressing inflectional functions, since these, although varying greatly across languages, tend to do so less than derivational functions. Derivational affixes span an astonishing range of modifying functions, from the ubiquitous nominalisers, changing verbs and adjectives to nouns (in a sample of fifty languages, 70% employ nominalising affixes; cf. Hawkins & Gilligan 1988: 249) to more idiosyncratic cases like the Gombe Fulani verbal suffix -(i)law, indicating that the action of the verb happens quickly (cf. Comrie 1985: 343). In so-called polysynthetic languages, the affix inventory is particularly rich, and its members are used to express meanings that in most languages would be expressed through free lexical or grammatical morphemes in syntactic phrases (cf. examples from Greenlandic and Nahuatl in Art. 128 and Art. 132). Generally, in inflectional languages which utilise both prefixes and suffixes, a single grammatical function is expressed either in prefix or suffix position, rather than in both (Sapir 1921: 72). For example, in Bantu languages the person affixes on verbs (for both subject and object) are prefixed and the voice affixes (active and passive) are suffixed (cf. Nida 21949: 81); one is not likely to find languages which express active voice as a prefix and passive voice as a suffix. Exceptions to this pattern do occur, however. Classical Nahuatl, for instance, expresses tense functions in both prefix and suffix positions. Choctaw indicates first person as a suffix and other persons as a prefix (cf. Haas 1946); Chukchi

transitive verbs have a subject prefix and an object prefix, but with some subjects a first person singular object is expressed by means of a prefix (cf. Muravyova 1998: 531). In Hebrew, person markers appear in both prefix and suffix position, depending on aspect, while in Chimariko, their position as prefix or suffix is lexically governed, being determined by the verb to which they are added (cf. Sapir 1921: 71). According to the GRAMCATS database, in which 315 functions (“meaning components” or morphosyntactic properties) were factored out from the meanings expressed by a total of 4819 verbal affixes from 94 languages (cf. Bybee et al. 1994), the inflectional function most typically expressed by affixation on the verb is clearly number (plural and singular), followed by subject, person (1st, 2nd and 3rd), object, tense (past and future), and imperative. The present tense is less generally overtly marked than other tenses. Other functions commonly expressed through affixation are: allative (direction towards), anterior, and the aspectual distinctions continuous, habitual, and immediate; also common are location of speaker, negation, and protasis (if-clause). Tab. 54.3 shows figures from the GRAMCATS database. “Meaning component”

No.

%

plural singular subject 3rd person 1st person 2nd person object past future imperative location of speaker present allative negation anterior habitual protasis (if-clause) immediate continuous

308 296 287 232 226 216 205 168 106 100 83 78 71 67 64 56 55 54 51

6.39 6.14 5.95 4.81 4.69 4.48 4.25 3.49 2.20 2.07 1.72 1.62 1.47 1.39 1.33 1.16 1.14 1.12 1.06

2723

56.48

TOTAL

Tab. 54.3: Most typical affix functions on verbs (over 50 occurrences in GRAMCATS database)

539


The nineteen functions listed in Tab. 54.3 constitute around 6% of the total number of functions identified, and yet together account for over half of the affix data. On nouns, number is probably also the most common inflection, but in this case only for marking plurality (singular marking appears to be quite rare; cf. Greenberg 21966: 94). Affixation is much more common than any other expression type for the plurality function (cf. Dryer 1989: 866); from a survey of 307 languages, 84% were found to express plurality through an affix on the noun. There does not seem to be a clear correlation between function and position as prefix or suffix, although some generalisations, at various degrees of robustness, can be made for some functions and for some families. The best attested correlation is in the expression of case functions, which have an overwhelming tendency to be suffixed (cf. Hawkins & Gilligan 1988: 222). It appears that suffixes marking subject and object are never prefixed, although affixes for other cases are reported to appear in prefix position in a small number of languages, including Zulu, Squamish, Sakao and Temiar (data from Matthew Dryer’s database at the State University of New York, Buffalo). Person/ number agreement affixes on verbs have a tendency to be suffixed (cf. Bybee et al. 1990: 9), but a greater proportion of prefixes than of suffixes express this function. Valence marking on the verb is also overwhelmingly suffixed, as is interrogative and imperative. Sentence negation, however, appears to have a tendency to be prefixed (cf. Bybee 1985: 177). Even at the higher level of inflection vs. derivation, universal patterns are elusive, although, again, some regularities emerge in particular languages or families. Indo-European inflection is overwhelmingly suffixed (although Greek has inflectional prefixes), whereas derivation appears in both positions. In contrast, Mayan languages tend to have inflectional prefixes and derivational suffixes. Khmer is predominantly prefixing, but uses its prefixes only to express derivational categories, whereas Bantu’s overwhelming use of prefixation is limited to inflection (cf. Sapir 1921: 134). These tendencies are ultimately explicable in terms of word order typology and word order change; since affixes are the bound legacy of earlier free elements, subject to word order rules, their positional tendencies within a family can often be traced to

genetically-shared word order regularities (cf. Givoń 1971; Dahl 1979; Bybee 1985: 177; Greenberg 1980; Art. 145; see also 4 for other potential explanatory factors).

4.

Distribution of affix position

It seems that human language makes more use of suffixes than of prefixes (cf. Sapir 1921: 70; Greenberg 21966: 92; Hawkins & Gilligan 1988). Although there are individual languages which appear to express grammatical functions exclusively or almost exclusively through prefixes, there are many more which employ only suffixes (cf. Sapir 1921: 70; Hawkins & Gilligan 1988: 228). Exclusively prefixing languages include: Kabyl*, Navaho*, Tiwi*, Temiar*, Khmer, AkanFante*, Yoruba*, Acholi*, Mangbetu*, Palantla, Chinantec*, from six different families (* indicates data on verbal affixes only). Exclusively suffixing languages include: Turkish, Nama, Eskimo, Nootka, Yana, Kui*, Uigur*, Maidu*, Chacobo*, Jivaro*, Gu-Yalanji*, Alyawarra*, and Nimboran*, from eleven different families. It seems that, cross-linguistically, approximately 70% of affixes (including individual elements of circumfix pairs) are suffixes as compared with 30% prefixes (cf. Hawkins & Gilligan 1988: 236; Bybee et al. 1990: 4f.). Explanations for this distribution have been offered basically from two sources: (a) psychological processing constraints, based on the assumption that functional pressures (here in the form of the language processing mechanism) have the capacity to influence the form of language, and (b) the exigencies of diachronic change. From the point of view of on-line word recognition (viewed as information processing; cf. Art. 163), the root morpheme is the key element and so should optimally occur earlier in the input than less informative bound material (cf. Greenberg 1957: 93; Cutler et al. 1985: 748f.; Hall 1992: 155f.). Psycholinguistic experimentation has demonstrated the critical importance of the temporal nature of speech in lexical processing, especially in spoken word recognition (cf. Marslen-Wilson 1987), and these findings have been complemented by work which suggests that the beginning portions of words are more informative in lexical processing that the final or

540 middle portions (cf. Nooteboom 1981; Cole 1973; Cooper & Paccia-Cooper 1980; Brown & McNeill 1966: 329f.). Further evidence suggests that morphologically complex words are decomposed during recognition in at least some cases, especially with inflectional affixes, and with derivational affixes where the structure is part of speakers’ morphological competence, i.e. where the combination is transparent and the affix productive (cf. Marslen-Wilson et al. 1994: 27; Hall 1995: 177⫺ 185). It has been concluded from this evidence that the optimal position for lexically heavy elements (roots) will be before lexically light elements (affixes), giving rise to a preponderance of suffixes. Other factors which have been suggested to contribute to the psychological explanation are the predictability of the content expressed by affixes and the phonological redundancy of affixes (cf. Greenberg 1957: 93; Cutler et al. 1985: 750f.; Hall 1992: 97⫺107, 157⫺161). It has been argued that suffixes tend to induce changes in the root morpheme, whereas prefixes retain their phonological integrity, and on the basis of this it has been suggested that suffixes are made even more predictable, since the root modification presignals the upcoming suffix (cf. Greenberg 1957: 93; Hall 1992: 103). Quantitative studies have, however, cast some doubt on this assumption (cf. Bybee et al. 1990: 19⫺27). Although there is some experimental support for suffix redundancy (cf. Tyler & Marslen-Wilson 1986: 749⫺751), extensive cross-linguistic research would need to be conducted to confirm this possibility. An alternative view of the cross-linguistic distribution of affixes vs. suffixes is that the predominance of suffixes results from the predominance of postposed free grammatical elements in verb-final languages, which crosslinguistically outnumber verb-initial languages. These free forms generalise semantically and reduce phonologically to become bound as affixes. In an analysis of inflectional morphs on verbs in 71 languages, verbfinal languages showed a strong tendency for bound and unbound morphs expressing grammatical functions to be postposed, whereas verb-initial and verb-medial languages showed more of a balance between post- and preposing (cf. Bybee et al. 1990: 7⫺18). Preposed grammatical morphs tended to be free in verb-medial languages, but were bound in the other language types. The ex-


planation for the suffixing preference derived from these data is that (a) grammatical morphs at clause boundaries (i.e. in verb-initial and verb-final languages) show a strong tendency to become bound as affixes, whereas grammatical morphs which occur clause-internally (i.e. in verb-medial languages) show a weaker tendency to become bound, and in this case reduction to affix is determined by semantic factors (cf. 5); (b) verb-final languages greatly outnumber verb-initial languages and grammatical morphs appear more consistently in postposed position. A second regularity is that there appears to be a partial correlation between the predominant (or exclusive) positioning of affixes (as either prefixes or suffixes) and the dominant order of syntactic head and modifier, particularly in the VP and PP (cf. Hawkins & Gilligan 1988: 226⫺231; Art. 118). If the overall skewing in favour of suffixing is discounted, the head/affix correlation clearly emerges. Explanations for this distribution have been offered from (a) cross-component organising principles for the syntax and morphology (Hawkins & Gilligan 1988: 226⫺231) and (b) the results of diachronic change (Hall 1992: 74⫺83). Following much work in theoretical morphology in which principles of phrase syntax have been extended to word syntax (cf. Selkirk 1982; Williams 1981; Scalise 1984; Art. 22, 42), it has been proposed that in the morphology, the affix is the head of the word, and thus follows the same head-ordering pattern as syntactic elements. Alternatively, it has been argued that the correlation between syntactic heads and modifiers is a historical accident, in that the typical diachronic source for affixes is a free lexical item of head status in the syntax, which becomes bound on its former modifiers (cf. Hall 1992: 75⫺77; Givoń 1971; 1984: 228⫺237). Circumfixation is much rarer than suffixation or prefixation in languages, but does appear to occur in a large number of disparate language families, as illustrated in a sampling from a non-systematic survey of grammars and grammatical studies: (4) Afroasiatic (Amharic, Classical Arabic, Harari, Margi, Tuareg); Australian (Alawa, Worora); Austronesian (Indone-


sian, Rukai, Samoan, Tagalog, Tondano); Caucasian (Georgian); ChukotkoKamchatkan (Chukchi); Finno-Ugric (Udmurt); Ge-Pano-Carib (Abipon); Hokan (Karok); Indo-European (Germanic: Dutch, German; Iranian: Balochi, Caspian subgroup, Early Modern Persian, Ormuri, Pamir subgroup, Pashto, Talysh); Khoisan (!Kung); Kiwai (Kiwai); Macro-Algonquin (Cheyenne); NigerCongo (Voltaic: Akasele; West Atlantic: Dyola); Oto-Manguean (San Pedro Mixtepec, Zapotec, Amatlan Zapotec); Penutian (Mayan: Kekchi, Mam); Totonacan (Totonac); Uto-Aztecan (Nahuatl) In certain families, e.g. Indo-European and Afroasiatic, circumfixation is particularly well documented and in a few languages, e.g. Indonesian, circumfixes are used to express a wide variety of functions, including marking of nominalisation, verbalisation, iterative, reciprocal, locative, causative, and stative. In German and Dutch, however, circumfixes are found only sporadically.

5.

Theoretical issues

One of the major theoretical issues arising in the analysis of affixation to the root is how these affixes interact with each other, i.e. how they are ordered on either side of the root. This problem has been studied from various points of view, and with different goals in mind. Although affixes almost always appear in a fixed order within the word (unlike syntactic constituents in a sentence), the problem of determining the positional classes of an affix inventory is often just as difficult as word order determination, especially with a large inventory, as in polysynthetic languages, where the combinatorial possibilities are multiple. Consequently, considerable effort has been expended on devising systematic procedures for what has been called in this context positional analysis (cf. Nida 21949: 205⫺207; Grimes 1967; 1983; Muysken 1986; Elson & Pickett 1983: 12⫺16). A typical field practice is to record for each affix (or class of affixes) the numerical position it occupies, counting to the left or right of some reference point, normally the root. Taking the furthest position from the reference point, the set of immediately preceding suffixes or subsequent prefixes is identified. From this set, the affix(es) which occupy the next furthest position from the reference point are determined and the procedure is repeated until all rela-

541 tive orders are established. Proponents of a syntactic approach to morphological analysis argue that positional analysis may be accomplished through the postulation of subcategorization frames (cf. Selkirk 1982: 71⫺74). Advocates of paradigm functions, in contrast, argue that syntactic operations introducing an affix into a tree structure should be kept distinct from operations which realise an affix in a specific sequential position relative to the root, and thus reject subcategorization explanations (cf. Stump 1992; 1993). From a theoretical point of view, linguists have been concerned with the question of affix order as determined by ordered rule application (in either a characterisation of our tacit knowledge of language or of grammar as an abstract object). In Lexical Morphology affix order is viewed as a problem of rule-block ordering (cf. Siegel 1979; Allen 1978). In relatively simple affix systems like English, the affix inventory has been claimed to be divisible into classes (also called strata, layers or levels), characterised by their proximity to the root, their liability to undergo certain phonological rules (especially stress rules) and other phenomena. It is argued that affixes at lower levels are introduced by rules applying earlier than those introducing affixes at higher levels. In English, for example, -ify, as in purify is introduced at Level I, whereas -er, as in purifier is introduced at Level II (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968; Katamba 1993: 89⫺153). The fundamental notion is that some morphological processes involve a closer relationship between collocated morphemes than other processes; in the theory, the latter correspond to lower levels and the former to higher levels (for the psychological reality of these levels, cf. Emmorey & Fromkin 1988: 137⫺141). The approach has been extended to other languages to a limited extent (cf. Booij & Rubach 1987; Pulleyblank 1986), but some researchers regard it as unable to account for all the data in certain languages (cf. Aronoff & Sridhar 1983). In attempts to identify universal causal factors in determining the proximity of affixes to the root, appeals have been made to principles of iconicity (cf. Art. 30). It has been suggested, for example, that affix order is determined by degree of semantic relevance (cf. Bybee 1985: 33⫺35). Within non-intrusive affixation, the prediction is that affixes expressing more relevant categories will appear closer to the root in multi-affix strings and show a greater degree of fusion with the root (cf. Art. 39). For example, derivational

542 affixes virtually always occur closer to the root than inflectional affixes (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 222; Nida 21949: 99; Greenberg 21966: 93) and, within inflection, it has been proposed that more relevant categories appear closer to the stem than less relevant categories (cf. Bybee 1985: 33⫺35). Thus, affixes expressing aspect tend to appear closer to the verb stem than those expressing subject agreement, and the iconicity hypothesis claims that this is because aspect expresses fundamental properties of the verb meaning, whereas subject agreement refers to an argument of the verb rather than affecting the verb meaning itself. For nouns, it appears that number affixes occur closer to the noun stem than case affixes (cf. Greenberg 21966: 95), and number expresses significant information about what is referred to by the noun stem, whereas case refers to the entity or entities’ role in relation to other entities referred to. In line with this hypothesis, it appears that aspect provokes phonological changes in the stem much more often than number agreement does, and lexically-conditioned allomorphs are attested to a much greater extent for aspect than for number (e.g. in Serbo-Croatian; cf. Bybee 1985: 37). These findings are taken to reflect a greater degree of fusion between verb stem and affix for aspect than for number. Another explanatory account of affix order, again proposed as a linguistic universal, appeals to syntactic rather than semantic factors, claiming that rule application in morphology and syntax are essentially isomorphic. The “Mirror Principle” makes explicit this claim, stating that “the syntactic ordering known via examination of […] feeding and bleeding relationships [between syntactic rules] must match the morphological ordering known independently by examining morpheme orders” (Baker 1985: 382). Evidence from a wide range of unrelated languages seems to be compatible with this principle; however, its status is still controversial given the separation of syntax and morphology in many grammatical theories (cf. Art. 22, 34, 36). Furthermore, its compatibility with the historical semantic iconicity account of affix order remains to be explored. The term circumfixation has been employed to refer to the morphological process introducing a discontinuous affixal unit which surrounds the base (cf. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 59; Mel’cˇuk 1982: 84f.); it has also been used to refer to simultaneous prefixation and suffixation, when the formal,


distributional, and/or semantic properties of the elements introduced differ according to whether the elements occur combined around a single base or independently (cf. Bauer 1988 b: 20f.; Anderson 1990: 284f.). In the prototypical case, the elements do not occur outside the combination (the distributional criterion), nor express identifiably independent meanings/functions within the combination (the semantic criterion). Clear cases include: (5) (a) Georgian comparative/superlative circumfix u-…-esi, e.g. lamazi ‘beautiful’, u-lamaz-esi ‘more/most beautiful’ (b) Amatlan Zapotec negative circumfix na-…-t, e.g. top ‘to gather’, na-top-t ‘to not gather’ Many reported cases of circumfixation present problems, however, for these criteria, and might be analysed as defective cases of circumfixes or, simply, as prefix-suffix combinations. For example, it is often difficult to distinguish circumfixation from what has been called parasynthesis (Malkiel 1978: 146), where a prefix and suffix pair obligatorily cooccur but have identifiably separable roles within the combination, as in this example from Spanish: (6) (a) grande ‘large’ en-grand-ecer, a-grandar ‘to enlarge’ (b) loco ‘mad’ en-loqu-ecer, a-loc-ar ‘to madden’ In these forms the en-/a- prefixes mark verbalisation, and -ecer/-ar mark the infinitive. Deadjectival forms such as *en-grand-ar or *a-grand-ecer are not attested. The infinitive forms can stand alone (cf. abast-ar, abastecer ‘[to] supply’ from the noun abasto ‘supply’), but the prefixes always derive verbs from adjectives, and so require verbal inflection. In such cases, the suffix could be said to potentiate the prefix (i.e. the presence of the suffix is a necessary condition for the presence of the prefix). So, despite their obligatory co-occurrence in deadjectival verbalisation, a circumfix analysis *en-…-ecer and *a-…-ar would seem unmotivated and the postulation of a linked prefix-suffix pair favoured (cf. Scalise 1984: 147⫺150 for a similar phenomenon in Italian). An oft-cited case of circumfixation is the German past participle ge-…-t, e.g. filmen ‘to film’, gefilm-t ‘filmed’. In this case, the element -t does occur alone on some verbs as the past participle marker (e.g. wiederholen, wiederhol-t; probieren, probier-t; passieren, passier-t),

543


and so can be analysed as a suffix; the element ge-, on the other hand, does not occur independently. For the group of verbs which take the circumfix, however, both elements are necessary: neither *ge-film nor *film-t are well-formed past participle forms of the verb filmen (cf. Bauer 1988 a: 22f., 197). Since the distributional criterion is partially compromised for this circumfix, it should be seen as defective. Kekchi presents a problematic case for the semantic criterion, in a form of the 3rd person plural possessor, reported as the circumfix /r-…-e?p/ (cf. Nida 21949: 50f.). The prefix element is identical to one form of the 3rd person singular ergative marker and nominal possessive marker, and the suffix element is identical to a 3rd person plural absolutive marker: (7) (a) (b) (c) (d)

/r-otsots/ /r-otsots-e?p/ /jas/ /jas-e?p/

‘his house’ ‘their house’ ‘he is sick’ ‘they are sick’

It is possible to analyse (7b), then, as a combination of possessive prefix plus plural suffix, where the suffix encodes the plurality of the possessor as it does the plurality of the subject in (7d) but in this combination does not express absolutive. Circumfixation is a special case of the expression of a single function (a morpheme) by a combination of several markers (morphs), a phenomenon for which the term synaffix has been suggested (Bauer 1988 b). For example, Pawnee expresses potential modality through two prefixes, kus- and i-, which occur to the left and right of the subject prefix respectively (cf. Bybee 1985: 181). In the Kubachi dialect of Dargva, essive and ablative locative case is expressed through pairs of suffixes (cf. Comrie 1981: 210). A further possibility is that an affix may not be specified for position, i.e. it may appear either as a prefix or a suffix, depending on context (cf. Malkiel 1978: 145). In Afar, for example, the determining context for some affixes is the nature of the onset of the base-form: an affix is realised as a prefix before stems beginning with [e, i, o, u], e.g. tokm-e´ ‘2-eat-perf (you ate)’, but as a suffix after stems beginning with [a] or a consonant, e.g. yab-t-e´ ‘speak-2-imperf (you speak)’; abt-e´ ‘do-2-perf (you did)’ (cf. Fulmer 1991). A similar phenomenon appears to occur in Kekchi (cf. Nida 21949: 42). Finally, affixes may be reduplicated (cf. Art. 57). For example, Yukaghir -nu expresses iteration, whereas

-nu-nu expresses intense iteration (cf. Bybee 1985: 150f.). In Tagalog, elements of circumfixes may also be reduplicated (cf. Schachter & Otanes 1972).

6.

References

Allen, Margaret Reece (1978), Morphological Investigations. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Connecticut Anderson, Stephen R. (1990), “Sapir’s Approach to Typology and Current Issues in Morphology”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Luschützky, Hans C. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. & Rennison, John R. (eds.), Contemporary Morphology. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 49), 277⫺295 Aronoff, Mark & Sridhar, S[hikaripur] N. (1983), “Morphological Levels in English and Kannada; or Atarizing Reagan”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 19.2, 3⫺16 [Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax] Baker, Mark (1985), “The Mirror Principle and Morphosyntactic Explanation”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 373⫺415 Bauer, Laurie (1988 a), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Bauer, Laurie (1988 b), “A Descriptive Gap in Morphology”. Yearbook of Morphology 1988, 17⫺27 Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1979), Einführung in die Morphologie. Stuttgart etc.: Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbücher 296) Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt [British edition 1935, London: Allen & Unwin] Booij, Geert & Rubach, Jerzy (1987), “Cyclic versus Postcyclic Rules in Lexical Phonology.” Linguistic Inquiry 18, 1⫺44 Bopp, Franz (1820), “Analytical Comparison of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Teutonic Languages, Showing the Original Identity of Their Grammatical Structure”. Annals of Oriental Literature 1, 1⫺64 [reprinted 1889 in: Internationale Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 4, 14⫺60; reprint reproduced in: Bopp, Franz (1974), Analytical Comparison of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Teutonic Languages, Showing the Original Identity of Their Grammatical Structure, ed. by E. F. K. Koerner. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Amsterdam Classics in Linguistics 3)] Brown, Roger & McNeill, David (1966), “The ‘Tip of the Tongue’ Phenomenon”. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5, 325⫺337 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9) Bybee, Joan L. & Pagliuca, William (1985), “Cross-linguistic Comparison and the Develop-

544 ment of Grammatical Meaning”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (ed.), Historical Semantics, Historical Word-formation. Berlin etc.: Mouton (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 29), 59⫺83 Bybee, Joan L. & Pagliuca, William & Perkins, Revere D. (1990), “On the Asymmetries in the Affixation of Grammatical Material”. In: Croft, William & Denning, Keith & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Studies in Typology and Diachrony. Papers Presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on His 75th Birthday. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 20), 1⫺42 Bybee, Joan L. & Perkins, Revere D. & Pagliuca, William (1994), The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York etc.: Harper & Row Cole, Ronald A. (1973), “Listening for Mispronunciations: A Measure of What We Hear During Speech”. Perception and Psychophysics 11, 153⫺ 156 Comrie, Bernard (1981), Languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Comrie, Bernard (1985), “Causative Verb Formation and Other Verb-deriving Morphology”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 309⫺348 Conrad, Rudi (1985), Lexikon sprarchwissenschaftlicher Termini. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut Cooper, William E. & Paccia-Cooper, Jeanne (1980), Syntax and Speech. Cambridge/MA, London: Harvard Univ. Press (Cognitive Science Series 3) Cutler, Anne & Hawkins, John A. & Gilligan, Gary (1985), “The Suffixing Preference: A Processing Explanation”. Linguistics 23, 723⫺758 Dahl, Östen (1979), “Typology of Sentence Negation”. Linguistics 17, 79⫺106 Dryer, Matthew (1989), “Plural Words”. Linguistics 27, 865⫺895 Dubois, Jean & Giacomo, Matheé & Guespin, Louis & Marcellesi, Christiane & Marcellesi, JeanBaptiste & Mevel, Jean-Pierre (1973), Dictionnaire de linguistique. Paris: Larousse Elson, Benjamin F. & Pickett, Velma B. (1983), Beginning Morphology and Syntax. Dallas/TX: Summer Inst. of Linguistics Emmorey, Karen D. & Fromkin, Victoria A. (1988), “The Mental Lexicon”. In: Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Vol. III: Language: Psychological and Biological Aspects. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 124⫺149 Fulmer, S. Lee (1991 [1990]), “Dual-position Affixes in Afar: An Argument for Phonologicallydriven Morphology”. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 9, 189⫺203

VIII. Formale Prozesse Givoń, Talmy (1971), “Historical Syntax and Synchronic Morphology: An Archaeologist’s Field Trip”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 7.1, 394⫺415 Givoń, Talmy (1984), Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction, Vol. I. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Greenberg, Joseph H. (1957), Essays in Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Language. Report of a Conference Held at Dobbs Ferry, New York, April 13⫺ 15, 1961. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 58⫺90 [21966, 73⫺113; reprinted in: Greenberg, Joseph H. (1990), On Language: Selected Writings, ed. by Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer. Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 40⫺70] Greenberg, Joseph H. (1980), “Circumfixes and Typological Change”. In: Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Labrum, Rebecca & Shepherd, Susan (eds.), Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics [Stanford 1980]. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistics Theory 14), 233⫺241 Grimes, Joseph E. (1967), “Positional Analysis”. Language 43, 437⫺444 Grimes, Joseph E. (1983), Affix Positions and Cooccurrences: The PARADIGM Program. Dallas/ TX: Summer Inst. of Linguistics (SIL Publications in Linguistics 68) Haas, Mary (1946), “A Proto-Muskogean Grammar”. Language 22, 326⫺332 Hall, Christopher J. (1992), Morphology and Mind: A Unified Approach to Explanation in Linguistics. London, New York: Routledge Hall, Christopher J. (1995), “Formal Linguistics and Mental Representation: Psycholinguistic Contributions to the Identification and Explanation of Morphological and Syntactic Competence”. Language and Cognitive Processes 10, 169⫺187 Hawkins, John A. & Gilligan, Gary (1988), “Prefixing and Suffixing Universals in Relation to Basic Word Order”. Lingua 74, 219⫺259 Jakobson, Roman (1941), Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell (Spra˚kvetenskapliga Sällskapets Förhandlingar 1940⫺1942) [reprinted 1969, Stuttgart: Suhrkamp (edition suhrkamp 330); also in: Jakobson, Roman (1962), Selected Writings, Vol. I: Phonological Studies. ’s Gravenhage: Mouton [⫽ 21971 The Hague, Paris: Mouton], 328⫺401; English transl. 1968: Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals, transl. by Allan R. Keiler. The Hague, Paris: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Minor 72)] Katamba, Francis (1993), Morphology. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan

55. Infixation Malkiel, Yakov (1978), “Derivational Categories”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. III: Word Structure. Stanford/ CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 125⫺149 Marslen-Wilson, William D. (1987), “Functional Parallelism in Spoken Word-recognition”. Cognition 25, 71⫺102 Marslen-Wilson, William D. & Tyler, Lorraine K. & Waksler, Rachel & Older, Lynn (1994), “Morphology and Meaning in the English Mental Lexicon”. Psychological Review 101, 3⫺33 Meillet, A[ntoine] (1912), “L’e´volution des formes grammaticales”. Scientia 12, 384⫺400 [reprinted in: Meillet, A[ntoine] (1948), Linguistique historique et linguistique geńe´rale. Paris: Champion (Collection linguistique 8), 130⫺148] Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44) Mugdan, Joachim (1990), “On the History of Linguistic Terminology”. In: Niederehe, Hans-Josef & Koerner, Konrad (eds.), History and Historiography of Linguistics. Papers from the Fourth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS IV), Trier, 24⫺28 August 1987, Vol. I. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 51), 49⫺61 Muravyova, Irina A. (1998), “Chukchee (Paleo-Siberian)”. In: Spencer, Andrew & Zwicky, Arnold M. (eds.), The Handbook of Morphology. Oxford, Malden/MA: Blackwell, 521⫺538 Muysken, Pieter (1986), “Approaches to Affix Order”. Linguistics 24, 629⫺644 Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Nooteboom, Sieb G. (1981), “Lexical Retrieval from Fragments of Spoken Words: Beginnings vs Endings”. Journal of Phonetics 9, 407⫺424

545 Pei, Mario & Gaynor, Frank (1954), A Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library Pulleyblank, Douglas (1986), Tone in Lexical Phonology. Dordrecht, Boston: Reidel (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4) Rozental’, Ditmar E. & Telenkova, Margarita A. (21976), Slovar’-spravocˇnik lingvisticˇeskich terminov. Moskva: Prosvesˇcˇenie Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Studies in Generative Grammar 18) Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe T. (1972), Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press Selkirk, Elizabeth O. (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 7) Siegel, Dorothy (1979), Topics in English Morphology. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1974, Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Stump, Gregory T. (1992), “On the Theoretical Status of Position Class Restrictions on Inflectional Affixes”. Yearbook of Morphology 1991, 211⫺241 Stump, Gregory T. (1993), “Position Classes and Morphological Theory”. Yearbook of Morphology 1992, 129⫺180 Tyler, Lorraine K. & Marslen-Wilson, William (1986), “The Effects of Context on the Recognition of Polymorphemic Words”. Journal of Memory and Language 25, 741⫺752 Williams, Edwin (1981), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’ ”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274

Christopher J. Hall, Cholula (Mexico)

55. Infixation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Definition and terminology Formal properties Meanings Distribution in the languages of the world Why does infixation exist? References

1.

Definition and terminology

An infix is an affix which is positioned inside the base such that the preceding and following portions are not meaningful by

themselves. For instance, the Sundanese word barudak ‘children’ exemplifies infixation since it is analysable into budak ‘child’ and -ar- ‘plural’, with neither b- nor -udak independently meaningful (similarly s3ar8are, the plural of sare ‘sleep’, and n3ar8iis, the plural of niis ‘cool oneself’). In Chamorro, it is a reduplicated syllable of the base that is infixed, e.g. metgogot ‘very strong’ from metgot ‘strong’ (on infixal reduplication, cf. Art. 57). English strong verbs (sing ⫺ sang) and internal plurals (foot ⫺ feet) can also be de-

546 scribed as involving infixing (cf. Hockett 1958: 271f., 286) although, because of the limited productivity of the pattern, little is gained by such an analysis (cf. Art. 58). While infixing involves a continuous affix and a discontinuous single-morph base, there are other types of word-internal discontinuity, some of which are also dubbed infixing in the literature. First, there are discontinuous affixes (cf. Art. 53), as in circumfixing, which involves a split affix (cf. Art. 54), and in transfixing, which involves both a split base and a split affix (cf. Art. 56). Second, the element interrupting the base may be a free form, rather than an affix: it may be a clitic (cf. Art. 41) or even a full word. Root-internal clitics occur in Pashto, where second-position clitics may be placed either after the sentence-initial verb or inside the verb after the initial stressed syllable. Thus, both agˇuste´-me and a´3me8gˇuste mean ‘I was wearing it’, where agˇuste is the verb root ‘wear’ and me is the clitic ‘I’ (cf. Tegey 1977: 93). The infixation of entire words is exemplified by English fan-bloody-tastic or abso-blooming-lutely (cf. Aronoff 1976: 69f.; McMillan 1980; McCarthy 1982; Kaye 1989; Bauer 1993). Third, the base that is split may not be a single morph as it is in infixing; instead, the intruding element may be positioned between two morphs of the base which bear a closer semantic or phonological relation to each other than either does to the interposed element. The term infixation is sometimes used for such constructions as well. Examples are ⫺ a clitic that is ordered closer to the base than an affix is (on such endoclitics, cf. Zwicky 1977: 7⫺9; for reanalysing endoclitics as affixes, cf. Nevis 1984 on Estonian and Macauley 1989 on Karok); or ⫺ an inflectional affix which occurs closer to the stem than a derivational one even though the latter is semantically closer to the base; for example, Kwakw’ala /ax-emaxud/ ‘put-plur-down (put several down)’ (Anderson 1985: 31; cf. also Matthews 1974: 126 on Chipewyan; Hargus 1987 on Sekani); or ⫺ when there is other evidence for the derivationally prior positioning of an outer affix over an inner one (cf. Madhavan 1983 on Malayalam). If the interruptive element occurs between parts of a compound ⫺ frequently between


two parts of the reduplicated base as in Hindi (cf. Abbi 1980: 8) or Mandara (cf. Frajzyngier 1984) ⫺, it is called an interfix (cf. Art. 53). The term infix is sporadically applied in the literature to yet another pattern: to affixes which do not interrupt base morphs but which are nonetheless in a non-peripheral position in the word, such as the tense prefix tain Swahili wa-ta-pika ‘they-fut-arrive (they will arrive)’, or German ge- in the past participle angekommen ‘arrived’ vs. the infinitive ankommen.

2.

Formal properties

In some languages, the class of infixes is definable in terms of phonetic form regardless of meaning, while in others, infixes form a semantic class regardless of form ⫺ or perhaps no class of any kind at all. An example of the former is Zoque. This language has a single infix /j/ ‘his’, as in /p3j8ata/ ‘his mat’ or /b3j8uro/ ‘his burro’. The pattern is best analysed by assuming that this affix is underlyingly a prefix and that it ends up in wordinternal position through the application of a general segment-inversion rule that is completely blind to its meaning. The purely phonological nature of the rule is shown by the fact that pre-consonantal /j/ metathesizes not only when it forms a prefix but also when it is part of the base, as in /popja/ ‘run:incompl’, where ‘run’ is /poj/ and the incompletive suffix is /pa/ (cf. Wonderly 1951; Moravcsik 1977: 27⫺49). A language of the opposite kind, where the phonetic shapes of infixes are immaterial, is Atayal. Even though both infixes of the language ⫺ /m/ ‘animate actor focus’ and /n/ ‘perf’ ⫺ are nasals, this is irrelevant to their ordering. This is shown by the fact that there is another affix /m/ in the language, meaning ‘animate actor focus, reciprocal’, that is always prefixed. For instance, affixation of the verbal base /qul/ ‘snatch’ by the two /m/ affixes yields both an infixed word: /q3m8ul/ ‘snatch, animate actor focus’ and a prefixed word: /m-qul/ ‘snatch from each other, animate actor focus’ (cf. Egerod 1965; Moravcsik 1977: 83). In view of these facts showing that languages vary in whether they infix affixes on account of their forms or on account of their meanings, it is not to be expected that any exceptionless crosslinguistic generalization regarding either infix meanings or infix forms of infixes exist. Nonetheless, there are tendencies in both domains.

55. Infixation

To begin with, infixes seem to prefer certain phonetic shapes (cf. Karstien 1971: 15; Ultan 1975: 162⫺164, 190⫺196). Most of them involve at least one consonant; many of them involve only a single consonant or a single syllable. The participating consonants tend to be liquids, nasals, and glides, e.g. the active infix /l/ in Sora, the durative infix /m/ in Malay, and the diminutive infix /j/ in Quileute. Of the 31 infixes that Dakota has, only three ⫺ cí, icc´ø i, and kicí ⫺ do not involve any nasal, liquid, or glide (cf. Boas & Deloria 1941; Moravcsik 1977: 98⫺101). Infix-taking bases also show certain features in common. As far as morphological structure is concerned, most but not all of them are monomorphemic (cf. Ultan 1975: 160, 166). By phonological form, infix-taking bases mostly start with stops or fricatives (cf. Karstien 1971: 16; Ultan 1975: 162⫺164). A third facet of the form of infixed words is the exact position of the infix relative to the base. One tendency in this regard has to do with peripheral versus internal position: infix position is more frequently defined relative to word periphery than relative to a word-internal reference point. Word-internal infixing is manifested in English word-infixing (e-bloody-nough), where the infixed word is placed immediately before a stressed syllable (cf. McCarthy 1982), as well is in internal reduplication (cf. Art. 57). A second regularity concerning infix order pertains to which edge of the word infix positions are referenced to. Infixes are ordered relative to the beginning of the base much more frequently than relative to the end of the base. The attested patterns are the following (cf. Ultan 1975: 164⫺168): (a) after the first consonant; (b) after the first consonant or consonant cluster; (c) after the first vowel; (d) after the first syllable; (e) after the second consonant; (f) after the vowel of the penultimate syllable; (g) before the final syllable; (h) before the final consonant. Of these eight patterns, the first five are referenced to the left edge of the word as opposed to the right one. Furthermore, the rightedge positions are not only in the minority but are also infrequent: for example, in one sample of 33 languages, there are 22 that place infixes after the first consonant of the

547 stem but only 3 that put them after the last consonant (cf. Ultan 1975: 167f.). Two of these patterns, (b) and (f), require some discussion (neither is noted in Ultan 1975: 164⫺ 168). Option (b) ⫺ positioning either after the first consonant or the first consonant cluster ⫺ occurs in Tagalog as well as in Atayal (cf. Moravcsik 1977: 74f.). In both languages, infixes follow the first consonant of bases that start with a single consonant and the first consonant cluster of bases that start with such; e.g. Tagalog b3um8ilih ‘X buys/bought’, from bilih and gr3um8adwet ‘X graduates/ graduated’, from gradwet (cf. French 1988: 25, 32, where infix position is defined as “after the first onset”). The other rare pattern is (f): infix positioned after the vowel of the penultimate syllable. It is exemplified by the infix h in Alabama indicating “an increase in degree of the quality expressed by the verb” (Hardy & Montler 1988: 386); e.g. ka3h8no ‘be better’, from kano ‘be good’. Although it might appear that this is a case of (g), position before the last syllable, it can be argued that infixed forms of bases where the final consonant of the penultimate syllable is dropped ⫺ such as in kasa3h8ka ‘be colder’, from kasatka ‘be cold’ ⫺ can be best explained by assuming that the infix h precedes, rather than follows, this consonant. Additional infix positions noted in the literature are subject to alternative analyses. Syrian Arabic has been said to position the augmentative and frequentative affixes before the second consonant; e.g. xa3r8mas ‘to scratch (augmentative)’ from xamas ‘to scratch’ (cf. Ultan 1975: 165; Cowell 1964: 255). However, assuming CV-CVC syllabification of the base, this case is equally well describable in terms of the position after the first syllable ⫺ i.e., an instance of (d), which is independently attested in Oaxaca Chontal and, possibly, in Dakota (cf. Moravcsik 1977: 93⫺108). Another infix position ⫺ after the second syllable of the word ⫺ has been proposed for Dakota (Ultan 1975: 165). However, the Dakota examples showing the infix after the second syllable are probably interfixes rather than infixes (cf. Moravcsik 1977: 154). The third constraint on infix position has to do with the predictability of the alternative external positions that infixes may have. If an infix has an alternative position outside the word, that external position is always at the edge of the word to which the infixed position is referenced. Examples are Hua (e.g.

548


ra’-haie and ha3ra’8aie both meaning ‘it please the two of us’; cf. Haiman 1977: 314), the Indoeuropean nasal affix which is infixed in front of the final consonant in some bases but suffixed in others (cf. Matthews 21991: 132), and Atayal affixes which are prefixed to some bases and infixed after the first consonant of the base in others (cf. Egerod 1965; Moravcsik 1977: 74⫺93).

3.

Meanings

A survey of infixes involving some 70 infixing languages shows that infix meanings extend over a broad semantic range including voice, tense, number, reflexive, passive, and many others. Nonetheless, there is a broad tendency: the base-internal positioning of infixes tends to be iconically reflective of the fact that their meanings are closely tied to that of the base (cf. Ultan 1975: 169⫺171). For example, infixes are generally derivational, rather than inflectional (cf. Ultan 1975: 168f.; cf. also Bybee 1985: 97, 110), reflecting the closer semantic link between base and derivational affix than what holds between base and inflectional affix. A particularly interesting example bearing out the parallelism between semantic relevance and internal position is Miskito, which has an infix and an external affix with related meanings such that the infix expresses inalienable possession, which is a more intimate relation between the affix and the base, while the external affix expresses alienable possession ⫺ a less intimate relation; examples are na3m8pa ‘your tooth’ and nina-m ‘your name’, both involving the second person singular possessive affix m (cf. Ultan 1975: 170).

4.

Distribution in the languages of the world

Although infixing is very common in certain special registers such as in “secret languages” (e.g. Tagalog “baligtad”; French 1988; Ultan 1975: 162f.), it is infrequent in standard registers. The languages that nonetheless have them show a fairly broad geographic and genetic distribution. This is documented by the various crosslinguistic discussions found in the literature. Some of these are more factoriented surveys (cf. de la Grasserie 1894, a lesser-known work which discusses, among others, a number of American Indian languages; Karstien 1965 on Indoeuropean and

some other language; Ultan 1975, the most extensive survey to date; Moravcsik 1977). Others are theoretical accounts analysing infixing under the assumptions of prosodic and morphemic circumscription (cf. Lombardi & McCarthy 1991; Hammond 1992). The question is whether infixing languages can be characterized in some general way, whether genetically, areally, or typologically. Infixing languages do tend to cluster in genetic or areal groups, such as Austronesian, Mon-Khmer, Munda, the Thai languages, Indoeuropean, Semitic, Caucasian, and American Indian languages (cf. Ultan 1975: 172, 163f.). No infixes seem to have been reported from (non-Semitic) Africa and Australia. In Indoeuropean, the only generally recognized infix is n as in Latin iung- ‘link’ (the base is iug-). However, several other infixes have also been posited for a wide range of Slavic, Germanic, and Baltic languages as well as for Latin and Old Indic, mostly in positions after the first consonant of the base (e.g. Polish knowac´ ‘make plans’, related to Old Slavic kovati ‘forge [metal]’) or before the base-final consonant (cf. Karstien 1971). However, the morphemic status of the posited elements is in doubt since their meanings cannot be clearly identified at the attested language stages. Are there any relevant distributional patterns of a typological sort? There is one structural characteristic whose existence can be predicted from infixing: external affixing. “If a language has discontinuous affixes, it always has either prefixing or suffixing or both” (Greenberg 1963: 73 [21966: 92; 1990: 56]; the term discontinuous affix is meant to cover infixes as well). This may be generally true for discontinuous constructions: they tend to alternate with their continuous counterparts in the same language. The occurrence of external affixes is thus a necessary ⫺ but by no means sufficient ⫺ condition for the occurrence of infixes. There is one other structural characteristic that frequently cooccurs with infixing: reduplication. It sometimes occurs with infixing within the same word, such as in Nakanai (cf. Broselow & McCarthy 1983/84: 62f.) and in Mandara (cf. Frajzyngier 1984: 38), or the two may be alternative expressions of the same meaning, as in Saanich (cf. Montler 1989) and in Syrian Arabic (cf. Cowell 1964: 254f.), or the two patterns may simply co-exist in the structural inventory of a language, as in Zoque, Sundanese, Atayal, and Dakota (cf. Moravcsik 1977). The examples of Saanich and Syrian

55. Infixation

Arabic suggest that there is a correspondence between the position of the reduplicated structure and its affixal allomorph: in both languages, the site of the reduplicated structure and that of the infix coincide. Reduplication does not predict the occurrence of infixing: Samoan, for example, has reduplication but not infixing. Whether its presence is in turn predicted by that of infixing has not yet been established.

5.

Why does infixation exist?

Discontinuity, the most prominent feature of infixing, is a complex semiotic pattern: if linguistic form were perfectly aligned with meaning, elements that are semantically coherent would always stand next to each other. The question thus arises why discontinuous constructions exist at all, whether in morphology or in syntax (cf. Huck & Ojeda 1987, eds.); and, in particular, why infixation exists? First, it should be noted that infixes are not only rare but also short-lived (cf. Ultan 1975: 185). One thing that can happen to them is that they become fossilized. Such non-productive infixes occur in Indoeuropean as well as in today’s Malay. Alternatively, they may become external affixes. In Sora, for example, the reciprocal affix al is infixed only in archaic forms; otherwise, it is prefixed (cf. Karstien 1971: 20; on the historical externalization of word-internal affixes of various kinds, cf. Haspelmath 1993). ⫺ But how do infixes arise? One synchronic fact that is suggestive of their historical origin is that infixes often show multiple relations to external affixes (cf. 2): (a) an infix form may have an alternative external position (e.g. in Dakota; cf. Moravcsik 1977: 103f.); (b) an infix may have a variant form that is externally ordered (e.g. in Atayal; cf. Moravcsik 1977: 87); (c) an infixed word may show phonological characteristics which are explainable by assuming that the underlying position of the infix is external (e.g. in Sundanese; cf. Anderson 1972); (d) an infix may have externally ordered paradigm-mates (e.g. in Zoque; cf. Moravcsik 1977: 35⫺38); (e) cognate affixes may be infixed in one language and prefixed in another related language (e.g. in Hua versus Gimi and Siane; cf. Haiman 1977: 315).

549 In addition, there is also direct evidence for the historical relationship between infixes and external affixes: external affixes developing into infixes are abundantly exemplified in Austronesian and Austroasiatic as well as from Sino-Tibetan, Northwestern Caucasian, Semitic, and American Indian languages (cf. Ultan 1975: 176f.; de la Grasserie 1894). A special affixing pattern that has a tendency to give rise to infixes is reduplication (such as in Trukese and Quileute; cf. Ultan 1975: 182f.). There are two major mechanisms through which external affixes may become infixes: metathesis and entrapment (cf. Ultan 1975: 178⫺184). Metathesis as an infix-creating process means at one point in history the affix in question is externally ordered whereas at a later point the affix is placed inside the base. This is proposed to have been the case in Indonesian, with the passive affix um originally prefixed to all bases and then metathesizing with the first sound of consonant-initial bases (cf. Ultan 1975: 179). Entrapment may happen to an external affix that is on the inner side of another external affix. It involves no actual shift of position: the outer affix is simply re-analysed as part of the base so that “the inner affix is trapped within the root, like a fly in amber, and becomes an infix” (Ultan 1975: 180). In addition to Dakota and other examples, this seems to have been a contributing factor in Hua (cf. Haiman 1977), and in Alabama, where present-day infixes used to be prefixed to an auxiliary verb which later coalesced with the preceding verb with the affix caught in between (cf. Chiu 1987). However, not all infixes go back to earlier external affixes. One study explicitly denies that all infixes have “etymologies” and argues that they may come into existence in word-internal position (cf. Karstien 1971: 29f.). An infix with a non-external origin may be the [?] in Saanich, one of the allomorphs of the ‘actual’ morpheme. It can be analysed as simply a segmental realization of the “floating feature” [⫹constricted glottis] always associated with the actual form of the verb (cf. Montler 1989: 106). The two prevailing sources of affixes ⫺ metathesis and entrapment ⫺ go a long way towards making sense of both formal and semantic properties of infixes. The fact that infixes preferentially involve nasals and glides (cf. 2) fits in with metathesis being a major source of infixes: nasals, liquids, and glides

550 are just the sound types most susceptible to metathesis (cf. Ultan 1975: 64; Ultan 1971). The observation that infix-taking bases often start with fricatives and stops again argues for the probability of metathesis being the driving force behind infixation since the reordering of a sonorant that is on the outer side of an obstruent in a word is sanctioned by the Sonority Hierarchy Principle, which states that the cross-linguistically preferred position for sonorants is on the inner side of obstruents (cf. Selkirk 1982; also Karstien 1971: 21). Metathesis as a common historical origin of infixation also explains some of the positional preferences of infixes. There are two possible explanations for the preponderance of left-edge-referenced infix order that come to mind. First, in languages where infixing is the result of metathesis aimed at resolving a phonotactically excluded consonant cluster, the need for such metathesis is more likely to occur word-initially. This is because of the cross-linguistic preference for syllables that start with a consonant and end with a vowel, as opposed to syllables that begin with a vowel and end in a consonant. As a result of these preferences, bases are more likely to start with a consonant than to end in one and thus a consonantal prefix is more likely to result in a disfavored consonant cluster than a suffix. Second, prefixing is generally dispreferred across languages as compared with suffixing (cf. Hawkins & Cutler 1988; Hall 1988; 1992; Bybee & Pagliuca & Perkins 1990). Infixing may thus be an anticipatory pattern aimed at getting the prefix out of the way and “getting on” with the base (Greenberg 1957: 92; cf. also Ultan 1975: 173). The word-external origin of infixes also helps explain some of their meaning characteristics. One explanation for infixes being preferentially derivational is psychological: base and derivational affix are more amenable to being stored holistically in memory than base and inflectional affix are and thus derivational affixes do not have to be clearly separable from the stem (Plank 1981: 27). An alternative, diachronic explanation proposes that derivational infixes are more common than inflectional ones because infixes usually arise from external affixes and derivational affixes are generally closer to the root (Ultan 1975: 169). However, this explanation fails to take into account that many words include only inflectional affixes.


Perhaps all three tendencies ⫺ that derivational affixes tend to be closer to the root, that they tend to be stored in memory in a single unit with the base, and that they are more likely to be infixed ⫺ are due to the same factor: the closer semantic ties between root and derivational affix (cf. Bybee 1985: 98⫺194). If infixes have multiple historical origins, then why are they so infrequent? One explanation points at two undesirable features of this pattern: discontinuity, and placement of an affix in the least salient part of the word: its inside (cf. Hawkins & Cutler 1988: 309f.). Similarly, it has been argued that infixes are semiotically infelicitous (cf. Dressler 1982). The problem that still remains is a familiar one cropping up any time the infrequency of a pattern is to be explained. If the pattern is rare, it must be because it is undesirable; but if it is undesirable, why does it occur at all? The conditions under which infix-creating forces prevail over infix-inhibiting ones are yet to be identified.

6.

References

Abbi, Anvita (1980), Semantic Grammar of Hindi: A Study in Reduplication. New Delhi: Bahri (Series in Indian Languages and Linguistics 10) Anderson, Stephen R. (1972), “On Nasalization in Sundanese”. Linguistic Inquiry 3, 253⫺268 Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), “Typological Distinctions in Word Formation”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 3⫺56 Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 1) Bauer, Laurie (1993), “Un-bloody-likely Words”. In: Bauer, Laurie & Franzen, Christine (eds.), Of Pavlova, Poetry, and Paradigms. Essays in Honour of Harry Orsman. Wellington: Victoria Univ. Press, 70⫺77 Boas, Franz & Deloria, Ella (1941), Dakota Grammar. Washington/DC: National Academy of Sciences (Memories of the National Academy of Sciences 23.2) Broselow, Ellen & McCarthy, John (1983/84), “A Theory of Internal Reduplication”. The Linguistic Review 3, 25⫺88 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9)

55. Infixation Bybee, Joan L. & Pagliuca, William & Perkins, Revere D. (1990), “On the Asymmetries in the Affixation of Grammatical Material”. In: Croft, William & Denning, Keith & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Studies in Typology and Diachrony. Papers Presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on His 75th Birthday. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 20), 1⫺42 Chiu, Bonnie Hui-Chun (1987), “The Morphology of the Alabama Set I Affixes”. In: Munroe, Pamela (ed.), Muskogean Linguistics. Los Angeles: Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of California at Los Angeles (UCLA Occasional Papers in Linguistics 6), 21⫺35 Cowell, Mark W. (1964), A Reference Grammar of Syrian Arabic. Washington/DC: Georgetown Univ. Press (Arabic Series 7) Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1982), “On Word Formation in Natural Morphology”. In: Hattori, Shiroˆ & Inoue, Kazuko (eds.), Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Linguists, August 29⫺September 4, 1982, Tokyo. Tokyo: Proceedings Publishing Comittee, 172⫺182 Egerod, Søren (1965), “Verb Inflexion in Atayal”. Lingua 15, 251⫺282 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt (1984), “Ergative and Nominative-accusative Features in Mandara”. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 6, 35⫺45 French, Koleen Matsuda (1988), Insights into Tagalog: Reduplication, Infixation, and Stress from Nonlinear Phonology. Dallas/TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL Publications in Linguistics 84) Grasserie, Raoul de la (1894), “De l’infixation”. Revue de linguistique et de philologie compareé 27, 1⫺27 Greenberg, Joseph H. (1957), Essays in Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Language. Report of a Conference Held at Dobbs Ferry, New York, April 13⫺15, 1961. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 58⫺90 [21966, 73⫺113; reprinted in: Greenberg, Joseph H. (1990), On Language: Selected Writings, ed. by Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer. Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 40⫺70] Haiman, John (1977), “Reinterpretation”. Language 53, 312⫺328 Hall, Christopher J. (1988), “Integrating Diachronic and Processing Principles in Explaining the Suffixing Preference”. In: Hawkins (ed.), 321⫺349 Hall, Christopher J. (1992), Morphology and Mind: A Unified Approach to Explanation in Linguistics. London, New York: Routledge Hammond, Michael (1992), “Morphological Circumscription”. Yearbook of Morphology 1991, 195⫺209 Hardy, Heather K. & Montler, Timothy R. (1988), “Alabama Radical Morphology: H-Infix and Dis-

551 fixation”. In: Shipley, William (ed.), In Honor of Mary Haas. From the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter, 377⫺409 Hargus, Sharon (1987), “Infixation and Bracketing Erasure in Sekani”. Working Papers in Linguistics (Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of Washington) 9, 83⫺117 Haspelmath, Martin (1993), “The Diachronic Externalization of Inflection”. Linguistics 31, 279⫺ 309 Hawkins, John A. (1988, ed.), Explaining Language Universals. Oxford, New York: Blackwell Hawkins, John A. & Cutler, Anne (1988), “Psychological Factors in Morphological Asymmetry”. In: Hawkins (ed.), 280⫺317 Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Huck, Geoffrey J. & Ojeda, Almerindo E. (1987, eds.), Discontinuous Constituency. Orlando/FL etc.: Academic Press (Syntax and Semantics 20) Karstien, Hans (1971), Infixe im Indogermanischen. Heidelberg: Winter Kaye, Alan S. (1989), “Interfixation in English”. Language Sciences 11, 337⫺341 Lombardi, Linda & McCarthy, John (1991), “Prosodic Circumscription in Choctaw Morphology”. Phonology 8, 37⫺71 Macaulay, Monica (1989), “A Suffixal Analysis of the Karok ‘Endoclitic’ ”. Lingua 78, 159⫺180 Madhavan, P. (1983), “On a (Putative) Infixation Process in Malayalam Causative Morphology”. Indian Linguistics 44, 55⫺64 Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press McCarthy, John J. (1982), “Prosodic Structure and Expletive Infixation”. Language 58, 574⫺590 McMillan, James B. (1980), “Infixing and Interposing in English”. American Speech 55, 163⫺ 183 Montler, Timothy R. (1989), “Infixation, Reduplication, and Metathesis in the Saanich Actual Aspect”. Southwest Journal of Linguistics 9, 92⫺107 Moravcsik, Edith A. (1977), On Rules of Infixing. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club Nevis, Joel A. (1984), “A Non-endoclitic in Estonian”. In: Zwicky, Arnold M. & Wallace, Rex E. (eds.), Papers on Morphology. Columbus: Dept. of Linguistics, Ohio State Univ. (Working Papers in Linguistics 29), 139⫺147 Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten: Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 13) Selkirk, Elizabeth (1982), “The Syllable”. In: Hulst, Harry van der & Smith, Norval (eds.), The Structure of Phonological Representations, Vol. II. Dor-

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drecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Linguistic Models 3), 337⫺383 Tegey, Habibullah (1977), “The Relevance of Morphological Structure and of Stress to Clitic Placement Rule ⫺ I in Pashto”. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 7.1, 88⫺116 Ultan, Russell (1971), “A Typological View of Metathesis”. Working Papers in Language Universals 7, 1⫺44 [reprinted in: Greenberg, Joseph H. (1978, ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. II: Phonology. Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 367⫺ 402] Ultan, Russell (1975), “Infixes and their Origins”. In: Seiler, Hansjakob (ed.), Linguistic Workshop III. München: Fink (Structura 9), 157⫺205

Wonderly, William L. (1951), “Zoque III: Morphological Classes, Affix List, and Verbs”. International Journal of American Linguistics 17.3, 137⫺ 162 Zwicky, Arnold M. (1977), On Clitics. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club [also without sections 4⫺6 in: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. (eds.), Phonologica 1976. Akten der dritten Internationalen Phonologie-Tagung, Wien, 1.⫺4. September 1976. Innsbruck: Inst. für Sprachwissenschaft der Univ. Innsbruck (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 19), 29⫺39]

Edith A. Moravcsik, Milwaukee/WI (U.S.A.)

56. Transfixation 1. 2. 3. 4.

Definition and overview Segmental transfixation Shape-defining morphology References

1.

Definition and overview

A transfix may be defined as a discontinuous affix that disrupts the base to which it is attached (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1963: 35 [1976: 273]). The term will be reserved for true single affixes, rather than combinations of an infix with an independent prefix or suffix. Transfixes themselves, however, may cooccur with independent affixes; in fact, it appears that all languages that employ transfixation also employ more conventional peripheral affixation. Processes that fit this definition are found in a number of genetically and areally distinct languages. The phenomenon is associated with a wide range of meanings and functions, both inflectional and derivational; as with other processes, inflectional transfixation is likely to be more productive and semantically transparent than derivational transfixation. One example of a relatively sporadic transfixation process comes from Yurok, a native language of California. In Yurok, some or all stem vowels may in certain lexical items be replaced by a retroflex vowel (cf. Robins 1958: 13; following this source, this vowel is represented as /u/): (1) (a) /mestek/ /mustuk/ (b) /kelomen/ /kulumuw/

‘lining in a basket’ ‘to line a basket’ ‘to turn (transitive)’ ‘to turn inside out’

In contrast, a productive and transparent transfixation is found in Amharic, in which verbs of the infinitive shape /meCCeC/ exhibit corresponding perfect and reciprocal stems of the form /CeCCeC/ and /CCaCeC/, respectively: (2) (a) infinitive: (b) perfect: (c) reciprocal:

‘dress’ /melbes/ /lebbes/ /llabes/

‘judge’ /mefred/ /ferred/ /ffared/

These two examples illustrate a difference in the formal properties of different transfixations. In the Yurok examples, the derived form corresponds to the base in every respect except for the substitution of the retroflex vowel (and occasional changes in consonant quality). This sort of process, in which some of the segments in a word are replaced or modified while the shape of the base remains constant, will be referred to in this article as segmental transfixation (cf. 2). In contrast, the Amharic infinitives and their corresponding perfects and reciprocals differ not only in segmental quality but also in shape ⫺ that is, in the arrangement of consonants and vowels. The morphological system illustrated by these examples has come to be called root and pattern morphology; in addition, the terms templatic, prosodic, nonlinear, and nonconcatenative morphology have all been used for Semitic-type transfixation. Here the term shape-defining transfixation will be used as a theory-neutral term (cf. 3). In other classifications of morphological processes, the term

553

56. Transfixation

transfixation is reserved for the shape-defining type, while segmental transfixation is interpreted as multiple substitution (cf. Art. 53, 58), and sometimes the substitution analysis is extended to shape-defining transfixation (cf. 3.2). Moreover, the line between segmental and shape-defining transfixation is not always clearly drawn. Yurok, for example, uses shape-changing transfixation alongside segmental transfixation in its numeral classifier system, while in Classical Arabic, one of the prototypical root and pattern languages, the active and passive forms of perfect verbs are distinguished solely by segmental differences, as in kataba ‘he wrote’ and kutiba ‘he/it was written’. Nonetheless, it is useful to begin with a consideration of transfixation in terms of these two types.

reduplication, to signal the diminutive (cf. Nichols 1971: 844):

2.

The Tera case is distinct from the examples (1), (3) and (4) in using a segmental change to mark a change in inflectional category.

Segmental transfixation

2.1. Uses and types One common use of segmental transfixation is to indicate expressive features such as diminutive or intensive. This sort of use is often called sound symbolism, a term that reflects the common cross-linguistic association of particular acoustic qualities and particular expressive functions; diminutivization, for example, is often associated with high vowels. Thus, Gta?, a South Munda language, derives diminutives by replacing all stem vowels with /i/ (cf. McCarthy 1982: 202f.): (3) (a) /kiton/ /kitin/ (d) /kesu/ /kisi/

‘god’ ‘minor deity’ ‘wrapper worn against the cold’ ‘small or thin piece of cloth’

Where Gta? allows replacement of all the vowels of a base by a specified sequence of articulatorily independent vowels, parallel cases of total consonant replacement are unattested, for obvious functional reasons: Since consonants generally bear the greater burden of phonemic contrast, replacing all the consonants of a morph with a specified consonant string is likely to destroy crucial lexical information. However, cases in which some subset of the consonants of a base are replaced by articulatorily similar consonants are fairly common. One example of this sort of consonant shift is found in Cœur d’Alene, which (like many other Northwest Coast American Indian languages) uses glottalization of all sonorant consonants, along with

(4) (a) marmarimentemilsˇ ‘they were treated one by one’ (b) m’m’ar’m’ar’im’en’tem’il’sˇ ‘they (little ones) were treated one by one’ Similarly, other processes may replace (or modify) only certain specified vowels. An example of this type comes from Tera, a Chadic language of Nigeria, which forms the imperative by replacing all occurrences of /a/ with /o/, as well as by adding a suffix /u/ prejuncturally after high vowels (which include /e/; cf. Newman 1970: 149): (5)

stem (a) /karanta/ (b) /La]e/

imperative /koronto/ /Lo]eu/

‘read’ ‘beat’

2.2. Analyses One of the central questions in the description of segmental transfixes is the extent to which these segmental changes can and should be analyzed as a result of phonological processes, such as harmony. For example, since the Tera replacement of /a/ throughout the stem by the round vowel /o/ is accompanied in certain environments by an overt round vowel suffix, it is tempting to conclude that the change of /a/ to /o/ is phonologically conditioned, a result of spreading the roundness of the suffix to certain stem vowels. In fact, many cases of vowel and consonant shift exhibit similar harmony-like characteristics. The Californian language Karok, for example, forms the diminutive by suffixation of icˇ plus change of each u in the base to cˇ (cf. Bright 1957: 77), a shift that can be viewed as spread of a feature from the suffix (although this change is accompanied by a much less obviously harmonic shift or r to n). Whether segmental transfixation can in general be described by means of phonologically-conditioned rules spreading some feature from an affix of course depends in large part on the possible representations of an affix in a given theory. In a framework that permits formatives consisting solely or in part of single features or feature complexes that are not in themselves anchored in a segment, stem changes may be triggered by an affix that itself has no independent realiza-

554 tion in the word. Affixes that are not themselves segmental are found in the “long-component” analyses of American structuralism (e.g. Harris 1951: 299⫺324), in prosodic analyses of the London school (e.g. Firth 1949), and autosegmental or nonlinear analyses (cf. also Art. 50). For example, the autosegmental analysis of Cœur d’Alene glottalization posits a “floating” glottalization feature as part of the diminutive suffix that spreads to all sonorants within a word (cf. Cole 1991: 77⫺103). One attractive aspect of such analyses is that they make possible the expression of explicit parallels between the phonological and morphological processes of a language. Such parallels are fairly common. In Manchu, for example, the distinction between masculine and feminine counterpart nouns is signalled by a vowel alternation that reflects the general vowel harmony system of the language. Certain Manchu nouns are distinguished solely by use of /a/ in the masculine and /e/ in the feminine forms: ama ‘father’ vs. eme ‘mother’; amila ‘rooster’ vs. emile ‘hen’, and so forth (cf. Haenisch 1961: 34). While there is no overt formative to trigger the alternation of /a/ and /e/ in masculine and feminine counterpart forms, this alternation is certainly reminiscent of clearly phonologically motivated vowel harmony alternations: Normally, Manchu suffixes agree with stem vowels in backness, with /a/ the back counterpart of /e/. The failure of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ to alternate in the masculine/feminine pairs is also consistent with the general failure of high vowels to either trigger or undergo vowel harmony in Manchu. Cases of true segmental replacement, like the Gta? example (3), differ from segmental shift in that, rather than changing some articulatory feature of specified segments, they replace any vowel sequence by an independently specified sequence. In autosegmental frameworks, this sort of process may be seen as differing from quality shift cases in terms of the phonemic completeness of the affix. For example, the Gta? case can be seen as differing from the Tera case (5) in that the Gta? affix provides completely specified vowels rather than specific articulatory features that change or fill in only some of the properties of particular basic vowels (cf. McCarthy 1982: 202⫺208). The association of the affixal vowel melody to the stem causes the “delinking” or loss of all articulatory properties of the original stem vowels. The obvious


alternative to this sort of approach is more clearly processual than affixational, with sound shifts accomplished by a morphological rule or rules, and requiring no identifiable affix (and therefore no subphonemic affixes). In this approach, any parallels with clearly phonologically motivated processes of the language can be viewed as historical residue, requiring no formal recognition in the synchronic grammar.

3.

Shape-defining morphology

3.1. Root and pattern morphology In contrast to the typically limited uses of segmental transfixation, root and pattern morphology often plays a central role in the grammatical system of a language. In such a system, particular sequences of consonants, traditionally called roots, appear in various words occupying a single semantic field. In Cairene Arabic, for example, all words containing the root ktb bear some relationship to the concept of writing, while those with drs have to do with study: (6) (a) katab daras (b) kattib darris (c) kaatib daaris (d) maktaba madrasa

‘he wrote’ ‘he studied’ ‘he caused to write’ ‘he taught’ ‘writing; clerk’ ‘studying’ ‘library’ ‘school’

The arrangements of consonants and vowel illustrated in (6) are called patterns, which are assumed to specify a particular shape, including the specification of segment length, as well as the segmental content of particular positions in a word: For example, all active participles have the vowel sequence aa-i. Patterns may cooccur with truly independent affixes ⫺ for example, the participle may take feminine or plural suffixes ⫺ or may themselves serve as the sole marker of a lexical or derivational category. While Semitic languages are generally taken as the paradigm cases of root and pattern morphology, similar morphological systems are found in a number of other AfroAsiatic languages. For example, in the Chadic language Mubi, only consonant roots are held constant under derivation, while stem shape and vowel quality vary. Lexical tone pattern is also maintained across the aorist and imperfect, though all infinitives are

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56. Transfixation

assigned a uniform tone pattern (cf. Jungraithmayr 1978: 314): (7) infinitive aorist imperfect

‘exchange’ fe`le`ge´ fı´lı´k fı´leé´k

‘kneel down’ de`re`se´ dı`rı´s dı`reé´s

A number of languages use root and pattern morphology alongside more conventional concatenative morphology; in the Cushitic language Beja, for example, verbs are either “strong” (keeping only their root consonants constant across various patterns) or “weak” (maintaining a constant stem which inflects by conventional affixation; cf. Hudson 1976). While classic root and pattern morphology holds only the quality of the root consonants constant, a number of languages retain both consonant and vowel quality under derivation, altering only shape. Thus in Sierra Miwok, a Californian language, derived verb forms have a characteristic shape, but maintain both vowel and consonant quality across patterns (cf. Smith 1984, where no glosses are given): (8) basic form 2 form 5 form 6

polaat polat pollat polta

kelti kelit kellit kelti

Whether such a system properly falls under the rubric of transfixation can only be decided in the context of a specific framework. 3.2. Analyses Analyses of shape-defining transfixation lie along a continuum with two ends. In what may be called the stem-based multiple modification approach, the relation between forms of different shapes is expressed by means of rules of copying, metathesis, insertion, deletion, or ablaut operating on a fully-specified base form. The changes in shape associated with morphological derivation are therefore simply a by-product of morphological processes (cf. Kilani-Schoch & Dressler 1984). At the other end of the continuum is a position that is often called templatic (or prosodic), in which the shape of the derived form is itself given theoretical status in the grammar. Analyses that lie toward the templatic end of the continuum include those of traditional Semitic grammarians (e.g. Wright 31896), long-component analyses (e.g. Chomsky 1979), London School analyses (e.g. Mitchell 1975) and more recent autosegmental analyses (e.g. McCarthy 1981). In the latter framework, for example, the Cairene participles

kaatib and daaris would be described as composed of a consonantal root, and vowel melody ai, and a template defining the participle shape. The length of the first vowel of the participle is argued to follow from the need to give segmental content to the shape requirements of the template. Since the template is itself viewed as a formative consisting of a shape specification but little or no phonemic content, the assumption that formatives may be sub-phonemic (cf. 2.2) is crucial to this analysis. The definition of a template within early autosegmental accounts is in terms of consonant and vowel slots (cf. McCarthy 1981), although convincing arguments have been proposed for various alternative definitions, most notably in terms of prosodic categories such as syllables and feet (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1990). Any decision on the merits of alternative approaches to transfixation must consider the justification for the elements posited in each framework. A number of arguments for the necessity of positing a template in rootand-pattern systems point to the insertion or deletion of segments to fit the requirements of the template. Thus, the loss of the final consonant in the Arabic verb magˇnat¸ ‘to magnetize’ formed from the borrowing magˇnat¸iisˇ ‘magnetic’ results from association of the five-consonant root to the maximally quadriconsonantal verb template CVCCVC (cf. McCarthy 1981: 399). Conversely, when a template stipulates more consonant positions that a root provides, the final consonant position is filled, either by double association of a root consonant to two positions, or by insertion of a consonant. Thus, in Classical Arabic, various arguments favor the analysis of forms like samam ‘poison’ as underlyingly biconsonantal (sm), with m spreading to fill the two final consonant positions in the CVCVC template (cf. McCarthy 1981: 396⫺ 399). In Amharic, in contrast, a t appears in the final consonant slot of biconsonantal roots; this t contrasts with underlying t in the same position (cf. Broselow 1984: 19⫺27). Arguments for the autonomy of consonant roots have generally pointed to processes that need to pick out just root consonants. For example, a language game played by speakers of Bedouin Hijazi Arabic permutes root consonants while holding the shape and vowel quality of a word constant and leaving affixal consonants in place (McCarthy 1982: 196⫺ 199). Thus, from the word jtimaø ‘met’ are formed all possible permutations of the root consonants jmø , leaving the infix t undis-

556 turbed (mtijasø , ø timaj, etc.). Arguments for the independence of vocalic melody are harder to find. The Classical Arabic alternations CaCaC (perfective active) vs. CuCiC (perfective passive) illustrate one of the few cases in which a change in vowel quality signals a change in derivational category. More often, a derivational category is marked by both a particular vowel quality and a particular shape, consistent with the traditional notion of a pattern as a specifier of both shape and vocalism. Furthermore, for certain patterns, vowel quality may vary with consonant root, suggesting that vowel quality must be lexically specified for some roots, for example Classical Arabic samar ‘chat’ vs. samur ‘be brown’ (cf. Testen 1987: 365). It is examples of this sort that underlie many arguments for a stem-based rather than a rootbased analysis. Stem-based approaches have been implemented both in multiple modification analyses (cf. Kilani-Schoch & Dressler 1984) and in templatic analyses; in the latter, a process of extraction is posited to separate a consonant root from a vocalized stem, leaving the root available to combine with various templates (cf. Bat-El 1988). The major consideration in deciding between various approaches to shape-defining transfixation involves the relationship of this sort of morphology to more common morphological processes ⫺ specifically, whether the processes required to describe transfixation can be generalized to other sorts of phenomena. One argument advanced for the multiple-modification approach to root-andpattern morphology is that analyzing it as a complex series of internal modifications of a more familiar sort (ablaut, copying, etc.) essentially removes transfixation from the inventory of possible morphological processes: “transfixation is, in fact, so unnatural that it does not exist” (Bauer 1988: 197, summarizing Kilani-Schoch & Dressler 1984; cf. Wurzel 1989). The autosegmental approach also analyzes shape-defining transfixation by means of the sorts of processes required in other areas of morphology. Since this framework makes independent use of processes that provide for associations among affixes of different types (tonal, vocalic, consonantal, featural, and templatic), transfixation can be seen as but one of a number of templatebased processes. The inventory of templatic processes, in this approach, includes not only classic consonantal root-and-pattern morphology, but also the clearly stem-based templatic systems like that of Sierra Miwok in


(8), as well as virtually all processes of reduplication, copying, and lengthening, most of which can be analyzed as affixation of a prosodic template which receives its segmental content from the base to which it is affixed (cf. McCarthy and Prince 1986; 1993). Thus, in this approach, transfixation is seen as quite natural, simply another manifestation of template-based morphology. Furthermore, within an autosegmental framework, the processes of association that map segmental strings onto templates are argued to be exactly the same sorts of processes required for any phenomenon that involves association of one autosegment with another, including assignment of tonal melodies to words, spreading of vowel harmony features across morphs, and segmental transfixation (cf. McCarthy 1981; 1982). Ultimately, then, a choice between different analyses of transfixation can only be made in the context of an entire theory of morphology.

4.

References

Bat-El, Outi (1988), “Remarks on Tier Conflation”. Linguistic Inquiry 19, 477⫺485 Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Bright, William (1957), The Karok Language. Berkeley, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press (Univ. of California Publications in Linguistics 13) Broselow, Ellen (1984), “Default Consonants in Amharic Morphology”. In: Speas, Margaret & Sproat, Richard (eds.), Papers from the January 1984 MIT Workshop in Morphology. Cambridge/ MA: Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 7), 15⫺32 Chomsky, Noam Avram (1979), Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew. New York, London: Garland (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics 12) [orig. 1951: M.A. thesis, Univ. of Pennsylvania] Cole, Jennifer (1991), Planar Phonology and Morphology. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1987: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Firth, John R. (1949 [1948]), “Sounds and Prosodies”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1948, 127⫺152 [reprint in: Firth, J[ohn] R. (1957), Papers in Linguistics 1934⫺1951. London etc.: Oxford Univ. Press, 121⫺138] Haenisch, Erich (1961), Mandschu-Grammatik. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie (Lehrbücher für das Studium der Orientalischen Sprachen 6) Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press [later printings entitled Structural Lingiustics]

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57. Reduplication Hudson, Richard A. (1976), “Beja”. In: Bender, M. Lionel (ed.), The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing: African Studies Center, Michigan State Univ. (Committee on Ethiopian Studies, Occasional Papers Series, Monograph 5), 97⫺132 Jungraithmayr, Herrmann (1978), “Ablaut und Ton im Verbalsystem des Mubi”. Afrika und Übersee 61, 312⫺320 Kilani-Schoch, Marianne & Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1984), “Natural Morphology and Classical vs. Tunisian Arabic”. Wiener linguistische Gazette 33/34, 51⫺67 McCarthy, John J. (1981), “A Prosodic Theory of Nonconcatenative Morphology”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 373⫺418 McCarthy, John J. (1982), “Prosodic Templates, Morphemic Templates, and Morphemic Tiers”. In: Hulst, Harry van der & Smith, Norval (eds.), The Structure of Phonological Representations, Vol. I. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Linguistic Models 2), 191⫺223 McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. (1986), Prosodic Morphology. University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Brandeis University, ms. [issued in 1996 as Technical Report #32, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science] McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. (1990), “Foot and Word in Prosodic Morphology: The Arabic Broken Plural”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 209⫺283 McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. (1993), Prosodic Morphology I: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction. University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Rutgers University, ms. Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1963), “O ‘vnutrennej fleksii’ v indoevropejskich i semitskich jazykach”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1963.4, 27⫺40 [German transl.: “Zur ‘inneren Flexion’ in den indoeuropäischen und semitischen Sprachen”. In: Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1976), Das Wort: Zwischen Inhalt und Ausdruck.

München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 9), 258⫺287] Mitchell, T[erence] F. (1975), Principles of Firthian Linguistics. London: Longman (Longman Linguistics Library 19) Newman, Paul (1970), A Grammar of Tera. Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press (Univ. of California Publications in Linguistics 57) Nichols, Johanna (1971), “Diminutive Consonant Symbolism in Western North America”. Language 47, 826⫺848 Robins, R[obert] H. (1958), The Yurok Language. Berkeley, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press (Univ. of California Publications in Linguistics 15) Smith, Norval (1984), “Spreading, Reduplication and the Default Option in Miwok Nonconcatenative Morphology”. In: Hulst, Harry van der & Smith, Norval (eds.), Advances in Nonlinear Phonology. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris (Linguistic Models 7), 363⫺380 Testen, David (1987), “Vowel Structures and the Arabic Verb”. In: Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 23.2, 363⫺373 [Parasession on Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology] Wright, W[illiam] (31896), A Grammar of the Arabic Language, Vol. I, rev. by W. Robertson Smith and M. J. de Goeje. London, New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [11859 London, Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate; rev. transl. of: Caspari, Carl Paul (21859), Grammatik der arabischen Sprache für akademische Vorlesungen. Leipzig: Fritzsche [11848 Latin]) Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1989), “Von der Inadäquatheit einer Affixmorphologie”. In: Motsch, W[olfgang] (ed.), Wortstruktur und Satzstruktur. Berlin/DDR: Zentralinst. für Sprachwissenschaft (Linguistische Studien A 194), 277⫺298

Ellen Broselow, Stony Brook (U.S.A.)

57. Reduplication 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Definition Formal characteristics and subtypes Typical meanings and functions Cross-linguistic distribution Theoretical problems References

1.

Definition

The term reduplication is applied to a type of word formation (in the broad sense, including both derivation and inflection) in which

the phonological form of an affix is determined in whole or in part by the phonological form of the base to which it attaches. For example, in the Dravidian language Tamil, a reduplicative suffix is used to express plurality with variation (more than one similar objects or actions): (1) (a) /maram/ /maram-kiram/ (b) /kaappii/ /kaappii-kiippii/

‘tree’ ‘trees and such’ ‘coffee’ ‘coffee and such’

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(c) /maatu/ /maatu-kiitu/ (d) /paati/ /paati-kiiti/

‘cow’ ‘cows and such’ ‘having sung’ ‘having sung and so on’

The phonemic content of the Tamil plural/ variation suffix illustrated in (1) changes with the host stem; the length of the vowel in the first syllable and the entire shape of the second syllable replicate that of the stem. This phonological dependence characterizes reduplicating affixes, which may replicate as little as a single segment of the base or as much as the entire base (cf. 2.1). Although the segmental form of the reduplicating affix depends on a base, the affix may impose phonological requirements of its own, so that the affix may not reflect all of the characteristics of the base (cf. 2.2). Like other affixes, reduplicative affixes appear prefixed, suffixed, or infixed to a base, but unlike other affixes, they copy either contiguous or non-contiguous material from the beginning or end of the base (cf. 2.3). The discussion of reduplication in this article is limited to the affixation of a morpheme carrying some inflectional or derivational meaning (cf. 3). Examples of the repetition of the same word, as in very very bright, may be treated as syntactic rather than morphological, and hence are not considered here (cf. Moravcsik 1978: 301). Furthermore, only productive reduplication is taken into account, excluding non-productive reduplication within individual lexical items and onomatopoetic forms such as seesaw (cf. Wiese 1990: 622). Finally, cases of “doubling” or “gemination” (as in Semitic languages, e.g. Arabic katab ‘wrote’, kattab ‘caused to write’) and similar phenomena, which could be regarded as reduplication, are classified as substitution, together with converse processes such as “degemination” (cf. Art. 58).

2.

Formal characteristics and subtypes

2.1. Types of copies Reduplication can be total or partial, and can repeat the phonological form of the stem exactly or inexactly, as when some portion of the reduplicating affix prespecifies a fixed set of sounds or sound features independent of the phonological form of the base. In exact total reduplication, the reduplicating affix repeats the entire phonological form of the base. For example, Warlpiri forms the

plural of some nouns by affixing a complete copy of the noun (Nash 1986: 130): (2) (a) kurdu kurdu-kurdu (b) kamina kamina-kamina (c) mardukuja mardukuja-mardukuja

‘child’ ‘children’ ‘girl’ ‘girls’ ‘woman’ ‘women’

In exact partial reduplication, the affix repeats only some of the phonological material from the base. Agta forms various plurals by prefixing a copy of the first (consonant)vowel-consonant sequence of the stem, rather than copying the entire stem (Healey 1960: 7): (3) (a) takki tak-takki (b) labańg lab-labańg (c) uffu uf-uffu

‘leg’ ‘legs’ ‘patch’ ‘patches’ ‘thigh’ ‘thighs‘’

The term inexact reduplication applies to cases in which the reduplicating affix includes prespecified segments or features, in addition to copying material from the stem. Thus, the affix includes some phonological material that does not depend on the base. In the Tamil plural formation illustrated in (1), the phonological form of the affix is partially fixed; the first consonant /k/ and the quality of the first vowel /i/ remain constant, while the remainder of the affix is determined by the phonological shape of the stem. Similarly, Yoruba nominalizes verbs with a prefix that copies the first consonant of a stem but places an ´ı after this copied consonant, regardless of the first stem vowel (Pulleyblank 1988: 265): (4) (a) to´bi tı´-to´bi (b) du`n dı´-du`n

‘be big’ ‘bigness’ ‘be sweet’ ‘sweetness’

As little as a single sound feature may be prespecified in partial reduplication. In Akan, a reduplicating verbal prefix, which indicates multiple activity or multiple actors, copies the first consonant and vowel of the stem but makes the copied vowel [⫹high] (Schachter & Fromkin 1968: 157): (5)

Verb (a) /se?/ (b) /fa?/ (c) /sc?/

Multiple /si-se?/ /f=-fa?/ /sw-sc?/

‘say’ ‘take’ ‘light’

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57. Reduplication

In some cases of reduplication, as exemplified in Tamil in (1), the length of the vowel in a reduplicating affix depends on vowel length in the stem. In Mokilese reduplication, a long vowel is reduplicated long but a short vowel is reduplicated with a following consonant. The vowel in the reduplicating affix thus does not have invariant length; it copies the length of the base vowel (Levin 1985: 35). (6) (a) (b) (c) (d)

Stem /pcdok/ /kasc/ /wadek/ /kookc/

Progressive /pcd-pcdok/ /kas-kasc/ /wad-wadek/ /koo-kookc/

‘plant’ ‘throw’ ‘read’ ‘grind coconut’ ‘bend’

in either case, segments are copied regardless of whether the sequence forms exactly a syllable or any other constituent in the stem from which the melody is copied (CarrierDuncan 1984: 262). (9) (a) /laakad/ /pag-la-lakad/ (b) /kandiilah/ /mag-ka-kandiilah/ (c) /ma-taliinoh/ /ma-talii-taliinoh/

‘walk’ ‘walking’ ‘candle’ ‘candle vendor’ ‘intelligent’ ‘rather intelligent’

Similarly, Mokilese distinguishes reduplication for a progressive verb from triplication for a continuative (Harrison 1973: 426):

Although the portion of the base copied in reduplication may not respect the constituency of the base, the form of the reduplicating affix itself in cases of partial reduplication is a specifiable phonological constituent, such as a syllable or foot, that can be characterized in terms of phonological shape (cf. 5.1.3). Because a reduplicating affix is not limited to copying a specific prosodic constituent of the base to which it attaches, reduplication may also copy more than the stem to which it is morphologically attached. For example, in Kihehe, the moderative of a verb stem is formed by a full reduplication prefix that copies the inflectional infinitival morph when this morph syllabifies with the stem, as in (10a) (Odden [D.] & Odden [M.] 1985: 501).

(8) (a) roar roar-roar roar-roar-roar

(10) (a) kwıíta-kw-ıíta moderat-inf-pour ‘to pour a bit’

(e) /caak/

/caa-caak/

Finally, in addition to reduplication, we also find languages that exhibit triplication. One such case involves Chinese adjectives, where the addition of two copies of a stem serves a different function from the addition of a single copy (Zhang 1987: 379): (7) ang ang-ang ang-ang-ang

‘red’ ‘reddish’ ‘extremely red’

‘give a shudder’ ‘be shuddering’ ‘continue to shudder’ (b) soang ‘tight’ soang-soang ‘being tight’ soang-soang-soang ‘still tight’

Hence the term reduplication extends to multiple repetitions, and to partial and inexact copies as well as total and exact copies of a base. 2.2. Types of bases In general, reduplication appears to copy some of the phonological material from a stem to which the reduplicating affix may be analyzed as attaching morphologically. The plurals in Tamil in (1) and Warlpiri in (2), for example, are created morphologically from the noun stem to be pluralized, and reduplication copies all or part of the stem. Although phonologically dependent, partial reduplication is often oblivious to the prosodic structure of the base from which it copies a phonemic melody. For example, Tagalog (cf. Art. 135) has reduplication of CV only, as in (9a⫺b) or CV(C)CV(C) sequences, as in (9c);

(b) ku-tova-tova inf-moderat-beat ‘to beat a bit’ The prefix appears in the form ku- in (10b) before a consonant, and thus is neither syllabified with the stem nor copied by the moderative verb forming reduplicating affix. The prefix in (10a) appears as kw- before a vowel, and thus is both syllabified with the stem and copied by moderative reduplication. Hence reduplication is not limited to copying material from only a single morph nor from the stem to which the reduplicating affix is morphologically attached; the apparent problem that examples like (10) raise for the issue of morphological bracketing is discussed further in 5.3.1. 2.3. Position Reduplicative affixes are positioned relative to their bases like any other affix; that is, they appear as prefixes, suffixes, and infixes. Examples of prefixed reduplication include Agta

560


(3), Yoruba (4), Akan (5), Mokilese (6), and Tagalog (9) (cf. also Bates 1986: 1 on Lushootseed). Suffixed reduplication appears in total inexact form in Tamil (1) and in partial exact form in Chukchi, which places a copy of the initial CVC of a noun in a suffix position to make the absolutive singular form (Krause 1980: 152): (11) noun /jil?e-/ /nute-/

Absolutive singular /jil?e-jil/ ‘gopher’ /nute-nut/ ‘earth, ground’ (12) (a) /qa6Le´?/ /qa´-q-Le?/ (b) /tsı¯ko/ /tsı´-ts-ko/ (c) /kwe¯6tsa?/ /kwe¯6-kw-tsa?/ (d) /tukoˆ6jo?/ /tu-t-koˆ6jo?/

Plural verb forms in Samoan illustrate the second sort of infixation. Here, a CV infix appears before the stressed syllable of a verb stem to form the plural. Stress is penultimate in Samoan (Broselow & MCarthy 1983/ 84: 30). (13) Singular /taa/ /nofo/ /alofa/ /savali/ /maliu/

Plural /ta-taa/ /no-nofo/ /a-lo-lofa/ /sa-va-vali/ /ma-li-liu/

‘strike’ ‘sit’ ‘love’ ‘walk’ ‘die’

Numerous examples of infixed reduplication have been reported and analyzed in the literature (cf. Broselow & McCarthy 1983/84; Davis 1988); their placement relative to a base is further discussed in 5.2.3. In addition to the varied positions of the reduplicating affix itself, the position of the material in the base that is copied in reduplication may vary. The examples from Mokilese (6), Chukchi (11), and Quileute (12) show that material copied from base-initial position may appear in prefix, suffix or infix position. Base-final material may be copied by prefixes, suffixes, or infixes as well. Madurese, for example, copies base-final material into prefix position to produce plurals, as in [bu´wa´q-ań] ‘fruit’, [wa´q-bu´wa´q-ań] ‘fruits’ (cf. Stevens 1968: 34). Chamorro provides an example of an infix which reduplicates material from the end of the base, although any word final consonants are ignored in the affix. Hence, only the initial CV of the final

Infixed reduplicative affixes occur in positions determined by either the CV structure or the foot structure (stress placement) of the base. An example of the first kind is found in Quileute; the reduplicative infix is positioned after the first vowel of a stem and copies the first consonant of the base in this position to form a frequentative. Thus the affix attaches after a specifiable portion of the stem (Andrade 1933⫺38: 187; the symbols ´, ¯ and ˆ denote high, mid and falling tonal accents). ‘he failed’ ‘he failed repeatedly’ ‘he put it on’ ‘he put it on repeatedly’ ‘he is hungry’ ‘several are hungry’ ‘snow’ ‘snow here and there’ syllable is copied, adding an intensified meaning to the adjective (Topping 1973: 183): (14) Adjective /⬘dankolo/ /bu⬘nita/ /⬘metgot/ /⬘MalaM/

Intensified /⬘danko-lo-lo/ /bu⬘ni-ta-ta/ /⬘met-go-got/ /⬘Ma-la-laM/

‘big’ ‘pretty’ ‘strong’ ‘hungry’

Furthermore, though the reduplicative affix usually copies a continuous sequence of segments from the base, as in the examples above, it may also copy a discontinuous set of segments (cf. Kitagawa 1987). The Austronesian languages Nakanai is claimed to have a reduplicative prefix which copies the initial consonant and the final vowel of the base, resulting in a progressive, plural, or adjectival form (cf. Broselow & McCarthy 1983/ 84: 60) (example from Johnston 1980: 149f.): (15) Base pita beta sio sile biso

3.

Reduplicated form pa-pita ‘muddy’ ba-beta ‘wet’ so-sio ‘carrying on ceremonial litter’ se-sile ‘tearing’ bo-biso ‘Biso sib-member’

Typical meanings and functions

Cross-linguistically, reduplicating affixes serve the same types of functions that any affix with its own phonological form can serve, including all derivational and inflectional functions. Thus reduplication functions in the

561

57. Reduplication

morphology just like other forms of affixation. Since reduplication is commonly used to mark certain semantic features, however, it has been suggested that it serves an iconic function (cf. Art. 30), with the repetition of phonological material indicating a repetition or intensity in the semantics. It has been claimed, furthermore, that its meanings are typically limited (cf. Bloomfield 1914: 156f.; Sapir 1921: 76⫺68; Moravcsik 1978: 316⫺ 325). For example, reduplication in nouns often indicates plurality, whether: (a) simple plurality, as in Warlpiri (2); (b) plurals of diversity, as in Tamil (1); (c) distributive plurals, as in Yoruba orı´ ‘head’, oroorı´ ‘every head’; `ıta`do´gu´ ‘15th day’, `ıt´`ı`ıta`do´gu´ ‘every 15th day’ (cf. Pulleyblank 1988: 262). In verbs, it often signals repetitive or intensive aspect. Thus, reduplication can signal (a) a repeated occurrence with the same participants in Quileute: /e´la¯6xali/ ‘I left him’, /e´?ela¯6xali/ ‘I leave him often’ (cf. Andrade 1933⫺38: 187); (b) reciprocal action in Yami: /palu/ ‘strike’, /mipalupalu/ ‘strike each other’; (c) repeated occurrence with multiple participants in Twi: /wu/ ‘die’, /wuwu/ ‘die (in numbers); /bu/ ‘bend/break’, /bubu/ ‘bend/break a thing in many places / break many things’; (d) added intensity in Thai: /dii/ ‘to be good’, /dıídii/ ‘to be extremely good’ (cf. Moravcsik 1978: 318⫺321). However, reduplication is also found signalling grammatical functions without apparent iconic meanings, or with meanings exactly opposite of the above typical meanings, e.g. perfective aspect in verbs in Greek (cf. Art. 123), diminished intensity in verbs in Kihehe (10), or diminutive in nouns in Agta: /wer/ ‘creek’, /wala-wer/ ‘small creek’; /ba´g/ ‘g-string’, /bala-ba´g/ ‘small g-string’ (cf. Healey 1960: 6). In addition, reduplication occurs in connection with the affixation of a phonologically fixed prefix or suffix, e.g. in Tagalog (9) (cf. Carrier-Duncan 1984). Here reduplication is a kind of stem extension and serves no function by itself, iconic or noniconic.

4.

Cross-linguistic distribution

Reduplication is not limited to one part of the globe or one type of morphology; it is found in a wide variety of language families

and language types. However, reduplication has been noted to be more common as a basic type of morphology in some families than in others. For example, reduplication plays a major role in the formation of words in members of the Austronesian family (as in Agta (3), Tagalog (9), Samoan (13), Chamorro (14), and Nakanai (15)) and the Niger-Congo family (including Yoruba (4), Akan (5), Kihehe (10)), while it is less common in the Indo-European family members (but cf. Latin (19) and Greek (20)). Reduplication may also serve as an indicator of a linguistic area, a geographic area in which languages of different families share linguistic structures. The languages of India, for example, which include Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, and Indo-European members, share certain types of reduplication in common, regardless of the origin of the reduplicative structure in a specific language family (cf. Abbi 1992: 157). Thus the presence or absence of a specific type of reduplication may be useful in drawing areal isoglosses. Reduplication also seems to be found in languages of all morphological types, from synthetic (cf. Latin (19), Greek (20)) and isolating (cf. Chinese (7), Samoan (13)) to agglutinative (Yoruba (4)).

5.

Theoretical problems

5.1. Formalization 5.1.1. Transformational rules Many attempts at the formal characterization of reduplication have resorted to notations that would allow rules to be written that never occur in natural languages (cf. McCarthy 1982: 356; Marantz 1982: 435). Since reduplication seems to involve a factorization of the string of phonemes in a stem and an operation on some of the factors, traditional rule systems of the 1960s and 1970s would write reduplication as a transformational rule of the sort familiar from early transformational syntax. Partial reduplication might involve a rule such as: (16) C V X 1 2 3 J 1 2 1 2 3 However, admitting such transformational rules to the grammar gives it the formal power to express rules that would be equally natural formally yet are never observed, for example, the mirror-image reduplication rule in (17): (17) C V C V 1 2 3 4 J 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4

562 An adequate theory should provide a means to formalize reduplication without allowing the sort of rule schematized in (17). Some observations on the formal properties of reduplication have led to the abandonment of such transformational rules and an investigation of partial reduplication in terms of phonological units called prosodic categories, including moras, syllables, and feet. Full reduplication affixes a copy of an entire morph, regardless of its phonological character. Partial reduplication too is often oblivious to the prosodic structure of the base from which it copies a melody, so that the segments in the reduplicated affix may not come from a single syllable in the base. For example, reduplication in Agta (3) copies CVC sequences without regard to whether the sequence forms a syllable in the morph from which the melody is copied. Thus the portion of the stem copied in partial reduplication may or may not respect the prosodic constituency of the stem. However, where partial reduplication appears to copy a nonconstituent portion of the stem, the form of the reduplicating affix itself is a specifiable prosodic constituent, such as a syllable or foot, that can be characterized in terms of phonological shape. While a transformational account might predict that one should find reduplication copying any specifiable sub-part of the stem in any order without regard to the form of the output, the reduplicating affix, like affixes that have their own phonological material, in fact seems to be assigned a particular prosodic structure. In reduplication, phonological material from the stem is “borrowed” and mapped onto the prosodic structure of the affix (cf. Marantz 1982: 445). How this borrowing and mapping should be formalized has been a matter of theoretical debate since the early 1980’s. 5.1.2. Full copy and truncation One approach is to characterize reduplication as a set of rules including (full) copying, syllabification and truncation, rather than affixation (cf. Steriade 1988). All partial reduplication would thus be full reduplication followed by truncation of the copy, where the truncation involved is parallel to that occurring in the formation of nick-names (hypocoristics, e.g. Liz from Elizabeth, Sam from Samuel with a CVC structure; cf. also Art. 92). Although the truncation and simplification result in reduplicative morphs which conform to certain canonical prosodic shapes in a language, the truncation rules themselves


do not characterize these prosodic shapes or their connection to reduplication. Partial reduplication thus has to specify the unmarked prosodic shape that serves as the target for the reduction of a full copy of the stem. 5.1.3. Affixed templates Another approach suggests that the form of reduplication affixes are exactly the prosodic structures that characterize the output of truncation processes (cf. Marantz 1987; McCarthy & Prince 1988). The approach is based on the use of an independent prosodic “skeleton” or CV tier to which phonological material associates, an analysis required outside reduplication in the non-concatenative root and pattern morphology familiar from Semitic languages (cf. McCarthy 1981: 382; Art. 56). In such non-concatenative morphology, the phonemic content (the “melody”) and the skeleton are independent morphemes. A reduplicative affix consists of a skeleton without complete phonemic content, so that at least some of the melody must be borrowed from the stem. In this approach, the templates for reduplicative affixes are predicted to reflect the authentic units of prosody for the language, e.g. minimal or maximal moras, syllables, or feet. Since the reduplicating affix asserts its own skeletal requirements on its form, the syllabification of the copied material does not necessarily match the syllabification of the original material as found in the base (cf. (3), (6), (9), (11)). 5.2. Specific problems On either model of reduplication, the special character of reduplication apart from other forms of word formation rests in the copying or borrowing of phonemic material from a base. Both models assume that a single general mechanism for copying or borrowing is part of Universal Grammar. The other principles or mechanisms needed to derive the correct forms of reduplicating affixes would be motivated independently of reduplication. Thus the account of reduplication would not add formal power to the grammar and predict the existence of wild word formation rules such as that in (17). Nevertheless, problems remain for proposed accounts of reduplication. 5.2.1. Transfer problem One problem with characterizing all reduplicating affixes in terms of specific prosodic units is that in some cases, aspects of the prosodic structure of the affix are determined by

563

57. Reduplication

the base. This is known as the problem of transfer, since it seems that non-melodic information can be transferred from the base to the reduplicating affix (cf. Clements 1985: 41). In the most common case of transfer, vowel length in a reduplicating affix depends on vowel length in the stem. In autosegmental phonology, long vowels are generally represented as a single vowel melody attached to two vowel positions (two V slots or two moras); thus length is not represented in the phoneme melody itself. Under the template approach, the reduplicating affix should have a consistent prosodic shape, such as a heavy syllable, and only the phonemic melody could be mapped to the affix (cf. 5.1.3). Thus the length of the vowel in the base should be irrelevant to the length of the vowel in the affix. However, the length of a vowel in the base may be reflected in the reduplicative affix. In the Mokilese examples (6), the reduplication affix on forms with long vowels, such as (6d) /kookc/ differs from that on bases with short vowels, such as (6a) /pcdok/. If the length of the vowel in the base were not available to the reduplicative affix in template form, we should get */kok-kookc/ by parallel to /pcd-pcdok/; instead, we find /koo-kookc/, with the length of the initial syllable preserved in the reduplicative affix. The diagram (18) illustrates a bare templatic approach; the reduplicative affix is added to the form in (6a), and has access to a copy of only the melody of that base.

a reduplicative affix in purely prosodic terms (cf. Spring 1990: 86). Some melodic information must also accompany a prespecified affix, as in Tamil (1), Yoruba (4), and Akan (5). It may be possible to account for some apparent cases of prespecification by blocking the copying of base melody to certain positions in the reduplicative affix and filling these positions with the default segments of the language. This blocking of association and default fill-in has been suggested as the source of the invariant ´ı in the Yoruba reduplicating prefix in (4) (cf. Pulleyblank 1988). However, cases of total reduplication with prespecified slots, as in Tamil (1), have required copy and association accounts of reduplication to add rules of melodic overwriting to full copying (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1988).

(18) sAF

(19)

k o k

s 兩兩兩 C V V C 兩 k o k

As in (18), the copy of the melody alone does not reveal the length the vowel has in the base; thus, the template should not be able to distinguish between a base with a long vowel and a base with a short vowel. An account involving full copying of the base with its prosodic information followed by truncation has no difficulty accounting for such transfer (cf. Steriade 1988 and 5.1.2). But approaches using prosodic templates for the reduplicative affix have had to specify that the double linking of a long vowel to the skeletal or moraic tier is part of the information copied with the base melody. Prespecification of fixed phonemic material in a reduplicating affix can also pose a problem for accounts that state the form of

5.2.2. Coping versus spreading In the formalization of reduplication, the affix’s phonological dependence on the base to which it attaches may be captured through the copying of the entire base or just the phonemic melody of the base, with truncation of the copy or association of the copy to a prosodic skeleton. However, such a phonological dependence may also result from the spreading of the base’s melody to the affix through the addition of association lines without copying any part of the base. One form of perfect reduplication in Latin and Greek illustrates the two types of reduplication (cf. McIntyre 1992). In Latin, the first CV of the verb base is copied to form the perfect stem: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

Base currpugdicmordtondtendpend-

Perfect stem cucurr‘run’ pupug‘prick’ didic‘learn’ momord‘bite’ totond‘shear’ tetend‘stretch’ pepend‘hang’

The vowel of the Latin verb root is copied in the reduplicated affix. By contrast, in perfect stems in Greek, the first vowel of the stem does not reflect the root vowel but rather appears as /e/ in the consonant-initial roots, as in (20a⫺c). In vowel initial roots, the initial vowel is lengthened, as in (20d⫺f): (20) (d) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

Base lu¯graphklinaggelethelophel-

Perfect stem lelu¯‘loose’ gegraph‘write’ kekli‘incline’ a¯ggel‘announce’ e¯thel‘wish’ o¯phel‘owe’

564


While Latin is seen as the copy and associate type of reduplication, perfect reduplication in Greek has been analyzed as the spreading of a melody from the perfect stem to a prefixed CV (cf. Steriade 1982: 200). Once the CV- prefix is added, the melody of the initial consonant of the perfect stem spreads to the prefixal C by the addition of an association line.

cesses” potentially distinct in morphology from the arrangement of the morphological “items” known as morphemes. Reduplication is special only in being underspecified in segmental features, and these are filled in by copying or spreading information from the base to which the reduplicating morphemes are attached.

(21) C V ⫺ C V V .

5.2.3. Infixing reduplication Like other affixes, reduplicating affixes may be positioned as infixes, within the stem to which they are morphologically attached (cf. 2.3 and Art. 55). The positioning of reduplicating infixes parallels that of infixes with fixed phonological form (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1993: § 7). In general, infixes attach to bases in one of two ways: they attach to the beginning or end of a word after a specifiable portion of the stem has been removed (e.g. after the first C of a word), or they attach to a specific metrical subconstituent of the base (e.g. to the foot or syllable with main stress). Reduplication infixation illustrates both patterns of infixation (cf. Broselow & McCarthy 1983/84), as the examples from Quileute (12) and Samoan (13) show. Regardless of the positioning of the reduplicating infix, it never seems necessary for the infix to borrow phonological material from both pieces of the base inside which it finds itself, i.e. from both the left and the right. Therefore, it is possible to reduce the copying in infixing reduplication to the copying in prefixing and suffixing reduplication: the infix would attach phonologically to the piece of the stem from which it borrows its phonemic melody and borrow its melody from the constituent to which it attaches, as does any reduplicating affix. However, such an account of the phonological form of reduplicating infixes raises certain questions for explicit theories of prosodic morphology. Suppose that in cases in which the infix occurs either before or after some prosodically specifiable prosodic unit or units, these units are “circumscribed” or ignored in the attachment of the infix to the remainder of the word (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1990; Hammond 1991). In the Quileute forms in (12), the initial C and V of the stems would be circumscribed so that the infix can be positioned after them. However, the infix appears to borrow material from the circumscribed CV; the borrowed C is not part of the base to which the affix attaches after circumscription. On a prosodic circumscription analysis, then, an infix must borrow the entire phonemic melody of the base to which

. l u o After the initial consonant of the prefix has been associated to the same melody as the initial consonant of the base by spreading, the melody of the vowel of the base cannot associate to the vowel of the prefix without crossing association lines. The vowel of the prefix must be filled in either by default or by an insertion rule. (22) C V ⫺ C V V 兩兩兩

兩

l u o Hence the vowel of the prefix remains /e/ for all bases rather than matching the melody of vowel in each base. If the reduplicating affix associated to a copy of the melody of the base, as in Latin, there would be no reason for the vowel to remain the same when the CV- attaches to different bases; the first copied vowel from the base, whatever its identity, would associate with the first V slot of the prefix. Furthermore, a spreading approach allows the same CV- perfect prefix to account for the vowel-initial perfect stems in Greek, as in (20d⫺f), where the vowel lengthens. If the base melody associates with the added CV- by spreading, the vowel from the stem spreads to the V slot of the prefix, yielding the representation of a long vowel, and all consonantal spreading is blocked. (23) C V ⫺ V C C V C . . a g g e l Hence an analysis involving spreading is argued to provide a better account for some cases of reduplication. ⫺ In all the abovementioned formal approaches, reduplication proves to be simply another form of regular affixation, rather than one of a class of “pro-

57. Reduplication

565

it attaches morphologically, not just the portion of the base to which it attaches phonologically after circumscription. On the other hand, when an infix attaches to a specified prosodic constituent, such as the stressed foot in Samoan (13), the infix borrows only the melody of this specified constituent. The behavior of reduplicating infixes under circumscription might support a general view of infixation under circumscription that analyzes such infixes as prefixes (or suffixes) that are trying simultaneously to attach to the left (or right) edge of the morphological base and to meet the phonological wellformedness conditions of the language. In the Quileute example, the infix would be analyzed as a C prefix that copies the phonemic material of its morphological base. The prefixal C could not syllabify with the initial C of the base and so finds itself moved to the coda position of the initial syllable, a position as close to the beginning of the stem as the C affix could get while still creating a wellformed syllable with the phonological material of the stem. Under such an approach, considerations of the optimal phonological form of the output interact with the CV form of the affix to determine its location relative to the base (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1993: 21).

those cases where it syllabifies with the stem. In such cases as (10a) kwıíta-kw-ıíta ‘to pour a bit’, the prefix is phonologically bracketed with the verb stem and the affix copies both.

5.3. Morphology and phonology Reduplication affixes raise two theoretical issues for the interaction between morphology and phonology (cf. Art. 35). First, mismatches between morphological and phonological bracketings in reduplication raise questions for approaches to morphology and phonology that require that phonological rules operate in parallel with morphological affixation (5.3.1). Second, the copying of phonological material in reduplication after the application of certain phonological rules raises the question of whether copying is morphological or phonological in nature (5.3.2).

5.3.2. Interaction with phonological rules Also indicating that the copying of reduplication is essentially phonological is the interaction of reduplication with the operation of phonological rules. In certain cases, it appears that the copying in reduplication must follow the application of specific phonological rules to the stem (cf. Odden [D.] & Odden [M.] 1985: 501). The Kihehe examples in (10) demonstrate the need to order at least syllabification before the copying of reduplication. On standard assumptions about the organization of grammar, strictly morphological operations should precede phonological rules, so reduplicative copying could not reflect the prior operation of phonological rules if it were strictly morphological. On the other hand, approaches that allow phonological rules to apply before morphological ones could allow the application of certain phonological rules before the copying in reduplication (cf. Art. 35). The evidence from bracketing paradoxes shows that the morphological and phonological structures, and hence morphological and phonological derivations of words, cannot be equated as they are in some of these approaches. Since the morphological and phonological structures are seen to be in-

5.3.1. Bracketing paradoxes When a reduplicating affix attaches to a subpiece of a stem, as in Samoan infixation (13), the phonological bracketing of the resulting word does not exactly mirror the morphological bracketing. Similarly to bracketing paradoxes, the copying in reduplication reflects a phonological bracketing of a word that is distinct from that word’s morphological structure (cf. Marantz 1987 and Art. 42). In the Kihehe example (10), the infinitival prefix kuis copied in the reduplicative affix in exactly

(24) Phonological: moderat-[inf-[Stem]] Morphological: inf-[moderat-[Stem]] Under standard assumptions in morphology, the moderative affix, which is derivational, is morphologically attached to the stem inside the infinitival affix, which is inflectional. This morphological structure remains the same regardless of syllabification. However, the phonological structure, being sensitive to the syllabification, appears to result in a copy of an inflectional affix as part of the reduplicative derivational affix. Such “bracketing paradoxes” or mismatches between phonological and morphological bracketings reveal a separation of the morphological and phonological structure of words. Reduplication is sensitive to the syllabification and thus the phonological structure of words; therefore, the copying in reduplication occurs in the phonology, not the morphology. With a separation between morphological affixation (of a bare template) and phonological copying (of phonemic material), mismatches are to be expected.

566 dependent, evidence that the copying in reduplication depends on the operation of certain phonological rules provides further support for the conclusion that the copying in reduplication is part of the phonology, not the morphology. Recent accounts of reduplication stress the role of phonological constraints which interact to determine both the placement and the phonological form of reduplicative affixes (cf. McCarthy & Prince 1993; Prince & Smolensky 1993). For example, the optimal placement of a fundamentally prefixal affix may be shifted to a base-internal position in order to satisfy some phonological constraint on CV structure, as in Quileute (cf. 5.2.3). Copying in reduplication is viewed as the result of constraints which require a reduplicative affix to match the form of its base; inexact or partial copying results when these base-reduplicant identity constraints are overridden by other constraints in the phonology. This base-reduplicant identity approach of Optimality Theory revives an earlier analysis which accounted for apparent over- and under-application of phonological rules in reduplicated forms by a constraint enforcing a phonological identity between base and reduplicating affix (cf. Wilbur 1973). On the optimality accounts of the 1990s, the only property unique to reduplicative affixes, as opposed to affixes with full segmental content, is that they are subject to such identity constraints, in addition to the usual phonetic (and other) constraints of the language. Such work in constraint-based phonology continues the tradition of treating reduplication as similar to any other affixation except in the borrowing of phonological material (cf. Marantz 1982). The various mechanisms needed to derive the correct phonological form for the reduplicating affix have been shown to be independently motivated in affixes, except perhaps for this copying. However, research on bracketing paradoxes and on the interaction of reduplication and phonological rules shows that whatever this copying is, it is phonological, not morphological; it is ordered among phonological processes and dependent on the phonological, not the morphological, bracketing of a word. Thus it belongs, together with the “spreading” of features and the attachment and delinking of association lines, among the types of autosegmental phonological mechanisms. If a general copying mechanism or base-reduplicant identity constraint is added to the possible


phonological resources of the grammar, reduplication may be wholly assimilated to affixation.

6.

References

Abbi, Anvita (1992), Reduplication in South Asian Languages. New Delhi: Allied Publishers Andrade, Manuel J. (1933⫺38), “Quileute”. In: Boas, Franz (ed.), Handbook of American Indian Languages, Vol. III. Glückstadt etc.: Augustin, 149⫺202 Bates, Dawn (1986), “An Analysis of Lushootseed Diminutive Reduplication”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 12, 1⫺13 Bloomfield, Leonard (1914), An Introduction to the Study of Language. New York: Holt; London: Bell Broselow, Ellen & McCarthy, John (1983/84), “A Theory of Internal Reduplication”. The Linguistic Review 3, 25⫺88 Carrier-Duncan, Jill (1984), “Some Problems with Prosodic Accounts of Reduplication”. In: Aronoff, Mark & Oehrle, Richard T. (eds.), Language Sound Structure. Studies in Phonology Presented to Morris Halle by His Teacher and Students. Cambridge/ MA, London: MIT Press, 260⫺286 Clements, George N. (1985), “The Problem of Transfer in Nonlinear Morphology”. Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics 7, 38⫺73 Davis, Stuart (1988), “On the Nature of Internal Reduplication”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press, 305⫺323 Hammond, Michael (1991), “Morphemic Circumscription”. Yearbook of Morphology 1991, 195⫺209 Harrison, S. P. (1973), “Reduplication in Micronesian Languages”. Oceanic Linguistics 12, 407⫺454 Healey, Phyllis M. (1960), An Agta Grammar. Manila: Bureau of Printing Johnston, Raymond Leslie (1980), Nakanai of New Britain: The Grammar of an Oceanic Language. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Australian National Univ. (Pacific Linguistics B 70) Kitagawa, Yoshihisa (1987), “Redoing Reduplication: A Preliminary Sketch”. In: Huck, Geoffrey J. & Ojeda, Almerindo E. (eds.), Discontinuous Constituency. Orlando/FL etc.: Academic Press (Syntax and Semantics 20), 71⫺106 Krause, Scott Russell (1980), Topics in Chukchee Phonology and Morphology. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Illinois Levin, Juliette (1985), A Metrical Theory of Syllabicity. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Marantz, Alec (1982), “Re Reduplication”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 435⫺482

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58. Substitution of segments and features Marantz, Alec (1987), “Phonologically Induced Bracketing Paradoxes in Full Morpheme Reduplication”. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 6, 203⫺211 McCarthy, John J. (1981), “A Prosodic Theory of Nonconcatenative Morphology”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 373⫺418 McCarthy, John J. (1982), Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology. New York, London: Garland Publishing [orig. 1979: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; reprinted 1982, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club] McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan (1988), “Quantitative Transfer in Reduplicative and Templatic Morphology”. In: Linguistics in the Morning Calm 2. Selected Papers from SICOL-1986. Seoul: Hanshin, 3⫺35 McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. (1990), “Foot and Word in Prosodic Morphology: The Arabic Broken Plural”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 202⫺282. McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan (1993), Generalized Alignment. New Brunswick/NJ: Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (Technical Report 7) McIntyre, Linda Lee (1992), Classical Reduplication. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Moravcsik, Edith A. (1978), “Reduplicative Constructions”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. III: Word Structure: Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 297⫺334 Nash, David (1986), Topics in Warlpiri Grammar. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1980: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Odden, David & Odden, Mary (1985), “Ordered Reduplication in Kihehe”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 497⫺503 Prince, Alan & Smolensky, Paul (1993), Optimality Theory. New Brunswick/NJ: Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (Technical Report 2)

Pulleyblank, Douglas (1988), “Vocalic Underspecification in Yoruba”. Linguistic Inquiry 19, 233⫺270 Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace Schachter, Paul & Fromkin, Victoria A. (1968), A Phonology of Akan: Akuapem, Asante, and Fante. Los Angeles: Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of California at Los Angeles (UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 9) Spring, Cari Louise (1990), Implications of Axininca Campa for Prosodic Morphology and Reduplication. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Arizona Steriade, Donca (1982), Greek Prosodies and the Nature of Syllabification. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Steriade, Donca (1988), “Reduplication and Syllable Transfer in Sanskrit and Elsewhere”. Phonology 5, 73⫺155 Stevens, Alan M. (1968), Madurese Phonology and Morphology. New Haven/CT: American Oriental Society (American Oriental Series 52) Topping, Donald M. (1973), Chamorro Reference Grammar. Honolulu: Univ. Press of Hawaii Wiese, Richard (1990), “Über die Interaktion von Morphologie und Phonologie ⫺ Reduplikation im Deutschen”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 43, 603⫺ 624 Wilbur, Ronnie Bring (1973), The Phonology of Reduplication. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Illinois [reprinted 1973, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club] Zhang, Zheng-Sheng (1987), “Reduplication as a Type of Operation”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 23.1, 376⫺388

Caroline Wiltshire, Gainesville/FL (U.S.A.) Alec Marantz, Cambridge/MA (U.S.A.)

58. Substitution of segments and features 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Definition and terminology Characteristic formal properties Typical meanings and functions Theoretical issues References

1.

Definition and terminology

There are a variety of morphological phenomena in which meaning is conveyed not by affixation or repetition of segments (redupli-

cation), but within stem morphemes by variation in consonants and/or vowels. Although many of these seem to be quasi-phonological processes, they have morphological functions similar to those of affixation, reduplication, compounding, and the like. Included here specifically are phenomena of vowel and consonant mutation and gradation. (a) Vowel mutation (umlaut or metaphony) involves alternations of vowels either syn-

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chronically or historically brought about by neighboring vowels (cf. Hartman & Stork 1972: 254). Typical vowel mutation or umlaut cases are English plurals like foot ⬃ feet, from Old English fo¯t ⬃ fo¯ti, where the conditioning segment has ceased to exist. In German, umlaut frequently appears to be conditioned by certain derivational suffixes which no longer contain front vowels. Less usual seems to be a case like Chamorro, where stem vowels are fronted when immediately preceded by any morph containing a front vowel (cf. Topping 1968: 68f.); in such a case it becomes more difficult to distinguish vowel mutation from vowel harmony. (b) Vowel gradation (ablaut or apophony) concerns variations in the vowels of stems which serve to mark different meanings or functions. Historically in Indo-European, ablaut was conditioned by the position of accent. Strong verbs in English (sing, sang, sung and the like) show vowel gradation to signal past tense and participial forms of verbs. Within the Sanskrit grammatical tradition two particular types of ablaut are distinguished: guna and vrøddi; the former involves prefixing of an a-element to a simple vowel, and the latter adding another a- prefix to the guna vowel (cf. Whitney 21889: 81). (c) Consonant mutation and gradation (the terms are not consistently distinguished) are morphological phenomena in which lexical stems exhibit two or more forms that differ (usually, but see 2.2) in an initial or final consonant and appear in distinct morphological environments (cf. Lieber 1987: 72). A typical example occurs in Fula, where noun classes (3) (a) /sinkXl/ /sinkXl/ (b) /mesXkkupta/ /misXkkepta/ (c) /kXlkcek/ /kalcak/ (d) /tunkXl/ /tonkXl/

are distinguished on the basis of initial consonants: waa ‘monkey (Class 11)’, baa ‘monkey (Class 25)’, mbaa ‘monkey (Class 6)’. It is frequently the case that consonant mutations are triggered by the presence of particular neighboring morphemes or in particular syntactic configurations. Within the American structuralist tradition, vowel and consonant mutation and gradations were frequently described as replacive morphs (cf. 4.4.2). Here, the term mutation will be used as a theoretically neutral term to refer to all of these phenomena collectively.

2.

Characteristic formal properties

2.1. Vocalic alternations Mutations effect a variety of changes on the base. Typical mutations for vowels include the fronting that occurs in German umlaut (1), or in the male/female pairs (2) in Manchu (cf. Haenisch 1961: 34): (1) kurz rot Arzt faul (2) haha ama amila

‘short’ ‘red’ ‘doctor’ ‘rotten’ ‘man’ ‘father’ ‘cock’

Kürze Röte Ärztin Fäulnis hehe eme emile

‘shortness’ ‘redness’ ‘female doctor’ ‘rot’ ‘woman’ ‘mother’ ‘hen’

Korean attests a mutation which depends upon the height of vowels; in this language nonlow vowels alternate with low vowels, except for the high rounded vowels /u/ and /y/ which alternate with the mid vowels /o/ and /ø/ respectively (cf. Kim 1977: 68; see also 4.3):

‘smiling’ ‘smiling brightly and affectionately’ ‘nauseating’ ‘a little nauseating’ ‘scratch successively’ ‘scratching with a small and quick movement’ ‘somewhat round’ ‘somewhat round involving a small circle’

In Hua, mutation involves change in both backness and height; front vowels become back in certain contexts (see 3), back vowels become low in other contexts, and back vowels become front in still others (cf. Haiman 1980: 35⫺44). Javanese exhibits a mutation in which the final stem vowel is raised and tensed (cf. Dudas 1974: 93). Vowel mutations in other languages are not so simply charac-

terized. For example, ablaut of strong verbs in English involves a variety of alternations in backness (awake ⬃ awoke), height (blow ⬃ blew; sing ⬃ sang), length/tenseness (bleed ⬃ bled, bite ⬃ bit; due to the Great Vowel Shift, the nature of the alternation has changed), and others. Finally, some languages attest changes in the length of vowels or in tonal patterns in specified morpho-

569

58. Substitution of segments and features

logical contexts. Sanskrit vrøddi might be seen as an example of the sort involving length, as might certain types of word formation in Tagalog which, together with the addition of a suffix, effect a change in vowel length. The

word formation process which derives nouns meaning ‘covered with X’ requires the noun stem to have a short vowel regardless of its underlying length (cf. Schachter & Otanes 1972: 224):

(4) /dugo?/ ‘blood’ /dugu?an/ ‘covered with blood’ /pu6tik/ ‘mud’ /putikan/ ‘covered with mud’ The Nigerian Kwa language Bini evidences high tone on adverbs conveying concepts of tallness, thinness, tightness, etc., and low tone on those conveying shortness, thickness, looseness, and so on (cf. McCarthy 1983 b: 138f.). 2.2. Consonantal alternations Mutation in consonants might in theory show a great variety of segmental alternations; in fact, the vast majority of cases seem to involve alternations in one (or more) of three features (cf. Lieber 1987: 72⫺129; Rice & Cowper 1984: 309; Kendall & Bird 1982: 3f.; Dillon & o´ Croínin 1961: 9f.; Prince 1984: 241; see 2.3 for some examples): (a) voicing (Fula, Nuer, Chemehuevi, Mende, Soninke, Celtic languages, Finnish), (b) continuancy (all of the above), and (c) nasality (Fula, Chemehuevi, Mende, Soninke, Celtic languages). However, these mutations are not always phonetically regular (see 4.3). Other sorts of alternations evidenced in consonant mutations include palatalization of various consonants (Chaha, Ennemor, Zoque, Basque; cf. McCarthy 1983 a: 178⫺ 182; Marocs 1974: 251f.; Webb 1976: 81; Saltarelli 1988: 270), labialization of consonants (Chaha), and alternations having to do with laryngeal features such as glottalization (Otomi, Zoque; cf. Wallis 1956: 254; Webb 1976: 81) and aspiration (Korean; cf. Kim 1977: 67; McCarthy 1983 b: 142). Typically, then, consonant mutations involve alternations in the manner of articulation of specified consonants, as opposed to the point of articulation. A possible exception to this generalization is an alternation between alveolar and dental r in Dieguenõ that is one of a number of sparsely attested sound symbolic alternations in this language (cf. Langdon 1971: 102). 2.3. Location of mutation Vocalic mutations may appear in the sole stem vowel (English umlaut plurals and strong verbs; some cases of German umlaut),

in the vowel preceding a triggering morphological element (ablaut in Hua; some cases of German umlaut), in a stem initial vowel (the Tagalog example in (4)), a stem final vowel (Javanese), or in all relevant stem vowels (for Manchu, all nonhigh stem vowels; all stem vowels in Bini; all vowels except high nonrounded vowels in noninitial syllables in Korean). Consonant mutation tends to occur in a marginal segment, that is, either an initial or final consonant. Fula noun class mutation (see 1) is an initial mutation, as are the mutations in Chemehuevi, Mende, Soninke, Otomi, and the Celtic languages. Palatalization in Chaha imperatives affects a final consonant (cf. McCarthy 1983 a: 179; /dj/ and /sj/ are phonetically [dz] and [s]): (5) 2. sg. m. /nemæd/ /nekes/ /feræx/

2. sg. f. /nemædj/ /nekesj/ /feræxj/

‘love!’ ‘bite!’ ‘be patient!’

Mutation in Nuer also affects only stem final consonants. Relatively rare are mutations that affect nonfinal consonants, or more than one consonant in a stem. Of the former sort are labialization in Chaha, which affects the rightmost labializable consonant (labializable consonants are the labials and the velars), and palatalization in Ennemor imperatives, which affects a stem final dental consonant, or if there is no dental the rightmost velar as long as no palatalizable stop intervenes (cf. Marcos 1974: 251; /tj/ is phonetically [ts]): (6) 2. sg. m. /keft/ /feræx/ /kefef/

2. sg. f. /keftj/ /feræxj/ /kjefef/

‘open!’ ‘be patient!’ ‘trim!’

Mutation in Ennemor is an especially interesting case, as it may affect vowels as well as consonants. If a stem contains no palatalizable consonant, the rightmost vowel will be fronted instead: /serem/ ⬃ /serim/ ‘spin!’ (labials are not palatalizable). In the consonant

570


mutation associated with Korean ideophones, any syllable initial stop may undergo mutation; lightly aspirated stops are repre(7) simple /pinpin/ /calkak/

intensive /p’inp’in/ /c’alk’ak/

paraintensive /phinphin/ ‘round and round in circles’ /chalkhak/ ‘with a click or clink’

One final phenomenon which is referred to in the literature as “consonant gradation” (cf. Keyser & Kiparsky 1984: 15; Prince 1984: 240) is probably not an example of the sort of phenomenon we are concerned with here. Finnish displays a phenomenon in which geminate /pp, tt, kk/ shorten, nongeminate /p, t, k/ undergo certain changes reminiscent of mutation (e.g., /k/ J π, /p/ J /v/, /t/ J /d/, /mp/ J /mm/), but the environment appears to be purely phonological: “gradation” occurs in the onset of short, closed, noninitial syllables. Since it is not a bearer of morphological meaning, it is perhaps not an example of gradation or mutation in the sense intended here.

3.

sented as C, voiceless unaspirated stops as C’, and heavily aspirated stops as Ch (cf. McCarthy 1983 b: 142):

Typical meanings and functions

Mutation serves to encode a wide variety of meanings. Some mutations serve a purely inflectional function. Among these are the vowel mutations of English, which encode plural, past tense, and participial forms, and the consonant mutation of Fula, which is one of the markers of noun class membership. Mutation in Otomi distinguishes completive verbs, incompletive verbs, and resultant nouns. In Hua, two of the ablaut processes occur before certain verbal suffixes (the third is a sort of elsewhere case, occurring in verbs where neither of the other ablaut processes is applicable). Mutation in Chaha, Ennemor, and Zoque also serves an inflectional function. On the other hand, mutation in Manchu, Basque, and Javanese serves more of a derivational function, creating male-female pairs, diminutives, and intensives of adjectives (elatives), respectively. It is not always apparent what the meaning or function of a mutation is, however. One environment in which the Irish Lenition mutation takes place is in the second element of a compound (caint ‘talk’ ⬃ droch-chaint ‘bad language’); here it is not clear that mutation conveys a particular meaning or serves a particular function. Similarly, umlaut in German appears in a number of inflectional and derivational environments, including the plural of

certain nouns, the subjunctive of strong verbs, the comparative and superlative of some adjectives, and in conjunction with derivational affixes like -chen, -lein, -ling, and sometimes -in, -lich, -ig, among others. Again, it is not obvious what umlaut by itself means, or whether it has a unified function, although one possibility is that it serves to convey a concept of “markedness” (cf. Wurzel 1984: 651). Another typical function of mutation is in conveying sound symbolism, forming what have in some cases been called ideophones or echo words. Such is its function in Dieguenõ (cf. Langdon 1971: 101⫺103), where consonantal mutation can signal variation in size or intensity (e.g. /tsekulk/ ‘little hole through something’ ⬃ /tsekuLk/ ‘big hole through something’). Korean ideophones also signal differences in size and intensity (cf. (3)), whereas Gta? echowords signal concepts of size and difference: /kiton/ ‘god’ ⬃ /katan/ ‘being with powers equal to kiton’ ⬃ /kitin/ ‘being smaller, weaker than kiton’ ⬃ /kutan/ ‘being other than kiton’ (cf. McCarthy 1983 b: 148). Finally, some phenomena which are called mutations appear in contexts which are more easily characterized as syntactic than as morphological. For example, in Irish, Lenition occurs following certain prepositions, following the article an, after certain numerals, as well as in the second element of compounds, in the genitive of proper nouns, and so on. Here it is difficult to conceive of a single meaning or function to attribute to Lenition. The same problem arises with respect to the various mutations in the other Celtic languages, as well as in Soninke and Mende, although for Mende it can be argued that a uniform syntactic context is at stake, roughly that mutation occurs in the right sister of any branching syntactic configuration (cf. Rice & Cowper 1984: 311).

4.

Theoretical issues

4.1. Delimitation against other processes One issue which arises in considering mutation is how broadly we construe the scope of the phenomenon. Certainly the sorts of vowel


ablaut and umlaut and consonant mutation illustrated in 2 and 3 are central examples of this type of word formation. Less clearly to be counted as examples of mutation might be the noun-verb conversion pairs of English that involve a stress shift: pro´duceN ⬃ produćeV; pe´rmitN ⬃ permı´tV; etc. (cf. Art. 61). Are these to be treated as items involving substitution of segments or features? Similarly, morphological processes involving gemination and length might conceivably be treated as a species of mutation; for example, the Nilotic language Dinka uses changes in vowel length to signal plurality. One class of nouns which has long vowels in the singular forms the plural by shortening the stem vowel: piii ‘moon’ pii ‘moons’; cˇiin ‘hand’ ⬃ cˇin ‘hands’. Another class of nouns has short vowels in the singular and corresponding long vowels in the plural: pal ‘knife’ ⬃ paal ‘knives’ (cf. Anderson & Browne 1973: 460). Is this sort of phenomenon to be treated as mutation (cf. also Art. 60)? It has become increasingly clear in the 1980s that such phenomena might best not be classed as mutations. The theoretical issue here hinges on how the phonological phenomena of stress and quantity are to be treated. If stress has to do with prosodic aspects of language rather than with segmental aspects, then pairs like pe´rmit ⬃ permı´t do not involve mutation. Similarly, long segments have increasingly come to be seen as differing from short segments in terms of the number of timing units they occupy; the former occupy two units, the latter only one. Seen in this light, phenomena like the Dinka plural classes may not be strictly comparable to the sorts of mutation which involve qualitative changes in segments. Delineating mutation from affixation (cf. Art. 54) can also be a subtle matter. For instance, in the Kwa language Etsako, the singular ⬃ plural pairs in (8) are typical (cf. Elimelech 1978: 15): (8) singular /akpa/ /ukpo/ /ope/

plural /ikpa/ /ikpo/ /epe/

‘cup’ ‘cloth’ ‘rat’

A superficial examination of these data does not determine whether plural and singular are related by ablaut, or whether prefixation of separate singular and plural prefixes might be involved. But further examination of data involving diphthongs suggests that

571 prefixation might be the correct designation here. A noun like /aokwi/ ‘chameleon’ pluralizes as /iokwi/, with only the first vowel being affected (cf. Elimelech 1978: 18). A true ablaut process might conceivably effect a change to the whole diphthong. Finally, we might wonder whether a case like the French plurals in -aux (cheval ⬃ chevaux, journal ⬃ journaux) should be treated as a mutation in which the rime of a syllable is substituted. Historically, this class of plurals involved simple affixation, with subsequent vocalization of [l] before [s] (chevals J chevaus J chevaux); x is simply an orthographic sign of [s] in this context (cf. Grevisse 8 1964: 218). Synchronically, it is not clear how to treat this case. 4.2. Direction of substitution Another theoretical question is how to choose what form the mutation change, conceived either as a quasi-phonological process or as a species of affixation (cf. 4.4), is to be applied to, or in generative terms, how to arrive at the most plausible underlying form. Frequently the underlying form is taken to be the citation form, that is, the form of the word uttered in isolation (cf. Art. 62). This is the case, for example, in standard grammars of Irish and the other Celtic languages (cf. Dillon & o´ Croínin 1961: 4, 9f.; Mackinnon 1971: 1⫺3). Another alternative, which frequently coincides with the first in any case, is to take the semantically or morphosyntactically least marked form as the underlying form ⫺ for example, the underived stem or the nominative singular form for nouns or the uninflected stem for verbs (cf. also Art. 29). But another alternative is to propose as the base of the mutation the form which yields the simplest and most elegant set of mutation rules. Thus it has been argued that the stop initial forms of Fula nouns are the underlying forms, even though they are not necessarily the unmarked, singular forms, on the grounds that all nouns participating in the consonant gradation system of Fula have a stop initial form, but not all have continuant or prenasalized stop initial forms (cf. Skousen 1972: 88f.). Within an autosegmental framework (cf. 4.4.2), it has been argued that the underlying form is actually none of the forms that shows up in the noun classes, but rather a form in which the initial consonant of the noun stem is underspecified for the features of voicing, continuancy, and na-

572


sality (cf. Lieber 1987: 74⫺77). Which analysis is considered best ultimately depends upon the correctness of the empirical predictions made, as well as on theory-internal matters. There is no general or independent way of determining the direction of substitution. 4.3. Phonological irregularities Some mutations are quite regular in terms of the phonological changes effected; labialization in Chaha, for example, affects all labial and velar consonants, producing /gw/ from /g/, /kw/ from /k/, and so on. Other mutations are not so easily characterized as coherent phonological changes or substitutions of natural classes of segments or features, however. In the Lenition mutation in Welsh, for example, initial consonants alternate as follows (cf. Rhys Jones 1977; see also Art. 51 on Irish): (9) /p/ /t/ /k/ /b/ /d/

⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃

/b/ /d/ /g/ /v/ /d/

/g/ /m/ /L/ /rj/

⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃

π /v/ /l/ /r/

In other words, voiceless stops and liquids become voiced, voiced stops become continuants (except for /g/, which is deleted), and /m/ becomes /v/ in environments which trigger Lenition. It is difficult to see how this could be captured in a single rule. Similarly, in Mende, the initial mutation is not easily characterized (cf. Rice & Cowper 1984: 309): (10) /f/ /s/ /p/ /t/ /k/ /kp/

⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃

/v/ /dz/ /w/ /l/ /g/ /gb/

/mb/ /nd/ /ndz/ /ng/ /ng/

⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃ ⬃

/b/ /d/ /j/ /j/ /w/

Again, voiceless obstruents are voiced in mutation environments, and if prenasalized, become nonnasal. What is most difficult to characterize in a unitary fashion is the feature of continuancy (cf. especially the voiceless stop series with /p/ J /w/, /t/ J /l/, but /k/ J /g/). Equally difficult to characterize is the mutation in Otomi, which appears to take a different form in roots that begin with glottal consonant as opposed to oral consonants (cf. Wallis 1956: 456). In glottal initial stems, a component of palatalization is added to the initial consonant to form the completive aspect, and a /t/ is added to form the resultant

noun, yielding a glottalized or aspirated t (11a). In oral initial roots, the completive involves voicing the initial consonant and the resultant noun involves aspirating or glottalizing the initial consonant (11b): (11)

Incompletive (a) /?a`pı´/ /ho/ (b) /tæ´/ /tsı´/

Completive /?ja`pı´/ /hjo´/ /dæ´/ /zı´/

Resultant /t’a`pı´/ /tho´/ /thæ´/ /ts’i/

‘ask’ ‘kill’ ‘scrape’ ‘eat’

It is clear roughly what is going on here: glottal initial roots add an oral component to form the completive and resultant, and oral initial roots add a glottal (laryngeal) component for these forms, but it is not at all clear how to characterize this as a unitary process. Certain cases of mutation which seem rather irregular can, however, be treated quite simply. For example, in the system of Korean ideophones, vowels are traditionally divided into two sets known traditionally as “light” and “dark” (cf. McCarthy 1983 b: 144f.): (12) dark /i/, /e/ /y/ /X/, /e/ /u/

light /æ/ /ø/ /a/ /o/

The light vowels are always relatively lower than the dark vowels, but cannot, at least on the surface, be characterized as a natural class; not all light vowels are [⫹low], and some dark vowels are [⫺high]. One possible way of characterizing this alternation is to postulate a somewhat idealized system in which [ø] is underlyingly /œ/ and [o] is /c/, that is, in which all light vowels are underlyingly [⫹low]. A subsequent rule would then change all [⫹round] vowels to [⫺low] (cf. McCarthy 1983b: 146). Similar idealizations and regularizations have in fact been proposed for Mende and Welsh as well (cf. Lieber 1987: 112f.). 4.4.

Possible analyses

4.4.1. Process models of mutation Although there are numerous conceivable ways of analyzing mutations, they generally fall into one of two basic classes. One of these is the process model (“item-and-process” in American structuralist terms) in which mutations are analyzed as quasi-phonological rules which operate in morphological envi-


ronments. Indeed this sort of analysis was the prevalent one during the early years of generative phonology, when there was no separate morphological component per se. In a process-based analysis, the General Ablaut Rule of Hua can be stated as (cf. Haiman 1980: 55): (13) V J [⫹front] / [⫺second person, nonsingular] Or the rule for pluralizing nouns in Etsako might be stated as (cf. Elimelech 1978: 16): (14) i J e / [⫹Pl], where [V, ⫺high, ⫺low, ⫹Sg] A process approach to ablaut in Old English strong verbs might generate the past stem ba¯d from the present stem bı¯d of bı¯dan ‘to await’ with the rule (cf. Jensen 1990: 72): (15) [C ¯ı C]V 1 2 3 4 J 1 a¯ 3

4 [⫹past]

The rule in (15) differs from those in (13) and (14) in being stated as a transformation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, theoretical discussion concerned the relative power of transformational and nontransformational “process” rules (cf. McCarthy 1982; Lieber 1990), and their power as compared to “item and arrangement” analyses (cf. 4.4.2). A variation on the process analysis is one in which mutation is made to look more like a true phonological process, typically an assimilatory process. In such an analysis a special segment appears in mutation environments triggering a phonological change in a neighboring segment. The triggering segment is then deleted. In this vein, the palatalization mutation in Ennemor can be described as the suffixation of /j/ in the second person singular feminine of the imperative: /keft⫹jh/ J /kefts⫹j/ J /kefts/ ‘open!’ (cf. Marcos 1974: 252). The /j/ affix causes palatalization of a preceding consonant, then deletes. A difficulty of this analysis is to explain the location of the palatalization on the initial segment in a form like /kjefef/ (from /kefef⫹j/). An analysis of German umlaut along similar lines might postulate underlying forms which contain front vowels for umlaut-inducing suffixes; these would trigger fronting of the stem vowel and subsequently be lowered and/ or backed. Problematic for this analysis, however, is the fact that certain German derivational suffixes (e.g. -lich, -ig) condition um-

573 laut in only some forms. At best, exception features would be needed to prevent the phonological fronting rule from applying in certain forms (cf. Wurzel 1970: 106⫺133). 4.4.2. Mutation as affixation The alternative to a process-based analysis of mutation is an analysis which attempts to treat mutation as a species of affixation; such analyses have appeared in both the American structuralist tradition and in generative theory in the framework of autosegmental morphology. In the structuralist tradition, an English strong verb like sang might be conceived as being composed of two morphs, a stem /s…n/ and a so-called replacive morph /i J æ/ (also written /i ⬎ æ/, /æ ⬍ i/, /æ I (i)/ and the like) which signals the change that takes place in the past tense (cf. Harris 1942: 170f. [1957: 110]; Hockett 1947: 323 [1957: 230]; Nida 1948: 427⫺429, 440f. [1957: 262⫺ 264, 270f.]). Similarly, the nouns in pairs like strive ⬃ strife, thieve ⬃ thief, grieve ⬃ grief consist of two morphs, the stem and the replacive morph /v J f/. Somewhat more problematic within the structuralist framework are cases in which the vowel change is not the sole signal of the morphological category. For example, in the English verb form lost, is /u6 J A/ to be treated as a replacive morph even though the past tense is also signalled by the suffix /t/ (cf. Nida 1948: 428f. [1957: 263])? Also difficult within this framework is determining whether a given instance of mutation is better treated as replacement or as a portmanteau morph. The English plural form men might on the one hand seem to consist of the morph /m … n/ and the replacive /æ J i/, or on the other as a single portmanteau combining the morphemes {man}⫹{plural}; it is difficult to see which is the correct analysis (cf. Hockett 1947: 339f. [1957: 239f.]). The framework of autosegmental morphology makes available another way in which to analyze mutation as a species of affixation (cf. also Art. 56). Since within this framework it is possible (and in later versions of the theory even necessary) to segregate distinctive features onto different tiers, it is possible to represent mutation as an element consisting of one or more floating features. For example, if it is assumed that in Fula the initial consonants of noun stems are underspecified for the features [continuant, nasal], then the Class 11 form of the noun ‘monkey’ will consist of the underspecified stem plus

574


a Class 11 prefix [⫹continuant, ⫺nasal] (cf. Lieber 1987: 75); the representation in (16) makes use of a model of segmental geometry (cf. Sagey 1990 [1986]): (16)

labial . .

+continuant – nasal

X

a X

X

= waa

Mutation on this view reduces to a form of affixation. Similarly, umlaut in German can be analyzed autosegmentally as the addition of a suffix wholly or partially composed of a floating feature [⫺back]. If we assume that the unmarked value of the feature [back] in German is [⫹back], this feature will not be present in underlying forms. Affixing an umlaut-inducing suffix like -chen to a noun stem Hund produces the following form (cf. Lieber 1992: 170): (17)

+round

suggests itself, however: we may say that compounding in the Celtic languages requires a linking morph between the two stems, and it is this linking morph which consists of the floating mutation features. A similar treatment of the syntactically induced mutation in Mende (cf. 3) seems plausible as well. A second problem concerns the relationship between the autosegmental analysis of mutation and the theories of segmental geometry proposed in the late 1980s (e.g. Sagey 1990 [1986]). The theory of segmental geometry proposes that segments are highly structured objects with features arrayed on specific tiers: (18)

labial coronal dorsal

place

[voice]

[nasal]

soft palate

[– back]

+high laryngeal supralaryngeal

h

.

n

d

ç

[continuant]

n root

X

X

X

X

X

X

= Hündchen

The feature [⫺back] is associated with the underspecified stem vowel, resulting in a front vowel. If no umlaut-inducing suffix is attached, a redundancy rule fills in the unmarked value of the feature [back]. The autosegmental model is of course not without its own set of problems. One problem occurs in analyzing the Celtic mutations. In languages like Irish or Welsh, the second stem of a compound usually undergoes Lenition. If compounding is a productive process, as it seems to be, it would seem necessary that any stem which could occur as the first stem in a compound be supplied with the floating features which would trigger the mutation. This would of course require potentially large sections of the lexicon to be supplied with these floating features, which would have no effect except in compounding contexts. In this case, a reasonable alternative

What is significant about this model of the segment for the treatment of mutation is that it fixes features for voicing, continuancy, and nasality on different tiers. It becomes difficult in this model to see how two features like [nasal] and [continuant] can act together as a single affix, as in the Fula mutation illustrated in (16). However, as of the early 1990s, the placement of manner features within the segment is still a matter of controversy, and this problem might find its resolution in future versions of the theory of segmental geometry.

5.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. & Browne, Wayles (1973), “On Keeping Exchange Rules in Czech”. Papers in Linguistics 6, 445⫺482 Aronoff, Mark & Oehrle, Richard T. (1984, eds.), Language Sound Structure. Studies in Phonology Presented to Morris Halle by His Teacher and Students. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press

58. Substitution of segments and features Dillon, Myles & o´ Croínin, Donncha (1961), Irish. London: English Universities Press [later impressions: Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton]; New York: McKay Dudas, Karen (1974), “A Case of Functional Opacity: Javanese Elative Formations”. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 4.2, 91⫺111 Elimelech, Baruch (1978), A Tonal Grammar of Etsakoø . Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press (Univ. of California Publications in Linguistics 87) Grevisse, Maurice (81964), Le bon usage. Gembloux: Duculot [11936] Haenisch, Erich (1961), Mandschu-Grammatik. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie (Lehrbücher für das Studium der Orientalischen Sprachen 6) Haiman, John (1980), Hua: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Studies in Language Companion Series 5) Harris, Zellig S. (1942), “Morpheme Alternants in Linguistic Analysis”. Language 18, 169⫺180 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 109⫺115] Hartmann, R[einhard] R. K. & Stork, F[rancis] C. (1972), Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. London: Applied Science Publishers Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 229⫺242] Jensen, John T. (1990), Morphology: Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 70) Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966 Readings in Linguistics, Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] Kendall, Martha B. & Bird, Charles S. (1982), “Initial Consonant Change in Soninke”. Anthropological Linguistics 24, 1⫺13 Keyser, Samuel J. & Kiparsky, Paul (1984), “Syllable Structure in Finnish Phonology”. In: Aronoff & Oehrle (eds.), 7⫺31 Kim, Kong-On (1977), “Sound Symbolism in Korean”. Journal of Linguistics 13, 67⫺75 Langdon, Margaret (1971), “Sound Symbolism in Yuman Languages”. In: Sawyer, Jesse (ed.), Studies in American Indian Languages. Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press (Univ. of California Publications in Linguistics 65), 149⫺173 Lieber, Rochelle (1987), An Integrated Theory of Autosegmental Processes. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press Lieber, Rochelle (1990), On the Organization of the Lexicon. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1980: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of

575 Technology; reprinted 1981, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club] Lieber, Rochelle (1992), Deconstructing Morphology: Word Formation in Syntactic Theory. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press Mackinnon, Roderick (1971), Gaelic. London: Teach Yourself Books [later impressions: Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton]; New York: McKay Marcos, Habte M. (1974), “Palatalization in Ennemor”. In: Cerulli, Enrico (ed.), IV Congresso Internazionale di Studi Etiopici, Roma, 10⫺15 Aprile 1972. Roma: Accademia Nazionale de Lincei, 251⫺265 McCarthy, John J. (1982), Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology. New York, London: Garland Publishing [orig. 1979: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; reprinted 1982, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club] McCarthy, John J. (1983 a), “Consonantal Morphology in the Chaha Verb”. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 2, 176⫺188 [also in: Gussmann, Edmund (1987, ed.), Rules and the Lexicon: Studies in Word-formation. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniw. Lubelskiego, 121⫺136] McCarthy, John J. (1983 b), “Phonological Features and Morphological Structure”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 19.2, 135⫺161 [Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax] Nida, Eugene A. (1948), “The Identification of Morphemes”. Language 24, 414⫺441 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 255⫺271] Prince, Alan S. (1984), “Phonology with Tiers”. In: Aronoff & Oehrle (eds.), 234⫺244 Rhys Jones, T[homas] J. (1977), Living Welsh. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton; New York: McKay Rice, Keren & Cowper, Elizabeth (1984), “Consonant Mutation and Autosegmental Morphology”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 20.1, 309⫺320 Sagey, Elizabeth (1990), The Representation of Features in Nonlinear Phonology. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1986: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Saltarelli, Mario (1988), Basque. London: Croom Helm [reprinted 1989: London, New York: Routledge] Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe T. (1972), Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press Skousen, Royal (1972), “Consonant Alternation in Fula”. Studies in African Linguistics 3, 77⫺96 Topping, Donald M. (1968), “Chamorro Vowel Harmony”. Oceanic Linguistics 7, 67⫺79

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Wallis, Ethel (1956), “Simulfixation in Aspect Markers of Mezquital Otomi”. Language 32, 453⫺459 Webb, Charlotte (1976), “The Status of Metathesis as a Phonological Process”. California Linguistics Association Conference Proceedings 6, 77⫺89 Whitney, William Dwight (21889), A Sanskrit Grammar. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Haertel (Bibliothek indogermanischer Grammatiken 2) [11879]

Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1970), Studien zur deutschen Lautstruktur. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag (Studia grammatica 8) Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1984), “Was bezeichnet der Umlaut im Deutschen”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 37, 647⫺663

Rochelle Lieber, Durham/NH (U.S.A.)

59. Metathesis 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Types of metathesis Morphological metathesis Diachronic origins Theoretical problems References

1.

Types of metathesis

Metathesis, the transposition of segments, occurs in various parts of the language system. This article primarily deals with morphological metathesis, i.e. the marking of two distinct morphological classes solely by the transposition of segments. Nevertheless a brief sketch of the other types seems to be appropriate. Syntactic inversion, metathesis in secret languages (as Pig Latin), prosodic “metathesis” of quantity or stress, do not belong to the scope of this article. Cases without overt metathesis like Kasem [pia]/[pæ] for which a metathesis rule was employed in generative grammar will not be considered either. 1.1. Speech errors A spoonerism is an involuntary interchange of speech sounds, as rouring pain for pouring rain or shiplofter for shoplifter. Not all switches are equally likely. More often than the chance expectation, the interchanged sounds (a) are word or syllable initial or occur in the same syllabic position (MacKay 1970: 327⫺337, using German data), (b) occur in different but adjacent syllables, (c) are adjacent to identical speech sounds (p. 327), (d) are similar but differ in place of articulation, furthermore, (e) consonants switch more often than vowels, (f) consonants and vowels are never interchanged with one another, and

(g) the result has an admissible phonological structure, yet improvement of syllable structure is not the motivation. With the exception of (c) and (d) these results were confirmed by Motley (1973: 67f.), who analyzed English data. The forms of typical spoonerisms are different from those in morphological metathesis (see 1.4 and 2), which does not exclude, however, that metathesis originates through speech errors. Their patterns are not very likely to be universal (pace MacKay 1970: 338) and speech error data from the languages with morphological metathesis gathered at the time when it developed are lacking. Furthermore, the processes of lexicalization and morphologicalization might possibly filter out the functional patterns which could well be exactly the rare types. 1.2. Diachronic metathesis Diachronic methathesis is not rare but it is usually sporadic and irregular, e.g.: (1)

Old English (a) bridd frist (b) bricg crisp

Modern English bird first bridge crisp

Very often liquids are involved (Ultan 1978: 374f.). Metathesis “can become regular only when it serves a specific structural purpose” (Hock 1985: 532), cf. the following Latin and Old Spanish data from Hock (1985: 533f.): (2) Latin titulus spatula data illum retina catenatum date nobis

Old Spanish tilde ‘title’ espalda ‘back’ dalde ‘give him’ rienda ‘rein’ candado ‘padlock’ dandos ‘give to us’

577

59. Metathesis

The development passes through forms like tidle, many of which are attested. After syncope, stop and homorganic sonorant became tautosyllabic and would have enforced lateral or nasal plosion of the stop, which is generally avoided (cf. English *[쒙dl-], *[쒙dn-], *[쒙pm-] etc. besides [bvtn]; see Hock 1985: 533 for an alternative auditory explanation). If the clusters had remained heterosyllabic, they would have formed disfavoured syllable contacts which frequently are remedied by metathesis as well (cf. 1.4). Metathesis often results in forms with a more preferable syllable structure (Grammont 1933: 239; Ultan 1978: 395). That need not be its cause, as speech errors do not seem to be improvements (1.1), but it could be a prerequisite for its lexicalization and preservation, as speakers unconsciously choose preferred forms among existing variants. 1.3. Phonological metathesis The phonological repair of illicit structures caused by the combination of morphemes (often counted among phonological rules) is to be treated in 1.4. Because the choice among several repair strategies normally depends on morphological information it is part of the morphological rule. A case of real phonological metathesis is Kwara’ae (Malaita, Austronesian; classification after Ruhlen 1987). It appears both morphophonologically (Sohn 1980: 308) and purely phonologically as a shortening process, as it reduces the number of syllables. The long forms are used in citations, in a relaxed and leisured situation, and in songs, the short forms in normal communication (Sohn 1980: 311f.). The orthography still represents long forms but in the meantime the speakers find metathesized forms much easier to read (1980: 321). The following data are only the simplest cases, the details are fairly complicated (see Sohn 1980: 311⫺319): (3) long form ma’u lima Peter Lisa

short form [meu?] ‘fear’ [liem] ‘five’ [piet] [lies]

1.4. Morphophonological metathesis Morphophonological metathesis normally serves to repair disfavoured syllable structures caused by the combination of morphemes (Grammont 1933: 249). In Sidamo (Cushitic), suffixes regularly trigger metathe-

sis and assimilation if (and only if) the stem ends in a consonant “stronger” than the first segment of the suffix, i.e., if the suffix begins with a nasal (data from Vennemann 1988: 55; cf. also Moreno 1940: 58⫺60): (4) *gud-nońni J gun.dońni ‘they finished’ *hab-ne´mmo J ham.be´mmo ‘we forget’ *duk-nańni J dun.kańni ‘they carry’ *has-ne´mmo J han.se´mmo ‘we look for’ Nasals are weaker or more sonorous than obstruents in the scale of sonority or “Consonantal Strength” (Vennemann 1988: 9); contact metathesis improves the syllable contact according to Vennemann’s “Contact Law”: “A syllable contact A$B is the more preferred, the less the Consonantal Strength of the offset A and the greater the Consonantal Strength of the onset B […].” (Vennemann 1988: 40)

This law establishes a connection between a wide range of synchronic (e.g. syllabification) and diachronic phenomena (Vennemann 1988: 40⫺55).

2.

Morphological metathesis

There are only very few cases of pure morphological metathesis, in which the difference of two morphological classes is marked by the transposition of segments only. In the following, four examples will be presented, taken from three unrelated language families, one Austronesian, two examples from remotely related Amerind languages, and one from a Semitic language. 2.1. Rotuman (Central Pacific) In Rotuman “nearly every base has two forms, one shorter than (and derivable from) a long or full form” (Thompson [Laurence C.] & Thompson [M. Terry] 1969: 214). A noun phrase is marked as definite and specific when its final word occurs in the long form, otherwise it is indefinite, unspecific, or both (cf. Besnier 1987: 203, which is not fully compatible with Hocart 1919: 259⫺ 261; Churchward 1940: 15⫺18, 85⫺101). The short form is obtained by overt metathesis of the final CV-sequence if (and only if) the transposed vowel is lower than its preceding vowel. Only in that case they can be combined to form an opening, on-gliding, and therefore monomoraic diphthong (the only combination fitting into a single V-slot), whereby the first vowel turns into a glide and

578


several diphthongs merge (Besnier 1987: 208): (5) long form [tife] [rito] [pitsa] [hune] [ulo] [kuruna] [kelena] [lona]

short form [tycf] [rjct] [pycts] [hwcn] [wol] [kurwcn] [keljan] [lwan]

‘pearl shell’ ‘to glitter’ ‘rat’ ‘to breath’ ‘seabird species’ ‘head-rest’ ‘to appear to’ ‘up-country’

English loan-words show that this process is productive in both directions (Milner 1971: 417; *j+ ⫽ [ts]): (6) uja suka

uaj suak

‘watch’ ‘sugar’

When the first vowel is a back and round u or o and the second vowel a palatal i or e, the first turns into a palatal round vowel ([y] or [ø]). Biggs (1959: 25) assumes previous metathesis for this case, too (data from Besnier 1987: 208): (7) [toni] [tøn] [sone] [søn] [fuli] [fyl]

‘to buy’ ‘famine’ ‘deaf’

Otherwise the second vowel is deleted, after metathesis, possibly (Besnier 1987: 209): (8) [kainana] [la?o] [hcsu] [kise] [kamata]

[kainan] [la?] [hcs] [kis] [kamat]

‘clan’ ‘to go’ ‘gall-bladder’ ‘cash’ ‘to begin’

Several further cases need to be distinguished, nevertheless, the Rotuman rule is a case of morphological metathesis, because the rule relates two grammatically distinct categories and at least one phonologically defined subrule relates word forms distinguished only by the order of two segments. 2.2. Saanich (Straits Salish) The Straits languages of Coast Salish (e.g. Clallam, Lummi, and Saanich) distinguish actual from non-actual aspect; the actual forms are often glossed by the -ing form of an English verb (Thompson & Thompson 1969: 215). In Saanich the roots with actual aspect are formed either by metathesis, by infixation, or by reduplication. Stonham (1994: 178) does not only establish a prosodic connection between the three subrules but also motivates the choice among the three different types of morphological processes: “There are three basic forms to the actual aspect morpheme then, all involving the augmentation of the root by a single mora: (i) metathesis, which is found in roots of the shape CCV, exactly those roots where the permutation of C and V still allows the root a permissible shape; (ii) ?- infixation, which is added to the coda of the open, stressed syllable of the root, adding a mora to the syllable by closing it; and (iii) reduplication, which is found in roots of the shape CVC쒙 or CVC⫹C where the already existing bimoraic root requires augmentation to three moras, achievable only by the addition of a syllable to the root.”

He gives the following examples (Stonham 1994: 172, 178, roots isolated from all further morphology):

(9) (a) metathesis (non-actual/actual) [t’se] [t’es] ‘to break’ [tqwe] [teqw] ‘to tighten’ (b) infixation [ne] [ne-?] ‘to name’ [we´qes] [we´-?-qes] ‘to yawn’ (c) reduplication [qen] [qe´⫹qe⫹n’] ‘to steal’ [Lı´k’w⫹sen’] [Lı´⫹Lek’w⫹sen’] ‘to trip’ A similar rule is to be found in Clallam (Thompson & Thompson 1969: 215f.), which is closely related to Saanich. 2.3. Mutsun (Miwok-Costanoan) Several Miwok-Costanoan languages show the metathesis of stem-final VC, which is largely morphophonological, the shape of the stem being determined by the following suffix (Okrand 1979: 123; for Sierra Miwok cf. Stonham

1994: 152⫺159). Stems ending in a consonant form a derived stem by metathesis of final VC before suffixes beginning with a consonant cluster or consisting of a single consonant in word-final position, thus avoiding prohibited consonant clusters. Maybe through morphological leveling (Okrand 1979: 129), verb stems appear in the derived form (except before very few suffixes), even without any suffixation, although there is no restriction against word

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59. Metathesis

final consonants (Okrand 1979: 126f.). Thus there are many pairs of unsuffixed nouns and verbs differing by metathesis alone, apart (10) [to:her] [lullup] [posol] [la:lak]

‘cough’ ‘flute’ ‘a stew’ ‘goose’

from adjustments in vowel and consonant length to meet the phonotactic requirements of the language (Okrand 1979: 127): [tohre] [lulpu] [poslo-] [lalka-]

In some cases verb stems are not attested without suffix (Mutsun is extinct) but for Okrand “it seems reasonable to assume that there is a verb stem which might occur without an overt verb suffix, but simply lacking from the data”. He concludes that metathesis “marks a grammatical distinction between noun and verb. In other words, metathesis serves a grammatical, as well as (11) [fhem] [m⬃rad ⬃] [mlek] [kfcr]

‘il ‘il ‘il ‘il

comprit’ fut malade’ posse´da’ blasphe´ma’

Action nouns can also be formed by conversion, ablaut, or suffixation; some verbs have more than one corresponding noun (e.g. [kcfra:n] ‘blasphe`me’). The choice of the morphological process type cannot be predicted apart from the restriction that metathesis occurs only with the regular triliteral root (consisting of three consonants none of which is a glide); for others it would not be applicable as the bases of the formation would not have the input structure of the rule (e.g. [sedd] ‘il tint’, [sra] ‘il acheta’ [su:q] ‘il conduisit’). Yet it can be stated that metathesis is the normal way of nominalizing a regular verb: “On dira donc que les bases verbales saines produi˘ CC sent majoritairement des noms a` structure CV ˘ CC ⫺ et on sait par ailleurs que cette structure CV domine parmi les noms d’action et les noms en geńe´ral ⫺ et que quelques-unes d’entre elles produi˘ C.” (Kilani-Schoch & Dressler sent des noms CCV 1986: 65)

A test with nonce-words showed that the metathesis rule is by far the most productive rule for bases with the structure of the regular triliteral verbs: “la me´tathe`se n’est nullement rećessive, bien au contraire” (1986: 71). It can be concluded that there is a non-marginal and productive metathesis rule in the morphology of Tunisian Arabic. (12)

verbs CA [kadab-a] TA [kdeb] CA [¯ha⬃sar-a]

‘to cough’ ‘to play the flute’ ‘to make posol’ ‘gather geese’

a morphophonemic 1979: 127).

function”

(Okrand

2.4. Tunisian Arabic (Semitic) The Arabic dialect in the city of Tunis (“le parler musulman de Tunis”, Kilani-Schoch & Dressler 1986: 61) has a number of verbs and corresponding nomina actionis related by metathesis (1986: 62): [fehm] [ma⬃r d ⬃] [melk] [kcfr]

3.

‘compre´hension’ ‘maladie’ ‘avoir, bien’ ‘blasphe`me’

Diachronic origins

Among the four cases described in 2, Tunisian Arabic is the only language with a well attested diachronic predecessor, although the Tunisian dialect cannot simply be derived from Classical Arabic. Kilani-Schoch & Dressler (1986: 65f.) insinuate a diachronic explanation: “Une P[honological] R[ule] diachronique de syn˘ non accentueé en syllabe ouverte […] et cope de V de PRs d’affaiblissement vocalique ont produit les formes nominales que l’on observe en T[unisian] A[rabic] et qui diffe`rent de C[lassical] A[rabic]. A quoi s’ajoute la perte des de´sinences flexionnelles pour le nom aussi bien que pour le verbe.”

The diachronic note by Kilani-Schoch & Dressler and their data do not force this explanation neither should it be implausible: Syncope and other lenition processes produced pairs with a CV/VC-alternation with historically different vowels subsequently identified by reanalysis; these pairs were models for a productive rule which enlarged the number of pairs, i.e. new pairs were formed by analogical extension of the pattern (CA ⫽ Classical Arabic, TA ⫽ Tunisian Arabic):

nouns [kadib-un] ‘il mentit’/ [kedb] ‘mensonge’ [¯ha⬃sr-un] ‘il serra’/

580


TA [¯h⬃sar] CA [malak-a] TA [mlek] CA [kafar-a] TA [kfcr]

[¯ha⬃sr] [milk-un] [melk] [kufr-un] [kcfr]

The diachronic origins of the Rotuman case have not been investigated thoroughly, there are only some hints in the literature (cf. Thompson & Thompson 1969: 215; Besnier 1987: 204f. with further references). Regarding the phonological metathesis in the related language Kwara’ae, one might speculate that the long forms be grammaticalized “strong” forms at the end of an intonational phrase (maybe due to an enclitic particle, cf. Besnier 1987: 204). Metathesis in the Miwok-Costanoan languages is by and large morphophonological with a phonological motivation: to avoid prohibited consonant clusters. Its origin is unknown; it could have developed like Tunisian Arabic through syncope, or equally well through speech errors whose results have prevailed in the selection made by speakers due to an advantage over less perspicuous shortened forms (cf. the discussion in 1.1). Therefore the diachronic origin of morphological metathesis in general is still an open question.

4.


In spite of its marginal status in the languages of the world, the theoretical importance of morphological metathesis is considerable. It has been brought forward as evidence against word-syntactical theories (e.g. Janda 1984: 88; Anderson [Stephen R.] 1992: 66f.): the relation between [mlek] and [melk] cannot be described in a plausible way by the combination of morphemes. On the other hand, theories using metathesis rules like “abcd J acbd” have been criticized (mirroring an argument important in the development of generative syntax) as being totally unrestricted in generative power and unable to part impossible morphological structures from possible ones. Such an unrestricted grammar would not be learnable, i.e., a learner would not be able to select one out of the infinite set of possible grammars on the basis of finite data. However, the necessity to restrict the power of rules is peculiar to a grammatical model in which the rules relate unobservable, theoretical, underlying forms to surface forms, as in generative models. In a grammar whose morphological component consists of a limited number of rules that relate observable surface forms (a “Word and Para-

‘action de serrer’ ‘il posse´da’/ ‘avoir, bien’ ‘il blasphe´ma’/ ‘blasphe`me’

digm” model, cf. Art. 62), a metathesis rule does not pose a learnability problem even if it has transformational power. Moreover, restrictions of a grammatical model need not be implicit in the rule format, they can as well be formulated explicitly as constraints. Therefore, the “metathesis-taboo” observable in theoretical morphology is not very well founded. On the other hand, the efforts made to avoid rules like metathesis have led to fairly perspicuous graphical representations of morphological structures. The scarcity of data attesting morphological metathesis does not really allow generalizations, yet it is remarkable that the four cases presented in 2 are far more restricted than the other types of 1. They involve only the transposition of adjacent CV sequences. That allows one to use models designed for the morphology of Semitic languages where the exponence of lexical and grammatical meaning is not distributed on separate morphemes but represented by a root as (in the regular case) a sequence of three consonants ⫺ e.g. Classical Arabic k-t-b ‘to write’ ⫺ and by a word structure (“vowelling”, a misleading term as there are structural consonants as well), traditionally given as a form of the verb ‘to do’, e.g. fuø ila ‘3rd person singular indicative perfect passive’, the consonants f-ø -l being variables for the root consonants. These two aspects of the word combine to the form kutiba ‘it has been written’. This traditional account has been developed further in “Prosodic Morphology” (cf. Art. 17) by adding representations of prosodic units as foot, mora etc. Separating vowels from consonants, one can describe all four cases of morphological metathesis without employing a permutational rule. The noun [kcfr] is obtained from the verb [kfcr], see 2.4 above, through replacing the verbal template CCVC by the nominal template CVCC: ɔ C C V C

ɔ J

k f r Fig. 59.1: [kfcr]V J [kcfr]N

C V C C k f r

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60. Subtraction

The imposition of a new template is not to be taken as metathesis, as no segments are interchanged; the linear order of segments on each tier is preserved. Due to the restriction mentioned above that only CV sequences are interchanged, the other cases of metathesis can be described in a similar way (cf. e.g. Stonham 1994: 139⫺183; Besnier 1987: 214), although in the non-Semitic languages vowels are not just structural elements but belong to the root, so that the separation of levels is not motivated equally well. On the basis of that debatable analysis Stonham (1994: 183) concludes “that morphologically conditioned metathesis does not exist as a process in natural language”. This re´sume´ will not be approved at least by those morphologists who reject the analysis presented above or who believe that morphological rules relate surface forms. Yet one can state that morphological metathesis is far more restricted than the other types, provided that the scarcity of data is not misleading.

5.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Besnier, Niko (1987), “An Autosegmental Approach to Metathesis in Rotuman”. Lingua 73, 201⫺223 Biggs, Bruce G. (1959), “Rotuman Vowels and Their History”. Te Reo 2, 24⫺26 Churchward, Clerk Maxwell (1940), Rotuman Grammar and Dictionary. Sydney: Australesian Medical Publishing Company Grammont, Maurice (1933), Traite´ de phone´tique. Paris: Delagrave Hocart, A. M. (1919), “Notes on Rotuman Grammar”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 49, 252⫺264 Hock, Hans Henrich (1985), “Regular Metathesis”. Linguistics 23, 529⫺546

Janda, Richard D. (1984), “Why Morphological Metathesis Rules Are Rare”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 10, 87⫺105 Kilani-Schoch, Marianne & Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1986), “Me´tathe`se et conversion morphologiques en arabe tunisien”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 61⫺75 MacKay, Donald G. (1970), “Spoonerisms: the Structure of Errors in the Serial Order of Speech”. Neuropsychologia 8, 323⫺350 Milner, George B. (1971), “Fijian and Rotuman”. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. VIII: Linguistics in Oceania. The Hague: Mouton, 397⫺425 Moreno, Martino Mario (1940), Manuale di Sidamo. Roma: Mondadori Motley, Michael T. (1973), “An Analysis of Spoonerisms as Psycholinguistic Phenomena”. Speech Monographs 40, 66⫺71 Okrand, Marc (1979), “Metathesis in Costanoan Grammar”. International Journal of American Linguistics 45, 123⫺130 Ruhlen, Merritt (1987), A Guide to the World’s Languages, Vol. I: Classification. Stanford: Stanford University Press Sohn, Ho-min (1980), “Metathesis in Kwara’ae”. Lingua 52, 305⫺323 Stonham, John T. (1994), Combinatorial Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins Thompson, Laurence C. & Thompson, M. Terry (1969), “Metathesis as a Grammatical Device”. International Journal of American Linguistics 35, 213⫺219 Ultan, Russell (1978), “A Typological View of Metathesis”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. II: Phonology. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 367⫺402 Vennemann, Theo (1988), Preference Laws for Syllable Structure and the Explanation of Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

Thomas Becker, Munich (Germany)

60. Subtraction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Introduction Terminology The Notion of subtraction Characteristic formal properties Typical meanings Cross-linguistic distribution Theoretical problems References

1.

Introduction

Whereas morphological processes usually add (affix) morphological elements to their respective bases, the very infrequent processes of subtraction consist in shortening the shape of a word. For example, in Central and

582


Upper Hessian dialects of German, which usually form noun plurals by suffixation or substitution (cf. Art. 58), a few nouns show subtraction of the stem-final phoneme, e.g. in Ebsdorf near Marburg (cf. Haas 1988: 86): (1) singular [hondj ] [keendj ] [dc6g˚]

plural [hon] [keen] [dc6]

‘dog’ ‘child’ ‘day’

Subtractions are so rare that a classical morphology textbook presents only two examples (Nida 21949: 75f., 317); one is invented and the other, gender alternation in French adjectives, highly controversial: (2) masculine faux /fo/ petit /peti/ grand /gra˜/

feminine fausse /fos/ petite /petit/ grande /gra˜d/

‘wrong’ ‘small’ ‘large’

Here, the shape of the masculine forms can be predicted from the feminine ones (via subtraction of the stem-final consonant) but not vice versa (cf. also Bloomfield 1933: 217). These irregular alternations are, however, not productive nowadays, and ⫺ according to more recent analyses ⫺ the masculine forms are the bases whereas the irregular feminine forms are suppletive and learned by rote (cf. Kaye & Morin 1978; Mel’cˇuk 1991: 283f.). Another stock example is the formation of so-called “passives” in some Polynesian languages, e.g. Samoan (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 219; Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992: 198⫺200, 209⫺217): (3) “active” tao sao folo milo

“passive” taomia saofia fologia milosia

‘cover’ ‘collect’ ‘swallow’ ‘twist’

This case is even less likely to involve morphological subtraction. Not only is there evidence that the longer forms are derived from the shorter ones (cf. Krupa 1966), but no word ends in a consonant so that one can posit a purely phonological deletion rule (cf. Nida 21949: 76; Hale 1973: 413⫺420). Such rules have also been suggested for the French examples in (2), although they may require “abstract” underlying representations (cf. Art. 51), e.g. 兩 fos 兩 and 兩 fose 兩; to a more limited extent, a solution of this kind is conceivable in (1), too (cf. Haas 1988: 47). Thus, many examples of subtraction have been

challenged on the grounds that the direction of derivation is incorrect (cf. Art. 84) or that a phonological analysis is preferable.

2.

Terminology

Other terms for subtraction are deletion, truncation and minus formation; on the model of prefixation, suffixation etc., disfixation has been coined (cf. Hardy & Montler 1988: 378). In combination with nouns such as process, rule, operation or affixation, the adjectives subtractive and negative can be used. In some approaches, notably American structuralism, subtraction is interpreted as a special kind of linguistic element, called minus-feature (Bloomfield 1933: 217), minus morpheme (Harris 1942: 170f. [1957: 110]), subtraction morph (Hockett 1947: 340 [1957: 240]), subtractive morpheme (Nida 21949: 75) and the like. Occasionally, such terms are applied to the material that is subtracted rather than to an element which effects subtraction, e.g. when subtractive morph is defined as “a morph which is removed by a morphological process” (Bauer 1988: 32). This deviation from the original usage is not appropriate because subtraction removes phonemes, not linguistic signs (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1991: 283⫺285).

3.

The Notion of subtraction

In terms of process morphology, a prototypical subtraction can be defined as a reductive grammatical morphological process which ⫺ is the only overt morphotactic signal of a morphological meaning and ⫺ consists in reducing the base of the morphological process by one phoneme at its right edge, as in (1). The definition of a non-prototypical subtraction is less clear. In the first definiens, it may involve changing “only” to “main”; the second may be modified so as to include the deletion of more than one phoneme (in which case the deleted phonemes must be adjacent) or less than a whole phoneme (i.e. phonological features). Other characteristics follow from the definition of prototypical vs. nonprototypical morphological processes (or operations or rules; cf. 7). The definitions exclude many reductive phenomena from the class of subtractions: (a) Since a grammatical process must have some mininum generality and regularity, isolated “subtractions” must be classified as

583

60. Subtraction

(weak) suppletion (cf. Art. 52), e.g. the Irish comparative mo´ ‘greater’ from mo´r ‘great’ or the Spanish imperative di! ‘say!’ from dig‘say’ (as in digo ‘I say’). If there are only a few cases of a similar nature, e.g. Standard French /os/ ‘bone’, /bœf/ ‘ox’, /œf/ ‘egg’ with the plurals /o/, /bø/, /ø/, some linguists may be ready to accept this as sufficient for establishing a rule of subtraction (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1991: 289), while most will opt for suppletion. In a few varieties of French, however, such alternations are more frequent (cf. Morin 1981) and may have to be assessed differently. Similarly, the status of subtraction in German dialects (cf. (1)) depends on the number of items involved. (b) Morphological processes are synchronic. This excludes diachronic shortenings such as back-formation (also called back-derivation or retrograde formation), as exemplified by the verb edit, which has been coined from the noun editor in analogy to pairs like exhibit / exhibitor. A frequently occurring type of back-formation may, however, eventually develop into a subtractive rule. In Polish, for instance, diminutives with the suffix -k, such as wo´dka ‘vodka’ (lit. ‘little water’) from woda ‘water’, gave rise to back-formations like wo´da ‘much/bad vodka’. Now -k can be subtracted from any nominal stem ending in this consonant (whatever its origin) in order to form an augmentative with the meaning ‘increased quantity’ or ‘bad quality’ (or also with positive connotations, depending on the speech situation; cf. Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 485⫺487). (c) Among synchronic morphological processes, truncation (i.e. a deletion which is triggered by an additive process) must be distinguished from subtraction, because it is only a secondary signal of morphological meanings. An example is Hungarian Erzse´bet ‘Elizabeth’ J hypocoristic Erzs-i (cf. Dressler 1987: 74; see also Corbin 1987: 341⫺370; Scalise 1994: 154⫺156). In certain cases the deletion has been claimed to involve a morphological unit, and the term truncation is sometimes reserved for these, e.g. English nominate J nomin-ee (presupposing a truncation of nominate to nomin-; cf. Aronoff 1976: 88). Another special type is haplology, i.e. the deletion of one of two identical phoneme sequences, as in English sorcer-er J sorcer-ess and the German equivalent Zauber-er J Zauber-in, instead of *sorcer-er-ess and *Zauber-er-in (cf. Corbin & Pleńat 1992). (d) Since subtraction has been defined as a grammatical process, extragrammatical re-

ductive processes should be excluded, such as clippings, blends and other types of abbreviations, e.g. motor hotel J motel, perambulator J pram, telephone J phone (cf. Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 36⫺38; Art. 91⫺93). Here, the reduction may affect much more than the prototypical single phoneme. This is also true of hypocoristic names, e.g. Edward J Ed, Joseph J Joe, Lenard J Len, Jacob J Jake, etc. The original use of such abbreviated names is in calling, i.e. as “vocatives”, which corroborates the identification of these reduction processes as extragrammatical. Moreover, reductive hypocoristic formation is an abbreviatory device devoid of the regular meaning change of grammatical word formation, and unlike many patterns of non-reductive hypocoristic formation it does not coincide with a rule of diminution (cf. Art. 99). (e) The notion of subtraction is normally applied to phonological material, but it has been suggested that meanings can be “subtractive”, too; in Russian, for instance, derivations of the type serdit’ ‘make angry’ J serdit’sja ‘be angry’ appear to involve a deletion of the semantic component ‘cause’ (cf. Mel’cˇuk (1967: 359⫺362 [1976: 78⫺93]; 1991: 285⫺288). No matter how such phenomena are best analyzed, they do not belong under the heading of morphological subtraction (cf. Martin 1988: 235). Finally, subtraction must be distinguished from instances in which the presence of an affix contrasts with its absence (or with a zero affix: cf. Art. 45). Thus, the fact that Russian kniga ‘book’ has the genitive plural knig might look like subtractive morphology (cf. Spencer 1991: 224f.) ⫺ but -a is an inflectional suffix, not part of the root. Likewise, derivational relationships are usually defined in terms of roots or stems rather than citation forms. Thus, the Russian feminine noun logika ‘logic’ is the base of the masculine noun logik ‘logician’, but although the nominative singular form of the latter is shorter than that of the former, their roots are identical (cf. Dressler 1984: 80⫺83).

4.

Characteristic formal properties

As stated in the definition (cf. 3), subtraction prototypically deletes just one phoneme. Consonant subtraction as in (1) also occurs in some verbal plurals in several Muskogean languages, e.g. Alabama /salat-li/ ‘slide once’ J /salaa-li/ ‘slide repeatedly’ (with secondary

584


vowel lengthening and a “classificatory suffix” /-li/; cf. Hardy & Montler 1988: 393f.; Broadwell 1993: 417f.). According to one analysis, Danish imperatives are formed by subtracting a vowel, the final /e/ of the infinitive, as in bade [bæ6de] ‘to bathe’ J bad! [bæ?d] ‘bathe!’ (cf. Basbøll 1970; Anderson 1988: 159f. ⫺ alternatively, both forms may be derived from the same root; cf. Stonham 1994: 65⫺68). More than one phoneme is subtracted in Papago, where the completive aspect is formed by deleting the base-final CV-sequence of the incompletive aspect form, e.g. /huKuni/ ‘descend’ J /huKu⁄ (cf. Hale 1965: 100f.). This is syllable deletion, but Papago also has final consonant deletion (cf. Anderson 1992: 65; for a different interpretation, see Stonham 1994: 68⫺74). Rhyme deletion occurs in another group of Muskogean verbal plurals, e.g. Alabama /batat-li/ ‘hit once’ J /bat-li/ ‘hit repeatedly’ (cf. Hardy & Montler 1988: 390⫺393; Broadwell 1993; Martin 1988; 1994: 42⫺44). Some Polish and Czech augmentative formations seem to involve deletion of final -ek, as in Czech children’s jezˇek ‘hedgehog’ J jezˇ, but this is a spurious example because augmentative subtraction affects only /k/, whereas the (5) (a) photographie cartographie (b) photographe cartographe

alternation between /e/ and zero is morphonological. Shortening of long vowels (or loss of a vowel mora) can be viewed as subtraction of less than one phoneme. It occurs, for example, in East Franconian dialects of German, including that of Oberschefflenz (cf. Truax 1991: 9, 16, 75): (4) singular beerig ruuler fliiglø

In these augmentative formations, subtraction is primary because /k/ is always subtracted, whereas the preceding consonant does not necessarily alternate.

‘mountain’ ‘rudder’ ‘wing’

Hidatsa imperatives have been analyzed in a similar way (cf. Harris 1942: 171 [1957: 110]), but it is also possible to group lengthening and shortening processes together, classifying them as substitution (cf. Art. 58). The fact that vowel shortening is not confined to basefinal position might lend further support to this solution. Prototypically, the subtracted phonemes are not morphologically identifiable. For example, in the Hessian forms in (1), the subtracted base-final phoneme has no morphological identity (neither morphosemantically nor morphotactically, e.g. in terms of morphological recurrence). Non-prototypical is the subtraction of a suffix, e.g. French -ie:

/fotografi/ /kartografi/ /fotograf/ /kartograf/

Here, the meaning relation vouches for the direction of derivation from (5a) to (5b): a cartographer is someone who deals professionally with cartography. There are analogous cases in other languages (cf. Rainer 1993: 80f., 695⫺697 on Spanish; Hristea 3 1984: 75f. on Romanian); some involve the subtraction of more than one phoneme, another non-prototypical property. By definition, prototypical subtraction is the only signal of a meaning change. More rarely, it is accompanied by another (co-)signal, such as the morphological change of a sibilant into /x/ in Polish augmentatives (cf. Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 485⫺ 487): (6) neutral augmentative piach /pjax/ ‘sand’ piasek /pjasek/ flaszka /flaska/ flacha /flaxa/ ‘bottle’

plural berig ruler fliglø

5.

‘photography’ ‘cartography’ ‘photographer’ ‘cartographer’

Typical meanings

As the examples in 1 and 4 show, inflectional categories signalled by subtraction include nominal plural in German dialects, verbal plural (i.e. plurality of subjects or objects, distributive plurality or iterativity) in the Muskogean languages Alabama, Koasati, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Mikasuki (cf. Broadwell 1993; Martin 1988; 1994: 43) and verbal aspect distinctions in Papago. Both vocatives and imperatives exhibit subtraction in several languages (cf. Winter 1969). Examples of subtraction in word-formation are: deverbal action nouns in Icelandic (cf. Anderson 1988: 160; 1992: 65; Martin 1988: 229) and Romanian (Hristea 31984: 82f., 89⫺95), augmentatives in Polish and other Slavic languages (cf. (6)) and agent nouns related to Latinate names of professions (cf. (5)). Another ⫺ very infrequent ⫺ case are designations of inhabitants (of countries, regions or communities) and adjectives

585

60. Subtraction

formed from toponyms, e.g. in Italian, where the subtraction of root-final -i in (7a) is much rarer than the additive formations in (7b); -a is inflectional: (7)

region (a) Umbria Lombardia (b) Sicilia Romagna

female inhabitant Umbra Lombarda Siciliana Romagnola

More commonly, reductive ethnonyms etc. are suppletive or extragrammatical (cf. 3 (a), (d)) and do not belong to subtraction proper (cf. Crocco Galeàs 1991: 102⫺106, 163f.; Rainer 1993: 694f.).

6.

Cross-linguistic distribution

Although subtraction is very rare, one typological generalisation about its distribution seems to be feasible: it does not occur in agglutinating or non-fusional languages. A telling example are those varieties of Northern Greek which have morphologized a phonological rule of subtraction (cf. Dressler & Acson 1985). This subtraction is well preserved in the fairly inflecting Macedonian dialects (e.g. nominative singular /⬘anurupus/ ‘man’, genitive singular and nominative plural /an⬘urop/), but not in the rather agglutinating Anatolian dialects. It is also noteworthy that in French, subtraction has been preserved better in the more inflecting Latinate part of the lexicon.

7.


Since subtraction of form contradicts addition of meaning, subtractive morphological rules are anti-diagrammatic or anti-iconic, i.e. they represent a very marked (dispreferred, unnatural) phenomenon and are thus very rare (cf. Plank 1981: 200f.; Dressler 1984; 1987; Kilani-Schoch 1988: 117; Mel’cˇuk 1991: 283; Broadwell 1993: 425; Art. 31). A comparable observation can be made in numeral systems, where addition is also highly favored over subtraction of the type found in Latin duodeviginti ‘18’, lit. ‘2 from 20’ and undeviginti ‘19’, lit. ‘1 from 20’ (cf. Lejeune 1981). In contrast to additive affixation rules, the subtracted unit is subject to a number of constraints (cf. 3 and 4). It is minimal (a single phoneme or another prosodic unit, e.g. rhyme or syllable), always base-final (whereas affixation shows only a prefer-

ence for suffixes; cf. Art. 31 and 54) and normally not morphologically identifiable. All this guarantees its optimal recoverability. Due to their marked status, subtractive rules are mostly unproductive (e.g. plural formation in German dialects; cf. (1)) and are easily restructured so as to create an additive pattern (as in French and Polynesian languages; cf. (2) and (3)). They owe their existence to a constellation of historical accidents. The formation of Polish augmentatives in (6), for instance, resulted from back-formation (cf. 3 (b)). In Italian, provinces were originally named after their inhabitants, but rule inversion led to the opposite relationship in (7). In other cases, a peculiar sequence of phonological changes took place, e.g. in the Hessian plurals in (1), where /honde/ first became /honne/ by assimilation and eventually /hon/ by degemination and apocope (cf. Haas 1988: 47; Martin 1988: 236f.; see also Broadwell 1993: 425f. on Muskogean). A certain motivation for such unnatural operations may be found in their similarity with extragrammatical operations (cf. 3 (d)); grammatical subtractions thus appear as restricted versions of extragrammatical reductions. This is most obvious with vocatives and imperatives, which are often reductive. Both categories can represent minimal sentences so that there may be an iconic relation of shortness between shortest syntactic and shortest morphological forms (cf. Winter 1969: 220⫺222). Typologically, opacifying subtraction appears to have some “type adequacy” (cf. Art. 31) in languages which have much morphological opacity (cf. 6). As for language-specific factors (cf. Art. 31 on “system adequacy”), subtraction seems to be restricted to categories which are always expressed in the language in question (cf. Truax 1991: 69⫺73), as if it were better to express such a category via subtraction than not at all; this fits in with the preference for subtraction being the only signal. Subtraction has been cited as prime evidence for an item-and-process model and against an item-and-arrangement model or the assumption that morphological operations consist in the concatenation of morphs or morphemes (cf. Janda 1983: 82; Martin 1988: 229; Anderson 1992: 64⫺66). On the other hand, it has been argued that alternative analyses allow subtraction to be excluded from the inventory of morphological processes altogether (cf. Stonham 1994: 63⫺91).

586

8.


References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1988), “Morphological Theory”. In: Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Vol. I: Linguistic Theory: Foundations. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 146⫺191 Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 62) Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 1) Basbøll, Hans (1970 [1969]), “Notes on the Phonology of Danish Imperatives with a Digression on Vowel Quantity”. Annual Report of the Institute of Phonetics of the University of Copenhagen 4, 15⫺42 Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt [British edition 1935: London: Allen & Unwin] Broadwell, George Aaron (1993), “Subtractive Morphology in Southern Muskogean”. International Journal of American Linguistics 59, 416⫺429 Corbin, Danielle (1987), Morphologie de´rivationnelle et structuration du lexique, Vol. 1⫺2. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Linguistische Arbeiten 193⫺ 194) Corbin, Danielle & Pleńat, Marc (1992), “Note sur l’haplologie des mots construits”. Langue française 96, 101⫺112 Crocco Galeàs, Grazia (1991), Gli etnici italiani: Studio di morfologia naturale. Padova: Unipress (Quaderni patavini di linguistica, Monografie 9) Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1984), “Subtraction in Word Formation and Its Place within a Theory of Natural Morphology”. Quaderni di Semantica 5, 78⫺85 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1987), “Subtraction in a Polycentristic Theory of Natural Morphology”. In: Gussmann, Edmund (ed.), Rules and the Lexicon: Studies in Word-formation. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 67⫺77 Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Acson, Veneeta (1985), “On the Diachrony of Subtractive Operations: Evidence for Semiotically Based Models of Natural Phonology and Natural Morphology from Northern and Anatolian Greek Dialects”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (ed.), Papers from the 6th International Conference on Historical Linguistics [Poznan´ 1983]. Amsterdam: Benjamins; Poznan´: Adam Mickiewicz Univ. Press (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 34), 105⫺127 Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1994), Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and Intensifiers in Italian, German, and Other Languages.

Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 76) Haas, Walter (1988), Studien zur Dialektologie II: Zur Morphologie der Mundart von Ebsdorf im Landkreis Marburg-Biedenkopf. Hildesheim etc.: Olms (Germanistische Linguistik 95) Hale, Kenneth (1965), “Some Preliminary Observations on Papago Morphophonemics”. International Journal of American Linguistics 31, 295⫺305 Hale, Kenneth (1973), “Deep-surface Canonical Disparities in Relation to Analysis and Change: An Australian Example”. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics 11: Diachronic, Areal, and Typological Linguistics. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 401⫺458 Hardy, Heather K. & Montler, Timothy R. (1988), “Alabama Radical Morphology: H-Infix and Disfixation”. In: Shipley, William (ed.), In Honor of Mary Haas. From the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter, 377⫺409 Harris, Zellig S. (1942), “Morpheme Alternants in Linguistic Analysis”. Language 18, 169⫺180 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 109⫺115] Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 229⫺242] Hristea, Theodor (31984), Sinteze de limba romaˆna˘. Bucures¸ti: Albatros [11972] Janda, Richard D. (1983), “ ‘Morphemes’ Aren’t Something that Grows on Trees: Morphology as More the Phonology than the Syntax of Words”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 19.2, 79⫺95 [Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax] Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966 Readings in Linguistics, Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] Kaye, Jonathan D. & Morin, Yves-Charles (1978), “Il n’y a pas de re`gles de troncation, voyons!” In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Meid, Wolfgang (eds.), Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists Vienna, August 28⫺September 2, 1977. Innsbruck: Inst. für Sprachwissenschaft der Univ. Innsbruck, 788⫺792 Kilani-Schoch, Marianne (1988), Introduction a` la morphologie naturelle. Bern etc.: Lang (Sciences pour la communication 20) Krupa, Viktor (1966), “Rules of Occurrence of the Passive Suffix Allomorphs in Maori”. Asian and African Studies 2, 9⫺13 Lejeune, Michel (1981), “Proce´dures soustractives dans les nume´rations e´trusque et latine”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 76.1, 241⫺248

587

61. Suprasegmental processes Martin, Jack (1988), “Subtractive Morphology as Dissociation”. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 7, 229⫺240 Martin, Jack (1994), “Implications of Plural Reduplication, Infixation and Subtraction for Muskogean Subgrouping”. Anthropological Linguistics 36, 27⫺55 Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1967), “K ponjatiju slovoobrazovanija”. Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR, Serija literatury i jazyka 26, 352⫺362 [German transl.: “Zum Begriff der Wortbildung (Derivation)”. In: Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1976), Das Wort, Vol. I: Zwischen Inhalt und Ausdruck. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 9), 63⫺88] Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1991), “Subtraction in Natural Language”. In: Grochowski, Maciej & Weiss, Daniel (eds.), “Words Are Physicians for an Ailing Mind”. For Andrzej Bogusławski on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday. München: Sagner (Sagners Slavistische Sammlung 17), 279⫺293 Morin, Yves-Charles (1981), “Ou` sont passe´s les s finals de l’ancien français?”. In: Sankoff, David & Cedergren, Henrietta (eds.), Variation Omnibus. Edmonton/Alberta: Linguistic Research (Current Inquiry into Language, Linguistics and Human Communication 40), 35⫺47 Mosel, Ulrike & Hovdhaugen, Even (1992), Samoan Reference Grammar. Oslo: Universitetsforla-

get (Instituttet forskning B 85)

for

Sammenlignende

Kultur-

Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)regularitäten: Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 13) Rainer, Franz (1993), Spanische Wortbildungslehre. Tübingen: Niemeyer Scalise, Sergio (1994), Morfologia. Bologna: Mulino Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Stonham, John T. (1994), Combinatorial Morphology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 120) Truax, Catherine Elaine (1991), Transparency, Analogy, and Phonological Change: Vowel Quantity and Nominal Number in Selected German Dialects. Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford Univ. Winter, Werner (1969), “Vocative and Imperative”. In: Puhvel, Jaan (ed.), Substance and Structure of Language. Berkeley, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 205⫺223

Wolfgang U. Dressler, Vienna (Austria)

61. Suprasegmental processes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Introduction The study of tonal morphology Word-level tonal morphology Phrasal tonal morphology References

1.

Introduction

It has long been known that suprasegmental features play an important role in the morphology of many of the world’s languages. Perhaps most familiar are cases where morphological categories are distinguished solely by stress placement (e.g. English noun-verb pairs such as cońvert/conve´rt, pe´rmit/permı´t, etc.), or where stress is a major component in the realization of morphological paradigms (e.g. Italian pa´rlo ‘I speak’ vs. parlo´ ‘s/he spoke’). Languages also exploit differences in segmental duration, glottalization, and nasalization, among other suprasegmental features. For example, either consonants or vowels can be lengthened for morphological purposes (e.g. Arabic kataba ‘he wrote’, caus-

ative kattaba, reciprocal kaataba; this can also be viewed as substitution of one segment for another, cf. Art. 58). Final glottalization can be used for morphological purposes (e.g. imperative in Lahu), and nasalization quite commonly expresses morphological information in various languages (e.g. Terena ayo ‘his brother’, a˜yo˜ ‘my brother’; cf. BendorSamuel 1960). Finally, tone can play any number of roles in the morphology of languages in which it is distinctive (for general surveys of tone systems, cf. Pike 1948: 3⫺17; Anderson 1978; Odden 1995; Yip 1995). Tones are indicated by the following marks and abbreviations: [a´] [a¯] [aˆ] [a`] [!a´] [aˇ]

H M HL L ! H LH

high tone mid tone high to low falling tone low tone downstepped high tone low to high rising tone

In examples where vowels are not marked with a diacritic, they are underlyingly toneless.

588 Tone may enter into a nominal paradigm, for example marking case in Maasai (e.g. [c` lk=´ti` n] ‘ox(nom)’ vs. [c` lk=´ti´ n] ‘ox(abs)’) and Turkana (Art. 138) or number and obviation in some varieties of Montagnais (cf. Cowan 1983; Art. 130). Similarly, tone may enter into a verbal paradigm, as in the marking of tense/aspect in Gokana (e.g. [a` dc¯ ?] ‘s/he falls’ vs. [a¯ dc¯ ?] ‘s/he has fallen’) or person/ number in Chatino (cf. Pride 1963: 21). Besides its inflectional functions, tone may also be the sole exponent of a derivational process, e.g. nominalization in Lendu ([]o`] ‘give’ vs. []o´] ‘gift’, [dhu`] ‘insult [verb]’ vs. [dhu´] ‘insult [noun]’) or Classical Chinese (cf. Downer 1959: 267, 271⫺277). Compounding is another example. In Mande languages, for instance, non-initial elements of compounds forfeit their underlying tones. The underlying tones are replaced by tones that characterize tonally dependent morphemes, which, depending on the language, are often spread from the last tone of the nearest non-dependent element in the construction, sometimes in combination with default tones (e.g. Mende [ha`le`-wi´ li` ] ‘hospital’, from [ha`le´] ‘medicine’ and [pi´ li´ ] ‘house’, where the high tone on the derived form [wi´ li` ] is spread from [ha`le´] and the low tone of [wi´ li` ] is placed by default; cf. Leben 1978: 186⫺206). Tonal morphology is particularly interesting because it exhibits essentially the same range of morphological properties as in all of segmental morphology. Even in tonal systems with a highly developed morphology, most morphs will consist of a pairing of segmental and tonal features. However, a morphological property can be expressed solely through tone, i.e. by a tonal morph (often called tonal morpheme; cf. Art. 46). A suprasegmental contrast which coincides with a difference in grammatical meaning does not necessarily involve suprasegmental morphs. Thus, the Italian minimal pair pa´rlo vs. parlo´ exhibits both a difference in person (1st singular vs. 3rd singular) and one in tense (present vs. past), neither of which is consistently signalled by stress; in other inflection classes, 3rd singular past contrasts with 2nd singular present (dormı´ ‘s/he slept’ vs. do´rmi ‘you sleep’) or 3rd singular present (crede´ ‘s/he believed’ vs. cre´de ‘s/he believes’). This suggests that certain Italian suffixes (e.g. -o ‘3.sg.past’) are inherently stressed or stress-attracting and others (e.g. -o ‘1.sg.pres’) inherently unstressed or stress-


neutral. Even where there is a systematic correlation between grammatical meanings and stress/tone patterns, it may be attributable to the features of certain affixes (cf. Welmers 1973: 157f. on tone in ChiNyanja verbs) ⫺ or it may be secondary to segmental differences (cf. Art. 64, 3.2 on affixal and accentual subparadigms in Slavic languages). The grammatical role of suprasegmental features must therefore be examined in the context of the overall morphological system of the language in question.

2.

The study of tonal morphology

Since tonal contrasts can perform the same functions as segmental contrasts, lexical tone has often been treated from a theoretical standpoint as being no different from any other segmental feature, i.e. by definition associated with a given segment or syllable. Yet there has also been some recognition that the lexical and grammatical functions of tone sometimes require that it be analytically divorced from segments. Examples of morphologically relevant stress and tone, especially in African and American Indian languages, were reported in the first half of the 20th century (cf. Sapir 1921: 78⫺81; Pike 1948: 22f. with further references). In the 1940s, American structuralist works on morphological analysis explicitly mention suprasegmental “morphemes”, including intonation contours and stress or tone patterns of an additive character as well as stress or tone changes (cf. Hockett 1947: 337 [1957: 238]; Nida 21949: 62⫺65). The latter were regarded as a special type of “replacive morph” (cf. Art. 58), whereas additive elements were called superfix ⫺ despite the objection that they are neither “above” nor “below” the segments: “the term ‘superfix’ is no more apt than ‘subfix’, and (the bad Latin) ‘simulfix’ might be even better” (Hockett 1954: fn. 4). The variant suprafix is also used (cf. Nida 21949: 69; Matthews 1974: 133; Mel’cˇuk 1982: 87). Occasionally, these terms are applied to a “change of tone or stress in a base, when this has the same effect as adding an affix” (Bauer 1988: 254), but this is not the prevalent usage. Although the existence of suprasegmental morphs was frequently noted, they received little attention in most varieties of American and European structuralism; welldeveloped attempts to understand their

589

61. Suprasegmental processes

unique status within phonological theory were one of the hallmarks of John R. Firth’s “prosodic analysis” and of Zellig S. Harris’s “phonemic long components” (cf. Firth 1949; Harris 1951: 125⫺149). In the latter half of the twentieth century, work in African languages led to a more thorough understanding of tonal morphology. It was recognized that “certainly many tone languages have some morphemes composed exclusively of pitch phonemes” (Welmers 1959/60: 2; for examples, cf. Welmers 1959/60: 6; 1969: 90f.; 1973: 126⫺128). In Jukun, for instance, the hortative construction consists in the replacement of the normal pronoun tone by H: [ku´ bı¯] ‘he should come’ ´ bı¯] ‘I should come’ (cf. [ku¯ bı´] ‘he came’); [m ` bı´] ‘I came’). Along with replacive (cf. [m tonal morphs, there are others that simply function as prefixes and suffixes. Some are purely tonal allomorphs of segmental affixes (cf. Welmers 1959/60: 9), but others have no segmental counterparts. In Urhobo, for instance, the negative is expressed by adding a “floating” tone (cf. Welmers 1969: 90f.): After a final L, the negative is a floating H, as illustrated by (1a) and (1b), which differ only in the absence vs. presence of a floating H at the end; after a final H, the negative is a floating LH, as in (2b) vs. (2a): (1) (a) [c` ta´ ki` be`] (b) [c` ta´ ki` be`+]

‘he told me’ ‘he didn’t tell me’

(2) (a) [me` ta ki´ ] (b) [me` ta ki´ ˇ ]

‘I told him’ ‘I didn’t tell him’

Other examples which were reported in the 1960s include the high-toned “zero” subject concord prefix in Akan, which consists solely of a tone (cf. Schachter & Fromkin 1968: 113, where it is regarded as [⫹segment], with no phonological features other than tonal ones), and the “known” or “specific” (definite) determiner of Bambara, which is a floating L, recognizable by specific allotones of a preceding L or a following H (cf. Bird 1966: 6; 1968: 37f.). It was not only in African languages that such phenomena were being observed. Cantonese, for instance, has a highpitched suffix which adds a high-toned tail to a preceding non-high tone as an expression of endearment, familiarity etc. (cf. Whitaker 1956: 193, 202f.). The diachronic origin of this floating tone appears to be the hightoned diminutive suffix -i; its status as a synchronic suffix can be defended on the grounds that the combination with the pre-

ceding tone results in contours that are not otherwise attested in Cantonese. The term floating tone or non-segmental tone has also been applied to an “abstract” morphonemic entity which can trigger tonal changes: “Non-segmental tones are tones which are posited in the deep structure, but not attached to segmental phonemes. They might by late rules combine with a preceding segmental tone or be deleted. In many cases they have had an observable influence on the surrounding tones.” (Voorhoeve 1971: 47)

For example, the Igbo associative construction, which consists of a noun-noun sequence, was analyzed as containing a floating H tone between a noun and its possessive (cf. Voorhoeve & Meeussen & DeBlois 1969). This floating H provided the conditioning for certain changes, for example the change of a L-L noun to L-H when the following noun also begins with L. Thus, [a`gba´ e`nwe`] ‘jaw of monkey’ was analyzed as underlying /a`gba`+ e`nwe`/ (cf. [a`gba`] ‘jaw’). In every detail, a tonal morph is parallel to its segmental counterpart: It can occur as an affix or as a clitic, depending on whether it comes in at the word or phrase level (cf. Art. 41). In addition, a floating tone may either be added outside the tone of its base or host, or it may replace that tone. A tonal morph may be the sole exponent of a morphological expression, or it may cooccur with another morph, as when a tense is defined by a segmental prefix and a tonal suffix. In either case the same analytical problems arise as with segmental morphs. Thus, in each case one must ask whether a tonal morph is a “thing” (i.e. present in an actual string of segments and/or tones) or a “process” (i.e. the observable change that takes place). One must also ask whether the tone spells out a morphological or morphosyntactic feature or is simply inserted in the presence of such a feature, and so forth (for a discussion of these possibilities in the context of morphological theory, cf. Anderson 1992).

3.

Word-level tonal morphology

Just as two morphs may differ solely in the value of a single segmental feature (e.g. the feature [⫾voice] in English minimal pairs such as pear/bear), so can two lexical morphs differ only in a single feature of tone (e.g. Lahu [tsa`] ‘fierce’, [tsa¯] ‘feed’; Cemuhi [tıí] ‘destroy’, [tı¯i] ‘harvest’, [tıì] ‘write’). Similarly,

590


grammatical morphs may differ only in tone, e.g. Aghem [a`] ‘with’ vs. [aˆ] ‘to/for’; Haya [ka´] ‘if’, [ka`] (‘distant past’). Also common is when a paradigm is characterized by tonal differences on several morphs. A case of such multiple exponence (cf. Art. 64) is observed in Gokana verb forms such as [a¯ e` dc` ?] ‘s/he fell’ vs. [a` e´ dc¯ ?] ‘s/he will fall’. The past tense marker [e`] carries a L tone, while the future tense marker [e´] carries a H tone. However, there is also a difference in tone on the third person singular subject marker ([a¯] vs. [a`]) as well as on the verb ‘fall’ ([dc` ?] vs. [dc¯ ?]). In other cases of multiple exponence, a segmental affix may be accompanied by a tonal melody. Thus, in Hausa, plurals are marked by a segmental suffix and an accompanying tone pattern which is assigned to the resulting stem ⫹ suffix combination. For example, plurals in [⫺uńaà] are formed by replacing the final vowel of the base with this suffix and substituting an all H tone pattern over the stem: (3) (a) [keèke´] ‘bicycle’ [keékuńaà] ‘bicycles’ (b) [a`goógo´] ‘clock’ [a´goóguńaà] ‘clocks’ A similar, though more restricted, case occurs in Haya. In this typical Bantu language, surface tones are derived by applying phonological rules to the underlying tones of concatenated morphemes. The one exception occurs when a Hn-L-H melody replaces the underlying tones on an imperative verb that has a first person singular object prefix, e.g. [n´ko`ma´] ‘tie me’, [n´-lı´mı`ra´] ‘cultivate for me’ (underlying /n-ko´ma/, /n´-limira/). Such instances of replacive tonology are exactly parallel to cases where an inherent segmental feature or syllable structure is overwritten by a “prosodic template” based on the morphology. In “concatenative” tonal morphology, tonal morphs frequently turn up both as prefixes and as suffixes. In Noni, a L tone prefix marks the singular of class 9/10 nouns, forming a LH rising tone when the noun stem is H: (4) singular [bweˇ] [dzcˇ n] [jıˇn]

plural [bwe´] [dzc´ n] [jıń]

‘dog’ ‘star’ ‘maggot’

On the other hand, nouns which are underlyingly L show that the plural of class 9/10

nouns is marked by a H tone prefix (joining the lexical L to create a surface ML falling tone): (5) singular [Ma`m] [dzo`m] [ndzeè`]

plural `] [Ma¯m `] [dzo¯m [ndze¯e`]

‘animal’ ‘antelope’ ‘sheep’

Tonal suffixes are frequently attested. In Bamileke-Dschang, infinitives take the noun class prefix /le`-/ and a L tonal suffix: (6) (a) /le`-to`n-7/ ‘reimburse’ (b) /le`-toń-7/ J [le`-!toń] ‘call’ Frequently the same point in a paradigm may require both a tonal prefix and a tonal suffix. For instance, in Noni the imperative is marked by a L prefix and a H suffix: (7) (a) /7-dc` mse`-+/ J [dc` mseˇ] ‘push!’ (b) /7-tsı´mse´-+/ J [tsı¯mse´] ‘pacify!’ Where they cooccur in African languages, the tonal suffixes generally tend to be more tightly bound to their base than the tonal prefixes. If introduced at different levels or strata, the analysis of such cases as tonal “circumfixes” is less likely. There are notorious methodological problems as well as gaps in the analysis of tones as affixes. First, there is apparently no known case of a tonal infix, say a L tone, which interrupts the lexical tones of the base to which it is attached. There also are no clear cases of tonal transfixes. There are, however, sporadic reports of tonal metathesis in the literature. The Bamileke-Dschang infinitive [le`-!toń] in (6b) has been analyzed as /le`-toń-7/ with the infinitival suffix L metathesizing around the preceding H on the verb root [-toń] ‘call’. This causes the downstep on the H tone marked by the raised exclamation point. In Bamileke-Ghoma´la´?, where such sequences of linked H followed by unlinked L result in LH rising contours, e.g. /to´m7/ J [toˇm] ‘fruit’ (cf. [to´m] ‘[to] sprout’), the metathesis analysis appears even more compelling (cf. Nissim 1981: 288f.). In other cases there is a problem of segmentability. It is clear that a tonal morph is present, but it is not possible to sequence the tones of a base and its affix. One such case comes from Mpi, where nouns and verbs belong to three non-intersecting tone classes. In each case the verb appears to have an additional contour that the noun lacks: [sı´] ‘four’, [sı¯] a color, [sı`] ‘blood’ vs. [sıˆ] ‘die’, [sı¯7] ‘roll’, [sıˇ] ‘be putrid’. One would like to segment out

591


part of the tone as a tonal suffix on verbs, a morpheme marking verbhood perhaps, but there is no way to generalize across the tonal contours. Other potential problems of tonal morphology are reminiscent of those involving strictly non-tonal features. In many TibetoBurman languages ⫺ though usually not productively ⫺ a tonal change can mark the difference between plain and causativized verbs. In Tibetan the initial part of a tonal contour may be raised to form a causative: (8) [Mi14] ‘sleep’ [Mi44] ‘make sleep’ [phap13] ‘descend’ [pap53] ‘make descend’ [sum15] ‘be firm’ [tsum54]‘make firm’ While it would appear that the causative morpheme is a tonal prefix, as part of the process voiceless aspirates deaspirate and fricatives affricate. The possibility thus arises that this tonal morph is instead a segmental morph with an accompanying (non-low) tone. Or could this be a case of two separate prefixes: a segmental one and a tonal one? This latter kind of analysis suggests itself in Slave, where alienable possession is marked by a H tone suffix [-e´], while inalienable possession is marked only by a H tonal morph: (9) (a) [dzı´je-tu-e´] (b) [dzı´je-tu´]

‘water from berries’ ‘wine’

In these examples it is possible to identify the H suffixal tone as ‘possessive’ and the [-e´] segmental suffix as ‘alienable’ (or perhaps as ‘genitive’) such that the underlying representations of (9a) and (9b) become /dzı´je-tu-e-+/ and /dzı´je-tu-+/, respectively. These examples show that there is no a priori reason why a morph should have to be strictly segmental or strictly tonal, rather than combining tonal and non-tonal features (e.g. aspiration, nasalization etc.). In some such cases it may be desirable to set up a segmental tone-bearing unit to which the tone is linked. In other cases the tonal and non-tonal features may be semi-autonomous expressions of the same morpheme ⫺ or, upon closer examination, may turn out to be expressions of different morphemes. An additional difficulty that does not frequently arise in segmental morphology may be in determining the directionality of the tonal affixation. This is particularly in cases where a morphological process completely replaces the underlying tones of the base. This is true in the process in the San Miguel El Grande

dialect of Mixtec whereby adjectives are derived from nouns: [bı´ko´] ‘cloudy’ (cf. [bı¯ko`] ‘cloud’), [so´?o´] ‘deaf’ (cf. [so`?o`] ‘hear’), [sıńı´] ‘pertaining to the head’ (cf. [sı¯nı`] ‘head’). The derived adjective has all H tone, though it is difficult to say whether this H comes in from the left or from the right. At the lexical level, then, tone appears to be available for every kind of morphological expression (with the possible exceptions of infixation and transfixation). A final illustration at the lexical level is the role of tone in reduplication. In some languages, a morphological process may require that both targeted segments and their tones be reduplicated, e.g. Kinande /omu-ru´me/ ‘man’, which is realized [o`mu´-ru`me`] by anticipating the H onto the preceding vowel, reduplicates as /omu-ru´me-ru´me/, realized [o`mu´-ru`me´-ru`me`]. It is also possible for segments to be reduplicated without their underlying tones. In Haya, for instance, the infinitive [oku-kıńgula] ‘to open’ reduplicates its stem as [okukıńgula-kingula] ‘to open here and there’, not as *[oku-kıńgula-kıńgula]. An additional possibility is reflected in the reduplicative process that derives adjectives from nouns in the Changzhi dialect of Chinese: suan213-ti213 ‘sour’, xuan24-ti24 ‘yellow’, yan535-ti535 ‘soft’. In each case the first morpheme is the base noun; the suffix -ti reduplicates (or spreads?) the tone of this noun.

4.

Phrasal tonal morphology

A completely different kind of problem concerns the basic issue of when a tonal morph is an affix, as opposed to a clitic. One way to look at this distinction is to regard an affix as a grammatically bound morpheme introduced in the morphology, while a clitic is introduced syntactically, i.e. at the phrase level. One of the most often cited cases of a tonal morph, the associative H tone of Igbo, falls into this latter category. In cases where the possessed noun ends in L and the possessor noun begins with L, the H associative marker will be assigned to the left: [a`gba´ e`nwe`] ‘jaw of monkey’ (/a`gba` ⫹ + ⫹ e`nwe`/). In all other cases the H will be assigned to the right causing, for instance, the downstep in the sequence [a`gba` e´!wu´] ‘jaw of goat’ (/a`gba` ⫹ + ⫹ e´wu´/; while a number of different accounts have been offered to derive this downstep, they all have in common that the H is assigned to the right). Since the effect of the H tonal morph can be felt on either the preced-

592


ing or the following word, a syntactic account seems to be required: the associative H will cliticize sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, depending on the surrounding tonal context. Virtually any kind of grammatical morph can consist solely of a tone introduced syntactically: pronouns, determiners, tense-aspect auxiliaries, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth. In Bambara, for instance, definiteness is indicated by a L tonal morph (cf. 2); in Gwari, serial verbs are marked by a preceding L that converts a H to a LH rising tone and a M to a lowered M, e.g. ([]e´] ‘come’ / []eˇ] ‘and come’; [lo¯] ‘go’ / [!lo¯] ‘and go’). In Gokana both locative and temporal adjuncts are marked by a preceding H tone, e.g.

In other words, where in some languages a tonal clitic adds a tone to a string, in other languages, tones are deleted. In many languages, boundary tones are used to mark the edges of phrasal domains, e.g. phonological phrase, intonational phrase, utterance. In Kinande, a lexically toneless noun such as [omu-r=mi] ‘farmer’ is realized with four (default) L tone syllables in environments where no tonal morphs interact with it. When interacting with final boundary tones, however, ‘farmer’ may surface with one of three additional tone patterns: (11) (a) [o`mu`-ri`mi´] (— H%) (b) [o`mu`-ri´mi`] (— H% L//) (c) [o`mu`-ri´mi´] (— H% H//) Here, a final H% boundary tone (the symbol % indicates a boundary) marks a phonological phrase that ends in a lexically toneless vowel, e.g. a subject noun phrase as in (11a). At the end of an intonational phrase, L// marks statements (11b) and H// marks questions and lists (11c). While marking phrase boundaries and intonations, these tonal morphs differ from their affixal and clitic counterparts simply by being introduced late in the phrasal phonology. Tonal morphs of this type convey common intonational meanings associated with declarative, interrogative, negative, imperative and vocative utterances. This obviously applies to all languages that have intonations, i.e. probably to all languages. Kinande presents an example where boundary tones are added to a lexically toneless form. In other cases the phrasal and intonational tones modify ⫺ and potentially neutralize ⫺ lexical

(10) (a) [a¯e` mc` n nc¯ m] ‘he saw an animal’ ´ tc¯ ] ‘he saw an animal in (b) [a¯e` mc` n nc¯ m the house’ ´ nı¯?e¯´ı] ‘he saw an animal (c) [a¯e` mc` n nc¯ m today’ As (10) shows, tone may mark a variety of relationships within syntactic constituents. In addition to Igbo, many other West African languages use a H or L tone clitic to mark possession. In other languages which lack a separate tonal clitic per se, tonal differences may still be used to subordinate one element to another phonologically. For example, in Shanghai Chinese compounds as well as sequences of a lexical item and following function word(s), only the initial element retains its phonological tones, which are mapped over the entire sequence, with any excess syllables receiving a default L tone.

/thi + tshi/

HL ‘sky’

J /thi – tshi/

MH ‘gas’

HL ‘weather’

/'mo + ku + 'non 'va/

LH

MH

LM LH

‘scold-exper-you int’

J [thi – tshi]

H

L

J /'mo ku 'non 'va/ J ['mo ku 'non 'va]

LH

L H

‘[Has someone] scolded you?’

Fig. 61.1: Shanghai Chinese compounds and verb forms

L

L


tones. The most commonly encountered cases involve using a tonal means to distinguish interrogatives from declaratives. In Hausa, a L is added after the rightmost lexical H in a yes/no question, fusing with any pre-existing lexical L that may have followed the rightmost H (which is raised somewhat, as are any following L tones whatever their source). As a result, lexical tonal contrasts are neutralized. In statements, [ka´`ı] ‘head’ is tonally distinct from [ka´´ı] ‘you [masculine]’. But at the end of a yes/no question, they are identical, consisting of an extra-H gliding down to a raised L. In Nembe, a final lexical L becomes H in statements, and a final lexical H becomes L in questions. Thus, L-L / LH contrasts such as [dı`rı`] ‘book’ / [bu`ru´] ‘yam’ are neutralized as L-H in statements, but as L-L in questions. A similar case is found in Isoko, where a final L marks positive questions, while a final H marks negative questions. This causes a final lexical L to remain L in a positively expressed question, while this final L becomes a LH rise in a negatively expressed question: [u`bı`] ‘book’ / [u`bıˇ] ‘book? [negative]’. In other languages tonal differences may mark emphasis or attenuations. In Hausa raising the first H (or H sequence) in a word to extra H signals emphasis. The same gesture accompanied H ideophones, e.g. the extra-high tone intensifiers such as [fa˝t] and [k’ı˝rı˝n] ini [fa´rı´´ı fa˝t] ‘snow white’ and [ba´k’ı´´ı k’ı˝rı˝n] ‘jet black’. In Eastern Popoloc, a final upglide replaces the normal glottal stop to mark politeness, while imperatives in Kinande receive a final L boundary tone (and lack the phonological phrase-final H% tone). while some distance from word-level tonal morphology, these intonational boundary tones often have a complex grammar and phonology of their own and are not directly derivable from putative intonational universals. Thus, contrary to the expectations of some linguists, there are cases where final H marks declaratives (Nembe, Luganda) and cases where a final L marks interrogatives (Dagbani, Isoko).

5.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1978), “Tone Features”. In: Fromkin (ed.), 133⫺175 Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 62)

593 Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Bendor-Samuel, John T. (1960), “Some Problems of Segmentation in the Phonological Analysis of Tereno”. Word 16, 348⫺355 [reprinted in: Palmer (1970, ed.), 214⫺221] Bird, Charles S. (1966), “Determination in Bambara”. The Journal of West African Languages 3.1, 5⫺11 Bird, Charles S. (1968), “Relative Clauses in Bambara”. The Journal of West African Languages 5, 35⫺47 Cowan, William (1983), “The Development of Suprasegmental Inflections in Montagnais”. International Journal of American Linguistics 49, 64⫺71 Downer, G. B. (1959), “Derivation by Tone-change in Classical Chinese”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 22, 258⫺290 Firth, John R. (1949), “Sounds and Prosodies”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1948, 127⫺ 152 [reprinted in: Palmer (1970, ed.), 1⫺26] Fromkin, Victoria A. (1978, ed.), Tone: A Linguistic Survey. New York etc.: Academic Press Goldsmith, John A. (1995, ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics 1) Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press [later printings entitled Structural Linguistics] Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 229⫺242] Hockett, Charles F. (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 386⫺399] Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966 Readings in Linguistics, Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] Leben, William R. (1978), “The Representation of Tone”. In: Fromkin (ed.), 177⫺219 Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Mel’cˇuk, I[gor’] A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 44) Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press [11946] Nissim, Gabriel M. (1981), Le bamileke-ghoma´la´’ (parler de Bandjoun, Cameroun). Paris: SELAF (Langues et civilisations a` tradition orale 45) Odden, David (1995), “Tone: African Languages”. In: Goldsmith (ed.), 444⫺475

594 Palmer, F[rank] R. (1970, ed.), Prosodic Analysis. London: Oxford Univ. Press (Language and Language Learning 25)


Voorhoeve, Jan (1971), “Tonology of the Bamileke Noun”. Journal of African Languages 10, 44⫺53

tive Phrase”. The Journal of West African Languages 6, 79⫺84 Welmers, William E. (1959/60), “Tonemics, Morphotonemics, and Tonal Morphemes”. General Linguistics 4, 1⫺9 Welmers, William E. (1969), “Structural Notes on Urhobo”. The Journal of West African Languages 6, 85⫺107 Welmers, W[illia]m E. (1973), African Language Structures. Berkeley etc.: Univ. of California Press Whitaker, K[atherine] P. K. (1956), “A Study on the Modified Tones in Spoken Cantonese II: The Origin and Functions of the Modified Tones”. Asia Major N.S. 5, 184⫺207 Yip, Moira (1995), “Tone in East Asian Languages”. In: Goldsmith (ed.), 476⫺494

Voorhoeve, Jan & Meeussen, A[chiel] E. & Blois, K[ornelis] F. de (1969), “New Proposals for the Description of Tone Sequences in the Igbo Comple-

Larry M. Hyman, Berkeley/CA (U.S.A.) William R. Leben, Stanford/CA (U.S.A.)

Pike, Kenneth L. (1948), Tone Languages. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press Pride, Leslie (1963), “Chatino Tonal Structure”. Anthropological Linguistics 5.2, 19⫺28 Sapir, Edward (1921), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace Schachter, Paul & Fromkin, Victoria A. (1968), A Phonology of Akan: Akuapem, Asante, and Fante. Los Angeles, Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of California at Los Angeles (UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 9)

IX. Flexion Inflection 62. Lexeme, word-form, paradigm 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The scope of inflection Definitions: word-form, grammatical word, lexeme Paradigm The external delimitation of paradigms The internal structure of paradigms Stems References

1.

The scope of inflection

Neither of these questions has a clear-cut answer accepted by all morphologists, but one can try at least to identify the problems which stand in the way of clear-cut answers. As a first step, some important terms need to be defined.

2. Inflection is concerned with sets of wordforms which have the same lexical meaning but different grammatical (or morphosyntactic) properties. These grammatical differences usually involve syntactic relationships of government or concord between word-forms in the same sentence (cf. Art. 34). In this way, inflection is distinguished from derivation, which concerns related word-forms which have different lexical meanings (cf. Art. 38). For example, in the German sentence Meine junge Schwester liebt deinen jungen Bruder ‘my young sister loves your young brother’, the word-forms junge and jungen both belong to the lexeme jung ‘young’, their differences in form being due to the grammatical properties in this context of the words Schwester, liebt and Bruder. Some languages (e.g. Vietnamese) are said to display no inflection at all, so that there is only one word-form corresponding to each lexeme; on the other hand, some languages have lavish inflectional systems, in which one lexeme typically encompasses dozens or even hundreds of wordforms. The main theoretical questions raised by such system are: (a) How do we determine which word-forms belong to a given lexeme (see 4)? (b) To what extent do the relevant grammatical properties and their expressions impose an organisation on the word-forms within a given lexeme (see 5)?

Definitions: word-form, grammatical word, lexeme

A word can be thought of as one kind of sign, with a content and an expression (cf. Art. 26). A word-form is the expression side of a word, either phonological or orthographical. For example, walked in I walked to the bus-stop and I have walked for miles constitutes a single word-form, both phonologically (/wc6kt/) and orthographically, although it fulfils a different grammatical function in the two sentences, being a past tense form in the first and a past participle form in the second. By contrast, read in I read /ri6d/ the paper every day and She read /red/ the paper yesterday constitutes a single orthographical wordform but two distinct phonological wordforms. These two instances of read share a common lexical meaning, and the same is true of the two instances of walked; but that is not crucial in identifying word-forms, so that even the two instances of row /rew/ in the phrases a row of beans and to row a boat constitutes a single word-form (cf. Matthews 21991: 30f.). The two instances of walk-ed, although identical phonologically and in lexical meaning, differ in the grammatical part of their content, which can be represented as ‘walkpast’ versus ‘walk-past.part’. (This shows that the relationship between the -ed suffix and the grammatical properties of which it is an exponent is not one-to-one; cf. Art. 64.) We can therefore regard walk-ed meaning ‘walk-past’ and walk-ed meaning ‘walk-

596 past.part’ as distinct grammatical words (cf. Matthews 21991: 28⫺30; Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 116⫺118). One can think of a grammatical word as, in general, a complete two-sided sign, with a specified grammatical content as well as lexical content and phonological (and orthographical) expression. This reflects the fact that a given combination of lexical and grammatical content has, in general, just one expression, so that, for example, there is no alternative to walk-ed as the expression of ‘walk-past’. Such alternatives are occasionally found, however. For example, for any speakers of English for whom dreamed /dri6md/ and dreamt /dremt/ are free variants, we may say that there are two alternative word-forms for one grammatical word meaning ‘dream-past’. A lexeme is the set of grammatical words associated with a single lexical meaning (cf. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 117f., 137⫺ 140; Laskowski 1987: 178; Aronoff 1994: 8⫺ 11). For example, the English lexeme walk consists of the set of five grammatical words walk ‘walk(pres)’, walk-s ‘walk-3.sg’, walk-ed ‘walk-past’, walk-ed ‘walk-past.part’ and walk-ing ‘walk-prog’. Two relatively minor points should be clarified here. The parentheses surrounding pres reflect the absence of any formative in the word-form walk which can be associated with this part of its meaning, but that does not affect the status of walk ‘walk(pres)’ as a distinct grammatical word. Secondly, one could argue whether “present”, “past participle” and “progressive” are appropriate labels for the morphosyntactic properties concerned (cf. Art. 63); the important point, however, is that the five grammatical words can be clearly distinguished on syntactic grounds. A given grammatical word necessarily belongs to only one lexeme, but a given word-form does not; for example, row in a row of beans and row in to row a boat express grammatical words belonging to two lexemes which are clearly distinct in their lexical meanings as well as their word-class membership (cf. Ch. X). The term lexeme is sometimes used also to mean “the fundamental element in the lexicon” of any language (Matthews 21991: 26; cf. Lyons 1977: 18⫺25). Other terms often associated with this sense are lexical item and lexical unit (cf. Leech 1974: 179, 229f.; Cruse 1986: 23f., 35⫺39, 76⫺80). There is a considerable overlap between lexical items and items which can appropriately be called lexemes in our sense. The lexemes walk, read,

IX. Flexion

row ‘line’ and row ‘propel with oars’ are all items which would be listed separately in a dictionary. But the correspondence is not exact. In the idiomatic phrase kick the bucket meaning ‘die’, the word-form bucket expresses the same grammatical word ‘bucket(sg)’ as it does in the phrase fill the bucket; but only in the latter is it an instance of the lexical item meaning ‘cylindrical container with hinged handle’, whereas in the former it is part of a quite different lexical item (a phrasal idiom). The distinction drawn here between the two senses of lexeme resembles the distinction drawn by some linguists between morphological objects and listemes (cf. Di Sciullo & Williams 1987: 3⫺21).

3.

Paradigm

3.1. Definition The term paradigm has been used in a number of senses by different scholars. The definition proposed here is one which fits in conveniently with the definition of lexeme given in 2. The lexemes of any language can typically be assigned to a relatively small number of lexeme-classes or word-classes, on the basis of the number of grammatical words they contain and the morphosyntactic properties which distinguish these grammatical words (cf. Ch. X). For example, in German one can distinguish on this basis five word-classes: particles, verbs, substantives, pronouns and adjectives (cf. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 137⫺140). Of these, particles are “indeclinable” words or lexemes containing just one grammatical word. By contrast, a substantive is a lexeme which normally contains eight grammatical words, each identified by its combinations of properties from the two morphosyntactic categories case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative) and number (singular, plural); the qualification “normally” is included to take care of substantives which for semantic reasons are never plural, such as Milch ‘milk’ (cf. Art. 67). These eight case-number combinations constitute the paradigm for the word-class of substantives in German. There is no generally accepted term for the individual properties and combinations which constitute a paradigm, but cell seems more suitable than the ambiguous slot or position (in German, the standard term is Stelle ‘place’). Thus, in English, the paradigm for verbs consists of the five cells present, third person singular, past,

597

62. Lexeme, word-form, paradigm

progressive and past participle, which are expressed by the five grammatical words in a verbal lexeme (cf. the discussion of the lexeme walk in 2). 3.2. Other senses of paradigm and related terms Since the lexemes walk and speak are both verbs, they both conform to the same paradigm, as defined in 3.1, despite the fact that two of the grammatical words in speak exhibit different formatives from the corresponding grammatical words in walk: -en rather than -ed in spok-en ‘speak-past.part’, vowel change rather than -ed in spoke ‘speakpast’. In terms of the way in which many linguists use the term paradigm, this would mean that walk and speak belong to two different paradigms (cf. Carstairs 1987 a: 48f.). But in the terminology adopted here, this difference between walk and speak is one of inflection class rather than of paradigm (cf. Art. 65). Another sense sometimes attributed to the term paradigm is ‘all the inflectional forms of a word’ (cf. Hartmann & Stock 1972: 161; Wurzel 1984: 61 [1989: 52]). This equates the paradigm with the totality of grammatical words belonging to a lexeme, or, in effect, with the lexeme itself. Readers should be aware of these different usages; in this article, however, the term paradigm will be used in accordance with the original definition. It is often convenient to refer to a subset of a paradigm, in any of the senses just described. For example, we may want to refer to just the plural forms of a German noun, or just the present tense forms of a German verb. Some writers use the term paradigm in this sense too, so that, in German, either the present tense forms themselves, the set of grammatical words they express, the set of formatives they display (-e, -(e)st etc.) or the set of cells which define them (1st person singular present, 2nd person singular present etc.) would be described as the present tense paradigm (cf. Lehfeldt 1985: 30). Alternative terms which have been used for this notion are subparadigm, slab and screeve. The term subparadigm may also, however, have the quite different sense ‘(set of formatives associated with a) subclass of an inflection class’, in accordance with which one might distinguish in German not between (say) present and past subparadigms but between (say) the subparadigm of regular verbs whose 2nd person singular form ends in -st (e.g. [du] lob-st

‘[you] praise-2.sg’) and the subparadigm whose 2nd person singular form ends in -est (e.g. [du] reit-est ‘[you] ride-2.sg’). The term slab has been used to refer to a part of a paradigm associated with a specified morphosyntactic property, so that for German verbs one might speak of a present slab, a subjunctive slab or a 1st person slab, for example (cf. Carstairs 1987 a: 81). Finally, the term screeve has been used specifically to refer to a set of Georgian verb forms agreeing in all properties except those of person-number (cf. Aronson 1982: 41), and this term could clearly be applied in descriptions of other languages. However, none of these three terms for a part of a paradigm has yet become generally accepted among morphologists.

4.

The external delimitation of paradigms

The extent of the paradigm associated with a given word-class in a given language is intimately connected with the question of how many grammatical words belong to the lexemes of the word-class. Uncertainty on this may arise because of doubts over the following points: (a) Given two word-forms which are clearly related both in their shape and in their lexical meaning, it may be difficult to decide whether the difference between them is inflectional or derivational (see 4.1; cf. Art. 38). (b) It may not be clear whether a given item is a grammatical formative or an independent word, for example, a postposition (see 4.2; cf. Art. 40). (c) It may not be clear whether a given items is a grammatical formative or a clitic (see 4.3; cf. Art. 41). 4.1. Distinguishing grammatical words from derivatives The Latin words timid-ae ‘fearful-gen.sg.fem’ and timent-is ‘fearing-gen.sg’ are both clearly related in their lexical meaning to timeo ‘[I] fear’. But are they both grammatical words belonging to the lexeme timeo ‘fear’? The traditional answer is that timentis is but timidae is not; timentis is a form of the present participle of timeo, whereas timidae is a form of the distinct lexeme timidus, derived from timeo by suffixing -id- to the stem (see 6). The relationship between timeo and timentis is therefore inflectional, whereas that between timeo and timidae is derivational.

598 The justification for this traditional treatment lies in the fact that, both syntactically and morphologically, timidae behaves as an adjective. It is one of a set of grammatical words (with forms timida, timidam etc.) defined by different combinations of properties from the categories case, number and gender ⫺ combinations which constitute the paradigm for the adjectival word-class in Latin; and the difference in word-class between timidae and timeo means that they must be assigned to different lexemes. One apparent drawback with this traditional justification is that timent-is ‘fearinggen.sg’ is equally one of a set of grammatical words defined by different combinations of properties from the categories case, number and gender, with forms timens, timentem etc. Why then is this adjectivally inflected “present participle” not recognised as a separate adjectival lexeme too? In answer to this objection, one can point to differences between timidae and timentis as regards their syntactic behaviour. The latter, although inflected adjectivally, retains certain important syntactic characteristics of the verb timeo; for example, it can govern an object in the accusative case (timentis Gallos ‘fearing the Gauls’) or a subordinate clause (timentis ne Galli aggrediantur ‘fearing that the Gauls may attack’). The syntactic behaviour of timidae, however, is purely adjectival; it may modify nouns but cannot govern accusative objects or (normally) subordinate clauses. This answer seems adequate to justify the traditional analysis. However, it does point to a possible weakness in the definition of word-class which was assumed in 3, since that definition focussed exclusively on a morphological characteristic of lexemes (the grammatical words which constitute them) rather than on their syntactic characteristics (the constructions in which they can occur; cf. 5.2). 4.2. Distinguishing inflected forms from collocations of words The syntagmatic delimitation of words has traditionally depended on a variety of grammatical and phonological criteria which yield notoriously conflicting results (cf. Herbermann 1981: 123⫺163). The way in which this uncertainty can impinge on the delimitation of paradigms can suitably be illustrated in Hungarian. There, the substantival paradigm is traditionally regarded as containing numerous cases, including nine local cases expressed by monosyllabic suffixes. These local

IX. Flexion

cases are analysable in terms of two dimensions or categories, each with three members: direction (‘to’, ‘at’ or ‘from’) and position (‘in’, ‘on’ or ‘by’), e.g. ha´z-bo´l ‘housefrom.in’, ha´z-ba ‘house-to.in’, ha´z-on ‘houseat.on’, ha´z-hoz ‘house-to.by’. There is case agreement within the noun phrase between the head noun and the demonstratives ez ‘this’ and az ‘that’ (whose final -z assimilates to a following consonant), e.g. eb-bo˝l a ha´zbo´l /ebbø6l A ha6zbo6l/ ‘from inside this house’ (literally ‘this-from.in the house-from.in’), ab-bo´l a ha´z-bo´l /Abbo6l A ha6zbo6l/ ‘from inside that house’, eh-hez a ha´z-hoz ‘towards this house’, ah-hoz a ha´z-hoz ‘towards that house’. The contrasts between eb-bo˝l and abbo´l and between eh-hez and ah-hoz also illustrate the effect on these case suffixes of vowel harmony, a pervasive feature of Hungarian. But the problem with fixing the number of local cases at nine is that these monosyllabic local “suffixes” have in several respects just like a series of disyllabic local “postpositions”, e.g. mell-e´ ‘beside-to’, mellett ‘beside-at’, mell-o˝l ‘beside-from’, mög-e´ ‘behind-to’, mög-ött ‘behind-at’, mög-ül ‘behind-from’, etc. In meaning, these “postpositions”, just like the “suffixes”, are analysable partly in terms of a three-term category of direction, as the examples just given illustrate; moreover, they display the same pattern of demonstrative agreement, as in a mög-ül a ha´z mög-ül ‘from behind that house’ (literally ‘that behind-from the house behindfrom’), e mell-ett a ha´z mell-ett ‘next to this house’, a mell-ett a ha´z mell-ett ‘next to that house’. The “suffixes” and “postpositions” even share the characteristic that, when accompanying a personal pronoun, they precede rather than follow the pronominal element, e.g. benn-em ‘in-1.sg’, hozz-a´m ‘towards-1.sg’, mög-e´-m ‘behind-to-1.sg’, mello˝l-em ‘beside-from-1.sg’. So the characteristics which distinguish the “suffixes” from the “postpositions” are not primarily grammatical but rather orthographic and phonological: the “postpositions” are conventionally written as separate words, they are disyllabic rather than monosyllabic, and they are not subject to vowel harmony (as is shown by the pair of forms e mellett ‘beside this’ and a mellett ‘beside that’). But from the grammatical point of view, should we not treat local “suffixed” forms and forms with “postpositions” alike, either by excluding the former from substantive lexemes, or by including the latter within them?

599


The answer depends on how much weight we attach to different criteria for delimiting words. In Hungarian there are clear criteria for delimiting phonological words (namely initial stress and vowel harmony), and, generally speaking, phonological words coincide well with what we are inclined to identify as words on grammatical grounds. These facts constitute pressure to preserve the traditional analysis of the Hungarian substantive paradigm, with nine local cases defined by the categories of direction and position, while acknowledging that the category of direction is also relevant to a class of postpositions which mimic case suffixes in their distribution, and in which direction is expressed suffixally (-e´ ‘to’, -tt ‘at’, -l ‘from’). But two alternative analyses based on more strictly grammatical criteria are certainly conceivable, according to which noun forms with local “suffixes” and with local “postpositions” would be classified alike, either all or none being grammatical words. 4.3. Distinguishing grammatical formatives from clitics Clitics are phonologically bound forms which behave syntactically like words rather than like inflectional affixes (cf. Art. 41). The problem which they may pose for morphology can be illustrated by the English possessive marker -’s. Some linguists have analysed this as the exponent of a morphosyntactic case which we may call possessive, contrasting with a default case which we may call nominative (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 224). According to this analysis, each English noun lexeme (or, at any rate, each common noun lexeme denoting a person) consists of four grammatical words, and the paradigm for the English noun consists of the four cells nominative singular, possessive singular, nominative plural and possessive plural, thus: (1) nominative possessive

singular woman woman’s

plural women women’s

This analysis is superficially plausible, especially when one remembers that in Old English there certainly was a possessive (or genitive) case contrasting with three other cases, as in modern German, and that the exponent of genitive was frequently -s, which can be seen as one ancestor of the modern English -’s. But the drawback with this analysis is that there is ample evidence that, in modern English, -’s attaches not to nouns but to noun

phrases. In colloquial English one can say not only that man’s daughter but also that man there’s daughter and that man we met’s daughter, where the word to which -’s is attached is not a noun but is the last word in a noun phrase. Assuming that at least part of the ancestry of the English -’s resides in an inflectional suffix, the question arises how and why its grammatical character changed (cf. Carstairs 1987 b). Some such change may be under way in colloquial French, where subject and object noun phrases are increasingly often “copied” by weak pronouns preceding the verb, e.g. Jean, il la voit chaque jour, Marie ‘John sees Mary every day’ (literally ‘John, he her sees every day, Mary’) instead of standard French Jean voit Marie chaque jour (cf. Harris 1978: 118f.). If and when such “copies” become obligatory in French, one could argue that they have ceased to be clitic pronouns and have become instead inflectional prefixes (cf. Art. 145). At that stage, the paradigm of French verbal lexemes will be extended by a new category of person-number marking in agreement with the object of the verb, and, although the status of subject person-number within the paradigm will be unchanged, its expression will have become prefixal as well as suffixal.

5.

The internal structure of paradigms

Let us suppose that, for all word-classes in some language, (a) the same morphosyntactic properties are relevant to all the grammatical words in each lexeme; (b) all lexemes which one is inclined to assign to the same word-class on syntactic grounds unequivocally conform to the same paradigm; (c) within each lexeme, each grammatical word is expressed by a distinct wordform; (d) the word-forms which express morphosyntactic properties within a given category are all independent, i.e. the expression of one property is never “built upon” the expression of another. If all languages behaved like this hypothetical one, there would be little to say about the internal structure of paradigms except what might emerge from the internal organisation of the relevant morphosyntactic categories

600 themselves, especially relationships of markedness between the properties within them (cf. Ch. XIII⫺XIV, Art. 29). But most, perhaps all, languages do not behave like this. 5.1. Hierarchical structure within paradigms The paradigm of German substantives, discussed in 3.1, is straightforward in that only two categories are involved (case and number), and both categories are relevant to every grammatical word. The number of grammatical words in a German substantive lexeme is thus simply the product of the number of properties in each category, namely eight (4⫻2). But with German adjectives the situation is more complex. In addition to case and number, German adjectives in attributive contexts are inflected for gender, to express agreement with the head noun. The number of genders in German is three (masculine, feminine and neuter). But this does not mean that the adjectival paradigm has 24 (4⫻2⫻3) cells, representing the product of the case, number and gender properties. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, in predicative contexts German adjectives appear in an uninflected form, expressing no morphosyntactic property at all (contrast jene alt-e Frau ‘that old-nom.sg.fem woman’ with jene Frau ist alt ‘that woman is old’). Secondly, plural forms of adjectives make no distinction between genders, so that gender is relevant only in singular forms. The paradigm for German adjectives therefore contains only 17 cells: 12 singular ones (the product of four cases and three genders) plus four plural ones plus one uninflected cell (cf. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 139). The paradigm of Latin verbs, illustrated by timeo ‘fear’ in 4.1, presents a more complex illustration of the same phenomenon. Having concluded that participial forms such as timent-is ‘fearing-gen.sg’ and timent-ia ‘fearing-nom.pl.neut’ do belong to the lexeme timeo, we are obliged to recognise the typically adjectival categories of gender and case as relevant to the Latin verbal paradigm. They are relevant only to participial forms, however. By contrast, the quintessentially verbal categories of person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative) are relevant only to nonparticipial forms. The only categories which apply both to participial and to nonparticipial forms are number, tense (present, past, future) and possibly aspect (perfective, imperfective).

IX. Flexion

These examples suggest the need to establish within paradigms a hierarchy of categories on the basis of their relationships of presupposition and exclusion and, correspondingly, a hierarchy of grammatical words. For example, in German adjectives, marking of gender presupposes marking of number, but not vice versa, so two grammatical words which differ only in gender will belong more closely together than any two which differ in number. It may be that hierarchies established on this basis correlate with hierarchies which have been proposed on the basis of the relevance (i.e. the degree of semantic significance) of the categories concerned to the lexical meaning of the lexeme, or with the order in which morphosyntactic properties are realised relative to the stem (cf. Bybee 1985: 13⫺16, 33⫺35), or with the distribution of different stem-shapes among the word-forms of a lexeme (cf. 6); but this remains controversial. In any case, the way in which different categories subdivide paradigms into slabs (cf. 3.2) may not always be expressible in terms of a straightforward branching tree or Aristotelian taxonomy. Much work remains to be done in this area. German adjectives illustrate how, in the context of a given property (such as ‘plural’), a whole category (such as gender) may lack any morphological expression. More puzzling are situations where, in the context of a certain property, it is not a whole category but only certain properties within it which cannot be expressed morphologically. An example is provided by Latin verbs, where in the context of the passive mood there is no morphological expression for perfective “finite” forms, i.e. perfective forms inflected for person and number, even though imperfective finite forms exist. To fill the gap, periphrastic forms are used (cf. Art. 68), e.g. periphrastic perfective passive visi sunt ‘they have been seen’ in contrast to imperfective passive videntur ‘they are seen’. Linguistis differ as to whether periphrastic forms should be regarded as grammatical words belonging to the appropriate lexemes (in this instance, video ‘see’) on the same footing as ordinary grammatical words. 5.2. Paradigm discrepancies within a wordclass Since a word-class is identified on the basis of the number of grammatical words which its lexemes contain and the morphosyntactic properties which distinguish them, and since


these grammatical words determine the paradigm for that word-class (cf. 3.1), it is strictly contradictory to talk of different lexemes within one word-class being associated with different paradigms. It is tempting to do so, however, because of the very considerable correspondence between word-classes defined morphologically, as in 3.1, and wordclasses defined on purely syntactic criteria. If the paradigmatic difference between two lexemes is relatively marginal while their syntactic characteristics are overwhelmingly similar, can we not stretch our definitions so as to assign them to a single word-class? From the syntactic point of view, this kind of analysis implies an expectation that any two classes of lexemes which behave alike syntactically should conform to the same paradigm inflectionally (cf. 5.3). Russian nouns are traditionally analysed as having six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental and prepositional) as well as two numbers (singular and plural), yielding a total of 12 grammatical words in each noun lexeme (unless plural is excluded on semantic grounds) and a paradigm with 12 cells. Among the various normal functions of the genitive are a qualifying function and a partitive function, as in cena chleb-a ‘price bread-gen.sg ([the] price of bread)’ and kilo chleb-a ‘[a] kilo of bread’. However, there are a few nouns, such as syr ‘cheese’, which, in the singular only, have distinct word-forms in nonpartitive and partitive contexts, e.g. cena syr-a ‘[the] price of cheese’ versus kilo syr-u ‘[a] kilo of cheese’. Similarly, the prepositional normally fulfils a locative function after prepositions of place as well as a nonlocative function after other prepositions, as in v gorod-e ‘in town-prep.sg (in [the] town)’ and o gorod-e ‘concerning [the] town’. However, there are a few nouns, such as sad ‘garden’, which, in the singular only, have distinct word-forms in locative and nonlocative contexts, e.g. v sad-u ‘in [the] garden’ versus o sad-e ‘concerning [the] garden’. If, as seems inevitable, we recognise these distinct word-forms as expressing distinct grammatical words, then we are seemingly forced to recognise an extra partitive case for the lexeme syr and the few which behave like ist, and likewise an extra locative case for sad and the few lexemes like it. Should we assign these partitive and locative cases to all Russian nouns, including the great majority, like chleb and gorod, which fail to distinguish them overtly, and so

601 increase the number of cases in the normal noun paradigm to eight and the number of grammatical words in a noun lexeme to 16? Or should we recognise two extra wordclasses for the syr class and the sad class respectively, on the basis of a paradigmatic difference between them and the great majority of noun lexemes? Rather than choosing either of these courses, most analysts of Russian have preferred to include syr and sad in the normal noun word-class and allow instead for some paradigmatic variation within it, involving either independent partitive and locative cases which apply only to a minority of nouns, or else variants or “sub-cases” of the genitive and prepositional cases (cf. Comrie 1986; Mel’cˇuk 1986: 52⫺56, 61). This implies a kind of hierarchical structure within the category of case, quite distinct from the kind of hierarchical structure within paradigms discussed in 5.1. English provides an example of a superficially analogous situation which is traditionally analysed in a contrasting fashion. In most English verb lexemes, there is no distinction in word-form between a past and a past participle form (cf. walked in 2), just as in most Russian noun lexemes there is no distinction in word-form between a partitive and a nonpartitive genitive. Nevertheless, linguistics generally recognise walk-ed ‘walkpast’ and walk-ed ‘walk-past.participle’ as distinct grammatical words on the basis of the “strong” verbs in which past and past participle are expressed by distinct wordforms (e.g. spoke, gave, sang versus spoken, given, sung etc.). The crucial difference between this situation and that of the Russian partitive forms lies in the frequency with which “strong” verbs occur in ordinary usage and the fact that the distinction between past and past participle is semantically and syntactically relevant to all verbs. By contrast, the Russian partitive-nonpartitive distinction is semantically relevant to only relatively few and infrequently occurring nouns (namely mass nouns denoting edible commodities), and is not expressed overtly even with all of these (cf. chleb ‘bread’, which has only one genitive form chleba, in contrast with syr ‘cheese’). It therefore seems appropriate to extend the distinction between past and past participle grammatical words to all English verbs. The large class of “weak” verbs such as walk, in which past and past participle grammatical words are expressed by the same

602 word-form, thus illustrates the phenomenon of syncretism (cf. Art. 66). Another apparently similar situation arises with the English verb (or auxiliary) be, which, alone among English verbs and auxiliaries, distinguishes a past singular word-form was (as in I was there yesterday) and an irrealis singular word-form were (as in If I were you, I would accept the offer). Should we analyse the paradigms of all English verbs as containing cells for two properties ‘realis’ and ‘irrealis’ in the category of mood, which happen to be expressed homonymously in all verbal lexemes except one (cf. Huddleston 1975)? Here the analysis traditionally preferred is similar to that of the Russian partitive and locative. be is an extremely frequent lexeme, unlike the Russian nouns of the syr and sad classes; but both its syntactic and its morphological behaviour is so peculiar that linguists have been reluctant to extend the irrealis-realis contrast to other verbs on the strength of the unique contrast in form between was and were. What is odd about syr and sad is that they seem to have “extra” cases beyond the norm for Russian nouns. We can also find nouns which seem to have fewer cases ⫺ or, at any rate, fewer word-forms to distinguish cases ⫺ than the norm. Examples are Russian indeclinable nouns such as pal’to ‘overcoat’, which have the same word-form in all syntactic contexts. But again, rather than assuming that case and number are irrelevant to these “nouns” and assigning them to a separate word-class with a single-cell paradigm, Slavists conventionally assign them to the normal noun word-class and describe their uniformity of shape in terms of homonymy between the 12 grammatical words within the lexeme. This is not fully satisfactory, since it provokes the question why all six cases should be expressed homonymously, rather than (say) just four of the six. It may perhaps seem more apt to analyse pal’to and its like as nouns to which case and number, as inflectional categories, do not apply at all. But the traditional analysis conforms to the expectation that lexemes which are syntactically alike in their behaviour should also be paradigmatically alike. Although pal’to has only one word-form, it can occur in all syntactic contexts. Some lexemes, however, lack not only the normal complement of word-forms but also the capacity to appear in the corresponding syntactic contexts. Again, rather than assign these

IX. Flexion

to word-classes on their own, linguists have generally analysed them as defective members of the word-class which they resemble most closely (cf. Art. 67). A pattern of inflection which would constitute the most severe challenge to the traditional expectation would be one where two word-classes, identified as in 3.1, (a) behave syntactically just alike but (b) conform to paradigms which are too discrepant to be reconciled by appeal to syncretism (unlike Russian invariable nouns). Such a situation is not hard to envisage, but it seems to occur rarely if at all. Something like it is found in the Iranian language Sogdian, where there are two classes of “nouns”, quite distinct inflectionally. The first class has a six-term case system and a two-term number system on familiar IndoEuropean lines. In the second class, however, number marking is optional and there are apparently only two cases, neither corresponding straightforwardly to any combination of cases for the first class. But this peculiar state of affairs, which arose historically as a consequence of a purely phonological development affecting stems with a particular phonological shape (cf. 6), was unstable and seems to have led to the disintegration of the six-case system of the first class (cf. Sims-Williams 1982). This instability may be seen as confirming the unnaturalness of so gross a discrepancy between syntactically and morphologically defined word-classes. 5.3. Homonymy between grammatical words Sometimes the justification for recognising two grammatical words as distinct rests on a distinction of word-form not in different lexemes (e.g. Russian chleb versus syr, cf. 5.2) but in a different part of the paradigm. Thus, for example, in no Latin noun, pronoun or adjective is there a distinction in word-form between dative and ablative cases in the plural number. One might therefore argue that the morphosyntactic validity of the dative/ablative contrast is itself in doubt, at least in the plural part of the paradigm, just as in the plural part of the German adjective paradigm there are no valid contrasts of gender (cf. 5.1). But other Latin cases are clearly distinguished in the plural, and there is ample evidence for the dative/ablative contrast in the singular part of the Latin noun paradigm.

603


Moreover, the word-forms of plural adjectives modifying pairs of conjoined nouns in the dative singular and or in the ablative singular support the traditional analysis according to which dative plural and ablative plural grammatical words must be recognised as distinct, though homophonous, in every lexeme (cf. Carstairs 1987 a: 102⫺106). This is therefore another clearcut instance of syncretism (cf. Art. 66). An analysis involving syncretism may also be appropriate for the Yankunytjatjara dialect of the Australian Western Desert language (cf. Goddard 1982: 179⫺181), although the evidence is less straightforward. In three classes of “nominals”, lexemes with vowel-final stems express the three syntactic functions: A (subject of transitive verb), O (object of transitive verb) and S (subject of intransitive verb) suffixally as follows: (2) common nouns A -ngku; S, O -π proper nouns A -lu; S, O -nya anaphoric pronouns A, S -π; O -nya Each of the three functions thus has a different pattern of expression over the whole class of “nominals”, but for any given “nominal” lexeme the S function is always expressed in the same way as either A or O. The kind of analysis which is traditional among Australianists would describe this situation in terms of two distinct two-term case systems: one system for common and proper nouns, with ergative and absolutive cases (the ergative being a case which is restricted to the A function), and another for anaphoric pronouns, with nominative and accusative cases (the accusative being a case which is restricted to the O function). If one adopts this analysis, one must assign anaphoric pronouns to a different word-class from common and proper nouns. But syntactically all three types of “nominal” behave alike; moreover, some evidence involving case-agreement favours ascribing to all “nominals” a single three-term case system, distinguishing ergative, accusative and nominative cases expressing A, O and S functions respectively. If we do so, we can now assign all “nominals” to the same word-class according to the morphological criterion in 3.1, as well as on syntactic evidence. However, this commits us to recognising a set of grammatical words (namely nominative ones) which are syncretised with some other grammatical word invariably, not just in some lexemes or in some parts of the paradigm. Whether one is happy

with this analysis depends on how much weight one attaches to syntactic as opposed to morphological criteria in identifying word-classes. In the Yankunytjatjara discussion, a vital part was played by the three syntactic functions A, O and S, but it is important to note that the argument for a three-term case system did not rest on syntactic functions alone. Most morphologists insist that every alleged morphosyntactic contrast must be justified by some contrast in word-form somewhere in the relevant paradigm or word-class (as is the case in Yankunytjatjara). This means that when a word-form distinction is lost entirely, as between the former dative and locative cases of Serbo-Croat, the morphosyntactic distinction should be deemed to be lost also, so that the Serbo-Croat dative and locative have been replaced by a single new case (cf. Comrie 1986: 88; Carstairs 1987 a: 94). Admittedly, the distinct syntactic and semantic functions fulfilled by the two old cases remain; but describing how these functions are now fulfilled involves describing how the modern Serbo-Croat case system is used, not how it is structured internally (cf. Art. 63). ⫺ The distribution of homonymy within a paradigm may be a clue to its internal organization (cf. 5.1) and to markedness relationships between the morphosyntactic properties expressed in it (cf. Noyer 1992: 40⫺49; Williams 1994: 21⫺31). However, no generally agreed conclusions on this have yet been reached. 5.4. Relationships of word-form and markedness within lexemes All the cells of a paradigm may be entirely independent of one another so far as the corresponding word-forms are concerned, in the sense that no word-form is built upon or formed from another. This is the case for a Latin lexeme such as servus ‘servant’, in which no case-number suffix, either singular or plural, can plausibly be seen as the base from which another is formed: (3) nominative vocative accusative genitive dative ablative

singular serv-us serv-e serv-um serv-ı¯ serv-o¯ serv-o¯

plural serv-ı¯ serv-ı¯ serv-o¯s serv-o¯rum serv-ı¯s serv-ı¯s

Superficially it may seem that the accusative plural form can be got by suffixing -s to

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the dative-ablative singular form, and the dative-ablative plural form by suffixing -s to the nominative plural form. But no such pattern is consistently found in other Latin inflection classes, and no such analysis has ever been seriously proposed. Rather, all the forms can be analysed as consisting of a bound stem serv- followed by an indivisible cumulative case-number suffix. The lexeme servus thus illustrates what has been called stem inflection (German Stammflexion), with no grammatical word occupying a privileged position in respect of its form (cf. Wurzel 1984: 56⫺ 58 [1989: 47⫺49]). On the other hand, there is one form, namely the nominative singular servus, which is often regarded as having a privileged position in respect of its content, since nominative is regularly seen as the unmarked case and singular as the unmarked number (cf. Art. 29, 100, 102). The form which corresponds in this way to the least marked cell in the paradigm is often called the base form (German Grundform; cf. Wurzel 1984: 53 [1989: 44]). As well as being maximally unmarked, does the base form ever constitute the base for the formation of other word-forms within the lexeme? The answer is certainly yes, as can be illustrated with the Latin noun puer ‘boy’: (4) nominative vocative accusative genitive dative ablative

singular puer puer-e puer-um puer-ı¯ puer-o¯ puer-o¯

plural puer-ı¯ puer-ı¯ puer-o¯s puer-o¯rum puer-ı¯s puer-ı¯s

This pattern of inflection, known as base form inflection (German Grundformflexion), is regarded by many morphologists as semiotically more natural than stem inflection, and as constituting the pattern towards which inflectional systems should tend unless inhibited by language-particular pressures (cf. Art. 29, 30; Wurzel 1984: 55⫺58 [1989: 46⫺49]). Base form inflection is consistently exhibited in the nominal inflection of Turkish, for example, where no nominative singular form ever has a suffix. In Latin, by contrast, the absence of a nominative singular suffix in puer is relatively unusual, so that it may be preferable to analyse this lexeme in accordance with the majority Latin pattern of stem form inflection by ascribing to it a nominative singular suffix which is phonetically null (cf. Art. 45). Conversely, most German nouns have base form inflection (e.g.

Hund ‘dog’, plural Hund-e), and the few nouns with stem inflection (e.g. Firm-a ‘firm’, plural Firm-en) can be included in the majority pattern by reanalysing the apparent singular suffix (e.g. -a) as part of the base form; it must then be assumed that the plural is formed by substitution (a J en; cf. Art. 58) or that the plural suffix is accompanied by secondary truncation (a J π before -en; cf. Art. 60). The term base form or basic form is also sometimes used to refer to a form from which other grammatical words within the lexeme are derived, irrespective of whether it corresponds to an unmarked cell in the paradigm (cf. Bybee 1985: 50⫺68). It is easy to overlook this ambiguity because the same form is so often a base form in both senses. This also accounts for the occasional use of the term derived form (German abgeleitete Form) to mean any form other than a base form in the first sense (cf. Wurzel 1984: 66⫺68 [1989: 56⫺58]) ⫺ a term which is doubly unfortunate, because it implies wrongly that base forms in the first sense are always base forms in the second sense, and because it encourages confusion between inflectional and derivational morphology. A less misleading term for the same concept is oblique form. Distinct in principle from base forms (in either sense) are citation forms, which are the forms used to refer to lexemes in metalinguistic discussions (such as in this Handbook) and in dictionaries. The conventional citation form for a given lexeme may be a base form in the first sense only (as with Latin serv-us or German Firm-a) or in both senses (as with Latin puer or German Hund) or in neither sense (as with Latin verbs such as timeo ‘fear’, whose citation form is timeo, the form for the 1st person singular present indicative imperfective cell, rather than timet, the form for the less marked 3rd person cell). It is possible for some word-form in a lexeme to be derived from another word-form which is not a base form in either sense. This phenomenon has been most discussed in connection with case (cf. Desˇerieva 1970; Mel’cˇuk 1986: 63). The derived case-forms are called secondary derivative cases while the cases from which they are derived are called primary or independent cases. For example, in Lezgi (cf. Art. 127), the form lam ‘donkey’ is the base from which is derived the ergative form lam-ra ‘donkey-erg’, from which in turn is derived the genitive form lam-ra-n


‘donkey-erg-gen’, the dative lam-ra-v ‘donkey-erg-dat’, etc. This way of forming grammatical words can be taken as indicating a hierarchy among the cases concerned, so that genitive and dative are subordinate to ergative in Lezgi. But this kind of hierarchy is in principle quite independent of any one might want to establish on the basis of semantic markedness relationships between the cases themselves (cf. Art. 102) and of any hierarchy implied by the recognition of “sub-cases” such as the Russian partitive and locative (cf. 5.2). It is unclear to what extent the three kinds of hierarchy coincide. The gloss ‘donkey-erg-gen’ for the Lezgi genitive form lam-ra-n implies that the ergative word-form is contained inside the genitive word-form even though the genitive case is independent of the ergative syntactically and semantically. Similarly, the future imperfective active participle stem am-at-ur- of a Latin verb such as amo ‘love’ seems to contain the perfective passive stem am-at-, even though there is no sense in which the meaning or syntactic function of the former participle “contains” that of the latter. In such circumstances the derived grammatical word has been described as parasitic on the grammatical word which its word-form contains (Matthews 1972: 86, 173f.).

6.

Stems

The constant element in all grammatical words of a lexeme is its lexical meaning, and the stem of a word-form can be provisionally defined as that part of the word-form in which its lexical meaning is expressed. But a lexeme may have more than one stem. One can distinguish a sense of stem which relates solely to word-forms and a sense which pays attention to grammatical factors. The first sense of stem (call it stem1) can be defined in negative terms: the stems1 of a word are the set consisting of that part of each word-form of the lexeme which expresses the word’s lexical meaning. For some lexemes, this set will consist of a single member; for example, the German lexeme hund ‘dog’ has only one stem for Hund(-), which is the sole form occurring in its eight grammatical words. By contrast, the lexeme gast ‘guest’ has two stems1 Gast(-) and Gäst-, the latter occurring in forms such as Gäst-en ‘guest-dat.pl’. (The hyphen in Gäst- indicates that this stem1 is never free but is always accompanied by a

605 suffix; the parenthesised hyphen in Hund(-) and Gast(-) indicates that these stems1 can occur with or without suffixes.) Apart from being restricted to a particular lexeme, a stem1 is a phonological or orthographic entity, just like a word-form, whose identification does not depend on the grammatical words which it helps to express. Under one plausible analysis, the stems1 of the Latin verb amo ‘love’ are ama- (found, for example, in the 1st person plural imperfective present indicative forms ama-mus ‘we love’ and amamur ‘we are loved’) and am- (found, for example, in the 1st person singular imperfective present indicative forms am-o ‘I love’ and am-or ‘I am loved’). The first of these stems1 can be seen as derived from the second by the suffixation of -a-. However, this -a- has no clearcut grammatical meaning; it is simply a stem-forming element constituting the difference between one stem1 and another (cf. Wurzel 1970: 47⫺49; Art. 45). Stems1 may, however, be associated with parts of paradigms which are clearly definable in morphosyntactic terms. Thus, Gäst- is associated with all and only the plural forms of gast. It is therefore natural to use stem in a second sense (call it stem2) which associates it explicitly with a grammatical as well as a lexical meaning. For any lexeme, we can define its stem2 for a given paradigmatically relevant property P as that continuous part of any word-form within the lexeme which is consistently associated with grammatical words containing P and so expresses, or helps to express, P. In this sense, Gäst- can be called the plural stem2 of gast. In the stem2 Gäst-, the expression of plural (namely umlaut) cannot be separated from the expression of the lexical meaning. But the definition of stem2 does not exclude the possibility that what expresses P may be an affix which plays no part in expressing the lexical meaning. For example, the perfective stem2 of the Latin verb amo, found in all and only perfective forms, is ama-v-, consisting of the stem1 amaand a perfective suffix -v-. This illustrates the fact that a stem2, while it must contain a stem1, may contain further material too. It is natural to ask whether there are any restrictions on which of the morphosyntactic properties associated with a paradigm can be expressed by stems2. There is no guarantee of any interesting crosslinguistic answer. However, it has been claimed that, at least for stems2 which are also suppletive stems1 (cf. Art. 52), the notion of “relevance” mentioned

606

IX. Flexion

in 5.1 applies here (cf. Bybee 1985: 13⫺16). For example, tense is more “relevant” to the meaning of a verb than person is, so it is not an accident that, in a wide selection of languages, verbs may have suppletive stems1 associated with specific tenses but not associated with specific persons (cf. Rudes 1980). This claim and its implications deserve further investigation. The definition of stem1 imposes no requirement that a stem1 should be bound. If such a requirement had been imposed, one would have had to say that German hund ‘dog’ has no stem1, since that part of all its word-forms which expresses its lexical meaning, namely Hund(-), is a free form. This would have severely limited the usefulness of the notion. But some writers do use the term stem, in contrast to word, in a way which implies that stems are normally bound. This is implicit in the term stem inflection, as used in 5.4. If stems are defined in relation to lexemes, only inflectionally related forms can be said to share a stem. Strictly, the stem Hund(-) of hund ‘dog’ and the elements hünd- of hündisch ‘dog-like (servile)’ and Hunde- of Hundehütte ‘dog-hut (kennel)’ cannot be equated in any way. If (as seems reasonable) one wishes to analyse all these as related stems, the definitions have to be revised. But there is more than terminology at stake here. The question arises whether in general the stems which are exploited in inflection are also available for derivation, and vice versa; and the answer will bear on the controversial issue of how firmly inflection and derivation can be distinguished (cf. Art. 38; Lieber 1990).

7.

References

Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 22) Aronson, Howard I. (1982), Georgian: A Reading Grammar. Columbus/OH: Slavica Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1979), Einführung in die Morphologie. Stuttgart etc.: Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbücher 296) Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt [British edition 1935, London: Allen & Unwin] Brecht, Richard D. & Levine, James S. (1986, eds.), Case in Slavic. Columbus/OH: Slavica Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam,

Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9) Carstairs, Andrew (1987 a), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London etc.: Croom Helm Carstairs, Andrew (1987 b), “Diachronic Evidence and the Affix-Clitic Distinction”. In: Ramat, Anna Giacalone & Carruba, Onofrio & Bernini, Giuliano (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics [Pavia 1985]. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 48), 151⫺162 Comrie, Bernard (1986), “On Delimiting Cases”. In: Brecht & Levine (eds.), 86⫺106 Cruse, D[avid] A. (1986), Lexical Semantics. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Desˇerieva, T[amara] I. (1970), “Kriterij opredelenija v jazyke samostojatel’nych padezˇej, proizvodnych padezˇej i padezˇnych variantov”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1970.3, 109⫺116 Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria & Williams, Edwin (1987), On the Definition of Word. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 14) Goddard, Cliff (1982), “Case Systems and Case Marking in Australian Languages: A New Analysis”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 2, 167⫺196 Harris, Martin (1978), The Evolution of French Syntax: A Comparative Approach. London, New York: Longman (Longman Linguistics Library 22) Hartmann, R[einhard] R. K. & Stork, F[rancis] C. (1972), Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. London: Applied Science Publishers Herbermann, Clemens-Peter (1981), Wort, Basis, Lexem und die Grenzen zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik: Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der Bildung komplexer Substantive. München: Fink Huddleston, Rodney (1975), “Homonymy in the English Verbal Paradigm”. Lingua 37, 151⫺176 Laskowski, Roman (1987), “On the Concept of the Lexeme”. Scando-Slavica 33, 169⫺178 Leech, Geoffrey (1974), Semantics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Lehfeldt, Werner (1985), Sprjazˇenie ukrainskogo glagola. München: Sagner (Specimina Philologiae Slavicae Supplementband 9) Lieber, Rochelle (1990), On the Organization of the Lexicon. New York, London: Garland [orig. 1980: Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; reprinted 1981, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club] Lyons, John (1977), Semantics, Vol. 1⫺2. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 6)

607

63. Meaning vs. use in inflection Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press [11974] Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1986), “Toward a Definition of Case”. In: Brecht & Levine (eds.), 35⫺85 Noyer, Robert Rolf (1992), Features, Positions and Affixes in Autonomous Morphological Structure. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Rudes, Blair (1980), “On the Nature of Verbal Suppletion”. Linguistics 18, 655⫺676 Sims-Williams, Nicholas (1982), “The Double System of Nominal Inflexion in Sogdian”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1982, 67⫺76

Williams, Edwin (1994), “Remarks on Lexical Knowledge”. Lingua 92 [⫽ Gleitman, Lila & Landau, Barbara (eds.), The Acquisition of the Lexicon. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press], 7⫺34 Wurzel, Wolfgang Ulrich (1970), Studien zur deutschen Lautstruktur. Berlin/DDR: AkademieVerlag (Studia grammatica 8) Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: AkademieVerlag (Studia grammatica 21) [English transl. 1989: Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness. Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer]


63. Meaning vs. use in inflection 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Approaches to grammatical meaning General meaning Basic meaning Uses of inflectional forms System and environment References

1.

Approaches to grammatical meaning

There are three main approaches to the semantic characterization of inflectional forms: (a) the description of a set of different uses of individual forms representing such categories as mood, tense, person, etc. (cf. 4); (b) the analysis in terms of a basic meaning (German Grundbedeutung) and a number of secondary functions (cf. 3); (c) the theories which attempt to determine a single general meaning (German Gesamt-

bedeutung) which covers all particular meanings and uses (cf. 2). The first approach is typical of traditional grammatical descriptions, which list functions like genitivus subjectivus, genitivus objectivus, etc. Modern grammatical works include the analysis of functions such as the uses of the English simple past tense when it refers to past time, when it expresses hypothetical meaning in dependent clauses or when it refers to the present, etc. (cf. Leech 1971: 9⫺12). According to the second approach, the basic meaning of a grammatical form can be singled out. This meaning is treated as belonging to the grammatical system, but it does not cover all secondary meanings and uses. For example, reference to the hearer may be interpreted as the basic meaning of the Russian second person form. However, this form may also have a generic meaning, for instance:

(1) (a) takich ljudej na kazˇdom sˇagu ne vstretisˇ’ such people at every step not find:fut:2.sg ‘Such people are not easily found.’ (b) cˇego ne sdelaesˇ’ radi druga what not do:fut:2.sg for friend ‘You’d do anything for a friend.’ The generic meaning may be expressed only under limited contextual conditions. This secondary meaning belongs to a peripheral semantic sphere outside the basic meaning ‘reference to hearer’. These two meanings cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

The third approach is based on the idea of an absolute invariant which covers all particular meanings and uses as contextually conditioned variants, e.g. ‘reference to speaker’ as the invariant meaning of the first person form. The meanings in question are deter-

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IX. Flexion

mined by the value of a grammatical form in the system of forms constituting a given grammatical category (cf. Art. 28). Thus, the general meaning of a grammatical form may be defined as the invariant categorial meaning which distinguishes this form from other members of the same grammatical category and determines various particular meanings and uses in speech.

2.

General meaning

2.1. Theoretical foundations The study of general grammatical meanings has a long tradition in linguistics. In 1827, Franz Wüllner expressed the view that the idea which should be sought in a linguistic form should be a single idea, i.e. a sole meaning of a fairly high degree of abstraction, so that all the concrete uses of the given form could be inferred from it (on this position, cf. Hjelmslev 1935: 84; Jakobson 1936: 243f. [1971: 26f.; 1984: 62]). In the mid-19th century, K. S. Aksakov made a distinction between the uses and the meanings of the Russian verb forms (cf. Aksakov 1855). He also criticized definitions of case forms based on the listing of individual uses of the cases in speech. He believed that a complete listing of all uses is not possible and that even the most complete listing is misleading, because all these particular uses not only conceal the general law but also often contradict one another (cf. Aksakov 1860: 82 [1880: 79f.]). The interpretation of the meanings of grammatical forms as language features which are the basis of particular uses represented in speech had great influence upon later theories of grammatical meaning. The principle of general meaning was developed by Louis Hjelmslev (cf. Hjelmslev 1928: 163⫺213; 1935; on his interpretation of the notion “signification fondamentale”, cf. Jakobson 1936: 243⫺247 [1971: 26⫺30; 1984: 61⫺66]). The most comprehensive exposition of the theory of general meaning in grammar can be found in the works of Roman Jakobson. In analyzing the category of case and verbal categories in Russian, he regards the general meaning as a morphological invariant which must be distinguished from the contextual and/or lexically conditioned variants (cf. Jakobson 1958: 154 [1971: 179]). Thus, this theory includes the idea of the hierarchy of levels in the description of grammatical meanings. The general meaning of grammatical forms can be determined

in morphological correlations. The marked member of the correlation indicates the presence of a given feature A, whereas the unmarked member does not indicate the presence of this feature, i.e. it does not indicate whether A is present or not (cf. Art. 29). Thus, the meaning of the unmarked member of the correlation is reduced to ‘absence of the indication of A’ (Jakobson 1932: 74 [1971: 3; 1984: 1]). For example, the Russian perfective aspect is said to indicate an absolute limit of the action in contrast to the imperfective aspect, which is interpreted as the unmarked member of the correlation. The past tense in Russian is understood from this point of view as the marked member of the correlation, indicating reference to the past time in contrast to the present tense as an unmarked member (cf. Jakobson 1932: 76⫺ 78 [1971: 6⫺8; 1984: 3⫺6]). The Russian genitive “focuses upon the extent to which the entity takes part in the message” (Jakobson 1957: 181 [1971: 148; 1984: 135]). The context indicates whether the amount is measured as in (2a), extended as in (2b) and (2c) or reduced; in (2d) and (2e), the entity is intended without having been realized, in (2f) it is repelled, and (2g) and (2h) illustrate a similar “reduction to zero” (cf. Jakobson 1957: 181f. [1971: 148f.; 1984: 135f.]): (2) (a) skol’ko dram ‘how many dramas’ (b) dram! ‘[there are a lot of] dramas!’ (c) nasmotret’sja dram ‘to have seen enough of dramas’ (d) kosnulsja dram ‘touched upon dramas’ (e) zˇdal dram ‘waited for dramas’ (f) izbegal dram ‘avoided dramas’ (g) ne ljubil dram ‘did not like dramas’ (h) ne bylo dram ‘there were no dramas’ The adnominal genitive in such cases as konec dram ‘the end of dramas’ or vybor dram ‘the selection of dramas’ is treated as a signal that not the entire entity is considered but merely its part or property or only an action performed or undergone by this entity. Thus, the genitive is opposed to the nominative (which is treated as a “zero-case”) by one single mark: “the genitive is a mere quantifier” (Jakobson 1957: 182 [1971: 149; 1984: 136]; cf. Jakobson 1936: 254⫺261 [1971: 37⫺ 44; 1984: 72⫺77]). This meaning is quite abstract. This idea that the genitive always focuses upon the extent to which the entity takes part in the message (“die Grenze der Teilnahme des bezeichneten Gegenstandes am Sachverhalte der Aussage”, Jakobson

63. Meaning vs. use in inflection

1936: 255 [1971: 38; 1984: 72]) is the value rather than the meaning proper which may be interpreted by the speaker (on the invariant case meaning as a value in the sense of Saussure’s “valeur”, cf. Jakobson 1958: 129 [1971: 156; 1984: 107]). Such meanings can be neither proved nor disproved. The question arises whether it is possible to consider the general meaning as a homogeneous object of analysis. On the one hand, there are meanings which are connected with certain elements of content (e.g. the meaning of the past tense). On the other hand, there are meanings which are based only on the concept of value (e.g. the meaning of the present tense as unmarked member of the correlation or the meaning of the genitive). 2.2. Examples of analyses The forms analyzed sometimes allow different interpretations, for example in the case of the present tense. Within the framework of a theory based on the concept of markedness, the present tense in Russian is treated as an unmarked member of the correlation in contrast to the past tense as a marked member which indicated reference of the action to past time (cf. Jakobson 1932: 78 [1971: 8; 1984: 6]). It has also been said that the present tense as the unmarked member of the opposition with the periphrastic future tense leaves the feature ‘disconnection of a given process from the moment of speech’ unexpressed. According to this view, the “negative” semantics of the present tense determines the possibility to represent the action either as not disconnected from the moment of speech, i.e. as “actual”, or as disconnected from this moment, i.e. as “unactual” (cf. Isacˇenko 1960: 447f.). Markedness theory reflects the asymmetry of temporal relations, in particular the special status of the present tense in the system of temporal deixis, i.e. an indefiniteness of temporal perspective in contrast to the definite temporal deixis connected with the past and the future tense. Nevertheless, there are attempts at formulating definitions that would reflect not only the systematic value of the form, but also its proper “positive” meaning. For example, it has been claimed that the present tense invariably locates a situation at the present moment, and says nothing beyond that: (3) “More accurately, the situation referred to by the verb in the present tense is simply a situation holding literally at the present moment; whether or not this situation is part of a larger

609 situation extending into the past or the future is an implicature, rather than part of the meaning of the present tense, an implicature that is worked out on the basis of other features of the structure of the sentence and one’s knowledge of the real world.” (Comrie 1985: 38)

The distinction between the meaning of a linguistic item and the implicatures which can be drawn from the use of a linguistic item in a particular context (cf. Comrie 1985: 23⫺26) is of great importance for the analysis of meanings and uses in grammar. However, the interpretation of the present tense in (3) has been the subject of discussion (cf. Dahl 1987: 493; Bondarko 1990: 28⫺31). In the case of the sentence The Eiffel Tower stands in Paris, for instance, it assumes that “it is indeed true that the situation holds at the present moment, i.e. at this moment the Eiffel Tower does stand in Paris […], but it is not the case that the situation is restricted only to the present moment” (Comrie 1985: 37f.). But such statements are made “for all time” (cf. Leech 1971: 2), and the time reference to the present moment cannot be included in the actual content of the sentence. Some authors show preference for the view that the present tense may be characterized as ‘non-past’, ‘non-future’ (cf. Dahl 1987: 493). Such an approach seems to be quite feasible. Nevertheless, there is a good possibility of a “positive” interpretation. The invariant meaning of the present tense may be characterized as ‘reference to the present’ in the broad sense. This can be called “the unqualified present”. This general meaning constitutes the systemic base for various particular meanings and uses of a given form, e.g. the actual present, the habitual and gnomic present, etc. (cf. Bondarko 1990: 21⫺31). Although not all interpretations of general meanings of grammatical forms may be regarded as indisputable, this theory is very important and represents a possible type of systemic analysis in morphology. The theory of general meaning has had a strong influence upon linguistic studies, in particular in the field of aspectology. On the one hand, the principle of general meaning in grammar was put forward in various forms in different stages of the development of linguistics; on the other hand, it was always the subject of criticism, which took new forms and nuances at each stage (in the 19th and 20th centuries). In particular, some attempts at determining general meaning in grammar were interpreted as an “extract made of several different

610

IX. Flexion

forms” (Potebnja 1958: 42f.), and Jerzy Kuryłowicz was of the opinion that the general meaning is an abstraction whose usefulness and applicability to concrete linguistic problems will be revealed only in the future (cf. Kuryłowicz 1955: 78⫺80). There is no doubt that the concept of general meaning reflects only one of a number of types of systematic (categorial) meanings in grammar.

3.

Basic meaning

3.1. Theoretical foundations In contrast to general meaning, basic meaning is not connected with the idea of an absolute invariant. This meaning covers only the centre of the semantic sphere associated with a given form. It may be connected with some peripheral meanings and uses but it does not include all of them. In contrast to general meaning, it is not a “common denominator” at all. The first and second person in Russian can serve as an example showing the difference between the two concepts. Within the framework of the theory of general meaning, first person forms denote reference to the speaker, whereas second person forms are used as an unmarked category. The context determines which type of reference is meant: to the speaker, to the hearer, or to another person. This lack of markedness constitutes the general meaning of the form (cf. Jakobson 1932: 78f. [1971: 9; 1984: 6]). In contrast, the basic meaning of the Russian second person form may be understood as reference to the hearer (cf. 1). According to this approach, the meaning ‘“generic” person’ is treated as lying outside the basic meaning ‘reference to the hearer’, e.g. in the sentence: (4) Ego i tak est’ ne zastavisˇ’ him and thus eat not compel:fut:2.sg ‘As it is, it is impossible to make him eat’ It seems that the interpretation within the framework of the theory of basic meaning is more convincing in this case. Reference to the hearer constitutes the main distinctive semantic feature of the form. This feature determines its relationship to the other members of the morphological category. The notion of basic meaning is widely known in modern linguistics. In recognizing the concept of general meaning as a possible basis for the analysis, Bernhard Comrie prefers “a more flexible approach” which is connected with the concept of basic meaning, because such an approach, in his opinion, pro-

vides a more accurate characterization of the linguistic system (Comrie 1985: 19). For instance, the English past tense, expressing past time reference as its basic meaning, may also be used to indicate politeness, e.g. I just wanted to ask if you could lend me a pound. This polite request is unlikely to be intended or interpreted as a report on the speaker’s desires in the past, but rather as an expression of a present desire to borrow some money. Thus, politeness is a secondary meaning (use) which doesn’t constitute an overall invariant together with the basic meaning of the form (cf. Comrie 1985: 19f.). In analyzing the basic meanings of grammatical units, many scholars point out distinctive features with which one can differentiate the variants of a given meaning. In that way, the basic meaning may be linked with the contextually conditioned uses which are interpreted as variants. For example, one can distinguish two semantic elements characterizing the basic meaning of the English simple past tense. One of them is ‘the event takes place before the present moment’, e.g. in I lived in Sicily for ten years. The second element is ‘the speaker has a definite time in mind’, e.g. in We visited Selfridges last week. These semantic elements are represented in different uses of the simple past tense; thus, there is a contrast between past events happening simultaneously and past events happening in sequence (cf. Leech 1971: 9⫺12). 3.2. Extensional and intensional approaches There are different interpretations of the notion of basic meaning. For instance, it can be understood either extensionally or intensionally. In the first case, the extension of a term is divided into different regions, and one of them is treated as “basic” or “primary” with regard to the others. Within the framework of an “extensional” perspective, a “secondary meaning” (or use) could be defined negatively as something that is outside of the focus. The intensional approach postulates that the meaning of the linguistic item consists of several components (features), one or more of which are primary or basic with regard to the others. This is the approach which is chosen when “dominant” parameters are singled out; an example is the claim that although the primary (prototypical) use of the English future tense involves both ‘future time reference’ and ‘intention’, the basic meaning in the sense of a dominant parameter is ‘future time reference’ (cf. Dahl 1985: 9⫺11, 103⫺


112). Thus, future time reference is treated as a more constant element of the future tense than the modal feature of this category, which in most cases may or may not be present (cf. Dahl 1985: 107). The two aspects of analysis ⫺ extensional and intensional ⫺ reflect different features of the semantic items in question. Which aspect is to be preferred in each case depends on the object and goals of the analysis. In particular, the intensional approach is applicable to meanings that include several components, as in the case of the basic meanings of the Russian perfective and imperfective aspects (cf. Bondarko 1991: 81⫺85; 1996: 99⫺121). 3.3. Prototype theory After prototype semantics had became popular in the 1970s, attempts were made to define the basic meaning as a prototype, i.e. in terms of the most characteristic instance, rather than in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (Comrie 1985: 19). Prototype theory suggests that “categories, in general, have best examples (called ‘prototypes’)” (Lakoff 1987: 7). Prototype interpretation is applicable to linguistic categories (cf. Lakoff 1987: 58⫺64) and especially to the meanings of grammatical forms. The most representative meaning among the meanings of a grammatical form (the “best example” of the semantic sphere which is connected with a given category member) can be considered as the prototype meaning. For example, the actual present in many languages is the most representative meaning among those of the present tense. Similarly, a prototypical subject has been described as both agent and topic (cf. Lakoff 1987: 64f.), and this approach can also be applied to the description of the category of case. Such concepts as “degree of prototypicality” (cf. Lakoff 1987: 44ff.) are also applicable to the hierarchy of meanings and uses. Definitions in terms of prototypes imply that other entities can then be classified in terms of their degree of similarity to or difference from this prototypical set member (cf. Comrie 1985: 22). Prototype definitions are used, in particular, in the characterization of degrees of remoteness in past and future (cf. Comrie 1985: 22ff., 83⫺101). The prototype approach to basic (primary) and peripheral (secondary) meanings may be combined with the analysis of distinctive features. If the focus is defined by a set of properties, then the secondary meanings would be represented by a subset of the prototype, that

611 is, some of the prototypical properties would be present and others would not (cf. Dahl 1985: 10). This may be connected with a process which eventually leads to the creation of “secondary foci” that are characterized by sets of properties containing elements not present in the original prototype. Within the framework of this theory, a prototype is a set of “characteristic” rather than “defining” features (cf. Dahl 1985: 11). The relation between the basic meaning and other meanings of a given form can also be compared with the opposition “centre vs. periphery” in the theory of field structure. The centre of the semantic field constituted by a given grammatical form integrates the most characteristic features of this semantic sphere with respect to other members of a given grammatical category, whereas the periphery includes secondary features which may partially coincide with the semantic features of other forms (cf. Admoni 1988: 28f. on the field structure of grammatical meanings). In many cases, there is a whole gamut of gradual transitions between centre and periphery. For instance, the system of particular meanings of the imperfective aspect in Russian has a diffuse structure, with a weakly expressed centre, indistinct divisions and marked overlaps of various meanings (cf. Bondarko 1991: 83⫺86; 1996: 114⫺121). 3.4. Basic meaning vs. general meaning The term basic meaning is used in two different senses in relation to the term general meaning. Either the two are in opposition, or the concept of basic meaning is considered as subordinate to a broader concept of general meaning. In this case, the latter determines the fundamental approach to the semantic characterization of forms, whereas the former is treated only as the most specific of all the particular meanings of a given form. This concept of basic meaning within the theory of general meaning is connected with the idea of a hierarchy of particular meanings, which was suggested with respect to the unmarked member of a given morphological correlation: (5) “The particular meanings, determined syntactically or phraseologically, are not a mechanical accumulation, but form rather a regular hierarchy of particular meanings. One must at all costs avoid replacing the question of the general meaning of a case with the question of its specific meaning or its principal meaning (as is often done) […].” (Jakobson 1936: 252 [1971: 35; 1984: 70])

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For example, the specific meaning of the nominative in correlation with the accusative, i.e. the meaning of the subject, is treated as the basic meaning (German Hauptbedeutung) of this form (cf. Jakobson 1936: 252f. [1971: 35f.; 1984: 70]). In some publications the basic meaning is understood not only as the most specific one of a given form but also as the meaning which is least dependent on the context. An example of such an analysis is the interpretation of the concrete-factual meaning of the Russian perfective aspect as the basic meaning singled out among other particular meanings which are peripheral; all these meanings ⫺ both the basic or primary and the secondary or peripheral ones ⫺ are covered by the general meaning “totality” (cf. Maslov 1984: 72⫺82). ⫺ The analysis of basic meanings may be not only synchronic but also diachronic. For instance, the meaning of imperfectivity is interpreted by Jerzy Kuryłowicz as a primary function of the present tense form in the proto-Indo-European language, whereas the meaning of simultaneity with the moment of speech is the secondary one (cf. Kuryłowicz 1964: 469⫺490). All previous considerations reveal the value of the concept of basic meaning as one of the main types of semantic characterization of grammatical forms. The diversity of the facts analyzed leads to the supposition that the concepts “basic meaning” and “general meaning” may be treated as mutually complementary. They can be understood as two main types of structural organization of the grammatical meanings in the system of language. These types of meanings may coexist even within the framework of the same grammatical category (on the meanings of verb forms of the first and second person, cf. 1 and 3.1).

(b) descriptions of uses in combination with the concepts of basic or general meaning.

4.

It is evident that according to this theory, even grammatical polysemy is treated as categorial. Thus, the concept of categorial (systemic) meaning may be interpreted as admitting different types of structural organization. The tendency may be traced back to the comprehensive study of relations between grammatical and lexical meanings. It is not only a question of obvious paradigmatic connections but also of connections in the syntagmatic sphere. The subject of analysis may be influence of lexical meanings upon the uses of grammatical forms. For example, the interaction of grammatical and lexical mean-

Uses of inflectional forms

4.1. Different types of analysis The concept of use may be understood as the type of functioning of a given language unit in speech. Each type is represented by different variants which may occur in concrete utterances. The systemic description of uses and their variants is the goal of many modern studies. Two different types of analysis should be distinguished: (a) descriptions of uses which exclude the definition of a context-independent meaning of a given unit;

Type (a) is represented not only by the traditional practice of listing individual uses like dativus commodi, dativus possessivus, ablativus separationis, ablativus comparationis, ablativus instrumenti, etc., but also by theoretical studies which are in essence opposed to the concept of general meaning. An example of the latter approach is the analysis of the Russian instrumental by A. A. Potebnja. The goal of this analysis is to determine not the abstraction one could call “a single case” but more concrete formal meanings, and to differentiate these meanings as far as possible and to reveal their genetic connections or their absence (cf. Potebnja 1958: 431). The theoretical problems of the semantic charaterization of inflectional forms like instrumental or genitive have not yet been solved and various aspects of these problems might be a subject for further discussion. In particular, the set of main meanings of a given inflectional form (e.g. the sociative instrumental, the proper instrumental, and the instrumental determined by a passive predicate) may be regarded as a special type of semantic characterization of grammatical units in terms of basic meaning. In the linguistic tradition, the principle of plurality in the semantic characterization of grammatical forms has been well-known for a long time, i.e. the assumption that grammatical forms may be integrated from the point of view of their meaning either (a) by single meaning or, (b) by a single complex of homogeneous meanings, or (c) by a single complex of heterogeneous meanings wich are equally repeated in each form (cf. Pesˇkovskij 71956: 27).


ings may be relevant for particular meanings or uses of the present tense of the German verb such as the actual present, the generic present, and the historical present (cf. Nolte 1988: 95⫺104). In analyzing the functioning of grammatical forms, a linguist may apply, among others, the concept semantic potential (or potential of functioning) of a given form. A possible way to present this potential is to use matrices which record the basic function features and the relation of the units to these features. Thus, the description of the functioning of the Russian aspectual and temporal forms includes (a) the matrices indicating a set of semantic features like ‘totality’, ‘iterativity’, ‘durativity’ and ‘anteriority’, ‘simultaneity’, ‘posteriority’; (b) the relations of the form to a certain feature, which may be ⫺ always present [⫹], ⫺ absent [⫺], ⫺ either present or absent [⫹/⫺], ⫺ present only under specified conditions [(⫹)/⫺] (cf. Bondarko 1968: 87⫺89). The functional analysis includes the description of multi-stage variability of the uses under investigation. Their interaction of grammatical forms and their context is sometimes treated in terms of situations. The situational approach is used, in particular, for aspectual and temporal forms. In the 1930s, Erwin Koschmieder applied the notions of situation and situational types to the relation between the actions within a certain complex of actions, e.g. ‘something was happening, and meanwhile something else happened’, ‘something happened, then something else happened’ (cf. Koschmieder 1987: 38). He interpreted the situations as a factor which determines the use of aspects. An important feature of this analysis is the typification of situations: it deals not only with concrete situations but also with “situational types”. A similar approach may be found in more recent works, e.g. the analysis of “telic” and “atelic” situations described by sentences like John is making a chair and John is singing (cf. Comrie 1976: 44⫺46; see also Dahl 1985: 27⫺29 on the taxonomy of situations e.g. “dynamic situation” vs. “state”). Within the framework of functional grammar based on the “field approach” (cf. 3.3), modal, temporal, aspectual,

613 taxis, personal and other “categorial situations” have been studied (cf. Bondarko 1991: 91⫺94, 111⫺171). 4.2. Usage and cognitive content Some descriptions of the meanings and uses of grammatical units pay considerable attention to the connections between the linguistic and the psychological aspects of the problem. The question concerns the features which characterize the natural-language interpretation of cognitive content. Thus, the “makeup of human beings” is studied with respect to language use; it stands in sharp contrast to the make-up of computers, which employ artificial languages to communicate with their human users and with each other (cf. Zubin 1979: 469). Two properties of human perception have been singled out: selective attention and egocentric bias. These properties are said to determine the pattern of an individual’s interest in events and entities in the perceived world and to form a cognitive basis for the semantic substance of the speaker’s “focus of interest” in German. The focus system and its cognitive roots are of particular importance in investigating how speakers construct their discourse plans. The speaker uses the nominative case to indicate an entity that is his focus of interest in an event and the dative or the accusative cases for entities that are not the focus of this interest (Zubin 1979: 473f.; cf. also Zubin 1982). The specific character of the linguistic reflection of extra-linguistic relations was already emphasized by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. He stressed the peculiarity of linguistic knowledge (which he called “third knowledge”) in comparision with the two other types of knowledge, i.e. intuitive (contemplative, immediate) and scientific knowledge. In particular, his view about “the law of egocentrism” in language, e.g. in the meanings of person and tense, is still valid. Thus, the set consisting of the first person (I), the second person (you) and the third person (he, she) is interpreted as the first person plural (we). Egocentrism in the verbal sphere is manifested, in particular, in the fact that the “intensified present” covers not only the present time but also past and future times, i.e. it is equal to eternity and to something boundless. For example, birds fly means that they not only fly now but they have always flown and always will fly (cf. Baudouin de Courtenay 1904: 535f. [1963: 79f.]).

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4.3. Links with the interpretation of discourse The analysis of meanings and uses is only partly connected with inflection. The forms under consideration are inflectional, but each of their uses is characterized by a particular type of interaction between the meaning of the inflectional form and the context as well as the speech situation and lexical material. Also of great importance are the characteristics of discourse which have influence upon the functioning of inflectional categories. The analysis of such phenomena exceeds the bounds of traditional interpretations of inflection. Such trends in the description of particular meanings and uses are connected not only with the theory of inflectional categories but also with the linguistics of discourse and with discourse semantics. For example, it has been argued that the introduction of some discourse concepts is necessary, at least in part, to bridge the gap between the theoretical invariant core meaning of the traditional definitions and the functional variant uses or “particular meanings” of an aspectual category (cf. Leinonen 1982: 1). It is evident that this suggestion is correct not only for aspect but also for other grammatical categories. Of great importance for the functional analysis of inflectional forms in discourse is the distinction which has been drawn between the “plan de l’histoire” and the “plan du discours” with reference to the functioning of the verbal categories of tense and person (cf. Benveniste 1959: 259, 291).

5.

System and environment

In describing the meanings and uses of grammatical forms, one must bear in mind the theoretical problem of the interaction of system and environment. According to the general theory of systems, an integral system as a set of interconnected elements is opposed to the environment, and in the process of interacting with the environment, the system manifests and creates all its properties. In other words, a system functions in an environment by interacting with it. In relation to a certain language unit or a category as elements of the system, the environment is a set of linguistic and extralinguistic elements, and through the interaction with them that language unit or category performs its functions. Categorial meanings (treated as general or basic) are the elements of the grammatical

system. All these meanings interact in speech with the context, the speech situation, the lexical material, etc., i.e. with various elements of the environment. The particular meanings and uses are the result of this interaction. Two types of environment can be singled out: (a) paradigmatic (language), i.e. the environment of a given unit (category) in the paradigmatic system of language; and (b) syntagmatic (contextual, or speech), i.e. context and the speech situation. The concept of environment in its linguistic interpretation (cf. Bondarko 1991: 53⫺63; 1996: 49⫺51) makes it possible to integrate these two types of environments, which are usually studied separately, from a single standpoint. The process of functioning of grammatical units includes their interaction with the environment in both of these aspects. For instance, in the use of aspectual forms, their meanings interact with the semantics of the corresponding mode of action (which is connected with the environment on its paradigmatic level); at the same time, particular aspectual functions are determined by the interaction between the categorial meaning of a given aspectual form and the aspectual context, which is connected with the syntagmatic (speech) level of the concept of environment. The environment may include elements of heterogeneous surroundings which do not form one single system with an integrated structure. For instance, grammatical forms (of tense, mood, person, etc.) function, on the one hand, in an intralinguistic environment of contiguous grammatical and lexical phenomena, and on the other hand, in an environment beyond the boundaries of language, which include social and psychosocial factors. The elements of the “internal” and “external” environment may be connected, but they do not form an integrated homogeneous structure. Generalized models of a given unit’s correlation with specific types of environment are already programmed at the level of potential functions. For example, as regards the present tense forms in different languages, one type of potential system/environment correlation is revealed as actual present, another as habitual or gnomic, etc. From this point of view, one can regard the influence of the vocabulary (the lexical meanings of wordforms) on the grammatical categories as a special type of influence of the lexical environment on the grammatical system. For in-


stance, the verbs whose lexical meanings do not agree with imperative semantics are not used in the imperative mood (on the interaction of system and environment as a problem of functional grammar, cf. Bondarko 1991: 53⫺94; 1996: 49⫺51). The systematic (general and basic) meanings are always manifested in different uses which are the result of interaction of system and environment. The distinction “meaning vs. use” in inflection reflects the relation between the language system and the system of speech. Thus, this opposition is more relative than absolute.

6.

References

Admoni, Vladimir G. (1988), Grammaticˇeskij stroj kak sistema postroenija i obsˇcˇaja teorija grammatiki. Leningrad: Nauka Aksakov, Konstantin S. (1855), O russkich glagolach. Moskva: Tip. Stepanovoj [reprinted in: Aksakov, Konstantin S. (1875), Polnoe sobranie socˇiˇ ast’ 1. nenij, Vol. II: Socˇinenija filologicˇeskija, C Moskva: Universitetskaja tip. Katkov, 407⫺483] Aksakov, Konstantin S. (1860), Opyt russkoj gramˇ ast’ I, Vypusk 1. Moskva: Tip. Stepanovoj matiki, C [reprinted 1880 as: Polnoe sobranie socˇinenij, Vol. ˇ ast’ 2. Moskva: III: Socˇinenija filologicˇeskija, C Universitetskaja tip. Katkov] Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan ⫽ Bodue˙n-de-Kurtene˙, I[van] (1904), “Jazyk i jazyki”. In: E˙nciklopedicˇeskij slovar’, Vol. XLI. S.-Petersburg: Brokgauz-Efron, 529⫺548 [reprinted in: Bodue˙n de Kurtene˙, Ivan A. (1963), Izbrannye trudy po obsˇcˇemu jazykoznaniju, Vol. II. Moskva: Izd. AN SSSR, 67⫺95] Benveniste, Emile (1959), “Les relations de temps dans le verbe français”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 45.1, 69⫺82 Bondarko, Aleksandr V. (1968), “Obsˇcˇie i cˇastnye znacˇenija grammaticˇeskich form”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1968.4, 87⫺99. Bondarko, Aleksandr V. (1990), “Temporal‘nost’”. In: Bondarko A[leksandr] V. (ed.), Teorija funkcional’noj grammatiki: Temporal‘nost’, modal‘nost’. Leningrad: Nauka, 5⫺58 Bondarko, Alexander V. (1991), Functional Grammar: A Field Approach. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Linguistic & Literary Studies in Eastern Europe 75) Bondarko, Aleksandr V. (1996), Problemy grammaticˇeskoj semantiki i russkoj aspektologii. St. Petersburg: Izd. S.-Peterburgskogo universiteta Comrie, Bernard (1976), Aspect. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Comrie, Bernard (1985), Tense. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press

615 Dahl, Östen (1985), Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford, New York: Blackwell Dahl, Östen (1987), “Comrie’s Tense: Review Article”. Folia Linguistica 21, 489⫺502 Hjelmslev, Louis (1928), Principes de grammaire geńe´rale. København: Høst (Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Historisk-filologiske Meddelelser 16.1). Hjelmslev, Louis (1935), La cate´gorie des cas: E´tude de grammaire geńe´rale, Premie`re partie. Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget (Acta Jutlandica 7.1) [reprinted 1972, München: Fink (Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 25), with 2nd part of 1937] Isacˇenko, A[leksandr] V. (1960), Grammaticˇeskij stroj russkogo jazyka v sopostavlenii s slovackim: Morˇ ast’ vtoraja. Bratislava: Vydavatel’stvo fologija, C Slovenskej Akade´mie Vied Jakobson, Roman (1932), “Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums”. In: Charisteria Guilelmo Mathesio quinquagenario a discipulis et Circuli Linguistici Pragensis sodalibus oblata. Pragae: Prazˇsky´ Linguisticky´ Krouzˇek, 74⫺84 [reprinted in: Jakobson (1971), 3⫺15; English transl.: “Structure of the Russian Verb”. In: Jakobson (1984), 1⫺14] Jakobson, Roman (1936), “Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre: Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus”. In: E´tudes de´dieés au quatrie`me congre`s des linguistes. Prague: Jednota cˇeskoslovenskyćh matematiku˚ a fysiku˚ (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 6), 240⫺288 [reprinted in: Jakobson (1971), 23⫺71; English transl.: “Contribution to the General Theory of Case: General Meanings of the Russian Cases”. In: Jakobson (1984), 59⫺103] Jakobson, Roman (1957), “The Relationship between Genitive and Plural in the Declension of Russian Nouns”. Scando-Slavica 3, 181⫺186 [reprinted in: Jakobson (1971), 148⫺153; Jakobson (1984), 135⫺140] Jakobson, Roman (1958), “Morfologicˇeskie nabljudenija nad slavjanskim skloneniem (Sostav russkich padezˇnych form)”. In: American Contributions to the Fourth International Congress of Slavicists, Moscow, September 1958. ’s-Gravenhage: Mouton (Slavistische Drukken en Herdrukken 21), 127⫺156 [reprinted in: Jakobson (1971), 154⫺183; English transl.: “Morphological Observations on Slavic Declension (The Structure of Russian Case Forms)”. In: Jakobson (1984), 105⫺133] Jakobson, Roman (1971), Selected Writings, Vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton Jakobson, Roman (1984), Russian and Slavic Grammar: Studies 1931⫺1981, ed. by Linda R. Waugh and Morris Halle. Berlin etc.: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 106). Koschmieder, Erwin (1987), Aspektologie des Polnischen. Neuried: Hieronymus (Selecta Slavica 11) [orig. Polish: 1934]

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Kuryłowicz, Jerzy ⫽ Kurilovicˇ, E. R. (1955), “Zametki o znacˇenii slova”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1955.3, 73⫺81 Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1964), “On the Methods of Internal Reconstruction”. In: Lunt, Horace G. (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, Cambridge, Mass., August 27⫺31, 1962. The Hague etc.: Mouton (Janua Linguarum Series Maior 12), 9⫺36 Lakoff, George (1987), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press Leech, Geoffrey N. (1971), Meaning and the English Verb. London: Longman Leinonen, Marja (1982), Russian Aspect, “Temporal’naja Lokalizacija” and Definiteness/Indefiniteness. Helsinki: Neuvostoliittoinstituutti (Neuvostoliittoinstituutin vuosikirja 27) Maslov, Jurij S. (1984), Ocˇerki po aspektologii. Leningrad: Izd. Leningradskogo universiteta Nolte, Gabriele (1988), “Grammatische Kategorie Tempus und lexikalische Bedeutungen im Deut-

schen”. In: 2. Jenaer Semantik-Syntax-Symposium. Jena: Friedrich-Schiller-Univ., 95⫺104 Pesˇkovskij, A[leksandr] M. (71956), Russkij sintaksis v naucˇnom osvesˇcˇenii. Moscow: Ucˇpedgiz [11914] Potebnja, Aleksandr A. (1958), Iz zapisok po russkoj grammatike, Tom I⫺II. Moskva: Ucˇpedgiz [orig. in 2 vols., 1873⫺1874] Zubin, David A. (1979), “Discourse Function of Morphology: The Focus System in German”. In: Givoń, Talmy (ed.), Discourse and Syntax. New York etc.: Academic Press (Syntax and Semantics 12), 469⫺504 Zubin, David A. (1982), “Salience and Egocentrism: A Quantitative Study of the Meaning of the Nominative in German”. In: Abraham, Werner (ed.), Satzglieder im Deutschen. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 15), 245⫺259

Aleksandr V. Bondarko, St. Petersburg (Russia)

64. Exponence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Types of exponence in morphology Zero in exponence Constraints on patterns of exponence Exponence and morphological theory References

1.

Introduction

1.1. Definition For many linguists, exponence has the same meaning as realization, actualization, manifestation, and some less frequent alternatives. The verb related to it is expound, synonymous with realize, actualize, etc. That which expounds is an exponent. Once upon a time, the use of expound was regarded as a distinguishing feature of the linguistics of John R. Firth and his followers in the London School, and realize (or actualize etc.) was used more generally outside British linguistics. The term exponence and its relatives and synonyms have to do with the correspondence between the categories of some analytic level and those of another. Most often, they are used of relations between more abstract and more concrete categories, especially within a framework which conducts its analyses of language metaphorically moving

from meaning “down” to pronunciation/orthography (cf. Firth 1957: 15⫺17). Examples of exponence-relations might include: phonemes expounded as speech sounds; any unit expounded by its allo-units; (sets of) abstract grammatical features expounded by real morphological markers. In such a framework, exponents might be viewed as devices by means of which properties of “higher” categories might be recognized. In morphology, exponence is typically concerned with functions from morphosyntactic properties to markers on the plane of expression, following the lead of Peter H. Matthews (cf. Matthews 1972: 43, 65⫺77; 1974: 136⫺153; 2 1991: 168⫺184). A morphosyntactic property (or grammeme) is an element of grammatical meaning such as any one of the range of values (properties) encoded in some language for the categories voice, tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, person, case, polarity, reciprocity, reflexivity, emphasis, definiteness, comparison, and so forth (cf. Art. 28 and Ch. XIII⫺XIV). A marker is a morphological unit (e.g. an affix or reduplicative element) or process (e.g. a “substitution” such as ablaut; cf. Ch. VIII). Exponence may sometimes be defined much more narrowly, e.g. to cover only non-separate exponence within

617

64. Exponence

only one theoretical approach (cf. 2.2⫺2.6; Bauer 1988 a: 243). A simple exponence statement might be:

Cumulative

P

P

L E

E

(1) Plural number in regular English nouns is recognizable by the suffix 兩 -z 兩.

P

Alternatively: (2) Plural number in regular English nouns is expounded by the suffix 兩 -z 兩. Here, number is the category and ‘plural’ the property. The term exponent is used of the material which expounds the property or properties in question, i.e. 兩 -z 兩 in this example. Some authors distinguish between the terms realization and exponence. Sometimes an exponent may be shared by more than one morphosyntactic property. For example, the English regular past tense is expounded by the suffix 兩 -d 兩; the regular past participle is expounded by the same means. To avoid unnecessary repetition in exponence statements, this fact may be expressed in a rule of referral which explicitly equates the form of the past participle and that of the past tense. Such rules may or may not be directional, i.e. take one or the other property as basic and the other as derived. Many English irregular verbs also behave in a similar way (e.g. bound, taught); but where they do not (as with began vs. begun, beat vs. beaten) the rule of referral is overridden by a rule of exponence specific to one or the other property, e.g. “the past participle of begin is expounded as begun”). Both general rules of exponence and referral rules may then be called statements about realization (cf. Zwicky 1985: 372; Pullum & Zwicky 1988: 260f.; see also Carstairs 1987: 93⫺95 on systematic homonymy). 1.2. Overview Recognizing and categorizing patterns of exponence (cf. 2 and Fig. 64.1) is a difficult matter in itself; the existence of different models of grammar and different theories of phonology makes the task even more difficult. For the sake of simplicity, the catalogue of currently recognized types of exponence in 2 abstracts away from phonologically conditioned allomorphy (cf. Art. 47) and operates with phonemes rather than features, autosegments or analogous constructs. The starting point is an “item-and-arrangement” kind of representation (cf. 5 and Art. 20), with an iconic relation between a single morphosyn-

Fused

P

P

L

E|E

or

P

E|E

P

L

0 |E

Multiple

Extended

P

P

0|E

P E

E(m)

L

P

E

E(m)

Overlapping

P E(m)

P E*

E(m) * not (m) of both P’s

Inclusive P Overlapping

P

E

E

Fig. 64.1: Diagrams of types of exponence L P E 兩 (m)

lexical element morphosyntactic property exponent phonological obscuration element analysable as main exponent

Horizontal arrangement is to be interpreted syntagmatically but not necessarily directionally. Paradigmatic variety in E (sensitive exponence, cf. 2.7) is not shown.

618 tactic property and a single exponent (cf. 2.1; see also Art. 30). But it is quite common for a marker to expound two or more properties, either as a regular characteristic of the language in question (cf. 2.2) or as side-effect of phonological or morpholexical rules (cf. 2.3). A property may be expounded at more than one point in a word-form, either by more than one morphological marker (cf. 2.4), or both by a morphological marker and by a marker situated in the lexical stem with which such a marker cooccurs (cf. 2.5). Two or more properties may be expounded partly separately, and partly through the same marker (cf. 2.6). A further complication is the possibility that patterns of exponence may be disturbed by the requirement that a morphosyntactic property should be expounded in a way which is partly dictated by other morphosyntactic properties of the relevant wordform (cf. 2.7). Iconicity is also disrupted by the existence of properties which are not formally expressed at all (cf. 3.1) and of markers with no apparent morphosyntactic content (cf. 3.2). Such departures from iconicity appear to have certain limits which call for empirical investigation and theoretical explanation (cf. 4). The form of descriptive exponence statements may be partly dictated by the overall model of morphology one adopts, and a special understanding is required of the competition between different exponents of the same properties, e.g. where one is more specific and the other more general (cf. 5). 1.3. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic deviations from iconicity Departures from the strictly linear expression of morphosyntactic properties can be classified as many-to-one and one-to-many syntagmatic deviations from iconicity (cf. CarstairsMcCarthy 1992: 194⫺196). In addition, there are paradigmatic deviations or departures from invariance (which holds if a given morphosyntactic property always corresponds to the same marker and vice versa); these are not covered by the notion of exponence. The one-to-many paradigmatic deviations include those due to lexical class assignation (cf. Art. 65): Lexical items may inflect differently for the same properties according to which inflectional class they fall into; in Old English, for example, the case/number properties ‘genitive’ and ‘singular’ may be expounded as -es, -e, -a or -an (with or without effects on the stem to which they are attached) depending on which class the relevant noun

IX. Flexion

falls into, a matter partly related to its gender. A given marker may also appear in more than one form for a variety of other reasons to do with the phonological or orthographical environment in which it falls, which is one facet of allomorphy (cf. Art. 46⫺48). Of the many-to-one paradigmatic deviations, one is non-systematic homonymy between markers, i.e. where the same marker expounds more than one unrelated property or property-set. In Latin, for example, /-o6/ marks, amongst other things, the case/number properties ‘dative’ and ‘singular’ in a certain class of nouns, and the person/number properties ‘first’ and ‘singular’ in certain tense/aspectforms of most verbs. The second is the (partially) systematic homonymy called syncretism ⫺ thus, the Latin dative is identical to the ablative in singular nouns with the marker /-o6/, in the plural of all nouns as well as in the inflectional paradigms of some adjective classes (cf. Art. 66). This may be handled by rules of referral.

2.

Types of exponence in morphology

2.1. Separate exponence The fundamental type of exponence is where a single morphosyntactic property is expounded by a single formal element ⫺ socalled separate exponence (also called separatist or simple; cf. Plank 1986: 32; Matthews 2 1991: 79). It is widely assumed that such transparency or iconicity is a defining characteristic of optimal communication systems (cf. Art. 30 and 1.3). A stronger requirement on separateness might be to stipulate that the marker involved expounds only that morphosyntactic property; but syncretism is rife (cf. Art. 66). A further criterion that might be built into the definition is invariance, i.e. the absence of allomorphy (except for variation that can be described in purely phonological terms; cf. Ch. VII). A straightforward instance of separate exponence as defined by the strictest criteria is provided by the so-called temporal suffix for nouns -kor in Hungarian, with the temporallocative case-meaning ‘at’. It expounds one morphosyntactic property, and that property is expounded in it and nowhere else. (Moreover, it is actually invariant.) Another good example is the emphatic element proper of the formally complex emphatic pronouns of modern spoken French, which is /mim/, as in moi-meˆme ‘myself’, elles-meˆmes ‘themselves

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[fem.]’. As a morphosyntactic property, emphasis is expounded by just this sequence of phonemes, and this sequence expounds no other morphosyntactic property. There is, in both the Hungarian and French examples, a one-to-one correspondence between a property and its exponent. It is instructive to compare this with the behaviour of the noun plural suffix in Turkish. It may appear in (be expounded as) one of two phonological forms: /-lar/, /-ler/. But the choice between these two forms is entirely dependent on the vowel of the final syllable of the noun stem to which it is attached. From the morphological point of view, therefore, there is just one plural suffix in Turkish, and this example is exactly parallel to the previous two. A single morphosyntactic property has a single exponent, the differentiation observed in which, between /-lar/ and /-ler/, is one of phonologically-conditioned allomorphy, a case of paradigmatic one-tomany deviation from iconicity. 2.2. Cumulative exponence 2.2.1. Cumulation of morphosyntactic categories It is very common for a set of morphosyntactic categories to be expounded by just one formal device. In Lithuanian, noun-forms consist of a stem, and a suffix which expounds both case and number; vy´ras ‘man’ consists of a stressed stem vy´r- and a nominative-case, singular-number suffix (contrasting with, among others, the locative singular -e and the nominative plural -ai). This -as is not, as can readily be seen, decomposable into a recognizable case element and a recognizable number element. This is an example of cumulative exponence, a syntagmatic many-to-one deviation from separate exponence: There is systematic simultaneous exponence of two or more morphosyntactic properties in a single morphological marker, and neither/none of these properties is realized anywhere else in the string under analysis. Case/number cumulation is very frequently found in the older Indo-European languages. Also very commonly found, especially in familiar European languages, is the cumulation of tense with person and number. In northern Welsh, the past-tense suffixes also expound both person and number: (3) 1st person 2nd person 3rd person

singular -ais -aist -odd

plural -on -och -on

The present- and future-tense forms are structured quite differently, with a periphrasis involving the copular verb bod and the infinitive; the suffixes mentioned are confined to past-tense verbs. Such examples should be contrasted with case and number marking in Turkish, where the two categories are always recognizable separately from each other. The locative-case marker is -de (or -te under specifiable phonological conditions); it may be added to the bare stem to expound locative case with singular number (köy-de ‘at the village’), or to the plural marker to expound locative case with plural number (köy-ler-de ‘at the villages’). The paradigms of individual lexical items need not, however, show cumulative exponence of all relevant morphosyntactic properties in every cell of their matrices. The Catalan present subjunctive singular is formed by means of special suffixes in which information about tense, mood, person and number is cumulated (as with cant-is ‘singpres.subjun.2.sg’), but the corresponding imperfect indicative forms expound tense/ mood and person/number by means of separate suffixes (as with cant-av-es ‘sing-impf.indic-2.sg’; -es is the default ‘2.sg’ suffix). Even different subparadigms may be organized inconsistently. Catalan cantes means ‘you [sg.] sing’ and is formally cant-es ‘sing-2.sg’; whatever view one takes about how present tense is encoded in this form, it is certainly encoded suffixally in canto ‘I sing’, as the suffix -o encoding the meaning ‘1.sg’ is confined to the present tense (cf. cant-ı´ ‘sing-pret.1.sg’, cantav-a ‘sing-impf.indic-1.sg’). Some writers restrict the term cumulative exponence to instances where cumulation is the dominant organizing principle of the paradigms under examination (cf. Matthews 1974: 179). Some other term, such as simultaneous exponence, is then required for less systematic cases such as that of Catalan canto. But since exponence is about the rendering of notional properties by material which relates directly to categories of the expression-plane, it seems preferable to use the term cumulative exponence in relation to any unit in which such properties appear in a formally merged state. Languages such as Lithuanian and Turkish, are, in the respect under discussion, close to opposite extremes of a typological continuum from flectional to agglutinating languages (though this distinction is partly based on other criteria also, such as the pres-

620 ence or absence of inflectional classes; cf. Art. 65). In early historical linguistics, much that is now considered irrelevant was made of this distinction, for instance that a language’s place in such a typology was somehow related to its stage of development or evolution (cf. Art. 115); though it has been suggested recently that there is something worth saving in the basic typological idea (cf. Plank 1986: 32). The distinction might be rephrased in terms of degrees of cumulation; languages show a greater or lesser propensity to cumulation overall, within the paradigm, or within sub-paradigms, the range of possibilities being illustrated by the Catalan data cited. Cumulation of an indefinite number of categories may be found. It is stated or implied in traditional grammar that the Latin conjugational suffix -or, as in parcor ‘I am spared’, realizes person (‘first’), number (‘singular’), tense/aspect (‘present imperfective’), mood (‘indicative’) and voice (‘passive’): all five simultaneously. It is certainly arguable that the -o- expounds the first four. This may be seen by comparing parc-o ‘spare-pres.indic. act.1.sg’, parc-imus ‘sparepres.indic.act. 1.pl’, pe-perc-i ‘perf-spareperf.indic.act. 1.sg’, parc-am ‘spare-pres. subjun.act.1.sg’ and parc-eba-r ‘spare-imperf.indic-pass.1.sg’ (expression of conjugation class is passed over silently here). 2.2.2. Cumulation of morphosyntactic and lexical material It is usual to treat some phenomena that at first sight may appear to be the “cumulation” of lexical and grammatical material as a separate issue. In the case of apophony or ablaut (cf. Art. 58), it may be felt unsatisfactory to say that part of some word-form represents the lexical meaning of that form and some other part the grammatical meaning (for instance because of the lexically restricted distribution of some of the morphological units that could be isolated by this technique). An instance is afforded by the so-called strong verbs of the Germanic languages, in many of which can be seen non-sequential realizations of a lexical stem and one or more morphosyntactic properties, e.g. ‘first person’ or ‘past tense’. Icelandic bjo´da ‘[to] offer’ has the first-person singular present-tense form by´d and first-person singular past-tense form baud. The English past tense forms rang, bled, ran, etc., as compared with their infinitive forms ring, bleed, run, are instances of similar behaviour. It would be possible to allocate

IX. Flexion

the lexical meaning to the consonantal frame in these instances, and the grammatical meaning to the vowel nucleus, but there is little to be gained in saying, for instance, that /e/ in bled is a morpheme-sized exponent of ‘past tense’, since as such it is restricted to a handful of verbs and is unproductive. Analysts have in fact generally baulked at adopting this kind of solution for European languages, where there is a strong tradition of requiring stems to have a pronounceable base-form (thus usable as citation-form) and not be discontinuous (i.e. therefore not b…din the Icelandic instance). However, Arabic word-forms are routinely analysed in precisely this way in both Western and native Arabic traditions (cf. Art. 7, 56; see also Harris 1951: 165 on “staggered phonemes”): lexical meaning is inherent in the consonants of a form such as Colloquial Egyptian Arabic fı´him ‘understand:perf.3.sg’ and the meaning ‘perfective’ in the vowels interspersed among them (cf. Mitchell 1956: 14, 30f.). Different grammatical meanings are expressed by different patterns of presence/absence of vowels and by qualitatively or quantitatively different vowels (also partly by consonantal quantity). Subject to minor qualifications, and subject to the admission of the existence of affixes, such as yi- and -u in yifha´mu ‘understand:imperf.3.pl’ or tain tafaáhum ‘understanding [verbal noun]’, this approach is standard in the description of Arabic. There are however some instances, closely similar to Icelandic baud and English ran etc. in that affixation is absent, which demand to be explicated in terms of cumulation. There is no avoiding the conclusion that English verbs such as cut, hit, hurt, put, rid, etc. have numerous homonymous forms which differ morphosyntactically, i.e. constitute different grammatical words. Cut, for instance, may be ‘cut:infinitive’, ‘cut:pres [non-3.sg]’, ‘cut: past’, and so on; these verbs constitute a morphological class defined by cumulative exponence of lexical and certain morphosyntactic information (simply to provide a label for these instances). To avoid this conclusion, and to protect as far as possible (as the default assumption) the view that elements making up words are linearly concatenated, some analysts have postulated the existence of zero affixes expounding ‘past’, etc. (cf. Harris 1951: 213⫺215, and 3). The difference between separate exponence and cumulative exponence may sometimes be dictated by a theoretical stand on a technical

621

64. Exponence

point. It is notable that person and number are often intimately related in the way in which they are expounded; the view might be taken that there is a single morphosyntactic category person/number, rather than two distinct categories ⫺ or more weakly, that that is true for some languages. The English verbform gives exhibits a suffix -s. This suffix either cumulatively expounds ‘third person’ and ‘singular’ number, or separately expounds ‘third’/‘singular’. Here, person and number are treated as fully separate categories. The limits of syncretism (cf. Art. 66) are also a question to be settled by taking a theoretical stance before analysis takes place; for instance, is the German gender/number system, as applied to adjectives, a matter of the separate exponence of four properties of

the unitary category gender/number (viz. ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, ‘neuter’, ‘plural’), or a matter of three genders with syncretism in the plural? 2.3. Fused exponence A condition which shares some superficial similarity with cumulative exponence is fused exponence. The term fusion refers to the obscuration of morphological boundaries (whose hypothetical presence is deducible from other facts about the language) by historical or presumed synchronic phonological processes; fusion is not therefore a purely morphological matter. In Hungarian, the definite subjunctive form of verbs is expressed in general by the formula

(4) verb stem ⫺ 兩 j 兩 ⫺ person/number/definiteness and various processes of assimilation take place at the first boundary (cf. Vago 1980: 69⫺73). Usually, despite these processses, the morphological structure remains to some extent transparent; thus 兩 yt-j-yk 兩 ‘hit-subjun1.pl.def’ is pronounced /yssyk/, with the five phonetically distinguishable segments relatable in a one-to-one fashion with the underlying units, and with the morphosyntactic units therefore readily recoverable. In some circumstances, however, other processes reduce the number of segments, so that 兩 hajtj-uk 兩 ‘drive-subjun-1.pl.def’ is pronounced /hAjt suk/ (Vago 1980: 69⫺73). The first two elements, the stem and the marker of the subjunctive, are phonologically fused; i.e. they cannot be separately recognized. The boundary would fall, in some sense, inside the fourth segment of the phonological representation of the word-form, /t s/. Fusion may also be seen where phonological processes result in the elision of an element, as for instance in Spanish present-tense verb forms such as habl-o ‘speak-indic.1.sg’. Mood (the exponent of which is partly determined by the class to which the verb belongs) and person/number are normally expounded by distinct markers (the latter pair cumulatively) ⫺ as with habl-a-s ‘speak-indic-2.sg’, habl-e-mos ‘speak-subjun-1.pl’. The -o in hablo appears to be a cumulative exponent of all the relevant categories, but the overall system of Spanish verb morphology is not one typified by cumulation of these categories. Rather, the relevant property of mood could be analysed as being expounded in -o through the elision of its own exponent -a be-

fore -o, and is fused thereby with the properties expounded by -o. Fusion is a phonologically-driven process. Such instances as these become problematic within varieties of phonology which do not allow systematic elision of this kind as a descriptive device. Fusion of adjacent elements can result in morphological reanalysis. In the Western Desert language of Australia, the object-case form of the first-singular pronoun is nayunya, where *nay-nya might be expected (cf. Dixon 1980: 342). On this analysis, the earlier object suffix *-NHa has been attached to the subject-case stem nayu; this is a fused form of an original stem ⫹ ergative-case suffix formation *nay-DHu ⬎ *naDHu arising through loss of syllable-final semivowels. The form nayu, resulting from later changes, was taken as a stem in its own right and case markers attached to it. This illustrates the point that fused exponence may be inherently unstable and subject to analogical pressures (cf. Art. 147⫺148); case is now separately expounded. Something similar to fusion may be brought about by a simple loss of morphological boundaries which entails the loss of the specifically grammatical information carried by one of the fused elements. In Classical Nahuatl, the verb-form nitlachia ‘I am looking [intransitive]’ has the historical shape ni-tlachia ‘1.sg.subj-indef.non–hum.obj-seek’; the indefinite non-human object prefix tla- has become incorporated into the stem of a now intransitive verb, as may be verified by the fact that certain other prefixes may not be inserted in the expected position between tla- and the stem (cf. Andrews 1975: 45f.).

622 The term portmanteau morph has been used to label a type of fused sequences, including instances involving lexical material (cf. Hockett 1947: 333 [1957: 236]). The famous example involved French au ‘to the [masc.sg]’, where a lexical item ⫺ in fact a preposition ⫺ has a form which was analysed as fused with some grammatical information, namely definiteness, gender and number. This state of affairs has arisen through phonological change affecting the preposition a` in construction with the definite article le, and it is far from uncontroversial how au should be analysed in terms of synchronic morphology. The word portmanteau has also been used to label the phenomena in certain languages whereby morphosyntactic properties in rather unusual pairs/sets are expounded cumulatively (cf. 2.2), for instance person and functional role (internal vs. external argument) in Sayula Popoluca (cf. Merrifield et al. 31965: 12; Jensen 1990: 51⫺53). Here, for instance, the prefix /?is/ means ‘2.sg.subj & 1.sg.obj’. The term portmanteau may be found used in a watered-down sense to mean a form “simultaneously representing a bundle of several different grammatical elements” (Katamba 1993: 36); in that sense it is not clearly distinguishable from a unit showing cumulation of morphosyntactic properties. The term may be usable conveniently for a unit expounding more than one property within a (sub-)paradigm where cumulation is not the norm, as with the Finnish noun suffix -t expounding nominative case and plural number, where the properties of these categories normally have separate exponence in Finnish nouns (cf. also the example of Catalan canto in 2.2.2). 2.4. Multiple exponence A relative unproblematic elaboration of simple exponence is multiple exponence, where a given morphosyntactic property, and one only, is expressed at more than one point in a word-form, and is interpretable at each such point separately from any other morphosyntactic element expounded in that word-form. For instance, in Yokuts the dubitative mood marker consists of two units embracing the verb-stem: na’as…al (cf. Harris 1945: 122; 1951: 165). In Classical Nahuatl, the plural of certain absolutive-state nouns may be expressed by a reduplicatory prefix and a suffix, as in huı¯huı¯lo¯meh ‘doves’, from the stem huı¯lo¯- ‘dove’, tı¯tı¯cih ‘midwives’, from the stem tı¯ci- ‘midwife’ (cf. Andrews 1975: 145⫺147).

IX. Flexion

Plurality is recoverable from the suffix and from the fact of prefixation. The matter of whether one or the other exponent in multiple exponence has any descriptive or theoretical priority is left open here. These phenomena, with the exponents construed as structural elements, have been termed discontinuous morphemes (Harris 1945) and broken sequences (Harris 1951: 165); and some manifestations of them might be thought of as circumfixation (cf. Art. 54). The Yokuts example represents circumfixation, whilst the Nahuatl one represents combinations of more than one arguably independent marker in the service of a single morphosyntactic property (cf. also Bauer 1988 b). More complex issues arise where phonological changes have produced multiple exponence and one of the exponents coincides with some lexical material. Multiple exponence is sometimes called extended exponence (cf. Matthews 1972: 82; 1974: 149; 21991: 180; Beard 1995: 138). Here, extended exponence has been arbitrarily defined in such a way as to cover a more restricted range of phenomena (cf. 2.5). Agreement is in a sense multiple exponence (cf. Harris 1951: 165⫺167), but most linguists treat agreement as a different sort of phenomenon by virtue of a directionality implicit in it; agreement for some morphosyntactic properties flows from one linguistic unit to another in most current varieties of linguistic description, rather than merely showing up in more than one place (cf. HSK Syntax, Art. 33). For instance, gender in French (and scores of other languages) flows from nouns, for which gender is inherent, to adjectives. The term agreement is in any case not in general use for word-internal phenomena (see 2.6), and is therefore by fiat and/or convention distinct from multiple exponence. By contrast, some analysts treat, e.g., pronouns and articles as expounding morphosyntactic properties in constructions where those properties are also expounded in other words. This means that the variety of agreement between pronoun and verb-form in German er steht (‘3.singular’) or between noun and article in Spanish las casas (‘plural’) is, in effect, treated as the multiple exponence of the relevant property, and that that property is a phrase-level property (cf. Wurzel 1984: 60 [1989: 51f.]). 2.5. Extended exponence A loose, scarcely technical, definition of extended exponence is possible, namely “exponence of some property by more than one

623

64. Exponence

morphological unit”, which would make it equivalent to multiple exponence (2.4). It would also make it a precondition for overlapping exponence (2.6). Here, however, the term extended exponence is arbitrarily reserved for those instances where the property in question is partly expounded in the stem of the affected word-form, by substitution, stem-augmenting or any other morphological marker. In Standard German nouns such as Füß-e, Gäns-e, ‘foot-nom.pl’, ‘goose-nom.pl’ (singulars Fuß, Gans), plurality is recoverable from the suffix and also from the quality of the stem vowel, this being historically due to regressive frontness assimilation to the form of the ancestor of the suffix in question (*/-i/). Since a morphosyntactic property is thus recoverable at two points in the word-forms in question, there is one-to-many syntagmatic deviation from separate exponence (cf. Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 195; see also 1.2). Those who acknowledge the existence of this category of exponence (cf. Matthews 1972: 185f.) would identify the suffix -e as the main exponent of plurality, on the grounds that it performs this function even in the absence or vacuous application of vowel alternations in monosyllabic noun-stems, as respectively in Tag-e ‘day-nom.pl’ (singular Tag), Schein-e ‘certificate-nom.pl’ (singular Schein); whereas in such words as Fuß, Gans, the stem-vowel alternation is always accompanied by -e suffixation (at least in the standard dialect). It is less clear within such a framework how to handle instances like Vater ‘father’, Väter ‘fathers’, where the phonological/orthographic distinction in the stem-form is the sole marker of number properties. This shows that it may not be possible to identify the language-wide main exponent in multiple or extended exponence without recourse to abstract solutions which preserve a main structurally-identifiable exponent of some property, e.g. a suffix, by postulating an ellipsed or a zero exponent in suffixal position in some words (cf. Art. 45). The contrast between extended and cumulative exponence can be illustrated by a partial paradigm of Hebridean Gaelic clach [khlax] ‘stone’: (5) nominative genitive dative

singular clach cloiche cloich

plural clachan clachan clachan

Its genitive singular is cloiche [khloçe]. Genitive case and singular number are expounded

cumulatively by the suffix -e. Non-nominative cases and singular number have extended exponence, both in the suffix and the stem, being recognizable by the palatal stemfinal consonant and also by the -o-; cf. cloich [khloç] (dative singular, where non-nominative case is manifest only in the stem and therefore does not show extended exponence unless a zero case/number suffix is assumed) and clachan [khlaxan] (plural, all cases, in some dialects, where number has separate, suffixal, exponence). 2.6. Overlapping exponence A further logical possibility is that two morphosyntactic properties may both be expounded in a word-form, each being marked separately somewhere in the string of elements but also coinciding at one or more points in the string. Straightforward examples are hard to come by (but cf. (8)). More easily spotted is the special case of overlapping that might be called inclusive overlapping exponence (but cf. 2.7 for a reinterpretation). In such cases both properties are marked at some point in the word-form, and one at another point also. An instance comes from Turkish, where the first person plural of verbs in most tenses usually contains an element /-Vz/, where V is a harmonically-varying vowel. However, in the past tense (and some other forms), ‘first person plural’ is signalled by /-k/, as in bul-du-k ‘find-past1.pl’, bil-di-k ‘know-past-1.pl’. /-dV-/ is the past tense suffix. ‘past tense’ is therefore represented by both /-dV-/ and the special allomorph with the phonological shape /-k/; ‘first person’ and ‘plural number’ by /-k/, which is thus inclusively overlapped by ‘past tense’. (6)

PAST

bul

-du

1. PL

-k

In Vedic Sanskrit, the perfect active form of the verb has special person/number suffixes distinct from those of other tense/aspect/ mood forms, and is also characterized by a reduplicative prefix. So in tata´ptha ‘heat: perf.2.sg’ person/number is expounded by the suffix and perfective aspect by the prefix as well as the suffix. The exponence of cumulated person/number is thus inclusively over-

624

IX. Flexion

lapped by that of aspect. (This is a slight simplification of a very complex state of affairs.) (7)

PERFECTIVE

ta-

táp

2.SG

-tha

A somewhat similar example may be given from Ancient Greek (cf. Matthews 1974: 141⫺144; 21991: 180); it illustrates both cumulative and overlapping exponence. In the verb form elely´kete ‘you had unfastened’, ‘active voice’ is expounded by -k and ‘past tense’ by e-. But the vowel -e before the suffix -te is also a marker of both ‘active voice’ and ‘past tense’. Voice and tense may be said to have (non-inclusively) overlapping exponence in -e, which is at the same time the only exponent of ‘indicative mood’. A further marker of ‘active voice’ is -te, which also cumulatively expounds ‘second person’ and ‘plural number’, these properties not being recoverable elsewhere in the word-form. If no exponent of a property is given priority over the other(s), a complex network of exponence relations emerges (ignoring the contribution

of the root ly to the form’s grammatical meaning): (8)

PAST PERFECTIVE ACTIVE INDICATIVE

e-

le-

ly

-k

-e

2.PL

-te

2.7. Sensitive exponence The term sensitive exponence has been used to characterize a type of allomorphy conditioned by morphosyntactic rather than by phonological features of the environment in which the relevant unit is found (cf. McIntosh 1984: 196⫺201; Plank 1986: 32f.; see also Art. 47⫺48). That context-sensitivity is pervasive in morphology in general terms is shown by example of the Fulfulde (Ful) second-person singular suffix which, in object position after certain voice/aspect/polarity suffixes, differs in form (-e vs. -ma) according to whether there is another object marker preceding it; this difference cannot be accounted for in phonological terms (cf. McIntosh 1984: 196f.; some irrelevant properties are left unspecified in these examples):

(9) (a) ‘O-loot-π-e ‘3.sg-wash-emph.compl.act-2.sg’ ‘She washed you.’ (b) ‘O-loot-an-π-am-ma ‘3.sg-wash-for-emph.compl.act-1.sg-2.sg’ ‘She washed you for me.’ This is a variety of one-to-many paradigmatic deviation from separate exponence (cf. Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 195; also 1.2). The term sensitivity can be appropriated to label an entirely different approach to setting up a taxonomy of exponence-types from that presented here. Separate exponents with one showing some sensitivity to markers elsewhere in the string of elements do not thereby show cumulative exponence of the categories involved (cf. Plank 1986: 32f.). Rather, this would be an instance of inclusive overlapping exponence (cf. 2.6), and most conspicuously so where the main exponents (cf. 2.5) of the categories involved do not coincide. In approaches allowing the notion of “main exponent”, all one-to-many varieties of exponence can be eliminated as distinct types. If the main exponent of some property is hypostatized as the sole exponent, at some abstract analytic level, then the other expo-

nents can be regarded merely as markers which appear in a fashion sensitive to that “sole” one (cf. 6.1 in Art. 53 on the “Principle of a Single Morphological Process”). The example of the Turkish past-tense and person/ number markers (cf. 2.6) may be considered in this light. The form of the person/number suffix /-k/ in e.g. bul-du-k ‘find-past-1.sg’ is sensitive to tense; but because the main exponent of tense is /-dV-/, the /-k/ can be regarded as an alternant of ‘1.sg’ sensitive to tense rather than as a cumulative exponent of tense/person/number. It is clear that inclusive overlapping exponence is sensitive by its very nature; this observation contributes to a possible reassessment of one-to-many varieties of exponence. Sensitivity is a property crosscutting the taxonomy of distinctions in 2.1⫺ 2.6, where examples of insensitive exponence are given; either separate or cumulative exponence may be sensitive. The Fulfulde and

625

64. Exponence

Turkish examples show cumulative exponents (both of person/number) sensitive to other parts of the morphological string. An example of the sensitivity of a separate exponent would be the Romanian suffixal definite article, whose form is sensitive to an inherent property, viz. the gender, of the noun to which it is attached, e.g. masculine om-ul ‘man-def.nom’, feminine lume-a ‘world-def. nom’. (This would not normally be considered to be agreement since the phenomenon is internal to the word-form and agreement is normally defined syntactically; cf. 2.4.) The effect of this reassessment in terms of sensitivity is to decrease the amount of syntagmatic deviation from separate exponence and to increase the amount of paradigmatic deviance, as one might now view some markers, such as the Turkish /-k/ suffix, as alternants chosen in response to the presence of certain other markers, rather than as directly co-expounding the properties which those other markers also expound. The Ro-

manian article would not, on a thoroughgoing application of this view, expound gender properties, but reflect those of the noun to which it is attached. In this light one might also view instances where some properties are expounded if and only if some others are. Finite verb-forms in Russian are marked for gender properties (in the singular) if and only if the verb is marked for ‘past tense’, e.g. stroí-l ‘buildpast(m.sg)’, stroí-l-a ‘build-past-f.sg’. The exponence of gender in verbs is thus sensitive to tense. 2.8. Syntactic exponence A further mode of exponence has been identified which may be called syntactic exponence (in the present context better perhaps morphotactic exponence). In Fulfulde, element order may be the sole cue for a morphosyntactic distinction: depending on its position, mi ‘1.sg’ can indicate the subject, the direct object or the indirect object (cf. McIntosh 1984: 192f.):

(10) (a) mi-suuH-ii-koyn 1.sg.-hide-compl.act-3.pl ‘I hid them’ (b) ’o-]ad-ii-mi 3.sg-approach-compl.act-1.sg ‘he approached me’ (c) ’o-]ad-an-ii-mi-mo 3.sg-approach-for-compl.act-1.sg-3.sg ‘he approached him for me’ If this analysis is accepted, this mode should in principle be viewed as a special case of separate exponence, though in Fulfulde its simplicity may be obscured by the effects of sensitive exponence (see 2.6). An alternative approach would be to view the subject/object distinction as a property of slots, some possibly empty, associated with the verb stem. Such positions are required anyway to handle what could be called alternate syntactic exponence, where some morphosyntactic property or properties are expounded at either one place or another within the word. In Choctaw, for instance, ‘1.sg.act.subj’ is expounded as a suffix but all other active subject forms are expounded as prefixes (cf. Anderson 1988: 31).

3.

Zero in exponence

The relation between content elements and expression elements can be not only one-toone, many-to-one, or one-to-many (cf. 2),

but also zero-to-one (3.1) or one-to-zero (3.2). In general semiotic terms, the things so defined are not fully bilateral signs (cf. Art. 43). 3.1. Zero exponents It is possible to postulate zero markers for certain morphosyntactic properties (cf. 2.2.2). In many instances it is clear that properties are expounded by the absence of any marker, in contrast with the presence of a marker for other, related properties. A simple example is the marking of number in English nouns. ‘plural’ is almost always marked by some device, usually a suffix. ‘singular’, on the other hand, remains unmarked. Most, probably all, morphologists agree that the absence of a marker is not haphazardly distributed throughout the field of morphosyntactic categories. In many categories, across the world’s languages, some property is routinely expected to be unmarked. For number, ‘sin-

626

IX. Flexion

gular’ is commonly unmarked and ‘plural’ marked in some way. (“Commonly” does not mean “universally”.) This is usually taken as evidence that certain properties are, in some sense or other, more basic than other properties of the same category (cf. Art. 29; see also Bybee 1985: 52⫺54 for statistical data). Given that English nouns routinely mark the plural, it accords with the “spirit” of the language to suggest that for the few nouns which have no plural marker, such as deer, one might postulate a marker of plurality with no phonological content, i.e. zero (cf. Haas 1957; Art. 45). This may be systematized to some degree for some words for animals and fishes ⫺ or fish. A zero marker is often used in the description of rich inflectional systems where there is a surprise gap, i.e. where the markerless form does not appear to be grammatically or semantically basic in any sense, or where analogous lexemes in other classes have a marker for the property or properties in question. A case in point concerns the genitive plural of certain Russian nouns. The feminine noun gaze´ta ‘newspaper’ has a genitive plural form gaze´t and the neuter slo´vo ‘word’ has slov. Other nouns have suffixed genitive plurals, e.g. the neuter noun mo´re ‘sea’ has more´j and the feminine cˇast’ ‘part’ has cˇaste´j. In these circumstances, a zero exponent of the cumulated properties ‘genitive’ and ‘plural’ has been suggested. 3.2. Empty morphs The converse of a zero exponent is an empty morph (cf. Art. 45). There are instances in the literature where elements have been identified that seem to correspond to no morphosyntactic property. In inflectional morphology, a case in point may be thematic phonological units such as lexical subclass membership markers, e.g. the vowels -a, -e, -i preceding the infinitive marker -r in Spanish. They clearly have linguistic significance; they correlate with particular tense/person/number properties, and they interrelate interestingly in the exponence of the mood properties (cf. Matthews 21991: 198⫺200). But they have no meaning that registers as part of the propositional content of sentences in which they appear.

4.

Constraints on patterns of exponence

Although universal separate exponence would appear desirable or optimal for any communication system, the deviations ob-

served in cumulative, multiple, overlapping, fused and extended exponence (2.2⫺2.6) are all frequently found in natural language and are challenges to any simple-minded view of communicational optimality. No general theory of constraints on such deviations has emerged, but a start has been made (cf. Plank 1980; 1986; Carstairs 1987). The general hypothesis has been advanced that there are practical limits placed on the number of exponents of a morphosyntactic property by the extent to which exponence in the morphological system in question is cumulative and/or sensitive, since these characteristics tend to undermine distinctness (recognizability); and that therefore very rich morphosyntactic systems will tend to have a higher proportion of insensitive separate exponence than of the other types (cf. Plank 1986: 33f.). Thirty or so may be an empirically valid upper limit on the number of exponents of properties of noun-based categories in any one language. Certain other rather complex restrictions on exponence in inflectional systems have been proposed (cf. Carstairs 1987: 107⫺124). Homonymy (i.e. where one word-form is morphosyntactically ambiguous) is tolerated in inflectional paradigms in two situations: (a) The homonymous properties are expounded cumulatively with the contextual property. In German, all case-forms are homonymous (in the inflection of weak nouns) in the context ‘plural’, and the suffix -en cumulatively expounds case and number properties. (b) The homonymous properties are expounded distinctly from the contextual property and the exponent resembles the form expounding one of the (sets of) properties in other contexts. In French, the third person and first person plural markers are homophonous (/o˜/) in the context ‘future’, expounded by the preceding suffix /r/. The suffixal shape for person/number is that which is proper to the first person plural in other contexts, e.g. the present tense. To the extent that such homonymies are systematic in some language, they are a question of syncretism (cf. Art. 68). It has been shown that they have differing impacts on paradigms whose exponence characteristics are different. Paradigms in which morphosyntactic properties are expounded separately, as in (11), become more complicated

627

64. Exponence

if a homonymy is introduced, as in the dative plural in (12); the letters in these hypothetical paradigms stand for different morphs (cf. Carstairs 1987: 109⫺114). (11) nominative accusative genitive dative

singular a b c d

plural p a p b p c p d

nominative accusative genitive dative

singular a b c d

plural p a p b p c p c

(12)

(12) appears to contain an extra memoryload: no decrease in the number of markers, but special information about the distribution of c, which presents a many-to-one and inconsistent relationship with case (sometimes but not always dative). On the other hand, paradigms in which morphosyntactic properties are expounded cumulatively, as in (13), become somewhat simpler, in a particular sense, when homonymy is introduced, as in (14). (13) nominative accusative genitive dative

singular a b c d

plural e f g h

nominative accusative genitive dative

singular a b c d

plural e f g g

(14)

(14) appears to contain a decrease in memory-load, seven instead of eight markers; no exponent shows an inconsistent relationship with any property, and the double function of g can be handled by a rule of referral (cf. 1.1) which may be assumed to be less costly in processing terms than a rule which specifies new (or different) material for perception or learning (i.e. here the morph h). It is possible that the direction of historical change in inflection is in part guided by considerations such as these; that syncretism which is not merely due to the outcome of phonological change tends to evolve preferentially in systems which are organized cumulatively.

5.

Exponence and morphological theory

There are several competing general models of inflection (cf. Art. 42; Spencer 1991: 49⫺ 53). Those standardly acknowledged are ⫺ Item-and-Arrangement (IA), ⫺ Item-and-Process (IP) and ⫺ Word-and-Paradigm (WP). The classification was due to Charles F. Hockett (cf. Hockett 1954); WP was first defended theoretically by Robert H. Robins (see Robins 1960), and different formalizations and expansions of this model have been proposed (cf. Matthews 1972: 159⫺273; Anderson 1992: 48⫺135; for accounts of exponence in frameworks akin to WP, see also Hammond 1981 and ⫺ within a general theory based on a very different set of assumptions ⫺ Beard 1995: 55⫺70, 97⫺99, 137⫺ 139, 370⫺374). The choice of a general model has implications for the description of exponence. In a WP model, exponence statements are very straightforward: arbitrary clusters of morphosyntactic properties are linked directly with stretches of phonological or orthographic material constituting word-forms; thus in Irish ‘praise [verb], past tense, imperfective aspect, indicative mood, first person, singular number’, is expounded en bloc as mholainn (cf. Mac Eoin 1993: 127f.) with no worries about where the boundaries between separate morphosyntactic units might be. IA and IP have in common the fact that, at some level of analysis, the morphosyntactic properties are held to have quasi-independent status as “morphemes” (in one sense of the term; cf. Art. 46); in an “ideal” IA system, sequences of morphosyntactic properties would be expounded agglutinatively as sequences of morphological markers; whilst in an IP system this might hold at an underlying level, but the units might be viewed as having effects on each other, describable by process statements. An IA description of German Gänse ‘geese’, for example, might be that it consists of two units, Gäns- and -e; the former is an allomorph of {gans} (cf. singular, and free, Gans) used adjacent to the plural marker, and the latter is an allomorph of the abstract morpheme {plural} used with {gans} (among many other words). An IP description of the same facts might analyse Gänse as the juxtaposition of Gans and -e where the latter is said to have the effect of modifying Gans to Gäns-. The IA description

628 allows one to say that the lexical meanings and morphosyntactic properties are expressed separately, and agglutinatively (cf. 2.2.1); the IP description, in effect, allows one to say that {plural} is expounded in more than one place: in the stem-vowel and in the suffix, making this an instance of extended exponence (cf. 2.5). IA and IP approaches to data like the Irish mholainn run into serious difficulties. Here is a description based on the orthographic form; it is necessary to simplify somewhat and the description given is not fully accurate if non-finite forms of the verb are considered. The stem can be analysed as mol-. The infixed -h- is a marker of past tense, but is not unique to past tenses. The suffix -ainn is shared with ‘past.subjunctive’ and ‘conditional’. A comparison of other forms of this verb reveals no unique locus within -ainn for any of person, number, tense, aspect or mood. The marker -ainn is unique to ‘1.sg’, but not all ‘1.sg’ forms are so marked. It is not shared by all other past tenses, all other imperfective aspects, or all other indicative moods; it is not unique to pasts, imperfectives or indicatives. A thoroughgoing IA approach is bound to regard mhol- as a stem-allomorph selected in a way sensitive to other specified adjacent material, but might baulk at viewing -ainn as an inflectional marker in which five properties are cumulatively expounded. The only alternative would be to regard -ainn as expounding one of these properties (e.g. first person), and to regard its form as sensitive to the other four, which themselves have zero exponence. An IP approach might concur about -ainn, but has the option of postulating underlying morphemes pairing morphosyntactic properties with phonological or orthographic substance, and allowing these elements to have influence on each other’s form such that they merge before surfacing as the apparently unanalysable -ainn. Cumulative exponence of these properties would in IP therefore be an artifact of phonological derivation; underlyingly, the properties might be separately expounded. An IP approach might regard past tense as essentially expounded by -ainn (along with other properties), but by virtue of that suffix altering the form of the stem from mol- to mhol-. But it has the option of regarding past tense as mainly expounded by the infix -h-, with the suffix -ainn expounding ‘imperf.indic.1.sg’ in a manner sensitive to ‘past’. Neither IA nor IP would be comfortable with an analysis in which …h…ainn ex-

IX. Flexion

tendedly expounded the cluster of five cumulated properties, a solution which is very close to classic WP. Any theory of morphology requires the possibility of distinguishing between different inflection-classes (cf. Art. 65). Often, such classes are merely disjoint; a word belongs either to one class or another, which means that some morphosyntactic property or set of properties is expounded differently in different classes; this amounts to a special source of allomorphy, from some perspectives, as with the Old English case/number suffixes -es, -e, -a, -an (cf. 1.2). The tidiest state of affairs would be one in which the exponence of such properties fell into blocks where the application of one precluded the application of competitors (disjunctivity), and one in which lexically specific or otherwise less specific statements automatically had applicational precedence over more general statements. The latter is the state of affairs encapsulated by the Elsewhere Condition on rule-application, for instance as defined by Proper Inclusion Precedence (cf. Koutsoudas & Sanders & Noll 1974: 8⫺10). However, cases have been noted where arbitrary-looking constraints have to be imposed on the operation of otherwise valid generalizations. A much-discussed one concerns the past subjunctive of “weak” and “strong” verbs in German (cf. Anderson 1982; 1986; Jensen & Stong-Jensen 1984). Weak verbs have a past indicative with the suffix -t (e.g. lachte, meinte, wußte), identical to the corresponding subjunctive-mood forms; strong verbs exhibit a vowel alternation in the past indicative and form the past subjunctive from it by fronting the vowel (e.g. present [ich] wasche, past indicative [ich] wusch, past subjunctive [ich] wüsche). Some relation between the two generalizations other than the tidiest needs to be worked out, for wüßte and the corresponding past subjunctive forms of a few other verbs demand the operation of both t-suffixation and vowel alternation (cf. present [ich] weiß, past indicative [ich] wußte). It can be shown that standard “elsewhere” applicational ordering of the two statements fails to account for the German facts, and that stipulating their mutual exclusiveness does likewise. We are faced with ‘past.subjunctive’ being realized in two ways: separately expounded by vowel alternation (handled like Gänse in either an IA or an IP model), or accounted for by a rule of referral (cf. 1.2) equating the past indica-

64. Exponence

tive form with the past subjunctive form; and by both methods in the critical forms. How to derive forms showing extended exponence of the same property from such different exponence types remains an analytic problem.

6.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1982), “Where’s Morphology?”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 571⫺612 Anderson, Stephen R. (1986), “Disjunctive Ordering in Inflectional Morphology”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4, 1⫺31 Anderson, Stephen R. (1988), “Inflection”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego/CA etc.: Academic Press, 23⫺43 Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 62) Andrews, J. Richard (1975), Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Austin, London: Univ. of Texas Press Bauer, Laurie (1988 a), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Bauer, Laurie (1988 b), “A Descriptive Gap in Morphology”. Yearbook of Morphology 1988, 17⫺27 Beard, Robert (1995), Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology: A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9)

629 Hockett, Charles F. (1947), “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 23, 321⫺343 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 229⫺242] Hockett, Charles F. (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231 [reprinted in: Joos (1957, ed.), 386⫺399] Jensen, John T. (1990), Morphology: Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 70) Jensen, John T. & Stong-Jensen, M. (1984), “Morphology is in the Lexicon!”. Linguistic Inquiry 15, 474⫺498 Joos, Martin (1957, ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies [⫽ 41966 Readings in Linguistics, Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] Katamba, Francis (1993), Morphology. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan Koutsoudas, Andreas & Sanders, Gerald & Noll, Craig (1974), “On the Application of Phonological Rules”. Language 50, 1⫺28 Mac Eoin, Gearoíd (1993), “Irish”. In: Ball, Martin J. & Fife, James (eds.), The Celtic Languages. London, New York: Routledge, 101⫺144 Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 6) Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press

Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London etc.: Croom Helm

McIntosh, Mary (1984), Fulfulde Syntax and Verbal Morphology. Boston etc.: Kegan Paul

Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (1992), Current Morphology. London, New York: Routledge

Merrifield, William R. & Naish, Constance M. & Rensch, Calvin R. & Story, Gillian (31965), Laboratory Manual for Morphology and Syntax. Santa Ana/CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics

Dixon, R[obert] M. W. (1980), The Languages of Australia. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Firth, John R. (1957), “A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930⫺1955”. In: Studies, 1⫺32 Haas, William (1957), “Zero in Linguistic Description”. In: Studies, 33⫺53 Hammond, Michael (1981), “Some Vogul Morphology: A Hierarchical Account of Multiple Exponence”. In: Thomas-Flinders, Tracy (ed.), Inflectional Morphology: Introduction to the Extended Word-and-Paradigm Theory. Los Angeles: Univ. of California (UCLA Occasional Papers 4), 84⫺116 Harris, Zellig S. (1945), “Discontinuous Morphemes”. Language 21, 121⫺127 Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press [later printings entitled Structural Linguistics]

Mitchell, T[erence] F. (1956), An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. London: Oxford Univ. Press Plank, Frans (1980), “Encoding Grammatical Relations: Acceptable and Unacceptable Non-distinctness”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (ed.), Historical Morphology. The Hague: Mouton (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 17), 289⫺325 Plank, Frans (1986), “Paradigm Size, Morphological Typology, and Universal Economy”. Folia Linguistica 20, 29⫺48 Pullum, Geoffrey K. & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1988), “The Syntax-Phonology Interface”. In: Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Vol. I: Linguistic Theory: Foundations. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 255⫺280

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Robins, Robert H. (1960), “In Defence of WP”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1959, 116⫺144 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Studies (1957) ⫽ Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell Vago, Robert M. (1980), The Sound Pattern of Hungarian. Washington/DC: Georgetown Univ. Press

Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: AkademieVerlag (Studia grammatica 21) [English transl. 1989: Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness. Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer] Zwicky, Arnold M. (1985), “How to Describe Inflection”. Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: February 16⫺18, 1985. 372⫺386

Richard Coates, Brighton (Great Britain)

65. Inflection classes 1. 2.

8.

Inflection classes and paradigms Traditional styles of inflectional classification Inflectional subclasses and crossclassification Factors which may determine inflection class membership Constraints on inflection class diversity Principal parts and reference forms Origin and development of inflection class systems References

1.

Inflection classes and paradigms

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

An inflection class may be defined provisionally as a class of lexemes which share: ⫺ a paradigm consisting of a set of “cells”, i.e. inflectionally realised morphosyntactic properties or combinations of properties (cf. Art. 62); ⫺ all the inflectional markers, or exponents, which realise these cells (cf. Art. 64). For example, the German nouns Wald ‘forest’ and Lamm ‘lamb’ belong to the same inflection class, because they are both inflected for four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative) and two numbers (singular and plural), and they share the same exponent or exponents for each case-number combination, e.g. dative singular -e or -π, nominative plural -er with stem umlaut (Wäld-er, Lämm-er). On the other hand, Wald and Gast ‘guest’ belong to different inflection classes because their plural suffixes differ (-er in Wäld-er versus -e in Gäst-e). Wald also belongs to a different inflection class from Bild

‘picture’, according to this provisional definition, because, although Bild displays the same set of inflectional suffixes as Wald, it displays no umlaut (cf. plural Bilder), and so differs from Wald in one inflectional marker (see 3 for possible revisions to the provisional definition which may effect this analysis). The term paradigm is sometimes used to mean a pattern of inflectional realisations for all morphosyntactic properties and combinations of properties associated with a given word-class, such that at least one lexeme in the word-class exemplifies that pattern (Carstairs 1987: 48f.). This sense underlies the use of the term paradigm economy (see 5). Paradigms in this sense correspond exactly with inflection classes, so that in association with one word-class there can be several paradigms in this sense, but normally only one paradigm in the sense defined in Art. 62 and assumed generally in this article (unless started otherwise). In some languages, there happens to be only one inflection class associated with each word-class and therefore with each paradigm. This seems to be especially true of languages (such as Turkish) which are agglutinative, i.e. which avoid cumulative exponence of morphosyntactic properties (cf. Art. 64, 116; Skalicˇka 1979: 36⫺45). The reason for this correlation (if it is genuine) is obscure. But the importance of distinguishing the terms inflection class and paradigm clearly lies in the fact that in many languages, particularly fusional ones, two or more lexemes which share a paradigm may exhibit quite different realisations for some or all of the cells in the paradigm.

631

65. Inflection classes

2.

Traditional styles of inflectional classification

In traditional descriptions of Indo-European languages, verbal inflection classes are called conjugations while nominal, pronominal and adjectival ones are called declensions. Declensions and conjugations are often identified by labels which are either arbitrary (e.g. “firstconjugation verbs”, “strong nouns”) or related to some phonological characteristic of the stem (e.g. “consonant-stem nouns”, “istem verbs”). Each inflection class is treated as a distinct entity, with no explicit recognition of the similarities and differences between them. For example, in Latin, which is traditionally analysed as having five distinct nominal declensions, this numerical labelling pays no attention to the fact that, in their dative-ablative plural suffixes, the first and second declensions jointly contrast with the third, fourth and fifth declensions (-ı¯s versus -bus), while in their genitive singular forms it is the third and fourth declensions which contrast with the first, second and fifth (suffixes with final -s versus suffixes with a final vowel). But the traditional approach is not consistent in this respect. The “third declension” embraces lexemes whose inflection follows generally the same pattern but which differ in a variety of ways: nominative singular with or without -s (e.g. re¯x /re6k-s/ ‘kingnom.sg’ versus latro¯ ‘brigand(nom.sg)’), accusative singular in -em or -im (e.g. coll-em ‘hill-acc.sg’ versus pupp-im ‘poop-acc.sg’), genitive plural in -um or -ium (e.g. lapid-um ‘stone-gen.pl’ versus coll-ium ‘hill-gen.pl’). Some (but by no means all) treatments of German noun inflection agree with the provisional definition (cf. 1) in assigning wald and gast to different inflection classes, but disagree in that they assign wald and bild to the same class, or to subclasses of one class (cf. Mugdan 1977: 108⫺113; 1983: 198⫺200). This kind of analysis is compatible with amended criteria for inflection class membership (see 3). Another traditional method of indicating a lexeme’s inflection behaviour is by listing a set of principal parts ⫺ word-forms for certain standard grammatical words on the basis of which the word-forms for all other grammatical words can be derived by the application of certain rules. For example, according to the pedagogical tradition which has been observed for centuries in the study of Latin in Europe, verbs are not only assigned to

conjugations but also equipped with four principal parts; for mordeo ‘bite’ they are: the 1st person singular imperfective present indicative active form mordeo¯, the imperfective infinitive active form morde¯re, the 1st person singular perfective present indicative active form momordı¯ and the supine form morsum (or, alternatively, the past passive participle nominative singular masculine form morsus). The need to list principal parts reflects the fact that not all the information needed in order to decline mordeo in full can be got just from its identification as a “second conjugation” verb; in particular, the stem alternants associated with certain parts of the paradigm differ from one second conjugation verb to another (cf. Art. 62 and 3.2). Principal parts correspond quite closely to what in contemporary morphological theory are called reference forms, which can be thought of as minimally redundant principal parts (cf. 6).

3.

Inflectional subclasses and cross-classification

According to the provisional definition of inflection class (cf. 1), two lexemes belong to the same inflection class if they share all the inflectional markers which realise their paradigm. This presupposes that one can tell when two word-forms contain the same inflectional marker and when they do not. In many instances this is unproblematic. In German, for instance, there is no doubt that -en, as in Staat-en ‘state-pl’, is a distinct marker of plural from -e, as in Tag-e ‘day-pl’. This is because there is no ground for analysing either suffix as a phonological variant of the other, nor is their distribution predictable on any nonmorphological basis (cf. 4). On the other hand, one can argue that the “zero suffix” -π as a marker of plural in words like Löffel-π ‘spoon-pl’ is not distinct from -e, because the zero suffix occurs in noun plurals just where -e cannot, namely after syllables ending in unstressed -el, -er or -en (so that a hypothetical plural form *Löffel-e is not only wrong but morphologically ill formed). So, can markers which are phonologically distinct, at least superficially, count as the same for the purpose of assigning inflection class membership (see 3.1)? ⫺ Another kind of doubt may arise when two word-forms share one marker for a given cell but one of them carries a second, additional marker. For ex-

632 ample, all the grammatical words in the German lexeme gast show the same suffixes as the corresponding grammatical words in tag ‘day’, but in addition display umlaut in the plural (Gäst-e versus Tag-e). Is this sufficient ground for assigning tag and gast to distinct inflection classes (see 3.2)? 3.1. Subclassification based on phonological predictability It is relatively uncontroversial, in traditional terms, to assign a pair of nouns such as Tag and Löffel to the same inflection class (or, at any rate, to subclasses of one class) on the basis that their suffixal alternation (-e ~ -π) is phonologically predictable. And, at first sight, whether we deem these nouns to belong to the same class or not may seem a mere terminological issue. But the decision does have major theoretical consequences (see 4 and 5). A point to note is that the phonological predictability of an alternation does not depend on the phonological similarity of the alternants. For example, in the inflection class to which most Hungarian verbs belong, the 2nd person singular present indicative indefinite suffix is either -sz /s/, -asz /As/ or -ol. Clearly, -ol is phonologically quite dissimilar to -(a)sz. Nevertheless, verbs with -(a)sz and many of the verbs with -ol are traditionally assigned to the same conjugation, because the choice between the two suffixes is predictable phonologically: -ol appears with stems ending in sibilants (i.e. strident coronal fricatives and affricates) while -(a)sz appears elsewhere, e.g. olvas-ol ‘you are reading’ versus ´ır-sz ‘you are writing’. This implies that two lexemes can be members of one inflection class and yet display in some paradigmatic cell two markers which are not phonologically identical or even relatable to one another in terms of plausible phonological processes or rules such as assimilation, epenthesis or deletion. ⫺ Part of the reason why this analysis of Hungarian verbs has become established, no doubt, is that the phonological discrepancy between markers is restricted to the one cell ‘2nd person singular present indicative indefinite’, and in all other cells the verbs of the normal conjugation are inflected alike. But what if for several, or even all, cells there are two or more markers whose distribution is phonologically predictable even though they are phonologically unalike? For example, the German masculine nouns Hund ‘dog’ and Uhu ‘eagle-owl’ are traditionally

IX. Flexion

assigned to different inflection classes because their plural markers are quite distinct: Hund-e ‘dog-pl’ versus Uhu-s ‘eagle-owl-pl’. On the other hand, the plural affix that each of them displays is the commonest for masculine nouns of its phonological shape (-e after consonant-final stems, -s after stems ending in an unstressed vowel other than schwa; cf. Wurzel 1984: 125⫺127 [1989: 121⫺123]), and neither could readily adopt the marker of the other (*Uhu-e is phonotactically as well as inflectionally odd, and on consonant-final stems the -s plural suffix is restricted to a small number of loan-words, e.g. Park-s ‘park-pl’, Streik-s ‘strike-pl’). Should one then assign hund and uhu to a single inflection class, like the Hungarian verbs olvas and ír? This would be a decidedly unconventional analysis. Nevertheless, arguments for combining inflection classes on these lines have been advanced, and the term macroclass (or macroparadigm) has been proposed for the larger classes which result (see 4 and 5); cf. Carstairs 1986: 4; 1987: 50, 69). 3.2. Cross-classification on the basis of stems and affixes Do gast and tag belong to two inflection classes or one? Affixally they inflect alike, but only in gast does the stem vowel /a/ undergo umlaut in the plural. Again, this may appear a mere terminological issue; but there are also issues of fact at stake. If it were found that, in general, affixal and nonaffixal inflection were tied closely together, so that two lexemes which differed in their patterns of stem alternation nearly always differed affixally too, and vice versa, that would count in favour of allocating gast and tag to distinct inflection classes even though, in contrast to the usual pattern, they happen to be affixally identical. But in fact it appears that, in a variety of languages, affixal inflection and nonaffixal inflection do not correlate particularly closely. For example, in German, plural umlaut is not restricted to one affixal pattern, since it is found with both -e and -er plural affixes, and conversely the commoner of these two affixes (-e) is found both with and without umlaut; the only tight correlation is between -er and umlaut, in that nouns which take -er always display umlaut if the stem vowel is umlautable (e.g. Wäld-er, Männ-er ‘man-pl’, Büch-er ‘book-pl’, in contrast with nonumlautable Bild-er). Likewise, in Russian, stress alternations play a considerable role in


noun inflection and a stress contrast may be the sole differentiator between two grammatical words (e.g. vdov-y´ ‘widow-gen.sg’, vdo´vy ‘widow-nom.pl’), but almost every pattern of affixal inflection is found with more than one pattern of stress alternation, and vice versa. The present tense forms of Ukrainian verbs provide a more elaborate illustration, involving both stress (as in Russian nouns) and stem alternations (as in German nouns). One can distinguish three patterns of affixal inflection (or affixal subparadigms), five patterns of morphophonological alternation in the stem (or morphophonological subparadigms) and three accentual, or stress, subparadigms (cf. Lehfeldt 1985: 44⫺59). If these three aspects of inflectional exponence were tightly correlated, we would expect to find only five patterns of inflectional exponence overall, reflecting the total number of subparadigms of the most numerous type. On the other hand, if the subparadigms were totally independent of one another, we would expect to find 45 (3⫻5⫻3) patterns of inflectional exponence. But the actual number of patterns observed is 22. This shows that, although not all possible combinations occur, affixation, stress and stem alternation do operate substantially independently in Ukrainian verb inflection. The best answer to the question about gast and tag, therefore, seems to be that they belong to the same inflection class from the affixal point of view but to different classes from the point of view of stem alternation. This kind of analysis turns out also to facilitate a clear-cut answer to the question about inflection class diversity (see 5). But more work is needed both to substantiate the claim of subparadigm independence in a wider range of languages (particularly nonIndo-European ones) and also to explore the kinds of link which do exist between subparadigms of different types. For example, are stem alternation patterns in general better predictors of affixation patterns than vice versa, or not? And, if so, why?

4.

Factors which may determine inflection class membership

The discussion of macroclasses in 3.1 implies that the inflectional behaviour of a lexeme, and consequently its membership in its inflectional class, is not entirely arbitrary, in that

633 phonological factors can determine the choice between two rival exponents of some paradigmatic cell. Generally, inflection class membership may be determinable on the basis of extramorphological characteristics of lexemes ⫺ syntactic and semantic as well as phonological. As mentioned in 3.1, German masculine nouns with stem-final unstressed vowels other than schwa tend to form their plural in -s (e.g. Uhu-s). This tendency in fact applies to all German nouns of that shape, including neuters (e.g. Kino ‘cinema’, plural Kino-s) and feminines (e. g. Mutti ‘mummy’, plural Mutti-s), so that nouns of this phonological shape which form their plural in other ways (e.g. Viola, plural Viol-en) may defect to the -s class (plural Viola-s; cf. Wurzel 1984: 125 [1989: 122]). In Arapesh of New Guinea, phonological factors of this kind determine the inflection class of almost all nouns (cf. Aronoff 1994: 107⫺111). Phonological factors may play a part too in determining the membership of the class of English “strong” verbs with stem-internal /v/ rather than suffixed -ed as the past marker (e.g. stuck, clung); a high proportion of these verbs have in the present the stem vowel /=/ combined with a final velar nasal or an initial consonant cluster beginning with /s/ or both. What is operating here, it is suggested, is a schema involving similar associations between corresponding wordforms in different lexemes (cf. Bybee & Moder 1983). Although a schema is an association (or set of associations) rather than a rule, it is powerful enough to induce neologisms such as snuck and thunk in the lexemes sneak and think. German provides an example of a morphologically relevant extramorphological characteristic from the realm of meaning. Unlike the modals of English (can, may etc.), which differ paradigmatically from verbs in that they lack infinitive and past participle forms, the modals of German (kˆnnen, d¸rfen etc.) can be assigned to the same word-class as verbs from a purely morphological point of view (cf. Art. 62). However, in the standard language, modals and only modals belong to an inflection class in which the 3rd person singular present form has no -t suffix (kann, darf etc.). Consequently, the “normal” verb brauchen ‘need’, which can have a quasi-modal meaning in contexts like sie braucht nicht zu kommen ‘she doesn’t need to come’, conforms in some colloquial varieties of German to the modal inflection class in

634

IX. Flexion

having an unsuffixed 3rd person singular form brauch (sie brauch nicht …; cf. Wurzel 1984: 74 [1989: 66]). ⫺ A semantic characteristic affecting inflection class membership may be quite narrow, and fall outside the range of meanings which morphological processes typically express (cf. Ch. XIII⫺XIV). For example, it is unusual for a feminine noun in Latin to belong to the “second declension” class exemplified by servus ‘servant’ (cf. (3) in Art. 62) or the “fourth declension” exemplified by fructus ‘fruit’ (genitive singular and nominative plural fructu¯s); but feminine nouns denoting trees go firmly against this usual trend, in that they typically do belong to the second declension (e.g. fagus ‘beech’, fraxinus ‘ash’, malus ‘apple tree’, populus ‘poplar’, prunus ‘plum tree’, ulmus ‘elm’, sometimes pinus ‘pine’) or the fourth (e.g. quercus ‘oak’, sometimes pinus ‘pine’). Inflection class membership may also be affected by invariant syntactic characteristics of lexemes, such as gender in nouns. Corresponding to almost every German inflection class in which the genitive singular cell has -(e)s as its exponent, there is a class in which the genitive singular is suffixless, i.e. identical with the nominative singular base form (cf. Art. 62). However, these “zero-genitive” classes are often not recognised as separate from the corresponding “-s-genitive” classes, because the inflectional difference correlates so clearly with gender; all and only feminine nouns have “zero-genitive”. For example, the feminine noun hand ‘hand’ (genitive singular Hand, nominative plural Händ-e) is traditionally analysed as belonging to the same inflection class as the masculine noun gast (genitive singular Gast-(e)s, nominative plural Gäst-e). Similarly, in Latin, there is a class of nouns which decline exactly like servus (cf. (3) in Art. 62) except in the nominative, vocative and accusative, as illustrated by bellum ‘war’: (1) nominative vocative accusative genitive dative ablative

singular bell-um bell-um bell-um bell-ı¯ bell-o¯ bell-o¯

plural bell-a bell-a bell-a bell-o¯rum bell-ı¯s bell-ı¯s

These nouns are traditionally assigned to the second declension, along with servus, because (as with hand and gast) the inflectional difference correlates with gender: those

nouns which resemble bellum constitute all and only the neuters of the second declension (but for a tiny minority of neuters in -us like virus ‘poison’). The German Gast/Hand nouns and the Latin second declension are clear cases of what have been called macroclasses (or macroparadigms), meaning sets of inflection classes (in these instances, two) whose inflectional differences correlate exactly with phonological or lexically determined syntactic or semantic differences, or else single inflection classes which cannot be thus related to other classes (cf. Carstairs 1986: 4; 1987: 69). Many changes in inflection class membership can probably be accounted for in terms of increasing the extent to which class membership is predictable on the basis of extramorphological factors, thereby reducing the number of complementary classes, i.e. distinct classes which share the same extramorphological characteristics (cf. Wurzel 1984: 116⫺172 [1989: 112⫺ 173]; 1987). This amounts to saying that there is probably a tendency for all the inflection classes of a given word-class to be combined over time into a single macroclass. If that is so, the question arises why this goal has not yet been achieved in many inflectionally complex languages (see 7).

5.

Constraints on inflection class diversity

On the basis of the range of distinct markers for each cell in a paradigm, it is possible to compute the maximum and minimum number of inflection classes which might conform to that paradigm. Suppose, for example, the nouns in some language are inflected for the same two numbers and four cases as in German, and that the number of distinct markers for each cell is as follows: (2) nominative accusative genitive dative

singular 2 2 3 2

plural 4 3 3 1

Let us assume that this pattern is not complicated by any systematic homonymies or syncretisms (cf. Art. 66), and that no markers correlate with extramorphological factors so as to allow any inflection classes to be combined into macroclasses. The minimum number of inflection classes among which the array of markers in (2) can be distributed is


four, since lexemes with each of the four nominative plural markers must belong to distinct classes. The maximum number of inflection classes, reflecting a situation in which markers are chosen for each cell independently, is 864 (2⫻2⫻2⫻2⫻4⫻3⫻3⫻1). Is there any general linguistic constraint on how many inflection classes a language may have, so as to impose an upper limit below 864? One proposal is that (subject to certain qualifications) the upper limit is the strictest possible, namely the arithmetical minimum; in other words, languages must obey strictly a principle of paradigm economy (cf. Carstairs 1987: 42⫺86). It seems likely that paradigm economy is a byproduct of an expectation that distinct inflectional affixes, like distinct lexical items, should not be exactly synonymous; for, if one way of avoiding synonymy is unequivocal identification of inflection class membership, then the proliferation of inflection classes turns out to be appropriately constrained (cf. Carstairs-McCarthy 1994: 754⫺757). The inflectional pattern of German nouns appears at first sight to involve a considerably larger number of classes than the principle of paradigm economy allows; but if the principle is applied to noun macroclasses rather than to individual classes, the German facts emerge as consistent with it (cf. Carstairs 1986; 1987: 234⫺251). Another issue which turns out to be relevant is that of the criteria for inflectional difference (see 3.2). Some apparent breaches of paradigm economy can be reconciled with it if, for this purpose, attention is paid only to affixal inflection, and not to stem or stress alternations (cf. Carstairs 1987: 221⫺232). This suggests that markers involving different formal morphological processes (cf. Ch. VIII) are subject to different contraints in inflection. The implications of this have yet to be properly explored.

6.

Principal parts and reference forms

The traditional use of arbitrary labels and numbers to identify inflection classes (cf. 2) is unsatisfactory, but how could this be improved? And how might implicit knowledge about inflection class membership be represented in the native speaker’s “mental lexicon” (cf. Art. 162)? In discussions since the early 1980s, these two problems have been treated as related. For instance, the German

635 monosyllabic masculine nouns gast and mann have the same markers in the singular, with nominative-accusative expressed by the base form (cf. Art. 62), dative by -(e) and genitive by -(e)s, as well as in the dative plural, expressed by -n suffixed to the non-dative plural marker; but they differ in their nondative plural markers themselves (-e versus -er). Furthermore, the -er suffix is much less common than -e as a marker of plural, and is not productive (i.e. it is usually not found in neologisms, loanwords or native speakers’ speech errors). One can express these similarities and differences by saying that both nouns are subject to an (implicative) paradigm structure condition according to which, if a noun has the extramorphological characteristics of being masculine and monosyllabic, then it displays the pattern of affixal inflection just illustrated with gast; but, for mann, this condition is partially overridden by the lexical specification of -er as its suffix for the non-dative plural. Assuming that this paradigm structure condition is part of the competence of the native speaker of German, monosyllabic masculines which decline suffixally like gast (the great majority) need no further specification in the speaker’s mental lexicon to indicate their inflectional behaviour, whereas ones belonging to the minority which decline like mann must be lexically specified as having -er for their plural suffix. This implies that the inflection class of gast is the default class or unmarked class for nouns with this particular set of extramorphological characteristics (cf. Wurzel 1984: 116⫺172 [1989: 112⫺173]). The gast class and the mann class are complementary (cf. 4). In any set of complementary classes, all but the unmarked class must be lexically specified to indicate how their inflectional behaviour departs from that specified in the paradigm structure condition to which the unmarked class conforms ⫺ the dominant paradigm structure condition for that set of classes. Sometimes this specification may simply override part of the dominant paradigm structure condition, as does the specification of -er for the plural of mann. Sometimes, however, the specification of a given marker for a given paradigmatic cell may trigger the operation of a further paradigm structure condition, whose ifclause mentions not extramorphological factors but the specified marker itself. For example, under one plausible analysis the monosyllabic masculines mensch ‘human be-

636 ing’ and staat ‘state’ would both be lexically specified as having -en in the plural. For mensch, this specification would then trigger the application of a paradigm structure condition to the effect that if a masculine noun has -en as a plural marker and denotes an animate creature, then it will have -en as marker for the non-nominative singular cases too; staat, however, since it does not denote an animate creature and hence fails to fill the semantic part of this second paradigm structure condition, will be subject in the singular to the dominant paradigm structure condition for monosyllabic masculines and thereby obtain the forms Staat ‘state(acc.sg)’, Staates ‘state-gen.sg’ and Staat(-e) ‘state-dat.sg’. A lexically specified form which overrides or triggers paradigm structure conditions in this way is called a reference form (German Kennform), and has clear affinities with the traditional notion principal part (cf. 2). Paradigm economy (cf. 5) involves the identification of the one or more “diagnostic” cells in the paradigm which are most generously supplied with alternative markers ⫺ the nominative plural, in the hypothetical example (2) in 5. The paradigm economy principle entails that, in any set of complementary classes, the inflectional behaviour of all classes except the unmarked class should be derivable from simple paradigm structure conditions based on one reference form for each class, namely the form for the diagnostic cell. Yet the descriptive framework of reference forms and paradigm structure conditions imposes no such restriction on what can function as a reference form, and sets of complementary classes have been analysed as involving complex multi-stage paradigm structure conditions (“If A then B, and if B then C, and if C …”) and reference forms relating to two or more different cells (cf. Bittner 1985; Wurzel 1987). Besides, traditional descriptions in terms of principal parts typically invoke more than one principal part. But the inflectional markers whose prediction requires such complexities seem generally to be nonaffixal ⫺ in other words, they belong to subparadigms to which the paradigm economy principle does not apply (cf. 5). For example, the aspect of the inflection of mordeo which the principal parts momordı¯ and morsum predict are the stems, not the affixes, of perfective forms and of certain participial forms respectively. If this is generally true, then it may be possible to place desirable restrictions on what reference forms and para-

IX. Flexion

digm structure conditions can do, so as to yield a stronger theory of inflectional organisation. This possibility remains to be explored in more detail.

7.

Origin and development of inflection class systems

Why do distinct inflection classes survive? At first sight, the provision of more than one exponent for some paradigmatic cells (cf. Art. 63) ⫺ the phenomenon which underlies the need to recognise inflection classes ⫺ is functionally pointless. Especially if one believes that morphological change can be explained largely in terms of achieving greater “naturalness” in morphological coding relationships (cf. Art. 31), the survival of distinct inflection classes seems a mystery. Part of the solution to this mystery lies in understanding how inflection classes arise historically. A kind of semantic classification is imposed on nouns in some languages, such as Vietnamese (cf. Art. 141), by a system of “numeral classifiers” which always accompany a noun which is modified by a numeral. Semantic classification such as this becomes syntactically relevant if other items in the sentence (e.g. verbs, adjectives, anaphoric pronouns) have to “agree in class” with nouns. But there is a general tendency for classes to lose their semantic coherence, both because of metaphor and because of a tendency to classify together objects which are alike in ways independent of the original class meaning. For example, although most human nouns in Zulu belong in the “human” class with prefixes um(u)-/aba- (e.g. umu-ntu ‘person’, aba-ntu ‘people’), certain despised humans are classified metaphorically as ‘things’ with the prefixes um(u)-/imi- (e.g. um-hambuma ‘tramp’, plural imi-hambuma; cf. Carstairs 1987: 64f.). If anaphoric pronouns and other agreement markers now come to operate on the basis of meaning rather than class, then class loses its syntactic significance and becomes a purely morphological phenomenon ⫺ a system of inflection classes. It has been suggested that the declension types and genders of the Indo-European languages have their respective origins in earlier and later semantic classifications, both “desemanticised” extensively in prehistoric times ⫺ although not entirely, in that (for example) Old High German “ir-stem” nouns were still mainly restricted to animals and


parts of plants (e.g. kalb ‘calf’, blat ‘leaf’; cf. Wurzel 1986: 86). Phonological as well as semantic and syntactic changes can give rise to inflection classes. Comparison with related languages shows that the complex inflection class system in Turkana, a Nilotic language of Kenya, has arisen because what were originally parts of stems have come to be reanalysed as suffixes, after phonological attrition had affected an earlier set of suffixes (Dimmendaal 1987; cf. Dixon 1980: 402⫺415 on the likely origin of distinct conjugations in Australian languages). In German, similarly, the plural suffix -er of Männ-er has its origin in a stemforming element (cf. Art. 62) which originally had nothing to do with number, cognate with the empty morph -er- in the Latin itin-er-is ‘journey-π-gen.sg (of the journey)’. It seems likely also that the persistence of inflection classes may lie partly in the apparent determination of languages to “put to use” all formal distinctions, even if the uses to which these are put do not at first sight serve any clear communicative purpose (cf. Lass 1990). When there is more than one marker available for a given cell, one function which rival markers may fulfil, perhaps, is simply that of identifying the inflection classes to which lexemes belong. This function will be fulfilled most efficiently if the identification is unambiguous, i.e. if no more than one of the rivals is a “class-default” marker associated with more than one inflection class (cf. Carstairs-McCarthy 1994). This will constitute a source of pressure from within morphology itself not just to maintain but even to extend “useless” inflectional diversity.

8.

References

Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 22) Bittner, Andreas (1985), “Implikative Hierarchien in der Morphologie: Das ‘Stark-Schwach-Kontinuum’ der neuhochdeutschen Verben”. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 35, 31⫺42 Bybee, Joan L. & Moder, Carol Lynn (1983), “Morphological Classes as Natural Categories”. Language 59, 251⫺270 Carstairs, Andrew (1986), “Macroclasses and Paradigm Economy in German Nouns”. Zeitschrift für

637 Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 3⫺11 Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London etc.: Croom Helm Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (1994), “Inflection Classes, Gender, and the Principle of Contrast”. Language 70, 737⫺788 Dimmendaal, Gerrit (1987), “Drift and Selective Mechanisms in Morphological Change: The Eastern Nilotic Case”. In: Ramat et al. (eds.), 193⫺210 Dixon, R[obert] M. W. (1980), The Languages of Australia. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Lass, Roger (1990), “How to Do Things with Junk: Exaptation in Langauge Evolution”. Journal of Linguitics 26, 79⫺102 Lehfeldt, Werner (1985), Sprjazˇenie ukrainskogo glagola. München: Sagner (Specimina Philologiae Slavicae Supplementband 9) Mugdan, Joachim (1977), Flexionsmorphologie und Psycholinguistik. Tübingen: Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 82) Mugdan, Joachim (1983), “Grammatik im Wörterbuch: Flexion”. In: Wiegand, Herbert Ernst (ed.), Studien zur neuhochdeutschen Lexikographie, Vol. III. Hildesheim etc.: Olms (Germanistische Linguistik 1⫺4/82), 179⫺237 Ramat, Anna-Giacalone & Carruba, Onofrio & Bernini, Giuliano (1987, eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics [Pavia 1985]. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 48) Skalicˇka, Vladimı´r (1979), “Das Erscheinungsbild der Sprachtypen”. In: Skalicˇka, Vladimı´r, Typologische Studien, ed. by Peter Hartmann. Braunschweig: Vieweg (Schriften zur Linguistik 11), 21⫺58 [orig. Czech 1951] Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1984), Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin/DDR: AkademieVerlag (Studia grammatica 21) [English transl. 1989, Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness. Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer] Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1986), “Die wiederholte Klassifikation von Substantiven”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 76⫺96 Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1987), “Paradigmenstrukturbedingungen: Aufbau und Veränderung von Flexionsparadigmen”. In: Ramat et al. (eds.), 629⫺644 [also in: Wurzel, W[olfgang] U[llrich] (1987, ed.), Studien zur Morphologie und Phonologie, Vol. II. Berlin/DDR: Zentralinst. für Sprachwissenschaft (Linguistische Studien A 156), 135⫺ 155]


638

IX. Flexion

66. Synkretismus 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Definition und Abgrenzung Formaler und funktionaler Synkretismus Funktionaler Synkretismus Synkretismus und Typen morphosyntaktischer Kategorien Zitierte Literatur

1.

Definition und Abgrenzung

Der Terminus Synkretismus ist in der linguistischen Literatur mehrdeutig. Einerseits bezeichnet er einen diachronen Prozeß, durch den zwei oder mehr Exponenten morphosyntaktischer Kategorien zusammenfallen, so daß zwei oder mehr grammatische Bedeutungen (zum Beispiel zwei Kasus), die früher durch zwei verschiedene Exponenten ausgedrückt wurden, später nur noch durch einen ausgedrückt werden. Gebraucht man den Terminus Synkretismus entsprechend auf synchroner Ebene, sollte er sich auf das Fehlen von Isomorphismus zwischen Form und Funktion beziehen und darauf hinweisen, daß ein und dieselbe Form mehrere Funktionen ausdrücken kann: “The term ‘syncretism’ traditionally refers to cases where two or more meanings are associated with one and the same form” (Gvozdanovic´ 1991: 134). In diesem Sinne nähert sich der Begriff des Synkretismus in unklarer Weise dem der Polysemie an (s. 1.3). Auf der anderen Seite ist der Terminus Synkretismus auch in einem weiteren Sinn doppeldeutig. Einige Wissenschaftler identifizieren als Synkretismus nur die völlige Fusion der Exponenten zweier oder mehrerer grammatischer Bedeutungen. Andere dagegen sprechen von verschiedenen Graden von Synkretismus, wenn sich diese Fusion nur in einigen Teilen des Paradigmas realisiert. Für dieses zweite Phänomen wird auch der Terminus Homophonie gebraucht (s. 1.2). Beide Blickwinkel, der synchrone und der diachrone, bedingen die Abgrenzung der drei Begriffe Synkretismus, Homophonie und Polysemie mit (s. 1.1). Aus der synchronen Perspektive allein ist es schwierig, Synkretismus von Homophonie abzugrenzen, während in diachroner Perspektive das Ergebnis des Synkretismus die Polysemie zu sein scheint. Aufgrund der Verwendung des Terminus Synkretismus in der Fachliteratur nicht nur der letzten Jahre, sondern schon des 19. Jahrhunderts ist eine befriedigende Abgrenzung

der drei Begriffe nicht möglich, ohne die gewählte Perspektive und den angewendeten theoretischen Rahmen zu spezifizieren. 1.1. Synchronie und Diachronie Der Terminus Synkretismus wird oft eingeführt, ohne seine Bedeutung zu präzisieren oder einzugrenzen. Damit wird die Wahl zwischen der synchronen und der diachronen Ebene als gegeben betrachtet, und die Befürworter der einen oder anderen Betrachtungsweise scheinen das Vorhandensein der anderen zu ignorieren. Rein synchron ist beispielsweise die Definition von Synkretismus in einem Lehrbuch der Morphologie: (1) “Syncretism is the neutralisation of two forms in a paradigm, so that two different grammatical words are realised by homonymous wordforms. For example, in Latin there is consistent syncretism between the Dative and Ablative plural, so that re6gibus could be either the Dative or the Ablative plural of rex ‘king’.” (Bauer 1988: 255)

Die Einleitung zu einem Artikel über den Synkretismus der lateinischen Kasus lehnt dagegen eine synchrone Sicht ab: (2) “Le syncre´tisme casuel est un pheńome`ne tout a` fait geńe´ral dans les langues indo-europeénnes; si banal, en ve´rite´, qu’on semble souvent l’accepter comme une sorte de fatalite´ naturelle. […] Comme il s’inscrit force´ment dans un devenir, il ećhappe aux e´tudes qui se veulent strictement synchroniques: l’ideé meˆme d’un syncre´tisme est inconcevable dans le syste`me hjelmsle´vien par ex.” (Serbat 1988: 274)

Der zweite Teil der Definition (1) beinhaltet auch eine Lösungsmöglichkeit für das Problem des Synkretismus und der Homophonie (s. 1.2; vgl. mit ähnlicher Tendenz auch Carstairs 1987: 115f.). Die beiden Arten, Synkretismus zu verstehen, haben verschiedene Kontexte und Ursprünge. Die Definition (1) spiegelt einen Gebrauch des Terminus wider, wie er für die deskriptive Tradition der englischsprachigen Länder typisch ist (vgl. auch Matthews 1972: 92 und 1.2). Die diachrone Auffassung des Synkretismus wie in (2) ist hingegen diejenige, die der Einführung dieses Begriffs in die Linguistik zugrundeliegt und ihre Ursprünge in der historisch-vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts hat. Es ist möglich, die beiden Ebenen terminologisch zu unterscheiden, indem man Synkre-

66. Synkretismus

tismus nur in synchronem und merging nur in diachronem Sinn gebraucht (vgl. Luraghi 1991: 71); diese Wortwahl würde jedoch weder die Geschichte des Terminus Synkretismus berücksichtigen noch seine bisherige weite und meistens an die Diachronie gebundene Verwendung im indogermanistischen Bereich. Deswegen scheint es günstiger, den Terminus Synkretismus sowohl auf den diachronen Prozeß als auch auf die synchrone Polysemie anzuwenden. Denn wenn man unter Synkretismus das Phänomen versteht, bei dem mehrere Funktionen durch denselben Exponenten ausgedrückt werden, wird es von Interesse sein, die Kompatibilität zwischen den so vereinten Funktionen zu untersuchen; aber die Bedingungen, die diese Kompatibilität ermöglichen, sind dieselben, ganz gleich ob ein Sprachzustand oder ein Sprachwandel betrachtet wird. 1.2. Synkretismus und Homophonie Beim Beispiel für Synkretismus in der Definition (1) gilt die Identität der Exponenten der beiden Kasus nicht in allen Paradigmen. Im Lateinischen sind nämlich die Suffixe des Dativs und Ablativs im Plural formal identisch, sie haben aber zum großen Teil unterschiedliche Formen in den Singularparadigmen der Substantiva wie auch der Pronomina. Dieses Beispiel wird auch in einer Studie zitiert, in der der Synkretismus als eine synchrone Erscheinung gesehen wird, wobei drei Grade unterschieden werden (s. Coleman 1976: 47⫺ 50): (a) eine Unterscheidung ist nur in einem Teil der Paradigmen vorhanden, aber nicht in allen (ein Beispiel hierfür ist der lateinische Genitiv und Dativ Singular der a¯Stämme, die das gleiche Suffix -ae aufweisen, während in allen anderen Paradigmen Dativ und Genitiv Singular verschieden sind); (b) eine Unterscheidung ist nur in einem Numerus vorhanden (als weiteres Beispiel neben dem des Dativs und Ablativs im lateinischen Nominalparadigma kann auch das der Pronominalflexion im Deutschen gelten, wo Nominativ und Akkusativ Maskulinum, die im Singular normalerweise unterschieden sind, im Plural einen einzigen Exponenten teilen); (c) zwei Kasus, die in einer bestimmten Phase der Geschichte einer Sprache verschieden sind, werden in einer darauffolgenden Phase in allen Paradigmen und allen Numeri homophon.

639 Um mehr terminologische Klarheit zu gewinnen, kann man dem Vorschlag folgen, für (a) und (b) den Terminus Homonymie (s. Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 204) oder partieller Synkretismus (s. Coleman 1991: 199) zu verwenden und Synkretismus oder totaler Synkretismus auf das in (c) beschriebene Phänomen zu beschränken (mit Erweiterung auf die Synchronie; s. 1.1). Diese Einschränkung erscheint notwendig, da die Anwendung des Terminus auch auf partielle Fälle von Homophonie dazu führen würde, daß nicht mehr zwischen partieller und totaler Identität unterschieden werden könnte. Darüber hinaus hat die totale Identität andere Auswirkungen auf die Anzahl der Formen eines Flexionsparadigmas als die partielle Homophonie. Deswegen sollte man die beiden Erscheinungen voneinander abgrenzen, indem man ihnen unterschiedliche Namen gibt; nur so kann der Terminus Synkretismus eine Spezifizität gewinnen, die ihn an ein Phänomen bindet, das eine oder mehrere Kategorien einer lexikalischen Klasse in ihrer Gesamtheit und nicht nur einen Teil der Paradigmen betrifft. Einige der Autoren, die den Terminus Synkretismus auf Fälle des partiellen Synkretismus ausweiten, grenzen ihn dennoch ein, indem sie ihn synonym zu systematische Homophonie (s. Carstairs 1987: 91⫺102) oder zu morphologisch determinierte Homophonie (s. Spencer 1991: 45) verwenden. Andere dagegen weiten ihn auf alle Fälle von Homophonie in der Flexion aus, wobei sie für die systematische Homophonie die Bezeichnung kumulative Homophonie reservieren (s. Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 204). Ein besonderer Fall von systematischer Homophonie wird auch take-over genannt: (3) “A systematic inflexional homonymy is a takeover if it involves the realisation of two or more morphosyntactic properties (A and B) in some context by an inflexion which elsewhere realises only one of these properties (B). In such circumstances we can say that B takes over A, or that there is a take-over of A by B.” (Carstairs 1987: 117)

Die Begrenztheit der Kasussysteme (vgl. Plank 1986) ist dafür verantwortlich, daß nur gewisse semantische Rollen durch Kasus ohne Adpositionen ausgedrückt werden: Es gibt eine Wahrscheinlichkeitsskala, nach der Kasus bestimmte morphosyntaktische Eigenschaften eher ausdrücken als andere (vgl. Luraghi 1991). Gemäß dieser Skala drücken Kasus ohne Adpositionen mit höherer Wahr-

640 scheinlichkeit grammatische Beziehungen aus als semantische Rollen. Die semantischen Rollen, die am häufigsten durch einfache Kasus ausgedrückt werden, sind unter den Lokalkasus ‘Ort’, ‘Ausgangspunkt’, ‘Richtung’, und unter den anderen ‘Instrument’, ‘Agens’ und ‘Ursache’, zu denen noch ‘Begünstigter’, ‘Empfänger’, ‘Besitzer’ (engl. beneficiary, recipient, possessor) hinzukommen. Diese Überlegung gilt vor allem für die fusionierenden Sprachen, weil die agglutinierenden generell mehr Kasus mit viel komplexeren Systemen ⫺ insbesondere unter den Lokalkasus ⫺ besitzen. Die Paradigmen der fusionierenden Sprachen sind numerisch stärker begrenzt; das hängt vor allem mit der Existenz verschiedener Flexionsklassen zusammen (vgl. Art. 65), die in den agglutinierenden Sprachen fast vollkommen fehlen. Daher hängt Synkretismus nicht grundsätzlich vom morphologischen Typus ab, dem eine Sprache angehört. Dennoch tritt er tatsächlich meist in den fusionierenden Sprachen auf. Dagegen kommen agglutinierende Sprachen bei den Kasus einem Isomorphismus zwischen Form und semantischer Rolle viel näher (vgl. Art. 116); die möglichen semantischen Rollen, für die es keinen bestimmten Kasus gibt, werden durch adpositionelle Syntagmen ausgedrückt. 1.3. Synkretismus und Polysemie Wenn der Synkretismus als diachrones Phänomen gesehen wird, ist der Exponent, der aus dem Synkretismus resultiert, insofern durch Polysemie charakterisiert, als sein Wert die Werte zweier Exponenten beinhaltet, die im Laufe des historischen Wandlungsprozesses eins geworden sind: (4) “ ‘Full syncretism’ […] is synchronically recognisable as ‘syncretism’ only if morphology is compared with syntax: it may be maintained that one and the same form has different paradigmatic meanings only if these meanings are differentiated syntagmatically by having different placement and/or grouping possibilities.” (Gvozdanovic´ 1991: 135)

Man betrachte beispielsweise eine Sprache, in der es zwei verschiedene Exponenten für zwei grammatische Kasus gibt, z. B. den Nominativ mit dem Exponenten x und den Akkusativ mit dem Exponenten y. Wenn alle Exponenten der beiden Kasus miteinander verschmelzen, beispielsweise durch Lautwandel, so daß in einer späteren Epoche nur noch der Exponent w für Nominativ und Akkusativ in

IX. Flexion

allen Flexionsparadigmen existiert, ist eine Unterscheidung verloren gegangen, und die Exponenten des neuen Kasus (NominativAkkusativ) sind durch Polysemie gekennzeichnet. Es taucht jedoch das Problem auf, wie diese Polysemie entstehen kann, d. h. welche Bedeutungen oder Werte miteinander kompatibel sind, so daß sie Synkretismus erlauben. Die Kasus sind Exponenten morphosyntaktischer Eigenschaften oder grammatischer Bedeutungen wie Genitiv, Dativ usw. (vgl. Art. 102). Jeder grammatischen Bedeutung entsprechen auf syntaktischer Ebene verschiedene Funktionen, die von nominalen Konstituenten übernommen werden, d. h. grammatische Beziehungen (Subjekt, direktes Objekt usw.) und semantische Rollen (‘Ort’, ‘Agens’, ‘Instrument’ usw.). In jeder Einzelsprache verbinden sich mit jedem Exponenten eines Kasus eine oder mehrere Funktionen, die seinen Wert oder seine Bedeutung konstituieren. Dies geschieht auf der Grundlage dreier Prinzipien: (a) die Zahl der Unterscheidungsmöglichkeiten, die durch die Exponenten der Kasus möglich gemacht wird, wird maximal ausgenutzt; (b) zwischen den Funktionen, die durch den gleichen Exponenten ausgedrückt werden, besteht eine gewisse Affinität; (c) die semantische oder strukturelle Ambiguität kann durch den Kontext vermieden werden. Die mögliche Affinität ist nach dem Grad der Ähnlichkeit mit einem prototypischen Zentrum zu messen, d. h. der Funktion, die am häufigsten durch einen bestimmten Kasusexponenten ausgedrückt wird (vgl. auch Art. 63). Aus einem strikt synchronen Blickwinkel, der die Wandlungen, die das System erfahren hat, nicht berücksichtigt, ist in diesen Fällen die Verwendung des Terminus Synkretismus problematisch. Normalerweise wird von getrennen Kasus (oder generell von getrennten Ausprägungen einer Kategorie) nur dann gesprochen, wenn es eine formale Unterscheidung in mindestens einem der Paradigmen der betreffenden Sprache gibt (s. Comrie 1986: 91, 101; 1991; Blake 1994: 4, 20). Daraus folgt, wie das Zitat (1) suggeriert, daß man nur dann von Homophonie sprechen kann, wenn eine formale Unterscheidung mindestens an einer Stelle in irgendeiner Flexionsklasse oder in irgendeinem morphosyntaktischen Kontext gemacht wird (vgl.

641

66. Synkretismus

Jensen 1990: 57; Matthews 21991: 28; Katamba 1993: 36). Wenn der Terminus Synkretismus in gewisser Weise für synonym mit Homophonie gehalten wird, ergibt sich die paradoxe Konsequenz, daß der völlige oder totale Synkretismus nicht als Synkretismus betrachtet werden kann. Vielleicht wäre es gerade deshalb besser, den Terminus Synkretismus für das diachrone Phänomen vorzubehalten, wie es Zitat (4) vorzuschlagen scheint. Aufgrund der Verwendung des Terminus vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute kann die Frage nach seiner Abgrenzung von Homophonie und Polysemie nicht gelöst werden. Zusätzlich muß beachtet werden, daß nach einigen Autoren Synkretismus mit Polysemie völlig identisch ist und auch keiner diachronen Rechtfertigung bedarf: “Synkretismen [müssen] nicht durch ein gemeinsames Etymon motiviert sein” (Leiss 1997: 139).

2.

Formaler und funktionaler Synkretismus

Nach einer Auffassung ist der Synkretismus als diachroner Prozeß einzig an den phonologischen Wandel gebunden und darf nicht im Hinblick auf die funktionale Kompatibilität zwischen verschiedenen morphosyntaktischen Eigenschaften gesehen werden. Bei dieser Vorgehensweise ist normalerweise die formale Ebene vorrangig: “Morphological changes contribute specifically to second and third degree of syncretism. They consist exclusively [!] of analogical extensions of first degree syncretism” (Coleman 1976: 48). Die entgegengesetzte Tendenz, die funktionale Ebene als vorrangig zu betrachten, erachtet als Grundbedingung für den Synkretismus die Existenz einer Beziehung von “synonymie suffisante” zwischen zwei Formen, die deren Unterscheidung überflüssig macht (vgl. Serbat 1988). Bei einem rein formalen Zugang hat die Verwendung des Terminus Synkretismus aus synchroner Sicht keinen Sinn mehr, da sich das gesamte Phänomen auf das Ergebnis von Lautwandel reduzieren würde. Darüber hinaus ⫺ abgesehen von anderen möglichen Unterscheidungen ⫺ müßte man die Definition von Synkretismus als Ausdruck verschiedener grammatischer Beziehungen oder semantischer Rollen durch denselben morphologischen Exponenten aufgeben; sie wird jedoch anscheinend von den meisten Autoren akzep-

tiert. Entscheidend ist dabei, ob sich beweisen läßt, daß der formale Synkretismus nicht immer und notwendigerweise dem funktionalen Synkretismus vorangeht. Tatsächlich ist der nivellierende Vorgang des phonologischen Wandels nur einer der Wege, durch die ein Synkretismus von Kasus zustandekommt. Manchmal kann eine Unterscheidung verloren gehen, weil ein bestimmter Exponent durch einen anderen ersetzt wird, ohne daß sich eine formale Fusion vollzieht. Ein Beispiel dafür findet sich im Hethitischen, einer Sprache mit einem besonders reichen Nominalparadigma, das beim Übergang von der archaischen Phase zur jüngeren eine Vereinfachung erfährt. In der archaischen Sprache haben Ablativ und Instrumental im Singular unterschiedliche Suffixe (Ablativ -az; Instrumental -it); im Plural haben die beiden Kasus keine spezifischen Formen (vgl. Luraghi 1985). Unter dem Gesichtspunkt ihrer Verwendung handelt es sich um zwei unterschiedliche Kasus, da der Ablativ ‘Ausgangspunkt’ und der Instrumental ‘Instrument’ ausdrückt. Im Mittelhethitischen greift der Ablativ auf das Feld des Instrumentals über; das Ergebnis ist, daß die beiden Kasus, die noch formal unterschiedlich sind, für die gleichen Funktionen verwendet werden. Der einzige Unterschied in der Verteilung besteht im selteneren Auftreten des Instrumentals im Vergleich zum Ablativ. Der Instrumental kommt außer Gebrauch und ist in späten Texten nur in Abschriften von älteren zu finden (vgl. Melchert 1977: 423f.). Aus funktionaler Sicht ist jedoch der Ablativ tatsächlich der merger des Instrumentals mit dem Ablativ. Dieser merger hat sich jedoch nicht auf morphologischer Ebene vollzogen, weil eine der beiden Formen, ohne in Homophonieoder Nivellierungsphänomene mit der anderen verwickelt worden zu sein, einfach außer Gebrauch gekommen ist.

3.

Funktionaler Synkretismus

Die Kasus drücken grammatische Beziehungen und semantische Rollen aus; daher sind drei Kumulierungstypen möglich: (a) Kumulierung einer grammatischen Beziehung und einer semantischen Rolle (oder mehrerer); (b) Kumulierung mehrerer grammatischer Beziehungen; (c) Kumulierung mehrerer semantischer Rollen.

642 Das Phänomen (a) ist an die Ökonomie in der Ausnutzung der Paradigmen gebunden; es wirft an sich keine Kompatibilitätsprobleme auf, da untereinander inhomogene Funktionen vereint sind. Wenn sich aber untereinander homogene Funktionen vereinen, wie in den Fällen (b) und (c), ist es notwendig, die Frage nach der Kompatibilität zu stellen (vgl. auch Art. 63). 3.1. Der Synkretismus in den indogermanischen Sprachen In den Kasussystemen der indogermanischen Sprachen finden sich verschiedene Typen von diachron zustandegekommenem totalem Synkretismus (vgl. auch Delbrück 1907; Luraghi 1987): (a) Im Lateinischen sind Ablativ, Instrumental und Lokativ nur durch einen Kasus repräsentiert, der “Ablativ” genannt wird (eine separate Form des Lokativs bleibt im Singular für Toponyme und für einige wenige Namen mit räumlicher Referenz erhalten); (b) im Griechischen gibt es zwei Kasus, die Synkretismus aufweisen, nämlich den Dativ (der den Dativ, Lokativ und Instrumental indogermanischer Herkunft in sich vereint) und den Genitiv (der für Genitiv und Ablativ steht); (c) das Hethitische weist ein System mit acht Kasus auf, das aber nicht dem des Indoiranischen und des rekonstruierten Indogermanischen entspricht, denn während Dativ und Lokativ synkretisiert und durch denselben Kasus repräsentiert sind, findet sich hier im Vergleich zu den anderen Sprachen ein zusätzlicher Kasus, der sogenannte “Direktiv”, der ‘Richtung’ ausdrückt; (d) das Baltoslavische zeigt Synkretismus von Genitiv und Ablativ; (e) im Germanischen repräsentiert der Dativ auch den indogermanischen Lokativ, während die Entwicklung des Ablativs nicht klar ist (seine Funktionen scheinen eher auf den präpositionalen als auf den einfachen Dativ übergegangen zu sein); der Instrumental scheint ursprünglich in Teilen des Germanischen bewahrt worden zu sein, wurde dann aber auch durch den Dativ ⫺ vor allem durch den präpositionalen ⫺ ersetzt. Diese Beispiele weisen über den funktionalen Synkretismus hinaus auch eine weitgefä-

IX. Flexion

cherte Kasuistik an formalem Synkretismus auf. Beispielsweise folgt der griechische Dativ mit den Formen, die in den verschiedenen Paradigmen auftreten, dem indogermanischen Dativ (ly´ko¯j ‘Wolf:dat.sg’, vgl. archaisches lat. lupo¯i), dem indogermanischen Lokativ (po´lesi ‘Stadt:dat.pl’, vgl. skt. purasøu) und dem indogermanischen Instrumental (ly´kois ‘Wolf:dat.pl’ vgl. skt. vørkais). Der lateinische Ablativ stammt zum einen aus dem indogermanischen Ablativ (lupo¯ ⬍ *lupo¯d ‘Wolf:abl.sg’, vgl. skt. vr.ka¯d), zum anderen aus dem Instrumental (lupı¯s ‘Wolf:dat.pl’, vgl. griech. ly´kois). Darüber hinaus nähert sich der Ablativ der konsonantischen Stämme des Typs consule ‘Konsul:abl.sg’ einer Form des indogermanischen Lokativs an. Es scheint also die verschiedensten Typen von Synkretismus zu geben; tatsächlich zeigen sich aber zwei Grundtendenzen: Der Genitiv neigt dazu, auch die Funktionen des Ablativs zu übernehmen (möglicherweise dank eines hohen Homophoniegrades der Exponenten im Singular der beiden Kasus, die im rekonstruierten Indogermanischen nur bei den oStämmen unterschieden waren); einige oder alle konkreten Kasus, die darunter manchmal auch der Dativ, scheinen zur Verschmelzung zu neigen (s. 3.2⫺3.5, auch mit Daten aus nicht-indogermanischen Sprachen). 3.2. Räumliche Beziehungen Die zentralen semantischen Rollen, die eine räumliche Beziehung ausdrücken und in den fusionierenden Sprachen am häufigsten durch Kasus ohne Adposition ausgedrückt werden, sind ‘Ort’, ‘Richtung’ und ‘Ausgangspunkt’, zu denen manchmal auch ‘Route’ hinzukommt. Auch die komplizierteren und reicheren Systeme der agglutinierenden Sprachen basieren auf diesen drei oder vier Relationen, die durch andere Merkmalspaare wie ‘Kontakt’ / ‘kein Kontakt’, ‘intern’ / ‘extern’ usw. erweitert werden. Beispielsweise hat das Finnische neun Lokalkasus, die ‘Ort’, ‘Ausgangspunkt’ und ‘Richtung’ entweder neutral oder mit den Merkmalen ‘intern’ oder ‘extern’ ausdrücken. In gleicher Weise ist auch das System des Tabassaranischen strukturiert (vgl. Blake 1994: 153⫺155). Obwohl das Kasussystem des rekonstruierten Indogermanischen keinen gesonderten Kasus für den Allativ neben dem Lokativ und Ablativ aufweist, wird doch der Akkusativ ausgenutzt, um ein dreigeteiltes System aufzustellen. Es wird durch das Altindische exemplifiziert; in

66. Synkretismus

begrenzterem Maße findet sich ein ähnliches System auch in den anderen alten indogermanischen Sprachen, beispielsweise im Latein, wo es auf die Toponyme begrenzt ist, während bei anderen Substantiven die gleichen semantischen Rollen durch Präpositionalsyntagmen ausgedrückt werden. Das Hethitische hat ein dreigliedriges System mit einem gesonderten Kasus für ‘Richtung’, der meist “Direktiv” genannt wird. Dreigliedrige Systeme sind auch für nicht-indogermanische Sprachen belegt. Unter den australischen Sprachen weisen das Dyirbal wie auch das Wemba-Wemba und das Warlpiri drei lokale Kasus auf (vgl. Blake 1977). Häufiger ist in den australischen Sprachen der Synkretismus zwischen Lokativ und Allativ belegt, so daß ‘Ort’ und ‘Richtung’ durch denselben Kasusexponenten ausgedrückt werden (vgl. Blake 1977: 51, 60). Er kommt auch im indogermanischen Bereich vor: Im Hethitischen vereinfacht sich das System mit drei Kasus nach der archaischen Phase und der Direktiv verschmilzt mit dem Lokativ (vgl. Luraghi 1991: 65). Es handelt sich hier um den häufigsten Synkretismustyp bei den Lokalkasus. Ein dritter Typ ist derjenige, der alle lokalen Kasus in einem einzigen Exponenten vereint; in solchen Fällen wird aber die Verwendung von Adpositionen entscheidend, um die verschiedenen möglichen semantischen Rollen zu präzisieren. Die anderen möglichen Synkretismen zwischen räumlichen Beziehungen sind viel seltener; insbesondere scheint es eine Tendenz zu geben, Zwei-Kasus-Systeme mit einem Lokativ und einem Ablativ-Allativ zu vermeiden (vgl. Luraghi 1991: 65f.). Auch der Synkretismus von Ablativ und Lokativ ist nicht besonders häufig. Das kann auf der Tatsache beruhen, daß der Synkretismus von Allativ und Lokativ zwei semantische Rollen vereint, ‘Ort’ und ‘Richtung’, die leichter als andere durch den Kontakt disambiguiert werden können, da ‘Richtung’ normalerweise die semantische Rolle ist, die den Ergänzungen von Verben der Bewegung zugeschrieben wird. Viel schwieriger wäre die Disambiguierung von ‘Richtung’ und ‘Ausgangspunkt’, da beide semantische Rollen bei den Ergänzungen von Verben der Bewegung möglich sind. Die Disambiguierung von ‘Ort’ und ‘Ausgangspunkt’ erscheint weniger schwierig, und tatsächlich ist der Synkretismus von Lokativ und Ablativ belegt (z. B. im Lateinischen, wo aber später Präpositionen eingeführt wur-

643 den). Vielleicht ist der Grund, weshalb dieser Synkretismus trotzdem selten ist, in der geringen Affinität zwischen den semantischen Rollen zu suchen. 3.3. ‘Agens’, ‘Ursache’ und ‘Instrument’ Der Synkretismus von ‘Agens’, ‘Ursache’ und ‘Instrument’ ist weithin belegt. In einigen indogermanischen Sprachen drückt der Instrumental diese drei Rollen aus (vgl. Luraghi 1986; 1995), und in den australischen Sprachen tritt häufig der Synkretismus von Ergativ und Instrumental auf (es gibt aber in manchen einen besonderen kausalen Kasus, der ‘Ursache’ ausdrückt; vgl. Blake 1977: 57f.). Die Affinität zwischen diesen semantischen Rollen ist klar: es handelt sich um Entitäten, die ein bestimmtes Ereignis hervorrufen. Andererseits unterscheiden sich die drei Rollen auf ebenso klare Weise: sie stehen zueinander in Opposition bezüglich der Merkmale Belebtheit der Referenten (‘Agens’ gegenüber ‘Instrument’), Kontrolle über das Ereignis (‘Agens’ gegenüber ‘Ursache’ und ‘Instrument’) und Notwendigkeit eines Agens (‘Instrument’ gegenüber ‘Ursache’; vgl. Luraghi 1995). Deshalb ruft ihr Synkretismus normalerweise keine Ambiguität hervor. Die Affinität zwischen ‘Agens’ und ‘Instrument’ und die Leichtigkeit, mit der im Kontext die beiden semantischen Rollen disambiguiert werden können, wird auch durch die Fusion dieser Funktionen in der Derivation bestätigt: die Suffixe vieler indoeuropäischer Sprachen, die ‘Agens’ ausdrücken ⫺ darunter das englische und deutsche -er ⫺ dienen dazu, außer Nomina agentis auch Substantive mit instrumentaler Bedeutung zu bilden. Das ist möglicherweise ein Fall, bei dem der Begriff des Synkretismus über die Flexionsparadigmen hinaus ausgeweitet werden könnte, da die Verhältnisse bei den Derivationsaffixen vollkommen analog sind (vgl. Art. 81). Ähnliches gilt für ‘Ort’ und ‘Instrument’. Die Verwendung von Präpositionen in den bedeutendsten modernen Sprachen Europas deutet darauf hin, daß der Synkretismus zwischen ‘Instrument’ und ‘Begleitung’ häufig sein müßte (vgl. dt. mit). Diese beiden semantischen Rollen sind insofern ähnlich, als sie etwas bezeichnen, was mit dem zentralen Beteiligten an einem Ereignis (der als Subjekt gewählt wurde) zusammenwirkt. Dennoch wird zumindest in den indogermanischen Sprachen, die einen Kasus Instrumental aufweisen, ‘Begleitung’ normalerweise eher

644 durch präpositionale Syntagmen ausgedrückt als durch den Instrumental ohne Präpositionen. Das scheint an der Priorität des Synkretismus zwischen ‘Instrument’ und ‘Agens’ zu liegen. Außerdem unterscheidet sich ‘Begleitung’ von ‘Instrument’ normalerweise im Merkmal ‘Belebtheit’ der betreffenden Konstituenten; es ist jedoch mittels lexikalischer Merkmale nicht möglich, ‘Begleitung’ von ‘Agens’ zu unterscheiden. Deswegen wird in den indogermanischen Sprachen der Instrumental normalerweise bei Substantiven mit dem Merkmal ‘unbelebt’ für ‘Instrument’ verwendet, bei solchen mit dem Merkmal ‘belebt’ für ‘Agens’ und mit Präpositionen für ‘Begleitung’. Ein anderer häufiger Typ von Synkretismus, der die Rolle ‘Instrument’ betrifft, ist der des Lokativs und Instrumentals, der im indogermanischen Raum für das Griechische belegt ist (vgl. Luraghi 1996). Darüber hinaus ist er in den australischen Sprachen häufig: beispielsweise drückt das Suffix -da im Yidiny sowohl ‘Ort’ als auch ‘Instrument’ aus. Aus semantischer Sicht sind diese Rollen ähnlich, weil ein Ort als Mittel aufgefaßt werden kann und umgekehrt. Was das Griechische betrifft, so wird die Affinität zwischen den semantischen Rollen ‘Ort’ und ‘Instrument’, die durch den Synkretismus von Lokativ und Instrumental belegt ist, auch noch durch andere Phänomene verdeutlicht. So kann in der nominalen Derivation das gleiche Suffix Substantive mit instrumentaler wie mit lokaler Bedeutung bilden (vgl. Wackernagel 1922: 304f.). Insbesondere dient das Suffix -tro/-tra zur Bildung von Substantiven mit instrumentaler Bedeutung (was übrigens seine ursprüngliche Funktion war), z. B. zoˆstron ‘Gürtel’, und mit örtlicher Bedeutung, z. B. palaı´stra ‘Palästra’. Der konzeptionelle Übergang wird deutlich, wenn man ein Nomen wie phare´tra ‘Köcher’ betrachtet; es handelt sich um ein Mittel zum Tragen der Pfeile und auch um den Ort, an dem sie aufbewahrt werden. 3.4. Andere semantische Rollen Manche indogermanischen Sprachen weisen einen Synkretismus von Genitiv und Ablativ auf (s. 3.1). Eine sehr wichtige Funktion des indogermanischen Genitivs ist der Ausdruck einer partitiven Bedeutung. In diesem Fall wird er vor allem als Alternative zum Akkusativ verwendet, aber auch zu anderen Kasus, wenn der Referent einer bestimmten Konsti-

IX. Flexion

tuente nur partiell von einem bestimmten Sachverhalt betroffen ist. Eine Entität, die nur teilweise betroffen ist, wird also so gesehen, daß sie Bestandteile besitzt, die “abtrennbar” sind, d. h. entfernt werden können. Das wird normalerweise als Entwicklungskanal für den Synkretismus von Genitiv und Ablativ gesehen. Es gibt jedoch auch andere Kanäle und Berührungspunkte. Auch in Abhängigkeit von einem Nomen hat der Genitiv einen vorherrschenden semantischen Gehalt, nämlich einen possessiven. Der ‘Besitzer’ übt Kontrolle über den ‘Besitz’ aus und ist mit der ‘Ursache’ oder dem ‘Agens’ bei einem Ereignis vergleichbar. Das zeigt sich darin, daß in vielen indogermanischen Sprachen Ausdrücke für ‘Agens’ zu finden sind, die morphologisch possessiven Charakter haben, wie der Dativus oder Genitivus agentis. (Ferner besteht eine Affinität zwischen dem indogermanischen Suffix des Nominativs *-s, das vielleicht auf einen alten Ergativ zurückgeht, und dem des Genitivs *-os/-es/-s). ‘Agens’ und ‘Ursache’ sind insofern ähnlich, als das ‘Agens’ tatsächlich eine Entität ist, die ein Ereignis bestimmt. Andererseits drückt der Ablativ neben ‘Ausgangspunkt’ oft auch ‘Ursache’ aus, entsprechend der häufigen Metapher, die die Ursache von etwas und als dessen Ursprung betrachtet. Der Kasus, der “Dativ” genannt wird, ist häufig an das Merkmal ‘Belebtheit’ gebunden und bezeichnet normalerweise den Empfänger oder den Adressaten bei dreiwertigen Verben wie geben und sagen, bei denen er als indirektes Objekt fungiert, ferner den ‘Begünstigten’ (sogenannter Dativus commodi oder incommodi), mit adverbialer Funktion. Darüber hinaus sind in indogermanischen Sprachen die Verwendungen als Dativus possesivus und Dativus agentis charakteristisch. Der Dativus possesivus bezeugt den Synkretismus zwischen den Rollen ‘Begünstigter’ und ‘Besitzer’, der auch in nicht-indogermanischen Sprachen belegt ist, beispielsweise im Ungarischen, wo das Dativsuffix -nak/-nek regelmäßig für den Dativus possessivus verwendet wird. Der Dativus agentis erklärt sich durch den erwähnten Synkretismus zwischen ‘Agens’ und ‘Besitzer’ (vgl. Luraghi 1986; 1995). Der mögliche Synkretismus von Dativ und Lokativ läßt sich über verschiedene Kanäle erklären. In indogermanischen Sprachen, in denen der Dativ keinen Synkretismus mit einem anderen Kasus aufweist (wie im Lateinischen und im Altindischen), wird er hauptsächlich

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66. Synkretismus

mit unbelebten Objekten als Dativus finalis benutzt. Diese Verwendung ist möglicherweise auch die Basis für den doppelten Dativ des Lateins. Im Altindischen ist sie besonders entwickelt und bildet die Basis für den verbalen Infinitiv. Der Lokativ steht in den indogermanischen Sprachen oft im Zusammenhang mit Verben der Bewegung, die das Erreichen eines Ziels implizieren. Es handelt sich um Verben mit Bedeutungen wie ‘setzen’, ‘werfen’, ‘hinlegen’, ‘stellen’. Diese Verben regieren beispielsweise in den anatolischen Sprachen eher den Dativ-Lokativ als den Direktiv, der stattdessen ‘Richtung’ bei Verben der Bewegung ausdrückt (zum Griechischen vgl. Luraghi 1996). Die Verwendung des Lokativs in diesen Kontexten erklärt sich aus der Charakteristik der beteiligten Verben, die eher das Erreichen eines Ziels hervorheben als die tatsächlich dafür ausgeführte Bewegung. Ein anderer Berührungspunkt zwischen Dativ und Lokativ ist durch die Verwendung des Lokativs in seiner üblichen Bedeutung bei Situationen der Ruhe und durch den Dativus possessivus gegeben. Bei letzterem wird eine belebte Entität, die die Rolle ‘Besitzer’ hat, als der Ort aufgefaßt, den ein bestimmtes Objekt (der ‘Besitz’) einnimmt. Der Lokativ, der das Ende einer Bewegung anzeigt, und der Dativus finalis ähneln sich darin, daß man einen abstrakten Zweck als Ziel der Handlung sehen kann, die ihrerseits als Bewegung begriffen wird. Der Synkretismus von Dativ und Allativ folgt einem ähnlichen Kanal. Er ist beispielsweise für das Ungarische belegt. 3.5. Der syntaktische Synkretismus Auch der syntaktische Synkretismus basiert auf Affinitäten zwischen Funktionen, die unter ein und demselben Exponenten zusammengefaßt sind. Diese Affinitäten können in Opposition zu anderen Funktionen gestellt werden, wobei zugleich in begrenztem Maße strukturelle Ambiguitäten entstehen. Ein Beispiel für diese Art von Synkretismus ist die Vereinigung von Ablativ, Lokativ und Instrumental des Indogermanischen, aus der der lateinische Ablativ entstanden ist: (5) “[…] I[nstrumental], L[ocatif], Ab[latif] occupent dans la construction de la phrase une position identique. Cette position s’annonce d’embleé comme opposeé a` celle du N[ominativ] du sujet et de l’Ac[cusatif] objet. On l’appellera pour cette raison, si l’on veut, ‘position pe´ripherique’ (circonstancielle) […] Re´trospec-

tivement, on pourrait donc dire que la confusion en latin des 3 cas IE re´sulte de leur fonction syntaxique commune dans l’e´tat de langue reconstruit (position circonstancielle).” (Serbat 1988: 281)

Ein anderes gut belegtes Beispiel von syntaktischem Synkretismus ist die Entwicklung des lateinischen Kasussystems zum altfranzösischen mit zwei Kasus, die funktional als ‘Subjekt’ und ‘Nicht-Subjekt’ charakterisiert sind. Ein weiterer Fall aus den romanischen Sprachen ist der des Rumänischen, wo die sechs lateinischen Kasus auf drei reduziert sind: Rektus (für Subjekt und direktes Objekt), Obliquus und Vokativ (slavischer Herkunft). Die Synkretismusmöglichkeiten zwischen grammatischen Relationen folgen offenbar gewissen Regularitäten. Während der Synkretismus von Subjekt und direktem Objekt in zahlreichen Sprachen toleriert wird, scheint es eine generelle Tendenz zu geben, den Synkretismus von Kopf (engl. head) und Modifikator zu vermeiden, so daß die Sprachen, die eine partielle Homonymie zwischen den Exponenten dieser beiden Funktionen aufweisen, dazu neigen, den Ausdruck durch nicht-morphologische Markierungsmittel (z. B. Adpositionen) zu unterscheiden (vgl. Plank 1980, auch zu Fällen partieller Homophonie, die kontextuelle Ambiguität hervorruft).

4.

Synkretismus und Typen morphosyntaktischer Kategorien

Der Terminus Synkretismus bedeutet für sich genommen lediglich die Fusion von zwei oder mehreren Exponenten morphosyntaktischer Eigenschaften (vgl. z. B. Definition (1)). Dennoch wird er meist mit Bezug auf Kasus und weniger auf andere morphosyntaktische Kategorien angewendet. Auch wenn er auf alle Typen von Flexionsparadigmen bezogen wird, geschieht das auf der Basis von Beispielen, die Nominalparadigmen entnommen sind (vgl. z. B. Carstairs 1987: 116⫺120). Aus dem Blickwinkel der Definition (1) scheint eigentlich nichts gegen eine Anwendung des Terminus Synkretismus auch auf Verbalparadigmen zu sprechen; da aber spezifische Studien dazu fehlen, sollte man eine gewisse Vorsicht walten lassen, denn es scheint, daß die Unterscheidung zwischen totalem Synkretismus und partieller Homophonie in Verbalparadigmen komplexer ist. Zu diesem Zweck

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sind Auflistungen möglicher Homophonien sowohl in nominalen als auch in verbalen Paradigmen erstellt worden (s. Carstairs 1987: 141⫺143). So unterscheiden im Deutschen die starken Verben zwischen Indikativ und Konjunktiv Präteritum (z. B. ich gab und ich gäbe), aber bei den schwachen findet sich keine solche Differenzierung (z. B. ich lebte). Man müßte in diesem Fall nicht von Synkretismus, sondern nur von systematischer Homophonie sprechen, da die Unterscheidung in Teilen der Paradigmen beibehalten wurde (s. 1.2). Wenn man aber die Unterscheidung zwischen den beiden Modi in allen Paradigmen wegfiele, könnte der Terminus Synkretismus bestenfalls den diachronen Prozeß des Verschwindens der Opposition bezeichnen, weil es aus einem synchronen Blickwinkel nur eine überflüssige Verkomplizierung bedeuten würde, vom Synkretismus zweier Modi zu sprechen. Grundsätzlich taucht das Problem auf, ob die schwachen Verben des Deutschen einen Konjunktiv Präteritum besitzen, der mit dem Indikativ homophon ist, oder ob eine Minderheit der Verben, nämlich die starken, eine zusätzliche Unterscheidung aufweisen (vgl. Art. 62). Ein anderes mögliches Beispiel ist die Form der ersten Person Plural Indikativ Präsens des Italienischen, die mit der des Konjunktivs für alle Flexionsklassen identisch ist (z. B. amare ⫺ noi amiamo; cadere ⫺ noi cadiamo; sentire ⫺ noi sentiamo). Die Form des Indikativs ist in diesem Fall auch historisch aus dem Konjunktiv abgeleitet. Diese Erscheinung scheint dem Synkretismus der Kasus näherzustehen. Unter anderem ist es möglich, einen pragmatischen Grund für den Synkretismus der beiden Formen zu finden, nämlich daß der Indikativ in der ersten Person Plural aufgrund der häufigen Verwendung hortativer Konjunktive durch diese ersetzt worden ist.

5.

Zitierte Literatur

Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Blake, Barry J. (1977), Case Marking in Australian Languages. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (Linguistic Series 23)

Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (1992), Current Morphology. London, New York: Routledge Coleman, Robert (1976), “Patterns of Syncretism in Latin”. In: Morpurgo-Davies, Anna & Meid, Wolfgang (Hrsg.), Studies in Greek, Italic, and Indo-European Linguistics Offered to Leonard R. Palmer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Innsbruck: Inst. für Sprachwissenschaft der Univ. Innsbruck (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 16), 47⫺56 Coleman, Robert (1991), “The Assessment of Paradigm Stability: Some Indo-European Case Studies”. In: Plank (Hrsg.), 197⫺211 Comrie, Bernard (1986), “On Delimiting Cases”. In: Brecht, Richard D. & Levine, James S. (Hrsg.), Case in Slavic. Columbus/OH: Slavica, 86⫺106 Comrie, Bernard (1991), “Form and Function in Identifying Cases”. In: Plank (Hrsg.), 41⫺55 Delbrück, Berthold (1907), Syncretismus: Ein Beitrag zur germanischen Kasuslehre. Straßburg: Trübner Gvozdanovic´, Jadranka (1991), “Syncretism and the Paradigmatic Patterning of Grammatical Meaning”. In: Plank (Hrsg.), 133⫺160 Jensen, John T. (1990), Morphology: Word Structure in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 70) Katamba, Francis (1993), Morphology. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan. Leiss, Elisabeth (1997), “Synkretismus und Natürlichkeit”. Folia Linguistica 31, 133⫺160 Luraghi, Silvia (1985), “Der semantische und funktionelle Bau des althethitischen Kasussystems”. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 99, 23⫺42 Luraghi, Silvia (1986), “On the Distribution of Instrumental and Agent Markers for Human and Non-human Agents of Passive Verbs in Some IndoEuropean Languages”. Indogermanische Forschungen 91, 48⫺66 Luraghi, Silvia (1987), “Patterns of Case Syncretism in Indo-European Languages”. In: Ramat, Anna Giacalone & Carruba, Onofrio & Bernini, Giuliano (Hrsg.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics [Pavia 1985]. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 48), 355⫺371 Luraghi, Silvia (1991), “Paradigm Size, Possible Syncretism, and the Use of Cases with Adpositions in Flective Languages”. In: Plank (Hrsg.), 57⫺74

Blake, Barry J. (1994), Case. Cambridge usw.: Cambridge Univ. Press

Luraghi, Silvia (1995), “Prototypicality and Agenthood in Indo-European”. In Andersen, Henning (Hrsg.), Historical Linguistics 1993. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 124), 259⫺268

Carstairs, Andrew (1987), Allomorphy in Inflexion. London usw.: Croom Helm

Luraghi, Silvia (1996), Studi su casi e preposizioni nel greco antico. Milano: Angeli

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67. Defectivity Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge usw.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 6) Matthews, P[eter] H. (21991), Morphology. Cambridge usw.: Cambridge Univ. Press Melchert, Craig (1977), Ablative and Instrumental in Hittite. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard Univ. Plank, Frans (1980), “Encoding Grammatical Relations: Acceptable and Unacceptable Non-distinctness”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (Hrsg.), Historical Morphology. The Hague: Mouton (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 17), 289⫺325 Plank, Frans (1986), “Paradigm Size, Morphological Typology, and Universal Economy”. Folia Linguistica 20, 29⫺48

Plank, Frans (1991, Hrsg.), Paradigms: The Economy of Inflection. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 9) Serbat, Guy (1988), “Le syncre´tisme des cas: quelques re´flexions”. In: Calboli, Gualtiero (Hrsg.), Subordination and Other Topics in Latin. Proceedings of the Third Colloquium on Latin Linguistics [Bologna 1985]. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Studies in Language Companion Series 17), 273⫺286 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell Wackernagel, Jakob (1922), Vorlesungen über Syntax, Bd. II. Basel: Birckhäuser

Silvia Luraghi, Pavia (Italien) Übersetzung: Simona Fabellini, Regensburg (Deutschland)

67. Defectivity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The notion defectivity Types of inflectional defectivity Frequency profiles of paradigms Concluding remarks References

1.

The notion defectivity

Defectivity is intimately tied to the notion of an inflectional paradigm. In the Finnish grammatical tradition, there is even an established term meaning ‘paradigm defectivity’ (vajaaparadigmaisuus; cf. also Germ. paradigmatische Defektivität, Plank 1981: 30). A (full) inflectional paradigm is a matrix defined by the relevant morphosyntactic properties of a language, typically from the categories number and case for nouns, or tense/mood/ aspect and person for verbs; the cells of the matrix are the word-forms of a given word (cf. Art. 62). A classical instance of an inflectional paradigm is the Latin nominal first declension: (1) nominative genitive dative accusative ablative vocative

singular mensa mensae mensae mensam mensa mensa

plural mensae mensarum mensis mensas mensis mensae

There is a potential ambiguity here. First, the matrix defines a certain inflectional type, de-

clension, by way of providing an exemplar that contains a full array of properly inflected word-forms. Second, the matrix lists the theoretically possible word-forms of the lexical item mensa ‘table’ which constitute its word-form paradigm. Defectivity normally applies to word-form paradigms rather than to inflectional types. Defective morphological behaviour of a word means that one or more cells in the word-form paradigm are systematically lacking, thereby creating gaps (lacunae, holes in the pattern). Occasionally, the term blocking is used. Typical defective behaviour concerns whole subsets of forms, e.g. all plural forms or all first and second person forms, rather than individual forms in isolation (e.g. the ablative singular, the first person past tense). Defectivity has not been much studied, and in handbooks it is normally mentioned only in passing (cf. Matthews 1972: 197 fn. 1; Spencer 1991: 76, 90). Disregarding some well-known examples such as pluralia tantum nouns and monopersonal verbs, the received view in the morphological literature seems to be that words classified as belonging to a certain inflectional type by definition have full word-form paradigms. There are, however, a few studies that pay major attention to inflectional defectivity. The topics they deal with include ⫺ defectivity in individual languages (e.g. Ingo 1978 on Finnish nouns and corre-

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sponding phenomena in major IndoEuropean languages; Maslov 1964 and Soboleva 1979 on Slavic verbs; Plank 1981: 90⫺185 on German and English), ⫺ frequency-related aspects of the stratification of individual paradigms (cf. F. Karlsson 1985; 1986) and ⫺ theoretical issues such as differences between inflection and derivation, the semantic basis of defectivity and diachronic trends (cf. Plank 1981: 90⫺185; Wurzel 1988).

2.

Types of inflectional defectivity

Instances of defectivity are commonly grouped according to the word class and grammatical property involved. In principle, all properties are susceptible to defectivity, but certain types are particularly frequent within individual languages and cross-linguistically. Often, most of the lexical items which exhibit a given type of defectivity (e.g. nouns without singular forms) fall into a fairly small number of semantic categories. Typically, their lexical meanings conflict with the morphosyntactic property in question, but some gaps appear quite arbitrary (cf. Vincent 1987: 241). A borderline case which should perhaps not be regarded as true defectivity is due to phonological blocking. For instance, in Swedish the ordinary genitive ending is -s. However, -s cannot be suffixed to stems ending in sibilants. Nouns such as hus ‘house’, svans ‘tail’, Max thus have no indefinite genitive singular forms like *hus-s, *Max-s (but they do have definite genitive singulars such as bil-en-s, Max-en-s). Similarly, English inflectional comparison of adjectives is to a great extent determined by the syllable structure and stress properties of the adjective stem (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 461⫺463). Thus, trisyllabic or longer adjectives take no comparative suffix, e.g. *perceivabl-er ‘more perceivable’, *interesting-er ‘more interesting’. Another type of “gap” which can be distinguished from true defectivity occurs if specific combinations of morphosyntactic properties are always expressed periphrastically; for example, Latin verbs have present active, present passive and perfect active forms but the function of the perfect passive is fulfilled by a phrase with the auxiliary ‘to be’ and the past participle (cf. Vincent 1987: 241; Art. 68).

2.1. Pluralia tantum nouns In many languages there are hundreds of nouns that have only plural forms and lack the singular ones. In the literature, this is the most frequently recurring example of inflectional defectivity. There are several typical semantically characterizable subtypes of pluralia tantum nouns that tend to recur in various languages (cf. Ingo 1978: 21⫺35). These include (all examples are given in the nominative plural of the respective language): (a) Nouns denoting human and divine beings: Lat. majores ‘ancestors’, Quirites ‘bourgeoisie’, Superi ‘the Gods in heaven’, Penates ‘the home Gods’; Fr. proches ‘relatives’, jumeaux ‘twins’, gens ‘people’; Germ. Eltern ‘parents’, Gebrüder ‘brothers [only with the family name]’, Leute ‘people’; Sw. sma˚gossar ‘little boys’, svear ‘inhabitants of Svealand’, betjänte ‘servants’; (b) nouns denoting meetings, celebrations, or contests: Lat. comitia ‘election meeting’, nuptiae ‘wedding’; Fr. bacchanales ‘bachanals’, e´pousailles ‘wedding’, fune´railles ‘funeral’; Germ. Pfingsten ‘Pentecost’, Weihnachten ‘Christmas’; Russ. rodiny ‘birthday’, oktjabriny ‘October (revolution) celebration’, skacˇki ‘horse race’; Fin. häät ‘wedding’, markkinat ‘market, marketplace’, arpajaiset ‘lottery’, naamiaiset ‘masquerade’, avajaiset ‘opening ceremony’; (c) nouns denoting parts of the (human) body: Lat. tonsillae, glandulae ‘tonsils’, intestina, viscera, exta ‘intestines’, barbae ‘beard’, genae ‘cheeks’; Eng. bowels, entrails, intestines, whiskers, genitals; Fr. tif(f)es ‘hair’, poste`res ‘rear, rump’; (d) nouns denoting conditions of illness: Lat. tormina ‘stomach ache’; Eng. measles, mumps, shivers, shingles, creeps; Fr. affres ‘fear of death’, menstrues ‘menstruation’; Sw. smittkoppor ‘smallpox’; (e) nouns denoting clothes: Lat. exuviae ‘dress’, crepidae ‘sandals’; Eng. trousers, unmentionables, shorts; Fr. gre`gues, trousses, chausses, braies ‘trousers’ [of various types]; Sw. kläder ‘clothes’, kalsonger ‘underpants’; Fin. housut ‘trousers’, liivit ‘waistcoat, vest’; (f) nouns denoting gifts, money, or wealth: Lat. divitiae ‘wealth’; Eng. amends, arrears, assets, finances, wages, vails; Fr. arrhes ‘down payment’, frais ‘expenditure’, honoraires ‘honorarium’, charges ‘taxes’; Germ. Kosten ‘costs’, Spesen ‘expenses’, Subsidien ‘subsidies’; Sw. böter ‘fines’, tillga˚ngar ‘monetary property’, finanser ‘finances’, ha˚vor ‘offerings’; (g) nouns denoting materials and utensils: Lat. impedimenta ‘baggage’, armamenta ‘[naval] fortifications’, praebia ‘medicines’; Eng. victuals, vivers; Fr. effondrilles ‘[the] dregs’, beátilles ‘delicacies’, balayres, ordures ‘trash, litter’; Germ. Effekten ‘goods’, Spirituosen ‘liquors’;

649

67. Defectivity Sw. specerier ‘[dry] foods’, kemikalier ‘chemicals’, exkrementer ‘feces’; (h) nouns denoting tools and (more or less) technical devices: Lat. scalae ‘ladder’, cancelli, clathri ‘bars [in prison]’, fores, valvae ‘double door’; Eng. scissors, shears, snuffers, tongs, pincers, scales, stairs, billiards, spectacles, glasses; Fr. forces ‘[big] scissors’, tricoises ‘tongs’, menottes ‘handcuffs’; Sw. glasögon ‘glasses’; Russ. ocˇki ‘glasses’; cˇasy ‘watch’; Fin. sakset ‘scissors’, suitset ‘rein’, urut ‘organ [musical instrument]’; (i) nouns denoting acts or results of communication: Lat. acta ‘official newspaper’, monumenta ‘annals’, tabulae ‘agreement’; Eng. annals, acclamations, news; Fr. matines ‘morning prayer’, contes, chansons, histoires ‘gossip’, belles-lettres ‘belles lettres’; Sw. bannor ‘scolding’, hävder, annaler, tideböcker ‘annals’; (j) nouns denoting human customs or actions: Lat. caeremoniae ‘ceremonies’, apinae, gerrae, ineptiae ‘hoax, practical joke’, tricae ‘teasing’; Germ. Formalien ‘formalities’; (k) place names: Lat. Athenae, Syracusae, Cannae, Mycenae, Thebae, Delphi, Pompeji, Alpes, Cyclades; Eng. Netherlands, Alps, Bermudas; Fr. Pays-Bas ‘Netherlands’, Indes ‘India’; Sw. Dardanellerna ‘Dardanelles’, Filippinerna ‘Philippines’.

For many of these words, the singular forms are totally ungrammatical and nonexistent, e.g. Eng. *measle, *Netherland, Fin. *suitsi ‘rein’ (for suitset), Lat. *barba ‘beard’ (for barbae), Sw. *banna ‘scolding’ (for bannor). These are prototypical instances of pluralia tantum nouns. There are, however, many unclear and borderline cases. Some words have a parallel singular form that seems to fill the hole(s) in pattern or at least to be semantically very closely related to the presumed pluralia tantum word. A case in point is Eng. scissor. One dictionary explains scissor as ‘a brand or type of scissors’, separating it clearly from the lexeme scissors (LDEL 1984), whereas another lists scissor and scissors as belonging to the same lexeme (COBUILD 1987). Even if regular singular forms are nonexistent there might occasionally occur singular-like stems used in compound formation, e.g. Fin. hää-yö ‘wedding-night’ (cf. häät ‘wedding’), markkina-korko ‘market interest rate’ (cf. markkinat ‘market, marketplace’). The morphological plurality of all presumed pluralia tantum words might be synchronically debatable, even if diachronically

clear as in the case of Germ. Leute ‘people’ from Middle High German liute, plural to liut ‘human being’ (cf. Wurzel 1988: 191). Syntactically, Leute behaves as a plural, e.g. in regard to number concord (die Leute sind ‘the people are’, third person plural). Eng. news is even more of a borderline case. Originally plural (Middle English newe-s), its synchronic morphological plurality is doubtful, and it fluctuates even in regard to number behaviour (cf. This is good news. ⫺ These were good news. ⫺ The news was/*were good.). A special and somewhat idiosyncratic type of defectivity is demonstrated by words such as the Finnish place name Parainen (nominative singular), where the nominative and the partitive (the central grammatical cases) occur only in the singular but all other cases only in the plural, e.g. adessive plural Paraisi-lla ‘in Parainen’, allative plural Parais-i-lle ‘to Parainen’. This is a mixture of pluralia tantum and singularia tantum. 2.2. Singularia tantum nouns Abstract noncount nouns such as music, dirt or homework normally do not have plural forms, neither do ordinary mass nouns such as honey and proper names. Some of them can, however, occasionally be used in the plural. The plural forms might even be due to productive semantic subprocesses such as the one allowing plurals of mass nouns with the meaning ‘kind of x’ or ‘a certain appropriate quantity of x’, e.g. golds ‘kinds of gold’, beers ‘bottles or glasses of beer’. Thus, the 44-million word Wall Street Journal Corpus (courtesy of the Association of Computational Linguistics) contains the following genuine sentences: (2) (a) South African golds closed lower. (b) I’m told that’s how they’ve won 15 out of 21 golds awarded in the sport […]. (c) Borden sells considerably more whole milk than reduced-fat milks in Hispanic markets, he says. (d) This year’s five-day conference, which ran through Sunday, did include a few doubting Thomases. In Finnish, pluralization of proper names is a productive semantic-pragmatic subprocess often expressing a supercilious attitude of the speaker:

(3) Ole-n näh-nyt Helsingi-t ja Tukholma-t be-1sg.pres.indic see-part.perf Helsinki-nom.pl and Stockholm-nom.pl ‘I have seen lots of cities like Helsinki and Stockholm.’

650 These data clearly indicate the gradual and somewhat elusive nature of many of the defectivity restrictions under discussion. Although there are a few absolute and exceptionless instances of defectivity (cf. 2.1), most defectivity phenomena are in fact just instances of special rare usage, often explicable in semantic and/or pragmatic terms. 2.3. Adjectives One of the defining characteristics of adjectives in languages with appropriate inflection is the propensity to be gradable, in particular to have comparative and superlative forms. However, there are several stative or absolute adjectives normally lacking these very forms, e.g. Sw. atomär ‘atomic’, död ‘dead’, euklidisk ‘euclidean’, fyrkantig ‘square’, parisisk ‘relating to Paris’, lockförsedd ‘having a lock’. Here, absence of comparison is due to obvious semantic and pragmatic reasons. Under ordinary circumstances, it makes no sense to predicate of an object that it is, say, more or less euclidean. However, many supposedly impossible forms can be used if specific nuances of meaning or connotations are intended. In German, for instance, comparatives or superlatives of sterblich ‘mortal’, empirisch ‘empirical’, deutsch ‘German’ and even fünfzigjährig ‘fifty years old’ are attested; it should therefore not come as a surprise that there is considerable disagreement among dictionaries as to which adjectives are defective, and the same applies to other word classes and other languages (cf. Mugdan 1983: 207⫺209; Meder & Mugdan 1990: 99⫺ 104). 2.4. Verbs Several of the central verbal inflectional categories might be subject to defectivity restrictions. Auxiliary verbs frequently have defective paradigms, often in fairly idiosyncratic ways, e.g. Eng. may without past *may-ed and progressive *may-ing; Sw. ma˚ste ‘must’ lacks an infinitive *ma˚sta (especially in standard Swedish). Grammars of several languages traditionally list a subcategory of monopersonal verbs that occur only in the third person but not in the first or second. Some such verbs do not even occur in the third person plural. For instance, Finnish has several subtypes of monopersonal verbs, here all listed in the third person singular (marked by lengthening of the stem-final vowel):

IX. Flexion

(a) modal verbs such as pitä-ä ‘must’, täyty-y ‘must’, kannatta-a ‘is worth’, kelpa-a ‘be suitable, be fitting, do’; (b) morphologically derived causatives (with the suffix -tutta or -tta) expressing various physiological or mental states, such as aivastutta-a ‘be about to sneeze, make somebody sneeze’, heikotta-a ‘feel weak, make somebody feel week’, kadutta-a ‘regret, make to feel sorry for’; (c) meteorological and equivalent verbs such as sata-a ‘rain’, myrskyä-ä ‘storm’, liplattele-e ‘splash [of waves]’. The verbs in (a) occur only in the third person singular, those in (c) also do not have the so-called passive forms with the suffix -ta/-tä and the person marker -Vn, actually expressing an indefinite agent (“fourth person”), hypothetically *sade-ta-an ‘one rains’, *liplatella-an ‘one splashes’, *kadute-ta-an ‘one is made to feel regret’. The perfective/imperfective opposition of Russian and other Slavic languages is twoways defective; there are both perfectiva tantum and imperfectiva tantum. Russian imperfectiva tantum include lezˇat’ ‘lay, idle, laze’, spat’ ‘sleep’, susˇcˇestvovat’ ‘exist’, golodat’ ‘starve’, stojat’ ‘stand’, ljubit’ ‘love, like’. The respective meanings and denotations are such that they cannot be naturally linked to the decisive, resultative, bounded etc. change constituting the core meaning of the perfective aspect. Perfectiva tantum are, for example, potancevat’ ‘dance for some time’, rychnut’ ‘collapse, slide down’, kol’nut’ ‘prick, sting, stick [fast or once]’, otsˇumet’ ‘stop making noise’, zakricˇat’ ‘start screaming’. These meanings involve components such as suddenness, uniqueness and inchoation that are not readily combinable with the irresultative and durative nature of the imperfective aspect (for details, cf. Maslov 1964; Soboleva 1979). Paradigm defectivity in verbs is thus mostly due to natural semantic consequences of the incompatibility of the meanings of verbal roots and inflectional categories. 2.5. Adverbs Almost by definition, the category of adverbs is outside inflection. Therefore one would not a priori expect adverbs to have anything to do with defectivity. However, in Finnish, for example, there are hundreds of partially inflected adverbs. Most of them are inflected only in the plural of either the three internal local cases inessive, elative and illative, or the

651

67. Defectivity

plural of the three external local cases adessive, ablative and allative (cf. G. Karlsson 1957). Examples are eksyks-i-ssä, eksyks-i-

stä, eksyks-i-in ‘lost’, and here-i-llä, here-i-ltä, here-i-lle ‘awake’. Sentences such as these are possible:

(4) (a) Hän on eksyks-i-ssä she(nom.sg) be.3sg.pres.indic lost-plur-inessive ‘She is lost [local, non-directional]’ (b) Hän joutu-i eksyks-i-in she(nom.sg) get-past(3sg) lost-plur-illative ‘She got lost [directional, end-state]’ (c) Eksyks-i-stä häne-t löyde-tt-i-in lost-plur-elative she-acc.sg find-pass-past-indef ‘Having been lost [directional, start-state], she was found’ There is no ordinary base form for many of these defective adverb paradigms, such as a hypothetical nominative singular *nukus, nor are there any other inflected forms. The plural ending -i- still is morphologically and even semantically transparent.

3.

Frequency profiles of paradigms

There are indubitable instances of absolute defectivity where some forms are totally impossible and nonexisting, e.g. singular forms of certain Latin pluralia tantum place names (cf. (k) in 2.1), past tense forms of English modal auxiliaries or imperfective forms of Russian perfectiva tantum (cf. 2.4), and grammatical case forms (nominative, genitive, partitive) of Finnish adverbs like nukuks-i-ssa (cf. 2.5). The gaps of such paradigms are due to strict grammar restrictions, rules in the proper sense. But quite a few of the gaps in paradigms presumed to be defective depend more on semantic and pragmatic restrictions. Several examples of this propensity have been given in 2; thus, an absolute adjective like Sw. atomär ‘atomic’ is not likely to occur in the comparative, but the form atomärare is “grammatical” and could be used in some special context (cf. 2.3). This raises the more general question of whether there is some (weak) kind of defectivity in almost any word paradigm in the sense that some forms are central and frequently used, core forms, while others are rare or nonexistent, i.e. peripheral. This hypothesis presupposes investigation of the token frequencies of individual word-forms. The frequencies of the forms of some English nouns in Tab. 67.1 come from two wellknown machine-readable tagged corpora, the Brown University Corpus of American English, and the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen (LOB)

Corpus of British English. Both corpora contain roughly 1 million word-form tokens each. Brown N % boy boy’s boys boys’

194 8 121 5

SUM

328

car car’s cars cars’

272 1 62 0

SUM

335

child child’s children children’s

245 25 420 38

SUM

728

earth earth’s earths earths’

111 5 4 0

SUM

120

gold gold’s golds golds’

80 0 0 0

SUM

80

tree tree’s trees trees’

69 1 99 0

SUM

169

59 2 37 2

LOB N % 239 16 136 3

61 4 35 1

394 81 0 19 0

271 7 112 0

70 2 29 0

390 34 3 58 5

210 32 350 21

34 5 57 3

613 93 4 3 0

117 11 0 0

91 8 0 0

128 100 0 0 0

36 0 0 0

100 0 0 0

36 41 1 59 0

56 0 95 0

37 0 63 0

151

Tab. 67.1: Frequency profiles of English nouns

652

IX. Flexion

The central form of tree and child is the plural, due to the respective referents which tend to occur in groups. Cars are normally talked of in the singular, boys more often in the plural, but not as often as are hands and trees. Earth is predominantly singular. The paradigm of gold is 100% clustered around the singular (but cf. 2.2). The possessive, expecially in the plural, tends to presuppose that the referent be animate (human). Forms of individual paradigms are thus used in ways that are governed by semanticpragmatic factors. The forms of semantically different paradigms have different characteristic frequency profiles, token frequency distributions of the forms (cf. F. Karlsson 1985; 1986). Some forms are used often, others might be virtually nonexistent. Defectivity turns out to be a gradient phenomenon. The figures derived from the Brown and LOB corpora display the same systematic tendencies. In view of the fact that Brown and LOB were carefully compiled in order to be statistically exemplary, it is safe to conclude that the frequency profiles are not random atomistic data but reflections of important proper-

ties of language use (cf. also Sˇtejnfel’dt 1963 with frequencies of inflectional forms in Russian). The data are relevant for theories of the mental lexicon (e.g., what are the lexical entries?) and theories of language processing such as child language acquisition (e.g., what are the first word-forms likely to be acquired?, what morphological properties of the language system do they instantiate?, etc.). The frequency profile differences of semantically different paradigms are even more tangible in a language such as Finnish with many morphological cases (cf. F. Karlsson 1986). The data in Tab. 67.2 were derived from a computerized corpus of written Finnish containing 26 issues (610.000 wordforms) of Suomen Kuvalehti, a popular weekly magazine. The table shows the token frequencies of the case/number forms of five nouns and one pronoun belonging to different semantic subclasses. Martti is a man’s name, Helsinki a place name, vesi ‘water’ is a noncount noun, alue ‘region’ denotes place, and kesä ‘summer’ indicates time.

Martti N %

hän N %

Helsinki N %

vesi N %

alue N %

kesä N %

nom.sg nom.pl gen.sg gen.pl acc.sg acc.pl partit.sg partit.pl iness.sg iness.pl el.sg el.pl ill.sg ill.pl adess.sg adess.pl abl.sg abl.pl all.sg all.pl ess.sg ess.pl transl.sg transl.pl

129 94 0 0 8 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

2583 59 0 0 1034 24 0 0 179 4 0 0 181 4 0 0 15 0 0 0 63 1 0 0 19 0 0 0 141 3 0 0 26 1 0 0 133 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

443 43 0 0 372 36 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 1 0 0 131 13 0 0 19 2 0 0 43 4 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

31 6 39 9 0 0 37 3 5 2 5 1 11 4 3 9 0 0 1 5 0 0 0 0

36 13 59 14 0 0 20 9 0 0 4 3 2 4 90 24 10 4 21 7 2 0 1 0

15 4 42 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 7 0 3 0 56 0 0 0 0 0 35 3 2 0

SUM

138

4374

Tab. 67.2: Frequency profiles of Finnish nouns

1020

171

23 14 29 21 0 0 29 7 4 9 4 2 8 9 2 20 0 7 1 11 0 0 0 0

323

14 16 23 18 0 0 9 11 0 0 2 4 1 5 37 32 4 5 9 9 1 0 0 0

170

10 57 26 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 4 0 2 0 35 0 0 0 0 0 21 43 1 0

653

67. Defectivity

Proper names and personal pronouns denote human agents. Such words are subject-prominent in terms of syntactic behaviour and theme-prominent in terms of functional sentence perspective. It is to be expected that the nominative, the subject case par excellence, dominates their paradigms. The incidence of nominatives is 94% for Martti, and 59% for hän (here and henceforth only the singular is considered). The second major case of proper names and personal pronouns is the genitive (6% and 24%, respectively), which has many syntactic and semantic functions. The dominant function of the genitive in this context is possession. This is also the meaning expressed by the external local cases (adessive, ablative, allative) that constitute the third major use of these words (together 7% for hän). The notable incidence of possessive case uses is also semantically predictable. Possession is typically predicated of humans. A comparison with the other example paradigms reveals that the genitive recurs with a share of roughly one fourth. The really typical properties of pronouns and proper names are thus a high rate of nominatives and external local cases. Helsinki is a city name and has locality as one important meaning component. As it denotes the capital of Finland, it is treated as pragmatically given in most discourses. This predisposes it for subjecthood and thematic position, i.e. nominative case (43%). Helsinki also denotes a human conglomerate. This makes understandable the high frequency of (mainly) possessive genitives (36%). The third major use of this word is in local expressions. The internal local cases (inessive, elative, illative) have a 19% share. A common property of pronouns and proper names is the low predilection to take partitive case (0%, 4%, 1%). The reason is clear: Partitives typically occur with mass words. Therefore, apart from syntactically triggered partitives, proper nouns and pronouns qualify for partitive use only in the plural. Vesi ‘water’ is a mass word. This is reflected in its paradigm by the prominent 29% share of singular partitives. The internal local cases are also prominent (16%). The adessive and allative are frequent in the plural (20%, 11%), compared to their rareness in the singular (2%, 1%), due to some common idioms. Alue ‘region’ has an indeterminate local meaning and no obvious connections to subject- or theme-enforcing features. Indeterminate locality is expressed by the external local

cases which dominate this paradigm (some 50%). The incidence of nominatives is only 14% which reflects the remoteness of agency, thematicness, etc. Kesä ‘summer’ is partly temporal in meaning, the dominant cases for this being essive and adessive, and these cases do rule this paradigm (21%, 35%). The nominative singular has a frequency of only 10%. Meaning components thus often predispose what forms of a word are likely to be used and how “defective” its paradigm is likely to be. Syntactic and thematic factors also affect word-form use. The dominant forms are the focal points of the paradigm. The opposites of focal points are gaps, the extreme instances of which are due to grammatical restrictions (absolute defectivity).

4.

Concluding remarks

The notion of defectivity is associated primarily with inflectional paradigms. These are often taken to be strictly or “mechanically” rule-governed in the sense that all cells are in principle populated. It is well known that derivation (as one of the central means of word-formation) is less-rule-governed than inflection. Many gaps are therefore to be expected in the “derivational paradigms” of words. These gaps too are often due to constraints concerning semantic compatibility and pragmatic relevance, e.g. the absence of English verbs derived with the privative prefix un- such as *unbeat, *unswim, *unwalk (cf. Plank 1981: 94⫺129). Another derivationally relevant factor is blocking (cf. Wurzel 1988). Some derivatives are ungrammatical (or unneeded!) simply because there already exists an underived basic word expressing the same meaning; thus, there is no (need for an) English nomen agentis *steal-er from the verb steal because of the existence of the noun thief. Inflectional gaps are visible also in the course of diachronic processes. For instance, when paradigms are being restructured due to the effects of phonological and/or morphological changes, there might occur stages when no single form of several alternatives qualifies for populating a certain inflectional cell (cf. Kiparsky 1974: 271). Thus, the subsystems of strong verbs in Germanic languages are in a long-term process of being regularized. Presently Eng. stride has variation in its past participle (stridden vs. strided), occasionally accompanied by hesitance and even reluctance on the part of language users to use any form.

654

5.

IX. Flexion

References

COBUILD (1987) ⫽ Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary, Editor in Chief John Sinclair, Managing Editor Patrick Hanks. London, Glasgow: Collins Ingo, Rune (1978), Suomen kielen pluratiivit eli ˚ bo (Turku): A ˚ bo Akademi (Medmonikkosanat. A ˚ bo Akademi Fordelanden fra˚n Stiftelsens för A skningsinstitut 34) Karlsson, Fred (1985), “Paradigms and Word Forms”. In: Laskowski, Roman (ed.), Studia gramatyczne, Vol. VII. Wroclaw etc.: Ossolineum (Prace Instytutu Je˛zyka Polskiego 61), 135⫺154 Karlsson, Fred (1986), “Frequency Considerations in Morphology”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 19⫺28 Karlsson, Göran (1957), Suomen kielen nukuksissa ja hereillä-tyyppiset paikallissija-adverbit. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 250) Kiparsky, Paul (1974), “Remarks on Analogical Change”. In: Anderson, J[ohn] M. & Jones, C[harles] (eds.), Historical Linguistics, Vol. II: Theory and Description in Phonology. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Edinburgh 2nd⫺7th September 1973. Amsterdam, Oxford: North-Holland; New York: American Elsevier (North Holland Linguistic Series 12b), 257⫺275 LDEL (1984) ⫽ Longman Dictionary of the English Language. Harlow/Essex: Longman Maslov, Ju[rij] S. (1964), “Zametki o vidovoj defektivnosti (preimusˇcˇestvenno v russkom i bolgarskom jazykach)”. In: Larin, B[oris] A. & Safronov, G[erman] I. (eds.), Slavjanskaja filologija. Leningrad: Izd. Leningradskogo universiteta, 82⫺94 Matthews, P[eter] H. (1972), Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 6)

Meder, Gregor & Mugdan, Joachim (1990), “Alle reden von Häufigkeit …: Anmerkungen zum Thema ‘Frequenz’ in der Morphologie”. In: Bassarak, A[rmin] & Bittner, D[agmar] & Bittner, A[ndreas] & Thiele, P[etra] (eds.), Wurzel(n) der Natürlichkeit: Studien zur Morphologie und Phonologie, Vol. IV. Berlin: Zentralinst. für Sprachwissenschaft (Linguistische Studien A 208), 87⫺108 Mugdan, Joachim (1983), “Grammatik im Wörterbuch: Flexion”. In: Wiegand, Herbert Ernst (ed.), Studien zur neuhochdeutschen Lexikographie, Vol. III. Hildesheim etc.: Olms (Germanistische Linguistik 1⫺4/82), 179⫺237 Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)regularitäten: Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur Deutschen Grammatik 13) Quirk, Randolph & Greenbaum, Sidney & Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan (1985), A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London, New York: Longman Soboleva, P[olina] A. (1979), “Defektnost’ paradigmy i semanticˇeskoe tozˇdestvo slova”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1979.5, 37⫺47 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford, Cambridge/MA: Blackwell ˇ astotnyj slovar’ sovreSˇtejnfel’dt, E˙vi A. (1963), C mennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka. Tallinn: Naucˇno-issledovatel’skij institut pedagogiki E˙stonskoj SSR Vincent, Nigel (1987), “The Interaction of Periphrasis and Inflection: Some Romance Examples”. In: Harris, Martin & Ramat, Paolo (eds.), Historical Development of Auxiliaries. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 35), 237⫺256 Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich (1988), “Derivation, Flexion und Blockierung”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 41, 179⫺198

Fred Karlsson, Helsinki (Finland)

68. Periphrasis 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Defining periphrasis Suppletive periphrasis I: paradigm symmetry Suppletive periphrasis II: inflectional generality Categorial periphrasis Periphrasis in inflection, derivation, and syntax Periphrasis forms Conclusion References

1.

Defining periphrasis

The term periphrasis (from Greek perı´phrasis ‘paraphrase, circumlocution’), in its most general sense, refers to the use of longer, multi-word expressions in place of single words, or “circumlocution” (this Latin term is simply a loan translation of the Greek term). In a narrower philological context, pe-

655

68. Periphrasis

riphrasis is one of the canonical literary rhetorical figures (cf. Lausberg 21963: 69), e.g. English to be hit with Cupid’s arrow ‘to fall in love’, or German Elbflorenz ‘Florence on the Elbe [Dresden]’. For the purposes of this handbook, a still narrower, grammatical sense of the term is relevant. Periphrasis refers to a situation in which a multi-word expression is used in place of a single word in an inflectional paradigm: “When a form in a paradigm consists of two or more words it is periphrastic” (Matthews 1981: 55), e.g. more beautiful instead of *beautifuller (cf. (b) below). But unlike concepts such as ‘morpheme’ or ‘auxiliary’, the concept of ‘periphrasis’ has never been an important issue in linguistics, and it has not been used as a crucial ingredient in any formal grammatical framework. In general, the term is used in descriptive and typological work in an intuitive sense, and attempts at clarifying the conceptual content of the term have remained the exception (cf. Zawadowski 1959; Thümmel 1966: 157⫺164; Roseń 1992). Historically, the abstract noun periphrasis in its grammatical sense is a back-formation from the adjective periphrastic. In traditional Latin grammar, the term conjugatio periphrastica was used to refer to infrequent combinations of participial forms with the copula, e.g. facturus sit ‘is going to do [subjunctive]’ (cf. Kühner & Stegmann 21914: 180). This usage seems to have been the starting point of the contemporary use of the term periphrastic. Moreover, in current usage the term periphrastic is almost always applied to verbal constructions although there is nothing in its definition that would require such a restriction. (Thus, it would be perfectly coherent but distinctly unusual to say that German has a periphrastic instrumental case, using the preposition mit.) This restriction seems to be a historical accident, reflecting the origin of the term in the Latin conjugatio periphrastica. It is shared by the related term auxiliary (which always refers to verbs, although “auxiliary nouns” or “auxiliary adverbs” certainly exist; cf. Art. 78), but not by the quasisynonym analytic. This latter term has its origin in morphological typology (cf. Art. 115) and is contrasted with synthetic. It appears that analytic is more common in Europe and particularly in Russian linguistics, whereas periphrastic is more common in English. There are three types of cases in which periphrastic forms may be included in inflectional paradigms: (a) Latin verbs are inflected for different tenses and moods, but not all combinations

are expressed by single-word forms. Thus, there is no form with the features ‘future’ and ‘subjunctive’. The future participle in -urus with the copula in the present subjunctive (e.g. facturus sit lit. ‘he be going to do’) fills this gap, as illustrated by the array of 3rd person singular forms of facere ‘do’ in (1); the periphrastic form is given in square brackets. (1) present imperfect perfect future

indicative facit faciebat fecit faciet

subjunctive faciat faceret fecerit [facturus sit]

The future subjunctive is required in certain subordinate clauses that are subject to a sequence-of-tense rule, so that there is a real need to fill the gap in the paradigm. (b) In English, many adjectives have an inflected comparative formed by adding the suffix -er to the base form (e.g. warm ⬃ warm-er), but other adjectives lack such a form, and comparison is conveyed by a multi-word (or phrasal) expression containing the adverb more (e.g. beautiful ⬃ more beautiful). In some intuitive sense, the phrasal expression serves the same function as the inflected form with other adjectives, and linguists have often felt the need to assimilate such “periphrastic expressions” to the single-word forms, so that it becomes possible to say that more beautiful is the “comparative form” of beautiful, just as warmer is the comparative form of warm (cf. Matthews 1981: 54f.). (c) The French construction with the auxiliary aller ‘go’ as in je vais le faire ‘I’m going to do it’ is commonly referred to as futur pe´riphrastique. Apparently, the reason for including it in the inflectional paradigm of the French verb is that it expresses a grammatical meaning (cf. Art. 27). This sense of periphrastic is reflected, for instance, in the definition: “periphrastic: denoting a construction, especially one involving a verb, in which one or more auxiliary words are used to express grammatical distinctions, as opposed to the direct inflection of the lexical item involved” (Trask 1993 s.v.)

However, it is not self-evident what should count as an inflectional meaning, and the practice of grammarians is rarely rigorous and consistent. For instance, few would describe the French construction je veux le faire ‘I want to do it’ as a de´side´ratif pe´riphrastique, although it is quite similar to the “periphrastic future” je vais le faire. The reason for restricting periphrastic to the construction expressing future time reference may be

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mainly the expectation that the future “should be” an inflectional category, whereas no such expectation exists for the desiderative. In many cases such expectations are obviously influenced by the model of Latin grammar, for instance if English is said to have a “future tense” (cf. Huddleston 1995) or German a “vocative case” (cf. Häcki Buhofer 1987 on older grammars; see also Ch. II). Types (a) and (b) can be regarded as periphrasis in the narrower sense, which “can be recognized only where there is a clear gap in the inflectional patterns, which the phrases serve to fill” (Hockett 1958: 212; cf. Smirnickij 1956; Mel’cˇuk 1993: 355). In (a), the gap is filled in order to create paradigm symmetry in the forms of a lexeme (cf. 2); in (b), it achieves inflectional generality across different subclasses of lexemes (cf. 3). Type (c), where a multi-word combination expresses some additional semantic distinction, is less directly relevant to morphology, but it must be taken into consideration here because neither the boundaries between the different kinds of periphrasis nor that between periphrasis and inflection are very sharp (cf. 4). For similar reasons, the notion of periphrasis need not be confined to inflection (cf. 5). There are no established terms for the three subtypes of periphrasis. In this article, suppletive periphrasis will be used for types (a) and (b), and categorial periphrasis for type (c); (cf. Aerts 1967: 3; Roseń 1992: 18f. for somewhat similar terminological proposals). Suppletive periphrasis shares with true suppletion (cf. Art. 52) the function of supplying forms for the inflectional paradigms that are not formed in the regular way (cf. Vincent 1987: 242; Börjars et al. 1997), but it is of course a very different mechanism. For want of a better alternative, the rather old-fashioned term monolectic form will be used as the opposite of periphrastic form (cf. Aerts 1967: 3; Roseń 1992: 11); an equivalent distinction applicable to grammatical meanings is that between bound expression and periphrastic expression (cf. Bybee & Dahl 1989: 51). The term periphrasis form will be employed for inflectional forms which appear only in periphrastic constructions (cf. 6).

2.

Suppletive periphrasis I: paradigm symmetry

Gaps which are filled by periphrastic forms for the purpose of paradigm symmetry can only arise in inflectional systems in which

more than one morphological category is combined, e.g. tense and mood in Latin (1). Thus, a language in which verbs inflect only for tense or nouns only for number could not have this kind of periphrasis. Another example from Latin involves the interaction of voice and aspect. Latin has monolectic forms for the passive voice only in the infectum aspect (e.g. in the present and imperfect “tenses”), but not in the perfectum aspect (e.g. in the perfect and pluperfect). In the latter case, a periphrasis involving the perfect passive participle and the copula is used, as the 3rd person singular forms of capere ‘take’ in (2) show. (2) present imperfect perfect pluperfect

active capit capiebat cepit ceperat

passive capitur capiebatur [captum est] [captum erat]

The situation in Russian is quite similar. The 3rd person singular forms of (s)delat’ ‘do’ in (3) show that only the imperfective aspect has bound expression in the passive, while the perfective passive is periphrastic: (3) imperf. past present perf. past perf. future

active delal delaet s-delal s-delaet

passive delalo-s’ delaet-sja [bylo s-delano] [budet s-delano]

Another example, again from Russian, involves the interaction of tense and aspect. Only perfective verbs have monolectic forms in the future, while the imperfective future is periphrastic: (4)

perfective present ⫺ past s-delal future s-delaet

imperfective delaet delal [budet delat’]

This Russian paradigm is perhaps not a good example of a gap in terms of paradigm symmetry, because it is not very symmetrical to begin with. An alternative analysis would regard the perfective future form sdelaet as present, thus restoring the formal symmetry. The future meaning could be attributed to the interaction between the aspectual and the temporal interpretation (a perfective situation is not easily construed as simultaneous with the moment of speech). On this analysis, there would be no gap in the paradigm. But it is more likely that although this alternative analysis is diachronically accurate, synchronically (4) is a realistic description of Russian grammar. The diachronic scenario for the rise

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of the asymmetry thus helps to explain the need for a periphrastic gap filler. So far all examples have been from verbal inflection, but it is easy to imagine a similar situation in nominal inflection: A language might have a monolectic form of the instrumental case in the singular, but not in the plural, so that a periphrasis involving an instrumental adposition must be used. No example of this kind has come to my attention, but this may be purely accidental. In these cases of gaps filled by suppletive periphrasis to restore paradigm symmetry, it is clear that a good case can be made that the periphrastic forms belong to the inflectional paradigm. However, this does not necessarily mean that they are considered as morphological entities. A classical structuralist textbook states this explicitly in discussing Latin periphrastic passives (cf. 2): “These phrases are not part of the inflectional morphology of the Latin verb, because the structure of phrases is syntax, not morphology”. (Hockett 1958: 212)

Similarly, a standard introduction to morphology comes to the conclusion that seman(5) subject/object 1st singular 2nd singular 3rd singular 1st plural 2nd plural 3rd plural

1st singular ⫺ [engem ke´r-sz] [engem ke´r-ø] ⫺ [engem ke´r-tek] [engem ke´r-nek]

Only ke´r-lek ‘ask-1.sg.subj&2.sg.obj (I ask you)’ is a monolectic form, all other combinations involving a 1st or 2nd person object are “periphrastic” (though this term is never used in Hungarian linguistics for these cases), using the accusative forms of the personal pronouns. It is debatable whether the existence of a single monolectic form is sufficient to set up a morphological paradigm that consists largely of gaps filled by periphrasis. Perhaps more naturally, one might conversely regard (5) as a syntactic paradigm with a single gap, which is filled by the “anti-periphrastic”, “compacted” form ke´rlek (cf. 3 for further instances of this problem).

3.

Suppletive periphrasis II: inflectional generality

Almost by definition, inflectional forms are highly general, i.e. they apply to all or almost all members of a word class (cf. Bybee

tically, periphrastic forms should be analyzed like monolectic forms, whereas formally they should be regarded as syntactic phrases (Matthews 1974: 171). Periphrasis can thus be used as an argument for “separationist” approaches to morphology (cf. Aronoff 1994; Beard 1995), which stress the mutual independence of the formal expression of a morphological element and the semantic contribution it makes (cf. Börjars et al. 1997). An empirical problem with the gap-filling view of periphrasis is that it may not always be clear whether there are enough monolectic forms to constitute a paradigm that can be said to have gaps. In (1)⫺(4), the gaps are a distinct minority of the paradigm cells, but what if there are more gaps than filled cells? An example of this comes from Hungarian, which has a monolectic form expressing ‘1st person singular subject ⫺ 2nd person object’, but no others that express both subject and non-3rd person object. The paradigm thus looks as in (5), where only singular object forms are given for the sake of simplicity (ke´r- ‘ask’; engem ‘me’, te´ged ‘you’): 2nd singular ke´r-lek ⫺ [te´ged ke´r-ø] [te´ged ke´r-ünk] ⫺ [te´ged ke´r-nek]

3rd singular ke´r-em ke´r-ed ke´r-i ke´r-jük ke´r-itek ke´r-ik

1985: 5). If a certain inflectional pattern is not applicable to some members of the word class, a periphrasis may fill this gap. An example of this type is the English periphrastic comparative (cf. 1), which allows adjectives that lack the bound comparative (*beautifuller) to have a comparative form (more beautiful). 3.1. Examples A further example comes from Romanian, where most nouns have a bound oblique case form, but masculine proper nouns lack it. The auxiliary word lui (originally ‘his, to him’) is used to allow these proper names to occur in the oblique case form: (6) base form oblique case masc. common prieten-ul prieten-ul-ui ‘the friend’ fem. proper Ana Anei ‘Anna’ masc. proper Petre [lui Petre] ‘Peter’

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IX. Flexion

A periphrastic gap-filler may achieve both paradigm symmetry and lexical generality simultaneously. In Classical Greek, the 3rd person plural form of the middle perfect of a verb like gra´pho ‘write’ does not have a bound expression and can only be expressed periphrastically, using the middle perfect participle and the copula: (7)

singular 1st ge´gram-mai 2nd ge´grap-sai 3rd ge´grap-tai

plural gegra´m-metha ge´graph-the [gegram-meńoi eisı´]

Taken in isolation, the paradigm in (7) seems to involve periphrasis for paradigm symmetry (cf. 2). But in this case, the form in question is not lacking in all Greek verbs. Many verbs whose stem ends in a vowel do have a monolectic form for this paradigm cell, so the periphrasis here also serves to ensure inflectional generality: (8) 3rd singular pepaı´deu-tai tetı´me¯-tai ge´grap-tai

3rd plural pepaı´deu-ntai ‘educate’ tetı´me¯-ntai ‘honor’ [gegram-meńoi eisı´] ‘write’

In (6)⫺(8), the lexemes that lack a particular monolectic form are the clear minority, and there may be very specific reasons why these forms are impossible (thus, in Classical Greek the regular form *ge´graph-ntai is simply phonotactically ill-formed). But in the case of the English comparative, matters are more complicated. Forms like *negativer ‘more negative’ or *beautifuller seem to be phonologically well-formed, and the periphrastic comparatives are actually the majority (at least in terms of lexical types). Moreover, the periphrastic forms are not restricted to those lexemes that lack a monolectic form: In many cases, both forms may be used side by side, e.g. likelier or more likely. Thus, filling a gap in certain lexemes is probably not the only motivation for the existence of these forms. Gap-filling as the motivation for periphrasis becomes even more difficult to maintain when only a small minority of lexemes in the word class allow the monolectic form. For instance, in Lezgian only eighteen verbs allow negation by means of a prefix in non-finite forms (e.g. the verbal-noun form). All other verbs require a periphrastic form using the auxiliary t-awun ‘neg-doing’, and all verbs but two optionally allow this periphrastic form (cf. Haspelmath 1993: 133). Some examples are given in (9).

(9) affirmative awun xûn gun cˇüxün

negative t-awun ta-xûn ta-gun [cˇüxün t-awun]

‘do’ ‘become’ ‘give’ ‘wash’

Similarly, in Maltese only a small class of (mostly inalienable) nouns allow the use of possessive person-number suffixes, e.g. dar ‘house’, id ‘hand’, but the large majority of nouns require a periphrastic construction with ta’/tiegØ ‘of’ (this has been called “analytic genitive”; cf. Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1996): (10) base form dar id ktieb

possessive form dar-i id-i [ktieb tiegØ-i]

1st singular ‘house’ ‘hand’ ‘book’

The existence of a paradigm whose gaps are filled becomes even more questionable when the monolectic forms are not only very few, but also quite irregular. Thus, in Afrikaans only a handful of verbs have a bound past tense, and all of these are irregular (cf. Donaldson 1993: 222): (11) present is weet an werk begin

past was wis kon [het gewerk] [het begin]

‘be’ ‘know’ ‘can’ ‘work’ ‘begin’

Similarly, in the Romance languages only four adjectives have bound comparative forms, and these are all suppletive. All regular forms are periphrastic, e.g. in Spanish: (12) positive bueno pequenõ oscuro caliente

comparative mejor menor [ma´s oscuro] [ma´s caliente]

‘good’ ‘little’ ‘dark’ ‘warm’

In the extreme case, only a single lexeme has a monolectic form of a certain category. An example comes again from Hungarian, where only the verb lenni ‘be’ has a bound expression for future tense, whereas all other verbs only have a periphrastic future (fog ‘take’ plus infinitive; the forms given are 3rd person singular): (13) infinitive lenni ´ırni felelni

future lesz [fog ´ırni] [fog felelni]

‘be’ ‘write’ ‘answer’

As in (5), one has to ask whether so few nonperiphrastic forms justify calling all the other forms (suppletively) periphrastic. One might

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just as well call these few monolectic forms “anti-periphrastic” or “compacted”. Another doubtful case is that of the German hypothetical mood. Theoretically, every German verb has a monolectic hypotheticalmood form, but in the regular (weak) verbs, this form is homonymous with the past tense. (14) infinitive kommen ‘come’ sein ‘be’ loben ‘praise’ schwimmen ‘swim’

As a result, the semantically equivalent würde-periphrasis is much more common with these verbs in contemporary German, and in practice the old hypothetical mood (the “past subjunctive”) survives only in strong verbs (and even some of these sound awkward in this form):

past kam

hypothetical käme

war

wäre

lobte

[würde loben] (?lobte)

schwamm

[würde schwimmen] (?schwämme)

Thus, in some sense the German würde-periphrasis is tied to gap-filling contexts, but this link as fairly weak ⫺ the forms in parentheses in (14) are not outright impossible, they are just awkward. Conversely, the würde-periphrasis is not impossible with strong verbs like kommen, though it often sounds very colloquial. 3.2. Grammaticalization Since speakers are generally guided by a maxim of economy, there is a certain tendency that favors complementary distribution: When a monolectic form exists, this will tend to block the periphrastic form, and when a periphrastic form becomes the usual one, the monolectic form will tend to disappear. But this principle is only a tendency, because there are deviations in both directions. Moreover, in the long run periphrastic constructions tend to replace monolectic forms quite independently of whether the latter have a defective distribution or not. The Afrikaans example (11), for instance, shows the result of a change that has been going on in a similar form in varieties of German for many centuries. Standard German still has bound past tense forms for every verb, but in the colloquial language (and particularly in many southern dialects) only the haben-past is used with most verbs. This replacement had nothing to do with any kind of difficulty in forming the bound past tense form. It resulted from the continued grammaticalization of the haben/sein⫹participle construction, which originally had a special perfect meaning, but generally came to be basically equivalent to the simple past tense (cf. Bybee et al. 1994: 51⫺105). The functional equiva-

lence of the new periphrastic past and the old past tense then leads to the loss of the old past tense, except in the case of very common verbs, where high frequency helps to preserve the old forms. Such a process of gradual grammaticalization is ultimately responsible for most of the patterns examined in 3.1. Grammaticalization is a continuous, unindirectional, cyclic change that turns periphrastic expressions (i.e. categorial peripherasis; cf. 4) into synthetic forms, which are further reduced until they are again replaced by new roundabout expressions (cf. Art. 145). Such grammaticalization processes may at some point result in a kind of complementary distribution which creates the impression that the periphrastic expressions exist in order to fill a gap, but that is by no means necessary. For instance, colloquial French has gone through a process of extension of the ‘have’-perfect to the perfective past function (similar to the cases of Afrikaans and colloquial German), and the old perfective past form (the passe´ simple) has been lost from this register of French. But unlike the cases of Afrikaans and German, the passe´ simple does not even survive in a few isolated cases, and there was apparently never anything resembling a complementary distribution over different verb types. Even if there is a clear phonological reason for the nonexistence of certain inflected forms, the periphrasis need not owe its existence to its gap-filling function. For instance, Latin comparatives are formed by a suffix -ior, which cannot, however, be attached to vowel-final stems for phonological reasons.

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IX. Flexion

For these stems, a periphrasis with magis is used: (15) positive longus felix arduus idoneus

comparative longior felicior [magis arduus] [magis idoneus]

‘long’ ‘happy’ ‘steep’ ‘suitable’

Could it be that the periphrastic comparative, which became prevalent in the Romance languages (cf. (12)), began its existence as a filler of phonologically conditioned gaps? Perhaps, but another scenario is at least as likely: At the time of Classical Latin, from which the data in (15) are taken, the magisperiphrasis was already widely used in the colloquial language. The written norm still required the comparative in -ior for most adjectives, but where this was difficult to form, the colloquial periphrasis was admitted into the written language. If so, suppletive periphrasis is not as different from categorial periphrasis as it might have seemed. From a strictly structural and descriptive point of view, it might be desirable to restrict the incursion of phrasal forms into the domain of inflection as tightly as possible, but this hardly does justice to the reality of languages and their speakers.

4.

Categorial periphrasis

Examples of categorial periphrasis are the English have-perfect (explicitly excluded from the inflectional paradigm by some authors, e.g. Wallis 61765: xxv⫺xxvii, 102⫺111; Hockett 1958: 212; cf. Art. 62), the French allerfuture (je vais chanter ‘I am going to sing’), and the Spanish estar-progressive (estoy cantando ‘I am singing’). There exist no monolectic forms of any of these categories in the languages in which they occur, so these periphrastic forms do not fill a gap defined by a system of monolectic forms, i.e. “real” inflectional forms. Hence, these constructions cannot be properly said to be “circumlocutions” for anything, i.e. if they are periphrases, this can be understood only in an extended sense of the term, e.g. relative to the monolectic forms of another language. However, the use of the term periphrasis for such constructions is widespread in the literature. Statements such as the following are typical: “[‘Go’] occurs in periphrastic futures in English and various Romance languages” (Lehmann 1995: 29); “New periphrases develop to express

meanings that are more specific than the meanings already expressed grammatically in the language at the time” (Bybee et al. 1994: 133). These authors do not link the use of periphrasis in any way to inflectional paradigms. A periphrastic expression is simply one which expresses a grammatical meaning in a multi-word construction. A periphrasis can be identified if there is a conventional construction in a language which expresses a grammatical meaning, and where there is a particular lexical item (an auxiliary word) that regularly combines with all members of a word class to express this meaning. The question, of course, is: What is a grammatical meaning (cf. Art. 27)? In the worst case, all and only the meanings that are clearly grammaticalized in a language that linguists happen to know well (e.g. Latin or English) are counted as grammatical. Grammarians rarely justify their descriptive decisions explicitly. For instance, in one description of Welsh, two methods for forming verbs are presented, the “inflected” method (by adding endings to a verb stem) and the “periphrastic” method (by using an auxiliary verb in combination with the verbal noun to form a compound tense), without any discussion (cf. King 1993). Similarly, in a grammar of Lezgian, the chapter on verbal inflection includes a section on “periphrastic tense-aspect categories” (Haspelmath 1993: 146⫺148), in which the Periphrastic Habitual, the Periphrastic Future, and the Hearsay Evidential are described. However, no justification is given for this particular choice of categories. This does not necessarily mean that such justification is not possible, but grammatical descriptions usually assume that their choice of periphrastic constructions is unproblematic. Three specific criteria and one more general criterion for recognizing categorial periphrases are worth considering (cf. Bertinetto 1990 for a longer list of possible criteria). The first specific criterion asks whether the kind of meaning expressed by the periphrasis is expressed by monolectic forms elsewhere in the language. Thus, if a language has bound tense forms, then a complex construction expressing tense (e. g. the English will-future) will count as a periphrastic form (cf. Smirnickij 1956; Mel’cˇuk 1993: 355 on “analytic forms”). The problem here is that assigning specific grammatical meanings to broader grammatical categories is often not at all straightforward. For instance, is the Spanish estar-progressive an aspectual category on a

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par with the imperfective/perfective past distinction? Is the English have-perfect a tense? The second specific criterion is semantic non-compositionality (cf. also Art. 82). Ordinary phrases must be interpretable compositionally, but periphrastic constructions are often non-compositional. For instance, while the meaning of I want to break it can be derived from the component parts want and to break, the meaning of I have broken it cannot be derived from the components have and broken. Non-compositionality is always present when the main verb is in a periphrasis form (cf. 6). This criterion is perhaps easier to apply than the first, but it is only a sufficient, not a necessary condition for periphrastic status. The third specific criterion concerns the range of forms of the auxiliary element that occur in the periphrasis. In an ordinary combination of a finite and a non-finite verb, there are no restrictions on the forms of the finite verb, but in a periphrasis sometimes only a subset of the forms are allowed. For instance, in the German werden-future only present indicative (and perhaps subjunctive) forms of werden are allowed, but not past tense forms (e.g. wird kommen [lit. becomes come] ‘will come’, but not *wurde kommen [lit. became come]; cf. Vincent 1987 for discussion of a similar constraint on the Italian venire-passive). More generally, we need a comprehensive theory of grammaticalization in order to understand periphrasis. Grammaticalization is a very complex, multi-faceted phenomenon, and there are indefinitely many possible degrees of grammaticalization (cf. Lehmann 1995 for a systematic treatment of the various parameters of grammaticalization). Once we have such a theory, the definition of periphrastic construction is easy: The more grammaticalized a construction is, the more it can claim to have periphrastic status (unless grammaticalization has proceeded far enough to turn it into a monolectic form, of course). If we recognize this, it does not necessarily become easier in practice to identify a periphrastic construction, but we have reduced this problem to another, independent problem for which solutions have to be proposed (cf. Bertinetto 1990 for a similar conclusion). The grammaticalization perspective also helps us to solve the problem of delimiting periphrastic forms against monolectic forms. In some cases, this is not an easy task, because the boundaries between free words and

affixes are not always clear-cut. For instance, the Polish past tense czytałem ‘I read’ looks like an ordinary monolectic form czyta-ł-em ‘read-past-1.sg’, but occasionally the 1st person singular marker -(e)m may occur elsewhere in the clause, e.g. co-m czyta-ł? ‘what1.sg read-past (what did I read?)’. This shows that at least in these cases the form is not completely bound yet, although grammaticalization is advancing and these split forms are becoming rarer in the modern language. It is impossible to draw clear lines between the various stages of grammaticalization processes; there are often cases that are indeterminate not just for linguists, but also for the speakers. Finally, grammaticalization helps us to understand why certain grammatical categories are very often expressed periphrastically in the world’s languages, while others strongly tend to be expressed as monolectic forms. For instance, “perfect and progressive usually have periphrastic expression, while past, and perfective and imperfective usually have bound expression” (Bybee & Dahl 1989: 56; cf. also Dahl 1985; Bybee et al. 1994: 104⫺124). In the nominal domain, it has been noted for temporal markers that anterior-durative (‘until’) and posterior-durative (‘since’) markers tend to be bound, whereas anterior (‘before’) and posterior (‘after’) are almost always periphrastic, i.e. expressed adpositionally, in the world’s languages (cf. Haspelmath 1997: 145). The explanation for these form-meaning correlations is that the meanings of the bound categories arise only after a longer process of grammaticalization, so by this time the elements have also undergone a significant amount of formal reduction and agglutination. The periphrastic categories usually express younger, less grammaticalized meanings.

5.

Periphrasis in inflection, derivation, and syntax

Inflection is the prototypical domain for suppletive periphrasis (as it is for suppletion), because only inflection is organized in tight, symmetrical paradigms in which gaps can become salient. But insofar as derivation may also be regular, periphrasis within derivation is certainly not unimaginable, even though it is not normally called periphrasis (cf. also Art. 52 on suppletion in derivation). The

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English derivational suffix -ology, for example, productively forms nouns denoting a science from nouns denoting a possible subject matter for a science, e.g. climate ⬃ climatology, Egypt ⬃ Egyptology, volcano ⬃ volcanology. However, the Latinate suffix -ology does not combine felicitously with nouns like computer, so for the science of computers the “periphrastic” term computer science must be used. Another possible example are multiplicative numerals in English, e.g. on-ce, twi-ce, thri-ce. For higher numbers, “periphrastic” numerals are required (four times, five times, etc.). (16) decl., affirm. You are here You saw her

Somewhat more interesting are cases of periphrasis in syntax: At first it might seem that this is an incoherent notion, because there are no “syntactic paradigms”. However, it is not difficult to find syntactic phenomena that provide a striking analog of inflectional paradigms, gaps, and periphrasis in morphology. Again, a good example comes from English, where only a small subclass of verbs can occur without complications in interrogative and negative clauses. In (16), this well-known pattern is represented in such a way that the similarities with morphological suppletive periphrasis become apparent.

interrogative Are you here? [Did you see her?] (*Saw you her?)

Clearly, “periphrastic do” is periphrastic in much the same way as the cases of morphological periphrasis, but the filled gaps in (16) are not morphological monolectic forms. Did you see is a syntactic phrase which replaces the impossible syntactic phrase *saw you. What this case shares with the cases of morphological suppletive periphrasis is the restriction of the non-periphrastic forms to certain high-frequency verbs. In French, too, inverted interrogative clauses (e.g. viens-tu? ‘are you coming?’) tend to be superseded by circumlocutions with est-ce que (lit. ‘is it that’, e.g. est-ce que tu viens?), and these are often called “periphrastic questions” (cf. Behnstedt 1973). Thus, the general principles of periphrasis remain the same in syntax, inflection and derivation (which is in accordance with the notion of a syntax-inflectionderivation continuum; cf. Bybee 1985: 81⫺ 110). Finally, lexical substitution, i.e. the use of a different lexeme, may make up for missing inflectional forms. For instance, English modal auxiliaries like must and can lack nonfinite forms, and when these are required by the syntactic environment, they are usually replaced by the quasi-synonyms have to and be able to. This has been described as periphrasis (cf. Westney 1995), but in other respects it is more like suppletion. Unlike standard suppletion, however, the “periphrastic modals” have to and be able to are not old remnant forms, but they have full paradigms and can occur also in finite forms (e.g. she can ⫽ she is able to; cf. also Vincent 1987: 242; Börjars et al. 1997: 168).

6.

negative You are not here [You did not see her] (*You saw not her)

Periphrasis forms

The term periphrasis form is introduced here for inflectional forms of lexemes which combine with auxiliary elements to form periphrases and which have no other function in the language. An example of a periphrasis form is the Modern Greek form in -i (derived from the aorist stem) that combines with the auxiliary e´xo (‘have’) to form a perfect periphrasis (e.g. dheńo ‘I tie’, periphrasis form dhe´-s-i, periphrastic perfect e´xo dhe´si ‘I have tied’). In Swedish, the perfect periphrasis consists of ha (‘have’) plus a periphrasis form (called “supine” in Scandinavian linguists) in -t/-tt/ -it (e.g. skriva ‘write’, periphrasis form skrivit, periphrastic perfect jag har skrivit ‘I have written’). The concept of periphrasis form is not yet generally recognized in theoretical linguistics, but it is necessary for a complete theory of grammar. It appears that in the majority of periphrases, the form of the lexeme is identical to some inflectional form that occurs independently in the language, e.g. an infinitive or a participle (cf. (1)⫺(4), (7)⫺(8), (13)⫺ (14)). This reflects the diachronic origin of periphrases in ordinary combinations of a main verb plus a subordinate verb. But as the periphrasis is grammaticalized, the connection between the non-finite form in the periphrasis and in other parts of the grammar may be severed. This separate development may concern only the semantics (as in English a broken heart vs. I have broken), or it may concern the morphological form as well (as in Swedish skrivit, contrasting with the

663

68. Periphrasis

past participle skrivet; originally the two forms were identical), or the non-periphrastic use of the non-finite form may disappear entirely from the language (as in Modern Greek dhe´si, going back to the old infinitive, which has fallen into disuse elsewhere). In the latter two cases, the result is a special periphrasis form. And even the first case (English broken) could be described as a periphrasis form, which (for diachronic reasons) happens to be homonymous with the adjectival past participle. Like the non-finite verb forms from which they develop, periphrasis forms may be variable. For instance, the Lezgian negative periphrasis illustrated in (9) consists of a negative auxiliary plus a preceding periphrasis form whose shape depends on the aspectual stem of the auxiliary, e.g. rax-un tawuna ‘not having talked’, but rax-an tijiz ‘not to talk’ (Haspelmath 1993: 134). Synchronically this looks like an unusual kind of agreement, and nothing is known about the diachronic origin of the construction. An analog of these verbal periphrasis forms can be found in the nominal domain: Russian has a nominal case form that occurs only in combination with certain prepositions (sometimes called “prepositive case”, sometimes called “locative”, reflecting its origin), e.g. v Rim-e ‘in Rome’ (*Rim-e alone does not occur). One could say for the sake of consistency that v Rime is the periphrastic inessive case of Rim ‘Rome’, and that Rime is its periphrasis form.

7.

Conclusion

Periphrasis (in the narrower sense of suppletive periphrasis) presents an important challenge to theories of inflection in that it shows that there are potentially two distinct notions of an inflectional paradigm (cf. Art. 62) which need not coincide: The paradigm may be construed (a) as the set of all word-forms belonging to a lexeme, or (b) as the set of all elements filling the cells defined by the inflectional categories that can be expressed for the lexeme. On the second interpretation, periphrastic forms are admitted as members of the paradigm, but at the price that the paradigm is no longer a purely morphological notion. But arguments were provided in this article for

the view that it is not possible to separate morphology and syntax neatly anyway: The two are linked inextricably through the continuous and ubiquitous process of grammaticalization. In fact, most inflectional formatives arise through grammaticalization in the first place, so periphrasis is in a sense the basis of inflection. In this perspective, it appears legitimate to extend the notion of periphrasis even further to semantic categories which are never expressed by monolectic forms, but which show a sufficiently high degree of grammaticalization to be described as part of the verbal paradigm rather than only in the syntax (i.e., to categorial periphrasis).

8.

References

Aerts, Willem Johan (1967), Periphrastica: An Investigation into the Use of eıñai and e´khein as Auxiliaries and Pseudo-Auxiliaries in Greek from Homer up to the Present Day. Chicago: Argonaut [orig. 1965: Proefschrift, Universiteit van Amsterdam] Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 22) Beard, Robert (1995), Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology: A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation. Albany: State University of New York Press Behnstedt, Peter (1973), Viens-tu? Est-ce que tu viens? Tu viens? Formen und Strukturen des direkten Fragesatzes im Französischen. Tübingen: Narr (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 41) Bertinetto, Pier Marco (1990), “Perifrasi verbali italiane: criteri di identificazione e gerarchia di perifrasticita`”. In: Bernini, Giuliano & Giacalone Ramat, Anna (eds.), La temporalita` nell’acquisizione di lingue seconde. Milano: Angeli, 331⫺350 Börjars, Kersti & Vincent, Nigel & Chapman, Carol (1997), “Paradigms, Periphrases and Pronominal Inflection: A Feature-based Account”. Yearbook of Morphology 1996, 155⫺180 Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 9) Bybee, Joan L. & Dahl, Östen (1989), “The Creation of Tense and Aspect Systems in the Languages of the World”. Studies in Language 13, 51⫺103 Bybee, Joan & Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William (1994), The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago, London: Chicago Univ. Press Dahl, Östen (1985), Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford, New York: Blackwell

664 Donaldson, Bruce (1993), A Grammar of Afrikaans. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (Mouton Grammar Library 8) Häcki Buhofer, Annelies (1987), “Die Kasus des Deutschen ⫺ wissenschaftsgeschichtliche und methodologische Überlegungen”. Deutsche Sprache 1987, 137⫺150 Haspelmath, Martin (1993), A Grammar of Lezgian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (Mouton Grammar Library 9) Haspelmath, Martin (1997), From Space to Time: Temporal Adverbials in the World’s Languages. München: Lincom Europa (Lincom Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 3) Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan Huddleston, Rodney (1995), “The Case Against a Future Tense in English”. Studies in Language 19, 399⫺446 King, Gareth (1993), Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria (1996), “Possessive Noun Phrases in Maltese: Alienability, Iconicity and Grammaticalization”. Rivista di Linguistica 8, 245⫺274 Kühner, Raphael & Stegmann, Carl (21914), Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache, 2. Teil, Vol. II. Hannover: Hahn [reprint 1992] Lausberg, Heinrich (21963), Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik. München: Hueber Lehmann, Christian (1995), Thoughts on Grammaticalization. München: Lincom Europa (Lincom Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 1) Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Matthews, P[eter] H. (1981), Syntax. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press

IX. Flexion Mel’cˇuk, Igor (1993), Cours de morphologie geńe´rale (Theórique et descriptive), Vol. I: Introduction et Premie`re partie: Le mot. Montreál: Presses de l’Universite´ de Montreál; [Paris]: CNRS Roseń, Haiim B. (1992), Die Periphrase: Wesen und Entstehung. Innsbruck: Univ. Innsbruck (Innsbrukker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Vorträge und Kleinere Schriften 57) Smirnickij, Aleksandr I. (1956), “Analiticˇeskie formy”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1956.2, 41⫺52 Thümmel, Wolf (1966), Das Problem der periphrastischen Konstruktionen. München: Fink (Forum Slavicum 5) Trask, R[obert] L. (1993), A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. London, New York: Routledge Vincent, Nigel (1987), “The Interaction of Periphrasis and Inflection: Some Romance Examples”. In: Harris, Martin & Ramat, Paolo (eds.), Historical Development of Auxiliaries. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 35), 237⫺256 Wallis, John ⫽ Iohannes (61765), Grammatica lingvae anglicanae. Londinum: Bowyer [11653 Oxford: Lichfield; reprinted in: Wallis, John (1972), Grammar of the English Language, with translation and commentary by J. A. Kemp. London: Longman] Westney, Paul (1995), Modals and Periphrastics in English: An Investigation into the Semantic Correspondence between Certain English Modal Verbs and their Periphrastic Equivalents. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Linguistische Arbeiten 339) Zawadowski, Leon (1959), Constructions grammaticales et formes pe´riphrastiques. Krako´w: Ossolineum (Prace je˛zykoznawcze 18)

Martin Haspelmath, Leipzig (Germany)

X. Wortarten Word classes 69. Wortart, syntaktische Funktion, syntaktische Kategorie 1. 2. 3. 4.

Zur Rolle von Wörtern im Satz Syntaktische Funktionen Syntaktische Kategorien Zitierte Literatur

1.

Zur Rolle von Wörtern im Satz

Wörter sind die kleinsten Bausteine des Satzes. (Unter Satz wird hier ein inhaltlich kohärenter Komplex von Wörtern verstanden, der ein finites Verb enthält; zum Problem der Satzdefinition vgl. z. B. Ries 1931; Müller 1985; Forsgren 1992 b). Im Satz Der Hund biß den Briefträger beziehen sich die Wörter Hund und Briefträger offensichtlich verschiedenartig auf das Wort biß (der Hund beißt, der Briefträger wird gebissen), d. h. sie erfüllen verschiedene syntaktische Funktionen ⫺ was auch die Formen der bzw. den signalisieren. Die Wörter Hund und Briefträger gehören aber zu derselben Wortart: Substantiv. Daraus wird ersichtlich, daß sich die Unterschiedlichkeit dieser syntaktischen Funktionen mit Hilfe des Wortartbegriffs Substantiv nicht eindeutig beschreiben läßt. Im Satz Der kleine Hund bellt bezieht sich das Adjektiv klein direkt auf das Substantiv Hund und bildet mit ihm eine sprachliche Einheit (Konstituente), eine Phrase, deren Ganzes sich zu bellt verhält wie die Einheit der Hund allein. Die Phrase ist eine syntaktische Kategorie, die eine syntaktische Funktion erfüllt. Es kommt nicht selten vor, daß die Begriffe Wort und Wortart ungenügend von solchen getrennt werden, die sich (a) auf die Rollen (Funktionen) der Wörter im Satz beziehen, (b) auf die sprachlichen Einheiten (Konstituenten, Kategorien) beziehen, die diese Rollen spielen. In diesem Artikel soll deswegen ausführlicher erklärt und erörtert werden, wie sich der Begriff Wortart zu denen der syntakti-

schen Funktion (2.1) und der syntaktischen Kategorie (3.1) verhält, und wie sich die betreffenden Begriffe für die Beschreibung der Rollen der Wörter im Aufbau des Satzes eignen. Anschließend wird kurz und beispielhaft auf einige einschlägige Theorien und Terminologien (2.2; 3.2) eingegangen, die methodologischen Grundlagen dargestellt (2.3; 3.3) und schließlich die Entstehung und Entwicklung der entsprechenden Unterscheidungen und Begriffe nachgezeichnet (2.4; 3.4).

2.

Syntaktische Funktionen

2.1. Wortart und syntaktische Funktion Es ist eine allgemein bekannte Tatsache, daß sich der Begriff Wort schwer definieren läßt (vgl. Art. 26), weil die sprachlichen Einheiten, die sich unter diesem Begriff zusammenfassen lassen, fundamentale Unterschiede aufweisen. Das betrifft einerseits den inneren Bau oder die Morphologie der Wörter. Mit den Wörtern Hund und bellen sind z. B. verschiedene Flexionsmuster (Paradigmen) verbunden (Hund/es/-e; bell-e/-st/-t etc.) Diese Wörter sind flektierbar, andere aber wie heute und nach (Partikeln) sind nicht flektierbar. Andererseits sind auch die syntaktischen Eigenschaften der Wörter verschiedenartig, weil diese sich nach bestimmten Mustern oder Regeln mit anderen Wörtern kombinieren lassen: Der/Ein Mann/ Hund/Fuchs kommt/schläft. Wörter mit ähnlichen Flexionsparadigmen wie Hund können demnach dieselbe Funktion im Satz erfüllen, und an die Stelle von kommen lassen sich nur Wörter mit entsprechenden morphologischen Paradigmen einsetzen, wie z. B. schlafen. Die Wörter haben somit unterschiedliche Fügungspotenz oder Valenz (vgl. Stepanowa & Helbig 21981: 118⫺124; Admoni 41982: 216). Der Begriff Fügungspotenz oder Valenz bezieht sich demnach auf die “nach außen” gerichte-

666 ten syntaktischen Eigenschaften des Wortes, syntaktische Funktion hingegen auf den inneren syntaktischen Aufbau des Satzes oder der Phrase durch Wörter. Um eine vollständigere Sprachbeschreibung zu ermöglichen, sind deshalb weitere Differenzierungen und eine Klassifikation der Wörter notwendig. Zu diesem Zweck hat sich im Laufe der Zeiten das System der Wortarten (s. Art. 70⫺72) herausgebildet. Ihre Anzahl kann auf Grund verschiedenartiger Abgrenzungs- und Organisationskriterien von Grammatik zu Grammatik stark variieren, beläuft sich aber häufig auf neun bis zehn Klassen: Substantiv, Verb, Adjektiv, Adverb, Numerale, Pronomen, Präposition, Konjunktion, Interjektion. Zum System der Wortarten gehört weiterhin ein Inventar von grammatischen Subkategorien: Kasus, Tempus, Komparation etc. (Die Artikel können entweder als eine selbständige Klasse oder als eine Subkategorie des Substantivs betrachtet werden.) Daß die Wortarten für die Beschreibung syntaktischer Funktionen nicht ausreichen (vgl. 1), erklärt sich teils daraus, daß sich die Gliederung auf das Vorkommen oder die Distribution (vgl. Harris 1951: 146) der Wörter in allen möglichen Kontexten gründet, und teils daraus, daß eine Wortart in einem gegebenen Satz mehrere Funktionen erfüllen kann: (1) Der Hund des Nachbarn biß den neuen Briefträger. (2) Dieser Hund hat früher niemand gebissen. (3) Der gebissene Mann wurde krank. (4) Er wurde ins Krankenhaus gebracht. In (1) bezieht sich das Adjektiv (neu) auf ein Substantiv (Briefträger), dasselbe syntaktische Verhältnis hat aber auch das Substantiv des Nachbarn zum Substantiv der Hund. In (1) und (3) sind die Funktionen der Adjektive verschieden. Das Adjektiv neu bezieht sich direkt auf ein Substantiv, das Adjektiv krank aber erst über die Vermittlung eines Verbs (wurde). Das Verb beißen erfüllt die gleichen Funktionen in (1) und (2), nicht aber in (3), wo es dieselbe Funktion hat wie das Adjektiv neu in (1). Die Pronomina erfüllen verschiedene Funktionen in (2) (dieser, niemand) und (4) (er). Mit jeder Funktion verbindet sich in der Regel eine bestimmte Flexionsform im morphologischen Paradigma der flektierbaren Wortarten, z. B. der (Hund), des (Nachbarn), gebissen-e etc.

X. Wortarten

Umgekehrt kann aber auch eine bestimmte Funktion durch verschiedene Wortarten erfüllt werden: (5) Das Problem / Es / Zu rechnen ist schwierig In (5) erfüllt ein Substantiv und ein Artikel (Problem und das) dieselbe syntaktische Funktion wie ein Verb mit Partikel (rechnen und zu) und wie ein Pronomen (es). Eine syntaktische Funktion kann durch Einheiten verschiedener Komplexität vertreten werden, und zwar durch ein Wort, eine Phrase, oder sogar einen ganzen Satz: (6) Die Nachricht / Der schöne Anblick / Daß du heute kommst, ist erfreulich (7) Daß du heute / in zwei Wochen kommst, ist erfreulich / eine erfreuliche Nachricht Eine solche syntaktische oder funktionale Synonymie der Wörter, Wortformen oder Phrasen ist kennzeichnend für alle syntaktischen Funktionen (vgl. Forsgren 1973: 44; Gulyga 1978: 62) außer dem finiten Verb als Prädikat ⫺ z. B. biß in (1) ⫺ das nicht durch eine andere Form ersetzt werden kann. Auch die funktionale Synonymie begrenzt die Verwendbarkeit der Wortartenbegriffe für die Beschreibung der syntaktischen Funktionen. Es ist somit nicht möglich, eindeutig etwa von “dem Substantiv des Satzes” oder “dem Adjektiv des Satzes” zu sprechen, und es kann ebensowenig behauptet werden, daß eine bestimmte syntaktische Funktion von einer einzigen Wortart erfüllt wird. Zu diesem Zweck steht indessen ein anderes Inventar von Begriffen zur Verfügung, nämlich: Subjekt, Prädikat, Objekt, Adverbiale, Prädikativ, Attribut. In Beispiel (6) betrifft die funktionale Synonymie die Subjektfunktion, in Beispiel (7) die Adverbial- bzw. die Prädikativfunktion. Die Funktionsbegriffe beziehen sich im Unterschied zu den Wortarten eindeutiger auf die syntaktischen Funktionen. Es ist durchaus plausibel, vom “Subjekt des Satzes”, “Prädikat des Satzes” oder “Objekt des Satzes” zu sprechen. Dagegen ist es nicht adäquat, den Ausdruck “Attribut des Satzes” zu verwenden. Attribute wie des Nachbarn, neuen (4), dieser (5), gebissene (6) vertreten nämlich keine Satzfunktionen, sondern Funktionen innerhalb der Phrasen (vgl. 1 sowie 2.2, 2.4, 3.1). Die Funktionsbegriffe sind als reine Relationsbegriffe zu betrachten. Der Begriff Subjekt bezeichnet beispielsweise nur eine Ein-

69. Wortart, syntaktische Funktion, syntaktische Kategorie

heit, die ein besonderes Verhältnis zum finiten Verb hat, zu dem wiederum ein Objekt in einer anderen Relation steht usw. Das finite Verb als Prädikat ⫺ z. B. biß in (1) ⫺ ist die einzige syntaktische Funktion ohne funktionale Synonymie. Es gibt zwei Definitionen des Begriffs Prädikat: eine, durch die das Prädikat mit dem finiten Verb gleichgestellt wird, und eine, durch die es alle Wörter umfaßt, außer denen, die das Subjekt bilden ⫺ d. h. auch Objekte, Adverbiale und vor allem Prädikative. Dadurch erhalten die letzeren Funktionen einen anderen Status im Satz. Diese Schwankung ist historisch bedingt (s. 2.4), findet sich indessen auf Grund unterschiedlicher theoretischer Positionen auch in der heutigen Sprachwissenschaft wieder (s. 2.2). 2.2. Theorien und Terminologien Terminologien wechselnder theoretischer Provenienz ⫺ und deshalb mit mehr oder minder abweichenden begrifflichen Abgrenzungen ⫺ werden mit den syntaktischen Funktionen verbunden. (Von der synonymen sogenannten Verdeutschungsterminologie, z. B. “Satzgegenstand” für das Subjekt, “Aussage” für das Prädikat, wird hier abgesehen.) Es ist nicht das Ziel dieses Abschnitts, eine erschöpfende Übersicht über die betreffenden Terminologien und ihre theoretische Verankerung zu geben; zur weitergehenden Information wird auf einschlägige Literatur hingewiesen. Die herkömmlichen Termini für die syntaktischen Funktionen (Subjekt etc.) wurden zuerst in der Schulgrammatik (vgl. Art. 11) verwendet, weil sich die Wortartenbegriffe als unzureichend erwiesen (s. 2.4). Diese Terminologie wird häufig in der modernen Sprachwissenschaft benutzt, wobei die Benennung (finites) Verb für das Prädikat oft vorkommt. Eine Wortartenbezeichnung anstelle eines Begriffs für eine syntaktischen Funktion zu verwenden, ist nur dank der fehlenden funktionalen Synonymie eben dieser Funktion möglich (vgl. 2.1). Leerstelle ist ein Terminus, der für die Fügungspotenz (Valenz) der Wörter verwendet wird, entspricht aber auch, insofern er mit dem finiten Verb verbunden ist, den Satzfunktionen (vgl. Bühler 1934: 173). Im letztgenannten Sinne wird er in der Valenztheorie oder der Dependenzgrammatik für alle Funktionen außer der des finiten Verbs verwendet. Andere synonyme Termini sind ac-

667

tants (Aktanten), circonstants (Angaben) (vgl. z. B. Tesnie`re 1959: 102⫺105; Hays 1964: 513; Helbig 1982: 40f.). Das Verhältnis zu den Wortarten entspricht weitgehend dem der syntaktischen Funktionen, wie es in 2.1 dargelegt wurde. Nur ein finites Verb kann keine Leerstelle sein, da es als Satzkern die letzteren um sich eröffnet. Argument und Prädikat sind ursprünglich formallogische Termini (vgl. Palmer 1994: 2⫺4), die sowohl in der Dependenzgrammatik als auch in der generativen Transformationsgrammatik (Chomsky 71993: 27, 35f.) verwendet werden. Argument ist weitgehend synonym mit Leerstelle. Dagegen umfaßt der Begriff Prädikat in diesem theoretischen Kontext alles, was eine Aussagefunktion erfüllt, d. h. nicht nur das finite Verb, sondern beispielsweise auch Prädikative. Im Satz Karl ist groß ist Karl ein Argument, ist groß ein (einstelliges) Prädikat. In Karl ist größer als Peter sind Karl und Peter Argumente und ist größer ein (zweistelliges) Prädikat. Die syntaktischen Funktionen können auch terminologisch unbestimmt bleiben, weil sie sich auf andere Weise darstellen lassen. In der Phrasenstruktur-Grammatik und der generativen Transformationsgrammatik in der Version der Aspects (vgl. Bierwisch 1966: 38f.; Chomsky 1965: 63⫺74) werden die Funktionen ebenso wie die Hierarchie der syntaktischen Funktionen bis zu den einzelnen Wörtern mit Hilfe von Einklammerungen und Baumdiagrammen veranschaulicht (vgl. auch 3.1; 3.2). In Aktiv- und Passivsätzen wie Der Hund biß den Briefträger und Der Briefträger wurde vom Hund gebissen erfüllen Hund und Briefträger jeweils verschiedene syntaktische Funktionen, obwohl ihre semantischen Rollen in beiden Sätzen dieselben sind: Hund ist Agens (agentive), Briefträger Patiens (objective, goal, theme). Benennungen für solche Rollen sind (semantische) Kasus (Tiefenkasustheorie, vgl. z. B. Fillmore 1968; 1977; Stepanowa & Helbig 21981: 135⫺137; Jackendoff 1990: 50; Palmer 1994: 4⫺11; Art. 102) oder ThetaRollen (Theta-Theorie, vgl. Pleines 1978: 358; Chomsky 71993: 34⫺48). Theta-Rollen werden grundsätzlich Einzelwörtern zugeschrieben. In Frage kommen natürlich nur Autosemantika, nicht etwa “inhaltsleere” Konstituenten wie es in Es spielt das Orchester. Die Begriffspaare Thema und Rhema (funktionale Satzperspektive, vgl. Ammann

668 1928: 3; Mathesius 1929: 202f.; Boost 1955; Haftka 1981: 751f.; Welke 21994: 19⫺44), topic und comment u. a.m. beziehen sich auf den Informationswert der Funktionen, d. h. ob sie ⫺ sehr vereinfacht ausgedrückt ⫺ in der Darstellung “Neues” (Rhema) bringen oder schon “Bekanntes” (Thema) wiedergeben. Das Verhältnis zu den herkömmlichen syntaktischen Funktionsbegriffen und zu Wort und Wortarten ist sehr frei und abhängig von Kontext und Situation, auch wenn in einem normalen erzählenden Prosatext die Übereinstimmung Subjekt ⫺ Thema, Prädikat ⫺ Rhema nicht selten ist: der Hund (des Nachbarn) (⫽Thema) biß den (neuen) Briefträger (⫽Rhema). Je nach der Antwort auf durch Situation und Kontext motivierte Fragen können auch Konstituenten der anderen syntaktischen Funktionen die Rhemafunktion erfüllen: der Hund [des Nachbarn], wenn die Frage lautet: Wer biß den Briefträger?, [den neuen] Briefträger bei der Frage Wen biß der Hund?, [der Hund des] Nachbarn bei der Frage Wessen Hund biß den Briefträger? etc. 2.3. Methodik Für die empirische Herausarbeitung von syntaktischen Funktionen und die Absicherung der Begriffsbildung werden besondere Operationen verwendet, durch die beobachtet wird, wie sich eine Konstante zu verschiedenen Variablen verhält (vgl. z. B. Glinz 21961: 44f., 85f.; Fries 1957: 75f.; Admoni 1971: 108⫺ 130). Dadurch können Begriffe voneinander abgegrenzt und verborgene Relationen, Diskrepanzen und Übereinstimmungen nachgewiesen werden. Operationen, die sich für die Ermittlung syntaktischer Funktionen eignen, sind: (a) Die Kommutation (Substitution, Ersatzprobe): Ein Glied in einem syntaktischen Kontext wird durch ein anderes ersetzt, z. B. ein Wort durch eine Phrase: Karl / mein kleiner Bruder kommt; eine Phrase durch einen Nebensatz: Wir erwarten eine baldige Antwort / daß er bald antwortet; (b) die Transformation: Ein Glied wird in bezug auf seine grammatische Form umgewandelt, wobei das lexikalische Element und/oder sein Referent unverändert bleibt: Der Junge wirft den Ball ⇒ Der vom Jungen geworfene Ball.

X. Wortarten

Varianten dieser zwei Haupttypen sind beispielsweise: (a1) die Pronominalisierung: Der Zug fährt ab ⇒ Er fährt ab (b1) die Frageprobe: Was kommt? ⫺ Der Zug (und der Bus) kommen (b2) die Nominalisierung, z. B. Der Zug fährt ab ⇒ Die Abfahrt des Zuges. Wie die verschiedenen Kommutationen verwendet werden, zeigen die Ausführungen in 2.1 zu den Beispielen (1) bis (7). Die Transformation dient demselben Zweck, doch läßt sich durch sie besonders die Äquivalenz von Satz und Wort/Phrase nachweisen, vgl. 2.4, (8) ⫺ (10). Die Methode ist für das Englische zur Abgrenzung der Wortarten verwendet worden (vgl. Fries 1957: 74f.; Admoni 1971: 114). In der Schulgrammatik wird besonders die Operation (b1) benutzt, um die syntaktischen Funktionen zu ermitteln, z. B. Jemand tut etwas irgendwo. Frageprobe: Wer tut etwas? ⫺ Jemand (⫽ Subjekt); Was wird getan? ⫺ Etwas (⫽ Objekt); Wo wird das getan? ⫺ Irgendwo (⫽ Adverbial) etc. Auf diese Weise können auch Thema-Rhema-Funktionen nachgewiesen werden (vgl. Haftka 1981f.; Welke 21994: 401). 2.4. Geschichte Die Benennung Redeteile (partes orationis) für die Wortarten läßt vermuten, daß in der zweitausendjährigen Geschichte der abendländischen Grammatik nicht von Anfang an zwischen Wortart und syntaktischer Funktion unterschieden wurde. Bedeutsam für die Ausbildung der Unterscheidung waren besonders die Versuche der sog. Allgemeinen oder Philosophischen Grammatik, den sprachlichen Satz mit dem logischen Urteil (Subjekt, Prädikat, Kopula) gleichzusetzen und die Wortarten nach ontologischen Kategorien (Substanzwörter, Akzidenzwörter, Attributiva) oder mit Bezug auf das logische Urteil (Subjekts-, Prädikats-, Urteilswörter usw.) einzuteilen. Durch die Philosophische Grammatik wurde das Interesse auf syntaktische Fragen gelenkt. Häufig wurde hier Wortart und Satzfunktion gleichgesetzt, vor allem Substantiv und Subjekt (vgl. Forsgren 1985: 48). Die Syntax der älteren Grammatik basierte im übrigen auf dem herkömmlichen Wortarteninventar. Johann Christoph Adelung (1732⫺ 1806) bediente sich in seiner Syntax einer auf


die Wortarten gegründeten Kombinationslehre, worin dargelegt wurde, wie Adjektive mit Substantiven, diese wieder mit anderen Substantiven etc. verbunden werden könnten (vgl. Jellinek 1914: 380; s. auch Forsgren 1985: 90). Funktionsbegriffe wie Objekt waren gewöhnlich in der Kasuslehre zu finden. Die Satzlehre beschränkte sich auf die Kategorien des logischen Urteils: Karl (Subjekt) ist (Kopula) krank (Prädikat), Karl (Subjekt) kommt (Prädikat). Dies erklärt die Ambiguität des Prädikatbegriffs (vgl. 2.1), die noch heute besteht. Ein wichtiger Schritt auf dem Wege zur Unterscheidung zwischen Wortarten und syntaktischen Funktionen war die Lehre von den sog. grammatischen Satzarten. Darin kam die Erkenntnis zum Ausdruck, daß Nebensätze mit den autosemantischen Wortarten (Substantiven, Adjektiven oder Adverbien) funktional synonym sein können. Nach dieser Terminologie liegt in (8) ein Substantivsatz, in (9) ein Adjektivsatz und in (10) ein Adverbialsatz vor: (8) Der Bote verkündete mir den Tod meines Vaters ⇒ Der Bote verkündete mir, daß mein Vater gestorben sei; (9) Der gestern angekommene Bote ⇒ Der Bote, der gestern ankam; (10) Der Bote verkündete mir soeben, daß … ⇒ Der Bote verkündete mir, als er mich sah, daß … Diese Theorie wurde in den zwanziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts von dem hessischen Grammatiker Simon Heinrich Adolf Herling (1780⫺1849) formuliert. (vgl. Forsgren 1985: 108⫺112). Später wurden die Wortartenbegriffe durch Satzgliedbegriffe ersetzt und die Sätze nach letzteren benannt: Subjektsatz, Objektsatz (8), Attributsatz (9), Adverbialsatz (10), Prädikativsatz (vgl. Forsgren 1992 a: 231⫺265). Dadurch konnten Fügungspotenz/ Valenz und funktionale Synonymie besser berücksichtigt werden. Zu bemerken ist, daß die Unterscheidungen operativ durch Transformationen begründet wurden. Die heutige, vor allem in der Schulgrammatik übliche Satzgliedlehre wurde in ihren Grundzügen um 1830 von dem hessischen Arzt und Sprachlehrer Karl Ferdinand Bekker (1775⫺1849) entworfen (vgl. Glinz 1947; Haselbach 1966; Weigand 1967; Forsgren 1973; 1985; Vesper 1980; Knobloch 1989 a; 1989 b).

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Ein Schlüsselbegriff im Rahmen von Beckers Unterscheidung zwischen Wortarten und Satzgliedern ist die grammatische Bedeutung (vgl. Knobloch 1988: 113⫺116; Forsgren 1992 a: 116; vgl. auch Art. 27). Darunter wird die syntaktische Funktion der autosemantischen Wörter verstanden, die von deren lexikalischer (“etymologischer”) Bedeutung zu unterscheiden ist: “Wir nennen diejenige Bedeutung, welche ein Wort als Glied eines Satzverhältnisses in dem Satze hat, die grammatische Bedeutung des Wortes. […]: aus der Stelle, die das Wort als Subjekt, Prädikat, Attribut oder Objekt im Satze einnimmt, erkennen wir seine grammatische Bedeutung, d. h. die Bedeutung, welche der Begriff als ein Glied des Gedankens in der Rede hat.” (Becker 1837: 8; Hervorhebungen im Original)

Wenn in der semantisierenden Ausdrucksweise Beckers Begriff durch Wort und Gedanke durch Satz ausgetauscht wird, ist die Beziehung Wort-syntaktische Funktion völlig klar. Wie Becker die Beziehung Wortart-syntaktische Funktion (vgl. auch dazu Glinz 1947: 53; Forsgren 1985: 66, 94f.; Knobloch 1989 b: 92) betrachtet, geht aus dem folgenden Zitat hervor: “Jeder Faktor eines Satzverhältnisses wird zwar insgemein durch die seinem Begriffe entsprechende Wortart ausgedrückt, nämlich das Subjekt und das Objekt durch ein Substantiv, das Prädikat durch ein Verb oder Adjektiv und das Attribut durch ein Adjektiv; aber sehr oft wird ein Faktor durch eine andere Wortart ausgedrückt, z. B. das Prädikat und das Attribut durch ein Substantiv, und das Objekt durch ein Adjektiv [z. B. arm in Er macht mich ˚ .F.].” (Becker 1837: 8) arm, K.-A

Trotz der Erkenntnis der funktionalen Synonymie werden die Wortarten doch als die typischen Vertreter und das Einzelwort für die Grundeinheit der Funktionen gehalten (Subjekt, Objekt ⫺ Substantiv; Attribut ⫺ Adjektiv etc.). Daraus erklärt sich auch die Subklassifizierung nach morphologischen Kriterien, z. B. Akkusativobjekt oder Dativobjekt. Becker (1837: 8f.) kritisiert “die oft verwirrende Unsicherheit der älteren Grammatik”, weil sie “mehr auf die Wortformen” und nicht auf die “grammatische Bedeutung” achteten, und deshalb “die drei Satzverhältnisse nicht mit gehöriger Schärfe” unterschieden. In Beckers System kommen nämlich die syntaktischen Funktionen der autosemantischen Wörter in den drei “Satzverhältnissen” zum Ausdruck (vgl. Haselbach 1966: 166f.):

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im Satzverhältnisprädikativen (zwischen Subjekt und Prädikat, z. B. der Vogel singt, Der Vogel ist gelb), im attributiven, (zwischen Attribut und Substantiv, z. B. der gelbe Vogel) und im objektiven Satzverhältnis (zwischen Prädikat und Objekt, z. B. Der Vogel singt ein Lied, singt schön). Zwischen den inneren Funktionen des Satzes und denen der Phrase unterscheidet Becker demnach nicht (vgl. 3.4). Dem Begriffspaar Thema-Rhema ähnliche kommunikative Begriffsbestimmungen kamen in den vergangenen Jahrhunderten vor: z. B. Schatten (krank in der kranke Mann) vs. Licht (krank in der Mann ist krank; vgl. Forsgren 1985: 97). Normalerweise wurde dem Subjekt Thema-, und dem Prädikat RhemaWert beigemessen, aber Begriffe wie logisches Subjekt für die Themafunktion und Hauptbegriff für die Rhemafunktion spiegeln die Erkenntnis wider, daß auch Konstituenten anderer grammatischer Funktionen solche kommunikativ-pragmatischen Rollen spielen können. Logisches Subjekt ist z. B. zu dieser Stelle in Du mußt dir eine andere Stelle suchen; zu dieser Stelle bedarf man eines stärkeren Arms (Beispiel aus Forsgren 1992 a: 132) und den Boten in Es hat den Boten ein Räuber angefallen (Beispiel aus Forsgren 1992 a: 133). Hauptbegriff (“Prädiziertes”) ist ein Räuber angefallen. Diese Termini ⫺ auch psychologisches Subjekt, psychologisches Prädikat ⫺ wurden bis ins 20. Jahrhundert verwendet (vgl. Paul 1920: 282f.; Sütterlin 21910: 299f.).

3.

Syntaktische Kategorien

3.1. Wortart und syntaktische Kategorie Wie aus 2.4 hervorgeht, wurde in der traditionellen Schulgrammatik Beckerscher Prägung nicht streng genug zwischen Wort, Satzglied und syntaktischer Funktion unterschieden (vgl. 2.4). Die syntaktische Funktion ist aber wegen der reichhaltigen funktionalen Synonymie, als eine Abstraktion zu betrachten, als ein Begriff, der sich ausschließlich auf die Relationen der Einheiten, unabhängig von der Beschaffenheit der Konstituenten, bezieht. Aus diesem Grunde wird jetzt zwischen syntaktischer Funktion und syntaktischer Kategorie unterschieden. Der Begriff der syntaktischen Kategorie bezieht sich auf die konkreten Typen der Konstituenten, die

in einem spezifischen Satz aktualisiert werden. Für die Konstituenten lassen sich die Wortartenbegriffe verwenden, sofern sie aus einem Wort bestehen, z. B. “das Subjekt dieses Satzes ist ein Substantiv”, “das Adverbial dieses Satzes ist ein Adverb” etc. Wie in 2.1 gezeigt wurde, wird indessen eine Funktion häufig durch einen Komplex von Wörtern oder eine Phrase aktualisiert ⫺ besonders wenn der Artikel, wie im Deutschen und Englischen, als ein Wort betrachtet wird. Die Phrasen als syntaktische Kategorien sind im hierarchischen Aufbau des Satzes als eine Stufe zwischen Wort und Satz zu betrachten: (11) (a) Wort: der, Hund, Nachbar, beißen etc. (b) Phrase: der Hund des Nachbarn; den neuen Briefträger (c) Satz: Der Hund des Nachbarn biß den neuen Briefträger. Wörter sind demnach Konstituenten der Phrasen, und Phrasen Konstituenten von Sätzen. Ein Wort bildet dabei den Kern einer Phrase (s. 3.3). Die Konstituenten Hund und Briefträger lassen sich im Unterschied zu des Mannes und neuen nicht eliminieren, ohne schon vorher erwähnt worden zu sein (vgl. 3.3). Die Einheiten der Hund des Mannes und den neuen Briefträger erfüllen im Satz dieselben syntaktischen Funktionen wie der Hund und den Briefträger. Nicht nur Substantive fungieren als Kern einer Phrase, sondern auch Adjektive, z. B. in sehr klein, ungemein schön. Adjektivische Phrasen können dann auch dieselben Funktionen wie Adjektive erfüllen, z. B. der sehr kleine Hund (des Nachbarn), (Sie singt) ungemein schön. Die Phrase hat demnach dieselbe Fügungspotenz wie ihr Kern. Daraus folgt, daß eine Phrase wiederum Konstituente einer anderen Phrase sein kann usw.: (12) (a) Phrase1: [der kleine Hund], [des neuen Nachbarn], [meines alten Vaters] (b) Phrase2: [[der kleine Hund] [des neuen Nachbarn]] (c) Phrase3: [[[der kleine Hund] [des neuen Nachbarn]] [meines alten Vaters]]] (d) Satz: Der kleine Hund des neuen Nachbarn meines alten Vaters biß den Briefträger.


Von der Fügungspotenz der Wörter aus betrachtet gibt es demnach eine Übereinstimmung zwischen Wortart und Phrase, indem sich die Phrase zu den syntaktischen Funktionen wie ihr Kernwort verhält. 3.2. Theorien und Terminologien Normalerweise wird der Terminus Satzglied in der heutigen Linguistik für die Bezeichnung von verschiedenen Konstituentenkategorien (Wort, Phrase, Gliedsatz) verwendet (vgl. z. B. Engelen 1986: 33⫺49), insofern als diese Satzfunktionen erfüllen. Dasselbe gilt für den Terminus Gliedteil wodurch dieselben Kategorien (Wort, Phrase, Gliedsatz) begrifflich subsumiert werden, insofern als diese Konstituenten Funktionen innerhalb einer Phrase erfüllen (Attribut, Kernwort, Determinant). Satzglied und Gliedteil sind demnach den anderen Konstituentenkategorien übergeordnet und deshalb selbst als (abstraktere) Kategorienbegriffe anzusehen. In demselben Sinne wie Satzglied wird auch Phrase als Terminus für die Konstituenten syntaktischer Funktionen benutzt. Die engere Bezogenheit der Phrasen auf die Wortarten spiegelt sich darin wider, daß die verschiedenen Phrasen nach den Wortarten benannt werden, zu denen ihr Kernwort gehört: Nominalphrase, Adjektivphrase, Adverbialphrase. Der Begriff Verbphrase hat jedoch einen anderen Status. Auf der ersten Verzweigungsstufe des Satzes (S) werden nämlich in der Phrasenstruktur-Grammatik und der generativen Grammatik sowohl das finite Verb als auch die davon abhängigen Träger der Satzfunktionen in den Begriff einbezogen und von der Nominalphrase der Subjektsfunktion unterschieden (Chomsky 1965: 72): (13) S J [Karl liest ein Buch] J NP VP J [liest ein Buch] J V NP J [liest] [ein Buch]. N[omen] und V[erb] sind Bezeichnungen für Wortarten (lexikalische Kategorien) im Unterschied zu Phrasen (syntaktische Kategorien), die nach der Wortart des Kernwortes bezeichnet werden (NP [Nominalphrase], VP [Verbalphrase]). Ein anderer häufig verwendeter Terminus, der Bezeichnung für alle segmentierbaren Einheiten vom Wort bis zum Satz sein kann, ist Syntagma. Besonders nach britischem Vorbild wird er auch für Phrasen gebraucht, die kein finites Verb enthalten und somit als

671

vermittelndes Glied zwischen Wort und Satz zu verstehen sind (vgl. Lyons 1971: 174f.). In Chomskys X-Bar-Theorie (Chomsky 71993: 48⫺55; Jackendoff 1977: 7⫺27) werden die Phrasen nach ihrer Komplexität klassifiziert. Die kleinste Stufe sind Wörter oder “lexikalische Kategorien” (N[omen], V[erb], A[djektiv]), die den “Kern” (“Kopf”, “head”) der Phrase bilden und mit X0 bezeichnet werden. Je nach der Komplexität werden die Phrasen danach als X1, X2 oder X⬘, X⬙ usw. markiert. 3.3. Methodik Um Phrasen und Phrasenkonstituenten zu ermitteln, werden in der Regel andere Operationen verwendet als Kommutation und Transformation (vgl. 2.3): (a) die Permutation (Verschiebeprobe): Ein Glied wird im Verhältnis zu den übrigen Gliedern im Kontext verschoben, z. B. Wir warten auf den Zug ⇒ Auf den Zug warten wir; (b) die Reduktion (Weglaßprobe): Ein Glied oder mehrere werden weggelassen, z. B. Der verspätete Zug kam endlich an ⇒ Der Zug kam an; und sein Gegensatz, die Augmentation (Interpolierung, Insertion): Ein Glied wird eingesetzt, z. B. Der Zug kam an ⇒ Der verspätete Zug kam an. Durch Permutationen lassen sich vor allem Phrasen ermitteln: (14) Der Hund des Nachbarn biß den neuen Briefträger ⇒ Den neuen Briefträger biß der Hund des Nachbarn. Dadurch werden demnach Phrasen als kleinste umstellbare Satzkonstituenten isoliert, vgl. *des Nachbarn der Hund; *der Briefträger neue. (Zur Problematik der nicht in allen Sprachen gleichermaßen verwendbaren Permutation vgl. z. B. Helbig 1972: 334f.; 1982: 45f.). Mit Hilfe der Reduktion läßt sich das Kernwort der Phrase feststellen: (15) Der Hund des Nachbarn biß … ⇒ Der Hund biß … (16) der sehr kleine Hund ⇒ der kleine Hund In (15) ist demnach Hund das Kernwort und in (16) klein, weil Hund und klein nicht weglaßbar sind, sofern der Satz nicht elliptisch ist. Dagegen können in der Regel die Attri-

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bute des Nachbarn und sehr reduziert werden, auch wenn sie zuvor nicht erwähnt worden sind.

4.

3.4. Geschichte In 2.4 wurde festgestellt, daß die traditionelle Schulgrammatik Beckerscher Prägung nicht mit Phrasen operierte. Eine Phrasentheorie wurde indessen schon in der französischen Grammatik des 18. Jahrhunderts von Abbe´ Gabriel Girard (1677⫺1748) formuliert, der zwischen parties d’oraison (Wortarten) und membres de frase (Satzglieder, z. B. subjectif, attributif, objectif, terminatif) unterschied. Die letzteren konnten durch einzelne Wörter oder durch Phrasen konstituiert werden, doch wurden sie von Girard im Unterschied zu Becker für gleichwertig gehalten ⫺ so bezeichnet er z. B. das Einzelwort nous als subjectif oder die Phrase un avantage solide als objectif (vgl. Jellinek 1914: 468; Glinz 1947: 26⫺31; Forsgren 1985: 43f., 76⫺81). Vor allem die Gleichsetzung von Satzglied und Gliedteil (das Attribut wird als “Satzverhältnis” definiert, vgl. 2.4) zeigt die mangelnde Berücksichtigung der Phrasen im Aufbau des Satzes. In der Nachfolge wird außerdem nicht ausreichend zwischen syntaktischer Funktion und Konstituente unterschieden, obwohl gerade bei Becker die Begriffe Satzverhältnis und Faktor eine solche Unterscheidung implizieren. Von Becker wurde indessen der Terminus Attribut konsequent als Gliedteilbenennung für die substantivische Phrase und deren funktionale Synonymie angewandt, z. B. für des Königs und königliche in das Schloß des Königs, das königliche Schloß (Glinz 1947: 53; Forsgren 1985: 66, 94f.; Knobloch 1989 b: 92). Es sollte bis ins 20. Jahrhundert dauern, bevor die Bedeutung der Phrasen im Aufbau des Satzes allgemein erkannt wurde und diese Erkenntnis allmählich Eingang in die grammatische Literatur finden sollte (Sütterlin 21910: 314⫺343; Ries 21927: 52⫺54; 1928). Einen wichtigen Schritt bedeuteten die Analyseverfahren (vgl. 3.3) des amerikanischen Strukturalismus zur Ermittlung der sog. unmittelbaren und mittelbaren Konstituenten des Satzes (Immediate Constituents, IC-Analyse, s. Wells 1947: 188; Harris 1951: 15f.; Fries 1957: 64f.; Grewendorf et al. 21989: 156⫺171), die auch versuchsweise zur Abgrenzung der Wortarten (Formklassen) verwendet wurden (vgl. Fries 1957: 74f.).

Admoni, Wladimir (41982), Der deutsche Sprachbau. München: Beck [11960]

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69. Wortart, syntaktische Funktion, syntaktische Kategorie Grammatik von Karl Ferdinand Becker bis Konrad Duden 1830⫺1880. Münster: Nodus ˚ ke (1992 b): “Zum Problem des Forsgren, Kjell-A Satzbegriffes im Deutschen”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (Tübingen) 114, 3⫺27 Fries Charles C. (1957), The Structure of English: An Introduction to the Construction of English Sentences. London: Longman & Green [11952] Glinz, Hans (1947), Geschichte und Kritik der Lehre von den Satzgliedern im Deutschen. Bern: Francke Glinz, Hans (21961), Die innere Form des Deutschen. Bern: Francke [11952] Grewendorf, Günther & Hamm, Fritz & Sternefeld, Wolfgang (21989), Sprachliches Wissen. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp [11987] Gulyga, Elena (1978), “Die Satzgliedtheorie und die Hypotaxe”. In: Helbig, Gerhard (Hrsg.), Beiträge zu Problemen der Satzglieder. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie, 56⫺78 Haftka, Brigitta (1981), “Reihenfolgebezeichnungen im Satz (Topologie)”. In: Heidolph, Karl Erich (Hrsg.), Grundzüge einer Deutschen Grammatik. Berlin: Akademieverlag, 702⫺764 Harris, Zellig S. (1951), Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Haselbach, Gerhard (1966), Grammatik und Sprachstruktur: Karl Ferdinand Beckers Beitrag zur Allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft in historischer und systematischer Sicht. Berlin: de Gruyter Hays, David G. (1964), “Dependency Theory: A Formalism and Some Observations”. Language 40, 511⫺525 Helbig, Gerhard (1972), “Zu Problemen des Attributs in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (1)”. Deutsch als Fremdsprache 6, 332⫺341 Helbig, Gerhard (1982), Valenz ⫺ Satzglieder ⫺ semantische Kasus ⫺ Satzmodelle. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Jackendoff, Ray (1977), X-Bar-Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Jackendoff, Ray (1990), Semantic Structures. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Jellinek, Max Herman (1914), Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Grammatik von den Anfängen bis auf Adelung, Zweiter Halbband. Heidelberg: Winter Knobloch, Clemens (1988), Sprache als Technik der Rede. Frankfurt/M.: Lang (Theorie und Vermittlung der Sprache 9) Knobloch, Clemens (1989 a), “Die deutsche Schulgrammatik vor dem Erscheinen von Karl Ferdinand Beckers ‘Organism der Sprache’ (1827)”. In: Erlinger et al. (Hrsg.), 62⫺86

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Knobloch, Clemens (1989 b), “Einige Entwicklungstendenzen der deutschen Schulgrammatik nach Karl Ferdinand Becker”. Erlinger et al. (Hrsg.), 87⫺113 Lyons, John (1971), Einführung in die moderne Linguistik. München: Beck Mathesius, Vile´m (1929), “Zur Satzperspektive im modernen Englisch”. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 84.155 [NS 55], 202⫺210 Müller, Beat Louis (1985), Der Satz: Definition und sprachtheoretischer Status. Tübingen: Niemeyer Palmer, Frank R. (1994), Grammatical Roles and Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Paul, Hermann (1920), Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle/S.: Niemeyer Pleines, Jochen (1978), “Ist der Universalanspruch der Kasusgrammatik berechtigt?”. In: Abraham, Werner (Hrsg.), Valence, Semantic Case and Grammatical Relations. Papers Prepared for the Working Group “Valence and Semantic Case”, 12th International Congress of Linguistics, Univ. of Vienna Aug. 29 ⫺ Sept. 3, 1977. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Studies in Language Companion Series 1), 366⫺375 Ries, John (21927), Beiträge zur Grundlegung der Syntax, Bd. I: Was ist Syntax. Prag: Taussig und Taussig [11894; unveränd. reprograph. Nachdruck, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967] Ries, John (1928), Beiträge zur Grundlegung der Syntax, Bd. II: Zur Wortgruppenlehre. Prag: Taussig und Taussig Ries, John (1931), Beiträge zur Grundlegung der Syntax, Bd. III: Was ist ein Satz. Prag: Taussig und Taussig Sütterlin, Ludwig (21910), Die deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart. Leipzig: Voigtländer [11900] Stepanowa, M[arija] & Helbig, G[erhard] (21981), Wortarten und das Problem der Valenz in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut [11978] Tesnie`re, Lucien (1959), E´le´ments de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klincksieck Vesper, Wilhelm (1980), Deutsche Schulgrammatik im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer Weigand, Georg (1967), Karl Ferdinand Becker ⫺ ein hessischer Pädagoge und Sprachphilosoph des 19. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt/M.: Diesterweg Welke, Klaus, (21994), Funktionale Satzperspektive: Ansätze und Probleme der funktionalen Grammatik. Münster: Nodus [11992] Wells, Rulon S. (1947), “Immediate Constituents”. Language 23, 81⫺118

Kjell-A˚ke Forsgren, Högskolan i Skövde (Schweden)

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70. Kriterien für die Definition von Wortarten 1. Terminologische Vorbemerkung 2. Die traditionelle Praxis der Wortartenklassifizierung 3. Kritik am synkretistischen Charakter der Wortarten 4. Kriterienreine Wortartensysteme 5. Kriterien hierarchisierende Wortartensysteme 6. Wortartensysteme auf logischer Grundlage 7. Die X-Bar-Theorie: Abschaffung der Wortarten? 8. Theoretische Probleme 9. Zentrum und Peripherie: Die Wortarten als Prototypen 10. Semantische Theorien 11. Wortarten und Valenz 12. Offene Fragen und Schlußfolgerungen 13. Zitierte Literatur

1.

Terminologische Vorbemerkung

Jede Beschäftigung mit Graphetik/Graphematik, Morphologie, Syntax oder Semantik der lexikalischen Einheiten einer Sprache gibt Anlaß, Klassen zu postulieren. Als lexikalische Grundeinheiten werden etwa klassifiziert: dt. Wörter, engl. words, frz. les mots, ital. le parole, span. las palabras, russ. slove. Das Ergebnis der Klassifikation sind verschiedene Klassen, die zusammengenommen eine grammatische Kategorie bilden: dt. Wortarten / Wortklassen / Lexemklassen, engl. parts of speech / word-classes, frz. les parties du discours / les classes de mots, ital. le parti del discorso, span. las partes de la oracioń, russ. cˇasti recˇi.

Gewonnen und definiert werden die verschiedenen Klassen mit Hilfe von formalen und/ oder funktionalen und/oder inhaltlichen Eigenschaften bzw. Merkmalen, die jeweils einer Teilmenge der Gesamtmenge der lexikalischen Grundeinheiten als gleich, ähnlich oder äquivalent zugeschrieben werden. Solche Eigenschaften bzw. Merkmale sind z. B. kontinuierlich vs. nicht-kontinuierlich, flektierbar vs. unflektierbar, satzgliedfähig vs. nichtsatzgliedfähig, autosemantisch vs. synsemantisch. Terminologisch haben sich die Bezeichnungen der indoeuropäischen Sprachen für die Kategorie Wortart aus gr. me´ros lo´gou entwickelt, das als pars orationis ins Lateinische übersetzt wurde und ins Deutsche zunächst als tail der red bzw. Redeteil Eingang fand. Seit dem 17. Jahrhundert bürgert sich in der deutschen Grammatik zunächst daneben,

dann im 19. Jahrhundert allmählich überwiegend der Begriff Wortart ein. Als konkurrierende Bezeichnungen finden sich Wortklasse und ⫺ in Entsprechung zur Bezeichnung der zu klassifizierenden lexikalischen Grundeinheiten ⫺ Lexemklasse oder Formativklasse.

2.

Die traditionelle Praxis der Wortartenklassifizierung

Mit den Bezeichnungen Redeteil etc. wurden auch die Inhalte der griechisch-römischen Wortartenlehre übernommen. Art, Anzahl und Begründung der Redeteile bleiben von Dionysios Thrax (1. Jh. v. Chr.; vgl. Arens 21974: 23) über Donatus (4. Jh. n. Chr.) und Priscian (6. Jh. n. Chr.) bis ins gesamte Mittelalter nahezu konstant. Zur Entwicklung der Redeteile siehe genauer Art. 71, besonders zu Abb. 71.1; Robins (1966); Robins (1986). Trotz aller Kritik und alternativer Konzepte finden sich bis auf den heutigen Tag in allen traditionellen, vor allen in den für schulischen Unterricht bestimmten Grammatiken im wesentlichen die vor rund 2000 Jahren etablierten Wortarten: Nomen/Substantiv, Artikel, Pronomen, Adjektiv, Verb, Adverb, Präposition, Konjunktion, und Interjektion; daneben bisweilen: Numerale.

Die einzelnen Redeteile werden bei Dionysios Thrax folgendermaßen beschrieben (zitiert nach Arens 21974: 23⫺27): “Das Nomen ist ein kasusbildender Satzteil, welcher ein Ding, z. B. Stein, oder eine Handlung, z. B. Erziehung, bezeichnet und allgemein, z. B. Mensch, Pferd, und besonders, z. B. Sokrates, gebraucht wird. Das Nomen hat 5 verschiedene Begleiterscheinungen: Geschlecht, Art, Form, Zahl, Kasus […]. Das Verbum ist ein Satzteil ohne Kasus, empfänglich für Tempora, Personen, Numeri, Tätigkeit oder Leiden ausdrückend. [Oder nach Uhlig: “Das Verbum ist ein Satzteil ohne Kasus, der Tätigkeit oder Leiden ausdrückt und eine Aussage bezeichnet.”] Das Verbum hat 8 Begleiterscheinungen: Modi, Genera, Arten, Formen, Numeri, Personen, Tempora, Konjugationen […]. Das Partizip ist eine Wortart, die an den Eigenheiten des Verbums und des Nomens partizipiert. Es hat dieselben Begleiterscheinungen wie Nomen und Verbum, außer Personen und Modi […]. Der Artikel ist ein kasusbildender Satzteil, der dem Nomen voraus oder nachgestellt wird; der vorange-

70. Kriterien für die Definition von Wortarten stellte ist ho, der nachgestellte ho´s. Er hat 3 Begleiterscheinungen: Genus, Numerus, Kasus […]. [Hiernach werden also der Artikel ho und das Relativpronomen ho´s nicht unterschieden; die Verf.] Das Pronomen ist ein Satzteil, der anstelle eines Nomens gebraucht wird und bestimmte Personen bezeichnet. Es hat 6 Begleiterscheinungen: Person, Genus, Numerus, Kasus, Form, Art […]. Die Präposition ist eine Wortart, die vor alle Satzteile treten kann […]. Das Adverb ist ein flexionsloser Satzteil, der von einem Verbum ausgesagt oder ihm hinzugefügt wird […]. Die Konjunktion ist eine Wortart, die den Gedanken in einer bestimmten Ordnung zusammenbindet und die Lücke in der Rede ausfüllt […].”

Schon in den frühesten Beschreibungen bzw. Definitionen finden sich Subklassen, die bis heute fortleben, z. B. nomen appellativum (Gattungsname) und nomen proprium (Eigenname), bestimmter und unbestimmter Artikel, substantivisches und adjektivisches Pronomen, Personal-, Reflexiv-, Demonstrativ-, Possessiv-, Interrogativ-, Relativ- und Indefinitpronomen, attributives, prädikatives und adverbiales Adjektiv, Voll-, Hilfs- und reflexives Verb, parataktische und hypotaktische Konjunktion usw.

3.

Kritik am synkretistischen Charakter der Wortarten

Wenn auch die traditionelle Lehre von den Wortarten nicht nur lange Zeit im wesentlichen unangefochten, sondern bis in die jüngste Zeit hinein auch Kernstück der meisten Grammatiken geblieben ist, wurde schon früh bezweifelt, (a) daß eine dem Lateinischen nachgebildete Grammatik hinreiche, die deutsche, englische, französische etc. Sprache angemessen zu beschreiben (vgl. Art. 71), und (b) daß die bisher verwendeten Kriterien zur Einteilung und Begründung der Wortarten wegen ihrer Uneinheitlichkeit und Heterogenität überhaupt befriedigende Ergebnisse zeitigen könnten. So erklärt Valentinus Ickelsamer in seiner Teütschen Grammatica (1534: 1f.), zum Verfassen einer deutschen Grammatik reiche es nicht aus, die lateinischen Wortartenbegriffe ins Deutsche zu übersetzen. Vielmehr gehe es darum, das “gantze […] ampt und wesen” einer Wortart zu erfassen. Ickelsamers Plädoyer bleibt zunächst ⫺ auch für sein eigenes Werk ⫺ ohne Folgen. Im zweiten Band seiner Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Grammatik bis auf Adelung befindet Jellinek (1914: 73):

675 “Vor dem 18. Jh. ist von einem Interesse für die Theorie der Redeteile wenig zu merken. Mitunter fehlen Definitionen ganz, oder man schließt sich einfach an die landläufige lateinische Grammatik an.”

Sütterlin (1923: 97) urteilt über die traditionelle Wortarteneinteilung: “Diese Einteilung ist deswegen (wissenschaftlich) nicht haltbar, weil ihr kein einheitliches Einteilungsmerkmal zugrunde liegt. Bald ist die Form des Wortes, die Flexion oder Beugbarkeit, maßgebend (z. B. beim Verbum), bald die Bedeutung an sich (z. B. beim Pronomen und beim Zahlwort), bald seine Bedeutung und Verwendung im Satze (bei Adverb, Präposition, Konjunktion und Artikel).”

Während die meisten Grammatiker am überlieferten System der Wortarten festhalten, halten andere es für schlechthin unmöglich, eine begründete Klassifikation vorzunehmen. So meint Hermann Paul (1968 [1880]: 352): “Der Versuch ein streng logisch gegliedertes System aufzustellen, ist überhaupt undurchführbar.”

Im 20. Jahrhundert kommt es dann in der Auseinandersetzung der verschiedenen strukturalistischen Schulen mit der traditionellen Grammatik zu massiver Kritik an der üblichen Klassifizierung der Wortarten, die sich vor allem an folgenden Punkten entzündet: ⫺ Fehlende oder unzureichende Begründung der Zielsetzung einer Klassifikation. Werden mit der Klassifikation z. B. anwendungsbezogene (sprachdidaktische, computerlinguistische, lexikographische) Zwecke verfolgt, oder spielen sprachtheoretische Überlegungen die ausschlaggebende Rolle? ⫺ Unklarheit über den theoretischen Status der angestrebten Klassen; handelt es sich bei der Wortart z. B. um eine lexikalische oder um eine grammatische Kategorie; oder (wie Schmidt 41973: 54 meint) um eine “lexikalisch-grammatische Kategorie”? ⫺ ungenügende Präzisierung des lexikologischen bzw. grammatischen Modells, innerhalb dessen Wortarten etabliert werden; ⫺ funktionale Unbestimmtheit der einzelnen Kategorien bzw. der Kategorien insgesamt; ⫺ definitorische Unklarheit über die formale und inhaltliche Beschaffenheit der sprachlichen Einheiten, die klassifiziert werden; ⫺ Heterogenität der Kriterien, die zur Klassifizierung verwendet werden, mit der Folge von Inkonsistenz des Systems;

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⫺ mangelhafte Bestimmtheit der einzelnen Klassen und die damit verbundene Unschärfe der Abgrenzung der einzelnen Klassen gegeneinander; ⫺ Sperrigkeit einiger lexikalischer Einheiten gegen eine Einordnung und die damit verbundene Notwendigkeit der Etablierung von Residualklassen; ⫺ fehlende Übertragbarkeit der für eine Sprache entwickelten Klassifikation auf andere Sprachen. “Man ist sich darüber einig, daß das System der Wortarten heterogen begründet und schwer anwendbar ist ⫺ nur: sowohl in der Sprachtheorie als auch in der Sprachbeschreibung kommt man nicht aus ohne dieses System. So ist das Verhältnis der Sprachwissenschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts zu den Wortarten kritisch und resignativ zugleich. Die Kritik gehört zum Diskurs der Abgrenzung gegen die traditionelle Sprachwissenschaft ⫺ in der Praxis muß man mit einer, wie immer modifizierten, Systematisierung des Lexikons in Wortklassen arbeiten.” (Ivo & Schlieben-Lange 1990: 10)

4.

Kriterienreine Wortartensysteme

Schon Sütterlin (1923: 97) bemängelte die vermischte Anwendung morphologischer, syntaktischer und semantischer Kriterien bei der Wortartenklassifikation und erklärte: “Man kann aber jeweils nur nach dem einen dieser drei Gesichtspunkte einteilen.” In seiner Grammatik führt er dies vor (s. 4.1). Außer Sütterlin haben es auch andere unternommen, nur mit Hilfe eines der drei Kriterien Wortartensysteme zu begründen. 4.1. Morphologisch begründete Wortartensysteme Das wichtigste und am häufigsten angewendete Kriterium ist jenes der Flexion. Entscheidend ist zunächst, ob ein Wort veränderbar ist oder nicht, sodann ob es sich komparieren läßt oder nicht, schließlich ob es dekliniert oder konjugiert wird. Sütterlin (1923: 97f.), der die Flektierbarkeit zum entscheidenden Kriterium erhebt, gelangt zu folgender Einteilung: “Nach ihrer Beugbarkeit sind die Wörter einzuteilen in: 1. Veränderliche. Nach der Art der Beugung zerfallen diese wieder in: 1. deklinierbare oder Nomina: ich, Baum, stark; und zwar sind diese wieder: 1. Substantive (und Pronomina); 2. Adjektive; 2. konjugierbare oder Zeitwörter (Verba): bin, gebe, rechne 2. Unveränderliche oder Partikeln: ei; dort, für, und, an.”

Bergenholtz (1976) unterteilt die Gesamtheit der Lexeme des Deutschen ebenfalls zunächst in unflektierbare und flektierbare. Wie bei Sütterlin bilden die unflektierbaren Lexeme insgesamt die Wortart Partikel. Die flektierbaren Lexeme werden im weiteren nach der Art ihrer Flexionsmorpheme unterschieden und definiert. So ergeben sich vier weitere Wortarten: Verb, Adjektiv, Substantiv und Nominal (Pronomen, Artikel). Dazu wurde kritisch angemerkt (Kupfer 1979: 21), daß das Kriterium “flektierbar vs. nicht-flektierbar” fälschlicherweise “meistens mit dem morphologischen Grundkriterium schlechthin gleichgesetzt” werde (vgl. z. B. Helbig 1977: 93; Bergenholtz & Schaeder 1977: 14). Kupfer (1979: 21f.) führt als weitere morphologische Kriterien das Kriterium der Wortbildung sowie das Kriterium der Reduplikation an. Der Wortbildung sei zuzurechnen, wenn etwa im Deutschen die Suffixe -heit, -keit, -ung begründen, daß derart suffigierte Wörter stets als Substantive klassifiziert würden. Soweit es sich zudem bei der Reduplikation nicht um eine Art der Flexion handele, gelte es, dieses Kriterium gesondert zu berücksichtigen, wie folgende Beispiele aus dem Indonesischen belegen sollen: orangorang (¤MenschenÅ; die Reduplikation ist hier Ausdruck der Pluralität), menari-nari (¤dauernd tanzenÅ; iterativ-durativer Aspekt). 4.2. Syntaktisch begründete Wortartensysteme Ein erstes syntaktisches Kriterium ist die syntaktische Funktion. Die lexikalischen Einheiten bzw. Wörter werden aufgrund der “Verwendung im Satze” (Sütterlin 1923: 98) klassifiziert, d. h. aufgrund der Funktionen, die sie allein oder in Kombination mit Wörtern anderer Wortarten innerhalb größerer Einheiten wahrnehmen können, etwa als Satzglieder. Ein weiteres syntaktisches Kriterium ist die Position. Die lexikalischen Einheiten bzw. Wörter werden nach der Stellung klassifiziert, die sie in den jeweils ranghöheren syntaktischen Einheiten einnehmen, also etwa danach, ob sie stets an erster, mittlerer oder letzter Stelle vorkommen. Das Kriterium der Position korreliert mit denjenigen der Substitution (Ersetzung) und der Distribution (Verteilung). Danach gehören alle lexikalischen Einheiten zu ein und derselben Wortart, die auf einer bestimmten Position innerhalb einer bestimmten syntaktischen Umgebung für ein-

70. Kriterien für die Definition von Wortarten

ander substituierbar sind. Die auf diese Weise gewonnenen Klassen werden bisweilen auch form-classes (Bloomfield 1973: 185 [11933]) bzw. “Formklassen” oder “word classes” (Crystal 1967) bzw. “Wortklassen” (Helbig & Buscha 81984: 19) genannt, um sie gegen die herkömmlichen Begriffe Wortarten bzw. parts of speech abzusetzen. Rein distributiv wird z. B. von Helbig & Buscha (81984) für das Deutsche argumentiert. Als ein weiteres syntaktisches Kriterium gilt die Kombinationsfähigkeit einer lexikalischen Einheit. Gemeint ist das, was auch “collocability”, “Fügungspotenz” (Admoni 31970: 61), “colligations” (Simon 1953; 1958), “Verbindungsfähigkeit” (Dragunov 1960: 1) oder “grammatische Kombinierbarkeit” (Pospelov 1977: 149) genannt wird. Über die Kombinationsfähigkeit einer lexikalischen Einheit mit anderen lexikalischen Einheiten hinaus fällt hierunter auch diejenige einzelner lexikalischer Einheiten mit sog. gebundenen Formen bzw. Morphemen. Die Berücksichtigung dieser Art von Kombinationsfähigkeit spielt vor allem bei der Untersuchung flexionsarmer bzw. flexionsloser Sprachen (wie etwa des Chinesischen) eine wichtige Rolle. Während Hermann (1928: 5) mit Hilfe syntaktischer Kriterien vier Wortarten unterscheidet, umfaßt das ebenfalls syntaktisch begründete, aus der Anwendung der Kriterien Position, Distribution und Funktion resultierende Wortartensystem von Bergenholtz & Schaeder (1977) insgesamt 51 Wortarten. Streng syntaktisch verfahren bei der Gewinnung und Definition von Wortarten auch Helbig & Buscha (81984: 19). Wortarten werden von Helbig & Buscha gefunden, gegeneinander abgegrenzt und definiert “durch den Stellenwert im Satz, durch die Substituierbarkeit in einem gegebenen Satzrahmen, durch das Vorkommen in einer bestimmten Umgebung, durch die syntaktische Funktion oder Position im Satz.”

Auf diese Weise kommen sie zu insgesamt zehn Wortklassen: Verben, Substantivwörter, Adjektive, Adverbien, Artikelwörter, Präpositionen, Konjunktionen, Partikeln, Modalwörter, Satzäquivalente, die jeweils zusätzlich morphologisch und semantisch beschrieben und bisweilen entsprechend subklassifiziert werden. Helbig & Buscha (81984: 19): “Wenn das syntaktische Prinzip bei der Einteilung der Wortklassen gewählt wurde, bedeutet das natürlich keine Leugnung der morphologischen und

677 semantischen Merkmale, im Gegenteil: ein Teil der Wortarten hat zusätzlich morphologische und semantische Kennzeichen.”

4.3. Semantisch begründete Wortartensysteme Semantisch begründete Wortartensysteme operieren mit den verschiedenen Beziehungsmöglichkeiten zwischen Wörtern und Sachen. Ein erstes Kriterium stellt die Sachbedeutung dar, die auch als lexikalisch-denotative Bedeutung bezeichnet wird. Es wird hierbei angenommen, daß sich Wörter nach der Art ihrer Zuordnung zu bestimmten Sachverhalten der außersprachlichen Welt klassifizieren lassen. So heißt es etwa bei Jung (1966: 170f.): “Die Welt der Dinge findet ihren sprachlichen Niederschlag in den ¤DingwörternÅ (den Substantiven); die Kennzeichnung von Eigenschaften, Merkmalen und Urteilen übernehmen die ¤EigenschaftswörterÅ (die Adjektive); Tätigkeiten und Vorgänge werden durch ¤TätigkeitswörterÅ (Verben) ausgedrückt, Beziehungen durch ¤UmstandswörterÅ (Adverbien), ¤VerhältniswörterÅ (Präpositionen) und ¤BindewörterÅ (Konjunktionen).”

Auch wenn dies die sprechenden deutschen Benennungen suggerieren, ist nicht erst seit Kaznelson (1974: 171f.) hinreichend bekannt, daß es keine derartige Beziehung zwischen Wörtern und Sachen gibt. Als ein weiteres semantisches Kriterium läßt sich dasjenige der verallgemeinerten abstrahierten Bedeutung bestimmen. Admoni (31970: 60) spricht von einem “verallgemeinerten abstrahierten Bedeutungsgehalt”, Erben (1968: 39) von “kategorialer Grundbedeutung”, W. Schmidt (41973: 46) von einer “begrifflich kategorialen Prägung”, Glinz (1957: 28) von einer “geistigen Grundgestalt”, Sandmann (1962: 203) von “Bedeutungsperspektiven”, Hempel (1962: 217) von “Bedeutungsweisen”, Tichonov (1968: 9) von “klassifizierender Bedeutung”, Charitonova (1977: 29) von “kategorialer Semantik”. Wortarten gelten demnach als “Kategorien der Welterfassung” (Hempel 1962: 218) oder als die “sprachlichen Formen der begrifflichkategorialen Widerspiegelung der objektiven Realität” (Schmidt 41967: 51). Sie ergeben sich im Unterschied zur direkten Zuordnung von Wörtern und Sachen demnach “nicht mehr unmittelbar aus der Sachbedeutung der Wörter, sondern aus der verallgemeinerten Bedeutung, wie sie im Prozeß des menschlichen Denkens entsteht” (Helbig 1977: 94). Wortarten werden damit nach Sandmann

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(1962: 192) zum “sprachlichen Ausdruck für die Kategorien in unserem Bewußtsein […], in die der denkende Geist des Menschen die Erscheinungen einordnet.” Damit werden die Wortarten annähernd gleichgesetzt mit den Kategorien des Denkens. Gegen diese Art der Beziehungssetzung wendet Helbig (1977: 96) ein, “daß es keineswegs sicher ist, ob alle Wortarten einen solchen ¤verallgemeinerten BedeutungsgehaltÅ haben; zumindest ist es den Vertretern dieses Konzepts bisher nicht gelungen, über vage und impressionistische Bemerkungen hinaus ihn präzise festzulegen”. Fachgeschichtlich geht der Gedanke, die Wortarten stünden für aktive Gliederungs- und Auffassungsprinzipien unserer Erfahrung, wenigstens auf die spätmittelalterliche Lehre von den modi significandi zurück (vgl. Art. 71).

5.

Kriterien hierarchisierende Wortartensysteme

Auf der einen Seite ist bei einer Reihe von Wörtern (grammatischen, synsemantischen bzw. Funktionswörtern) zumindest strittig, ob sie einen (eigenen) semantischen Gehalt besitzen. Auf der anderen Seite deklariert eine morphologische Klassifikation alle unflektierbaren Wörter unterschiedslos als Partikeln, während sich alle Wörter je nach ihrer Verwendung im Satz nach positionalen, di-

stributionellen, funktionalen Kriterien zu Klassen zusammenfassen lassen. Daher wurden schon frühzeitig Wortartensysteme vorgeschlagen, die die verschiedenen Kriterien kombinieren. In solchen Mischsystemen werden zwei oder mehr Kriterien für alle in Frage kommenden Klassenbildungen insgesamt oder in Auswahl, gleichzeitig oder sukzessiv, gewichtet oder ungewichtet bzw. in bestimmter oder unbestimmter Rangfolge verwendet. Während die meisten Mischsysteme die Kriterien in wechselnder Auswahl, ungleichmäßig und in unerkennbarer Reihenfolge, d. h. letztlich beliebig verwenden, gibt es durchaus Versuche von Wortartenklassifikation, bei denen etwa zwei Kriterien in klar geschiedener, geordneter und gewichteter Weise eingesetzt werden. So findet sich z. B. in dem von Flämig entwickelten, verschiedentlich modifizierten, zuletzt in Heidolph et al. (1981: 491) vorgestellten System eine gezielte Verwendung zunächst morphologischer und dann syntaktischer Kriterien. Das Ergebnis sind acht Wortarten (flektierbar: Verb, Substantiv, Adjektiv, Pronomen; unflektierbar: Adverb, Präposition, Konjunktion, Partikel), die nach dem syntaktischen Kriterium noch einmal gegliedert werden in: “Satzgliedfähige (Hauptwortklassen, relativ offen): Verb, Substantiv, Adjektiv, Pronomen, Adverb; Nichtsatzgliedfähige (Nebenwortklassen, relativ geschlossen: (Modalwort), Präposition, Konjunktion, Partikel, (Interjektion).”

“Wort”

flektierbar konjugierbar Verb

nicht flektierbar

nicht konjugierbar = deklinierbar

artikelfähig Substantiv

mit Satzglied-/ Gliedteilwert Adverb

nicht artikelfähig komparierbar Adjektiv

ohne Satzglied-/ Gliedteilwert Fügteil

nicht komparierbar Pronomen

mit Kasusforderung Präposition

nicht Fügteil Partikel ohne Kasusforderung Konjunktion

Abb. 70.1

Ein Wortartensystem, bei dem alle drei Kriterien angewendet werden, stammt von Moskal’skaja (21975; 1977). Übergeordnetes Prinzip der Zuordnung eines Wortes zu einer bestimmten Wortart ist für sie der “Charakter seines Funktionierens in der Sprache”. Das

“Funktionieren in der Sprache” ist abhängig von (a) der Allgemeinbedeutung des Wortes (⫽ semantisches Kriterium), (b) seinem Fügungswert, d. h. der Distribution (⫽ syntaktisches Kriterium), (c) seiner morphologischen Prägung (⫽ morphologisches Kriterium). Er-

679


kel, Hilfsverb, unter denen im Vergleich zu anderen Systemen als eigene Wortarten Kopula und Hilfsverb besonders ins Auge fallen.

gebnis dieser Klassifikation sind zehn Wortarten: Substantiv, Verb, Adjektiv, Adverb, Präposition, Konjunktion, Partikel, Kopula, Arti-

Gesamtwortschatz nichtsatzwertige Wortklassen

satzwertige Wortklassen autosemantisch Modalwort

synsemantisch Interjektion

autosemantisch und satzgliedfähig

eigentliche Wortarten benennend

verweisend Pronomen

Gegenstandswörter

VorArtgangs- wörter wörter

Substantiv

Verb

Umstandswörter

Adjektiv Adverb

synsemantisch und nicht satzgliedfähig

Funktionswörter

zählend Numerale

mit syntaktischer Funktion

Verhältniswort

Bindewort

Füllwort

Präposition

KonPartikel junktion

mit morphologischer Funktion

prädikatsprägendes Wort

im Bereich des Substantivs

im Bereich des Verbs

Kopula

Artikel

Hilfsverb

Abb. 70.2

Obwohl Moskal’skaja zunächst von einer Gleichwertigkeit der Komponenten ausgeht, spielt das morphologische Kriterium so gut wie keine Rolle. Hingegen nimmt das syntaktische Kriterium (satzwertig vs. nichtsatzwertig, satzgliedfähig vs. nicht satzgliedfähig) den ersten und das semantische Kriterium (autosemantisch vs. synsemantisch, benennend, verweisend, zählend) den zweiten Rang ein.

6.

Wortartensysteme auf logischer Grundlage

Generell gilt, daß die oben dargestellten Kriterien auf jeweils unterschiedlichen sprachlichen Ebenen operieren, die in den Einzelsprachen unterschiedlich ausgeprägt sind. Morphologische Kriterien sind nur für entsprechend ausgestattete Sprachen tauglich und langue-basiert. Syntaktische Kriterien sind hingegen parole-basiert und lassen sich ⫺ in unterschiedlicher Weise ⫺ für alle Sprachen bestimmen. Für die semantischen Kriterien gilt, daß sie sich zwar auf alle Sprachen anwenden lassen, in Abhängigkeit von der jeweiligen Theorie aber auf die langue und/oder die parole bezogen werden.

Bisweilen zu den semantischen Kriterien gerechnet, bisweilen auch von ihnen unterschieden (vgl. z. B. Helbig 1977: 99) werden logische Kriterien der Wortartenbestimmung und -einteilung, die insgesamt auf ein universelles, einzelsprachenunabhängiges Wortartensystem zielen: Wörter werden über gängige Wortartengrenzen hinweg aufgrund gemeinsamer Funktionen in logischen Urteilen klassifiziert. Diese Art der Klassifizierung wurde und wird im Rahmen und zum Zwecke sprachtypologischer Untersuchungen angewendet (vgl. Naes 1962; Kaznelson 1974). Der konsequenteste Versuch einer Wortartenklassifikation mit Hilfe logischer Kriterien stammt von Brøndal (1948 [11928]), der die aristotelischen Kategorien Relation, Substanz, Qualität und Quantität als hinreichend für die Bestimmung und Einteilung von Wortarten in jedweder Sprache ansieht. Brøndal setzt die aristotelischen Kategorien auf folgende Weise zu sprachlichen in Beziehung: ⫺ Relation (oder Verhältnis) ⫺ Relator (r) ⫺ Substanz (oder Gegenstand) ⫺ Relatum (R)

680 ⫺ Qualität (oder Eigenschaft) ⫺ Deskriptor (d) ⫺ Quantität (oder Basis) ⫺ Deskriptum (D) Durch einfache oder kombinierte Zuordnung zu diesen Kategorien ergeben sich für ihn daraus abstrakte, konkrete, komplexe und undifferenzierte Klassen: ⫺ Abstrakte Klassen: r: Präposition, R: Proprium, d: Adverb, D: Numerale ⫺ Konkrete Klassen: Rd: Nomina, rd: Verben, RD: Pronomina, rD: Konjunktionen, rR: Possessiva, dD: Reflexiva ⫺ Komplexe Klassen: Drd: abgeleitete Verben, DRd: abgeleitete Nomina, rDR: abgeleitete Pronomina, rdR: Verbalnomina ⫺ Undifferenzierte Klassen: rRdD: Interjektionen Das von Brøndal vorgestellte (und am Beispiel des Französischen demonstrierte) System hat verschiedene Vorzüge: es ist einzelsprachunabhängig, überaus komplex und variabel. Einen ähnlichen Rückgriff auf logisch-deduktive Traditionen findet man auch bei Schmid (1970). Für ihn ist jedes Zeichen spezifizierbar in den drei (der Morrisschen Semiotik entlehnten) Dimensionen: (a) Beziehung zu anderen Zeichen (Syntax), (b) Beziehung zum Bezeichneten (Semantik), (c) Beziehung zu den Parametern der Sprechsituation (Pragmatik), und außerdem noch nach Grad und Art seiner Autonomie. Gemeint ist hier mit Autonomie Grad und Art der Autosemantie, die ein Wort konstitutiv machen kann für einen Satz oder ein Syntagma (Phrase) (vgl. Knobloch 1990). In jeder dieser vier Dimensionen muß ein Lexem/Wort binär mit [⫹] oder [⫺] charakterisiert werden, so daß eine allgemeine Matrix mit 16 logischen Merkmalsmustern entsteht. Diese Matrix bildet gewissermaßen das allgemeine Schema der Wortarten. Von den dort enthaltenen Möglichkeiten machen die Einzelsprachen unterschiedlichen Gebrauch. Die verschiedenen “Füllungen” des Schemas W ⫽ [⫾SEM, ⫾SYN, ⫾PRAG, ⫾AUT] werden nun grammatischen Kategorien zugeteilt, derart daß zwar die traditionelle Einteilung als im wesentlichen gut begründet erkennbar bleibt, aber nicht einfach bestätigt wird. Das finite Vollverb hat die Matrix [1,1,1,1]: Es hat lexikalische Semantik und syntaktische Funktion, die pragmatische Veranke-

X. Wortarten

rung der Rede in der Sprechsituation (mittels Personenendungen) gehört zu seinem Geschäft, es kann selbständig Sätze bzw. Phrasen/Syntagmen bilden. Diese letztere Fähigkeit geht dem finiten Hilfsverb ab, weshalb es mit der Matrix [1,1,1,0] erscheint (was gleich die Frage provoziert, ob man Verben wie dt. sein, haben, werden als [⫹SEM] klassifizieren kann, während z. B. Präpositionen und Konjunktionen mit [-SEM] klassifiziert werden). Die Klasse der Substantive wird dargestellt durch die Matrix [1,1,0,1]. Vom Verb unterscheidet sie die fehlende pragmatische Situationsverankerung. Der pragmatischen Einbindung der Substantive dient gegebenenfalls die Wortart Artikel, in der Matrix darstellbar durch [0,1,1,0], definiert also in den Dimensionen Syntax und Situationsverankerung, nicht definiert in den Dimensionen Semantik und Autonomie. Die Klasse der Adjektive wird dargestellt durch [1,1,0,0]. Ihre Mitglieder sind, im Unterschied zu den Substantiven, nicht autonom. Um autonom zu werden, müssen Adjektive verbalisiert oder substantiviert werden. Die Adverben zerfallen in syntagmenbildende [⫹AUT] und in sog. Wortadverbien (wie sehr, besonders etc.) mit [⫺AUT]. Es fragt sich freilich, warum die ganze Klasse, die man doch mit Recht als eine der wenigen streng syntaktisch definierbaren ansprechen kann, als [⫺SYN] charakterisiert wird. Bei allen Sprachtheoretikern, die mit Varianten eines Systems von “Rängen” im Satz arbeiten (Jespersen, Kurylowicz, Tesnie`re, Kaznelson, Arutjunowa), erscheinen Adverben als Wörter, die “Merkmale von Merkmalen” bezeichnen, sich modifizierend auf Merkmalswörter (Nichtnomina) beziehen (Verb, Adjektiv, Adverb). Überhaupt schwankt die Bedeutung, die dem Merkmal [SYN] zugeteilt wird. Substantive werden als [⫹SYN] gekennzeichnet, weil sie ein Kasussystem haben, das syntaktische Relationen repräsentiert (Schmid 1970: 11), Präpositionen, weil sie am Ausdruck der syntaktischen Relationen der Substantive teilhaben. (Man vergleiche zum Problem der syntaktischen Charakterisierung der Hauptwortart auch die klassische Arbeit von Sandmann 1962 [1940].) Schmid (1970) entwickelt aus seiner Matrix noch den Gedanken einer begrenzten Homologie zwischen dem Wortartensystem und den Satzkonstituenten (Phrasentypen) auf der einen, den grammatischen Morphemen auf der anderen Seite. Für alle Phrasen-

681


typen wird die Matrixposition [AUT] redundant, weil ja die Satz- bzw. Phrasenfähigkeit hier Definitionsmerkmal ist. Für die grammatischen Morpheme wird diese Position ebenfalls redundant, da sie nie phrasenfähig sind und sein können. Aus nahezu den gleichen Gründen ist für die Phrasen [SEM] immer positiv, für die Morpheme immer negativ.

7.

Die X-Bar-Theorie: Abschaffung der Wortarten?

Thema der X-Bar-Syntax ist das Verhältnis der hauptsächlichen grammatischen Kategorien (Verb, Nomen, Adjektiv, Präposition) zu den Syntagmen, in denen sie dominant vorkommen. Für die Wortartenlehre einschlägig und interessant ist die Frage nach der relativen Äquivalenz zwischen Kategorien und “ihren” Syntagmen und nach den Dominanzverhältnissen zwischen den Ebenen der Kategorie und des Syntagmas: Nomen ⫺ Nominalgruppe, Verb ⫺ Verbalgruppe etc. Hat man die Syntagmen als Entfaltung der kategorialen Potentiale der Wörter zu verstehen, oder sind die Kategorien umgekehrt der untere Grenzfall deszendenter Satz- und letztlich Äußerungsfunktionen? Die verschiedenen Versionen der X-Bar-Theorie bewegen sich im Rahmen dieser Alternative (für einen Überblick Cann 1994). Die Wortartentheorie im Rahmen der XBar-Syntax versucht keine differentielle Definition der Wortarten: Die Hauptwortarten gelten als unanalysierbare Primitive und werden in einer Matrix “durch sich selbst” notiert (Verb ⫽ [⫹verbal, ⫺nominal] etc.). Ziel der X-bar-Theorie ist es, ein universelles Format für kontextfreie Phrasenstrukturen anzugeben. Um wirklich allgemein sein zu können, muß dieses Format nicht nur die Verschiedenheit der Sprachen, sondern auch die Verschiedenheit der Wortarten einer Sprache als heads von Phrasen nivellieren. Wenn alle syntaktisch komplexen Gebilde auf das gleiche universale Schema abgebildet werden können, dann ist die syntaktische Verschiedenheit der Wortarten (als heads unterschiedlicher Phrasen) in der Theorie dementiert oder wenigstens aufs Oberflächliche abgeschwächt. Gleichzeitig hat gegenüber der “alten” generativen Grammatik ein radikaler Perspektivenwechsel stattgefunden: Gewann diese die Phrasen (NP, VP etc.) deszendent aus der

Analyse des Satzes, so gelten die Phrasen jetzt aszendent als (universell geordnete) Projektionen ihrer lexikalischen heads. In der Anfangsphase der X-bar-Theorie (Jackendoff 1977) galten Verb, Nomen, Adjektiv und Präposition (manchmal auch Adverb) als mögliche lexikalische heads syntaktischer Phrasen (vgl. auch Emonds 1986). Der Parallelismus der von diesen Kategorien dominierten Strukturen sollte darin bestehen, daß auf der ersten Projektionsebene (X⬘) strikt subkategorisierte Argumente, auf der zweiten (X⬙) restriktive modifier und auf der dritten (X⵮) nichtrestriktive modifier stehen können (vgl. Jackendoff 1977: 57). In diese drei Klassen wurde dann alles aufgeteilt, was von den “kopffähigen” Kategorien syntaktisch dominiert werden kann (vgl. für die Nominalphrase z. B. Vater 1985). Die Dreizahl der Projektionsebenen galt als universal. Heute geht man in der X-Bar-Theorie davon aus, daß syntaktische Phrasen nicht von ihren lexikalischen heads, sondern von sog. funktionalen heads dominiert werden. Für die Nominalphrase ist DET ein solcher funktionaler head (vgl. Haider 1988). Die lexikalischen Kategorien rücken in die zweite Linie. Unter den funktionalen heads versteht man offenbar die (latenten und manifesten) Elemente der Satz- und Wortgruppenstruktur, die der kommunikativen Aktualisierung der Nominationen, Phrasen und Propositionen dienen (vgl. Arutjunowa 1975). Die Tatsache, daß diese Kategorien weder eine konsistente morphosyntaktische Repräsentanz noch eine global strukturierende Auswirkung auf Phrasen haben (wie die lexikalischen Kategorien), macht den Aufbau einer Wortartenlehre auf Grundlage dieser Kategorien problematisch.

8.

Theoretische Probleme

8.1. Problemaufriß “Das” Wortartenproblem steht in Wirklichkeit für ein ganzes Problembündel, dessen Verzweigungen beinahe alle grammatischen Kernbereiche berühren. Wir unterscheiden hier drei Problembereiche: (a) Das empirisch-deskriptive Problem der “Klassifizierung der ungeheueren Masse von Wörtern, über welche jede Sprache verfügt” (Admoni 31970: 51). Dieses Problem stellt sich für jede Sprache neu und anders. Die angewandten Kriterien sollen explizit, schlüssig, widerspruchsfrei und der Gegenstand, auf den sie angewandt werden, (Le-

682 xeme, Wortformen) klar sein. Ansonsten spielen Zweckmäßigkeitserwägungen, Ziel und projektierter Nutzen der grammatischen Beschreibung etc. eine Rolle. Das Klassifizierungsproblem betrifft die Subsumtion vorgegebener Einheiten unter Rubriken und ist relativ unabhängig von (b) der theoretisch-begrifflichen Explikation und Fundierung der Wortartbegriffe (vgl. Coseriu 1987). Die Frage, ob das Element X in einer gegebenen Sprache ein “Substantiv” ist oder sein soll, unterscheidet sich wesentlich von der Frage danach, was denn die “Substantivität” von Substantiven eigentlich ausmacht. Von beiden Fragen wesentlich verschieden, obwohl auch mit beiden verbunden, ist schließlich die Frage nach (c) der Universalität bzw. der einzelsprachlichen Bindung der Wortartkategorien. Wenn es so etwas wie kategoriale Bedeutungen gibt, dann unterliegt ihre Realisierung in morpho-syntaktischen Schemata von bestimmter Art und Technik starker einzelsprachlicher Variation. Ebenso ⫺ und das ist für die Wortartenfrage besonders folgenreich ⫺ unterscheiden sich die Sprachen auch nach Art und Technik der Verbindung von lexikalischen und kategorialen Bedeutungen in den Einheiten des Lexikons bzw. in den Einheiten des Verlaufs und der Verkettung. So sind, um ein Beispiel zu nennen, im Deutschen die auf der Basis derselben lexikalischen Bedeutung gebildeten Lexeme Fieber, fieber-n und fiebr-ig schon als Lexeme kategorial unterschieden durch distinkte morphologische Formparadigmen, zu denen sie jeweils gehören, während z. B. das englische Lexem open in den drei Sätzen: (1) the door is open (2) open the door! (3) he went out into the open erst in der Ebene des Verlaufs, in der syntaktischen Konstellation ausdifferenziert wird; das reine und virtuelle Lexem {open} kann man nicht verbindlich einer Kategorie zuordnen. Wenn man die Dinge so versteht wie Coseriu (1987: 34), dann handelt es sich hier um die idiomatische Realisierung der Kategorien in identifizierbaren einzelsprachlichen Schemata, nicht um die Kategorien selbst. Wenn die Frage auftaucht, ob eine Sprache überhaupt Wortarten hat, und wenn ja: welche, dann kann man fast sicher sein, daß es sich um eine Sprache handelt, in der die kategorialen Bedeutungen (oder Funktionen) nicht fest (z. B. durch distinkte morphologi-

X. Wortarten

sche Paradigmen), sondern nur fallweise und in der Ebene des Verlaufs mit den lexikalischen Bedeutungen verbunden sind bzw. verbunden werden. Paradebeispiel für eine solche Spache ist immer das klassische Chinesisch. Die uns wohl vertrauteste Form einer Klassifikation der Lexeme mit hilfsweiser Feindifferenzierung nach syntaktischen Verlaufsqualitäten kann das Wortartenproblem überhaupt nur dann annehmen, wenn kategoriale und lexikalische Bedeutungen auf der Basis lexemklassenspezifischer morphologischer Formschemata relativ fest miteinander verbunden sind, wenigstens auf der Ebene der Hauptwortarten. Wir sprechen von kategorialen “Bedeutungen” nur mangels brauchbarer terminologischer Alternativen. Auf keinen Fall sind die theoretischen Implikationen mitgemeint, die etwa beim terminologisierten Gebrauch dieses Ausdrucks (z. B. Admoni; s. 4.3) entstehen. Es ist nur gemeint, daß es sich um etwas Grammatisches und von den lexikalischen Bedeutungen grundsätzlich Verschiedenes handelt. 8.2. Wortarten als theoretisch-begriffliches Problem Das Programm von Kaznelson (1974) ist die Reduktion des Unwiederholbar-Individuellen in der morphosyntaktischen Ausdruckstechnik der Einzelsprachen bis auf das Gerüst der begrifflich-universellen (nicht der empirischallgemeinen) für jede Sprache notwendigen kategorialen Oppositionen und Merkmale. Diese gelten für begründet in den Notwendigkeiten der sprachlichen Kommunikation und des sprachlichen Denkens. Den letzten Grund der grammatisch-semantischen Klassifikation der Wörter bilden für Kaznelson (1974: 177) zwei Merkmalsoppositionen, “zwei Gliederungsprinzipien, die zwei sich kreuzende Mengen bilden”: Nach dem ersten Gliederungsprinzip, der Art der Bezeichnung, zerfallen die Wörter in poiotetische, wasbestimmte (Bühler 1934), benennende auf der einen, hinweisende (deiktische) auf der anderen Seite. Nach dem zweiten Gliederungsprinzip, der Funktion der lexikalischen Bedeutungen bei der Zusammenstellung der Sinngehalte in der Rede, zerfallen die Bedeutungen der autosemantischen Wörter in nominale und nichtnominale. Die ersteren fungieren in der Verkettung primär in der Rolle des determinatum, die letzteren in der Rolle des determinans. Kaznelson nimmt aber nach dem von Kurylowicz (1973) entwickelten Prinzip der De-


683

rivationsverteilung an, daß die sekundären Funktionen einer Kategorie den primären Funktionen der entgegengesetzen entsprechen und umgekehrt. Die lexikalische Bedeutung der poiotetischen Wörter wird strikt unterschieden vom Sachwissen über das, was im Durchschnitt von ihnen bezeichnet wird. Als lexikalische Bedeutung genügt eine minimale abstrakte und distinktive Charakterisierung, die zur bloßen Identifikation des Gemeinten führt. Was immer die Sprecher sonst noch über das Bezeichnete wissen mögen, ist nicht mehr Sache der Sprachtechnik. Die weitere Differenzierung und die morphosyntaktische Ausprägung der nichtnominalen Bedeutungen ist einzelsprachlich. Relativ häufig gilt, daß primär prädikative und primär attributive explicans-Wörter (wiederum per Derivationsverteilung) eine Form von Verb-Adjektiv-Distinktion ausbilden (Kaznelson 1974: 197). Kaznelson unterscheidet noch einmal zwei Ebenen der grammatischsemantischen Beziehung: die Ebene der faktischen Verkettung autosemantischer Wörter (hier ist explicandum : explicans die primär relevante kategoriale Opposition) und die Ebene des syntaktischen Potentials der Wörter außerhalb der Verkettung (hier ist die Opposition substantielle Bedeutungen : Merkmalsbedeutungen primär). Wenn wir Kaznelson richtig verstehen, dann ist hier so etwas wie die (letztlich lexikalisch fundierte) Bindefähigkeit und Bindebedürftigkeit der Wörter auf Lexemebene gemeint, eine Art logisch-semantische Valenz. An der traditionellen semantischen Fundierung der Wortarten bemängelt er, daß sie sich auf Wörter bezogen hat und nicht auf lexikalische Bedeutungen bzw. auf deren grammatische Semantik. Die einzelsprachlichen Wortartensysteme haben also einen universellen Kern in den Gesetzen der Kommunikation und des Sprachdenkens:

rien nicht im Sprechen gesucht wird (wie bei Coseriu 1987), nicht in der notwendigen Beziehung der Sprachtechniken auf Kommunikation und Sprachdenken (wie bei Kaznelson 1974), sondern in der Psychologie des kognitiven Apparates. Das birgt die Gefahr der Vermengung von allgemein-kognitiven und spezifisch sprachlichen Kategorisierungsund Schematisierungsprinzipien. Obwohl die Grenze zwischen beiden Bereichen kaum zu ziehen ist, muß der Unterschied als wesentlich festgehalten werden. Auf eher deszendenten Wegen nähert sich Meier (1979) dem Allgemeinen in den Wortartensystemen. Die Kriterien der einzelsprachlichen Klassifikation, so führt er aus, taugen nicht einmal recht als deskriptives Instrument. Das morphologische Kriterium sei selbst bei den morphologisch strukturierten Sprachen als einziges und ausschließliches nicht zu gebrauchen. Semantische Klassifikation des Wortschatzes, die bei hinreichender Kenntnis der zu beschreibenden Sprache immer möglich sei, führe gleichwohl nicht zu den Klassen, die für die grammatische Beschreibung einer Sprache nötig sind. Gegen die rein distributive Klassifizierung der Wörter und Wortformen (praktiziert etwa bei Helbig & Buscha 81984) macht er geltend, daß

“Die wichtigsten Wortarten sind also nur insofern universell, als sie Primärbedeutungen ausdrücken. Ansonsten ist ihre lexikalische Zusammensetzung labil, zeigt sie idioethnische Abweichungen. Die abgeleiteten Bedeutungen verteilt jede Sprache auf die Wörter auf ihre Weise, was das Durcheinander in der traditionellen Klassifizierung der Wortarten noch verstärkt.” (Kaznelson 1974: 214)

Dennoch nähert sich auch Meier auf Umwegen wieder den Positionen von Kaznelson und Coseriu. Des ersteren Ansicht war ja durchaus auch, daß man induktiv, von den einzelsprachlichen Systemen her, nicht zu einem universalen Kategorienapparat kommen kann. Für universal, da bedingt durch die Thema-Rhema-Struktur der Mitteilung und die Subjekt-Prädikat-Struktur des sprachlichen Denkaktes, hält auch Meier die Subjekts- und Prädikatskategorien (vgl. hierzu Sandmann 21979). Es gibt also methodisch für ihn nur den deszendenten Weg vom Satz

Einen ähnlichen Denkansatz verfolgen einschlägige Arbeiten aus dem Umkreis des Kölner Universalienprojektes (etwa Broschart 1991; Lehmann 1991), mit dem Unterschied freilich, daß die universale Seite der Katego-

(a) die faktische Distribution nicht bloß grammatische Klassen, sondern auch semantische Verträglichkeit, Kollokation der Elemente, widerspiegelt; (b) daß sie, streng durchgeführt, zu einer sehr großen Zahl von Klassen führt (vgl. Bergenholtz & Schaeder 1977); (c) daß sie als Gesamtverfahren zirkulär ist und daher wenigstens die Ausgangselemente auf andere als distributive Weise ermittelt werden müssen (schließlich braucht man ja die Kategorien schon zur Fixierung “gleicher” Umgebungen).

684 her. Als Grundlage des Allgemeinen in den Wortartensystemen erscheint somit die Anpassung der lexikalischen Elemente an die kognitiv-kommunikative Gliederung des Satzes, die aber verständlicherweise in ganz unterschiedliche Formschemata und Wortartensysteme einmünden kann. 8.3. Klassifikatorische Praxis und linguistische Theorie Plank (1984) nähert sich den Problemen der Wortartenklassifikation eher pragmatisch: Wortartbegriffe sollen deskriptiv angemessen sein, den Sprachvergleich nicht verbauen und die Erklärung in den Verhältnissen der verschiedenen Sprachen fördern. In erster Linie geht es um empirisch adäquate Einteilungen des Wortschatzes. Die Notwendigkeit grammatischer Klassen wird dadurch begründet, daß angemessen formulierte grammatische Regeln/Regularitäten auf sie Bezug nehmen bzw. ohne sie nicht formuliert werden können (Plank 1984: 491). Ob aber eine “adäquat formulierte” grammatische Regel auf einen Kategorienbegriff Bezug nehmen muß, das hängt auch von der Theorie ab, die der Regelformulierung zugrunde liegt, nicht nur von der Bestimmung der Kategorie. Methodologisch wertvoll bleibt freilich die Probe, ob nicht eine bestimmte festgestellte Regularität mit einfacheren, weniger implizierenden Begriffen beschrieben werden kann. In gewissen Grenzen variiert auch das angemessene Objekt der Wortartenklassifikation. Plank argumentiert, daß für das Deutsche die kategoriale Unklarheit, die NichtFestgelegtheit der Grundmorpheme, die Regel ist, während die mit diesen Morphemen gebildeten Stämme recht eindeutig einer Klasse zugeordnet werden können (Plank 1984: 493). Die Wortformen als Einheiten der syntaktischen Verkettung gelten ihm jedoch als ungeeignete Objekte: eine streng distributive Klassifizierung der finiten Verbformen z. B. müßte jede Personenform einer anderen Klasse zuordnen, ebenso jeden Kasus des Substantivs etc. Insgesamt gilt Plank (1984) die Wortartenklassifikation als Lexemklassifikation im Hinblick auf das grammatische Verwendungspotential der Lexeme (1984: 496). Da gilt es freilich, das unwiederholbar Individuelle jedes Lexems von den allgemeinen und klassenbildenden Kriterien abzugrenzen. Am Beispiel der englischen Modalverben demonstriert der Autor, daß es nicht um vollständige Übereinstimmung der Verhaltensrepertoires gehen kann (1984: 499).

X. Wortarten

Plank folgt hier der eher konstruktivistischen Praxis der Theoriebildung und überlegt abstrakt, welche Muster von Übereinstimmung bzw. Abweichung klassenrelevanter Verhaltensmerkmale zu verschiedenen Klassen führen sollten und welche in einer Klasse koexistieren können. Nur wenn der Anwendungsbereich eines Merkmals durch ein anderes eingeschränkt ist, gilt Plank die Hierarchisierung der Merkmale für gerechtfertigt (1984: 505). Bevor man beispielsweise Substantive nach der allomorphischen Bildung der Deklinationsformen klassifizieren kann, müssen die items zunächst als [deklinierbar] klassifiziert sein. In Plank (1984) verbleibt das Wortartenproblem im wesentlichen in der Sphäre der empirischen Zweckmäßigkeit, die wir in 8.1 unter (a) skizziert haben. Poitou (1984), geschrieben als Kritik an der Wortartenlehre der Grundzüge (Heidolph et al. 1981), weist auf die Zirkularität der Wortartenklassifizierung hin: Damit ein Wortartensytem bei der Formulierung grammatischer Regeln aktiv als Eingabe verwendet werden kann, müßte die Klassifikation des Wortschatzes vor dem Aufbau der Grammatik erfolgen und von der manifesten phonologisch-morphologisch-syntaktischen Technik der Einzelsprache relativ unabhängig sein. Dann und nur dann würden die grammatischen Regeln einer Sprache zum Prüfstein, an dem sich erweist, ob und wie weit die Wortklassen tatsächlich Äquivalenzklassen sind (Poitou 1984: 122). Die grammatischen Regeln fungieren gewissermaßen als praktische Kritik und Korrektur der vorab gebildeten Klassen. Mit dieser Vorgehensweise ist die praktische Unterstellung verbunden, daß die morphologische und die syntaktische Klassifizierung des Wortschatzes zum gleichen Ergebnis führen bzw. restlos auf einander abgebildet werden können. Schon Sütterlin (1923) belegt aber, daß dies im Deutschen nicht der Fall ist. Poitou (1984) zieht deshalb den Schluß, (a) daß es angebracht wäre, für jede Komponente der Grammatik ein eigenes Wortartensystem zu bilden, (was übrigens auch schon Sütterlin 1923 getan hat; Sütterlin gibt nämlich drei verschiedene Einteilungen, in denen jeweils ein Gesichtspunkt, eine Systemebene, beibehalten ist); (b) daß eine völlig vom Aufbau der Grammatik abgesetzte, “externe” Wortartenklassifikation nicht sinnvoll ist; (c) daß die Wortarten nicht als Liste, sondern als System gegeben werden müssen.

685


Die Zerschlagung der Lexemklassen zugunsten komponentenspezifischer Klassifizierungen kann letztlich aus dem Zirkel auch nicht herausführen. Die Konsequenz (c) beinhaltet, daß man den Inklusions- und Exklusionsbeziehungen der Wortarten systematisch Rechnung trägt. So läßt sich z. B. im Deutschen jedes Verb auch wie ein Nomen flektieren und gebrauchen, umgekehrt aber kann kein Nomen ohne explizite morphologische Derivation als Verb gebraucht werden (Poitou 1984: 127). Man muß also unterscheiden zwischen Elementen, die Verb und Nomen sein können, und Elementen, die nur Nomen sein können (zu den Ursprüngen dieses Gedankens Poitou 1984: 127; Knobloch 1988 a). Die Arbeiten von Plank und Poitou zeigen, daß über die Grenzen induktiver Generalisierung, über das Problem der komponentenspezifischen Klassifizierung des Wortschatzes (in Morphologie, Syntax, Semantik) und über die Wortarten als Voraussetzung und/ oder Folge grammatischer Regelformulierung neu nachgedacht werden muß. Über den Befund, daß die tradierten Wortartbegriffe auf Ausgleich, Überlappung, Synchyse (Bühler) ganz heterogener Bedeutungsmerkmale beruhen, muß man nicht nur “beschreibungspragmatisch”, sondern auch theoretisch-begrifflich hinauskommen. Auch Heger (1985) verfolgt einen semasiologischen Ansatz. Hier stellt sich das Wortartenproblem im Rahmen seiner Theorie der Signemränge in Satz und Text. Zunächst geht es um die Frage, auf welchen Rang eine Wortartenklassifikation sich beziehen muß (der Ausdruck Rang ist hier nicht allein auf die grammatische Satzstruktur zu beziehen, sondern auf den semasiologischen Status der Elemente, aus denen Satz und Text aufgebaut werden): sind es Flexionsformen, Vokabeln oder die autosemen Minimaleinheiten (lexikalische Morpheme), die klassifiziert werden sollen (Heger 1985: 5f.)? Heger argumentiert, daß klassifikationsrelevant in praxi primär die abstrakten Verbindungen zwischen autosemen Minimaleinheiten und Vokabeln (definiert durch Systeme der grammatischen Abwandlung, durch Paradigmen) sind. Demnach sei es kein Argument gegen eine Wortartenunterscheidung, daß ein lexikalisches Morphem in mehreren Abwandlungssystemen/Vokabeln vorkomme (Heger 1985: 6). Weiterhin bestimmt Heger die Wortartenklassifikation im Rahmen der Opposition von aszendenter und deszendenter Einheitenbildung in der Grammatik (aufsteigend von

Morphem oder Wort zu den größeren grammatikalischen Einheiten oder absteigend von Satz oder Text zu den Konstituenten der größeren Einheiten). Die Übertragbarkeit der Klassifikation auf verschiedene Sprachen hängt jeweils von der Kriterienkonstellation ab, durch die eine Wortart fixiert ist. Handelt es sich nur um ein einziges Kriterium (wie laut Heger 1985: 165 z. B. beim prädikativen Adjektiv), so kann die Wortart in anderen Sprachen entweder vorliegen oder nicht. Wo es mehrere Kriterien gibt, will Heger den praktischen Nutzen der Übertragung gewahrt und kontrolliert wissen, indem er sich an Lehmanns Prototypenlehre der grammatischen Kategorien anschließt, die ebenfalls auf variable Kontinua zentraler und peripherer Merkmale hinausläuft (Lehmann 1982 über Nominalität; Lehmann 1984 über Relativsätze bzw. -pronomina). Vergleichbarkeit überhaupt gilt als gesichert durch ein gemeinsames noematisches tertium comparationis der Sprachen (Noematik ist die Theorie des sprachlich Gemeinten und Meinbaren, vgl. hierzu Koschmieder 1965). Einen besonderen Hinweis verdient Hegers Detailanalyse zur sauberen Differenzierung von Partizipien und Adjektiven im Deutschen.

9.

Zentrum und Peripherie: Die Wortarten als Prototypen

Daß auch Wortarten zentrale oder prototypische und periphere Mitglieder haben, kann auf verschiedenen Ebenen geltend gemacht werden, auf der Ebene der Einzelsprache etwa durch Kriterien wie maximale oder nur partielle Ausnutzung kategorienspezifischer Möglichkeiten. Danach wäre etwa ein Adjektiv peripher, das nur prädikativ oder nur attributiv gebraucht werden kann, umgekehrt wäre etwa auch ein Nomen peripher, das über verbspezifische Kombinationsmöglichkeiten (etwa eine Infinitivkonstruktion mit zu in der Wunsch zu lesen) verfügt (vgl. Charitonova 1977). Auf allgemein sprachwissenschaftlicher Ebene wird Prototypikalität entweder auf der Ebene der Bezeichnung (“typische Nomina sind Namen, Bezeichnungen von Objekten und Lebewesen” etc.) oder auf der Ebene der Sprachtechnik (“typische Nomina sind nichtrelational” etc.) oder auf beiden fundiert. Wir beschränken uns auf ein Beispiel: den Ansatz von Dixon (1982), der interessante Unterschiede zu Meier (1979) (s. o., 8.2) aufweist.

686 Dixon (1982: 1) akzeptiert zwar die Mannigfaltigkeit der Klassenmarken und -kennungen in den Einzelsprachen, er zweifelt aber nicht daran, daß die intuitive Praxis der Sprachbeschreiber, jeweils eine große und offene Klasse des Wortschatzes “Substantiv” und eine andere “Verb” zu nennen, berechtigt ist (zur Frage der Nomen-Verb-Distinktion vgl. Art. 72). Dixon geht vom bezeichneten Konzept aus und untersucht die Art und Weise der Bezeichnung in verschiedenen Sprachen. Dieses Verfahren impliziert die völlige Unabhängigkeit beider Seiten. Wenn hingegen der kategoriale Bau einer Sprache die Bildung und die Anatomie kognitiver Konzepte (auch nur) mitbestimmt, dann ist das Verfahren unsachgemäß, weil ihm die Zwischenebene des sprachlich Gemeinten fehlt, die Koschmieder (1965) “noetisch” nennt. (Eine andere Position vertritt Coseriu 1987; für diesen wären allein die bezeichnenden Konzepte sprachlich und einzelsprachspezifisch, die ihrerseits eine Prägewirkung, jedenfalls aber einen Einfluß auf die bezeichneten Konzepte ausüben, so daß von diesen letzteren her ein übereinzelsprachlicher Standpunkt nicht zu gewinnen ist. Problematisch an Dixons Ansatz ist auch, daß er eine denotative Basis für grammatische Kategorien postuliert.) Dixon (1982) vergleicht deskriptive Adjektive in 20 Sprachen mit kleinen und geschlossenen Adjektivklassen. Dabei versucht er, die syntaktisch-semantisch universalen Inhalte der Wortart Adjektiv zu bestimmen. Seine Hypothese: Im Bezugssystem einer Einzelsprache kann man die syntaktischen Eigenschaften und Verhaltensweisen eines Lexems aus dessen Bedeutung erschließen, nicht aber umgekehrt. Es versteht sich, daß Dixon von dieser Warte auf das Problem der (morphologisch expliziten und impliziten) syntaktischen Derivation stößt. Dixon rechnet Lexeme mit mehrfacher Kategorienzugehörigkeit (z. B. laugh ⫽ *V,N+, rain ⫽ *N,V+, narrow ⫽ *Adj.,V+) jeweils primär zu einer Kategorie. Daß er der syntaktischen Derivation keine Auswirkung auf den semantischen Inhalt eines Wortes zuschreibt (1982: 11f.), erklärt sich daraus, daß er eben nicht von “kategorialen Bedeutungen” oder ähnlichen Größen ausgeht, sondern von Bezeichnungsklassen; und die primäre Zugehörigkeit eines Lexems zu einer solchen Bezeichnungsklasse schließt nicht aus, daß es auch explizit oder implizit

X. Wortarten

(was nur die Technik betrifft) in syntaktische Verwendungen überführt werden kann, die eine andere primäre “konzeptuelle” Basis haben. Universale “semantic types” sind für Dixon Größen wie object, motion, affect, kin, dimension, colour, value etc. Wortarten geben gewöhnlich “clusters” solcher “semantic types” wieder, also z. B. *dimension, colour, value+, und ein paar andere bilden die Basis einer offenen Adjektivklasse, wo diese vorhanden. Jeder Wörterbucheintrag in einer Sprache gehört zunächst zu einer solchen “universalen semantischen Kategorie” (Dixon 1982: 13). Daneben gibt es, als “Basisoder Tiefenebene” bezeichnet, die einzelsprachliche Norm-Assoziation einer solchen semantischen Klasse mit einer Wortart und schließlich die idiosynkratische Oberfläche des Lexems mit ihren Eigenheiten, Derivationsbeziehungen etc. Dixon partizipiert ebenfalls an der Tendenz, eine Wortart in Zentrum und Peripherie einzuteilen. Seine Kriterien für den zentralen oder randständigen Status eines Lexems sind aber ganz überwiegend semantische: die Entfernung eines Adjektivs von den zentralen semantischen Typen, die in den geschlossenen und kleinen Adjektivsystemen vertreten sind.

10. Semantische Theorien Lyons (1983) befaßt sich ausführlich mit dem Wortartenproblem vom Standpunkt der grammatischen Semantik: “Besitzen alle Sprachen dieselben Wortarten?” und “In welchem Umfang spielen semantische Erwägungen bei der Definition von Ausdrücken wie ¤NomenÅ, ¤VerbÅ oder ¤AdjektivÅ eine Rolle?” (Lyons 1983: 54). Den Begriff Wortart will Lyons allein auf Lexeme bezogen wissen. Den Ausdruck Formklasse indessen bestimmt er distributiv (so daß z. B. die verschiedenen Personenformen eines Verblexems, die verschiedenen Kasusformen eines Nomens, so wenig zu einer Formklasse gehören wie etwa zwei morphosyntaktisch gleich gebildete Formen verschiedener Verben, wenn das eine transitiv und das andere intransitiv ist). Terminologisch wird zunächst zwischen der Lexemklasse Substantiv, der Substantivform (welche zu verschiedenen Form- bzw. Distributionsklassen gehören kann) und der Nominalphrase unterschieden. Substantive haben Denotation, Nominalphrasen Referenz (1983: 56).


Lyons weist dann darauf hin, daß die häufig reklamierten morphologischen Klassifikationskriterien (flektiert nach Numerus, Genus, Kasus, Modus etc.) in Wahrheit immer morpho-syntaktische sind. Sie gelten ihm aber (aufgrund der morpho-syntaktischen Verschiedenheit der Sprachen) als nur von sekundärer Bedeutung für eine allgemeine Theorie der Wortarten, auch wenn sie in manchen Einzelsprachen sehr wichtig sein mögen. Als Startpunkt seiner Überlegungen nimmt Lyons (1983) das Verhältnis satzsyntaktischer Funktionen (Subjekt, Prädikat), phrasaler Kategorien (NP, VP) und lexikalischer Kategorien (Wortarten). Wie ist die Verbindung zwischen Subjektsfunktion, Nominalphrase und Nomen als Wortart? Einmal angenommen, es stimmt, daß alle Sprachen zwischen Nominalausdruck und Verbalausdruck im Satz (das, worüber gesprochen wird, vs. das, was darüber ausgesagt wird) unterscheiden, so folgt ja daraus nicht, daß sie auch zwischen Nomen und Verb unterscheiden müssen (1983: 60). Um die gleichwohl angenommenen Beziehungen zwischen den verschiedenen Ebenen in den Blick zu bekommen, definiert Lyons wie folgt: “Ein Nomen ist ein Lexem, das in einem Nominale als einziger oder Hauptkonstituent einer offenen Klasse fungieren kann und das sich von anderen Lexemen, die in denselben Positionen als Konstituenten einer offenen Klasse fungieren (z. B. Verben oder Adjektive), syntaktisch oder morpho-syntaktisch unterscheidet.” (Lyons 1983: 60) [entsprechend ist die Definition für das Verb]

Bis hierhin ist die Argumentation vergleichbar mit dem oben (8.2) besprochenen Ansatz von Meier (1979). Aus dem Gesagten folgt, daß Sprachen keine Nomen-Verb-Distinktion haben, wenn alle ihre lexikalischen Elemente gleichermaßen bereitwillig und häufig als Kern von Nominale (NP) und Verbale (VP) fungieren können. Mit gewissen Einschränkungen hält Lyons (1983: 63) Nootka und Kwakiutl für solche Sprachen (kontrastiv dazu: Walter 1981; zur Nomen-Verb-Distinktion vgl. auch die Literatur in Plank 1984; s. Art. 72). Solche syntaktische Korrelationsanalysen zwischen verschiedenen Ebenen sind für Lyons nur dann von wahrhaft sprachtheoretischem Interesse, wenn die solchermaßen erhobenen und fixierten Klassen auch mit semantischen Klassen korrelieren. Das relative Recht der (beinahe überall verpönten) se-

687 mantisch-ontologischen Klassifikationsbasis ist Lyons’ ureigenes Anliegen (vgl. auch Knobloch 1988 b und 1990). Zunächst gilt die Einschränkung: der semantisch-ontologische Teil der Wortartendefinition betrifft nicht die ganze grammatische Klasse, sondern jeweils nur einen fokalen, zentralen, repräsentativen, typischen Ausschnitt dieser Klasse. Es versteht sich auch, daß man eine minimale (vom sprachlichen Wortartensystem unabhängige) Ontologie etablieren muß, will man dem Zirkel entkommen, der in den klassischen semantisch-ontologischen Wortartlehren steckt (vgl. Knobloch 1990), dem Zirkel, der “Gegenstände” und Substantive, “Handlungen” und Verben etc. wechselseitig miteinander verbindet. Physikalische Objekte (Personen, Lebewesen, Dinge) werden, unbeschadet der schwierigen Grenzziehung (ist ein “Berg”, ein “Weg” ein Objekt?) als Entitäten erster Ordnung beschrieben und aufgefaßt (vgl. Kaznelson 1974). Davon unterschieden werden die Entitäten zweiter Ordnung, worunter Ereignisse, Prozesse, Sachverhalte, Situationen zu verstehen sind. Von der ersten Ordnung unterscheiden sie sich namentlich durch ein prekäres Verhältnis zur “Identität”: vgl. dieselbe Person war wieder hier und dieselbe Sache ist wieder passiert. Offenbar gilt als “Identität” für die zweite Ordnung nur ¤dieselbe Art von XÅ, was für die erste Ordnung gerade nicht gelten kann. Von den Entitäten dritter Ordnung wiederum unterscheiden sie sich durch die noch vorhandene Bindung an die Wahrnehmung. Zwar hat ein Ereignis, eine Situation etc. einen anderen perzeptiven Status als eine Person oder Sache, aber das, was die Lexeme {glaube}, {erwartung}, {hoffnung} etc. bezeichnen, hat gar keinen perzeptiven Status. Entitäten dritter Ordnung lassen sich nicht beobachten oder raum-zeitlich situieren (Lyons 1983: 73). Man kann nun die Substantive einer Sprache danach einteilen, auf welche Einheiten sie primär referieren, bzw. welche Einheiten ihre primäre Denotation bilden. Lyons argumentiert dann zweigleisig: zum einen nimmt mit wachsender Ordnungszahl der referierten Entitäten auch der Grad ihrer (einzel-)sprachlichen Hypostasierung zu, zum anderen gilt für beinahe alle Sprachen, die Entitäten der dritten Ordnung nominal bezeichnen, daß die Mehrzahl der Substantive für die Entitäten der höheren Ordnungen komplex, zusammengesetzt, abgeleitet (häufig: deprädikativ) ist, während die Mehrzahl der einfachen und

688 nichtabgeleiteten Nomina umgekehrt auf Entitäten erster Ordnung referiert. Parallel zu dieser ontologisch gestützten Argumentation entfaltet aber Lyons noch eine syntaktische Gedankenreihe. Denn nach seinen Prämissen ist die semantisch-ontologische Frage so wenig an sich sinnvoll wie die syntaktische. Von Interesse ist allein die enge Entsprechung zwischen Syntax und Semantik (1983: 70; für neuere Ansichten Lyons’ zum Wortartenproblem vgl. Lyons 1991). Angenommen wird eine Hierarchie der “normalen” Determinationsverhältnisse zwischen den Wortarten dergestalt, daß immer der modifizierende Ausdruck im Verhältnis zum modifizierten im Rang niedriger oder gleich ist, also Rang 1: Nomen; Rang 2: Verb, Adjektiv; Rang 3: Adverb. Lyons Gesamthypothese lautet also: Es gibt eine (freilich auf die fokalen Kerne der Haupt-Wortarten beschränkte) Entsprechung zwischen der Rangfolge der Wortarten in der strukturellen Determinationshierarchie und ihrer denotativ-referentiellen Charakteristik. Lyons nennt Hjelsmslev und Jespersen als Gewährsleute für die Rangtheorie der Determinationsverhältnisse (vgl. auch Kaznelson 1974). Für Coseriu (1975 [1957]), der in einem älteren Aufsatz mit allen derartigen Parallelisierungs- und Ontologisierungsversuchen streng ins Gericht geht, wäre das wohl eine logizistische Entgleisung, und zwar in erster Linie deswegen, weil eine solche sprachunabhängige Minimalontologie nicht allgemein zustimmungsfähig ist. Für ihn wäre umgekehrt das Begreifen der Wirklichkeit weit stärker sprachabhängig (vgl. Coseriu 1975: 218f. [1957]), während Lyons eine stärkere einzelsprachliche Präformation (“Hypostasierung”) nur für die Entitäten höherer Ordnung anerkennt. In der Tat spitzt sich bei einer Gegenüberstellung der beiden Positionen alles darauf zu, ob die Lexeme überhaupt als “Namen von Entitäten” Bestandteile der Sprache(n) sind. Für Coseriu wären wohl die Lexeme bloß virtuelle Einheiten, und mit Entitäten verbände sie allein die Rede. Wenn man ganz strikt bloß die Darstellungstechnik der Sprachen zum System rechnet, wie es Coseriu empfiehlt, dann ist Lyons’ Argumentation nicht zulässig. Zur Sprache gehören dann nämlich nur die virtuellen Symbole mit ihrer begriffsähnlichen Anatomie. Es ist freilich die Frage, wie weit man die Annahme treiben kann, daß die allgemeinen Eigenschaften des Darstellungsgerätes Sprache

X. Wortarten

ohne Rekurs auf das Dargestellte beschrieben werden können. Oder anders gefragt: Sind Lexeme auch in ihrer Eigenschaft, Bezeichnungen von Sachen etc. zu sein, Bestandteile der Sprache, gehört das durchschnittlich Bezeichnete zu den semantischen Systemeigenschaften der langue oder insgesamt zur Rede? Diesen Problemen kann man zumindest ein Stück weit entgehen, wenn man Lyons’ “Ontologie” im Sinne Koschmieders (1965) noematisch reinterpretiert (also als Lehre von den “sachlichen” und semiotischen Verschiedenheiten des mit Sprachzeichen “Meinbaren”). Das würde auch den Bedenken Coserius Rechnung tragen, weil ja dann von einer “Ontologie” an sich keine Rede mehr sein könnte, weil noematische “Entitäten” allein aus den Techniken der sprachlichen Bezugnahme in der Rede abgeleitet werden müßten. Ontologisch gestützte Argumentationen sind immer gefährdet, die darstellungstechnische Pointe grammatischer Kategoriensysteme zu verfehlen. Niemand kann der Aussage widersprechen: “die Namen von Entitäten erster Ordnung sind gewöhnlich Substantive”, aber das ist eine Aussage über “Entitäten” und nicht über Wortarten. Trotz dieser grundsätzlichen Schwierigkeiten bleibt die Fragestellung von Lyons und vielen anderen berechtigt. Natürliche Sprachen werden ja nicht um ihrer selbst willen, sondern als Techniken der Bezeichnung gelernt und erworben. Ob in ihrer Architektonik das Bezeichnete selbst eine aktive Rolle spielt, wenn ja, in welchen rede- und denkbedingten Brechungen und Filterungen, ist eine sprachphilosophisch reizvolle Frage. In einer älteren, aber wenig beachteten Arbeit versucht Engelen (1971), ein kleines Stück der alten ontologischen Frage mit Bezug auf die Sprachtechnik zu reformulieren. Gestützt auf die Beobachtung, daß nicht alle Wörter ihren semantischen Inhalt auf die gleiche Weise determinieren, postuliert Engelen ein Kontinuum zwischen eher kontextueller und eher referentieller Determination des Wortinhalts. Seine Hypothese: die konkreten Substantive und eine Gruppe der Adjektive neigen zu eher referentieller (kontextfreier) Determination der Wortinhalte; Verben, abstrakte Nomina und ein anderer Teil der Adjektive neigen zu eher kontextueller Determination. Wie ist das zu verstehen? Nun, unter kontextueller (Mit-)Konstitution des Inhalts versteht Engelen die mit der kategorial spezifizierten grammatischen Umgebung verbunde-

689


nen Determinanten. Gemeint ist nicht der lexikalische oder semantische (oder thematische) Kontext, der ebenso bereitwillig auch Konkreta spezifiziert: (4) er kaufte im Blumengeschäft fünf Tulpen, drei Narzissen und eine Rurikokta, wobei Rurikokta sofort als Blume identifiziert wird. Gemeint ist auch nicht die kontextuelle Spezifizierung von Homonymen: (5) der Hahn kräht (6) der Hahn rinnt Gemeint ist schließlich auch nicht der syntaktische Kontext, der uns per Position oder Endung eine Wortform kategorial identifizieren läßt: (7) der glurige Elefant der immer als adjektivisch determiniert wahrgenommen werden wird. Es geht allein um die determinierende Wirkung, die die oberflächensyntaktische Umgebungskonstellation eines Wortes auf dessen lexikalischen Inhalt ausübt (damit ist gleichzeitig ein Vorschlag zur Präzisierung des Kontextbegriffes gemacht): (8) Köln schlägt München 3:1 Peter schlägt seine Frau Er schlägt einen Nagel in die Wand Fritz schlägt Sahne etc. Rahmenkonstruktionen, in denen die kategoriale Konstellation, die grammatischen Elemente (Kasus, Präposition, Präfixe etc.), bei Nomina die Subklasse (abstrakt, belebt, unbelebt), spezifiziert ist, beeinflussen Verben (wie in (8)), Abstrakta und einen Teil der Adjektive signifikant stärker als Konkreta. Die Spezifizierung des syntagmatischen Anteils an der Bedeutung der Wörter und Wortklassen durch gezielte empirische Untersuchungen erscheint als ein lohnendes Verfahren für den Nachweis “kategorialer Bedeutungen”.

gen. Im Rückblick gewissermaßen hat die Ausbreitung des Valenzbegriffes auf Nichtverben Probleme deutlicher konturiert, die auch schon im Konzept der Verbvalenz stecken. Jedenfalls ist deutlich geworden, wie eng und notwendig jede Valenztheorie ein bestimmtes Wortartenmodell voraussetzt (vgl. Baum 1976 zur Wortarttheorie Tesnie`res; eine allgemeine Wortarttheorie auf Valenzbasis: Lemarećhal 1989). Im traditionellen Modell der Abhängigkeitsgrammatik stehen die Valenzpartner des satzkonstitutiven verbalen Zentralnexus unter diesem in der nächst tieferen Strukturebene. Die (intentionale) Sonderstellung des Subjekts (vgl. hierzu Kaznelson 1974) ist abgeschafft, woraus erhellt, daß ein propositionales, kein kommunikatives Satzmodell zugrunde gelegt wird. Der obligatorische Valenzpartner des Adjektivs hingegen steht im System der semantischen Determination immer über dem Valenzträger. Im System der strukturellen Beziehungen ist die Überordnung des Valenzpartners klar beim attributiven (und beim adverbialen) Adjektiv. Ganz unklar ist die Lage beim prädikativen Adjektiv in dieser Hinsicht. Das kann man mit der Kopula zusammen wie ein Verb behandeln (das wäre die ehrwürdige Port-Royal-Tradition, wo grammatischer Prädikator und lexikalischer Prädikatsteil grundsätzlich als verschiedene Dinge gelten, auch beim finiten Vollverb): (9) [reich (sein)] 兩 [der Mann] Man kann Valenzträger und Valenzpartner der fraglichen Beziehung der Kopula gemeinsam unterordnen (und handelt sich dann die Schwierigkeit ein, wie man die Beziehung eigentlich darstellt): (10)

ist der Mann

11. Wortarten und Valenz Es konnte nicht ausbleiben, daß sich das Erklärungsprinzip “Valenz” vom Verb, seiner angestammten Heimat, rasch auch auf die anderen Wortarten ausdehnte, läßt sich doch die Fähigkeit eines Lexems, bestimmte Umgebungen zu implizieren, nicht auf das Verb beschränken und schon gar nicht das empirische Vorkommen von Wortformen in bestimmten typischen syntaktischen Umgebun-

reich

Oder man kann schließlich noch das Subjekt als ranghöchstes determinatum auch die Struktur solcher Konstruktionen dominieren lassen, wobei die Abhängigkeit des Restes als “kongruenzbedingt” erscheinen müßte: (11) der Mann (sein) reich

690 Für jede dieser Lösungen lassen sich Argumente anführen, die hier nicht diskutiert werden können. Fest steht, daß die valenztheoretische Nivellierung der strukturellen Wortartendifferenzen nicht unproblematisch ist und daß gerade die valenztheoretische Analyse der Verb-Adjektiv-Differenz bisher fast nur aus offenen Fragen besteht (vgl. Stepanowa & Helbig 21981: 174f.). Die gleiche theoretische Gefahr wird deutlich auch bei der Valenz der Substantive (Stepanowa & Helbig 21981: 175f.). Man beginnt mit dem deverbalen Nomen und vergleicht dieses mit den Verhältnissen beim zugrundeliegenden Verb. Vom Systemstandpunkt sind aber deverbale Nomina peripher. Aus der nivellierenden Sicht besteht dann der Hauptunterschied nur darin, daß bei der Nominalisierung aus obligatorischen und fakultativen Aktanten (fast) nur fakultative werden. Man übersieht dabei leicht, daß man sich gar nicht mehr in der darstellungstechnischen Sphäre der Proposition befindet, für die das Aktantenmodell ersonnen ist, sondern in der Sphäre der einfachen Nomination, wo der Ausdruck “Aktanten”, der schon beim Adjektiv zu schillern begonnen hat, endgültig eine andere Färbung annimmt (berücksichtigt wird diese Differenz in praxi von Sandberg 1979). Wenn man dem Valenzbegriff nur einfach die Tatsache geregelter syntaktischer Verkettung von Wortformen zugrunde legt (und nicht die Tatsache der gerichteten morphosyntaktischen und/oder semantischen Implikation außerhalb der aktuellen Verkettung), dann läßt man den sprachtechnisch entscheidenden Umstand unberücksichtigt, daß mit den Wortarten Verb und Adjektiv jeweils bestimmte (und jeweils andere) syntaktische Implikationen gegeben sind, mit der Wortart Substantiv aber zunächst gar keine (vgl. Sandmann 1962 [1940]).

12. Offene Fragen und Schlußfolgerungen Für jede linguistische Theorie und für jede praktische Sprachbeschreibung stellt sich das Wortartenproblem neu. Es ist also nur natürlich, daß alle Lösungen relativ und alle Fragen offen sind. Jenseits aller pragmatischen und theoretischen Relevanzen, die das Wortartenproblem von Fall zu Fall neu bestimmen, ist die Frage interessant, ob das enorme Beharrungsvermögen der uralt tradierten, synkretistischen Wortartbegriffe und -merk-

X. Wortarten

male vielleicht doch keinen Makel der Theorie indiziert, sondern den Umstand, daß synkretische Klassen kognitiv äußerst effizient zu handhaben sind. Auch lexikalische Bedeutungen natürlicher Sprachen sind synkretistisch und keinesfalls merkmalsrein strukturiert. Hier wäre ein Konvergenzpunkt für typologisch-vergleichende, psycholinguistische und historiographische Studien zum Wortartenproblem. Hier wäre auch der Punkt, wo die Gradierung der Kategorien in zentral und peripher von einem bloßen Instrument genauerer Beschreibung zu einem potentiell erklärenden Theorem wird.

13. Zitierte Literatur Admoni, Vladimir G. (31970), Der deutsche Sprachbau. München: Beck Arens, Hans (21974), Sprachwissenschaft: Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum Fischer Taschenbuchverlag Arutjunowa, N. D. (1975), “Die Syntax”. In: Sere´brennikow, B. A. (Hrsg.), Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Bd. II: Die innere Struktur der Sprache. Berlin: Akademie; München: Fink Baum, Richard (1976), Dependenzgrammatik: Tesnie`res Modell der Sprachbeschreibung in wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher und kritischer Sicht. Tübingen: Niemeyer Bergenholtz, Henning (1976), Zur Morphologie deutscher Substantive, Verben und Adjektive. Bonn: Dümmler Bergenholtz, Henning & Schaeder, Burkhard (1977), Die Wortarten des Deutschen: Versuch einer syntaktisch orientierten Klassifikation. Stuttgart: Klett Bloomfield, Leonard (1973), Language. London: Allen & Unwin [11933] Brøndal, Viggo (1948), Les parties du discours: Partes orationis: Etudes sur les categories linguistiques. Copenhague: Munksgaard [11928] Broschart, Jürgen (1991), “Noun, Verb, and participation (A Typology of the Noun/Verb Distinction)”. In: Seiler & Premper (Hrsg.), 65⫺137 Bühler, Karl (1934), Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Fischer Cann, R. (1994), “X-Bar-Syntax”. In: Asher, R. E. & Simpson, J. M. Y. (Hrsg.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Bd. IX. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 5065⫺5070 Charitonova, I. J. (1977), “Zur Frage von Zentrum und Peripherie einer Wortart im Deutschen”. In: Helbig (Hrsg.), 28⫺38 Coseriu, Eugenio (1957), “Logicismo y antilogicismo en la grama´tica”. Revista Nacional (Montevi-

70. Kriterien für die Definition von Wortarten deo) 189, 456⫺473 [deutsche Übers.: Coseriu, Eugenio (1975), Sprachtheorie und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft: Fünf Studien. München: Fink, 210⫺233] Coseriu, Eugenio (1987), “Über die Wortkategorien (¤partes orationisÅ)”. In: Coseriu, Eugenio, Formen und Funktionen: Studien zur Grammatik. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 24⫺44 Crystal, David (1967), “Word Classes in English”. Lingua 17, 24⫺56 Dixon, Robert M. W. (1982), Where Have All the Adjectives Gone? And Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax. Berlin usw.: Mouton Dragunov, A. A. (1960), Untersuchungen zur Grammatik der modernen chinesischen Sprache, aus dem Russischen übersetzt von W. Lippert. Berlin: Akademie (Ostasiatische Forschungen: Sonderreihe Monographien 1) Emonds, J. (1986), “Les parties du discours en grammaire generative”. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes, 14/15, 53⫺154 Engelen, Bernhard (1971), Referentielle und kontextuelle Determination des Wortinhaltes als Problem der Wortarten. Mannheim (Forschungsberichte des IDS 5) Erben, Johannes (1968), Deutsche Grammatik: Ein Leitfaden. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer Feuillet, Jacques (1983), “Se debarrasera-t-on un jour des parties du discours?”. Bulletin de la societe de linguistique de Paris 78.1, 23⫺51 Flämig, Walter (1977), “Zur grammatischen Klassifizierung des Wortbestandes im Deutschen”. In: Helbig (Hrsg.), 39⫺52 Glinz, Hans (1957), Der deutsche Satz: Wortarten und Satzglieder wissenschaftlich gefaßt und dichterisch gedeutet. Düsseldorf: Schwann Haider, Hubert (1988), “Die Struktur der deutschen Nominalphrase”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 7, 32⫺59 Heidolph, K. E. & Flämig, W. & Motsch, W. (1981), Grundzüge einer deutschen Grammatik. Berlin: Akademie Heger, Klaus (1985), Flexionsformen, Vokabeln und Wortarten. Heidelberg: Bitsch (Abhdl. der Heidelb. Akad. der Wiss. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 1/1985) Helbig, Gerhard (1977, Hrsg.), Beiträge zur Klassifizierung der Wortarten. Leipzig: Bibliogr. Institut Helbig, Gerhard (1977), “Zu einigen Problemen der Wortklassifizierung im Deutschen”. In: Helbig (Hrsg.), 90⫺118 Helbig, Gerhard & Buscha, Joachim (81984), Deutsche Grammatik: Ein Handbuch für den Ausländerunterricht. Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie [11972] Hempel, H. (1962), “Wortklassen und Bedeutungsweisen”. In: Moser (Hrsg.), 217⫺254

691 Hermann, E. (1928), Die Wortarten. Berlin: Weidmann Ickelsamer, Valentinus (1534), Ein Teütsche Grammatica […]. o.O. [Nachdruck in: Fechner, Heinrich (1882, Hrsg.), Vier seltene Schriften des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. Berlin] Ivo, Hubert & Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte (1988), “Das neue Interesse an den alten Wortarten”. In: Schlieben-Lange & Ivo (Hrsg.), 7⫺12 Ivo, Hubert & Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte (1990, Hrsg.), Wortarten. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht ¯ ⫺Syntax: A Study of Jackendoff, Ray S. (1977), X Phrase Structure. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 2) Jellinek, Max Hermann (1913⫺1914), Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Grammatik von den Anfängen bis auf Adelung, Bd. 1⫺2. Heidelberg: Winter (Germanistische Bibliotek 2; 7) Jespersen, Otto (1940), “Word Classes and Ranks”. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 197⫺200 Jung, Walter (1966), Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie Kaznelson, Solomon D. (1974), Sprachtypologie und Sprachdenken. Berlin: Hüber; München: Akademie Knobloch, Clemens (1988 a), “Das Wortartenproblem in Sprachpsychologie und Spracherwerbsforschung”. In: Knobloch (1988 c), 131⫺161 Knobloch, Clemens (1988 b), “Wortarten und Satzglieder in der deutschen Grammatik zwischen Adelung und Becker”. In: Knobloch (1988 c), 89⫺130 Knobloch, Clemens (1988 c), Die Sprache als Technik der Rede: Beiträge zu einer Linguistik des Sprechens. Frankfurt/M. usw.: Lang Knobloch, Clemens (1990), “Wortarten und Satzglieder. Theoretische Überlegungen zu einem alten Problem”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 112, 173⫺199 Koschmieder, Erwin (1965), Beiträge zur allgemeinen Syntax. Heidelberg: Winter Kupfer, Peter (1979), Die Wortarten im modernen Chinesischen: Zur Entwicklung und Etablierung einer grammatischen Kategorie im Rahmen der chinesischen Linguistik. Dissertation, Bonn Kurylowicz, Jerzy (1973), Derivation lexicale et derivation syntaxique: Contribution a la theorie des parties du discours. München: Fink (Esquisses Linguistiques 1) [11936] Lehmann, Christian (1982), “Nominalisierung: Typisierung von Propositionen”. In: Seiler, Hansjakob & Lehmann, Christian (Hrsg.), Apprehension: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Gegenständen, Teil I: Bereich und Ordnung der Phänomene. Tübingen: Narr (Language Universals Series 1/I), 66⫺83 Lehmann, Christian (1984), Der Relativsatz, Typologie seiner Strukturen ⫺ Theorie seiner Funktionen

692 ⫺ Kompendium seiner Grammatik. Tübingen: Narr (Language Universals Series 2) Lehmann, Christian (1991), “Predicate Classes and participation”. In: Seiler & Premper (Hrsg.), 183⫺239 Lemarećhal, Alain (1989), Les parties du discours: Semantique et syntaxe. Paris: PUF Lyons, John (1983), Semantik, Bd. 1⫺2. München: Beck [Engl. Orig.: 1977, Semantics, Bd. 1⫺2. London: Cambridge Univ. Press] Lyons, John (1991), “Towards a Notional theory of the ¤Parts of SpeechÅ”. In: Lyons, John, Natural Language and Universal Grammar: Essays in Linguistic Theory, Bd. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 110⫺145 Meier, Georg F. (1979), “Wortklassen als Basis jeder Grammatiktheorie: Zur Methodologie der Wortklassifikation in asiatischen und europäischen Sprachen”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 32, 24⫺35 Moser, Hugo (1962, Hrsg.), Das Ringen um eine deutsche Grammatik. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft [11954] Moskal’skaja, Olga I. (21975), Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, Moskau [11971] Moskal’skaja, Olga (1977), “Zur Wortartentheorie”. In: Helbig (Hrsg.), 138⫺147 Naes, O. (1962), “Versuch einer allgemeinen Syntax der Aussagen”. In: Moser (Hrsg.), 280⫺334 Paul, Hermann (1968), Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Tübingen: Niemeyer [11880] Plank, Frans (1984), “24 grundsätzliche Bemerkungen zur Wortartenfrage”. Leuvense Bijdragen 73, 489⫺520 Poitou, Jacques (1983), Categories et grammaire. Unveröff. Ms., Paris Poitou, Jaques (1984), “Zur Kritik an der Theorie der Wortklassen”. Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie 27, 119⫺130 Pospelov, N. S. (1977), “Die Wortarten der russischen Sprache der Gegenwart vom Standpunkt ihrer grammatischen Kombinierbarkeit”. In: Helbig (Hrsg.), 148⫺156 Robins, Robert H. (1966), “The Development of the Word Class System of the European Grammatical Tradition”. Foundations of Language 2, 2⫺19 Robins, Robert H. (1986), “The Techneˆ Grammatikeˆ of Dionysius Trax in its Historical Perspective: The Evolution of the Traditional European Word Class Systems”. In: Swiggers, Pierre & van Hoecke, Willy (Hrsg.), Mot et parties du discours, Word and Word Classes, Wort und Wortarten. Leuven: University Press (La penseé linguistique 1), 9⫺17

X. Wortarten Sandberg, Bengt (1979), Zur Repräsentation, Besetzung und Funktion einiger zentraler Leerstellen bei Substantiven. Göteborg (Göteburger Germ. Forschungen 18) Sandmann, Manfred (1962), Substantiv, Adjektiv/ Adverb und Verb als sprachliche Formen: Bemerkungen zur Theorie der Wortarten. [Orig. 1940; Nachdruck in: Moser (Hrsg.), 186⫺216] Sandmann, Manfred (21979), Subject and Predicate: A Contribution to the Theory of Syntax. Heidelberg: Winter [11954] Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte & Ivo, Hubert (1988, Hrsg.), Wortarten. Göttingen (Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 76, 1988) Schmid, Wolfgang P. (1970), Skizze einer allgemeinen Theorie der Wortarten. Mainz: Verlag der Akademie (Akad. der Wissenschaften und der Lit., Abhdl. der geistes- und sozialwiss. Klasse, 5/1970) Schmidt, Wilhelm (41967), Lexikalische und aktuelle Bedeutung: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der Wortbedeutung. Berlin/DDR: Akademie Schmidt, W. (41973), Grundfragen der deutschen Grammatik: Eine Einführung in die funktionale Sprachlehre. Berlin/DDR: Akademie [11965] Seiler, Hansjakob & Premper, Waldfried (1991, Hrsg.), Partizipation: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Sachverhalten. Tübingen: Narr (Language Universal Series 6) Simon, H. F. (1953), “Two Substantival Complexes in Standard Chinese”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 15, 327⫺355 Simon, H. F. (1958), “Some Remarks on the Structure of the Verb in Standard Chinese”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 21, 553⫺577 Stepanowa, M. D. & Helbig, G. (21981), Wortarten und das Problem der Valenz in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut Sütterlin, Ludwig (1923), Die deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart. 5 durchges. Aufl. der 2 stark veränd. Aufl. Leipzig: Voigtländer [11900] Tichonov, A. N. (1968), Redeteile ⫺ lexikogrammatische Wortkategorien. In: Zirmunskij, V. M. & Sunik, O. P. (Hrsg.), Voprosy teorii castej reci, aus dem Russischen übersetzt von H. Vehreschild. Leningrad, 219⫺228 Vater, Heinz (1985), Einführung in die Nominalphrasensyntax des Deutschen. Trier: L.A.U.T. Walter, Heribert (1981), Studien zur Nomen-VerbDistinktion aus typologischer Sicht. München: Fink (Structura 13)

Clemens Knobloch, Siegen (Deutschland) Burkhard Schaeder, Siegen (Deutschland)

693

71. Wortartensysteme in der Linguistik

71. Wortartensysteme in der Linguistik 1. 2.

8.

Zum Begriff der Wortarten Entwicklung des traditionellen griechischrömischen Wortartensystems Tradierung der griechisch-römischen Klassifikation durch die Grammatik des Mittelalters Wortartensysteme in der Grammatikographie des Westens vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert Auseinandersetzung mit dem traditionellen Wortartensystem Übertragung des traditionellen Wortartensystems auf nicht-indoeuropäische Sprachen Traditionelle Wortartensysteme in der außereuropäischen Grammatikographie Zitierte Literatur

1.

Zum Begriff der Wortarten

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Der Begriff der Wortart setzt die Existenz von Wörtern als wohldefinierten sprachlichen Einheiten voraus (vgl. Funke 1965: 117; Meier 1974: 130); dem Begriff des Wortartensystems liegt die Annahme zugrunde, daß Einteilungen des Wortbestandes einer gegebenen Sprache ein systematischer Charakter zukommt. Über diese beiden Annahmen besteht in der modernen Sprachwissenschaft keineswegs Einigkeit. Das Wort mag für den Laien ein unproblematischer Terminus sein; viele Sprachwissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhunderts (vgl. etwa Martinet 1986) lehnen den Wortbegriff jedoch mit der Begründung ab, er lasse sich nicht eindeutig definieren (vgl. auch 5.1 und Art. 26). Die von der griechisch-römischen Grammatiktradition (vgl. 2) übernommene Wortarteneinteilung, die nicht nur den noyau dur der gesamten traditionellen westeuropäischen Grammatikographie konstituiert (Auroux 1990: 27; vgl. auch Colombat 1990 sowie die in Lagarde 1988 b nachgewiesene Literatur und Colombat 1998), sondern auch heute noch vor allem in Schulgrammatiken und Wörterbüchern dominiert, beruht auf der Annahme, daß die Wörter einer Sprache sich auf Grund bestimmter gemeinsamer Merkmale in Klassen einteilen lassen. Diese Merkmale können morphologischer, syntaktischer, inhaltlicher und logisch-semantischer Natur sein (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 47⫺55) und bilden die sogenannten Klassifikationskriterien (vgl. Auroux 1988 b und 1992 b; vgl. Boisson et al. 1994 und Art. 70). Da die überlieferte Eintei-

lung das Ergebnis einer Mischklassifikation ist (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 48), wird sie von Vertretern der modernen Linguistik vielfach als unwissenschaftlich verworfen (vgl. 5.1). Die grundlegende Bedeutung von Wortarteneinteilungen für die Grammatikographie wird dabei zumeist nicht in Frage gestellt; der Rekurs auf Wortarten ⫺ die nun jedoch anders definiert werden als in der überlieferten Einteilung ⫺ gilt den meisten Linguisten als unumgänglich: Die Einteilung in Wortarten ist ein “essential stage in the construction of an adequate grammar of a language” (Crystal 1967: 27; vgl. auch Meier 1974: 127; Helbig 1977: 5; Verrac 1985: 88). Im Unterschied zur mittelalterlichen Grammatiktheorie und zur Tradition der Allgemeinen Grammatik, die die Universalität von Wortarten postulierten (vgl. 3 und 4), gehen viele Sprachwissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhunderts von der Annahme aus, daß Wortartensysteme auf Grund struktureller Eigenheiten der Einzelsprachen nur für jeweils eine Sprache Gültigkeit haben können (vgl. 5.1). Je nachdem, welche Klassifikationskriterien verwendet und wie diese gewichtet werden, gelangt man auch für eine gegebene Einzelsprache zu unterschiedlichen Einteilungen. Jedoch gibt es etwa für das Deutsche eine relativ weitgehende Übereinstimmung der Wortartensysteme hinsichtlich der sogenannten Hauptwortarten (auch: Grundwortarten), d. h. Substantiv (Nomen; vgl. Art. 73), Adjektiv (vgl. Art. 74), Verbum (vgl. Art. 77) und Adverb. Weniger Übereinstimmung besteht für die sogenannten Nebenwortarten (vgl. Art. 79); umstritten sind vor allem die Wortarten Numerale (vgl. Art. 75), Pronomen (vgl. Art. 76) und Interjektion (vgl. Vendrye`s 1950: 138; Schmidt 1964: 19). Diskutiert werden in diesem Zusammenhang insbesondere der sogenannte Wortartenwechsel (vgl. Art. 84 und 90) und Übergangserscheinungen bei bestimmten Wortarten, etwa die Abgrenzung von Präposition und Konjunktion im Deutschen (vgl. Crössmann 1973) oder die sogenannten Transitionswortarten im Lettischen (vgl. Stolz 1984). Verschiedentlich ist im Hinblick auf diese Übergangserscheinungen vorgeschlagen worden, zwischen dem Zentrum und der Peripherie von Wortarten zu unterscheiden (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 113f.; Sommerfeldt 1990). Zu kritisieren sind terminologische Unschärfen in der Diskussion über Wortarten.

694

X. Wortarten

So wird etwa der Terminus Wortart, der in der deutschen Grammatikschreibung ab dem 17. Jahrhundert neben dem überlieferten Terminus Redeteil (vgl. 2) Verwendung findet, des öfteren einfach mit den Termini Wortklasse oder grammatische Kategorie gleichgesetzt (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 38f.). Von lexikographischer Seite ist vorgeschlagen worden, zwischen den Wortarten im herkömmlichen Sinn und “funktionalen” Wortklassen, z. B. Prädikatorenklassen (Hausmann 1990: 1221), zu unterscheiden und diese als “komplementäre Beschreibungssysteme” zu begreifen (Strauß 1989: 788). Die grundsätzliche Unterscheidung von Wortart und Satzglied (vgl. Art. 69), die in der traditionellen Grammatikschreibung erst ab dem 18. Jahrhundert allmählich Gestalt annimmt (vgl. 4 und Kaltz 1996: 325⫺330, 337f.), ist dagegen in den meisten modernen Grammatiktheorien gewährleistet. Neben der Grobgliederung in Haupt- und Nebenwortarten gibt es noch eine Reihe anderer dichotomischer Klassifikationsvorschläge, etwa die Unterscheidung von Vollwörtern und Leerwörtern in der chinesischen und japanischen Grammatikographie, die auch in der Dependenzgrammatik verwendet wird (vgl. 5.3 und 7.3), oder die Einteilung in prädikative und transprädikative Wortarten (vgl. Joly 1984: 47). Eine andere Form der Grobgliederung, die Dreiteilung in Nomen, Verbum und Partikeln, stammt aus der arabisch-hebräischen Tradition (vgl. 7.1) und ist in der westeuropäischen Grammatikschreibung seit langem vertreten (vgl. Hockett 1966).

2.

Entwicklung des traditionellen griechisch-römischen Wortartensystems

2.1. Grundlegung durch die griechische Grammatik Der Unterscheidung von acht Wortarten in der griechischen Grammatikographie, wie wir sie in kodifizierter Form in der Dionysius Thrax zugeschriebenen Tećhne¯ finden (Kemp 1986), geht eine erste Ausgliederung des lo´gos voraus (vgl. Art. 6). Die “Vorgeschichte” der Wortartentheorie, in der Sprachen lediglich als Nomenklaturen, als Sammlungen von Wörtern zur Bezeichnung von Gegenständen, gesehen wurden (vgl. Lallot 1988: 11f.), beendet Plato mit einer Differenzierung des lo´gos in ońoma und rheˆma (vgl. Robins 1986: 22

und besonders Basset 1994 zum Problem einer exakten Bestimmung dieser Begriffe). Diese Abgrenzung, die in der platonischen Sprachphilosophie primär logisch konzipiert ist, jedoch auch morphologische Eigenschaften insbesondere des Verbums als rheˆma berücksichtigt, ist womöglich die bedeutendste Erkenntnis in der gesamten Geschichte der europäischen Grammatik; jedenfalls gab sie den Anstoß für die weitergehende Klassifizierung des Wortbestandes im Griechischen (vgl. Lallot 1988: 14f.). Wichtig ist in diesem Zusammenhang, daß das traditionelle Wortartensystem in der westeuropäischen Grammatikographie auf diese Redeteile rekurriert, die ursprünglich Kategorien zur Gliederung des lo´gos sind. Auf Grund der Vieldeutigkeit dieses Begriffs ist auch Redeteil, der überlieferte deutsche Terminus für Wortart, schwer zu fassen: lo´gos bedeutet zugleich ‘Rede’, ‘Satz’ und ‘Aussage’ (vgl. Lambert 1985: 115 und Basset 1994: 48), me´ros lo´gou, ‘Teil der Rede’, mithin zugleich ‘Teil des Satzes’. Den nächsten Schritt zu einer weiteren Ausgliederung bildet die Kategorie suńdesmos (Bindewort), die Aristoteles den Kategorien ońoma und rheˆma hinzufügt (vgl. Lallot 1988: 15 und Art. 6) und die von den Stoikern wiederum differenziert wird in a´rthron (Artikel im weiteren Sinne von Determinantien) und suńdesmos (Konjunktion). Die Unterscheidung von ońoma (Eigenname) und prosegorıá (Appellativum; Gattungsname) geht ebenfalls auf die Stoiker zurück (vgl. Art. 6 und Lallot 1988: 16f.). Die Unterscheidung einer weiteren Wortart (meso´tes), die einen Teil der Adverbien umfaßte, wird Antipater zugeschrieben (vgl. Robins 1986: 25). In der Tećhne¯ werden schließlich in einer Mischklassifikation, bei der morphologische Kriterien dominieren, die Kategorien Nomen (d. h. Substantiv und Adjektiv), Verbum, Partizip, Artikel und Pronomen als veränderliche Wortarten von der Gruppe der unveränderlichen Wortarten (Präposition, Adverb und Konjunktion) unterschieden (vgl. Abb. 71.1; Lallot 1988: 17 und Lallot 21998 sowie die Tabelle in Auroux 1992 b: 586f.; vgl. auch Art. 6). Das Primat morphologischer Kriterien erklärt sich durch den stark flektierenden Charakter des Griechischen. Wie dieses Wortartensystem, vermittelt durch die Lateingrammatik der Antike und des Mittelalters, bis hin zur sogenannten traditionellen Grammatik in der Neuzeit überliefert wurde, illustriert Abb. 71.1 (die Robins 1986: 26 entnommen ist; vgl. auch Baratin 1990).


l¸gow

Plato (427-348 B. C.)

onoma «¬

«~ rhma

Aristotle (fourth century B. C.)

onoma «¬

rhma «~

Stoics 1 (c. 300 B. C.)

onoma «¬

«~ rhma

s˝ndesmow

«¡ aruron

rhma «~

s˝ndesmow

«¡ aruron

rhma «~

s˝ndesmow

aruron «¡

Stoics 2 (third century B. C.)

onoma «¬

Stoics 3 (second century B. C.)

onoma «¬

Techne¯ (c. 100 B. C.)

¬ «onoma

Priscian (c. 500 A. D.)

nomen

Moderntraditional

noun

proshgorfla

proshgorfla

adjective

mes¸thw ¬ (pandekthw) « epflrrhma

interiectio

adverbium

interjection

adverb

s˝ndesmow

«~ rhma

metoxfi

pr¸uesiw

s˝ndesmow

« antvnymfla

verbum

participium

praepositio

coniunctio

pronomen

preposition

conjunction

pronoun

verb

aruron «¡

article

Abb. 71.1

695

696

X. Wortarten

2.2. Tradierung durch die lateinische Grammatik Zunächst ist kurz auf das Wortartensystem des lateinischen Grammatikers Varro hinzuweisen, das außerhalb der griechisch-lateinischen Tradition steht. Nach den Kategorien Kasus und Tempus werden die Wortarten Nomen (⫹Kasus, ⫺Tempus), Verbum (⫹Tempus, ⫺Kasus), Partizip (⫹Kasus, ⫹Tempus) und pars adminiculandi (⫺Kasus, ⫺Tempus) unterschieden (vgl. Varro 1938: 404; Kaltz 1983: 58; Holtz 1994: 81 und Art. 6). Wie Abb. 71.1 zeigt, weicht dagegen das dominierende lateinische Wortartensystem nur in zwei Punkten von der griechischen Vorlage ab: Zum einen entfällt die Kategorie Artikel, da sie im Lateinischen nicht existiert, zum anderen wird im Anschluß an Remmius Palaemon eine eigene Wortart für die Interjektion angesetzt, die in der griechischen Grammatik eine Subklasse des Adverbs war (vgl. Art. 6 und Holtz 1994: 82f.). Die Überlieferung dieses mithin im wesentlichen unverändert übernommenen griechischen Wortartensystems erfolgt vor allem durch die beiden Schulgrammatiken des Donatus (Ars maior und Ars minor; vgl. Holtz 1981; Ivo 1989; Borsche 1989) und durch Priscians Institutiones grammaticae. Die Anlehnung an die griechische Vorlage geht so weit, daß Donatus die Definitionen der einzelnen Wortarten in nahezu wörtlicher Übersetzung aus der Tećhne¯ übernimmt (vgl. Art. 6 und Ivo 1989: 30). Priscian formuliert in seiner Grammatik ausdrücklich, daß im Lateinischen dieselben Wortarten anzusetzen sind wie im Griechischen (vgl. Art. 6). Ebenso wird das Prinzip der Klassifikation nach gemischten Kriterien übernommen (so daß die Definition der Wortarten bei Priscian keineswegs rein semantisch begründet ist, wie Allerton 1990: 89 annimmt). Auch die Auffassung, daß die Wortarten in einer bestimmten Reihenfolge darzustellen sind, die ihrer Bedeutung entspricht, ist von der griechischen Grammatik (vgl. Lambert 1985: 117f.) übernommen: nomen und verbum müssen nach Priscian als partes principales den ersten und zweiten Rang einnehmen, da ohne sie keine vollständige Aussage möglich ist (vgl. Charpin 1986: 134, 139).

3.

Tradierung der griechischrömischen Klassifikation durch die Grammatik des Mittelalters

Das griechisch-römische Wortartensystem ist durchgängig Grundlage der grammatischen Darstellung im Mittelalter, und zwar sowohl

für die Lateingrammatiken (die nunmehr verstärkt auch in einer der Volkssprachen abgefaßt sind) als auch für die ersten Vernakulargrammatiken (vgl. Law 1990: 800⫺807 und Art. 8). Stets ist die Orientierung an Donatus’ Ars minor bzw. an Priscians Institutiones hinsichtlich der Anzahl, der Reihenfolge und der Definition der Wortarten offensichtlich. Beide Grammatiken werden nicht nur im lateinischen Original verwendet, sondern auch übersetzt, adaptiert und kommentiert. So erstellt Aelfric schon um 1000 eine altenglische Fassung des stark gekürzten und umgearbeiteten Textes von Priscian, in der die acht lateinischen Wortarten ebenso für das Altenglische angenommen werden (vgl. Law 1987: 60). Im französischen Sprachbereich geht die Vernakularisierung der grammatischen Terminologie für die Wortartenlehre auf die DonatÜbersetzungen des 13. Jahrhunderts zurück (vgl. Städtler 1988: 2). In der ersten auf französisch verfaßten Grammatik des Französischen, dem um 1409 entstandenen Donait francois von Barton, sind die Wortarten in enger Anlehnung an die lateinische Vorlage definiert (vgl. Kibbee 1991). Ebenso fraglos überträgt Uc Faidit in seiner Grammatik des Provenzalischen (Donatz proensals) die überlieferte Einteilung in acht Wortarten auf seine Muttersprache, wobei er sich bei der Reihenfolge stärker an Donatus, bei den Definitionen eher an Priscian orientiert (vgl. Marshall 1969: 66). Priscians Wortartensystem ist nicht nur Vorlage für die schulgrammatische Tradition des Mittelalters, sondern auch Ansatzpunkt der logisch orientierten Lateingrammatik. Ab dem 11. Jahrhundert und verstärkt ab dem 12. Jahrhundert wird es zum Gegenstand der Kritik. Diese gilt u. a. den Definitionskriterien; bemängelt wird auch, daß Priscian nicht auf die causa inventionis, die Ursache für die “Erfindung” der Wortarten und ihrer Merkmale, eingegangen sei (vgl. Bursill-Hall 1976: 166; Rosier 1988: 42f.; Law 1990: 802). In der modistischen Grammatiktheorie des 13. und frühen 14. Jahrhunderts wird das überlieferte Wortartensystem auf der Grundlage der scholastischen Sprachphilosophie reinterpretiert (vgl. Bursill-Hall 1976; Rosier 1981; 1988; de Libera & Rosier 1992; siehe auch Art. 8). Die traditionelle Einteilung wird zwar beibehalten; die Wortarten werden jedoch nunmehr als Kategorien der Sprache überhaupt begriffen, für deren Definition die in der griechisch-römischen Tradition vorrangig verwendeten formalen Kriterien se-


kundär sind. Maßgeblich für die Definition dieser notwendig in allen Sprachen vorhandenen Wortarten sind vielmehr deren modi significandi (‘Bedeutungsweisen’), die vermittelt über die modi intelligendi (‘Erkenntnisweisen’) zuletzt auf die modi essendi (‘Seinsweisen’) zurückgeführt werden (vgl. BursillHall 1976: 182). Die Unterscheidung der Wortarten erfolgt auf der Grundlage der modi significandi essentiales, der ‘wesentlichen Bedeutungsweisen’. So definiert Thomas von Erfurt etwa das Nomen durch den modus entis, die ‘Bedeutungsweise des Seienden’: “pars orationis significans per modum entis, vel determinatae apprehensionis […] modus entis est modus habitus et permanentis, rei inhaerens, ex hoc quod habet essentiam”; dem Verbum kommt dagegen der modus esse, die “Bedeutungsweise des Seins”, zu (Thomas von Erfurt 1891: 6, 22). Den solchermaßen als universale Kategorien definierten Wortarten werden darüber hinaus “akzidentelle” Bedeutungsweisen zugeschrieben, die den morphologischen Kategorien, den sogenannten Akzidentien, entsprechen (vgl. Bursill-Hall 1976: 177; Rosier 1981: 52⫺54).

4.

Wortartensysteme in der Grammatikographie des Westens vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert

Nachdem schon im Mittelalter vereinzelt Versuche unternommen worden waren, das griechisch-römische Wortartensystem auf europäische Volkssprachen zu übertragen, entsteht ab der Renaissance eine bald unüberschaubare Vielzahl volkssprachlicher Grammatiken, die sich zumeist an dieser Wortarteneinteilung orientieren (vgl. Auroux 1992a: 53⫺56 und Kaltz 1995: 88⫺93). Auf welche Weise die Grammatiker der Neuzeit das überlieferte Wortartensystem für die europäischen Volkssprachen adaptiert haben, sei hier überblicksartig für den französischen und deutschen Sprachbereich aufgezeigt. Für andere europäische Volkssprachen wird auf einschlägige Arbeiten mit weiterführenden Literaturangaben verwiesen (zum Russischen vgl. Biedermann 1978; Kempgen 1981; Archaimbault 1992 und Durovic 1995; zu Wortartensystemen in englischen Grammatiken Michael 1970; Vorlat 1975; Joly 1976; Padley 1985; zum Italienischen, Spanischen und Portugiesischen Swiggers & Vanvolsem 1987; zur spanischen Grammatik des 19. Jahrhunderts

697 Sarmiento 1984; allgemein zur Entwicklung bis zum 19. Jahrhundert vgl. auch Art. 10). Die Herausbildung der volkssprachlichen Grammatiken ist in engem Zusammenhang mit der Weiterführung der lateingrammatischen Tradition im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert zu sehen (vgl. Padley 1985: XIV sowie speziell zu Linacre, Ramus und Sanctius: Colombat 1988), deren Einfluß sich gerade auch im Bereich der sogenannten Allgemeinen Grammatik manifestiert. Schon der Umstand, daß volkssprachliche und lateinische Grammatiken nicht selten von ein und demselben Autor verfaßt sind (z. B. Ramus, Helwig, Lancelot), zeugt von dieser Verknüpfung der beiden Traditionsstränge (vgl. Kaltz 1996). Die im 16. Jahrhundert ⫺ zum Teil noch lateinisch ⫺ verfaßten Grammatiken des Deutschen (u. a. Clajus und Ölinger) übernehmen sämtlich das überlieferte Wortartensystem, vermittelt durch die im frühen 16. Jahrhundert erschienenen Lateingrammatiken von Melanchthon (vgl. Padley 1985: 97f. mit Hinweisen auf weitere “latinisierende” Grammatiken des Deutschen, auch des 17. Jahrhunderts; vgl. auch Jellinek 1913 und 1914). Abgesehen von Ramus verfahren die französischen Grammatiker des 16. Jahrhunderts ebenso. Meigret vermerkt immerhin die Existenz des Artikels im Französischen, wagt es jedoch nicht, die kanonische Einteilung in acht Wortarten und die überlieferten Definitionen anzutasten: “outre les articles” gibt es die überlieferten Wortarten “pour la neçessite´ du batiment de notre langaje” (Meigret 1550: 26; vgl. Kaltz 1996: 321f.). Ramus nimmt dagegen, ähnlich wie vor ihm Varro (vgl. 2.2), auf den er sich ausdrücklich bezieht, in seiner Grammatik des Französischen eine Klassifizierung nach morphologischen Kategorien (Numerus, Genus und Tempus) in Nomen, Verbum, Adverb und Konjunktion vor (vgl. Ramus 1572: 59; Padley 1985: 30⫺41; Kaltz 1996: 322f.). Ab dem 17. Jahrhundert entstehen neben zahlreichen weiteren Grammatiken, in denen das traditionelle Wortartensystem fraglos auf das Deutsche und Französische übertragen wird, auch stärker theoretisch ausgerichtete Werke, die an die Tradition der mittelalterlichen grammatica universalis anknüpfen. In diesen Grammatiken werden Wortarten stets als universale Kategorien definiert, Variationen ergeben sich jedoch hinsichtlich der Anzahl der Wortarten und der zugrundegelegten Definitionskriterien. So nimmt etwa Helwig im Anschluß an die arabisch-hebräische Tra-

698 dition nur drei ⫺ primär syntaktisch definierte ⫺ Wortarten an: Nännwort [Nomen], Sagwort [Verbum] und Beiwort [Advocabulum]. Nomen und Verbum sind Heubtwörter, “weil allzeit in denselben / als auff eim Grund / die Red bestehet”. Die dritte Wortart nennt Helwig Beiwort, “weil es der Red keinen Grund kan setzen / Sondern zu völliger Erleuterung / Umbzielung und Ergenzung der Red hinbeigesetzt wird / zu völligem eigentlicherm Verstand (Helwig 1619: 3; vgl. auch Kaltz 1978: 228f. und Padley 1985: 50⫺52). In der wohl einflußreichsten Universalgrammatik überhaupt, der Grammaire de Port Royal, erfolgt eine Einteilung in Wortarten, die den Gegenstand von Gedanken bezeichnen (“qui signifient les objets des penseés”), und solche, die die Form und die Art von Gedanken bezeichnen [“la forme & la maniere de nos penseés”]: “Les mots de la premiere sorte sont ceux qu’on a appellez noms, articles, pronoms, participes, pre´positions, & adverbes. Ceux de la seconde sont les verbes, les conjonctions, & les interjections. Qui sont tous tirez par une suitte necessaire de la maniere naturelle en laquelle nous exprimons nos penseés” (Arnauld & Lancelot 1660: 30; vgl. auch Chevalier 1977; Swiggers 1986: 42⫺54; Auroux 1988 a). Das rationalistische Postulat der Universalität von Wortarten wird von zahlreichen französischen Grammatikern des 18. Jahrhunderts aufrechterhalten, u. a. von Girard, der das Adjektiv endgültig als eine eigene Wortart vom Substantiv abgrenzt und die theoretisch bedeutsame Unterscheidung von Wortarten und membres de frase (Satzgliedern) vornimmt (vgl. Girard 1747: 41, 88; Kaltz 1996: 326 und Art. 69), sowie von Beauzeé (vgl. Auroux 1989), Condillac und Court de Ge´belin, die ihrerseits auf die deutschsprachige Allgemeine Grammatik des 18. Jahrhunderts und der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts einwirken (Meiner, Vater, Bernhardi, Schmitthenner u. a.; vgl. Jellinek 1913 und 1914; Naumann 1986; Kaltz 1996). Die Differenzierung von Substantiv und Adjektiv in der deutschen Grammatik geht auf Adelung zurück, dessen von der Allgemeinen Grammatik beeinflußtes, jedoch nicht universal konzipiertes Wortartensystem sich dann im 19. Jahrhundert gegenüber dem allgemeingrammatischen Ansatz als “Rezeptionssieger” erweist (vgl. Adelung 1782; Naumann 1986: 177). Die Grammatikographie der im 19. Jahrhundert dominierenden historisch-vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft stellt

X. Wortarten

die traditionelle Wortarteneinteilung so gut wie nicht in Frage, ebensowenig wie dies die im 19. Jahrhundert überaus zahlreichen Schulgrammatiken des Deutschen und Französischen tun (vgl. Chervel 1977: 93; Kaltz 1996: 330⫺332 und Art. 11).

5.

Auseinandersetzung mit dem traditionellen Wortartensystem

5.1. Kritik Die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem überlieferten Wortartensystem hat eine lange Tradition, die bereits im Mittelalter beginnt (vgl. 3) und im 16. Jahrhundert etwa von Ramus fortgesetzt wird (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 57). Im 18. Jahrhundert bemerkt Aichinger in seiner Grammatik des Deutschen: “Von dieser Eintheilung [in 9 Redeteile] läßt sich kein solcher Grund angeben, der zum voraus in der Natur einer Sprache läge: sondern die Grammatici haben die Wörter, so schon vorhanden waren, in so viel Classen eingetheilet, als ihnen nöthig schienen. Daher es hie und da an Verwirrungen nicht fehlt, z. B. zwischen den adiectiuis und pronominibus, aduerbiis und coniunctionibus.” (Aichinger 1754: 120f.)

Im 19. Jahrhundert wird etwa “die barbarische Vermengung des logischen, des syntaktischen und des etymologischen Gesichtspunktes” (Mager 1841: 349) bemängelt. Grundsätzliche Kritik wird im 20. Jahrhundert indessen verstärkt artikuliert, insbesondere von Vertretern der strukturalistischen Sprachwissenschaft (vgl. Lagarde 1988 b und 5.3). Saussure selbst äußert sich zu dieser Frage nur in sehr allgemeiner Form (vgl. Saussure 1972: 153f.). Die Kritik moderner Sprachwissenschaftler am überlieferten Wortartensystem muß im Zusammenhang mit dem Bestreben gesehen werden, sich grundsätzlich von der traditionellen Sprachwissenschaft abzugrenzen (vgl. Platz 1977: 104f.; Kaltz 1983: 15⫺17). Die vorgebrachten Einwände sind jedoch vielfach nur unzulänglich begründet (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 18f.). Moniert werden insbesondere die Abhängigkeit vom Wortbegriff (vgl. Meier 1974: 130; Lagarde 1988 a: 97), die Verwendung semantischer Kriterien bei der Klassifizierung von Wortarten als form classes (vgl. Bloomfield 1965: 268), der Rückgriff auf mehrere Klassifikationskriterien (vgl. Platz 1977: 113f.; Kaltz 1984: 567; Lagarde 1988 a: 93f.), die fehlende Hierarchisierung dieser Kriterien (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 107f.; Lagarde 1988 a: 97) und die mangelnde Be-


rücksichtigung einzelsprachlicher Besonderheiten bei der Wortarteneinteilung (vgl. Lagarde 1988 a: 96). Neben diesen grundsätzlichen Argumenten gegen das traditionelle Wortartensystem ist immer wieder auch Detailkritik erfolgt, etwa hinsichtlich der Qualität der Definition bestimmter Wortarten (vgl. Lagarde 1988 a: 94), der problematischen Wortartenzuordnung mancher Wörter (vgl. Lagarde 1988 a: 95) oder der Uneinheitlichkeit der Wortart Adverb (vgl. Lagarde 1988 a: 95; Gross 1994). Der theoretische Diskurs, in dem die traditionelle Wortarteneinteilung auf jede nur erdenkliche Weise als unwissenschaftlich und inkonsistent kritisiert wird, kommt bei vielen modernen Sprachwissenschaftlern jedoch nicht zur Deckung mit ihrer grammatikographischen Praxis (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 119; Lagarde 1988 a: 102f.; Colombat 1990: 33; vgl. auch 5.3). Zahlreiche moderne Sprachwissenschaftler halten im übrigen an den überlieferten Wortartenkategorien fest, oft ohne sie zu reflektieren (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 119). Das ist insbesondere bei Linguisten generativ-transformationeller Ausrichtung der Fall (vgl. etwa Lecle`re 1989; vgl. auch Kaltz 1983: 78⫺ 82; Lagarde 1988 a: 103). 5.2. Argumente zugunsten des traditionellen Wortartensystems Nicht alle modernen Sprachwissenschaftler, die sich kritisch mit dem traditionellen Wortartensystem auseinandersetzen, kommen zu dem Ergebnis, daß diese “grotesken” und “mißverständlichen” Kategorien (de Mauro in Saussure 1972: 460) zu verwerfen seien. Das überlieferte Wortartensystem kann “durchaus vor den Maßstäben der heutigen Sprachwissenschaft bestehen” (Schmidt 1964: 19); sein “rationaler Kern” wird betont (Flämig 1977: 47; vgl. auch Kaltz 1983: 119). Auch die fonctionnalite´ e´piste´mologique der traditionellen Wortartentheorie wird neuerdings hervorgehoben: Ungeachtet ihrer bekannten Schwächen führt diese bei minimalem Aufwand zu durchaus brauchbaren Ergebnissen (Lagarde 1988 a: 106). Die Kritik am Prinzip der Mischklassifikation ist hinfällig, wenn man das Wort als grundlegende, mehrschichtig strukturierte sprachliche Einheit begreift, die sich nur durch den Rekurs auf mehrere Kriterien angemessen erfassen läßt (vgl. Schmidt 1964: 19; Meier 1979: 30; Kaltz 1983: 43; Cadiot 1989: 59 zur “Polydimensionalität” der Präposition). Auch erscheint das mit der traditionellen Wortartentheorie verbundene

699 Postulat der Möglichkeit einer übereinzelsprachlichen Klassifikation in einem anderen Licht, wenn man bedenkt, daß die Bemühungen der Strukturalisten um eine streng einzelsprachliche Neubestimmung der Wortarten kaum zu befriedigenden Ergebnissen geführt haben (vgl. Joly 1976: 410; Kaltz 1983: 118). 5.3. Adaptationen und Gegenentwürfe Zahlreiche moderne Sprachwissenschaftler haben in unterschiedlichen Ansätzen vorgeschlagen, das traditionelle Wortartensystem zu adaptieren bzw. es durch Gegenentwürfe zu ersetzen. So haben etwa Brøndal (1948) und Bergenholtz & Schaeder (1977) versucht, jeweils ein Klassifikationsprinzip systematisch durchzuführen. Ein anderes Verfahren besteht darin, mehrere auf Grund unterschiedlicher Kriterien gewonnene Klassifikationen gegenüberzustellen und aufeinander zu beziehen (vgl. etwa Sütterlin 51923: 97⫺ 100). Weiter ist, etwa von Ross (1972) und Charitonova (1977), vorgeschlagen worden, an die Stelle einer Klassifikation im engeren Sinne (in der jedes Wort genau einer Klasse angehört) eine Typologie zu setzen, in der die spezifischen Eigenschaften von Wortarten nur in deren “Zentrum” gemeinsam auftreten, in der “Peripherie” dagegen nur teilweise (vgl. 1). Eine andere Möglichkeit besteht darin, das überlieferte Wortartensystem zwar zu kritisieren, jedoch die traditionellen Prinzipien der übereinzelsprachlichen Definition von Wortarten und der Mischklassifikation beizubehalten (Schmid 1986). Am Beispiel von Tesnie`re soll hier zunächst gezeigt werden, daß theoretischer Anspruch und eigene Praxis im Bereich der Wortartenbestimmung häufig auseinanderklaffen (vgl. dazu auch Laurendeau 1986 in bezug auf Jespersen und Ossner 1989: 103 zu neueren Grammatiken des Deutschen). Die sich daran anschließende Diskussion soll andeuten, welche Konsequenzen sich aus der Ablehnung des Prinzips der Mischklassifikation ergeben (Brøndal 1948; Bergenholtz & Schaeder 1977). Schließlich wird das Wortartensystem von Schmid (1986) kurz dargestellt, das die pragmatische Funktion von Wörtern berücksichtigt (vgl. dazu auch Pe´rennec 1994). Tesnie`re lehnt zunächst die traditionelle Mischklassifikation ab: “une bonne classification ne peut […] s’appuyer simultane´ment sur plusieurs caracte`res” (Tesnie`re 1969: 52). Wortarten sind rein grammatische Kategorien und als solche streng von den logischen

700 zu trennen (vgl. Tesnie`re 1969: 48). Eine erste Ausgliederung nach semantischen Kriterien ergibt die beiden “wesentlichen” Wortarten, die mots pleins (“qui sont charge´s d’une fonction se´mantique”) und die mots vides (“de simples outils grammaticaux”; Tesnie`re 1969: 53; vgl. 7.3). Die Abgrenzung der verschiedenen Klassen von Vollwörtern (d. h. Substantiv, Adjektiv, Verb und Adverb) erfolgt im Rekurs auf die Dichotomien Substanz/Prozeß sowie konkret/abstrakt, mithin auf Grund logisch-semantischer Kriterien (vgl. Tesnie`re 1969: 63). Die Arten von Leerwörtern werden dagegen auf Grund ihrer Funktion im Satz unterschieden, wodurch sich die Klasse der jonctifs (entsprechend der Subklasse der nebenordnenden Konjunktionen im traditionellen Wortartensystem) und die Klasse der translatifs (“dont la fonction est de transformer la cate´gorie des mots pleins”, Tesnie`re 1969: 82) ergeben. Dazu gehören die traditionellen Wortarten (bzw. Subklassen von traditionellen Wortarten) subordinierende Konjunktionen, Relativpronomina, Präpositionen, Artikel und Hilfsverben sowie “leere” Präverben im Russischen und Flexionsmorpheme (als translatifs agglutine´s; Tesnie`re 1969: 82). Die Zuordnung von gebundenen Morphemen zu Wortarten innerhalb dieses Wortartensystems ist insofern problematisch, als sie im Widerspruch zu Tesnie`res Definition des Wortes steht (vgl. Tesnie`re 1969: 25; Kaltz 1983: 98). Abgesehen von dieser Integration gebundener Morpheme weist das Wortartensystem deutliche Anklänge an die traditionelle Einteilung auf, insbesondere durch den Rekurs auf logisch-semantische Kategorien (vgl. dazu auch Zemb 1979: 35). Brøndal verwirft syntaktische und morphologische Kriterien als für die Wortarteneinteilung nicht maßgeblich bzw. nicht entscheidend (vgl. Brøndal 1948: 65f.). Statt dessen wird postuliert, daß jedes Wortartensystem auf die Kategorien Relatum (für die traditionelle logische Kategorie der Substanz), Descriptum (Quantität), Descriptor (Qualität) und Relator (Relation) zu gründen ist (vgl. Art. 70). Es sind dies Brøndal zufolge die notwendigen und hinreichenden konstanten Kategorien der Sprache überhaupt, mit deren Hilfe sich Wortartensysteme für jede beliebige Sprache aufstellen lassen. Die Definitionen der einzelnen Wortarten ergeben sich aus der Kombinatorik dieser Kategorien. Unterschieden werden “abstrakte” Klassen, denen jeweils nur eine Kategorie zugrundeliegt (im Falle der Präposition etwa die Kate-

X. Wortarten

gorie Relator), und “konkrete” Klassen, für die mehrere Kategorien zutreffen (im Extremfall der Interjektion alle vier; vgl. Kaltz 1983: 76). Jede Sprache hat ihr eigenes Wortartensystem, doch gibt es für alle Wortartensysteme nur eine logische Basis. Problematisch an diesem Ansatz ist die Hypostasierung logischer Kriterien bzw. die Vernachlässigung morphologischer und syntaktischer Merkmale von Wörtern (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 77f.; Lagarde 1988 a: 99). Bergenholtz und Schaeder gehen davon aus, daß nur Klassifikationen nach einem einzigen Kriterium dem Anspruch der Wissenschaftlichkeit gerecht werden (vgl. Bergenholtz & Schaeder 1977: 42). Aus der Entscheidung für die alleinige Anwendung des Kriteriums der syntaktischen Position und Funktion resultiert nicht nur die einzelsprachliche Gebundenheit, sondern auch die Komplexität ihres Wortartensystems, das 51 Klassen umfaßt. Statt der traditionellen Wortarten Verbum werden nun 9 “verbale Wortarten” unterschieden, die Konjunktion wird differenziert in 13 Klassen (vgl. Bergenholtz & Schaeder 1977: 73⫺75). Andererseits gibt es Klassen mit nur einem Element (z. B. die Wortart Infinitivpartikel; vgl. Bergenholtz & Schaeder 1977: 88) und äußerst komplexe Wortarten wie das Adverb, der “nicht nur die sogenannten genuinen Adverbien, sondern auch prädikativ gebrauchte Adjektive, Pronominaladverbien, die Formen des Partizips I sowie die unflektierten Komparativ- und Superlativformen des Adjektivs” zugeordnet werden (Bergenholtz & Schaeder 1977: 110). Dieses zum Einsatz in der computergestützten Sprachanalyse entwickelte Wortartensystem weist eine Reihe theoretischer Schwächen auf. Insbesondere bleibt die Zuordnung von Wortarten zu den von den Autoren angenommenen Lexemklassen unklar (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 66⫺68; Ossner 1989: 103f.). Auch ist zu fragen, ob die Entscheidung für eine rein syntaktisch begründete Einteilung hier nicht zu einer Überklassifizierung führt (vgl. Kaltz 1983: 43, 107). Schmid strebt eine “allgemeine Definitionsmöglichkeit” für Wortarten zumindest aller indoeuropäischen Sprachen an (Schmid 1986: 85). Wörter werden als “Zeichenträger” bestimmt, denen “Funktionsmerkmalbündel” zugeordnet werden; bei durchgängiger Anwendung der Merkmale ⫹/⫺SEM, ⫹/⫺SYN, ⫹/⫺PRAG und ⫹/⫺AUT ergibt sich ein Wortartensystem mit 16 Klassen (Schmid


1986: 86). Neben der semantischen und der syntaktischen Funktion von Wörtern wird mithin auch deren pragmatische Funktion (d. h. der Bezug auf den Sprecher bzw. die Sprechsituation) bei der Klassifikation berücksichtigt. Das Kriterium ⫹/⫺AUT etabliert, “ob die Zeichen allein oder nur in Verbindung mit anderen Zeichen einen Satz oder eine Satzkonstituente bilden können” (Schmid 1986: 86). Auf die Wortart finites Verbum treffen beispielsweise alle vier Merkmale zu, während der Wortart finites Hilfsverbum das Merkmal AUT fehlt. Die Wortart Substantiv unterscheidet sich vom Verbum allein dadurch, daß ihr keine pragmatische Funktion zukommt (vgl. Schmid 1986: 91). In diesem System werden manche traditionellen Wortarten zu einer Klasse zusammengefaßt (etwa Präposition und Konjunktion), andere traditionelle Subklassen erhalten den Status einer eigenständigen Wortart (so das Kardinalzahlwort). Schließlich bestimmt Schmid Pausen als Wörter und setzt Satzpause und Wortpause als Wortarten an, ohne daß dies jedoch hinreichend begründet würde (vgl. Schmid 1986: 96).

6.

Übertragung des traditionellen Wortartensystems auf nichtindoeuropäische Sprachen

6.1. Kritik Das griechisch-römische Wortartensystem ist jahrhundertelang nicht nur für die Beschreibung der mit dem Griechischen und Lateinischen verwandten europäischen Volkssprachen (vgl. 4) herangezogen worden, sondern auch für nicht-indoeuropäische Sprachen, so etwa bereits im 16. Jahrhundert u. a. für die amerikanischen Indianersprachen Nahuatl, Quechua und Tupi (vgl. Auroux 1992 a: 13). Die (vor allem in den frühen Grammatiken häufig unreflektierte) Übertragung des überlieferten Wortartensystems auf nicht-indoeuropäische Sprachen führt indessen nicht notwendig zu unbefriedigenden Ergebnissen. So ist etwa in der von Petraeus lateinisch verfaßten, 1649 erschienenen Grammatik des Finnischen eine dem Finnischen durchaus angemessene Einteilung der Wortarten auf der Grundlage des traditionellen Systems erfolgt, wenn man von den Postpositionen absieht (vgl. Korhonen 1987: 96). Zahlreiche Sprachwissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhunderts haben an diesem Verfahren jedoch grundsätzliche, häufig vernichtende

701 Kritik geübt. Unter anderem wird argumentiert, daß eine Übertragung des anhand des Griechischen gewonnenen Wortartensystems auf andere Sprachen prinzipiell unzulässig ist, da jede Sprache strukturelle Eigenheiten aufweist und Wortarten sich “nur innerhalb des Systems einer bestimmten Sprache oder eines Dialekts” aufstellen lassen (Meier 1979: 28). Das traditionelle Postulat der Universalität von Wortarten wird somit verworfen: “Universalien gibt es weder für das Wort noch für die Wortklassen” (Meier 1979: 35). Allgemein wird bemängelt, daß die überlieferte Einteilung zu stark an die Kategorie des Wortes gebunden ist (vgl. Lagarde 1988 a: 96). Die griechisch-römische Einteilung werde “bis heute in den unterschiedlichsten Grammatiken der verschiedensten Sprachen wie ein suggestiver Zwang verwendet” (Meier 1979: 25). Dies habe etwa für die Grammatikographie der asiatischen Sprachen geradezu “katastrophale” Folgen gehabt (vgl. Maes 1982: 26). 6.2. Adaptationen Dieser grundsätzlichen Kritik zum Trotz halten viele Sprachwissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhunderts auch für die Beschreibung nicht-indoeuropäischer Sprachen weiterhin am Prinzip einer Wortarteneinteilung fest und orientieren sich an dem überlieferten System. So schlägt etwa Hammerich für das Grönländische eine Klassifikation in Substantiv, Verbum, Pronomen, Numerale und Interjektion vor, wobei er das “Fehlen” der übrigen traditionellen Wortarten ausdrücklich vermerkt (vgl. Hammerich 1970: 12). Ein solches Verfahren impliziert, daß eine übereinzelsprachliche Klassifikation von Wortarten nicht nur möglich, sondern im Hinblick auf den Sprachvergleich auch erstrebenswert ist. Weiter wird argumentiert, es lasse sich auf diese Weise wenigstens für den Bereich der Wortarten eine weitere Proliferation linguistischer Terminologie vermeiden (vgl. van Eijk & Hess 1986: 327). Auch für die früher in Florida gesprochene Indianersprache Timucua ist eine Beschreibung nach Wortartenkategorien unter Zugrundelegung morphologischer und syntaktischer Kriterien vorgeschlagen worden. Auf Grund morphologischer Kriterien ergibt sich eine Klassifikation in Pronomen, Nomen, Verbum und Partikel (morphemic parts of speech); nach dem Kriterium der Verwendung von Wörtern im Satz lassen sich Verbum, Nomen, Pronomen, modifier, Demonstrativum und Konjunktion unterscheiden (syntactic

702 parts of speech; Granberry 1990: 79). Ein anderes Beispiel bietet die Kontroverse über die Existenz von Wortarten in den im Nordwesten Nordamerikas gesprochenen SalishSprachen. Manche Linguisten kommen zu dem Schluß, daß es in diesen Sprachen keine Evidenz für eine Unterscheidung von Wortarten gibt, die den überlieferten Kategorien Nomen und Verbum vergleichbar sind. Jedes volle Wort kann als predicate fungieren, und außer Prädikaten gibt es nur particles (vgl. Kinkade 1983: 25). Demgegenüber gibt es anderen Autoren zufolge offensichtliche formale Kriterien für die Abgrenzung zweier Wortarten in den Salish-Sprachen, die sinnvoll mit den traditionellen Kategorien Nomen und Verbum beschrieben werden können (vgl. van Eijk & Hess 1986: 319; allgemein zur Frage der Universalität der Opposition Nomen/Verbum vgl. Art. 72). Nach dieser Auffassung trifft es zwar zu, daß sowohl Nomina als auch Verben in diesen Sprachen als Prädikate (wie auch als deren Ergänzungen) fungieren können und insofern undifferenziert sind; Verben können im Unterschied zu Nomina jedoch nicht mit possessive markers kombiniert werden. Zu diesem morphosyntaktischen Kriterium tritt noch ein morphologisches, nämlich die Kategorie Aspekt und/oder Tempus, die das Verbum in den Salish-Sprachen (wie in den indoeuropäischen Sprachen) charakterisiert (vgl. van Eijk & Hess 1986: 330). Als letztes Beispiel soll hier kurz erörtert werden, wie die Wortartenproblematik für das Madagassische von traditionellen und modernen Grammatikern behandelt wird. Wörter in dieser dem agglutinierenden Typ angehörenden Sprache sind stets unveränderlich und können unterschiedslos als Prädikat und als Subjekt fungieren (vgl. Dez 1991: 5f.). Bemerkenswert ist, daß Flacourt, der Verfasser der ersten, 1648 erschienenen Grammatik des Madagassischen, diese strukturellen Eigenschaften wohl erkennt, nicht aber die im Vergleich zum Französischen andersartige Ausprägung der Opposition Nomen/Verbum (vgl. Dez 1991: 11f.). Die Forderung nach einer sprachadäquaten Beschreibung des Madagassischen wird zwar schon Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts erhoben (vgl. Dez 1991: 13), aber erst ab 1970 eingelöst (vgl. Dez 1991: 49). Bis dahin werden mit Hilfe der traditionellen Wortarten “des faits impossibles a` cate´goriser suivant les normes europeénnes” klassifiziert, was etwa zur Folge hat, daß eine Wortart Verbaladjektiv etabliert wird (Dez 1991: 30).

X. Wortarten

Die Adaptation des traditionellen Wortartensystems für die grammatische Beschreibung des Madagassischen erfolgt auf unterschiedliche Weise. Manche Autoren halten an der (nunmehr allerdings sprachangemessen definierten) Gegenüberstellung von Nomen und Verbum fest (vgl. Ranjeva 1988 und die in Dez 1991: 49⫺51 zusammengefaßte Theorie von Rajaona). In einem anderen Ansatz wird diese zwar verworfen, weil es in syntaktischer Hinsicht keinen Unterschied zwischen Nomen, Verbum und Adjektiv im Madagassischen gebe. Andererseits wird argumentiert, daß semantische Kriterien die Abgrenzung dieser Wortarten rechtfertigen (vgl. Dez 1991: 51; zu den Klassifikationskriterien für die Wortarten des Tagalog, einer anderen Sprache der indonesischen Sprachgruppe, vgl. ausführlich Lemarećhal 1989 und 1994).

7.

Traditionelle Wortartensysteme in der außereuropäischen Grammatikographie

In diesem Abschnitt kann nur ein kurzer Überblick über die Herausbildung von Wortartensystemen im außereuropäischen Bereich gegeben und lediglich auf einige besonders wichtig erscheinende Aspekte eingegangen werden, wobei die Kürze der Darstellung keineswegs ein Werturteil über die Relevanz dieser grammatikographischen Traditionsstränge impliziert. 7.1. Die arabische und hebräische Tradition Die traditionelle Einteilung für das Arabische und das Hebräische beruht auf dem Wortartensystem des arabischen Grammatikers Siibawayhi (gestorben 793), der eine Einteilung in drei Arten von Wörtern (kalim) vornimmt (vgl. Guillaume 1988: 25, 28; Bohas et al. 1990: 50f.; Hamze´ 1994). Während verschiedentlich ein Einfluß der aristotelischen Tradition angenommen worden ist, gilt die Eigenständigkeit dieses Wortartensystems in der neueren Forschung als gesichert (vgl. Guillaume 1988: 27). Die von Siibawayhi vorgenommene Dreiteilung in ’ism (Nomen, Name), fi’l (Verbum, Operation/Handlung) und harf (weder ’ism noch fi’l; Partikel; vgl. Versteegh 1977: 39f.) wird durch Subkategorisierung weiter differenziert (vgl. Owens 1988: 315f.). So umfaßt die Wortart Nomen nicht nur Substantiv und Eigennamen, sondern auch Adjektiv, Pronomen, Demonstrativum, Relativ- und Interrogativpronomen sowie die Kategorie masødar, die etwa dem sub-


stantivierten Infinitiv im Deutschen oder Französischen entspricht. Ebenso werden für die Wortarten Verbum und Partikel mehrere Subklassen unterschieden (vgl. Guillaume 1988: 26). Al-Mubarrad (gestorben 898) postuliert erstmalig explizit die Universalität dieses Wortartensystems, was insofern bemerkenswert ist, als diese Grammatiktradition ansonsten ganz auf das Arabische ausgerichtet ist und andere Sprachen kaum berücksichtigt (vgl. Guillaume 1988: 30). Ibn Al-Sarraaj (gestorben 928) ergänzt die Definitionen der drei Wortarten durch eine Beschreibung ihrer Merkmale (vgl. Troupeau 1981). So weist er etwa für das Nomen darauf hin, daß ihm ein Artikel oder eine Präposition vorausgehen kann (vgl. Guillaume 1988: 31). Alle späteren Grammatiker des Arabischen orientieren sich an diesem Wortartensystem (vgl. Troupeau 1981: 381; zur weiteren Entwicklung vgl. auch die in Diem 1981 nachgewiesene Literatur sowie Bohas et al. 1990; Owens 1988 und Art. 7). In der ältesten überlieferten, von Saadiah Gaon in arabischer Sprache verfaßten Grammatik des Hebräischen (10. Jahrhundert) wird die arabische Dreiteilung in Nomen, Verbum und Partikel auf das Hebräische übertragen (vgl. Kouloughli 1990: 286, 292). Sie findet sich auch in der hebräischen Grammatik von Dunash ben Labrat (Ende 10. Jahrhundert; vgl. Bacher 1975: 377). Im 16. Jahrhundert entstehen dann die ersten an der europäischen Tradition orientierten Grammatiken des Hebräischen (vgl. Kouloughli 1990: 291; KesslerMesguich 1992 und Art. 72). 7.2. Die indische Tradition Die erste überlieferte Einteilung für das Sanskrit geht auf Yaska zurück (vor dem 2. Jahrhundert v. Chr.; vgl. Pinault 1990 a: 315), der vier Wortarten unterscheidet: Verbum (akhyata), Nomen (naman), Präverb/Präposition (upasarga) und Partikel (nipata) (vgl. Renou 1957: 80, 107, 170, 175; Ruegg 1959: 24). Verbum und Nomen werden explizit semantisch definiert, das Verbum als Ausdruck des Werdens, das Nomen als Ausdruck des Seins (vgl. Pinault 1990 a: 317 und Staal 1976: 111). Zwischen den beiden Wortarten besteht nach Yaska insofern ein besonderes Verhältnis, als für alle Nomina eine Ableitung von Verbstämmen angenommen wird (vgl. Pinault 1990 a: 317f.). Die Wortart Nomen umfaßt die Subklassen Substantiv, Adjektiv und sarvanaman (Pronomen; vgl. Renou 1957: 526). Im Unterschied zu späteren Grammatikern

703 nimmt Yaska für die von ihm aufgelisteten upasarga jeweils eine verbunabhängige Bedeutung an (vgl. Pinault 1990 a: 317; Ruegg 1959: 25; Staal 1976: 112). Pa¯nø ini definiert in seiner wegweisenden Grammatik das Wort (pada) als sprachliche Einheit, die entweder ein Nominal- oder ein Verbalsuffix besitzt (vgl. Renou 1957: 445⫺ 447; Ruegg 1959: 35; Pinault 1990 b: 372). Da an anderer Stelle auch der Partikel, dem Präverb und der Präposition Wortcharakter zugesprochen wird, ergeben sich Probleme für deren Klassifikation. Präverben sind nach Pa¯nø ini als nipata zu klassifizieren; in einer anderen Regel bestimmt er diese als avyaya, als unveränderliche Einheiten (vgl. Renou 1957: 70). Diese wiederum werden als suffixloses Nomen aufgefaßt, und die Partikel wird der Kategorie pratipadika (Nominalbasis) zugeordnet. Eine Eigenbedeutung kommt der Partikel nach Pa¯nø ini jedoch nicht zu (vgl. Ruegg 1959: 35f.; zur weiteren Entwicklung dieses Wortartensystems vgl. Art. 5 und Art. 72). Auch in dem traditionellen Wortartensystem für Tamil werden die Klassen Nomen, Verbum und Partikel sowie eine vierte Wortart (uric col) unterschieden, deren genaue Bestimmung allerdings problematisch ist (vgl. Chevillard & Passerieu 1990: 427). 7.3. Die chinesische Tradition Die Grammatik der chinesischen Sprache wird erst im 19. Jahrhundert zum Gegenstand systematischer sprachwissenschaftlicher Bemühungen (vgl. Casacchia 1990 a und Law 1990: 833f.). Zuvor findet man lediglich vereinzelte Bemerkungen philologischer Art, die der Erschließung von Texten dienen sollen, im Bereich der Wortarten etwa zum Demonstrativpronomen und zur Interjektion (vgl. Casacchia 1990 a: 446). Zwei im Hinblick auf das Wortartensystem des Chinesischen grundlegende Dichotomien gehen indessen auf das späte 13. Jahrhundert zurück: die ursprünglich in der Poetik (vgl. Miller 1975: 1227) getroffene Unterscheidung zwischen vollen Wörtern (shi zi; dazu gehören Substantiv, Verb und Adjektiv) und leeren Wörtern (xu zi; d. h. Adverb, Konjunktion, Pronomen und Modalpartikel) und die Gegenüberstellung einer nominalen Klasse (Substantiv und Adjektiv) und einer verbalen Klasse durch Liu Jian (vgl. Casacchia 1990 a: 446f.). Die 1898 erschienene Grammatik von Ma Jianzhong enthält das erste umfassende Wortartensystem des Chinesischen. In dieser

704

X. Wortarten

Grammatik werden die am Lateinischen gewonnenen Kategorien der westeuropäischen Tradition auf das Chinesische übertragen. Das Ergebnis ist ein Wortartensystem, das die semantisch begründete Dichotomie volle/ leere Wörter mit der überlieferten Einteilung des Westens kombiniert: Substantiv, Pronomen, Adjektiv, Verbum und Adverb sind Klassen von Vollwörtern; Präposition, Konjunktion, Partikel und Interjektion sind Klassen von Leerwörtern (vgl. Casacchia 1990 b: 453). Die Zuordnung von Wörtern zu diesen Klassen erfolgt einzig auf der Grundlage semantischer Kriterien; morphologische Kriterien sind auf Grund der Unveränderlichkeit der Wörter im Chinesischen irrelevant. In der 1921 erschienenen Grammatik von Li Jinxi werden die Wortarten zu den für sie jeweils charakteristischen syntaktischen Positionen in Beziehung gesetzt. So kann etwa die Subjektsposition nur von Nomina bzw. Pronomina, die Prädikatsposition nur von Verben besetzt werden. Die Zugehörigkeit von Wörtern zu einer Wortart wird nunmehr auf Grund ihrer Rolle im Satz bestimmt (vgl. Casacchia 1990 b: 457 und Art. 72).

8.

Zitierte Literatur

Adelung, Johann Christoph (1782), Umständliches Lehrgebäude der Deutschen Sprache, zur Erläuterung der Deutschen Sprachlehre für Schulen. Leipzig: Breitkopf Aichinger, Carl Friedrich (1754), Versuch einer teutschen Sprachlehre […]. Frankfurt/M.: Kraus [Hildesheim: Olms, 1972] Allerton, D. J. (1990), “Language as Form and Pattern: Grammar and its Categories”. In: Collinge (Hrsg.), 68⫺111 Archaimbault, Sylvie (1992), “Les premie`res grammaires du slavon”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 239⫺250 Arnauld, Antoine & Lancelot, Claude (1660), Grammaire geńe´rale et raisonneé, hrsg. v. A. Bailly. Paris 1846 [Genf: Slatkine Reprints, 1968] Auroux, Sylvain (1988 a), “La grammaire geńe´rale et les fondements philosophiques des classements de mots”. Langages 92, 79⫺91 Auroux, Sylvain (1988 b), “Les crite`res de de´finition des parties du discours”. Langages 92, 109⫺112 Auroux, Sylvain (1989), “Beauzeé und die Universalität der Wortarten”. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 76, 56⫺75 Auroux, Sylvain (1990, Hrsg.), Histoire des ideés linguistiques, Bd. I: La naissance des me´talangages en Orient et en Occident. Lie`ge, Bruxelles: Mardaga Auroux, Sylvain (1992 a), “Introduction: Le processus de grammatisation et ses enjeux”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 11⫺64

Auroux, Sylvain (1992 b), “Appendice 1: Les parties du discours et leurs crite`res”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 581⫺589 Auroux, Sylvain (1992, Hrsg.), Histoire des ideés linguistiques, Bd. II: Le de´veloppement de la grammaire occidentale. Lie`ge, Bruxelles: Mardaga Bacher, W[ilhelm] (1975), Die Anfänge der hebräischen Grammatik und die hebräische Sprachwissenschaft vom 10. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert. Amsterdam: Benjamins [11892, 1895] Baratin, Marc (1990), “La constitution de la grammaire et de la dialectique”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 186⫺206 Basset, Louis & Pe´rennec, Marcel (1994, Hrsg.), Les classes de mots: Traditions et perspectives. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon Basset, Louis (1994), “Platon et la distinction nom/ verbe“. In: Basset & Pe´rennec (Hrsg.), 47⫺65 Bergenholtz, Henning & Schaeder, Burkhard (1977), Die Wortarten des Deutschen. Stuttgart: Klett Biedermann, Johann (1978), “Zur Entwicklung der russischen grammatischen Terminologie”. Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 40, 77⫺128 Bloomfield, Leonard (1965), Language. London: Allen & Unwin [11933] Bohas, Georges & Guillaume, Jean-Patrick & Kouloughli, Djamel (1990), The Arabic Linguistic Tradition. London, New York: Routledge Boisson, Claude & Basset, Louis & Kirtchuk, Pablo (1994), “Proble´matiques des parties du discours”. In: Basset & Pe´rennec (Hrsg.), 9⫺45 Borsche, Tilman (1989), “Quid est? Quod accidunt? Notizen zur Bedeutung und Entstehung des Begriffs der grammatischen Akzidentien bei Donatus”. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 76, 13⫺28 Brøndal, Viggo (1948), Les parties du discours. Kopenhagen: Munskgaard Bursill-Hall, Geoffrey L. (1976), “Some Notes on the Grammatical Theory of Boethius of Dacia”. In: Parret (Hrsg.), 164⫺188 Cadiot, Pierre (1989), “Dimensions de la pre´position”. In: Kleiber, Georges & Roques, Gilles (Hrsg.), Travaux de Linguistique et de Philologie, Bd. XXVII. Paris: Klincksieck, 59⫺74 Casacchia, Giorgio (1990 a), “Les de´buts de la tradition linguistique chinoise et l’aˆge d’or de la linguistique impe´riale”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 431⫺448 Casacchia, Giorgio (1990 b), “Les acquis de la tradition chinoise et le contact avec l’Occident”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 449⫺458 Charitonova, Irina I. (1977), “Zur Frage von Zentrum und Peripherie einer Wortart im Deutschen”. In: Helbig (Hrsg.), 28⫺52 Charpin, François (1986), “La notion de partie du discours chez les grammairiens latins”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 8.1, 125⫺140

71. Wortartensysteme in der Linguistik Chervel, Andre´ (1977), … et il fallut apprendre a` ećrire a` tous les petits français. Paris: Payot Chevalier, Jean-Claude (1977), “Grammaire geńe´rale de Port-Royal et tradition grecque. La constitution des parties du discours. Classement et signification”. In: Joly, Andre´ & Ste´fanini, Jean (Hrsg.), La grammaire geńe´rale des modistes aux ideólogues. Lille: Publications de l’Universite´ de Lille III, 145⫺156 Chevillard, Jean-Luc & Passerieu, Jean-Claude (1990), “La tradition grammaticale tamoule”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 417⫺429 Collinge, Neville Edgar (1990, Hrsg.), An Encyclopedia of Language. London, New York: Routledge Colombat, Bernard (1988), “Les ‘parties du discours’ (partes orationis) et la reconstruction d’une syntaxe latine au XVIe sie`cle”. Langages 92, 51⫺64 Colombat, Bernard (1990), “Construire l’histoire des conceptions des parties du discours”. Bulletin d’information de la S. H. E S. L. 25, 32⫺35 Colombat, Bernard (1998, Hrsg.), Corpus repre´sentatif des grammaires et des traditions linguistiques, Vol. I. Saint-Denis: Presses Univ. de Vincennes (Histoire Episte´mologie Langage, Hors-Se´rie 2) Crössmann, Helga (1973), “Präposition oder Konjunktion?”. Linguistische Studien 4, 16⫺38 Crystal, David (1967), “Word Classes in English”. Lingua 17, 24⫺56 De Libera, Alain & Rosier, Ire`ne (1992), “De´finition des cate´gories grammaticales”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 130⫺136 Dez, Jacques (1991), “La linguistique malgache: bref aperçu historique”. Archives et documents de la SHESL 5, 1⫺96 Diem, Werner (1981), “Sekundärliteratur zur einheimischen arabischen Grammatikschreibung”. Historiographia Linguistica 8, 431⫺486 Durovic, Lubomir (1995), “Emergence de la penseé grammaticale en Russie ancienne et formation de la grammaire du russe normatif”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 17.2, 17⫺32 Flämig, Walter (1977), “Zur grammatischen Klassifizierung des Wortbestandes im Deutschen”. In: Helbig (Hrsg.), 39⫺52 Funke, Otto (1965), “On What Principles Are Word-Classes to Be Defined and Named?” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Anglistik und zur Sprachtheorie. Bern, 116⫺135 Girard, abbe´ Gabriel (1747), Les vrais principes de la langue françoise: ou La parole re´duite en me´thode, conforme´ment aux loix de l’usage: en seize discours, Bd. I. Paris: Le Breton [Genf: Droz, 1982] Granberry, Julian (1990), “A Grammatical Sketch of Timucua”. International Journal of American Linguistics 56, 60⫺101 Gross, Gaston (1994), “A quoi sert la notion de partie de discours?”. In: Basset & Pe´rennec (Hrsg.), 217⫺231

705 Guillaume, Jean-Patrick (1988), “Elaboration et constitution de la theórie des parties du discours dans la tradition grammaticale arabe”. Langages 92, 25⫺36 Hammerich, L. L. (1970), The Eskimo Language. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget Hamze´, Hassan (1994), “Les parties du discours dans la tradition grammaticale arabe”. In: Basset & Pe´rennec (Hrsg.), 93⫺115 Hausmann, Franz Josef (1990), “Wortklassenbezogene Wörterbücher”. In: Hausmann et al. (Hrsg.), 1221⫺1223 Hausmann, Franz Josef & Reichmann, Oskar & Wiegand, Herbert Ernst & Zgusta, Ladislav (1989 und 1990, Hrsg.), Wörterbücher: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie, Bd. 1⫺2. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter (Handbücher zur Sprachund Kommunikationsforschung 5.1 und 5.2) Helbig, Gerhard (1977, Hrsg.), Beiträge zur Klassifizierung der Wortarten. Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie Helwig, Christoph (1619), Sprachkünste: I. Allgemaine/welche dasjenige/so allen Sprachen gemein ist/ in sich begreifft […]. Gießen: Chemlin Hockett, Charles F. (1966), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan [11958] Holtz, Louis (1981), Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical: Etude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe ⫺ IXe sie`cle) et e´dition critique. Paris: CNRS Holtz, Louis (1994), “Les parties du discours vues par les Latins”. In: Basset & Pe´rennec (Hrsg.), 73⫺92 Ivo, Hubert (1989), “Donatschnitzer”. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 76, 29⫺55 Jellinek, Max Hermann (1913 und 1914), Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Grammatik von den Anfängen bis auf Adelung, Bd. 1⫺2. Heidelberg: Winter Joly, Andre´ (1976), “James Harris et la proble´matique des parties du discours a` l’e´poque classique”. In: Parret (Hrsg.), 410⫺430 Joly, Andre´ (1984), “La distinction du nom et du verbe dans la theórie de G. Guillaume”. Mode`les linguistiques 6.1, 41⫺52 Kaltz, Barbara (1978), “Christoph Helwig, ein vergessener Vertreter der Allgemeinen Grammatik in Deutschland”. Historiographia Linguistica 5, 227⫺235 Kaltz, Barbara (1983), Zur Wortartenproblematik aus wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Sicht. Hamburg: Buske (Hamburger Philologische Studien 57) Kaltz, Barbara (1984), “Kriterien der Klassifikation des Wortbestandes”. In: Auroux, Sylvain & Glatigny, Michel & Joly, Andre´ & Nicolas, Anne & Rosier, Ire`ne (Hrsg.), Mate´riaux pour une histoire des theóries linguistiques. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 563⫺572

706 Kaltz, Barbara (1995), “L’enseignement des langues e´trange`res au XVIe sie`cle. Structure globale et typologie des textes destine´s a` l’apprentissage des vernaculaires”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 79⫺105 Kaltz, Barbara (1996), “Syntaxtheoretische Ansätze in französischen und deutschen Grammatiken des 16. bis 19. Jahrhunderts”. In: Schmitter, Peter (Hrsg.), Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit II: Von der Grammaire de Port-Royal (1660) zur Konstitution moderner linguistischer Disziplinen. Tübingen: Narr, 319⫺351 (Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 5) Kemp, Alan (1986), “The Tekhne Grammatike of Dionysius Thrax: English Translation with Introduction and Notes”. Historiographia Linguistica 13, 343⫺363 Kempgen, Sebastian (1981), ‘Wortarten’ als klassifikatorisches Problem der deskriptiven Grammatik. Historische und systematische Untersuchungen am Beispiel des Russischen. München: Sagner (Slavistische Beiträge 143) Kessler-Mesguich, Sophie (1992), “Les grammaires occidentales de l’he´breu”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 251⫺270 Kibbee, Douglas (1991), For to Speke Frenche Trewely: The French Language in England, 1000⫺1600. Amsterdam: Benjamins Kinkade, M. Dale (1983), “Salish evidence against the universality of ‘Noun’ and ‘Verb’”. Lingua 60, 25⫺40 Korhonen, Mikko (1987), “Les grammaires des langues finno-ougriennes: esquisse historique”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 9.1, 91⫺110 Kouloughli, Djamel Eddine (1990), “Les de´buts de la grammaire he´braı¨que”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 283⫺291 Lagarde, Jean-Pierre (1988 a), “Les parties du discours dans la linguistique moderne et contemporaine”. Langages 92, 93⫺108 Lagarde, Jean-Pierre (1988 b), “Bibliographie geńe´rale”. Langages 92, 117⫺127 Lallot, Jean (1988), “Origines et de´veloppements de la theórie des parties du discours en Gre`ce”. Langages 92, 11⫺23 Lallot, Jean (21998), La Grammaire de Denys le Thrace, trad. et annoteé. Paris: Ed. du Centre National de la Recherche Scientif. (Sciences du langage) [11989] Lambert, Fre´de´ric (1985), “Theórie syntaxique et tradition grammaticale: les parties du discours chez Apollonius Dyscole”. Archives et Documents de la SHESL 6, 115⫺132 Laurendeau, Paul (1986), “Jespersen et l’imposture des parties du discours”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 8.1, 141⫺155 Law, Vivien (1987), “Anglo-Saxon England: Aelfric’s ‘Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglice’”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 9.1, 47⫺71

X. Wortarten Law, Vivien (1990), “Language and its Students: The History of Linguistics”. In: Collinge (Hrsg.), 784⫺842 Lecle`re, Christian (1989), “Les mots ont-ils une grammaire?”. Le français dans le monde, Sondernummer 2/3, 40⫺49 Lemarećhal, Alain (1989), Les parties du discours: Se´mantique et syntaxe. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France Lemarećhal, Alain (1994), “De´signation et deńomination: superparties du discours et parties du discours”. In: Basset & Pe´rennec (Hrsg.), 149⫺168 Maes, Hubert (1982), “Les parties du discours dans la tradition grammaticale japonaise avant le XVIIIe sie`cle”. Langages 68, 17⫺26 Mager, Karl Wilhelm Eduard (1841), “Die grammatischen Kategorien”. Pädagogische Revue 3, 321⫺371 Marshall, J. H. (1969), The Donatz Proensals of Uc Faidit. London: Oxford University Press Martinet, Andre´ (1986), “Que faire du ‘mot’?”. In: Swiggers & Van Hoecke (Hrsg.), 75⫺84 Meier, Georg F. (1974), “Grundfragen der funktionalen Grammatik”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 27, 125⫺131 Meier, Georg F. (1979), “Wortklassen als Basis jeder Grammatiktheorie (Zur Methodologie der Wortklassifikation in asiatischen und europäischen Sprachen)”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 32, 24⫺35 Meigret, Louis (1550), Le trette´ de la grammere françoeze. Paris: Wechel [Genf: Slatkine Reprints, 1970] Michael, Ian (1970), English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Miller, Roy Andrew (1975), “The Far East”. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (Hrsg.), Current Trends in Linguistics. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1213⫺1264 (Historiography of Linguistics 13) Naumann, Bernd (1986), Grammatik der deutschen Sprache zwischen 1781 und 1856: Die Kategorien der deutschen Grammatik in der Tradition von Johann Werner Meiner und Johann Christoph Adelung. Berlin: Schmidt Ossner, Jakob (1989), “Wortarten: Form- und Funktionsklassen. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer Behandlung in neueren Grammatiken”. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 76, 94⫺117 Owens, Jonathan (1988), The Foundations of Grammar: An Introduction to Medieval Arabic Grammatical Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins Padley, G. Arthur (1985), Grammatical Theory in Western Europe 1500⫺1700, Bd. I: Trends in Vernacular Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

71. Wortartensysteme in der Linguistik Parret, Herman (1976, Hrsg.), History of Linguistic Thought and Contemporary Linguistics. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Pe´rennec, Marcel (1994), “Pre´sentation des mots du discours en allemand”. In: Basset & Pe´rennec (Hrsg.), 285⫺311 Pinault, Georges-Jean (1990 a), “Travaux a` partir du corpus ve´dique”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 303⫺330 Pinault, Georges-Jean (1990 b), “Le syste`me de Pa¯nø ini”. In: Auroux (Hrsg.), 371⫺400 Platz, Bärbel (1977), “Kritisches zur kritik an der traditionellen grammatik”. Wirkendes Wort 27.2, 104⫺120 Ramus, Petrus [Pierre de la Rameé] (1572), Grammaire. Paris: Wechel [Genf: Slatkine Reprints, 1972] Ranjeva, Henri (1988), “Mot et syntaxe en malgache”. Etudes Oceán Indien 9, 223⫺232 Renou, Louis (1957), Terminologie grammaticale du sanskrit. Paris: Champion Robins, Robert Henry (1986), “The techne grammatike of Dionysius Thrax in Its Historical Perspective: The Evolution of the Traditional European Word Class Systems”. In: Swiggers & Van Hoecke (Hrsg.), 9⫺37 Rosier, Ire`ne (1981), “La notion de partie du discours dans la Grammaire spećulative”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 3.1, 49⫺62 Rosier, Ire`ne (1988), “Les parties du discours aux confins du XIIe sie`cle”. Langages 92, 37⫺49 Ross, John Robert (1972), “The Category Squish: Endstation Hauptwort”. In: Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 8.1, 316⫺328 Ruegg, David Seyfort (1959), Contributions a` l’histoire de la philosophie linguistique indienne. Paris: Boccard (Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne 7) Sarmiento, Ramoń (1984), “The Grammatical Doctrine of the Real Academia Espanõla (1854)”. Historiographia Linguistica 11, 231⫺261 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1972), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale, hrsg. v. Tullio de Mauro. Paris: Payot [11916] Schmid, Wolfgang P. (1986), “Eine revidierte Skizze einer allgemeinen Theorie der Wortarten”. In: Swiggers & van Hoecke (Hrsg.), 85⫺99 Schmidt, Wilhelm (1964), “Die deutschen Wortarten aus der Sicht der funktionalen Grammatik betrachtet”. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Pädagogischen Hochschule Potsdam, Gesellsch.-Sprachw. Reihe 3, 3⫺22 Sommerfeldt, Karl-Ernst (1990), “Zum System der deutschen Wortarten ⫺ Kern und Peripherie der Wortart Substantiv”. Zeitschrift für Germanistik 11.1, 12⫺20

707 Staal, J. F. (1976), “Sanskrit Philosophy of Language”. In: Parret (Hrsg.), 102⫺136 Städtler, Thomas (1988), Zu den Anfängen der französischen Grammatiksprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer Stolz, Thomas (1984), “Para-Präpositionen, Präpositionen, Adverbien und (Pseudo-) Postpositionen im Lettischen”. Indogermanische Forschungen 89, 251⫺269 Strauß, Gerhard (1989), “Angabe traditioneller Wortarten oder Beschreibung nach funktionalen Wortklassen im allgemeinen einsprachigen Wörterbuch?”. In: Hausmann et al. (Hrsg.), 788⫺796 Sütterlin, Ludwig (51923), Die deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart. Leipzig: Voigtländer [11900] Swiggers, Pierre (1986), “Mot et partie du discours dans la grammaire française aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sie`cles”. In: Swiggers & Van Hoecke (Hrsg.), 38⫺74 Swiggers, Pierre & Van Hoecke, Willy (1986, Hrsg.), Mot et Parties du Discours. Leuven: Leuven University Press (La penseé linguistique 1) Swiggers, Pierre & Vanvolsem, Serge (1987), “Les premie`res grammaires vernaculaires de l’italien, de l’espagnol et du portugais”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 11.1, 157⫺181 Tesnie`re, Lucien (1969), Ele´ments de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klincksieck [11959] Thomas von Erfurt (1891), De modis significandi, sive grammatica speculativa. In: Joannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia ed. nova, Bd. I, Paris, 1⫺50 Troupeau, Ge´rard (1981), “Les ‘partes orationis’ dans le Kitab al-’Usul d’Ibn al’Sarraj”. Historiographia Linguistica 8, 379⫺388 van Eijk, Jan P. & Hess, Thom (1986), “Noun and Verb in Salish”. Lingua 69, 319⫺331 Varro, Marcus Terentius (1938), De lingua latina. Krit. Ausgabe in 2 Bänden, Bd. II, hrsg. v. Roland G. Kent. London, Cambridge/MA Vendrye`s, Joseph (1950), Le langage: Introduction linguistique a` l’histoire. Paris: Michel [11921] Verrac, Monique (1985), “Des notions de signe et de verbe substantif a` la notion d’auxiliaire”. Histoire Episte´mologie Langage 7.2, 87⫺106 Versteegh, Cornelis H. M. (1977), Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden: Brill Vorlat, Emma (1975), The Development of English Grammatical Theory 1586⫺1737 with Special Reference to the Theory of the Parts of Speech. Leuven: Leuven University Press Zemb, Jean Marie (1979), “Comment de´finir les parties du discours?”. In: Centre de Recherches sur l’Analyse et la Theórie des Savoirs, Se´mantique, Codes, Traductions. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 25⫺79

Barbara Kaltz, Tours (Frankreich)

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72. Word classes in the world’s languages 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

1.

Cross-linguistic identification of word classes Individual word classes Languages with no morphologically defined word classes Is the noun-verb distinction universal? Explaining word class systems Word class systems in typological perspective Uncommon abbreviations References

Cross-linguistic identification of word classes

Since the time of Dionysius Thrax, linguists have drawn on three types of criteria in identifying parts of speech (cf. Art. 70 and 71): syntactic (e.g. the fact that in English nouns can be preceded by articles), morphological (e.g. the fact that nouns in English inflect for number) and semantic (e.g. the fact that nouns typically denote entities, adjectives qualities, and verbs actions); some functional criteria were also invoked, as in Thrax’s definition of suńdesmos (conjunction) as “a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling gaps in its interpretation” (Robins 2 1979: 33f.). The semantic criterion is clearly problematic as a starting point for assigning words to parts of speech. Firstly, synonyms may be mapped into different word classes in different languages: cf. French savoir and ignorer, both verbs, and their Kayardild equivalents munuru and buKumbaMi, both predicate nominals; English only has a simple verb lexeme for ‘know’ and needs a phrase based on a lexical adjective, be ignorant of, for its antonym. Secondly, even within one language two words expressing essentially the same meaning may belong to distinct word-classes, as with English kiss (verb) and kiss (noun), though see Wierzbicka (1986) on the semantic differences in such cases. For these two reasons semantics is not a good point of departure for defining the membership of wordclasses, although we shall see that it remains important as a way of matching up, across languages, word-classes defined on languageinternal distributional grounds. Modern practice has therefore been to use distributional criteria in defining wordclasses. Clearly the nature of the language will determine which particular criteria are used: while most languages furnish both mor-

phological and syntactic criteria, in extreme isolating languages such as Vietnamese only syntactic criteria can be used (see 3). Further, the exact syntactic or morphological criteria will vary from language to language. In configurational languages constituency facts are widely used in defining word classes, while in languages with freer word order, such as Russian, syntactic tests need mainly to be based on dependency (Garde 1981). Or the exact morphosyntactic categories associated with a verb may vary: subject agreement is a useful morphological criterion for defining verbs in most European languages, but in Korean this is not a verbal inflectional category despite its rich verbal morphology, so that other categories such as tense/aspect and honorificity must be used. Conversely, a given inflectional category (e.g. tense) need not always be associated with the same word class: while restricted to verbs (and/or auxiliaries) in most languages, there are languages which signal tense on nouns as well (see 2.1). Despite this variation in the specific distributional tests used, typologists need to formulate versions of distributional criteria that survive cross-linguistic variation, since only then can we compare word classes across languages. For example, the facts of heading the clause and determining argument structure should be characteristic of verbs in all languages regardless of whether the argument structure is manifested through word-order, case-marking or verbal agreement. Typological studies can also be used to formulate implicational statements capable of predicting more subtle relations between parts of speech and inflectional categories: for example, an implicational statement that tense will only be an inflectional category of nouns if it is also an inflectional category of verbs, or that verbs will only have a morphological category of tense if they also have one related to valency (cf. Bybee 1985). Two points need to be made about the relationships between classes defined by the two types of distributional criteria (morphological and syntactic) and by semantic criteria. Firstly, the criteria are logically independent and need not define isomorphic classes: “On essaie de de´finir les parties du discours a` partir de tous les crite`res possibles (⫽ se´mantiques, syntaxiques et morphologiques) pris ensemble, alors

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72. Word classes in the world’s languages que ces crite`res peuvent fournir des indications diffe´rentes, voire contradictoires.” (Mel’cˇuk 1996: 163)

Now it is an interesting typological fact about language that in practice morphological and syntactic criteria usually converge to define the same class, but nonetheless there are various cases where words may be morphologically in one class and syntactically in another; a clear example is the Kayardild (Evans 1995) where words inflected for “verbal case” are morphologically verbal (inflecting for the (1) nada numban-d ji wu:-d ja 1.sg.nom 2.sg-acc present-nfut ‘I presented you with two spears.’ (2) nada numban-d ji wu:-d ja 1.sg.nom 2.sg-acc present-nfut ‘I presented you with two spears.’ Secondly, word classes typically have a gradient structure, with prototypical (or core) members displaying all defining characteristics of the class, and peripheral members dropping certain characteristics and perhaps also manifesting characteristics of other classes. Four dimensions of gradation can be distinguished: (a) Gradation according to degree of morphological and/or syntactic complexity: compare the simple and derived words man, runner, darkness (nouns); dark; dog-like (adjectives); hit, atomize (verbs). The links between morphological markedness and prototypical alignments between semantic and syntactic classes will be discussed in 5. (b) Gradation according to syntactic and discourse context. Thus non-referential nouns may be incorporated, losing the ability to show number or case, and verbs used as modifiers rather than predicates may lose certain morphosyntactically verbal features (such as tense) and behave more like adjectives, to the extent of showing gender agreement and case. Many languages (e.g. Russian, Classical Greek) have special ‘mixed’ categories of participle or gerund to deal with such cases (see Walter 1981; Haspelmath 1987). Importantly, mixed categories of the participle or gerundive type are always derived: there are no roots belonging to such categories. (c) Gradation according to the ability of members to take the full set of inflectional values ⫺ for example, in many languages stative verbs have fewer aspectual contrasts than processual verbs.

verbal categories of tense, mood and polarity) but syntactically nominal (belonging to a nominal phrase whose case is subcategorized for by the verb, and obeying normal ordering constraints within the nominal phrase). Compare (1), which contains the ordinary nominal phrase ‘two spears’ inflected for the proprietive case, and (2), which contains the same nominal phrase inflected for the “verbal donative”, which converts its hosts to morphological verbs: wumbuuun-kuuu spear-propr

kiyarn-kuuu two-propr

wumbuuu-:-d ja kiyar-wu-d ja spear-vdon-nfut two-vdon-nfut (d) Gradation according to semantics, with some words showing all semantic characteristics of core members and others lacking one or more characteristics. Croft (1991) gives a gradient-membership treatment of the semantics of the major lexical classes, arguing that nouns represent objects, have zero valency, and refer to stative, persistent and nongradable entities; adjectives have a valency of one, and should be stative, persistent and gradable, while prototypical verbs have valency of one or more and denote processes, transitory and non-gradable. Semantically non-prototypical members of a word-class are the most likely to show cross-linguistic variation in part-of-speech membership, to be morphologically complex, and to show restrictions in inflectional categories. Combining these observations on the gradient nature of word-class membership with our earlier points about the need to use language-internal distributional criteria to define word-classes, we can set out the following general procedure for cross-linguistic comparison: (a) define word classes on the basis of language-internal distributional criteria, both morphological and syntactic, noting problematic cases where morphological and syntactic criteria do not coincide; (b) map the prototype structure of these categories, identifying criteria for varying degrees of centrality, and assigning class members appropriately; (c) correlate, across languages, the classes so defined on the basis of the semantic and functional characteristics of their core members;

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(d) examine the distribution of matched classes cross-linguistically, and the degree of consistency with which words expressing particular types of meaning are assigned to a given class. We now pass to a cross-linguistic consideration of individual word classes, as they have been defined on the basis of the procedures outlined above. At the end of the discussion of each major class, the treatment of less prototypical members (which may appear in other classes in some languages) will be discussed. The final sections of the article will see what generalizations about possible systems can be made, in terms of the universality or otherwise of the major word-classes (4), examine the interrelation of semantic, discourse-based and grammatical explanations of why they should exist (5), and see whether cross-linguistic generalizations about possible and impossible systems can be made (6).

2.

Individual word classes

The first important distinction to be made is between open classes, which are indefinitely large since new members can be added any time, and closed classes. In addition to being difficult to add members to (other than through grammaticalization), closed classes typically have a very tight opposition-based semantic structure so that pronouns, for example, can normally be neatly arranged on the dimensions of person and number. The numeral class is an interesting exception to this opposition, being infinitely large in most languages (once one includes compounds) but displaying the tight formal and semantic structuring of a closed class. Typically a language will have three to four open classes ⫺ nouns, verbs, adjectives and maybe adverbs ⫺ and closed classes for pronouns, demonstratives, auxiliaries, adpositions, interjections, particles, ideophones and other minor

classes. However, we shall see that there are languages in which the adjective class is closed or non-existent, and languages with a closed class of verbs. The question of whether there are languages that go so far as to lack a noun-verb distinction, possessing just a ‘predicate’ class, will be deferred until 4. Most grammars present word-classes as a simple tree-like taxonomy; within nouns, for example, are such sub-types as count and mass, and verbs break into a number of dimensions (2.2.1), while nouns form part of a superordinate group (often termed nominals), including pronouns and demonstratives with many features in common. But there may also be morphosyntactically and semantically coherent groups cross-cutting the word-classes of noun, verb, etc.; this is often the case with ignoratives and demonstratives, two ‘functional word-classes’ discussed in 2.10 (for fuller surveys of word classes than can be given here, see Schachter 1985; Anward & Moravcsik & Stassen 1997; and the bibliography in Plank 1997). 2.1. Nouns Prototypically, the discourse function of nouns (see Art. 73) is to refer, their syntactic function is as arguments, and semantically they designate objects: persons and other animates, things, and places. Their morphological categories typically reflect their discourse or their syntactic function. In the first category come features aiding successful reference either through such characteristics of the referent as number and gender, or through contextual features such as discourse status or location relative to speech act participants. In the second category comes information about their syntactic function in the clause, preeminently case. Russian exemplifies the well-known Indo-European pattern of nouns that are inflected for case and number, and govern adjectival agreement in case, number and gender:

(3) (a) mal’en’k-ij mal’cˇik pocelova-l-ø small-nom.sg.m boy(nom.sg) kiss-pst(sg.m) ‘The small boy kissed the grandmother.’ (b) mal’en’k-aja devocˇk-a pocelova-l-a small-nom:sg:f girl-nom:sg kiss-pst(sg:f ) ‘The small girl kissed the grandmother.’ As regards the morphological representation of discourse- and context-based information, many languages inflect nouns for definiteness (e.g. Albanian), while Yuma is an

babusˇk-u grandmother-acc.sg babusˇk-u grandmother-acc.sg

example of a language where nouns bear suffixes showing distance from the speaker: ? a·ve-va-c ‘snake-this-nom (this snake)’, ? a·ve-M-c ‘snake-that-nom (that snake)’, and

72. Word classes in the world’s languages

? a·ve-sa-c ‘snake-that(distant)-nom (that (distant) snake)’ (Halpern 1946). Many languages do without such morphological encoding on nouns. Isolating languages, particularly, employ syntactic means (word order and/or adpositions) to convey the same information. And many head-marking languages use pronominal agreement on the verb to give information about syntactic relation, leaving the noun itself unmarked; its syntactic relations can be recovered by matching its person and/or number with the appropriate verbal affix, as in Nahuatl (Art. 132). Though the opposition of referring nouns to predicating verbs is often made in a loose sense, it should not be forgotten that at the logical level nouns, too, are predicates, and that these predicates can be situated in time. In some languages of the Tupi-Guarani family, such as Guarani (Guasch 1965) and Siriono (Firestone 1965), tense/mood inflections can be applied to nouns, restricting the temporal or modal context in which the predicate would have been applicable. The tense/mood inflections on nouns resemble those on verbs, but with a more restricted set of categories. In Siriono, for example, Me nda means ‘road’, its past form Me nda-ke means ‘former road, remains of a road’, and the future form Me nda-rae means ‘future road’. Note that there are two other ways in which nouns can come to inflect for information about tense/mood: when functioning as nominal predicates (see below), or when percolation of tense/mood information onto all elements of the clause in a language like Kayardild leads to ‘modal case’ (Evans 1995; Art. 102). Syntactically, of course, nouns are not simply arguments of verbs, but also have a syntactic function within a noun phrase, and there are many nominal morphological categories reflecting various types of relationship between two nouns in the same phrase. Nouns may be marked as a possessor of another noun, as in Russian cˇelovek-a dom ‘man-gen house(nom) ((the) house of (the) man)’, or as being possessed by another noun, as with Hebrew nouns in the ‘construct state’: tsuva ‘answer’, tsuvat ‘answer (construct form)’, tsuvat hasar ‘the minister’s answer’. Alternatively, nouns may be marked directly for the person and number of the possessor, as with Turkish el-im ‘my hand’, el-in ‘your hand’.

711 When used in the non-prototypical context of predication, nouns in some languages take a subset of the morphology normally reserved for verbs, while often losing some features associated with their prototypical use as an argument. In Turkish, for example, nouns and adjectives used predicatively take verblike suffixes in agreement with the subject, but at the same time forego the ability to take the nominal plural marker -lar (Underhill 1976: 40): biz kasab-iz but *biz kasab-lar-iz ‘1.pl.butcher-(*pl)-1.pl (we are butchers)’. Typically the permitted set of verb-like contrasts on predicate nominals is restricted: in Turkish, predicate nominals cannot be inflected for the imperative or subjunctive, and in the Australian language Mayali predicate nominals (4) and adjectives (5) take a subset of tense-mood inflections, including the past imperfective but excluding the past perfective. (4) koroko nad jik biniM-ni long.ago frogmouth human-pi ‘Long ago, the frogmouth was a human.’ (5) na-mak-ni m-good-pi ‘(He) was good.’ A number of entity types treated as nouns in the familiar European languages turn up as verbs or deverbal nominalizations in various head-marking languages of Australia and North America. Most of these are either relational items such as kin terms (Amith & Smith-Stark 1994; Evans 1999), body parts, and other part terms (‘bottom’, ‘arm’), or ephemeral entities such as ‘river’, ‘waterfall’, ‘thunder’ or ‘lightning’. Terms for kin, spouse and friend deviate from typical noun semantics in being twoplace predicates; Algonquian languages such as Mohawk (6) (Mithun 1995) and Australian languages such as Iwaidja (7) (Pym & Larrimore 1979) use subject and object agreement on the verb to encode both arguments of the predicate. (6) ri-yatere-? a 1.sg.agt/3.m.sg.pt-grandchild-dim ‘my grandson’ (7) ui-magan 3.sg.m/3.sg.f-husband:pres ‘Her husband’ (lit. ‘he husbands her’). Pronominal affixes are not the only inflectional possibilities of verbs used in these constructions: Mohawk (8) uses reciprocal verbal

712 morphology for self-converse kin terms like ‘sibling’, and Iwaidja (9) uses verbal tense contrasts. (8) akw-atate-? kv˛-? oku˛-? a 1.excl.pl.agent-recip-sibling-pl-dim ‘My brothers and sisters’. (9) ui-magandun 3.sg.m/3.sg.f-husband:pcont ‘Her late husband’. Some part expressions, which are also relational in the sense of predicating a type of part relation between two entities, are also treated as verbs in certain languages, such as Mohawk (10): (10) wate-nhoh-niyu˛t-ahkw-ha? nsg.agt-door-hang-instr-habitual ‘door hinge’ (lit. ‘one hangs the door with it’) Apart from relationality, another semantic dimension in which words can deviate from prototypical nounhood is the stative vs. processual axis. Dozens of words denoting ‘ephemeral’ or ‘dynamic’ features of the landscape or the heavens are expressed as deverbal nouns in Mayali: examples are ka-bo-yo ‘itwater-lies (billabong, ephemeral watercourse)’, ka-d jurk-mankan ‘it-current-falls (waterfall)’, and ka-bo-rolnkan ‘it-water-floats.as.mist (shower)’. ‘Lightning’ and ‘thunder’ are expressed as verbs in many languages for similar reasons. In all these examples, then, the referents differ from those of prototypical nouns in one or more respects, by being relational, processual or having low temporal stability, and are placed in the verbal class by some languages. 2.2. Verbs Verbs (cf. Art. 77) are primarily used for predication, and as predicates typically head the clause, determining its argument structure and case frame. Prototypically, verbs express actions, processes, and (somewhat more marginally) states. Verbs are also the relational category par excellence, subcategorizing for one, two, three and sometimes more arguments. As the head of the clause, verbs are usually the word class with the most complex morphological possibilities, reaching a peak in polysynthetic languages such as Nahuatl (Art. 132). An example from Mayali is (11); typically for a polysynthetic language, the verb agrees with both subject and object/indi-

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rect object in person and number, incorporates nominals, has applicatives adding derived objects, and a rich set of adverbial affixes. (11) aban-yawoy?-warka?-maUe-kaM-kiMe-n 1.sg.subj/3.pl.obj-ben-again-wrong-benmeat-cook-pst.perf ‘I cooked the wrong meat for them again.’ Cross-linguistically, an enormous range of morphological categories is found on verbs (the reader is referred to Bybee 1985; Mel’cˇuk 1991 and Art. 77 for a fuller survey than can be given here). The most common categories are (a) various operators with clausal scope, such as tense, aspect, mood and negation, (b) information about argument structure, whether it simply signals argument structure (e.g. a transitivity marker) or alters argument structure, as with voice, reflexives and reciprocals, and applicatives, (c) information about the arguments themselves, whether in the form of agreement in person, number and gender, or information about object-definiteness, or other types of categorization such as the classification of certain participants made by incorporated nominals or shape-classifiers, (d) information about interclausal relations, such as complementizers of various sorts, markers of switch-reference or logophoricity, or ‘anticipatory’ marking for subjects of subsequent clauses, as in Hua (Haiman 1980), (e) information about the social status of one or more participants in the speech-acts, as with verbal honorifics in Japanese (f) adverbial-type and quantifying information, (g) purely formal information, such as conjugation membership. To the above list we may add the many possibilities for deriving other morphological classes from verbs. Nominalizers convert verbs into nouns; many languages have distinct nominalizers according to the semantic role of the referent with respect to the action, such as agentive nominalizers (Eng. -er in employ-er) and patient nominalizers like Eng. -ee (employ-ee). See Comrie & Thompson (1985) for a survey. Participial morphology converts verbs into modifiers, which may or may not be morphological adjectives, depending on whether the language has a distinct adjective class. One special type of participle in some languages is the relative verb form: cf. the Swahili forms a-na-ya-twanga ‘she-pres-it-pound (she is pounding it)’ and a-na-ye-ya-twanga ‘(she) who is pounding it’, formed by inserting the

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relative pronoun prefix ye-. Gerundive or adverbializing morphology converts verbs into adverbs. 2.2.1. Verbal subclasses Verbs break down into subclasses along a number of dimensions. In terms of argument structure, they subdivide according to the number of arguments into intransitive (e.g. to sleep), transitive (to hit), ditransitive (to give), semi-transitive (to wait for) and sometimes subjectless verbs (e.g. to dawn). For a given number of arguments, further divisions are often made, such as differences in the case they assign to their arguments. Particularly important is the subdivision in some languages between intransitive verbs with an actor and intransitive verbs with an undergoer. Thus in Acehnese (Durie 1985) intransitive verbs divide into those like ‘fall’ (12), whose sole argument behaves morphologically like an undergoer in appearing as an enclitic pronoun and those like ‘go’ (13), whose sole argument behaves morphologically like an actor in appearing as a proclitic pronoun: (12) gopnyan ka⫽rhe¨t⫽geuh he inch-fall⫽3 ‘He fell.’ (13) gopnyan ka⫽geuh⫽jak he inch⫽3⫽go ‘He went.’

Two other important and common verbal subclasses are the copula, required in many languages when non-verbs are used as predicates (e.g. is a musician, was dark), and the subclass of auxiliary verbs (2.9 and Art. 78). 2.2.2. Closed verb-class languages Although verbs are often said to be the second universal open word-class, there are in fact many languages whose morphologicallydefined verb class is quite limited, and the full range of meanings expressed by verbs in other languages require a complex predicate construction of verb plus what is usually called a ‘preverb’. To exemplify the complex construction first from a better-known language, in Hindi complex predicates can be formed by combining a ‘light verb’ with a noun or adjective preverb, as in (14). (14) raam-ne kamre-kii safaaii kii Ram-erg room-gen cleaning do:perf ‘Ram cleaned the room.’ Mohanan (1997) has shown that both elements of such complex predicates contribute to the argument structure and case frame: the ergative agent in (14) and (15) is sanctioned by the light verb kii ‘do’, while the nominal preverb b harosaa in (15) is responsible for the assignment of locative case-marking.

(15) raam-ne mohan-par bharosaa kiyaa Ram-erg Mohan-loc reliance do-perf ‘Ram relied on Mohan.’ Now in languages like Hindi the presence of complex predicate constructions involving light verb and preverb does not affect the basic productivity of the class of verbs proper. However, there are other languages, such as the Papuan languages Kalam (Pawley 1993) and Kobon (Davies 1981) where the complex predicate construction is so prevalent that the set of verbs proper is quite limited. Kalam has only about one hundred regular verb stems, and of these only about twenty are used at all frequently; examples are nn ‘see, perceive’, and ag ‘talk, emit sound’. These verbs inflect for subject person/ number and tense. To obtain a fuller set of ‘semantic verbs’, Kalam combines the verbs

with ‘preverbs’ drawn from a number of word-classes, predominantly noun, adjective and adverb. Some examples are wdn nn ‘eye perceive (see)’, tmwd nn ‘ear perceive (hear)’, gos nn ‘thought perceive (think)’, gos koney nn ‘thought many perceive (worry)’, win nn ‘sleep perceive (dream)’; mnm ag- ‘speech sound (speak)’, kmap ag- ‘song sound (sing)’ and esek ag- ‘deception sound (lie)’. In addition to these expressions, which are lexicalized to varying degrees, the language exploits verb chaining, often semi-idiomatized, to decompose events that would be expressed by semantically complex polyvalent predicates in a language like English. An example is:

(16) b monday d yok-e-k, waty at am-b, wog-mgan yow-p man stick hold displace-ds:prior-3.sg fence over go-pf:3.sg garden-in fall-pf:3.sg ‘The man threw the stick over the fence into the garden.’

714 Augmented verb phrases comprising a preverb plus a verb are probably best regarded as complex predicates whose argument structure is determined by the phrase as a whole. These languages thus have an open class of complex predicates, but the set of morphologically defined verbs is a closed class. 2.3. Adjectives Adjectives (see Art. 74) prototypically modify nouns: “Restrictive modification helps fix the identity of what one is talking about (reference) by narrowing the description, while nonrestrictive modification provides a secondary comment (predication) on the head that it modifies, in addition to the main predication” (Croft 1991: 52).

Typically adjectives denote qualities, attributes or states. Syntactically, adjectives function either as dependents of nouns (when used attributively) or as predicates; some languages such as Russian make a formal distinction between attributive and predicative forms (cf. bol’noj cˇelovek ‘(the/a) sick man’, on bolen ‘he (is) sick’). Since the predicative function is prototypically associated with verbs, it is the attributive function that is distinctive of adjectives and where particularly adjectival morphological characteristics are mostly found. Adjectives are by no means a universal word-class, and since Dixon’s (1977) pioneering study, Where have all the adjectives gone?, we have a reasonable picture of the typological diversity of adjective classes, the treatment of ‘quality’ concepts in languages lacking an adjective class, and the semantics of core members. Dixon’s survey examined the part-of-speech membership of three dozen typically adjectival concepts in seventeen languages, and found several possible patterns. Firstly, many languages, like English and Dyirbal, have large open classes of adjective, with substantially similar membership. Secondly, there are languages with no adjective class at all, in which the corresponding concepts are expressed by a subclass of verbs. Dixon cites Chinese but a clearer case, from a morphological point of view, is Korean, where a traditional distinction is made between action verbs and ‘descriptive verbs’, the latter class largely corresponding to adjectives in other languages. Active and descriptive verbs in Korean share most verbal inflectional suffixes, except that descriptive verbs cannot take the processual (basically ongoing aspect) or the propositive (which gives suggestions); the anoma-

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lousness of the English translations *‘is being beautiful’ and ?‘let’s be beautiful’ suggests this restriction can be explained on semantic grounds. When used predicatively, descriptive verbs occur in the regular clause-final position, and take regular verb inflections: cf. alass-cyo ‘know-pst-decl (knew)’, himtXl-csscyo ‘difficult-pst-decl (was hard)’. When used attributively, descriptive verbs must be participialized: himtX-n il ‘difficult-part matter (a difficult matter)’. In addition to the use of descriptive verbs, some concepts expressed by adjectives in other languages are expressed in Korean by nouns in existential or negative existential constructions: ‘delicious’, used predicatively, is expressed as mas-i iss-cyo ‘tastenom exist-decl, (lit. there is taste)’, and as a participialized existential when used attributively: mas-i iss-nXn Xmsik ‘taste:nom existpart food (delicious food)’. In parallel fashion, nouns with negative existentials are used directly for some adjectival-type predications, and in participialized form for some attributives: cæmi cps-cyo ‘zest not.be-decl (it is boring)’, cæmi cps-nXn ycnhwa ‘zest not.bepart film (a boring film)’. Thirdly, there are languages in which the grammatical distinction between nouns and adjectives is elusive or absent. In a language like Quechua, according to the analyses of Cole (1982) and Schachter (1985) (but see Lehmann 1988 for some critical remarks), the corresponding meanings are expressed by nouns best glossed as ‘an X one’. In such languages these adjectival nouns freely occur without a head, as in Quechua rikasˇka: alkalde(kuna)ta / hatun(kuna)ta ‘I-saw (the) mayor(pl)acc / big(pl)acc (I saw the mayor(s) / the big one(s))’. And adjectival modification in such languages parallels modification achieved by juxtaposing two ordinary nouns: cf. chay alkalde runa ‘that mayor man, that man who is mayor’ and chay hatun runa ‘that big man’. Fourthly, languages may use the general strategy of saying, for example, ‘a girl of beauty’ instead of ‘a beautiful girl’. Hausa employs this model extensively, though it also has a small closed class of adjectives. For many antonymous pairs, Hausa uses the preposition plus abstract noun construction for the unmarked or positive quality and a verb for the marked quality: cf. fa’di ‘width’ vs. k’untace ‘become narrow’; kaifi ‘sharpness’ vs. dakushe ‘become blunt’. The use of such mixed systems has been shown by Dixon (1977) to be characteristic of languages with a small closed class of ad-

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jectives, supplemented by one or more of the strategies outlined above. Dixon found remarkable homogeneity in the membership of such closed adjective classes, which are likely to include antonymic pairs denoting dimension (‘large’/‘small’), color (‘dark’/‘light’), age (‘new’/‘old’) and value (‘good’/‘bad’); Igbo is an example of a language whose closed adjective class includes just these eight. In Hausa, which has a closed adjective class of a dozen words or so, ‘bad’ is expressed by an adjective, but ‘good’ by the preposition-plusabstract-noun construction da kyau ‘with that.which.delights.the.eye’, while other pairs oppose verbs to the abstract noun construction, as already illustrated. 2.4. Adverbs The traditional term adverb is used for a heterogeneous range of classes that modify a range of non-nominal classes ⫺ verbs (went up / home / slowly / yesterday), adverbs (somewhat slowly), adjectives (very tall) and nouns (the man below), as well as full clauses (Unfortunately / probably he is dead). Tighter syntactic and morphological definitions usually break this class into several subclasses, some of which may be open (e.g. manner adverbs in English) and others closed (e.g. the intensifiers like very and somewhat). Open-class adverbs are frequently derived from members of other classes: examples are

the formation of manner adverbs by the addition of -ly to adjectives in English (quick J quickly), or from nouns and adjectives by the suffix -ce in Turkish (asker ‘soldier’ J askerce ‘in a soldierly fashion’), or by reduplication of nouns in Indonesian (hati-hati ‘carefully’ from hati ‘liver, mind, attention’). Equally commonly, syntactic means may be used to derive adverbs from one of the other open classes: examples are the Indonesian use of dengan ‘with’ plus noun, as in dengan senang ‘with joy, happily’. Adverbs tend to have limited morphological possibilities. In some languages adverbs resemble adjectives in being specifiable for degree, but in English this possibility is limited to those adverbs that are formally identical with adjectives: Maria sang loud / louder / loudest but loudly / *loudlier / *loudliest. In some languages adverbs agree in case or gender with nominals in the scope of the modified predicate: thus in Pitjantjatjara (17) adverbs take the ergative case in transitive clauses (Bowe 1991: 56⫺62). In Daghestanian languages (Kibrik 1979) adverbs agree with either the agent (exemplified by the class II (feminine) singular ‘early’ in (18), from Archi) or the patient (e.g. in Avar), and in some languages such as Lak either type of agreement is allowed, with agreement emphasizing that the argument governing agreement falls in the scope of the adverb.

(17) miMma-nku⫽Ui uawa-Mku mai woman-erg⫽1.sg.obj continually-erg food.abs ‘The woman continually gave me food.’ (18) buwa dez dı¯taru x¯oalli mother(ii:sg) 1.sg:dat:ii:sg early:ii:sg bread:iii ‘Mother was baking me the bread early.’ Adverbs are by no means a universally distinct class. In many languages they form a subset of the noun class, perhaps with a special use of case (e.g. the use of the accusative on nouns in Arabic to give an adverbial meaning, as with yoman ‘daily’, the accusative form of yom ‘day’), while in other languages, such as Trique or Dutch, adjectives double as adverbs. 2.5. Numerals In most languages numerals (see Art. 75) form a subclass of the noun class, sometimes displaying features of both nouns, such as the ability to head a phrase, and adjectives, such as number and gender agreement. In Bambara, for example (Brauner 1989), numerals

u-nkupai give-pst barsi erdi bake:ger:iii:sg aux:ii:sg

may, like nouns, by themselves head a referring expression, or may combine with a noun: cf. muso taara ‘the woman went’, mo`go` saba taara ‘three men came’, saba taara ‘three came’. But like adjectives they regularly follow a head noun which they modify: cf. mo`go` saba ‘three men’, mo`go` suru ‘small man’. In some languages there is a cline from more adjective-like ‘small numerals’ to more nounlike ‘large numerals’: in Russian, for example, odin ‘one’ behaves like an adjective morphologically (having distinct agreement forms for all three genders) while desjat’ ‘ten’ behaves like a noun (not displaying agreement). For further discussion see Greenberg (1978) and Chapter 5 of Comrie (1981). Numerals often have specific morphological categories, such as ordinal formation

716 (English -th) or combination with classifiers, either through compounding as in Korean tul ‘two’, pjon ‘bottle’ J tupjon ‘two (bottles)’, or through suffixation as in Nivkh mim ‘two boats’, mir øˇ ‘two dogsledges’, nem ‘four boats’, ner øˇ ‘four dogsledges’ (Panfilov 1962: 179 ff). 2.6. Pronouns, demonstratives and articles These three classes are treated together here for several reasons. Firstly, all share the semantic characteristic of being reference indicators. Secondly, in many languages there is partial overlap between these classes ⫺ demonstratives indicate definiteness in Indonesian (buku itu ‘that book, the book’), third person pronouns may combine with nouns to indicate definiteness in many Australian languages, and conversely there are languages in which demonstratives double as third person pronouns, e.g. Dyirbal (Dixon 1972) and Southern Paiute (Sapir 1930). Demonstratives are a common diachronic source for definite articles. The term pronoun is conventionally defined as a word that replaces a noun or noun phrase, but especially in the case of ‘I’ and ‘you’ there are problems with taking another noun phrase as primary, and a better definition is ‘a deictic indexing an entity defined with respect to its role in the speech act’. In addition to the most basic type, the personal pronoun, languages may have special reflexive, reciprocal, demonstrative, indefinite, interrogative and relative pronouns. Personal pronouns typically form tight paradigms, organized most commonly along the semantic dimensions of person and number, but sometimes bringing in other dimensions. Like nouns, pronouns typically also inflect for case in languages with a case system. For fuller discussion of pronoun systems the reader is referred to Forchheimer (1953), Ingram (1978) and Art. 76. In many languages of East and South-East Asia the development of polite pronoun substitutes based on generalized kin terms (e.g. ‘uncle’ as a term of respect replacing ‘you’ when talking to an older male), or more elaborate locutions such as Thai taâj faà la? ccn phra´baàd (lit. ‘dust underneath Royal foot’, which replaces ‘I’ when addressing Royalty), has meant that the ‘original’ pronouns are reserved for intimate or vulgar use. This may reach a point where such ‘original pronouns’ are hardly ever used, and the line between pronouns and the open class of nouns becomes blurred (see Cooke 1968). In other languages personal pronouns are regularly omitted, with the identity of argu-

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ments partly recoverable from the presence of honorific or humbling vocabulary. Likewise, in languages whose verbs agree with one or more pronoun arguments free pronouns are often omitted. However, it is usual for there to be a class of free pronouns that can be employed for special emphasis: cf. Swahili sentences (19) and (20), the second employing a free pronoun to emphasize the subject. (19) ni-na-ku-penda 1.sg.subj-pres-2.sg.obj-love ‘I love you.’ (20) mimi ni-na-ku-penda I 1.sg.subj-pres-2.sg.obj-love ‘I love you.’ Relative pronouns, such as Eng. who, whom and that, replace the shared noun phrase in one of the clauses in a relative construction, and are usually positioned clause-initially. As these English examples show they are often identical in form with interrogative or demonstrative pronouns. Like other pronouns, relative pronouns frequently inflect for case, number and gender. Indefinite pronouns such as someone, anything and so forth often have rich morphological possibilities for indicating the type of knowledge, or lack of knowledge, that the speaker has about a particular epistemic domain. Because of their close relationship to interrogatives in many languages, and the way both cross-cut word-classes established on other grounds, the two will be discussed together in 2.10. Demonstrative pronouns, such as Eng. this, that and (archaic) yon typically form a closed-class of modifiers that identify their referent on the basis of primarily spatial information. While the most basic systems simply oppose ‘near speaker’ to ‘far from speaker’, many elaborations are found, in terms of distance, more elaborate person categories, visibility, geographical information or discourse status; the last category may overlap with articles. Like pronouns, demonstratives often form tightly structured paradigms distinguishing the various combinations of values on the above dimensions, and often also inflect for number, gender and case. A full survey of these possibilities is in Anderson & Keenan (1985). It is useful to group what are sometimes called ‘demonstrative adverbs’ like here and there with the demonstrative pronouns. Arguably these have parallel semantics, in terms of prototypically spatial identification, except

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that they refer to places rather than entities, and in fact many languages have a single class doing double duty. In Kayardild danda means ‘here; this’ and dad˝ ina ‘there; that’ with the sense distinguished by whether they modify a noun; in addition these demonstratives fail to take the locative case when used as demonstrative adverbs, but take it when functioning as demonstrative pronouns. To the extent that demonstratives in a language cross-cut other word-class categories (so that there are verbs meaning ‘do like this’) it may be useful to posit a ‘functional class’ ⫺ see 2.10. Articles, such as the English definite article the and indefinite article a, indicate the speaker’s presuppositions about the identifiability of the referent. Syntactically, articles are often distributionally equivalent to demonstrative pronouns, typically being positioned in the outermost position within the noun phrase (cf. Eng. The/those two old houses, Akan cbea ketewa bi/yi ‘a/this small woman’). In many languages articles inflect for various categories in agreement with their head, such as case, gender and number. Some languages have just a single article and others have none. This may be because the language has morphologized the definiteness category in some way, making use of definiteness prefixes (as in Arabic) or suffixes (as in Albanian), or suprasegmental indications of definiteness, as where definiteness is

expressed in Bambara by changing the tone of the final syllable (cf. ka´fe` ‘coffee’, ka´feˆ ‘the coffee’), or in Tongan by stressing the phrasefinal syllable (Broschart 1997). Other languages make use of alternative or additional strategies for conveying presuppositions about identifiability, such as wordorder (in Russian), topicality marking, the marking of object-definiteness on the verb (in Hungarian), or the use of case-choices to convey definiteness, e.g. the choice between the accusative for definite objects and the nominative for indefinite objects in Turkish, as between köpek-ler gör-dü-m ‘dog-pl(nom) see-pst-1.sg (I saw some dogs)’ and köpekler-i gör-dü-m ‘dog-pl-acc see-pst-1.sg (I saw the dogs)’. See Kra´msky´ (1972) and Himmelmann (1997) for fuller surveys. 2.7. Adpositions Adpositions form a phrasal constituent with nouns or noun phrases, which they precede (prepositions), follow (postpositions) or bracket (circumpositions). They are one means of marking syntactic, semantic or discourse roles; languages that encode these roles in other ways (through case-marking affixes, or verbal morphology) may lack an adpositional class. (21) illustrates the use of postpositions in Japanese for marking a range of case roles, (22) from Tongan illustrates the use of prepositions for a similar purpose.

(21) Taroo ga kodomo ni eigo o osiete-iru Taroo nom child dat English acc teach-be ‘Taroo is teaching English to the child.’ (22) na? e ? inu ? a e kava´ ? e he tanata´ pst drink abs art kava erg art man ‘The man drank the kava.’ Adpositions are relevant to morphology in four main ways. Firstly, they often govern case categories. Secondly, although adpositions are typically morphologically invariant, there are languages such as Welsh and Hungarian in which adpositions inflect in agreement with governed pronominals: cf. Welsh arnot ti ‘on you (sg.)’, arno fe ‘on him’, arni hi ‘on her’. Thirdly, adpositions are an important diachronic source for affixes. Fourthly, an important source for adpositions themselves is by grammaticalization of ‘serial verbs’, and intermediate phases of grammaticization are often marked by adpositions that retain some verb-like morphology (Durie 1988). In the Oceanic language Puluwat (Elbert 1974: 47),

for example, the verb ‘give’ can be used in a serial verb construction with the function of an instrumental marker; although it loses subject agreement in such a construction it still takes a transitivity-marking suffix: (23) wo pwe-nan-iy-aý you fut-give-tr-1.sg ‘Give me a cigarette.’ (24) yi pwe-yatipa I fut-slice ‘I will slice (it) with a

efo´r cl

suupwa cigarette

nan-i laayif give-tr knife knife.’

2.8. Auxiliaries Auxiliaries (see Art. 78), in those languages that have them, form a closed class of words encoding information about inflectional cate-

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gories that are typically associated with verbs morphologically, and with the clause level in terms of their scope: prototypically tense, aspect, mood and voice, but often also person/ number/gender information about subject and objects, as well as directionality. Auxiliaries are far from universal: many languages (e.g. Tagalog, Kayardild) include the equivalent information on a single, lexical verb. While it is sometimes claimed that auxiliaries form phrasal constituents with verbs, and this is certainly the case in many languages (e.g. English and Italian), there are languages like Warlpiri and Wambaya in which this is not the case, and the auxiliary is positioned with respect to the clause (typically in second position). In many languages, auxiliary verbs form a subclass of verbs, and are inflected for all or some verbal inflectional categories. Examples of the first type are Eng. have, as in I have read the book, and Ital. avere, as in Ho letto il libro; both these auxiliaries have almost

identical morphological possibilities to the corresponding lexical verbs, as in I have a book, Ho un libro, except that in many dialects of English (e.g. Australian English) only the auxiliary can reduce (I’ve read the book but *I’ve a book). Perhaps the most interesting morphological aspect of auxiliary verbs is the intricate way in which different subclasses can be chained together, with their syntax and inflectional morphology interacting in complex ways, as with the positioning of negative, tense, aspect and passivizing morphology in Eng. he won’t have been being beaten. On the basis of behavior it is often possible to define such subclasses as modal, aspectual, deontic and voice-marking auxiliaries. While auxiliaries in many European languages are clearly a subclass of verbs, there are many other languages in which they must be treated as a quite distinct class. Examples are Hausa (25⫺26, from Schachter 1985) and the Australian language Wambaya (27, from Nordlinger 1998).

(25) za-ta tafi fut-she go ‘She will go.’ (26) ta-kan tafi she-habit go ‘She goes.’ (27) yabu Mi-n-uba nira nauunud ji-ni have 2.sg.subj-1.obj-npst.away 1.pl.excl car:iv:obl-loc ‘You’ll take us in (your) car.’ Hausa auxiliaries show tense/aspect/polarity and person/gender/number of the subject, and are basically clause initial; Wambaya auxiliaries show tense/mood, person/gender/ number of the subject and object, and (optionally) directionality, and occur in second position in the clause (word order is otherwise free). In neither of these languages is it possible to treat auxiliaries as verbs. In Wambaya, for example, verbs do not agree with their subjects or objects, show directionality, have a set of tense/aspect categories parallel to the auxiliaries, or have the syntactic characteristic of occurring in clause-second position.

sis markers, classifiers, existential markers, mood markers, negators, politeness markers, and ideophones, as well as the problematic class of clitics (Art. 41) ⫺ are often defined precisely by their lack of morphological complexity more generally, and in this section I will concentrate on those that are of interest to morphology. While copulas are a subclass of verbs in most languages, some languages have a special class of copulas that cannot be regarded as verbs. In Hausa, for instance, there is a class of copulas that follow the predicate nominal and inflect for gender, whereas regular verbs precede their objects and inflect for tense/aspect (Schachter 1985: 55):

2.9. Other word classes Languages tend to have a number of minor, residual classes (Art. 79) in addition to the more easily-defined classes given above. These residual classes ⫺ including particles, interjections, conjunctions, copulas, empha-

(28) ita yarinya ce she girl cop:f ‘She is a girl’. (29) shi yaro ne he boy cop:m ‘He is a boy’.

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The usual definition of clitics (see Art. 41) as entities that are syntactically independent but phonologically bound leaves little room for morphological interest, but in fact there are at least three ways in which clitics are relevant to morphology. Firstly, various morphophonemic rules commonly apply only across clitic boundaries. Secondly, clitics are of interest to diachronic morphology because they frequently change into affixes, and more rarely affixes change into clitics. Thirdly, clitics may alternate with free words having morphological structure. In Warlpiri, for example, the ‘auxiliary’ has a template structure containing an initial tense/mood marker, a subject pronominal, then an object pronominal; when monosyllabic, it cliticizes to the first sentential constituent, but when bior polysyllabic it is an independent word: (30) paka-Uu⫽ø-ø-t ju hit-pst⫽pst-3.sg.subj-1.sg.obj ‘(S)he hit me.’ Mina-mi (31) nat ju ka-Ua I pres-1sg.subj sit-pres ‘I am sitting.’ Many languages have a special class of ideophones ⫺ words that are often onomatopoeic, which describe “a predicate, qualificative or adverb in respect to manner, color, sound, smell, action, state or intensity” (Doke 1935: 119) ⫺ and these often have special morphological characteristics. In Ewe, for example (Ameka 1991: 41), ideophones have a characteristic reduplicated or retriplicated form, along with a special employment of the tonal contrast that links low tone with negative evaluation or large size, and high tone with positive evaluation or small size. Taking the ideophonic base li˜li˜li˜ ‘smell’, a low tone conveys a bad smell, a high tone a nice smell; compare also po`to`po`to` ‘sound of big drum’ and po´to´po´to´ ‘sound of small drum’. Although ideophones are sometimes considered a subclass of manner adverbs (see Schachter 1985: 21), this is not always the correct analysis syntactically, since ideophones sometimes pattern like interjections in being able to occur in syntactic isolation. For further discussion see Alpher (1994) and Childs (1994). 2.10. Functional word classes: ignoratives and demonstratives Two sets of functionally defined word classes often cross-cut the categories defined on morphological and syntactic grounds: ignoratives, which signal various types of speaker

attitude to lack of knowledge in a particular epistemic domain, and demonstratives, which deictically indicate the needed information. The link between these was discerned by Karcevski (1969 a: 216): “La re´ponse la plus concre`te a` la question ‘Ty kuda?’ ‘Ou` vas tu?’ serait naturellement ‘Tuda’ ‘La-bas’ accompagneé du geste correspondant. C’est pourquoi la formule du dialogue d’information est k/t, c’est-a`-dire ‘ignoratif’-deictique.” Ignoratives, as defined by Karcevski, include interrogative, indefinite, negative, relative, exclamative, and even anaphoric pronouns. In many languages there are morphological and syntactic similarities between subclasses of ignorative, reflecting the semantic similarities which Karcevski (1969 b: 212) characterized as “diffe´rentes attitudes du sujet parlant vis-a`-vis de l’ ‘ignore´’ que ce pronom indique”. In Russian, for example, besides negative pronouns like nikto ‘no-one’, a rich variety of indefinite pronouns are derived from interrogative pronouns by the addition of various enclitics: cf. kto ‘who’, ktoto ‘someone, I can’t say who’, and kto-nibud‘ ‘someone, it doesn’t matter who’ (Wierzbicka 1980). The way in which ignorative and demonstrative classes cross-cut word-classes defined on other grounds is well-illustrated in Dyirbal (Dixon 1972: 49⫺58), which has ignorative/interrogative and demonstrative members of most of the main word classes ⫺ pronoun, noun, locational and verb; some of these are shown in Tab. 72.1. Each takes the morphology appropriate to its word class: verbal ignoratives and demonstratives have specific transitivity, and inflect for tense; noun ignoratives and demonstratives inflect for case and many show noun class.

Nominal Locational Noun Marker Verb

Ignorative

Demonstrative

waMa ‘who’ wuMd˛aru ‘whither’ wuMd jin ‘where (masc., nom.)’ wiyamal ‘do what/how to obj.’ wiyamay ‘do what (intr.)’

miMa ‘what’ balu ‘thither’ yalu ‘hither’ giyi ‘here visible (masc., nom.)’ yalamal ‘do this to obj.’ yalamay ‘do this (intr.)’

Tab. 72.1: Ignoratives and demonstratives in Dyirbal

Many languages have a single series that does double duty as interrogative and indefinite pronoun (cf. Haspelmath 1997). In May-

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ali, for example, the root Male ‘what; something’ has the first meaning when used in a clause with interrogative intonation (32), and the second meaning when used with declarative intonation (33); with either meaning it may be clause-initial (conjunctions aside). In negative clauses it means ‘nothing’ (34). The same triple polysemy is found with other members of the ignorative class, such as nanale ‘who/someone/no-one (masc.)’. (32) Male kabene-? -na-n? what 3.du.npst-imm-see-npst ‘What are they two looking at?’ (33) bu Male nari-ma-n… subord something 1.pl-get-npst ‘If we get something …’ (34) miM Male ø-yu-wiriM not what 3.sg.pst-lie-irr ‘Nothing remained.’

3.

Languages with no morphologically defined word classes

In various isolating languages the absence of inflectional morphology makes it difficult or impossible to set up word classes on morphological grounds. In some, such as Khmer, there are some derivational processes distinctive to particular classes, but since these do not apply to every word in a class they cannot be used as a primary distributional criterion and are at best a supplementary test to syntactic criteria. In other languages, such as Vietnamese and Classical Chinese, word classes need to be established entirely on syntactic criteria, since, except for abundant compounding, all derivational processes are lacking (though the southern dialect of Vietnamese has a limited tone-shift process for converting kinship terms and demonstratives into pronouns). Classical Chinese presents special problems of analysis because of its status as a dead language, so I will use examples from Vietnamese (Nguyen 1987), returning to the question of the noun-verb distinction in Chinese in 4.2.1. Syntactic distributional tests in Vietnamese establish eight broad classes: four types of ‘full (content) words’ ⫺ nouns, verbs (including adjectives), quantifiers and substitutes; and four types of ‘empty (function) words’ ⫺ particles, connectors, modals and interjections. Nouns combine with numeral or plural particles and classifiers, or with de-

monstratives, to form noun phrases, while verbs combine with particles and modals expressing tense, result, direction, voice, intensity and orientation. There are clear constraints on the use of nouns as predicates or verbs as arguments: nouns can function as predicates only when preceded by the copula la` or its negative counterpart, while verbs (including adjectives) must be syntactically converted to nouns by the classifiers caí ‘thing, object’ or cuooøˆ c ‘action, process, game’ before they can serve as arguments: caí d¯eø p ‘beauty’, caí ta´t ‘a slap’, cuooøˆ c vui ‘party’ (from vui ‘merry, fun’). It is also logically possible for a language to have significant morphology, but no morphologically defined word-classes because the same morphology can be used on all lexical roots. The analyses of Mundari by Hoffmann (1903) and Bhat (1994; 1997) take this position. They argue that both the small set of derivational infixes and the much larger set of inflectional suffixes apply equally to words corresponding to nouns, adjectives and verbs in other languages, and that therefore “the same unchanged form is at the same time a Conjunction, an Adjective, a Pronoun, an Adverb, a Verb and a Noun, or, to speak more precisely, it may become a Conjunction, an Adjective, etc… [by appropriate affixation; N. E.]; but by itself alone is it none of them. It is simply a vague elastic word, capable of signifying, in a vague manner, several distinct concepts, i.e. of assuming a variety of functions.” (Hoffmann 1903: 1)

Osada (1992) points out a number of problems with this position, and we return to the question of whether Mundari has distinct word classes in 4.2.3.

4.

Is the noun-verb distinction universal?

We have seen that neither adjective nor adverb classes are universal open classes: in some languages their functions are taken over by other word-classes. Are there languages which go further, merging nouns and verbs into a single class of predicates? This is certainly logically conceivable, since the predicate calculus treats verbs, adjectives and nouns alike as predicates. An initial, intuitive feel for how such a language would work comes from the translations of Cœur d’Ale`ne sentences which Kinkade (1983) reports as being given by Lawrence Nicodemus, a native speaker with some linguistic training: the sentence meaning ‘gophers make holes in the

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ground’ would be translated as ‘they dig and dig in the ground those which are gophers’, ‘Venison is delicious’ would be translated as ‘they are good to eat those which are deer’, and so forth. When one examines the universality of the noun-verb distinction, it is important to keep distinct the logically independent questions of whether there is a syntactic noun-verb distinction, and whether there is a morphological noun-verb distinction. In 4.1 I review the evidence for a syntactic noun-verb distinction in two groups of languages whose syntax has been claimed to treat nouns and verbs alike, although their morphology allows subclasses to be distinguished. Then in 4.2 I pass to the question of whether there exist languages where the noun-verb distinction is lacking in both morphology and syntax. 4.1. Languages claimed to have only a morphological noun-verb distinction For two groups of languages there has been long debate over whether the noun-verb distinction exists: Tagalog and a number of other Austronesian languages such as Riau Indonesian (Gil 1994) and Tongan (Broschart 1997), and languages of the Pacific Northwest such as Nootka and Salish. Pairs of sentences such as (35/36) for Nootka and (37/38) for Tagalog are often cited as showing that ‘semantic nouns’ and ‘semantic verbs’ are able to occur in both predicate and subject slots. (35) mamu·k⫽ma qu·? as-? i work⫽pres(indic) man-def ‘The man is working.’ mamu·k-? i (36) qu·? as⫽ma man⫽pres(indic) work-def ‘The working one is a man.’ (37) Nagtatrabaho ang lalaki at:ipf:work top man ‘The man is working.’ (38) Lalaki ang nagtatrabaho man top at:ipf:work ‘The one who is working is a man.’ As Schachter (1985: 12) puts it: “[s]ince the characteristic function of nouns is as arguments and that of verbs as predicates, a functional distinction between nouns and verbs becomes difficult to establish to the extent that nouns occur as predicates and verbs as arguments without any distinctive marking (such as a copula accompanying the predicative nominal or some morpheme indicating nominalization of the verb).”

In both cases early claims that this distinction was absent (e.g. Bloomfield 1917 for Philippine languages and Swadesh 1939 for Nootka) were superseded by more detailed analyses showing subtle distributional differences (e.g. Schachter & Otanes 1972; Jacobsen 1979). But the pendulum has recently swung back with claims that there is no syntactic (as opposed to morphological) distinction, by Gil (1991) and Himmelmann (1991; Art. 135) for Tagalog and by Jelinek (1995) and Jelinek & Demers (1994) for Straits Salish. We now examine the Tagalog and Salish cases in more detail. 4.1.1. Philippine languages Bloomfield (1917) was an early proponent of a unicategorial analysis of Tagalog, suggesting that it had but two parts of speech: full words (inflectable) and function words (not inflectable). An immediate objection to this is that there are clear morphological criteria for distinguishing nouns and verbs in Tagalog: despite a great deal of morphological overlap, particularly salient in the realm of ‘orientation’ (cf. Art. 135), only verbs may be inflected for aspect (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 62). However, if one distinguishes syntactic from morphological word classes, it is possible to argue that while Tagalog has a morphological distinction between nouns and verbs, it has but a single open syntactic word class, which might be called ‘predicate’. Gil (1991) advocates this analysis on the basis of the total syntactic parallelism of morphological nouns and verbs. Thus, both can follow quantifiers (39, 40); where the quantified expression is a morphological verb, the numeral selects the participant selected as topic by the voicing affix ⫺ actor in (40), patient in (41), and locative in (42). (Earlier analyses of Tagalog, e.g. Schachter & Otanes 1972, treated constructions like (40) and (41) as zero-converted nominalizations of verbal forms). (39) tatlo-ng bata three-lig child ‘three children’ (40) tatlo-ng umawit three-lig at:pf:sing ‘three persons that sang’ (41) tatlo-ng inaawit three-lig pt:ipf:sing ‘three things that are being sung’

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(42) tatlo-ng papag-awitan three-lig lt:fut-sing ‘three places that will be sung in’

(48) dikdik-in siya sa lusong crush:pt 3.sg loc mortar ‘(that) he be crushed in a mortar’

Both can be marked as ‘topic’ by the preposition ang (43, 44):

On this analysis, then, all Tagalog predications are simply equational, with the semantic role of the topic or ‘predication base’ being recoverable from the orientation affix, and the semantic role of the others being given by the combination of preposition and participation structure. These recent analyses therefore suggest that even though Tagalog may have a morphological distinction between nouns and verbs, there is but one syntactic class, predicates, and that clauses have an equational structure; as a result there is no scope for the grammatical relations of subject, object etc. in the language, their function being discharged by a combination of the orientation affixes with the semantics of participation. It must be stressed, though, that this type of analysis is far from settled, and it remains to be seen how detailed information from other Philippine languages will influence our understanding.

(43) nakita ko ang bata pt:pf:see 1:sg:gen top child ‘I saw the child.’ (44) nakita ko ang umawit pt:pf:see 1:sg:gen top at:pf:sing ‘I saw the person that sang.’ And both can be sentence-initial predicates (45, 46): (45) bata ang nakita ko child top pt:pf:see 1:sg:gen ‘The person I saw is a child.’ (46) umawit ang nakita ko at:pf:sing top pt:pf:see 1:sg:gen ‘The person I saw sang.’ Clearly linked to the lack of a syntactic noun-verb distinction is the suggestion, made by various scholars, that Tagalog clauses are all basically equational, lacking the relational structure of transitive verbal clauses in most languages. Thus Schachter & Otanes (1972: 62) suggest that “all Tagalog basic sentences […] are essentially equational in nature, involving a balancing of two elements ⫺ the predicate and the topic ⫺ against one another” (cf. Lemarećhal 1982). Himmelmann (1987; 1991) develops this analysis further and relates it to the oftclaimed absence of a ‘subject’ grammatical relation aligning agents with topics in the unmarked case (see Schachter 1976), as well as to the difficulties of characterizing the Philippine ‘focus’ constructions. He argues that what are normally called ‘focus’ or ‘voice’ affixes in Tagalog are functionally more similar to the ‘orientation affixes’ that in other languages form agentive, patientive, locative or instrumental nouns. The interplay of a predicate’s ‘participation’ (i.e. semantic relationality) with these ‘orientation affixes’ carries out the function that argument structure and grammatical relations have in most languages. Sentences like (47) and (48) are most revealingly translated, on this analysis, as ‘nodd-er in assent (was) the monkey’ and ‘he (be) crush-ee in the mortar’: (47) t-um-ango ‘ang unggo’ at:pf:nod top monkey ‘The monkey nodded in assent.’

4.1.2. Nootka and Salish Jacobsen (1979), Schachter (1985) and Anderson (1985) discuss the celebrated case of the Wakashan languages Nootka and Nitinaht, and refute the claim made in Swadesh (1939) that they do not distinguish nouns from verbs. They concede, however, that the difference is a subtle one, revolving around the fact that although both ‘nouns’ and ‘verbs’ can occupy the predicate slot, ‘verbs’ need to be overtly nominalized before they can occupy an argument slot. In (35) and (36) we saw the apparent interchangeability of ‘man’ and ‘work’ in subject and predicate functions. However, there is in fact a difference: nouns can be used as arguments with (35) or without (49) a following determiner/article, whereas bare verbs like ‘work’ are unacceptable as arguments (50), and must first be nominalized by a following determiner/article, as in (36), if they are to occupy an argument slot. (49) mamu·k⫽ma qu·? as work⫽pres man ‘A man is working.’ (50) *qu·? as⫽ma mamu·k man⫽pres work *‘The working one is a man.’

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There are thus subtle syntactic differences between nouns and verbs; Jacobsen (1979: 142) concludes that “in the history of the Nootkan languages the boundary between nouns and verbs has probably strengthened and weakened somewhat from time to time, as nouns and nominal markers have developed from other material.” But there are other languages in the same linguistic area, such as Salish and Kitimaat, where the case against distinguishing nouns and verbs syntactically is even stronger. In Straits Salish, for example (Jelinek 1995; Jelinek & Demers 1994; see also Kinkade 1983) there is just one open syntactically-defined word class, the predicate; arguments of the predicate are either (a) pronominal affixes or clitics (51, 52) or (b) subordinate clauses introduced by determiners, which must be used with both ‘semantic nouns’ (53) and ‘semantic verbs’ (54): (51) cˇey⫽ø work⫽3.abs ‘He works.’ (52) s-wey’qe’⫽ø stat-male⫽3.abs ‘He is a man.’ (53) cˇey⫽ø ce s-wey’qe’ work⫽3.abs det stat-male ‘He works, the (one who is a) man.’ (54) s-wey’qe’⫽ø ce cˇey stat-male-3.abs det work ‘He is a man, the (one who) works.’ Unlike in Nootka, there is no class of ‘syntactic nouns’ definable by the ability to serve as arguments without determinative modification: any referring expression other than a pronominal affix must be preceded by a determiner, whether it refers to an entity (either proper or common), or an action: (55) na-t-ø⫽sen ce scˇeenexw eat-tr-3.abs⫽1.subj det fish ‘I ate (the/a/some) fish.’ Eloise (56) ni? se exist det:fem be:Eloise ‘Eloise was born (lit. Exist(ed) the being-Eloise one)’ (57) cˇese? ce t’ilem be:two det sing ‘They are two, the ones who sang.’ These distributional facts support an analysis of Salish having just one open syntactic class,

the predicate, which includes the words for entities (58), qualities (59) and events (60): (58) swi? qoa¢-le⫽sxw be:young.man-perf⫽2.sg ‘You were a young man.’ (59) ? ey¤⫽ø be:good⫽3 ‘He is/was good.’ (60) ye? -e-se⫽sxw go-question-future⫽2.sg ‘Will you go?’ Despite the arguments for there being just one open syntactic word class, and the presence of many clitics (e.g. modal and aspectual) positioned with respect to the predicate, various morphological differences can be found, although these do not correspond exactly to the semantic noun-verb distinction. Firstly, predicates have morphological categories sensitive to relationality. They distinguish two types of argument morphologically: nominative (first or second person) or absolutive (third person), which are enclitic, and accusative (first or second person) or ergative (third person), which are suffixed, as in (61); there is also a ‘transitive suffix’ on two-place predicates whose form distinguishes controlled (c) from uncontrolled (uc) predicates. A morphological distinction between one-place and two-place predicates can thus be established. (61) len-t-ø⫽sxw see-tr:c-3.abs⫽2.sg.nom ‘You look at him.’ (62) t¤em-n-es⫽ø hit-tr:uc-3.erg⫽3.abs ‘He hit him (accidentally).’ Secondly, within the subclass of one-place predicates there are two further morphological distinctions between processes, states and entities. Stative verbs like ‘desire’, ‘like’ and ‘scared’, quality terms like ‘foolish’ and some generic nouns (e.g. ‘man, male’ and ‘fish’) can take a special ‘stative’ prefix (54, 64). And entities and experienced states, but not processes, can take possessive affixes, as in: (63) ne-ten⫽sxw 1.sg.poss-mother⫽2.sg.nom ‘You are my mother.’ (64) ne-s-l’i’⫽sxw 1.sg.poss-stat-like⫽2.sg.nom ‘I like you (lit. you are my lik(ing)).’

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Although Jelinek does not directly address the question of morphological word classes in Salish, facts such as the above suggest that a division something like the following should be made: predicate one-place stative

non-stative

two-place controlled

non-controlled

Fig. 72.1: Word-classes in Salish

While such semantic dimensions as stative vs. processual and one-place vs. two-place are relevant to the noun-verb distinction in most languages (2.2.1), the Salish system does not group them in the normal way and the morphological classes above do not correspond closely to the noun vs. verb vs. adjective distinction in most languages. Before concluding this discussion of these syntactically unicategorial languages, it is worth noting one important difference between Salish and Tagalog: in Salish, arguments are always indexed by bound pronouns, while in Tagalog, there is a single ‘predication base’, with other semantic arguments being ‘referentialized’ through the use of postpositions. 4.2. The noun-verb distinction in languages without morphologically defined word classes As we have seen, several scholars have argued that Tagalog and Coast Salish group nouns and verbs into a single syntactic class of ‘predicate’, but still distinguish them morphologically. Can we find languages where the lack of a syntactic noun-verb distinction is matched by a lack of a morphological distinction ⫺ either because the language is totally isolating, and hence has no morphology that can be used to distinguish classes (Classical Chinese being a candidate) or because the morphological possibilities are available to all lexemes, as has been claimed for Mundari. As we saw in 3, it is possible to set up word classes in isolating languages on purely syntactic-distributional grounds. In Vietnamese, for example, verbs and nouns have their own specific distribution patterns, with nouns having a characteristic pattern of modifiers within the nominal phrase, and verbs a distinctive set of modal and other modifiers;

nouns cannot be predicates without the use of a copula, while verbs cannot be arguments without the use of a classifier. But do all isolating languages make such a clear distinction? We now turn to Classical Chinese and Tongan, two languages for which it has been claimed that there is neither a morphological nor a syntactic distinction between nouns and verbs. 4.2.1. Classical Chinese Traditional Chinese grammarians did not distinguish noun from verb ⫺ both were members of the class of ‘full words’, opposed to the class of ‘empty words’, basically closed-class grammatical markers. All scholars agree that there were no morphological distinctions, and that the syntax distinguished predicate and argument positions (though with considerable ellipsis possible). Claims about the lack of a noun/verb distinction come from the fact that many (perhaps all) ‘full’ words can be used, with no overt marking of categorial conversion, as arguments, intransitive predicates, or transitive predicates. Thus nouns are frequently used as verbs with the sense ‘fulfill the duties of …’, ‘behave as … should’ (Norman 1988): (65) caì hoú yıń e´r bu´ fu` caí marquis profligate conj not father ‘The marquis of Cai was profligate and would not fulfill his duties as a father.’ Names (N) of tools may be used as transitive verbs with the meaning ‘perform an action on the undergoer using N as a tool’: (66) bia¯n zhı¯ jia`n xue` whip him see blood ‘lashed him and saw blood’ And before the locative preposition yu´ a noun may be interpreted as an intransitive verb: (67) jı`n shı¯ ju¯n yu´ lu´liuˇ Jin troops army at Luliu ‘The Jin troops encamped (armied) at Luliu.’ The important thing about these examples is that each time a word is syntactically converted, there is a distinct semantic addition (e.g. from ‘N’ to ‘fulfill the duties of an N’); this is quite distinct from the Tagalog and Salish cases. Furthermore, such generalizations about the semantic effects of conversion can only be made if one presupposes a basic


word class distinction between syntactic nouns and verbs, and a basic association of lexical items with one class; most lexemes have an unmarked valency value, and extensions to other valencies are often creative and literary (Simon 1937; Norman 1988). The distinctive feature of Classical Chinese, then, is not that it lacks a syntactic distinction between nouns and verbs, but that compared to other isolating languages such as Vietnamese, which signal word-class conversion by syntactic means (classifiers, copula etc.), it has much more productive processes of zero-conversion. 4.2.2. Tongan Tongan resembles Classical Chinese in having no inflectional morphology; within the limited derivational morphology “none of the affixes in question are used exclusively on translational equivalents of Indo-European nouns rather than verbs, and vice versa” (Broschart 1997: 146). As in Classical Chinese, virtually any root may be placed in the referring, predicating or qualifying syntactic frames, and take on a commensurate range of meanings, so that Tonga for example can mean ‘Tonga’, or ‘Tongan (person)’, and the derived faka-Tonga can mean ‘Tongan language’ or ‘speak Tongan’, according to the syntactic frame. Unlike Classical Chinese, however, it is extremely unusual for a lexical root to occur alone; rather, lexical roots will always be inserted into syntagms including adpositional tense/aspect/mood markers (in the case of a predicate) and article and case markers (in the case of a referring expression), as in (22). The presence of these adpositions allows one to readily identify verbal groups and noun phrases at the syntactic level, but virtually every lexical root can slot equally well into each syntagm; compare the swapping of the roots lele and fefine in (68) and (69), and the use of the name Mekipefi ‘Macbeth’ with the meaning ‘play Macbeth’ in (70): (68) na? e lele kata e kau fefine´ pst run art art pl woman:def ‘The women were running.’ (69) na? e fefine kotoa e kau lele´ pst woman all art pl run:def ‘The ones running were all female.’ (70) na? e mekipefi ? a sione pst Macbeth abs Sione ‘Sione played (assumed the character of, but is not identical with) Macbeth.

725 Now one interpretation of such facts is what may be called the conversion hypothesis: “that the lexical word classes noun and verb are distinct, but that they are only identifiable in the phrasal context” (Broschart 1997: 135). What may at first sight appear to favor this hypothesis is the large set of possible semantic relationships between the meanings obtained in different slots, so that (as with Classical Chinese) we appear to be dealing with lexically idiosyncratic cases of zero-conversion: cf. the pairs ‘three dollars; be worth three dollars’, ‘blue-colored head; have a blue-colored head’, ‘the teachers; provide the teachers’, ‘Tongan language; speak Tongan’, in which the second meaning is that normally found when the lexical item appears in the predicate slot. However, Broschart goes on to show that the nature of the addition can be predicted from detailed lexical semantics. Thus ‘task’ words with meanings like ‘king’, when in a noun phrase, mean ‘act as king’ when in the verbal group, ‘instrument’ words like ‘hoe’ then mean ‘use a hoe’, and ‘language’ words like ‘Tongan’ then mean ‘speak Tongan’ and so forth. A semantic addition like ‘provide’ will only apply with natural provisions like food, or with instruments, or personnel. Broschart’s point is that the word classes one needs to set up for Tongan in order to account for such patterns are much more detailed than such categories as ‘noun’ or ‘verb’, and instead constitute classes comparable to semantic-field categories like ‘instrument’, ‘provision’, ‘color word’ and so on. Once these are identified, the relevant analytic levels needed for Tongan can bypass the level of the noun-verb contrast, by setting up a direct relation between these detailed lexical classes and the phrasal syntax of noun phrases, verbal groups and so on. A major unsolved question, however, is just what the meaning of these lexemes is before they enter into phrasal syntax (since they only, ex hypothesi, gain such concrete meanings as ‘Tonga’, ‘Tongan language’ or ‘speak Tongan’ in conjunction with particular phrasal constructions), and a challenge for a Broschart-style analysis is to give precise semantic characterizations at both levels. 4.2.3. Mundari Mundari, as described by Hoffmann (1903) and rearticulated by Bhat (1994, 1997) presents similar problems to Tongan, except that

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here the syntagms within which lexical roots are placed are morphological as well as syntactic. ‘Noun’, ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’ slots can, on their analysis, be identified on morphological grounds, but lexical roots themselves are ‘fluid’ and free to occur in any slot, with appropriate changes in meaning. With regard to derivational morphology, Bhat (1994; 1997) states that the same infix -Vp- ⬃ -pVis used with both verbs and adjectives. Against this Osada (1992) points out that this

affix has a reciprocal function when used with verbs but works as an intensifier with adjectives; this is therefore a case of affixal homophony rather than the application of the same derivational morpheme. (71) ⫺ (74) are sentence examples illustrating the Hoffmann-Bhat position. In each sentence the verb is in final position, with aspect, transitivity, and mood suffixes following the root, and a subject enclitic attached to the preverbal constituent.

(71) buru⫽ko bai-ke-d-a mountain⫽sbj.3.pl make-compl-tr-indic ‘They made the mountain.’ (72) saan⫽ko buru-ke-d-a firewood⫽sbj.3.pl heap.up-compl-tr-indic ‘They heaped up the firewood.’ (73) mandi⫽ko jom-ke-d-a food⫽ sbj.3.pl eat-compl-tr-indic ‘They ate the food.’ (74) jom⫽ko nam-ke-d-a food⫽ sbj.3.pl get-compl-tr-indic ‘They got the food.’ There are three main arguments against the unicategorial analysis of Mundari. Firstly, unlike the Tagalog, Salish or Tongan cases the degree of semantic difference between noun-slot and verb-slot uses is greater than can be attributed just to the syntagmatic frame, and like Classical Chinese takes the full meaning of the ‘default’ word class as its input, rather than a more abstract precategorial meaning as claimed for Tongan. Thus in the pair jom ‘(v.t.) eat; (n.) thing eaten, food’ the nominal meaning must include the verbal meaning in its definition, while in buru ‘(n.) mountain; (v.t.) heap up, make a pile like a mountain’ the verbal meaning must include the nominal. Further, the meaning difference is often lexically idiosyncratic, and different members of the same lexical class typically have different increments, some more figurative than others: cf. enga ‘mother; be a mother’, haga ‘brother; be member of the same clan’. Secondly, and unlike Tongan, such fluidity is confined to a restricted subset of lexical roots in Mundari, and many lexemes in Hoffmann’s multi-volume Encylopaedia Mundarica (published several decades after his grammar) have specific word class labels identifying their restriction to one syntagm or another. And thirdly, while the possibilities of using nouns as predicates are relatively generous, the number of roots resem-

bling jom in having basically verbal meanings, but able to appear as the head of a noun phrase, is quite limited, so that the ‘fluidity’ between verb and noun is not bidirectional. The best analysis of Mundari, then, may turn out to be one in which major word-class distinctions are postulated, but the grammar is allowed to make productive use of nouns as predicates, and with a high level of zero conversion. As with virtually every one of the languages examined in this section, though, definite conclusions must await treatment of large numbers of vocabulary items, careful semantic analysis of the meaning differences between nominal, adjectival and verbal slots, and an explicit statement of how constructional syntagms contribute to meaning.

5.

Explaining word class systems

A variety of explanations have been offered for the ubiquity, and at least for some scholars the universality, of distinctions between the major word-classes of noun, verb and adjective. Investigators have variously sought accounts in terms of the structure of meaning or logic, the structure of the world, the structure of cognition, and the organization of discourse (see Art. 70). Logically-based accounts seek to correlate word classes with categories in some variety


of logic. Such accounts immediately face the problem that logical predicates can be realized as nouns, adjective and verbs; this problem is inherited by more sophisticated categorial accounts which substitute a ‘type’ such as <e,t> (i.e. something that combines with an entity to give a truth value) for the ‘predicate’ of first-order logic. More recent developments in logical semantics (e.g. Davidson 1967) allow one to distinguish different ontological types such as entities, properties, event and situations, and Bach et al. (1995: 7) have suggested that nouns express predicates of entities and verbs express predicates of events or situations. An example of an explanation seeking to account for the distinction between major word classes in terms of the structure of the world is Givoń (1979: 320⫺322; 1984: 51⫺ 56). He discusses the contrast between the most time-stable ‘phenomenological clusters’, normally realized as nouns, the most rapidlychanging, realized as verbs, and an intermediate category, normally realized as adjectives, though with much intergrading into the noun category at the more stable end (young / youth) and into the verb category at the more rapidly-changing end (be sick / ail). It is clear, though, that the structure of the world is not supposed to be a sufficient explanation for word class distinctions, since Givoń goes on to show how these different ontologies lead to different discourse patterns. In any case it is clear that these ontological differences are mediated by human cognition, and in particular are relative to particular semantic frames which set expectation as to what is ‘temporary’ and what is ‘stable’: how else to explain the fact that certain verbs (e.g. ‘conserve’, ‘curate’) denote far more time-stable processes than some nouns (e.g. ‘concert’)? Cognitivist approaches (e.g. Langacker 1987) see the major word-class distinctions as reflecting different cognitive ‘construals’ of what may objectively be the same situation: “[t]here is no real hope of finding universally valid definitions based on objective factors, or even on conceptual content alone; the critical factor ⫺ to be addressed at the level of cognitive processing ⫺ is how this content is accessed and construed.” (Langacker 1987: 92)

According to this view, speakers are free to construe the world in alternate ways: ‘kiss’, ‘catch’ and ‘hit’ may each be construed either as a noun ⫺ defined by Langacker (1987: 58) as “a region in some domain” ⫺ or as a verb,

727 characterized as the profiling of a process. While rightly emphasizing human cognitive flexibility, however, such approaches still face the problem of explaining why some construals are more natural, and some are ruled out altogether. Discourse-based accounts resemble cognitive accounts in downplaying the ontology of denotata in favor of factors of human representation, this time in terms of their representation in discourse. Hopper & Thompson (1984; 1985), for example, see the noun and verb categories as lexicalizations of the prototypical discourse functions of ‘discoursemanipulable participant’ and ‘reported event’ respectively: “the lexical facts about N’s and V’s are secondary to their DISCOURSE ROLES” (Hopper & Thompson 1984: 708). They draw attention to the successive neutralizations in morphosyntactic contrasts between noun and verb as one moves away from the ‘prototypical discourse environments’ of introducing participants (nouns) and reporting events (verbs). As verbs move away from their prototypical function of answering the question ‘what happened’, they lose oppositions of tense and person/number agreement, and as nouns move away from their prototypical function of referring to a concrete entity, they lose such prototypical nominal morphosyntactic trappings as case marking and the ability to take determiners. At the same time, verbs may be partially recategorized towards the noun prototype when naming an event as an entity, and here acquire at least some nominal morphosyntax; nouns may be partially recategorized towards the verb prototype when reporting a predicate. In a further study in this paradigm, Thompson (1988) argues against Givoń‘s attempt to characterize adjectives in terms of intermediate time-stability; instead, she accounts for the patterning of adjectives with nouns in some languages, and with verbs in others, by showing that adjectives have two main functions in English and Mandarin discourse: “Property concept words […] function in spontaneous, natural conversational discourse (i) to predicate a property of an established discourse referent or (ii) to introduce a new discourse referent […]. Property Concept Words share the predicating function with Verbs, and the referent-introducing function with Nouns […]. This sharing of both Verbal and Nominal functions in discourse provides an explanation for the fact that Property Concepts will sometimes be categorized with morpho-syntac-

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tic properties similar to those of Verbs, and sometimes with morpho-syntactic properties similar to those of Nouns.”

A recent synthesis of meaning-based and discourse-based approaches to explaining word classes is Croft (1991), who points out that Hopper & Thompson have recourse to some semantic categories anyway (e.g. they invoke the semantic contrast of events vs. processes to account for why stative constructions are low in verb categoriality), and shows that some languages do in fact have a distinct ‘modifier’ textual profile for adjectives. He argues for the following prototypical alignment between semantic class, discourse function, and syntactic category:

Semantic class Pragmatic function

Syntactic category Noun Adjective

Verb

Object

Action

Property

Reference Modification Predication

Tab. 72.2: Semantic class, pragmatic function, and syntactic categories

The alignments in Tab. 72.2 are only prototypical, and a given language may redeploy them in a variety of ways: by using a noun or adjective for predication, for example, or by using a noun to designate a property. Croft‘s point is that these non-prototypical alignments will tend to be marked in various ways, morphological and/or syntactic. English, for example, permits all possible alignments of semantic class with pragmatic function, but the non-prototypical alignments will be marked morphologically or syntactically (Croft 1991: 53): Reference Objects

Modification Predication

vehicle’s vehicular Properties whiteness white Actions destruction destroying to destroy destroyed vehicle

be a/the vehicle be white destroy

Tab. 72.3: Semantic class, pragmatic function and word-classes in English

6.

Word class systems in typological perspective

Structuralist theories of language tended to see each word-class system as sui generis, and this was a necessary step to attain the degree of faithfulness to each language’s genius that

descriptive grammars of the world’s languages have attained over the last decades. But the more recent typological research reported in this article has raised, in a more supple form, the possibility of universals in word-class systems. One type of universal looks at where systems draw the boundaries between classes: which meanings regularly appear in the same class cross-linguistically, and which are more border-line members of these classes and hence subject to greater cross-linguistic variation in membership, as with Dixon’s (1977) cross-linguistic study of adjectives. A second type of universal concerns the logical order in which systems reduce the number of open word classes. Hengeveld (1992: 47), working from a 40-language sample, proposes the following ‘predicate hierarchy’, according to which a category “is more likely to occur as a separate part of speech the more to the left it is in the hierarchy”: (80) Verb > Noun > Adjective > Adverb Like all implicational hierarchies, this generates a large grid of predictions with respect to possible and impossible systems; it correctly predicts, for example, that no language should have verb and adjective classes but no nouns. Examples illustrating some of the systems generated by this hierarchy have already been given: Dutch disposes of the adverb class, but retains nouns, verbs and adjectives; while Mandarin Chinese essentially has just a noun and a verb class. There are three main problems with Hengeveld’s analysis, one empirical and two theoretical. On the empirical side, a host of problems surround his identification of languages with particular cells: for example, his placement of Mundari as a language with a single flexible V/N/Adj/Adv is questionable (see 4.2.3 above), while his classification of Cayuga as a language that only has verbs does not do justice to the subtle treatment in Sasse (1993 a; 1993 b). On the theoretical side, the first problem is that this classification ignores the interesting problems of languages with restricted major classes: why should it be, for example, that some languages have highly restricted verb classes (2.2.2) if this is really the one universal class? The second and more significant theoretical problem is that it risks bringing back the old a prioristic problems of grammars based on the mould of the classical European languages, by forcing a new set of predefined options on the data. This is particularly acute when dealing with the deep challenge of lan-

729


guages that may have only one major word class. The examples discussed in 4 should have made clear how varied are the ways in which languages may have a single class: the single class of Straits Salish, more verb-like with its pronominal arguments, differs significantly from the single class in Tagalog, more reminiscent of nominalizations in an equational construction, and different in turn from Tongan, where it is not clear that lexical words can function in any productive way outside a constructional syntagm that must add tense/aspect/mood markers or specifiers before the word can be interpreted. This comes back to the classical semantic question of whether concepts can be defined simply by denotation (in this case, by reference to the theory-internal definitions of verb, noun etc. as predicates over various types of logical entity given by Functional Grammar) or whether sense, as given by the system of oppositions, is also relevant: in this case, does the term verb still make sense when not used in opposition to noun, and does the too-ready use of a hierarchy like Hengeveld‘s blind us to real and interesting differences in how Tongan or Salish, for example, organize their word-class systems. Resolving this dilemma remains a major challenge for word-class typology, and the use of what we have discovered about core morphological characteristics and core lexical members of the various classes will aid in the process of giving cross-linguistic denotational equivalence. Equally important is the factorization of the various ingredients ⫺ syntactic, morphological, and semantic ⫺ traditionally lumped together under the term ‘word class’, and the exploration of ways in which lexical classes exhibit systematic polysemy, in construction with particular syntagms, in those languages with relatively fluid word-class membership. Doing this will require more systematic exploration of larger sets of lexical items, and more principled discussion of the semantic contribution of grammatical frames to the interpretation of lexemes. In addition, new techniques for studying function in discourse, and more subtle means of studying typological markedness, point to the need for methodological variety in crosslinguistic studies of word-classes, and for more attention to the interactions between lexical meaning, discourse function and syntactic function. Only for adjectives do we have reasonable cross-linguistic studies relating word-class membership to semantic

groupings; similar work needs to be done for the other major classes. Work relating wordclass patternings to discourse functions needs to be extended to encompass the interaction of radically different grammatical types with supposedly universal discourse strategies, and to examine different alignments of discourse behaviour with semantically-definable subclasses.

7.

Uncommon abbreviations

agt art at ben c compl cop ds du imm ipf irr lig lt nfut npst nsg pcont pf pi propr pt stat top tr uc vdon

8.

agent article actor topic benefactive controlled completive copula different subject dual immediate imperfective irrealis ligature locative topic non-future non-past non-singular past continuous perfective past imperfective proprietive case patient topic stative topic transitive uncontrolled verbal donative

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72. Word classes in the world’s languages Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. (1997), Deiktikon, Artikel, Nominalphrase. Zur Emergenz syntaktischer Struktur. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag Hinton, Leanna & Nichols, Johanna & Ohala, John J. (1994, eds.), Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hoffmann, J. (1903), Mundari Grammar. Calcutta: Secretariat Press Hoffmann, J. (1930⫺79), Encyclopaedia Mundarica, Vol. 1⫺15. Patna: Bihar Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1984), “The Discourse Basis for Lexical Categories in Universal Grammar”. Language 60, 703⫺752 Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1985), “The Iconicity of the Universal Categories ‘Noun’ and ‘Verb’”. In: Haiman, John (ed.), Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 6), 151⫺183 Ingram, David (1978), “Typology and Universals of Personal Pronouns”. In: Greenberg (ed.), 213⫺ 247 Jacobsen, William H. (1979), “Noun and Verb in Nootkan”. In: Efrat, Barbara S. (ed.), The Victoria Conference on Northwestern Languages, Victoria, British Columbia, November 4/5, 1976. Victoria/ B. C.: British Columbia Provincial Museum (Heritage Record 4), 83⫺155 Jelinek, Eloise (1995), “Quantification in Straits Salish”. In: Bach et al. (eds.) Jelinek, Eloise & Richard Demers (1994), “Predicates and Pronominal Arguments in Straits Salish”. Language 70, 697⫺736 Karcevski, Serge (1969 a), “Sur la parataxe et la syntaxe en russe.” In: Godel (ed.) Karcevski, Serge (1969 b), “Introduction a` l’e´tude de l’interjection.” In: Godel (ed.) Kibrik, Alexandr E. (1979), “Canonical Ergativity and Daghestan Languages”. In: Plank, Frans (ed.), Ergativity. New York: Academic Press, 61⫺77 Kinkade, M. Dale (1983), “Salish Evidence against the Universality of ‘Noun’ and ‘Verb’”. Lingua 60, 25⫺40 Kra´msky, Jirˇ´ı (1972), The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language. The Hague: Mouton Langacker, Ronald W. (1987), “Nouns and verbs”. Language 63.1, 53⫺94 Lehmann, Christian (1988), “A Survey of General Comparative Linguistics. Review article of: Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description. 3 Vols. Cambridge, 1985”. Journal of Linguistics 24, 175⫺187 Lemarećhal, Alain (1982), “Se´mantisme des parties du discours et se´mantisme des relations”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 77.1, 1⫺39 Mel’cˇuk, Igor (1991), “Toward a Universal Calculus of Inflectional Categories: On Roman Jakobson’s Trail”. In: Waugh, Linda R. & Rudy, Stephen (eds.), New Vistas in Grammar: Invariance and Variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 85⫺109

731 Mel’cˇuk, Igor (1996), Cours de morphologie geńe´rale, Vol. III. Montreál: Les Presses de l’Universite´ de Montreál; Paris: CNRS Mithun, Marianne (1995), “Multiple Reflections of Inalienability in Mohawk”. In: Chappell, Hilary & McGregor, William (eds.), The Grammar of Inalienability. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Mohanan, Tara (1997), “Multidimensionality of Representation: Noun-verb Complex Predicates in Hindi”. In: Alsina, Alex & Bresnan, Joan & Sells, Peter (eds.), Complex Predicates. Stanford: CSLI Nguyen, Dinh-Hoa (1987), “Vietnamese”. In: Comrie, Bernard (ed.), The Major Languages of East and South-East Asia. London: Routledge, 777⫺796 Nordlinger, Rachel (1998), A Grammar of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics Norman, Jerry (1988), Chinese. Cambridge: CUP Osada, Toshiki (1992), A Reference Grammar of Mundari. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies: Institute for the Study of the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Panfilov, V. Z. (1962), Grammatika Nivxskogo Jazyka, Vol. I: Foneticˇoskoe Vvedenie i Morfologija Imennyx cˇastej Recˇi. Moscow: Akademii Nauk Pawley, Andrew (1993), “A language which Defies Description by Ordinary Means”. In: Foley, William A. (ed.), The Role of Theory in Language Description. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 87⫺129 Plank, Frans (1997), “Word classes in Typology: Recommended Reading”. Linguistic Typology 1.2, 185⫺192 Pym, Noreen & Larrimore, Bonnie (1979), Papers on Iwaidja Phonology and Grammar. Darwin: SILAAB Robins, R. H. (21979), A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longmans Sapir, Edward (1930), “Southern Paiute, a Shoshonean Language”. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 65, 1⫺296 Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1993 a), “Das Nomen ⫺ eine universale Kategorie?”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 46, 187⫺221 Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1993 b), “Syntactic Categories and Subcategories. In: Jacobs, Joachim & Stechow, Arnim von & Sternefeld, Wolfgang & Vennemann, Theo (eds.), Syntax: Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung, Vol. I. Berlin: de Gruyter. 646⫺686 Schachter, Paul (1976), “The Subject in Philippine Languages: Topic, Actor, Actor-topic or none of the Above”. In: Li, Charles (ed.), Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press, 491⫺518 Schachter, Paul (1985), “Parts-of-speech Systems”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. I: Clause Structure. Cambridge: CUP

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Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe T. (1972), Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press Shopen, Tim (1985, ed.), Language Typology and Linguistic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge: CUP Simon, Walter (1937), “Has the Chinese Language Parts of Speech?”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1937, 99⫺119 Swadesh, Morris (1939), “Nootka Internal Syntax”. International Journal of American Linguistics 9, 77⫺102 Thompson, Sandra (1988), “A Discourse Approach to the Cross-linguistic Category ‘Adjec-

tive’”. In: Hawkins, John A. (ed.), Explaining Language Universals. Oxford: Blackwell Underhill, Robert (1976), Turkish Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Walter, Heribert (1981), Studien zur Nomen-VerbDistinktion aus typologischer Sicht. München: Fink Wierzbicka, Anna (1980), Lingua Mentalis. Sydney: Academic Press Wierzbicka, Anna (1986), “What’s in a Noun? (Or: How Do Nouns Differ in Meaning from Adjectives?)”. Studies in Language 10, 353⫺389

Nicholas Evans, Melbourne (Australia)

73. Noun 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

1.

The term noun The concept ‘noun’ Semantic properties Nominal categories Major subclasses Morphological structure Syntactic functions Linguistic evolution References

The term noun

Following Aristotle, Dionysios Thrax (Alexandria, 1st c. BC) uses the term ‫ދ‬ȸȺȷȬ ‘name’ to designate the Ancient Greek noun. In his classification of parts of speech, the adjective, the numeral and various kinds of pronouns are species of the noun. While the first Roman grammarians, including Varro (1st. c. BC), still reserve the Latin term nomen ‘name’ for ‘proper noun’, later Latin translations of the parts-of-speech system use this term in the broader sense of ‘noun s. l.’ (see below). In the Romance languages, the words for ‘name’ and ‘noun’ are the same to this day (French nom, Ital./Port. nome etc.). The same is true for the term ismun of traditional Arabic grammar. The earliest classifications of parts of speech are based on the morphological criterion of inflectional categories that apply to them. Here, the term nomen refers to anything that inflects for case (a criterion already used by Dionysius Thrax and Varro). Priscianus (5th/6th c. AD), codifying the tradition of Latin grammar, subclassifies nomina as follows: nomen substantivum (‘noun with a

substance’, cf. 3), nomen adiectivum (‘attached noun’), pronomen (pronoun) and nomen numerale ‘numerical noun’). Subsequently, the compound terms were simplified, yielding adjective and numeral. In most of continental Europe, nomen substantivum was thus shortened to forms equivalent to English substantive. In this tradition, the term noun is used as a supercategory to cover the substantive and those word classes that are grammatically like it in the language in question, generally (as in Priscianus) the adjective, numeral and pronoun (including quantifier and determiner). In other parts of Europe, mostly in Britain, the meaning of nomen was narrowed, so that noun became opposed to adjective etc. The Committee on Grammatical Terminology (1911) recommended the use of noun instead of substantive. In German grammatical terminology, the term Nomen acquired the new meaning ‘noun’ by semantic loan in the second half of this century when grammatical concepts were imported from anglophone sources, and it began to both abandon its old broad meaning and to oust the traditional term Substantiv. The traditional hyponymy between substantive and noun is, however, alive both in some English sources (e. g. in Indo-Europeanist writings up to the middle of the 20th century) and when we speak of the substantivation of adjectives or of the nominalization (in the sense of ‘adjectivalization’) of relative clauses. Even more recently, some anglophone authors to whom the term substantive seemed functionless have begun using it with the meaning of

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Latin nomen, so that the traditional and the modern meanings and hyponymy relations of noun and substantive are exactly reverse. In what follows, the term noun s. l. ([sensu lato] noun in the wide sense) will be used for the supercategory.

2.

The concept ‘noun’

Like any other grammatical category, the word class ‘noun’ has no universal status a priori; rather, it is a language-specific category. However, and again like with all other grammatical categories, there is a universal (cognitive or communicative) basis to it. Languages have a class of expressions which designate entities, i.e. concepts that are reified, and which can be used to refer to specific entities. The prototypical representatives of this kind of concept are concrete individual physical objects such as a bird or an apple. The status of this class of expressions in the language system may vary. It need not, in principle, be a grammatical class, let alone one definable by morphological criteria. However, if there are grammatical criteria for assigning words (lexemes) to a class with these semantic properties, then this is the class of nouns of the language. Up to now, probably all grammars have made use of a grammatical category of noun. In particular, nouns generally seem to form a distinct class by syntactic criteria, although not necessarily by morphological or phonological criteria. Unlike other word classes like the adjective and the numeral classifier, the noun is therefore universal in the sense that there is an empirical generalization that every language described so far has a syntactic class which corresponds to the notional definition of the noun. The word classes of each language are delimited on distributional grounds. Essentially, if a class of stems such as that of nouns is to be defined as a distributional class, then a class of elements that constitutes the relevant criterial environment needs to be given beforehand so that it can be used without circularity in the definition of the stem class. Generally, this will be a class of elements with which the definiendum forms a close grammatical (including morphological) construction, such as those treated in 4. In the clearest cases, the criterial class is one of morphological markers, in the present instance, a nominal morphological category such as gender or case. In the absence of such morphological

markers, the closest syntactic environment is chosen as criterial, e.g. a class of determiners or nouns of multitude. The class of elements which thus figures in the distributional definition of a word class could itself be conceived as a distributional class, and its definitional environment could, in principle, be the noun. This would obviously lead to circularity. If this is to be avoided, the classes of elements which are criterial in the definition of a word class such as ‘noun’ must be grammatical categories which are defined by direct recourse to the functions of language in communication and cognition, such as are discussed in chapter XII of this handbook. The selection of the particular definitional criteria is, in theory, arbitrary. In practice, only such word-class systems have met with general acceptance whose definitions are heuristically guided by semantic prototypes like the one mentioned above for nouns. Declension is the inflection of nouns. This concept has an ambiguous position in the definitional hierarchy, since we can, in principle, either define the noun on independent grounds and then define declension as whatever inflection appears on nouns, or else we can define declension as inflection for certain morphological categories and then define the noun as the word which is declined. Given the definitional procedure for nouns which we outlined in the preceding paragraph, it appears that only the second way is passable. This means that declension in Latin is inflection for gender, number and case, while declension in Turkish is inflection for number, case and possessor. Analogous considerations apply, of course, to the concept of conjugation as the inflection of verbs.

3.

Semantic properties

Concepts differ in their time-stability, i.e. in the extent to which corresponding phenomena are prone to change (cf. Givoń 1979: ch. 8). For instance, the assignment of an entity to a class is more stable than a property that it has, which in turn is more stable than a state that the entity is in, and so forth, moving rightward in Fig. 73.1. The noun-verb distinction can be associated with time-stability in the sense that the most dynamic concepts of all languages are manifested by verbs, whereas the most static concepts are manifested by nouns. For those languages

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that have them, adjectives range between the two poles. time-stability static ø¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ dynamic concept type class property state process event part of speech noun adjective verb

Fig. 73.1: Scale of time-stability

Thus nouns typically designate (members of) classes such as birds or apples. These are entities which are not just features of an event, but conceptually independent participants of it. Less typically, nouns designate properties, like a beautiful one or a green one (cf. 5 below and Art. 72: 2.3 on adjectives in Quechua). The concept types further to the right in Fig. 73.1 are not directly expressed by nouns. Abstract, typically derived nouns such as sickness, occupation and conquest may be used to designate states, processes and events as reified entities (cf. Art. 94). Thus, a noun such as sickness does not designate a state or property as conceived in Fig. 73.1. The noun is minimally distinct from the adjective. For example, the German adjective tot designates the property ‘dead’, the noun Toter designates the class of dead persons, whose intension is, of course, the property in question. From Aristotle on, nouns were said to designate ‘substances’, which here does not mean ‘masses’, but ‘entities with ontological independence’. This provides the motivaSAP

tion of the term nomen substantivum introduced in 1. Intuitively, the difference between the meaning of a noun (‘substance’) and the meaning of an adjective (‘property’) is that if all the properties are subtracted from the adjective meaning, nothing is left, but if they are subtracted from the noun meaning, something is left (viz. ‘person’, in the case of Toter). Entities may be classified according to diverse criteria. The classification which is most relevant to linguistic structure is one according to the empathy which the speaker has with the type of entity. Since this is a matter of degree, the classification takes the form of an empathy hierarchy (cf. Kuno & Kaburaki 1977). One of the basic distinctions in the hierarchy is between animate and inanimate beings, which is why the hierarchy has also been known by the name of animacy hierarchy (e.g. in Comrie 1981: ch. 9). In general, the speaker has most empathy with such entities that are closest to and maximally like himself. These are the speech-act participants (SAP). In fact, for most purposes, the speaker himself forms the top of the hierarchy. The speaker has least empathy with phenomena that are so little individuated and thing-like that they cannot even properly be regarded as entities s. s. [in the strict sense], viz. with propositions (abstract concepts) and locations. Other entities occupy intermediate positions on the hierarchy, as shown in Fig. 73.2. Different languages may make finer or grosser distinctions.

Non-SAP human

non-human

animate

inanimate

individual object object entity s.s.

substance location proposition

Fig. 73.2: Empathy hierarchy

The empathy hierarchy is relevant to diverse structural features and grammatical rules in all known languages. Aspects of it also underlie subclassifications of nouns (cf. 5), no matter whether these manifest themselves at the morphological level, e.g. in the form of noun classes, or only at the syntactic level, e.g. in constructional differences between mass and count nouns. It was said in 2 that nouns such as apple and bird are focal instances of their species.

The prototypical noun designates a concept which comprises a class of concrete individual physical objects. This, however, presupposes that the object in question can be subsumed under a class in the first place. This is not so for those entities which form the top of Fig. 73.2. They are so highly individuated that they cannot even be assigned to a class. The structural correlate of this fact is that they are normally not represented by nouns, but by pronouns. On the other hand, con-

73. Noun

cepts at the bottom of the empathy hierarchy do not provide typical noun meanings either, because they are not sufficiently individuated. If we consider the empathy hierarchy as a continuum between the poles of the SAP and the proposition, it may be seen that the prototypical noun designates an entity which occupies a central position on this continuum. Speech act participants on the one hand and abstract entities on the other hand are peripheral to the class of nouns.

4.

Nominal categories

This section surveys a range of morphological categories which are also included in the onomasiological treatments of ch. XIII and XIV. Here we focus on their nominal character, i.e. they are seen as categories which may provide the relevant context for a distributional definition of the noun in the sense of 2. For surveys of the inflectional categories of nouns, cf. Givoń 1984: 57⫺64 and Anderson 1985 a: 174⫺189. Although we concentrate on nominal categories qua morphological categories, it should be clear that all of the notional categories coded in nominal morphological categories can also be coded in other ways. On the one hand, they may appear as independent words, which may be grammaticalized to different degrees. For instance, the relations coded by case may also be coded by adpositions, and these may be either concrete or grammatical. On the other hand, such notions may also be lexical-semantic features of nominal stems. For instance, definiteness may be a feature of proper names; and arguably, denominal adverbs such as home (in go home) embody a case. Similar considerations apply to all of the categories treated below. Subsections 4.1⫺4.8 review the range of nominal categories in inflection and derivation, while the remaining subsections make generalizations about the distribution of nominal categories over languages and within a language. 4.1. Nominal classification The entities of our cognitive world fall into many different categories, such as concrete and abstract objects, animate and inanimate beings, natural objects and artefacts. Such classes figure in the selection restrictions of verbs and adjectives perhaps of all languages and to that extent are relevant to semantosyntax. The classification of entities may be grammaticalized to different degrees in a lan-

735 guage (cf. Seiler 1986). Some classifications of nouns are signalled by words, such as numeral or possessive classifiers. If so, then any noun that can partake in the relevant syntactic construction at all (i.e., can combine with a numeral and a possessive pronoun, respectively) is combined with one of the classifiers and to that extent belongs to a particular class. However, these classes tend to be shiftable in the sense that the combination of a noun with a different classifier is not ungrammatical, but, rather, it leads to a different (possibly less usual) interpretation. A more grammaticalized form of nominal classification is found in noun classes (cf. Art. 98). These are generally based on cognitive categories such as individuality, animacy, humanness, etc. Any given noun stem is assigned to one of the classes. The class may be marked morphologically on the noun itself, as are the noun classes in Bantu languages (cf. Art. 140). A shift of noun class is a derivational process which is subject to constraints that are partly semantically motivated, partly idiosyncratic, as is typical for processes of word-formation. Noun classes appear on other constituents of the sentence, such as determiners, adjectives and verbs if they agree with the noun. Class markers may have different allomorphs for nouns and the various word classes that agree with them. The most grammaticalized form of nominal classification is gender. Gender is typically sex-based, whereas noun class is mostly not. It is common for a language to have two or three genders. One type of twofold subdivision yields animate and inanimate gender. In Menomini, nouns designating animate beings, including large plants, all belong to one gender which Bloomfield (1962) calls animate, while nouns designating inanimate entities may be of either animate or inanimate gender. Hittite, too, has an animate and an inanimate gender, which, on the basis of relations to Indo-European cognates, are called common gender (genus commune, i.e. indifferent to the masculine vs. feminine distinction) and neuter. Another type of twofold subdivision produces a masculine and a feminine gender, as in the Romance languages. Three genders are often masculine, feminine and neuter, as in Latin, Russian and German. Gender is an inherent grammatical category of a nominal lexeme, i.e. it is not assigned by a syntactic rule. It need not be, and often is not, marked separately on the noun itself, but (just as noun class) appears on sentence constituents that agree with a noun. On the noun itself, gender is often bound to de-

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clension class (cf. Art. 65). In Latin, for instance, the relation is twofold. First, a given declension class may only contain nouns of one particular gender. For instance, the a-declension contains only feminine nouns (with few exceptions). Second, gender may determine allomorphy within a declension class. For instance, in all Latin declension classes the nominative is syncretic (cf. Art. 66) with the accusative for neuters, but not for the other genders (cf. also Tab. 73.2 for Hittite). Moreover, the nominative has an -s ending in most declension classes on masculine and feminine, but not on neuter nouns; e.g. in the -u-declension: fructu-s (nom. m.) ‘fruit’, domu-s (nom. f.) ‘house’, cornu (nom./acc. n.) ‘horn’. Even more commonly than for noun classes, the gender of a noun is copied, by agreement, to other parts of speech, and then exponents of the genders may differ for nouns and those other parts of speech. In Russian, for instance, each gender has only one morph in the singular of past verbs (-0, -a, -o), while on singular nouns there is abundant allomorphy. Gender is inherent in a noun stem and so highly grammaticalized that there are no generally productive processes for its change. The exception is what has traditionally been called motion (‘movement into a different gender’): in nouns designating animate beings, gender may designate sex, and then it may be changed more or less productively, as in Latin lup-us (m.) ‘wolf’ ⫺ lup-a (f.) ‘shewolf’; Span. muchach-o ‘boy’ ⫺ muchach-a ‘girl’. The high degree of grammaticalization of gender correlates with two other features which distinguish it from other nominal clas-

sification systems. First, the classification by gender is almost exhaustive, in the following sense: If a language has gender, then almost every noun has a determinate gender which shows up either on the noun itself or on some agreeing constituent. There may be some exceptions to this; for instance in German, gender is neutralized in the plural, so that pluralia tantum are of indeterminate gender. In other systems of nominal classification, the number of nouns of indeterminate class is much larger. In numeral classification, for instance, all the nouns that do not combine with numerals never co-occur with a classifier and thus fall into no corresponding class. Second, while the weakly grammaticalized systems of nominal classification may classify concepts, with relatively few arbitrary assignments of nouns to classes, gender essentially classifies nouns. I. e., gender classifies not designata, but linguistic signs. In this sense, the classification is metalinguistic. Most languages have at least one grammatical category that somehow classifies nouns. Languages such as Turkish, which ⫺ apart from syntactic reflexes of the empathy hierarchy ⫺ do not possess any grammatical category of nominal classification, are relatively rare. At the pole of low grammaticalization, sometimes more than one classificatory system may coexist in a language. An admittedly extreme case is Yucatec Maya, which has numeral classification, possessive classification and a prefixal sex distinction (with metaphorical extensions reminiscent of gender). The three classifications are completely independent of each other and in (1) co-occur in one noun phrase.

(1) ka1-tuúl in w-aàlak1 h-taman two-cl.anim poss.1.sg 0-cl.domestic m-sheep ‘two of my rams’ 4.2. Number and collection The prototypical noun designates a concept which comprises a class of individual concrete objects. In a given moment of discourse, either the concept as such may be designated, or reference to entities falling under the concept may be intended. In the former case, the noun is used generically, in the latter case, specifically (cf. Art. 95). If reference is specific, then one individual, various individuals or a collective of them may be meant. At this point, grammatical categories such as number and the collective/singulative distinction come in. The distribution of number across

subcategories of the nouns of a language follows the empathy hierarchy downward; i.e. if nouns at a given level of the hierarchy have number, then the subcategories above that level have number, too (cf. Smith-Stark 1974). In Kobon, e.g., only kin terms and personal pronouns, in Mandarin, only human nouns and personal pronouns have number (cf. Mithun 1988: 212 for NorthAmerican languages), etc. Unlike nominal class, number is generally not inherent in a noun stem; and unlike case, it is generally not imposed on a noun by rules of syntax. Instead, it is generally freely cho-

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sen for a nominal on semantic grounds, from where it may be transferred to other sentence components (cf. Art. 100). A typical case is (2). (2) (a) The girl is there. (b) The girls are there. However, it is not unusual for a noun to have its number fixed lexically. Many nouns do not form a plural, among them proper nouns such as Iran and Saturn, collective nouns such as cattle and police, mass nouns such as milk and rubbish, and abstract nouns such as advice and specificity. On the other hand, some nouns, including trousers and ashes, or German Einkünfte ‘revenue(s)’, do not form a singular. A noun that is only used in the singular is a singulare tantum (Latin ‘singular only’), and one occurring only in the plural is a plurale tantum. In both cases, the number opposition is neutralized. To the extent that these are nouns of the lower levels of the empathy hierarchy, it may be said that on its spreading downward the hierarchy, number does not reach these subcategories. Often the bare noun stem or at any rate a morphologically unmarked form serves as the singular, against which the plural is marked overtly. However, the opposite also occurs, for instance in Arabic. The unmarked stem may designate a collective, as in (3 a). From this a singulative may be formed, as in (3 b), which may again be the basis for a plural form, as in (3 c). Neither the collective nor the singulative, but only the plural can directly combine with a numeral. (3) (a) tßala¯tßa ru1u¯s baqar three head\pl cow.coll ‘three heads of cattle’ (b) baqar-a cow-sglv ‘cow’ (c) tßala¯tßa baqar-a¯t three cow-pl ‘three cows’ (Premper 1986: 4) On the other hand, collective nouns may also be derived from stems which bear a number distinction. Portuguese, e.g., derives collective nouns from individual nouns with the suffix -ada, as in menino ‘boy, child’ ⫺ meninada ‘group of children’. Only highly grammaticalized number, such as in the Indo-European languages of the archaic type, is obligatory, so that even nouns combined with a numeral or quantifier are in the plural. Less grammaticalized number is usually optional. At the pole of lowest grammatical status, we find the so-called nouns of

multitude as plural markers. In the evolution of the Indo-Arian languages, nouns such as Sanskrit sakala ‘all’ > Old Bengali sae¯la, jana ‘people’ > janø a, loka ‘world’ > lo¯a develop the grammatical function of plural markers. They are combined with their host nouns in what is formally a compound, as in (4) from Old Bengali (Kölver 1982: 247). (4) (a) manø dø ala-sae¯la bha¯jai mandala-all broken ‘(all) the mandalas were broken’ (b) bidujanø a-lo¯a scholar-world ‘the scholars’ In Middle Bengali, more nouns of this kind are recruited as plural markers, and several of them appear as plural suffixes of present day Bengali. Number is not only copied to other parts of speech by agreement, but ⫺ in contrast to nominal class ⫺ it also has an independent status on the verb (cf., again, Art. 100). On verbal plurality, see Dressler 1968; for a comparison of nominal and verbal plurality, see Mithun 1988 and Gil 1991. Just as with the other nominal categories, the number paradigm may be the same on nouns and on other word classes, or the allomorphy may differ. Thus, while in Russian or German, adjectives and nouns take different suffixes for the same number-and-case categories, in Latin, for example, the affixes taken by adjectives form a proper subset of the pool of nominal affixes. Especially where verbal number is in a crossreference relationship with the number of some verb actant, the same number paradigm may be used on nouns and verbs. Turkish has the suffix -ler on plural nouns and on third person plural verb forms, and the same goes for Yucatec -o1b and for the Hebrew (Gil 1991: 8f.) and Hungarian plural markers. Reduplication is also often used for expressing plurality in either lexical category. 4.3. Case and stem alternations Case is an inflectional category which appears on a noun phrase or its constituents and expresses the former’s syntactic or semantic function in the construction. Case marking is the grammatical technique of signalling case. In recent anglophone literature, the term may also include the marking of categories of actants (generally person and number) on the verb in the form of pronominal affixes, and even verbal voice. However, this usage is inappropriate (cf. Lehmann 1988: § 5). Case is very widespread in the

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world’s languages. In particular, languages with verb-final word order almost always have case (Greenberg 1963: 쒙41). Case systems are surveyed in article 102. As indicated in the definition, the locus of case is the noun phrase (cf. also 7 below). If the noun phrase is governed by its dependency-controller, then its case will typically be a grammatical case (rather than a concrete or semantic one), and it may be analyzed as assigned by the controller, as the accusative of seruam in (5) from Latin is assigned by uerberat. If the noun phrase, instead, modifies its controller, then its case will typically be a concrete case, and it may be analyzed as chosen for this NP on semantic grounds, as the ablative of baculo. (5) domina uerberat mistress:nom.sg.f beats seruam baculo servant:acc.sg.f stick:abl.sg.n ‘the mistress beats the servant with a stick’ In either instance, the case of the NP may percolate from there to its subconstituents. One frequent possibility is case marking on

the head noun as the representative of the noun phrase, as in the Turkish (6). (6) küçük ev-den small house-abl ‘from the small house’ In Be´te´ (Kwa, Ivory Coast), there is one case, the genitive, and it is marked by lengthening the final vowel of the noun, as in (7). (7) lw´ i´-i´ ge`´ı elephant-gen tail ‘elephant’s tail’ In such languages, the noun is usually the last constituent of the noun phrase. Grammatical analysis has to ascertain whether case in this instance is a morphological category of the noun or is instead attached to the entire noun phrase. Another possibility is for case to spread to the modifiers and determiners of a noun, as in the Latin (8). As far as marking external syntactic or semantic relations of an NP is concerned, this spreading of case only increases redundancy. Like other forms of agreement, it signals coreference of the constituents so marked.

(8) ill-um porc-um siluatic-um d3-acc.sg.m pig-acc.sg.m forest:adj-acc.sg.m ‘that forest pig (acc.)’ (9) d-en the-acc.sg.m/dat.pl alt-en Frau-en old-obl.sg.m//gen/dat.sg.f/n//pl woman(f )-pl ‘to the old women’ A slightly different form of marking case is found in German. In noun phrases such as (9), case is marked neither on the NP nor on the noun, but only on the latter’s co-constituents (determiners and modifiers). The declension involves so much syncretism that the grammatical categories of the NP ⫺ dative plural feminine in the instance of (9) ⫺ have to be factored out as the intersection of the sets of possibilities contributed by each word form (marked by the slash in the gloss of (9); cf. Werner 1979). Noun stems frequently undergo alternations under case marking. Various languages have a morphological opposition between one casus rectus (lit. ‘upright case’), which is the absolutive or nominative, and the remaining cases, which are casu¯s obliqui (oblique cases). The Tamil paradigm in Tab. 73.1 shows that the oblique cases are

based on a different stem from the nominative. The oblique stem is essentially equal to the genitive, except that this has an added “enunciative vowel”. nominative genitive accusative dative instrumental comitative locative ablative

maram maratt-u maratt-e maratt-ukku maratt-aale maratt-oote maratt-ile maratt-ile-runtu

Tab. 73.1: Declension of Tamil maram ‘tree’ (Asher 1982: 103)

This kind of noun stem alternation is called heteroclisis and is also known from Hittite and other ancient Indo-European languages.

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Here, heteroclitic neuter stems such as the one of Tab. 73.2 end in r in the nominative/ accusative, but in n in the other cases. watar-0 weten-as weten-i

nominative/accusative genitive dative

Tab. 73.2: Some singular case forms of Hittite watar ‘water’

A different kind of stem alternation which may be found in declension is apophony (German Ablaut) familiar from Indo-European languages and shown in Tab. 73.3. In a couple of declension classes, the stem has full grade (a) in the locative, lengthened grade (a¯) in the nominative and zero grade (no vowel) in the genitive. nominative locative genitive

ra¯ja¯-0 ra¯jan-i ra¯jn˜-as

Tab. 73.3: Some singular case forms of Sanskrit ra¯jan- ‘king’

Various languages of the Americas make a morphological distinction between that form of a noun which forms a syntactic constituent and that form which is a morphological part of the verb, either a stem incorporated in the latter or functioning as a derivational morpheme (cf. Art. 88). In Nahuatl, the noun appears in the absolutive form (which here is not a case ⫺ Nahuatl has no case) if it is independent (10 a), but as a bare stem if it is incorporated in the verb (10 b). (10) (a) ni-ki-kwa in naka-tl sbj.l-obj.3-eat def meat-abs ‘I eat the meat’ (b) ni-naka-kwa sbj.l-meat-eat ‘I eat meat’ Among the entity concepts which often function in derivation, body parts are prominent. If a body part is used as an instrument, Yucatec Maya has the alternative of either constructing an instrumental adjunct, as in (11 a), or incorporating the notion into the verb, as in (11 b).

(11) (a) t-u yach1-ah yeétel u k1ab / yoòk prt-sbj.3 crush-cmpl with poss.3 hand foot (b) t-u yach1-k1ab-t-ah / yach1-chek1-t-ah prt-sbj.3 crush-hand-trr-cmpl crush-foot-trr-cmpl ‘he crushed it with his hand/foot’ While there is no morphological alternation in most of the noun stems which undergo this process, there is suppletion in the case of ‘foot’. This suppletion among independent and bound noun stems is even more extensive in Kwakw’ala (Wakashan) (Anderson 1985 a: § 2.1). 4.4.

Possession and attribution

4.4.1. Possessive affixes Assume a configuration in which NP2 directly depends on NP1 in some kind of possessive relation (cf. Art. 103 for details), such that NP1 represents the possessum and NP2 represents the possessor. Then first of all the number

singular

possessum NP is generally not an NP at all, but a nominal (or common noun phrase). Second, since typical possessors are high on the empathy hierarchy, the possessor NP is often represented by a pronoun, viz. a possessive pronoun. This, in turn, may be affixed to the possessed nominal or the latter’s head noun. Such possessive affixes are widespread in the world’s languages. For instance, Eskimo, Quechua, Hittite, Persian, Indonesian, Uralic, Altaic and Semitic languages have possessive suffixes, Abkhaz, Hixkaryana, Navajo, Dakota and Yuman languages have possessive prefixes (cf. Manzelli 1990 for European languages). Tab. 73.4 shows the Turkish paradigm. plural

person 1st 2nd 3rd

sãpka-m ‘my hat’ sãpka-mız ‘our hat’ sãpka-n ‘your hat’ sãpka-nız ‘your hat’ sãpka-sı ‘his hat’ sãpka-ları ‘their hat’

Tab. 73.4: Possessive suffix paradigm of the Turkish noun sãpka ‘hat’

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Just like any other bound personal markers, possessive markers may either have full pronominal function, i.e. occur without or even exclude a coreferential NP in the same phrase ⫺ in this case: the possessor NP ⫺, or else co-occur with such an NP, agreeing with it in pronominal categories such as person, number, gender, as in the Turkish (12) cf. Art. 75). (12) ogˇlan-ın sœapka-sı boy-gen hat-poss.3 ‘the boy’s hat’ The paradigm of possessive affixes in a language is mostly identical or similar to an affix paradigm that appears on the verb to cross-reference an actant (see Seiler 1983: ch. 5). In Turkish, the paradigm of possessive suffixes is cognate, and in some forms identical, with the paradigm of person endings on the verb. In Quechua, the verb has personal suffixes cross-referencing the subject and the object, and the former are virtually identical with the possessive suffixes on the noun. In Abkhaz, the verb has personal prefixes for absolutive, ergative and indirect object, the latter two paradigms being virtually identical with each other and with the possessive prefix paradigm on nouns. In Arabic, the suffixes cross-referencing the object on the verb are from the same paradigm as the possessive suffixes on the noun. The similarity between possessive affixes on nouns and person affixes on verbs is best manifested for specific subcategories of

nouns and verbs. From among nouns, it involves alienable nouns only if it also involves inalienable nouns. From among verbs, it involves intransitive, imperfective, modal, independent verb forms only if it also involves transitive, perfective, indicative, subordinate verb forms. 4.4.2. Other possessive morphology If the possessor is actually represented in the form of an NP, rather than by an affix, the relation of the possessor NP to the possessum NP must be somehow indicated. The relation may be inherent in the possessed noun, as when it designates a body part, a kin relation or another relational concept (cf. 5). In this case, the internominal relation is commonly not specifically marked. Otherwise, the possessed noun may be equipped by a relator (a relational marker) which converts it into a relational noun. Or else the possessor NP may be equipped with a relator which converts it into a modifier or determiner. The relator in the last-mentioned technique is a genitive case or, at any rate, a case marker or adposition with a similar function, and is therefore included in the treatment of 4.3. The distinction between relational and non-relational nouns appears as a grammatical one in many languages, in the form of the two classes of alienable and inalienable nouns. In Andoke (isolate), inalienable nouns only occur with a possessive pronoun or affix, as in (13 a), while alienable nouns may occur without them, as in (13 b).

(13) (a) ha-domi b-oýa ⫺ *domi b-oýa poss.2.sg-hand ass-cl2 hand ass-cl2 ‘it is your hand’ ⫺ ‘it is a hand’ (Landaburu 1979: 133) (b) du´1u b-vi water ass-cl1 ‘it is water’ In some languages, possessive attribution to alienable nouns requires additional structural means. In Yucatec Maya, nouns fall into a number of grammatical classes depending on whether they do or do not occur in possessive vs. non-possessive contexts. Kin terms, a subclass of inalienable nouns, directly combine with a possessive pronoun (14 b). If they are to be used without a possessive pronoun, they must first be absolutivized, i.e. be equipped with an absolutive marker (and this is the third meaning of this term), which blocks their relational slot

(14 a). On the other hand, there is a subclass of alienable nouns, exemplified in (15), which enter non-possessive contexts without further ado (a), but must be relationalized, i.e. converted into the class of relational nouns, if they are to take a possessive pronoun (b). (14) (a) le taàtah-tsil-o1 def father-absol-d2 ‘the father’ (b) in taàtah poss.l.sg father ‘my father’

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(15) (a) le nah-o1 def house-d2 ‘the house’ (b) in nah-il poss.l.sg house-rel ‘my house’ Some languages use the relational affix not only for alienable nouns, but in all possessive constructions. Hixkaryana, e.g., has kanawa ‘canoe’ ⫺ kanawa-rI ‘canoe-rel, canoe of’, as in (21). This relator does the same syntactic service as English of, but unlike the latter, forms a constituent with the possessed noun. The Semitic languages have, in addition to case, a morphological form of the noun called construct state (status constructus, lit. ‘the state [of a noun which is] in [a certain] construction’). This form appears if the noun is directly followed by a genitive attribute. (16 a) shows the noun in a case form, (16 b) shows its construct state. (16) (a) uzn-um sˇa ard-i ear-nom of servant-gen ‘ear of servant’ (b) uzun ard-i ear\stat.constr servant-gen ‘servant’s ear’ The construct state is apparently a morphological manifestation of the syntactic fact mentioned at the beginning of 4.4.1, viz. that the possessed item is not a full NP. This kind of possessive construction is structurally close to nominal compounding. 4.4.3. Other attributive morphology The relators seen so far render a noun capable of taking a possessive attribute. There are, however, more general relators that link a noun to just any attribute. (17) (a) mored-e nazar target-at glance ‘target of glance’ (b) ru-ye u face-at he ‘his face’ (c) da¯la¯n-e dera¯z-e ta¯rik corridor-at long-at dark ‘long, dark hall’ Persian (Farsi) has an enclitic morpheme -e called eza¯fe which fulfills this function. As may be seen from (17), it enables its carrier to take any kind of attribute. However, as becomes clear from (17 c), it is not limited to nouns but also attaches to a complex nominal that is followed by an attribute.

4.5. Determination Much like for case, the semanto-syntactic locus of determination is the NP (cf. Art. 95). Nevertheless, subcategories of determination are often marked on constituents of the NP. See Art. 74 for definiteness marking on the adjective. Nouns may be marked for determination in various ways. Affixal definite articles are relatively widespread. They are suffixal in Romanian, Swedish [e.g. gris-en ‘pigdef (the pig)’], Danish, Basque, Ijo (Kwa), Koyo (Kru) and Yuman languages. Prefixed articles occur in Abkhaz (Caucasian) [e.g. aje`yas ‘def-river (the river)’], Gola (NigerCongo) and Arabic vernaculars. As for nonsegmental definiteness marking, see 6.4 on final vowel lengthening for definiteness in Hausa. Sometimes, as in certain Bantu languages (Greenberg 1978), a nominal prefix codes noun class and definiteness or specificity at the same time. Diachronically, many noun class affixes appear to stem from earlier independent determiners. 4.6. Person Person is, first and foremost, a pronominal category. Its morphologization on verbs and other parts of speech is not at issue here (cf. Art. 96). There are two principal ways it may appear on nouns. First, in the form of possessive affixes as discussed in 4.4. Here, the noun and its affix have distinct reference. Second, in the form of person affixes which are coreferential with the noun. Here, two subcases must again be distinguished. First, if the noun functions as the predicate of the clause, it may bear person and number inflection just like a verb. This is common in Altaic languages and elsewhere and may be seen, e.g., in the Turkish (18). (18) (a) türk-in Turk-l.sg ‘I am a Turk’ (b) türk-iz Turk-2.sg ‘you are a Turk’ Here, the nominal predicate is treated grammatically like the verbal predicate, and such nominal forms are not used for reference. The second subcase, the appearance of person on referential nouns, is much rarer. Classical Nahuatl has person prefixes which attach to nouns and verbs. The paradigm of the subject agreement prefixes of verbs differs from that of the possessive prefixes on nouns.

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(b) ro-kanawa-tho / poss.l.sg-canoe-rel.past Waraka O-kanawa-tho Waraka poss.3-canoe-rel.past ‘my / Waraka’s former canoe’ (Derbyshire 1979: 68, 98f.)

Elements from the former set can appear on nouns, too, as in (19). (19) ceme an-cihuaˆ one 2.pl-woman ‘one of you women’ (Humboldt 1994: 121) While independent personal pronouns in apposition to nouns are widespread, person affixes in the same semanto-syntactic function are remarkable. 4.7. Tense While tense is regularly encountered on the verb, far fewer languages have it on the noun. The same subdivision as for person applies to nominal tense. First, it may be limited to possessive relations (see Art. 103). Where this occurs, tense is normally fused with the marking of possession to distinguish between present and past possession. This entails that tense appears on the possessor or on the possessed noun depending on whether the possessive relator attaches to one or the other of these. In (20) from Dyirbal, tense fuses with the genitive of the possessor noun. (20) (a) wana yara-nu boomerang man-gen ‘man’s boomerang’ (b) wana yara-mi boomerang man-gen.past ‘man’s former boomerang’ (Dixon 1972: 108⫺110) In (21) from Hixkaryana, tense fuses with the relational suffix on the possessed noun. (21) (a) ro-kanawa-rI / poss.l.sg-canoe-rel Waraka O-kanawa-rI Waraka poss.3-canoe-rel ‘my / Waraka’s canoe’

By the same token, some of these languages have tense/aspect on verbal nouns. Thus, Hixkaryana combines the suffix -nhIrI remote with (an allomorph of) the past relationalizer seen in (21 b), as in (22). (22) o-n-menho-thIrI-nhIrI sbj.2-pat.nr-write-rel.past-remote ‘the thing you wrote long ago’ (Derbyshire 1979: 99) Second, tense may be marked on any noun. Again, two subcases must be distinguished. If the noun functions as the predicate of the clause, it may accept inflection for tense in the same way as it accepts inflection for person and number. This is common in Altaic languages. Cf. the Turkish mühendisti-m ‘engineer-past-l.sg (I was an engineer)’. Nominal tense which is independent both of possessive and of predicative morphology occurs in the Americas. Kwakw’ala uses the same future and past suffixes on nouns as on l verbs, e.g. in xwakwena ‘canoe’ ⫺ xwakwena-⫺ ‘canoe that will be, that will come into existence’ ⫺ xwakwena-xdi ‘canoe that has been destroyed’ (Anderson 1985 b: 30). In the Tupi-Guarani language Tupinamba, the verb has no tense/aspect morphology (there are temporal particles, though). The tense morphemes may be suffixed to nouns, as in Tab. 73.5 (from Aryon D. Rodrigues p. c.).

suffix

example

past

-pwer

ro´k-we´r-a

‘former house’

tenseless

0

ro´k-a

‘house’

future

-ram

ro´k-wa´m-a

‘future house’

ro´k-a´m-we´r-a

‘ex-house-in-spe (what was to be a house)’

Tab. 73.5: Nominal tense in Tupinamba

The tense morpheme situates the referent of a noun in time relative to the time of the clause containing it. While there may be agreement between a nominal dependent and its verb in other categories, tense is not an agreement category.

Even where both the noun and the verb have tense, tense is selected independently for a verb and its nominal dependents, as in My exwife is visiting me, my future wife visited me, etc. Nevertheless, tense markers in nouns and verbs may be phonologically identical. Pota-

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watomi (Hockett 1958: 238), Kwakw’ala (Anderson 1985 b: 30), and Tagalog (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 153f.) for example, use the same affixes, but they are completely distinct in Hixkaryana (Derbyshire 1985: 201, 196) (cf. also the difference between the English verb married and the noun ex-wife). 4.8. Denominal derivation Both nominal and denominal derivation are extensively developed in many languages. While nominal derivation is treated in 6, we will here survey a couple of denominal processes. Languages such as Latin can derive stems of all classes productively from nominal stems. From the base milit- ‘soldier’, the noun milit-ia ‘military service’, the adjective milit-aris ‘military’ and the verb milit-are ‘serve as a soldier’ are derived. And from the noun gutta ‘drop’ the adverb guttatim ‘dropwise’ may be formed. 4.8.1. Derivation of nouns and adjectives Assume a nominal base designating X and a noun derived from it and designating Y. Then Y may be a kind of X, or it may be altogether distinct from X. The first derivation is an instance of modification and therefore semantically endocentric. In the second derivation, the derivational formative is the structural head of the construction, which is semantically exocentric. We will treat these two types in turn. Given a nominal base meaning X, a diminutive is a noun meaning ‘little X’, and an augmentative is one meaning ‘big X’, as in Italian libr-o ‘book’ ⫺ libr-ino ‘book-dim (booklet)’ ⫺ libr-one ‘book-aug (big book)’ (cf. Art. 99). Common connotations of diminutives include ‘cute, weak, unimportant, contemptuous’, common connotations of augmentatives include ‘strong, important, ugly’. Italian has special suffixes for some of these meanings, e.g. libr-accio ‘trashy book’. Similar examples can be found in Baltic and Slavic languages and all over the world. Since these derivations are structurally and semantically endocentric, they should be recursive, and in some languages they are. Thus, in Italian we have canna ‘tube’ ⫺ cannello ‘little tube’ ⫺ cannellone ‘tube-dim-aug (big little tube)’ (type of

noodle), and again vio`la ‘viol’ ⫺ violone ‘bassviol’ ⫺ violoncello ‘viol-aug-dim (cello)’. Shift of gender or noun class (motion in the sense of 4.1) may be used to derive diminutives and augmentatives. Thus, Kxoe (Central Khoisan) has yı`´ı ‘tree’ ⫺ yıì-ma´ ‘tree-m (tall tree)’ -yıì-hi´ ‘tree-f (small tree)’ (Heine 1982: 191). In Swahili, noun class 5 comprises paired and diverse other items, while class 7 comprises artefacts and other objects. In derivation, class 5 creates augmentatives [e.g. m-tu ‘cl1-man (person)’ ⫺ ji-tu ‘cl5-man (giant)’], while class 7 creates diminutives [e.g. ki-tu ‘cl7-man (dwarf)’]. We now turn to the semantically exocentric type of denominal derivation of nouns and adjectives. These derivations center around the notion of possession in the broadest sense. If X is the meaning of the base, then the smallest common denominator of the derived meanings is ‘Y related to X’. Specific kinds of relation between X and Y may be distinguished. Since these are relations between two nominal concepts, they can, in principle, be expressed by adnominal cases, too. It will be seen that for each specific relation, there may either be a clear alternative between a derivational process and case marking, or the distinction may be blurred in a particular language. A possessive adjective is one which is derived from a noun meaning X and which means ‘belonging to X, related to X’. Latin has various suffixes in this function, among them -ilis, as in (23), and -arius, as in funus ‘burial’ ⫺ funer-arius ‘funerary’. In Russian, the suffix -nyj, as in zˇelez-naja doroga ‘ironrelated:f road:f (railway)’, is even more widely used, competing with the genitive. The semantic type of the possessive adjective is also instantiated by nouns. The Latin adjectives in -arius can be substantivized, and thus the same suffix can derive nouns of the semantic type ‘Y related to X’. Examples are aqua ‘water’ ⫺ aquarius ‘Water Bearer’, herba ‘herb’ ⫺ herbarium ‘container of herbs’. This formation becomes highly productive, yielding, among others, the Germanic suffix -er as in potter (lit. ‘someone related to pots’).

(23) domus eri / erilis house:nom.sg master:gen.sg master:poss.adj:nom.sg ‘master’s house’ (24) dibirdibi-karran-ju dulk-u Rock.Cod-gen-prop place-prop ‘with Rock Cod’s place’ (Evans 1995: 151)

744 Possessive adjectives are related to possessive noun attributes formed with the genitive, both within a language and cross-linguistically. For instance, Latin has the alternative of (23). In several Australian languages, the genitive is like derivational categories in allowing the addition of another case suffix, as in (24) from Kayardild (Pama-Nyungan). The semantic converse of the possessive noun or adjective is the type ‘Y having X, Y provided with X’, as in Latin barba ‘beard’ ⫺ barbatus ‘bearded’. If X is a body part, then the derivation normally presupposes some modification of X, as in long-legged, blue-eyed. Just as one normally does not say ‘the girl has legs’, there is also no derivation legged (girl). This derivation, too, has a case form corresponding to it: the proprietive. (25) is again from Kayardild (cf. also (24)). (25) dun-kuru-ya maku-y husband-prop-loc woman-loc ‘near a married woman’ (Evans 1995: 146) The proprietive has a negative counterpart: a privative adjective is one meaning ‘lacking X, without X’. In English, such adjectives are derived with the suffix -less, as in hairless, verbless. In Kayardild, this is again expressed by a case, to be seen in (26). The paradigmatic relationship of proprietive and privative derivation is brought out by (27) from Mangarayi (non-Pama-Nyungan, Australia). (26) dangka-warri-wu dulk-u person-priv-prop place-prop ‘with uninhabitated places’ (Evans 1995: 158) (27) (a) nã-mawuj-(j)i 2.sg-food-prop ‘you have got food’ (b) nã-mi-wi 2.sg-food-priv ‘you have no food’ (Merlan 1982: 73) 4.8.2. Derivation of other parts of speech A verb derived from another part of speech consists of a base and a derivational element whose meaning is some verbal archisememe A such as ‘be’, ‘become’, ‘make’, ‘act’. Given a nominal base meaning X, the derived verb designates a situation whose core is A and in which X is a participant. The semantic types of denominal verb derivation may then be differentiated by the participant role of X. In German, all of these verbalizations may be

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achieved by converting the noun stem into a verb stem without any morphological means (cf. Art. 90). Here are some types (cf. Fleischer 21971: 288f.): X is subject complement: Spitzel ‘spy’ ⫺ spitzeln ‘to spy’. X is object complement: Knecht ‘servant’ ⫺ knechten ‘reduce to servitude’; X is an (effected) object: Knospe ‘bud’ ⫺ knospen ‘to bud’; X is an adverbial: Bürste ‘brush’ ⫺ bürsten ‘to brush’. A subtype of the last-mentioned type are ornative verbs, which follow the pattern ‘to provide Y with X’ : Sattel ‘saddle’ ⫺ satteln ‘to saddle’. Their negative counterpart are privative verbs like Kopf ‘head’ ⫺ köpfen ‘behead’. Denominal adverbs may be analyzed as an adverbial case form of the base X, e.g. ‘in X’. German has an adverbializing -s suffix in this function, as in Morgen ‘morning’ ⫺ morgens ‘in the morning’, Anfang ‘start’ ⫺ anfangs ‘in the beginning’. In analogous fashion, adpositions and conjunctions may be formed, e.g. Zweck ‘purpose’ ⫺ zwecks ‘for’, Fall ‘case’ ⫺ falls ‘if’. 4.9. Distribution of nominal categories It was mentioned on several occasions that a concept that is expressed as a nominal category may also be marked on other word classes. This may be so either because such a grammatical category is selected independently for other word classes or because it is copied on them by agreement. In general, most of the nominal categories mentioned may be marked on the noun s. l. In fact, as far as word classes (as opposed to nominal groups) are concerned, the functional locus of several nominal categories, such as nominal class, determination and person, is not the noun, but the pronoun. For more on this, see 5. Some grammatical categories are shared between the noun s. l. and the verb. These include the ones just mentioned plus number/collection and tense. Those categories that are really pronominal (rather than nominal) are not shared between noun and verb by virtue of some commonality of these word classes. Rather, the noun carries these categories to the extent it behaves like a pronoun, while the verb carries these categories by virtue of carrying pronominal indices. Number/collection covers a class of concepts that take different shapes on nouns and on verbs. Finally, tense is marked on nouns only exceptionally. In sum, there are, at a universal level, no morphological categories that are exclusive to nouns proper. A few, above all case and determination, appear on verbs only to the extent that pronominal indices on

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the verb may show them, but otherwise mark the noun s. l. off from the verb. To this extent, typology confirms the approach to the definition of the concept ‘noun’ taken by Dionysios Thrax (cf. 1). There is a systematic dependency between verbal and nominal morphology: if a language has nominal inflection, it has verbal inflection. Most languages have morphology in both categories. Japanese is an example of a language with verbal, but without nominal inflection. Thirdly, there are languages without inflection, such as Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese and Yoruba. However, the fourth logical type ⫺ languages with nominal inflection but no verbal inflection ⫺ has not been evidenced. For a similar dependency between pronominal and nominal inflection, see 5. Languages differ in the nominal categories that they possess and in the extent to which they develop subcategories of these categories. One systematic dependency seems to hold for gender and number: If a language has gender, then it has number (Greenberg 1963: 쒙36). Similarly, it seems that if a language has case, it also has number. In fact, number appears to be the most widespread nominal category. No implicational relationships involving possessive marking are known. The above observations involve the distribution of nominal categories over word classes and their subclasses. The question of how nominal categories can co-occur in one noun form will be taken up in 6.5. 4.10. Incomplete distribution of nominal categories Frequently, an inflectional category does not apply equally to all the members of a given word class. Such lack of generality may range from some erratic exceptions to whole subclasses of the word class in question. With respect to nouns, two cases have to be distinguished (analogous considerations apply to other word classes): (a) Defectivity: A grammatical category is not available for a certain noun or class of nouns (cf. Art. 67). This means that the noun cannot be used in a syntactic environment which would require this category. For the category of number, this is the situation for the singularia and pluralia tantum seen in 4.2, which can combine with articles or predicates of only one of the numbers. For the category of case, this kind of restriction is rarer. In German, the generic pronoun

man ‘one’ is a case in point; it cannot be used in the oblique cases and in their corresponding syntactic functions. (In the latter, forms of einer ‘one’ have to be used; but this is not an instance of suppletion, since einer has a nominative of its own.) (b) Zero marking: A grammatical category is not marked on a certain noun or class of nouns (cf. Art. 45). This presupposes that the noun can be used in syntactic environments that require the category in question but the category is not expressed. In French, large groups of nouns have no number marking (even if one takes liaison into account). What is orthographically classe ‘class’, plural classes, is phonologically /klas/ in both numbers. In German, certain classes of feminine nouns have no case marking; e.g. Frau ‘woman’, plural Frauen, in either number has the same form in all four cases [cf. also (9)]. This kind of failure to undergo inflection is frequent in loans. German Epos, plural Epen, which is neuter and has no case marking, is a typical instance. In cases of defectivity, we say that the noun in question does not have the category in question. In cases of zero marking, one would hesitate to propose this diagnosis. Although it seems weird to distinguish, for a noun like Frau, a paradigm of four cases none of which may be seen or heard, the syntax treats such a noun just like one on which the cases are marked. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that if a grammatical category gets lost altogether in diachronic change, this does not happen because defectivity spreads over the word class in question, but because zero marking spreads. For instance, English and the Romance languages lost the category of case not because fewer and fewer nouns could be used in syntactic environments which required oblique cases, but because fewer and fewer nouns were marked for case. From this perspective, it does seem correct to say that Frau has no case.

5.

Major subclasses

Just like word classes themselves, their subclasses may be grammatical and even morphological classes or may be recognizable only on semantic grounds. In this section, we deal with the major classes of nouns that are manifested at least syntactically, if not morphologically, in most languages. Classes

746 formed by such language-specific classification systems as gender and noun class have been discussed in 4. Most of the distinctions to be reviewed here are based on the empathy hierarchy of Fig. 73.2. In many languages, the category of the noun proper belongs to the supercategory of the noun s. l., which commonly includes nouns s. s., adjectives, numerals and pronouns (cf. 1). In languages such as Latin, all of these word classes are morphologically alike in that they inflect for gender, number and case. Moreover, they are syntactically alike in some ways, for example, that a word of any of these classes can function as a noun phrase. Nouns and adjectives, in particular, form a natural class in many languages (cf. Art. 74). In Quechua, the grammatical potential of adjectives includes that of nouns. They differ by only two grammatical features: First, if an adjective and a noun are combined in an attributive construction, then the former precedes the latter. Second, adjectives, but not nouns, undergo an inchoative derivation. Apart from these two differences, adjectives and nouns share all their grammatical properties (cf. Schachter 1985: 17f.): they inflect for number and case, they may constitute referential noun phrases (there is no process of substantivization of adjectives), and they require a copula if used as a predicate. Even more languages have derivational processes which apply to substantival and adjectival bases alike. For example, in English, two different derivational affixes, -hood and -ness, provide for abstract nouns depending on whether the stem is adjective or noun, but in Persian, the same suffix -i can be used in both cases: mard-i ‘manhood’ and bozorg-i ‘greatness’ (Windfuhr 1989: 531). Similarly, the Hungarian suffix -sa´g/-se´g deriving abstract nouns can join both nominal and adjectival stems: ember-se´g ‘man-abstr (humanness)’ and sze´p-se´g ‘beautiful-abstr (beauty)’. The same goes for Hungarian -talan/-telen ‘without’. Successively narrowing down on nouns proper, the first subdivision is between lexical nouns and pronouns (see Art. 76 for the morphology of pronouns). By its name, a pronoun should be a substitute for a noun. However, since most pronouns incorporate categories of determination (definiteness, specificity etc.), they are actually substitutes for noun phrases. Insofar, a pronoun is a substitute for a noun only if the noun can form a noun phrase by itself. This, in turn, is true for proper nouns in most languages (see below) and for all nouns in such languages as

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Latin and Russian where determiners are optional. Moreover, pronouns can be substitutes for nouns only if they are independent words. Many languages have pronominal clitics or affixes which are, of course, not in a distribution class with nouns, but often may co-occur with them. In most languages, the morphology of pronouns and nouns proper differs markedly. In any given language, pronouns are at least as richly inflected as nouns. In particular, if a language has gender or number or case or any combination of these in the noun, then it has the same categories in the pronoun (Greenberg 1963: 쒙43; Plank 1989: 298). For instance, English and the Romance languages have case in the pronoun, but not in the noun. This relationship is related to the effects of the empathy hierarchy, since pronouns essentially include person pronouns, which refer to speech act participants, which in turn occupy the top of the hierarchy (see Art. 76 for the internal differentiation of the class of pronouns). The universal is true for the categories of nominal class, number and case at the generic level. Within the category of number, the dual is special in that there are a few languages, including Hopi, which have dual in nouns but not in pronouns (Plank 1989: 297f.). Nouns and pronouns may also differ in their declension class. The ancient Indo-European languages have a pronominal inflection pattern which does not appear on nouns. For instance, Latin has a genitive singular allomorph -ius in pronouns (e.g. qui ‘who’ ⫺ gen. cuius, alter ‘the other’ gen. alterius), which no noun has. Lexical nouns are further subdivided into proper nouns and common nouns. Proper nouns are names, i.e. nouns whose designation is not a concept, but an individual. Any other noun is a common noun or nomen appellativum. The term nomen proprium was motivated by the ambiguity of the term nomen noted in 1. Proper and common nouns often belong to different distribution classes such that the distribution of common nouns usually includes the distribution of proper nouns. First, names are semantically definite. Therefore, restrictions on the combination of proper nouns with articles are common. A proper noun does not generally combine with the indefinite article (*a Linda); and if it does, it is thereby turned into a common one. Proper nouns may require a definite article (e.g. English the Alps) or they may admit no article (e.g. Linda). Second, proper nouns are generally defective for number (*the Alp,

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73. Noun

*Lindas), and they undergo fewer derivational processes (mountainless vs. *alpless). Common nouns are subdivided into count vs. mass nouns, designating individual, separate objects and continuous substances, respectively. A count or countable noun is one which combines with the indefinite article and with numerals, such as a girl, two cookies. A mass noun does not so combine; cf. *a milk, *two airs. If mass nouns can be pluralized, the result is a sortal plural, as in three wines. Otherwise, a numeral must first be combined with a mensurative (or mensural classifier; cf. Art. 101), and the resulting phrase can then combine with a mass noun, as in three bottles of wine. Moreover, mass nouns may occur without an article in contexts in which count nouns may not: Linda ate butter/*cookie. Nevertheless, these classes do not have distinctive morphological properties in many languages. Common nouns are also subdivided into concrete vs. abstract nouns. Girl, apple and milk are concrete, time, grammaticalization and kindness are abstract. A semantic definition of this distinction presupposes a notion of abstraction, the operation of creating an abstract concept. The standard way of doing this is to orient the concept to the situation

(property, action, event etc.) itself while disregarding (“abstracting away from”) its arguments. The grammatical/derivational operation that achieves this is the formation of action nouns by nominalization. A prototypical abstract noun is an action noun formed by nominalization. All nouns which are grammatically or semantically like the prototypical ones are abstract nouns. A concrete noun is then simply a common noun which is not abstract in the sense defined. Grammatical properties that abstract nouns have in common include the same as for mass nouns: They may occur without an article (cf. Linda worked on the file / on grammaticalization) and hardly combine with the indefinite article and with numerals (*a grammaticalization, *three kindnesses). Thus, on grammatical grounds, abstract nouns may be a subclass of mass nouns. This is motivated by the fact that they do not designate individual objects. On the other hand, and in contrast with mass nouns, abstract nouns often do have morphological characteristics, insofar as most of them are formed by nominalization. Tab. 73.6 presents some derived abstract nouns of Latin (in the genitive, for the sake of morphological clarity) from different base categories.

base

derived noun

gloss

meaning

noun adjective verb

ciui-tat-is pulchri-tudin-is migra-tion-is

citizen-abstr-gen.sg beautiful-abstr-gen.sg wander-abstr-gen.sg

of citizenship of beauty of migration

Tab. 73.6: Latin derived abstract nouns

Other base categories, such as adverbs and numerals, play a negligible role in nominal derivation. If a language has denominal derivation, it has nominal derivation. Burmese is a language which has verb-to-noun derivation but, apparently (Wheatley 1989: 849), no productive pattern of denominal verb derivation (cf. also Hopper & Thompson 1984: 737f.). It is possible that nominalization is the most important derivational operation at all. Concrete nouns may be further subdivided into collective and individual nouns. A collective noun designates a collection of similar entities which has a quality of its own, i.e. it is more than a set of such entities. Examples are bunch (of flowers), flock (of sheep), but also police. Some languages have productive processes for the derivation of collective nouns (cf. 4.2). In English, subclasses of them

may be delimited on grammatical grounds. For instance, nouns like bunch and flock are count nouns which form a specific possessive attribute construction, while police shares some features with mass nouns. In this area, many distinctions can be made (cf. Leech & Svartvik 21994: 39ff., Collins COBUILD English Grammar 1990). Nouns of measure may grammaticalize to mensuratives, unit nouns may grammaticalize to numeral classifiers. Such classes are, however, of no known morphological relevance. Concrete nouns, whether individual or collective, are subdivided into animate and inanimate nouns, and the former into human and nonhuman. Some aspects of grammatical structure in perhaps all languages are sensitive to these distinctions. With certain wellmotivated exceptions, the principle is that within any of the nominal categories of 4,

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more differentiation is found in nouns which are higher up on the empathy hierarchy. Thus, several Australian languages have a separate accusative only for nouns from a given position of Fig. 73.2 upward, e.g. only for human noun phrases (Arabana) or only for animate noun phrases (Thargari). While these are predominantly ergative languages, something similar is true for the (accusative) ancient Indo-European languages (cf. Tab. 73.2), which syncretize the accusative with the nominative in neuter nouns. Again, several languages mark number only on nouns from a given position of Fig. 73.2 upward. For example, Mandarin Chinese has obligatory number in pronouns, optional number in human nouns and no number in nouns of less empathy. A stem which contains at least one position for a governed argument is called relational; otherwise, it is absolute. In this sense, all verbs except the avalent ones are relational. Among nouns, those designating kin (like sister), body parts (hand), personal attributes (name) and spatial regions (top) as well as certain verbal nouns such as nomination are relational, while nouns designating physical objects such as apple, woman are absolute. It will be seen that prototypical nouns as defined in 2 are absolute nouns, while relational nouns are more verb-like. Apart from differing syntactically from absolute nouns, relational nouns are often marked off from absolute nouns at the morphological level, too. The relevant facts are reviewed in 4.4. The marking of nominal categories is often subject to allomorphy that is morphologi-

cally or lexically conditioned. If it is, then the conditioning environment is usually one of the subcategories of nouns reviewed in the present section. For instance, allomorphy in possessive marking may be conditioned by the alienable or inalienable character of the noun. Number marking is another example: it is often different for human or animate nouns as opposed to non-human or inanimate ones. For example, Latin and Greek have allomorphy in the plural of masculine and feminine nouns, but only the form -a for neuter plural, which is not among the plural allomorphs of the other genders. The same subclasses which condition the applicability of a nominal category in one language may condition its allomorphy in another language. Cf. also 4.10 for the conditioning of zero allomorphs.

6.

Morphological structure

While the noun shares much of its morphological structure with words of other classes, the following subsections concentrate on those morphological properties which mark the noun off from other word classes. There are distinct processes of stem formation which have the noun as their target; and there are distinct processes of stem formation and inflection which presuppose the noun as their base. A given type of grammatical concept may be expressed by diverse kinds of morphological processes. Tab. 73.7 illustrates this for sex/gender.

process

language

male

female

suppletion

English

son

daughter

compounding

Hungarian

tanar

derivation

German

Lehrer

inflection

Latin

zero marking

English

fili-us ‘offspring-m’ teacher

tanar-no ‘teacher-woman’ Lehrer-in ‘teacher-ess’ fili-a ‘offspring-f’ teacher

Tab. 73.7: Processes of sex/gender marking

In the following subsection, the levels of word structure in the noun are introduced. Sections 6.2⫺6.4 review the formal processes operative at the levels of compounding, derivation, inflection and theme formation. Finally, the mutual relationship of diverse markings on a stem is considered.

6.1. Morphological levels in the noun If ‘noun’ is taken as a syntactic (distributional) category, then nominals or phrasal nouns and even nominalized clauses will count as nouns. Following common practice, the concept is restricted here to the word level. As with other inflecting word classes,

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the internal morphological structure of a noun is a hierarchy of the following three levels: word form stem root

(1) (a) (b) (c) (2) (a) (b) (c)

We forego the possibility of positing a level ‘phrasal stem’ between ‘word form’ and ‘stem’ (cf. Art. 87). The formation of units at the upper two levels is recursive; i.e. a word form may consist of word forms, and a stem may consist of stems, but a root may not consist of roots. This may be represented by the set of expansion rules given in Tab. 73.8:

Rule

Morphological process

word form J word form ⫹ word form word form ⫹ inflectional element stem stem J stem ⫹ stem stem ⫹ derivational element root

periphrastic inflection synthetic inflection compounding derivation

Tab. 73.8: Formation of nouns

Again, a process of phrasal compounding could be posited between synthetic inflection and compounding. ‘Inflectional element’, ‘derivational element’ and ‘root’ are terminal, i.e. unexpandable units. The rules apply in the usual way: Start with the unit ‘word form’ and apply expansion rules until only terminal units are left. Tab. 73.8 is, in principle, valid for any word class. Specialties of nouns will be mentioned below. Tab. 73.8 accounts for the morphological complexity that may be found in nouns. In particular, since compound and derived stems may be formed from compound and derived bases, nominal stems may get as complex as the English word decompartmentalization. Sanskrit is famous for its morphological complexity in the nominal sphere. However, such examples stand out against the majority of the languages of the world, where morphological complexity is more developed in the verbal sphere. The alternation among morphological variants of noun stems is treated in 4.3. The operations for the formation of entity concepts of various classes and, thus, of nouns, are treated in Art. 94. Here the various formal processes of producing a noun stem are discussed. 6.2. Compounding Compounding as a morphological process (by rule (2 a) of Tab. 73.8; cf. Art. 87) is most productive in nominal morphology. Germanic languages abound in compounds of arbitrary complexity such as English 1997 physics nobel prize winner or German Turmuhr-zeiger ‘tower-clock-pointer (hand of steeple clock)’. The determinative nominal com-

pound, where one stem serves as the base and is determined by the other one, is the most common type in the languages of the world, probably because it is in a virtually regular paradigmatic relationship with the syntactic construction of possessive attribution. For instance, there is a regular relationship ⫺ which has often been analyzed by means of transformations ⫺ between linguistics student and student of linguistics. Examples of this type of compound may also be cited from Mandarin (Li & Thompson 1981: 48ff.): chuang-dan(zi) ‘bed sheet’, jiu-bei(zi) ‘wine cup’. In these languages, the order of the stems is ‘determinans-determinatum’. The opposite order is common in languages that have had head-dependent order for a long time. Yucatec Maya has chuúmuk-k1ıìn ‘middle-day (noon)’, eét-kaàhal ‘companion-place (compatriot)’, taán-ho1l ‘front-head (forehead)’. Tagalog (Schachter & Otanes 1972: 107ff.) has mata-ng-lawin ‘eye-linker-hawk (keen eyes)’, bata-ng-lasangan ‘child-linkerstreet (homeless child)’. The determinans of a denominal nominal compound may also belong to another category, as in blackbird, washing machine and jack-in-the-box. Further types of nominal compounding may be distinguished by diverse criteria. First, the construction need not be semantically endocentric. It is not, for instance, in English redcap ‘suitcase carrier’ or pick-pocket. Second, there does not need to be a nominal base in order to compose a noun stem. There is none in English see-saw and Mandarin kai-guan ‘open close (switch)’. Compound nouns constitute a specific formal subclass of nouns, but there is, among

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all the designata of nouns, no specific kind of entities designated by compound nouns, witness such cross-linguistic synonyms as eyebrow ⫽ French sourcil, fingernail ⫽ French ongle etc. (cf. Andersen 1978). 6.3. Processes of inflection and derivation The notion of periphrasis (see Art. 68) has occasionally been extended to noun inflection. Just like Italian e` venuto ‘has come’ is periphrastic with respect to Latin ue¯nit, so Italian del lago ‘of the lake’ may be called periphrastic with respect to Latin lacu¯s. However, there is a crucial difference in that e` venuto consists of two verb forms, while del lago does not consist of two noun forms. There are, in fact, no periphrastic noun forms in this narrow sense. Therefore, the notion of periphrastic inflection as defined by rule (1 a) in Tab. 73.8 is not applicable to nouns. However, several of the nominal categories mentioned in 4 may be expressed by grammatical words. Grammatical words which express a nominal class are classifiers as mentioned in 4.1. Words indicating plurality or a collective,

i.e. nouns of multitude, have been seen in 4.2. Words expressing case are adpositions. For possession, we have possessive pronouns, attributors like of and possessive classifiers. Grammatical words expressing determination and person are, of course, determiners and personal pronouns. By grammaticalization, all such grammatical words may develop into nominal inflections. Synthetic inflection of nouns may involve any of the formal processes treated in ch. VIII. Affixation is most prominent. All of the nominal categories mentioned in 4 may be expressed by suffixes. Nominal classes may also be expressed by prefixes, e.g. in Bantu languages. Here, nominal number fuses with the category of noun class. Case prefixes are exceedingly rare (Sanders 1978; Hawkins & Gilligan 1988). They do occur in some Semitic and Bantu languages (cf. Hetzron 1980: 278) and in Mangarayi, where they are fused with gender and combined with case suffixes, so that the case system might also be analyzed as consisting of circumfixes. Tab. 73.9 shows a major fragment of the declension paradigm.

gender masculine

feminine

case accusative

N

nan- N

nominative

nj a- N

nalja- N

genitive/dative

nj a- N -w1u

naya- N

locative

nj a- N -y1an

naya- N -y1an

allative

N -(ga)ljama naya- N -(ga)ljama

ablative

N -w1ana

naya- N -w1ana

Tab. 73.9: Mangarayi declension

Infixation (cf. Art. 55) is chiefly found in verbal morphology and only very rarely applies to noun stems. In Miskito (Misumalpan, Central America), possessive affixes differ according to the alienability of the noun. Inalienable nouns have possessive infixes of first and second person possessors (the third is marked by a prefix), as in napa ‘tooth’ ⫺ nampa ‘your tooth’. The relative rarity of nominal infixation is probably a computable consequence of the overall rarity of infixation and the relatively low average complexity of nominal (as compared to verbal) morphology. Transfixation and its importance in Semitic languages is treated more fully in Art. 56.

Here it suffices to mention that it also figures among the various processes of plural formation in Arabic. Plurals formed by transfixation, called broken plurals, are especially common in non-human nouns. In each dialect, there are more than a dozen different patterns of broken plural formation. Tab. 73.10 shows some examples from Gulf Arabic (Holes 1990: 150⫺154): meaning

singular

plural

visitor book house mountain

zaayir kitaab beet jabal

zuwwaar kutub buyuut jibaal

Tab. 73.10: Gulf Arabic broken plural formation

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73. Noun

nary nouns form a plural in galja, like malamgalja ‘man-pl (men)’. However, the plural of gadj ugu ‘woman’ is gadj u-galja, with subtraction of the final stem syllable. Plural formation of social subsection terms involves a suffix -w2u plus various stem alternations, one of which is subtraction. Thus jamijin (a section), plural jamij-bu, narijbalan, plural narijban-bu. Apart from these formal processes, nouns may also be paradigmatically related to stems of other categories by conversion and suppletion. Conversion (or polycategoriality) is common in English, as in dance, go, or fit. Suppletion is the general pattern in Kunjen, an Australian language of North Queenland. Cf. egna ‘dance’ (verb), odnden ‘dance’ (noun) (Sommer 1972: 74). As mentioned repeatedly, most languages use several of these processes in nominal morphology. Not infrequently, two different processes co-occur in one word form, and even as the (discontinuous) significans of one grammatical meaning. Among all the different techniques, affixation is dominant. While total reduplication may be found ⫺ in isolating languages ⫺ as the sole process of nominal derivation and inflection, the use of all the other processes of nominal derivation and inflection in a language implies the use of affixation.

In nominal morphology, reduplication is mostly used for plural formation. Sumerian has plural suffixes, but also total reduplication, as in kur ‘mountain’, kur-kur ‘mountains’. Mangarayi (Merlan 1982: § 2.1.1.8), too, uses mainly suffixing, but also has various forms of reduplication. Total reduplication is seen in bugbugbug ‘old people’. For most nouns, reduplication is limited to their use as the basis for proprietive derivation, and there it is often partial reduplication, as in malam ‘man’, malalam-yi ‘having husbands’. Elsewhere, reduplication is also used as a process of nominal derivation, e.g. Malay lamit ‘sky’, lamit-lamit ‘cloth canope’, ‘palate of the mouth’; Ewe fo ‘beat’, fo-fo ‘beating’. The employment of internal modification (cf. Art. 58) in nominal morphology is wellknown from Indo-European languages. Apophony was exemplified in Tab. 73.3. Metaphony (German Umlaut) is common in German inflection. In plural formation, it may be the sole mark of the plural, as in Mutter ‘mother’, plural Mütter, or it may co-occur with suffixation, as in Sohn ‘son’, plural Söhne. Other operations of nominal morphology involving metaphony include diminution, where the diminutive suffixes -lein and -chen trigger metaphony, as in Mütterlein, Söhnchen. Consonant mutation is operative, although again as a concomitant feature, in English plural formation of the type wolf ⫺ wolves. While metathesis does not appear as a productive process in nominal morphology, all kinds of suprasegmental processes may be employed. Accent shift occurs in English nominalizations of the type contra´st ⫺ cońtrast, addre´ss ⫺ a´ddress. Tonal changes expressing case are reported from Turkana (Dimmendaal 1983: ch. 5.3). Vowel lengthening in the same function was seen in (7). Subtraction of final syllables in declension occurs in Mangarayi plural formation. Ordi-

6.4. Theme formation If no more rules of stem formation (number 2 of Tab. 73.8) are applied, we should get to the level of the root. It is, however, frequently the case that an elementary noun stem consists of a root plus a stem-forming submorphemic unit. Many Latin nouns, for instance, have the general structure displayed in the head row of Tab. 73.11 and exemplified with nouns from three different declension classes.

root

thematic vowel

case.number

significans significatum

turr tower

-i N

-s nom.sg.


mens tabel

-a N

0 nom.sg.


duc leader

0 0

-s nom.sg.

Tab. 73.11: The Latin noun stem

At earlier stages in the language history, the thematic vowel was probably a nominal derivational device (cf. Benveniste 21935).

Synchronically, it is mostly fossilized and forms the basis of declension classes; i.e. the thematic vowel and the case/number ending

752 together form the desinence. For stems of such a structure, one may make an argument to the effect that the root signifies a pure, uncategorized concept, while the significatum of the thematic element is nothing but a category, which it confers to the concept. For Latin, the argument would suffer from the extensive homonymy between noun-forming and verb-forming thematic vowels, as all of the conjugation vowels have counterparts among the declension vowels. For Hausa, the case would be much clearer (cf. Greenberg 1978: § 5.3). Here, virtually all nouns end in a long vowel. Diachronically, this goes back to a definite article, but synchronically, final vowel length is the significans of the grammatical meaning ‘noun’ (N in Tab. 73.11). In Latin, not all nouns have a thematic vowel. On the one hand, a noun may have a productive or unproductive derivational suffix that ends in a consonant, such as clam-or ‘shout-ing’. If these are discounted, the socalled root nouns remain, words such as dux ‘leader’ (in Tab. 73.11), fur ‘thief’ and lux ‘light’ which have the case/number suffix attached directly to the root. These may be analyzed as resulting from the application of rules 1. c and 2. c of Tab. 73.8. There are root words in every word class. One and the same root may be restricted to one word class or may be used in more than one. The examples just given are exclusively nominal. In such cases, the root itself is word-class specific. Roots which are used in more than one word class are frequent in German, e.g. Lauf (noun) ⫺ laufen (verb) ‘run’, krach (ideophone) ⫺ Krach (noun) ⫺ krachen (verb) ‘bang’. Refined and possibly historical analysis may ascertain the direction of derivation in some such cases. For instance, the fact that laufen inflects as a strong verb (past lief ) may point to the basic character of the verb stem, while the weak inflection of krachen (past krachte) argues for its derived status. This would still leave many cases unanalyzed, including krach as an ideophone and as a noun. Here, one may once more consider that the root signifies an uncategorized concept. However, the word class would not be contributed by a distinct element, but would be a purely distributional property of the root morpheme in question. The result of this discussion is that the distinction between the lexical and the grammatical portion of the meaning of a stem, its individual vs. categorial meaning, is sometimes reflected in mor-

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phology and sometimes not, and this variation is both language-internal and cross-linguistic. 6.5. Order of stem and affixes One question here concerns the position of an affixal morphological category relative to the stem. Some preferences concerning the various kinds of affixes are stated in 6.3. A number of typological correlations exist between inflectional affix order and syntactic order (Hawkins & Gilligan 1988). These are summarized in Tab. 73.12. implicans Gender Affix Gender Affix NP SO NP SO

implicatum N N Adp V Adp V

V Adp N N N N

O NP Gender Affix Gender Affix Indef Affix indef Affix

Tab. 73.12: Affix order and syntactic order

From this it follows that the default for gender and indefiniteness affixes is to be suffixes. No exceptionless generalizations of this kind have been found for definiteness and number affixes. In general, nominal prefixation tends to imply verbal prefixation. Another question concerns the co-occurrence of markings on a single stem. Different formal processes may apply to a given noun stem; no constraints on their combination are known. Both agglutination and fusion of morphological categories are widespread. In Altaic languages, number and case receive separate expression. Neither conditions any allomorphy in the other, so this is typical agglutinative morphology. In Niger-Kordofanian languages, gender and number are usually fused in one morpheme. In ancient IndoEuropean languages, these are furthermore cumulated with case. As regards the sequential order of different affixal categories on one stem, order constraints could, in principle, pertain to any kind of formal marker relative to another one or relative to the stem. In reality, however, the only generalizations that can be ascertained concern the order of an affix expressing some morphological category relative to the stem and its relative closeness to the stem. That is, there is no rule of the kind that one inflection has to precede another one (regardless of their position relative to

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the stem), or that a particular affix has to be second in the sequence of inflections. The semantics of grammatical categories may be conceived in an operator-operand framework based on categorial grammar. Applying this to the specification of grammatical categories on a nominal stem, one may say that a morphological category such as number applies as an operator to a nominal stem as an operand. The order in which different operators may apply successively sometimes matters semantically, as in the Kayardild (28) and the Turkish (29). (28) a) maku-wala-nurru woman-lot-assoc ‘having many wives’ (b) maku-nurru-walad woman-assoc-lot ‘the many having wives’ (Evans 1995: 123)

(29) (a) türk-ler-dir Turk-pl-cop ‘it is the Turks’ (b) türk-tür-ler Turk-cop-pl ‘they are Turks’ (Anderson 1985 a: 153) Even where the morphological positions associated with the nouns of a language obey a fixed order, this may reflect, in an iconic fashion, operator-operand layering. The sequential order of morphological categories then reflects their semantic relevance to the stem (cf. Bybee 1985 and Anderson 1985 b: 25). This is, in fact, an instantiation at the morphological level of Behaghel’s first law. To the extent that operand-operator layering in nominal categories is, in fact, iconic, it tends to follow Fig. 73.3:

stem ⫺ derivation ⫺ gender/noun class ⫺ number ⫺ possessive ⫺ determination ⫺ case Fig. 73.3. Iconic ordering of nominal categories

Fig. 73.3 is meant to represent relative closeness of diverse categories to the stem, but not their left vs. right ordering with respect to the stem or to each other. Naturally, relative ordering in the sense of Fig. 73.3 is crucial only if the respective operators are affixed on the same side of the stem. The semantic motivation for Fig. 73.3 cannot be fully developed here. The following aspects are important: No order is postulated among diverse derivational categories. However, as in other word classes, these are, on the whole, closer to the stem than inflectional categories. Of the latter, gender/noun class is closest to the stem, since this is a lexicalgrammatical category of the stem that is presupposed, but not changed by rules of syntax. All the following categories have the nominal or even the entire noun phrase as their semantic locus. The relative order of number and case is stated in Greenberg 1963, 쒙39. Instantiations of Fig. 73.3 include Tab. 73.8 and Tab. 73.11. (30) from Hungarian also contains some of the categories in the canonical order. (30) arc-ai-k-at face-pl-poss.3.pl-acc ‘their faces (acc.)’ However, orders that contradict Fig. 73.3 are not unheard of. Finnish, as illustrated in (31),

has the opposite order of Hungarian (cf. Comrie 1980): (31) yslävä-lle-ni friend-dat-poss.1.sg ‘to my friend’ Similarly, while Turkish shows the canonical order of number and possessive, Chuvash has these suffixes in the opposite order (Johanson 1973: 91). German has some erratic exceptions to Fig. 73.3 such as Kind-er-chen ‘childpl-dim (kids)’ (Dressler 1989: 8f.). Orders of nominal categories that contradict the iconic principle embodied in Fig. 73.3 are manifestations of the fact that morphology is less iconic than syntax. From the operator-operand model it also follows that there must be heavy restrictions on the re-application of a morphological category to the same stem. While this is indeed rare, it is not excluded in general. First, a phenomenon which only appears to be an instance of reapplication should be noted. In languages where the possessed noun agrees in number and person with the possessor, possessed nouns may end up with two number markers, one showing the number of the possessed noun, the other the number of the possessor, as is the case in Hungarian when the possessed noun is plural: (32) (a) az eń kaba´t-ai-m the I coat-pl-poss.1.sg ‘my coats’

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(b) a mi kaba´t-ai-n-k the we coat-pl-poss.1-pl ‘our coats’ In such cases, there are really two different sequential slots in the morphological template of the noun form. Second, there may be more than one case on a noun stem. Examples have already been seen in (24) and (25) from Kayardild; similar ones could be adduced from Yidiny and Old Georgian. The most common subtype of this phenomenon is known as suffix resumption (German Suffixaufnahme; cf. Plank (1995, ed.). It occurs on a noun NA which functions as an attribute to a noun NH such that NA first has a case affix which converts it into an adnominal modifier and second agrees in case with NH. As was observed in 4.8.1, such adnominal cases are very close to adjectivizers. Here, too, the noun stem possesses sequential morphological slots for cases in diverse functions. It remains to look at the third type of reapplication of a morphological category to a noun, the (redundant) repetition of the same morphological meaning by another mark. As was observed in 4.8.1, some nominal derivations such as diminution and augmentation are recursive. Consequently, nouns with two diminutive suffixes, such as Italian pezz-ettino ⫽ German Stück-el-chen ‘piece-dim-dim’, are not hard to find. Empty re-application of the same inflectional category is rarer. It occurs in double plural marking, as in German Junge-n-s ‘boy-pl-pl (boys)’ (cf. Bybee 1985: 75f. for West Frisian). In Hungarian colloquial style, demonstrative and third person singular personal pronouns tolerate double accusative marking: e.g. ez-t-et ‘this-acc-acc (this (accusative))’. Double stem formation can be seen in the (completely irregular) inflection stem of Latin iecur ‘liver’, e.g. gen. sg. iec-in-or-is. Double gender marking is unknown.

7.

Syntactic functions

The system of syntactic functions presupposed for this section is conceived in a categorial variant of dependency grammar (see Lehmann 1985). A grammatical relation is one of dependency or of sociation. Dependency is an asymmetric binary relation between two grammatical units which do not both belong to the category of the target construction and one of which has a relational slot to be occupied by the other. All the other

grammatical relations are ones of sociation. A dependency relation is one of government iff the controller has a relational slot to be occupied by the dependent. It is one of modification iff the dependent element has a relational slot occupied by the controller. In modification, the target syntagm is of the same category as its head (it is endocentric), while in government, it is not. The syntactic potential of a member of any syntactic category is determined precisely by this category. Because a noun designates an entity or a class of entities, it does not have a modifying slot. From this it follows that, unlike the adjective and the adverb, the noun is not a modifier. This is the functional motivation for the case morphology seen in 4.3 and some of the derivational morphology seen in 4.8.1. In particular, a case affix converts a noun (more generally: a nominal constituent) into a modifier. For instance, an NP in the instrumental case can function as an instrumental adjunct to a verb; an NP in the genitive can function as a possessive attribute to a nominal. A possessive adjective can modify a nominal, too. If a noun is not case-marked, the only way it can depend on anything is by being governed. From this it follows that the primary syntactic functions of a bare noun are those in which an NP is governed. These include the functions of subject and object, of possessor of a relational noun and of complement of an adposition. To these, the function of the predicate nominal must be added. In most languages, the bare noun can bear this function and constitute the predicate either by itself, in a nominal clause, or in combination with a copula. The whole gamut of syntactic functions can be fulfilled by nouns which are high in empathy. Consequently, such nouns inflect for the complete case paradigm. Anempathic entities cannot fulfill certain semantic functions such as agent, beneficiary, experiencer, etc. Consequently, low position on the empathy hierarchy correlates positively with defectivity in case inflection. It was said in 6.5 (cf. Fig. 73.3) that nominal categories differ as to their ‘origin’. Some, including derivational categories and nominal classes, originate in the noun itself, as they are lexical properties of a noun stem. Others, including number/collection, may essentially be chosen for a noun phrase in itself. Yet others, including possessive, determination and case, are assigned to the noun by its syntagmatic or pragmatic context. As

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we have seen, these differences tend to be manifested in the relative closeness of the respective morphological categories to the noun stem.

8.

Linguistic evolution

As we said in 2, the noun is a universal word class. It is not easy to tell why this should be so. Entity concepts can be co-lexicalized with verbs, as the meaning of kick contains the concept ‘foot’. Concrete nominal concepts can be formed freely by substantivization of adjectival expressions, as in the old one. This would, in fact, allow that there be just one concrete noun (‘one’), with all the others formed by attribution. Abstract nominal concepts can be formed with equal freedom by nominalization, as we have seen in 5. However, human language appears to be organized in such a way that the goal of such operations must exist in the form of ready-made Gestalten which can serve as a model. Nouns are relatively stable in aphasia (Dressler 1977). In the ontogeny of language, nouns are prior to the other word classes (Gentner 1982), which means they cannot be regarded as primarily derived from adjectives or verbs. The same can be assumed for the phylogeny of human language. The universality of nouns equally entails that diachronic change does not lead to the acquisition or loss of the category ‘noun’ in a language. What does happen, however, is the feeding and bleeding of the class of nouns. Nominal and denominal stem formation is one of the ways in which this happens. But, in addition, various structures can turn into nouns or evolve from them in diachrony. Noun phrases can develop into nouns. A common process is for a nominal consisting of a head noun and a genitive attribute to develop into a compound noun. Thus, the German suffix -s appearing at the juncture of such compounds as Mannesmut ‘manly courage’ goes back to the genitive suffix. Furthermore, compound nouns can develop into derived nouns when the determinatum is grammaticalized to a derivational affix. Thus, English derived nouns of the structure X⫺Y, where Y 苸 {-hood, ship, -dom}, stem from compound nouns in which X functioned as determinans and Y as determinatum. Again, nouns may fade out of their class by grammaticalization. Some, or perhaps all, Japanese personal pronouns have nominal origin. For example, wata(ku)si, a first per-

son singular pronoun, was earlier a noun watakusi meaning ‘privacy’ and boku, a masculine version of ‘I’, had the nominal meaning ‘male servant’. At the early stages of their pronominal use, the element ‘humble’ was part of their meaning. This meaning property has dropped out later, and watakusi was shortened to watasi (Sugamoto 1989: 272f.). Similarly, relational nouns such as front develop into adpositions and finally into case affixes. Other nouns develop into classifiers of various sorts. Thus, the noun has an important function in feeding various classes of grammatical formatives.

9.

References

Andersen, Elaine. (1978), “Lexical Universals of Body-Part Terminology”. In: Greenberg (ed.), Vol.III, 335⫺368 Anderson, Stephen R. (1985 a), “Inflectional Morphology”. In: Shopen (ed.), Vol. III, 150⫺201 Anderson, Stephen R. (1985 b), “Typological Distinctions in Word Formation”. In: Shopen (ed.), Vol. III, 3⫺56 Asher, R. E. (1982), Tamil. Amsterdam: NorthHolland (Lingua Descriptive Studies, 7) Benveniste, Emile (21935), Origines de la formation des noms en indo-europeén. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve Bloomfield, Leonard (1962), The Menomini Language. New Haven & London: Yale University Press (William Dwight Whitney Linguistic Series) Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Collins COBUILD English Grammar (1990), London & Glasgow: Collins Committee on Grammatical Terminology (1911), On the Terminology of Grammar. London: John Murray Comrie, Bernard (1980), “The Order of Case and Possessive Suffixes in Uralic Languages: An Approach to the Comparative-Historical Problem”. Lingua Posnaniensis 23: 81⫺86 Comrie, Bernard (1981), Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology. Oxford: B. Blackwell Corrigan, Roberta & Eckman, Fred & Noonan, Michael (1989, eds.), Linguistic Categorization. Amsterdam: Benjamins (CILT, 61). Derbyshire, Desmond C. (1979), Hixkaryana. Amsterdam: North-Holland (Lingua Descriptive Studies, 1) Derbyshire, Desmond C. (1985), Hixkaryana and Linguistic Typology. Dallas, Texas: Summer Institute of Linguistics

756 Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (1983), The Turkana Language. Dordrecht & Cinnaminson: Foris (Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, 2) Dixon, Robert M. W. (1972), The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. Cambridge & London: Cambridge University (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 9) Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1968), Studien zur verbalen Pluralität: Iterativum, Distributivum, Durativum, Intensivum in der allgemeinen Grammatik, im Lateinischen und Hethitischen. Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf. (Österreich. Ak. d. Wiss., Philos.-Hist. Kl., Sitzungsber., 259. Bd., 1. Abhandl.) Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1977), “Elements of a Polycentristic Theory of Word Formation”. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 15, 13⫺32 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989), “Prototypical Differences between Inflection and Derivation”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42: 3⫺10. Evans, Nicholas D. (1995), A Grammar of Kayardild: With Historical-Comparative Notes on Tangkic. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (Mouton Grammar Library, 15) Fleischer, Wolfgang (21971), Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer [2. unveränd. Aufl.; 11969, Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie] Gentner, Dedre (1982), “Why Nouns are Learned before Verbs: Linguistic Relativity versus Natural Partitioning”. In: Kuczaj II., S. (ed.). Language development. Vol. II: Language, Thought, and Culture. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 301⫺334 Gil, David (1991), Nouns, Verbs, and Quantification. Strasbourg: European Science Foundation (EUROTYP Working Paper, series 10, number 1.) Givoń, Talmy (1979), On Understanding Grammar. New York etc.: Academic Press (Perspectives in Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics) Givoń, Talmy (1984), Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction, Vol. I. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of language: Report of a conference held at Dobbs Ferry, New York, April 13⫺15, 1961. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 58⫺90 Greenberg, Joseph H. (1978), “How Does a Language Acquire Gender Markers?”. In: Greenberg (ed.), Vol. III: 47⫺82 Greenberg, Joseph H. (1978, ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. 1⫺4. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Hawkins, John A. & Gilligan, Gary (1988), “Prefixing and Suffixing Universals in Relation to Basic Word Order”. Lingua 74, 219⫺259 Heine, Bernd (1982), “African Noun Class Systems”. In: Seiler & Lehmann (eds.), 189⫺216

X. Wortarten Hetzron, Robert (1980), “Universals of Human Language: A Monteverdian Quartet in Forty-six Movements”. Lingua 50, 249⫺294 Hockett, Charles F. (1958), A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: MacMillan Holes, Clive (1990), Gulf Arabic. London: Routledge (Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars) Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1984), “The Discourse Basis for Lexical Categories in Universal Grammar”. Language 60, 703⫺752 Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1994), Mexicanische Grammatik. Herausgegeben von Manfred Ringmacher. Paderborn: F. Schöningh (Schöningh Wissenschaft. W. v. Humboldt, Schriften zur Sprachwissenschaft, 3/2) Johanson, Lars. (1973), “Sprachbau und Inhaltssyntax am Beispiel des Türkischen”. Orientalia Suecana 22, 84⫺106 Kölver, Ulrike (1982), “Interaktion von nominalen Kategorien am Beispiel der Entwicklung des modernen Bengali”. In: Seiler & Lehmann (eds.), 244⫺251 Kuno, Susumu & Kaburaki, E. (1977), “Empathy and Syntax”. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 627⫺672 Landaburu, Jon (1979), La langue des Andoke: Amazonie colombienne. Paris: SELAF (Langues et Civilisations a` Tradition Orale, 36) Leech, Geoffrey N. & Svartvik, Jan (21994), A Communicative Grammar of English. London: Longman Lehmann, Christian (1985), “On Grammatical Relationality”. Folia Linguistica 19: 67⫺109 Lehmann, Christian (1988), “On the Function of Agreement”. Barlow, Michael & Ferguson, Charles A. (eds.), Agreement in Natural Language: Approaches, Theories, Descriptions. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 55⫺65 Li, Charles & Thompson, Sandra (1981), Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press Manzelli, Gianguido (1990), “Possessive Adnominal Modifiers”. In: Bechert, Johannes & Bernini, Giuliano & Buridant, Claude (eds.), Toward a Typology of European Languages. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, 8), 63⫺111 Merlan, Francesca (1982), Mangarayi. Amsterdam: North Holland (Lingua Descriptive Studies, 4) Mithun, Marianne (1988), “Lexical Categories and Number Marking”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (eds.), Theoretical Morphology. Approaches in Modern Linguistics. San Diego: Academic Press, 211⫺234 Plank, Frans (1989), “On Humboldt on the Dual”. In: Corrigan et al. (eds.), 293⫺333 Plank, Frans (1995, ed.), Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. New York etc.: Oxford University Press

74. Adjective Premper, Waldfried (1986), Kollektion im Arabischen. Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität (Arbeitspapier Nr. 49)

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Seiler, Hansjakob & Christian Lehmann (1982, eds.), Apprehension: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Gegenständen. Teil I: Bereich und Ordnung der Phänomene. Tübingen: G. Narr (LUS, 1, I)

Smith-Stark, Thomas C. (1974), “The Plurality Split”. Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society, 657⫺671 Sommer, Bruce A. (1972), Kunjen Syntax. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Sugamoto, N. (1989), “Pronominality: a NounPronoun Continuum”. In: Corrigan et al. (eds.), 267⫺291 Wheatley, Julian K. (1989), “Burmese”. In: Comrie, Bernard (ed.), The World’s Major Languages. London: Routledge, 834⫺854 Werner, Otmar (1979), “Kongruenz wird zu Diskontinuität im Deutschen”. In: Brogyanyi, Bela (ed.), Studies in Diachronic, Synchronic, and Typological Linguistics: Festschrift for Oswald Szemereńyi on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins (CILT, 11), 959⫺988 Windfuhr, Gernot L. (1989), “Persian”. In: Comrie, Bernard (ed.), The World’s Major Languages. London: Routledge, 523⫺546

Shopen, Timothy (1985, ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. 1⫺3. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press

Christian Lehmann, Erfurt (Germany) Edith Moravcsik, Milwaukee, WI (U.S.A.)

Sanders, Gerald A. (1978), “Adverbial Constructions”. In: Greenberg (ed.), Vol. IV, 51⫺84 Schachter, Paul (1985), “Parts-of-speech Systems”. Shopen (ed.), Vol. I, 3⫺61 Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe T. (1972), Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press Seiler, Hansjakob (1983), POSSESSION as an Operational Dimension of Language. Tübingen: G. Narr (LUS, 2) Seiler, Hansjakob (1986), Apprehension: Language, Object, and Order. Part III: The Universal Dimension of Apprehension. Tübingen: G. Narr (LUS 1, III)

74. Adjective 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Morphological categories Derivational processes Syntactic functions Semantic properties References

1.

Introduction

The primary, categorial function of adjectives is the modification of nouns in a noun phrase. For example, the adjective white in the phrase a white flower is used in its categorial function of modifying the noun flower. Adjectives show all their morphological (and other) characteristics only when they are used in their categorial function. There are some languages like Takelma (Sapir 1922) in which adjectives are used only in this categorial function, but in most of the remaining languages they can be used in other functions as well, such as for example, in the predicative function of verbs (as in the sentence The flower is white) or in the referential function of nouns (as in the sentence There is too much white in the picture). In these non-categorial

usages, adjectives do not show all their characteristics because they tend to get “decategorized” in such usages. They also take on some of the characteristics of other categories (such as those of verbs when used as predicates and of nouns when used as referring expressions); this is due to the fact that they also tend to get “recategorized” as verbs or nouns in these usages. It is therefore necessary to restrict ourselves mainly to the attributive or modifying use of adjectives while trying to establish their defining characteristics. Another point that needs to be noted here is that languages differ from one another enormously in having (or not having) adjectives as a distinct word class (cf. Art. 72). Some, like English, have large, open classes of adjectives, whereas others, like Supyire (Carlson 1994), have small, closed classes with only about a dozen members. There are also languages which occur in-between these two extremes, such as Sango with about sixty adjectives, Kiriwinian with about fifty, Acoli with about forty, Luganda with about thirty, Bemba with about twenty, and so on (Dixon 1982). More numerous are languages which

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do not have any distinct category of adjectives as such. These also differ from one another with some like Sanskrit, Finnish, Arabic, Hausa, Dyirbal, etc. merging the relevant lexical items with nouns, and some like Manipuri, Chinese, Lakhota, Thai, Samoan, Indonesian, etc. merging them with verbs (Thompson 1988). There are gradations in the case of both these types of languages in that the adjectival words, though forming a subclass of either nouns or verbs, show different degrees of differentiation from them. The occurrence of this enormous amount of cross-linguistic variation (three major types of gradations, each merging with the others) in the encoding of adjectival words has led many linguists to the conclusion that adjectives form a “mixed” category. It is possible, on the other hand, to take care of this diversity by establishing a prototypical category of adjectives; actual languages can then be regarded as either having or not having such a category; in the case of languages which do possess such a category, we can make further differentiations by assuming that the category occurring in them is more or less close to this prototypical adjectival category. However, in view of the complexity of the situation mentioned earlier, it would not be possible for us to provide a simple definition for the adjective; we would have to use several criteria as the basis of our definition; further, all these criteria can be assigned only to the prototypical category; individual languages would only be showing certain combinations of them. These criteria would also have to be gathered from different areas of grammar, such as the morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and functional.

2.

Morphological categories

The morphological criteria that can form the basis of a definition of prototypical adjectives will have to be derived from the morphological categories that occur (or do not occur) with adjectives when they are used in their categorial function of modifying a noun. The most important of these is apparently a negative one, namely that adjectives occur in their unmarked, bare form when used as attributes of nouns, whereas words belonging to other categories, like nouns, verbs, and adverbs, require some kind of modification, like affixation, in order to function as attributes. The importance of this characteristic lies in the

fact that it establishes the adnominal, attributive position as the most “natural” (Kuryłowicz 1936; Croft 1984) and categorial one for adjectives. This point can be exemplified with the help of Kannada, in which an adjective like cikka ‘small’ can occur in its bare form as an attribute in a noun phrase, whereas a noun like mara ‘tree’ requires the addition of the genitive suffix; a verb like muri ‘break’ requires the addition of the participial suffix, and an adverb like me¯le ‘above’ requires the addition of a adjectival suffix in order to occur as an attribute. (1) cikka petøtøige mara-da petøtøige muri-da petøtøige me¯l-ina petøtøige

‘small box’ ‘wooden box’ ‘broken box’ ‘upper box’

On the other hand, adjectives require some markers to be affixed to them in several of these languages in order to occur in non-categorial functions in which nouns or verbs can occur unmarked, as will be pointed out in 4. This is one of the defining and distinguishing characteristics of adjectives in several languages like Kannada (and other Dravidian languages); it is also used as the defining criterion for identifying adjectives in languages like Turkana (Dimmendaal 1983). 2.1. Use of degree modifiers A criterion which does rely on a positive morphological property of adjectives is degree modification. All languages that have adjectives as a distinct category also have morphological or syntactic constructions of adjectives for indicating one or more types of degree modifications. Even in the case of languages which do not have a distinct adjectival category, we find subgroups of verbs or nouns (corresponding to the adjectives of other languages) which participate in such constructions. We can therefore regard degree modification as an important part of the defining criteria of prototypical adjectives. The basis of this characteristic is the fact that adjectives denote a single property. They are different from both nouns as well as verbs on this particular point. Nouns, for example, denote a cluster of properties and further, they also denote an object or entity which possesses those properties (cf. Jespersen 1924; Wierzbicka 1980). The possibility of modifying the meaning of a noun by adjectives as attributes apparently presupposes that they indicate a single property. Such an indication is also necessary for them in order to function as the basis of degree modification or

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comparison. Jespersen accounts for this latter constraint of comparatives occurring mainly with adjectives (and adverbs) on the basis of the fact that degrees of comparison necessarily deal with one quality at a time. Languages generally use several types of constructions (both morphological as well as syntactic) for denoting degree modification. For example, English uses the suffixes -er ‘comparative’ and -est ‘superlative’ with monosyllabic adjectives and also with many disyllabic adjectives; it also uses syntactic constructions with more and most, respectively, for the same purpose (funny ⫺ more funny, funniest ⫺ most funny). We may regard this formation of comparatives and superlatives as part of the process of degree modification or intensification in view of the fact that the latter has a wider scope. There are also languages in which the same marker is used with adjectives for forming comparatives and also for denoting intensity or high degree of the quality that the adjective denotes. For example, Balinese uses the suffix -an for denoting the comparative meaning as well as the meaning of intensity; further, it also uses the process of reduplication for indicating the latter meaning (Barber 1977). Another point worth noting here is that the majority of languages do not overtly mark the adjective (occurring as predicate) in comparative constructions (Stassen 1985), whereas marking adjectives for intensity is very widespread. Languages appear to correlate degree modification (or intensity) in the case of adjectives with plurality in that of nouns, and quantificational aspect in that of verbs for morphological marking. For example, in Obolo, the suffix -mi, which codes plural subjects in the completive aspect with verbs, also denotes intensity with adjectives. Intensity may also be expressed by means of (8) nan ten khu cum pik

‘clean’ ‘short’ ‘narrow’ ‘straight’ ‘small’

partial reduplication in Obolo (Faraclas 1984): (2) ˆıyo`k ‘hot’ mıˆyo`k ‘very hot’ e´fa`k ‘read’ mıˆfa`k ‘read:completive:pl’ (3) sc´ ntı´´ık ‘small’ sc´ ntı´tı´´ık ‘very small’ Reduplication is also a device used by many languages for denoting plurality in the case of nouns and quantificational aspect in the case of verbs (Moravcsik 1978); it is used for denoting the intensity of adjectives in some languages like Basque (Saltarelli 1988) and Koromfe (Rennison 1997). The following Basque sentence exemplifies this usage: (4) zopa bero-bero dago soup hot-hot is ‘The soup is very hot.’ Manipuri uses the aspectual quantifier suffix -men ‘much’ for denoting excessive degree in the case of state verbs (which include words denoting adjectival meanings). The suffix can also denote excess in one of the arguments that occur in the sentence, such as the actor, theme, location, associate, etc. There are also several other suffixes in this language which occur along with the reduplication of the adjectival base, to denote intensity. Examples (Bhat & Ningomba 1997): (5) mehakki yum cak-melle his house burn-much ‘His house has burnt too many times.’ / ‘His house has burnt too much.’ (6) phurit esi eynonde cin-melli shirt this me tight-much ‘This shirt is too tight for me.’ (7) (a) ey hotel edude ley-melle I hotel this stay-much ‘I have stayed in this hotel too many times.’ (b) ey hotel yamne ley-melle I hotel many stay-much ‘I have stayed in too many hotels.‘

nan-thrik nan ten-thrik ten khu-drik khu cum-drin cum pik-sek pik

Notice that the meaning of intensity provided by the suffix -men ‘much’ in the sentences given above involves “superabundance”,

‘very ‘very ‘very ‘very ‘very

clean’ short’ narrow’ straight’ small’

which has a sort of negative sense associated with it. Basque uses the suffix -egi for denoting this meaning (Saltarelli 1988):

(9) oinetako horiek handi-egi akdira ni-retzat shoe those big-too is I-benefactive ‘Those shoes are too big for me.’

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Reduplication is used in some languages for denoting the opposite meaning of diminution or moderation, as for example, in Tagalog (Schachter & Otanes 1983): (10) (a) masarap masarapsarap malinis malinislinis (b) hinog hinug-hinog pagod pagud-pagod

‘tasty’ ‘rather ‘clean’ ‘rather ‘ripe’ ‘rather ‘tired’ ‘rather

tasty’ clean’ ripe’ tired’

The case of Koromfe is rather interesting: normally reduplication denotes intensity with adjectives; but in the case of colour adjectives, reduplication produces the opposite effect, namely a diminution of the quality concerned (Rennison 1997): (11) scmdi ‘red’ bıñıñ ‘white’

scmdi scmdi ‘reddish’ bıñıñ bıñıñ ‘off-white’

Other languages use different types of affixes for this purpose. For example, Maltese uses the device of infixing -ejje-, -ejja-, -ajjeor -ajja- between the second and third consonant radicals for forming diminutive adjectives (it uses the same device for deriving diminutives from nouns as well). Examples (Borg & Azzopardi-Alexander 1997): (12) qasir ‘short’ fqir ‘poor’ tajjeb ‘good’

qsajjar ‘short:diminutive‘ fqajjar ‘poor:diminutive‘ twajjeb ‘good:diminutive’

In Pipil, the notion of “diminution of quality” is expressed by means of the derivational suffix -nah (Campbell 1985), which is attached to both nominal and verbal bases: (13) chichı¯l-nah payah-nah tultix-nah kwe¯l-nah

‘reddish’ ‘sandy’ ‘yellowish’ ‘bent’

Breton has an exclamation suffix -at which is added to adjectives occurring in exclamatory sentences, as shown in the following sentence (Press 1986): (14) na gwell-at devezh particle good-excl day ‘What a good day!’ There is actually a close association between adjectives (and adverbs) and the no-

tion of exclamation, which apparently derives from the fact that exclamations involve the expression of a high degree of quality or quantity. For example, English uses the two wh-words how and what in very restricted contexts for marking exclamations, with the former being connected with the intensity of a quality or quantity and the latter with the quality or quantity itself. The latter may occur without an overt adjective or adverb (e.g.: What a student!), but there is always an adjective implied in such cases (Quirk et al. 1972: 407). 2.2. Use of ligatures Another characteristic of attributive adjectives which produces certain morphological reflexes is their dependence upon their head nouns. This characteristic results from the fact that they are associated with the head noun in its function of identifying an extralinguistic referent. They modify, and thereby restrict, the type of referents that the noun can identify in a given context. For example, the referents that the noun phrase white flower can denote are fewer than the ones that the noun flower can denote. Since the meaning of the head noun in such a noun phrase is to be modified by the meaning of the adjective before the noun phrase can carry out its function of identifying an extralinguistic referent, languages tend to keep the two words together. There are languages in which this closeness is further emphasized through the use of ligatures which connect the adjective with the noun. The use of such ligatures is considered to be one of the striking features of Austronesian languages (Foley 1980). Such ligatures are also reported to occur in some of the American Indian languages; in Tsimshian, for example, adjectives, which precede nouns, are connected with the latter by means of the suffix -em, which is attached to the adjective; this suffix also serves to connect adverbs with verbs (Boas 1911). Tzutujil has a linking element called “modifier connector” which is suffixed to adjectival attributes when they occur before the head noun. It consists of a set of suffixes -a, -i, -o or -u whose occurrence is lexically determined. They do not occur with the adjective when it follows the head noun. (15) (a) k’ay-i naquun bitter-connector thing ‘bitter thing(s)’ (b) naquun k’ay thing bitter ‘bitter thing(s)’

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In Supyire, the function of qualifying nouns is accomplished either by using an independent adjective with the noun or by forming an adjective-noun compound. Most of the adjectival meanings are denoted by state verbs which can be readily compounded with nouns in this fashion. Using such compounded expressions, which indicate the “patients of states”, according to Carlson (1994), is a more common way of modifying nouns than the use of independent adjectives in this language: (16) (a) cee-we ciM-jyi` ku`lu`shıˆ ku`lu`shıˆ-tcngc ku`lu`shıˆ-bire (b) ci-tc´ c´ n-waga tree-long-dry ‘tall, dry tree’

‘woman’ ‘old woman’ ‘trousers’ ‘long trousers’ ‘short trousers’

We might perhaps consider this process of compounding as resulting from the abovementioned requirement that attributive adjectives must remain close to the head noun. Notice, however, that compounds must be differentiated from noun phrases that contain an adjective and a noun. The former may fuse further and become a single word, but we do not expect the latter to combine together in that fashion. This is because in the case of a compound, the meaning of constituent elements is not very relevant, whereas in that of a noun phrase it is very relevant (cf. Bhat 1994). NOM

GEN

DAT

The close affiliation of attributive adjectives with nouns may result in the fact that they do not take attachments that would separate them from their head nouns. For example, adjective is the only lexical category in Tamil which is not able to co-occur with clitics of whatever type (Lehmann 1989: 134); similarly in Kannada, clitics like u¯ ‘also’, e¯ ‘emphatic’ and o¯ ‘doubtful’ cannot be directly attached to adjectives; they can only be attached to noun phrases as a whole. Constituents of a noun phrase may not be emphasized by themselves under any condition in Basque; only the whole noun phrase can be emphasized (Saltarelli 1988: 138). 2.3. Use of agreement markers The occurrence of agreement markers for number, gender, definiteness and case (or different combinations of these) is considered by some scholars to be another defining characteristic of adjectives. In Latin, for example, there is a large class of adjectives which, like nouns, are inflected for the categories of case, number and gender. The respective formatives are fused into unsegmentable suffixes. There are five major declension classes; three of these also provide the paradigms for adjectives. The “o-declension” of masculine and neuter nouns and the “a-declension” of feminine nouns form the basis of one type of adjectives; each of the adjectives belonging to this class have masculine, feminine and neuter paradigms, derived on the basis of the two nominal paradigms, as shows Tab. 74.1: ACC

VOC

ABL

(a1) SG PL

Nominal root hort- ‘garden’ (o-declension): hort-us hort-i hort-o hort-um hort-i hort-orum hort-is hort-os

hort-e hort-i

hort-o hort-is

(a2) SG PL

Nominal root ros- ‘rose’ (a-declension): ros-a ros-ae ros-ae ros-ae ros-arum ros-is

ros-am ros-as

ros-a ros-ae

ros-a ros-is

(a3) SG PL (b1, 2, 3) MSG MPL FSG FPL NSG NPL

Nominal root bell- ‘war’ (o-declension): bell-um bell-i bell-o bell-a bell-orum bell-is Adjectival root bon- ‘good’: bon-us bon-i bon-o bon-i bon-orum bon-is bon-a bon-ae bon-ae bon-ae bon-arum bon-is bon-um bon-i bon-o bon-a bon-orum bon-is

bell-um bell-a

bell-um bell-a

bell-o bell-is

bon-um bon-os bon-am bon-as bon-um bon-a

bon-e bon-i bon-a bon-ae bon-um bon-a

bon-o bon-is bon-a bon-is bon-o bon-is

Tab. 74.1: Latin declension classes

762 Another declension of nouns, called “i-declension”, forms the basis of another type of adjectives; in this class, however, all the adjectives do not show the three gender-based sub-paradigms. Some like felix ‘happy’ have only a single paradigm for all the three genders; some subsume masculine and feminine genders, but have a distinct neuter gender (like fort- ‘strong’: nom. sg. m./f. fortis, nom. sg. n. forte). The adjective acr- ‘sharp’ of this class, however, shows all the three forms: nom. sg. m. acer, nom. sg. f. acris, nom. sg. n. acre. These agreement markers provide a linkage between adjectives and their head nouns and hence they may be regarded as indicating the dependence of the former upon the latter. However, the occurrence of agreement markers also has the effect of making the adjectives syntactically independent of their head nouns. That is, adjectives which contain such markers can be moved away from the head noun to other parts of the sentence and can still be linked with the noun because of the existence of these agreement markers. Further, adjectives can also be used on their own (i.e. as heads of noun phrases) more easily if they contain these agreement markers. This latter point gets emphasized by the fact that in several languages which do not have a distinct category of adjectives, and which express adjectival concepts by means of nouns, the latter occur with gender, number, case and definiteness markers; the constituents of noun phrases occur in an appositional rather than a modifying relationship in such languages. This latter point can be exemplified with the help of Sanskrit, in which words that translate as adjectives show gender, number, and case distinctions, and figure as appositions rather than modifiers in noun phrases. For example, in a noun phrase like kr.sønø ahø sarpahø ‘black snake’, it is difficult to decide which of the two constituent elements is the head, and which is the modifier. Pa¯nø ini, the great Sanskrit grammarian, simply regards the two as co-referential (sama¯na¯dhikaranø a) nouns. That is, he considers the noun phrase to be referring to a ‘black-thing’ which is also a ‘snake-thing’. The two nouns are in apposition and the fact that they refer to the same entity is able to provide a meaning which is similar to the meaning provided by the corresponding English noun phrase black snake, which involves modification. Adjectival agreement is widespread in Bantu and certain other African languages. Such adjectives can be differentiated from nouns only by their greater variability. For

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example, adjectives can be differentiated from nouns in Fula by the fact that the former are capable of occurring with affixes of all the twenty-five noun classes (unless the meaning of the adjective is not consistent with any noun in the class), whereas the latter can occur with suffixes of only a restricted range of classes (at most seven classes; Arnott 1970). This is also true of Swahili, in which adjectives agree with nouns in taking class prefixes; these express number distinction as well (Ashton 1947): (17) (a) ki-su CLSG-knife ‘long knife’ (b) vi-su CLPL-knife ‘long knives’

ki-refu CLSG-long vi-refu CLPL-long

(18) (a) m-tu m-vivu CLSG-man CLSG-lazy ‘lazy man’ (b) wa-tu wa-wili CLPL-man CLPL-two ‘two people’ Ashton (1947: 46) suggests, however, that the agreement (concord) prefix occurring with adjectives is usually identical with the class prefix, and virtually converts the “adjective” stem into a noun in apposition.

3.

Derivational processes

Languages have been reported to use different kinds of morphological strategies for deriving adjectives from lexical items belonging to other categories like nouns, verbs and adverbs, and also from adjectives themselves. These strategies include affixation, internal modification, reduplication, tone change, compounding, etc. It appears, however, that the derivational processes are more regular and transparent (and also more productive) in the case of adjectives than in that of nouns. For example, the irregularities that occur in the use of the suffix -able or -ible for deriving adjectives in English are quite predictable and statable in the form of certain broad generalizations (Lyons 1977: 526; see also Art. 33) which, clearly, is not the case as far as the irregularities that occur in the derivation of nouns are concerned. This is also true of the process of compounding as it occurs in the adjectival category. “Meaning particularization”, which is the hallmark of nominal compounding, is on the whole exceptional in the case of the so-called “compound

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adjectives”. The latter can, as a rule, be derived in a fairly straightforward way from underlying structures; they are in the true sense only condensed sentences (Meys 1975: xiii). This important difference between adjectives and nouns derives from the fact that in the case of nouns the relation between an expression and its referent is established by convention rather than by the meaning of constituent elements, whereas in that of adjectives, the meaning expressed is of crucial importance. In view of this point, the term derivation might not be adequate for describing the morphological processes that are involved in the formation of adjectives; the term “inflectional” might be more appropriate here. We can divide these morphologically “derived” adjectives into two distinct groups, namely (a) those which involve lexical items belonging to other categories like nouns, verbs, and adverbs, and (b) those which involve an extension or modification of lexical items that can by themselves function as adjectives. Some of the derived adjectives of the latter type are dealt with in 3.1. There are some additional ones which do not characterize the adjectival category as a whole; these are described in 3.2. 3.1. Adjectives derived from other categories Most of the adjectives derived from other categories like nouns, verbs and adverbs can in fact be viewed as involving extended uses (19) (a) kr.s´ sr.p (b) tan bhiksø (c) tras bha¯ (d) vr.sø taksø

‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to

be thin’ glide’ spread’ beg’ fear’ shine’ be manly’ pare’

3.2. Adjectives derived from other adjectives In addition to degree modification, adjectives manifest certain other types of derivational (or inflectional) processes; two of these may be noted here: (a) Several languages attach a negative marker to adjectives in order to derive their negative counterparts. This can be illustrated with English examples like wise : unwise, fair : unfair, happy : unhappy, kind : unkind, etc. The distinction is represented in Nama Hottentot in its derivation of adjectives from nouns and verbs; it has two suffixes, -xa` ‘at-

of lexical items belonging to those categories rather than as adjectives (see 4); this view is supported by the fact that unlike underived adjectives, these derived ones are generally less prototypical with respect to their adjectival characteristics; they show fewer of these characteristics, and further, they also retain some of the characteristics of categories from which they have been derived. For example, adjectives can be derived from verbs in several languages by changing verbs into participles; these forms generally retain some of their tense-aspect distinctions and are less prototypical as adjectives; for example, most of them cannot take degree modification. This is also true of adjectives derived from nouns and adverbs. They behave differently from prototypical adjectives. Another interesting point that may be noted here is that the derivation of adjectives is rather complex in the case of languages in which adjectives form only a subgroup of the nominal category. They apparently obtain this derivational complexity from being part of the nominal category. For example, Sanskrit shows very little difference between adjectives and nouns. It has a very complex derivational system for nouns (almost all its nouns can be derived from verbal roots), and this system gets extended to adjectival words as well, as shown by the following uses of derivational affixes: kr.s´-ahø sarp-ahø tan-uhø bhiksø-uhø tras-nuhø bha¯-nuhø vr.sø-an taksø-an

‘thin’ ‘snake’ ‘thin’ ‘mendicant’ ‘timid’ ‘sun’ ‘virile’ ‘carpenter’

tributive’ and -? o ‘privative’ which, when attached to nouns, provide the meanings ‘full of …’ and ‘lacking …’ respectively, and when attached to verbs, they provide the meanings ‘having the tendency to …’ and ‘having the tendency not to …’ respectively: 储 am’-’o ‘waterless’, 储 naù´-兩 na`m-’o ‘disobedient’, 储 xae´-xa ‘sandy’, 储 ’ore´-xa ‘deceitful’ (Hagman 1974: 60). (b) Another interesting distinction is reported to occur in Athapascan (Hupa); in this language, adjectives can occur with the prefixes n or l which appear to classify them

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according to the degree of connection of the quality with the noun; n is used mostly of inherent qualities, such as dimension, and l is used for the more accidental qualities, such as colour and condition of flesh (Goddard 1911). The use of adjectives in the nominal and verbal functions also involves some derivational processes, but these would be described in 4.

4.

Syntactic functions

There are languages like Takelma in which adjectives cannot be used predicatively (except that the simple form of the adjective may be predicatively understood for an implied third person; Sapir 1922). This is also true of a small set of “true” adjective roots denoting meanings such as ‘big’, ‘small’, ‘good’, ‘new’, ‘white’, ‘red’, ‘hot’ and ‘beautiful’ in Supyire; they occur as attributes either by compounding with the head noun, or by taking the prefix min- (with its vowel and final nasal showing assimilations with the following root) as independent adjectives, but not as predicates (Carlson 1994): (20) kyaa` niM-cinni thing prefix-good ‘a good thing’ (21) ninke´ num-bwc´ he tail prefix-big ‘the biggest tail’ Tinrin has a small, closed set of adjectives that can occur only as attributives and not as predicates. They occur immediately before the head noun in a noun phrase (Osumi 1955): (22) wa drorro vaju` det big sickness ‘the big disease’ (23) saa wadro` hu`wu`nraˆ fo`nrıˆmoo one tiny small history ‘a wee wee history’ (24)

In most languages, on the other hand, adjectives are also used in functions belonging to other word classes such as predication (verbal function), reference (nominal function), modification of verbs (adverbial function) and also in functions that do not belong to any word class as such, like compounding. We can regard these as secondary usages of adjectives; some of the categorial characteristics are lost by adjectives in these usages, and further, some of the non-categorial ones are acquired by them as these new characteristics are more suitable than their adjectival characteristics for these secondary functions. We may regard the former change as representing their decategorization (Hopper & Thompson 1984), and the latter change as representing their recategorization as verbs, nouns or adverbs (Bhat 1994). There is also a gradation among languages in the amount or degree of decategorization or recategorization that their adjectives undergo in these secondary usages. This gradation appears to be correlatable with a gradation in their effectiveness in the functions concerned. 4.1. Referential use Adjectives can be used either for referring to the property that they denote or to the person or object to which the property belongs. In English, for example, adjectives like black, white, poor, rich, etc. can be used for denoting the person or object that has the relevant property. In order to indicate the property itself, one will have to use nouns which are derived from these adjectives, such as blackness, poverty, etc. This is also true of Tzutujil in which a fairly large number of adjectives can be used as nouns for denoting the objects or persons that have the relevant property; in order to denote the property itself, the adjectives have to be used with a formative suffix (Dayley 1985: 201):

Adjective (a) meem mooy be’eyoom b’olob’ik

as a modifier ‘mute’ ‘blind’ ‘rich’ ‘cylindrical’

as a noun ‘mute person’ ‘blind person’ ‘rich one’ ‘log’

(b) mooy

‘blind’

rmooyaal ‘blindness’ rnimiil ‘bigness’ rsqiil ‘clarity’

nim

‘big’

saq

‘clean’

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In Kannada, on the other hand, adjectives can be used as nouns for denoting the property itself; in order to denote the possessor of that property, they need to be used with certain pronominal markers or other derivational affixes: (25)

as a modifier (a) dappa halige ‘thick plank’

as a noun haligeya dappa ‘plank’s thickness’

(b) bisi nı¯ru ‘hot water’

nı¯rina bisi ‘water’s temperature’

(c) kurudø u bekku bekkina kurudø u ‘blind cat’ ‘cat’s blindness’ When used in the referential function, adjectives tend to lose some of their prototypical characteristics. In Kannada, for example, adjectives used for referring to the property that they denote do not admit degree modification. Further, adjectives occurring in antonymous pairs like agala ‘broad’ vs. sapura ‘narrow’, udda ‘long’ vs. gidø dø a ‘short’, ettara ‘tall’ vs. taggu ‘low’ etc. lose their antonymous distinction in their nominal use, with only one of the pair (namely the unmarked one) occurring as the referring expression for denoting the quality indicated by the pair as a whole. This is true of the nominals derived from such adjectival pairs in English as well; for example, length refers to the dimension denoted by the adjective long as well as the one denoted by the adjective short; the latter fact is shown by sentences such as Its length is short by three inches. The occurrence of adjectives with case and number markers when used in their referential function, in the case of languages in which adjectives occur in their unmarked bare form in the attributive position, can be considered an instance of their recategorization as nouns. Notice, however, that adjectives differ from prototypical nouns in showing these inflectional characteristics. For example, they may show less number or case distinctions as compared to nouns. They may also show gradations in that some nominals derived from adjectives may be more noun-like than others. In English, for example, adjectives function-

ing as heads of noun phrases must take a definite determiner; they usually indicate a generic meaning; further, they do not inflect for number (but have plural concord), or for genitive case (Quirk et al. 1972: 251): (26) The poor are causing the nation’s leaders great concern. (27) The very wise avoid such temptations. Adjectives used as nouns differ from nouns in Moroccan Arabic in regularly having either a definite article or a demonstrative article (Harell 1962: 204), whereas in Syrian Arabic, adjectives in their nominal usage do not occur as subjects (Cowell 1964: 382). Kannada, and several other languages of the Dravidian family, have an echo-form construction for nouns (and also for verbs) which is used in contexts in which the speakers are not very sure about the nature of the object or event that they are denoting, or when they do not want to be very specific about it. Morphologically, the construction involves reduplication of the noun or verb, with the initial vowel (or consonant-vowel combination) in the second (reduplicated) form being replaced by gi or gı¯, depending upon whether the original vowel is short or long respectively: (28) (a) maløe banda-re baruvud-illa rain came-if come-not ‘(I) will not come if it rains.’ (b) maløe-giløe banda-re baruvud-illa rain-echo came-if come-not ‘(I) will not come if it rains or anything of that sort happens.’ Attributive adjectives do not show this echoform construction; this is apparently because the use of such forms goes against the requirement that adjectives need to be very specific in their meaning in order to carry out their function of modifying the meaning of their head noun; the use of echo-forms would make their meaning less specific and vague. When used as referring (or as predicating) expressions, however, adjectives are not constrained in this fashion, and hence they do allow echo-forms to occur with them:

(29) (a) adara udda aløed-a¯yitu its length measured-done ‘Its length has been measured.’ (b) adara udda-gidda ella aløed-a¯yitu its length-echo all measured-done ‘Its length and such other things have been measured.’

766 4.2. Predicative use When used as predicates of sentences, adjectives function to modify the referent of their subject noun phrase; this function is different from that of attributively used adjectives in that the latter modify the reference (or meaning) of their head nouns rather than their referents (see Bolinger 1967). Predicative function is the categorial function of verbs; it forms the basis of their occurrence as a distinct word class. Adjectives tend to manifest some of the characteristics of verbs when occurring in predicative function, and further, they also tend to lose some of their own categorial characteristics as these latter characteristics are apparently not very necessary for carrying out the predicative function. Adjectives occur in their unmarked, bare form in the attributive position whereas in the predicative position, they generally require some modification. For example, Turkana requires the addition of the habitual marker and the stative marker for its adjectives to occur as predicates (Dimmendaal 1983). Several other languages like Kui (Winfield 1928) and Tzutujil (Dayley 1985) require the subject agreement markers to be attached to adjectives before they can be used in the predicative position, whereas these are not needed for their attributive use. This is also true of Burushaski, in which adjectives occur in their unmarked form as attributes (although in some cases they may show agreement for number with their head noun). When used predicatively or as noun equivalents, they need to take the suffix -vn; plural forms of adjectives may sometimes occur with the suffix -ik in these latter functions (Lorimer 1935). In Koromfe, verbal adjectives can occur in their unmarked form as attributes of nouns but not as predicates; they require the addition of the relevant verbal suffixes in order to occur in this latter function (Rennison 1997). This does not mean, of course, that adjectives cannot be used in their unmarked form as predicates; the tendency, in the case of languages with a distinct word class of adjectives, is to modify them in some way or the other for predicative use. The ability of predicative adjectives to occur with some of the verbal categories like tense and aspect appears to derive from the fact that adjectives tend to denote transient rather than permanent characteristics when used in the predicative position (cf. Bolinger 1967). This is supported by the fact that in

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some languages, only a subgroup of the adjectival category, consisting of the more transient ones, can occur with tense or aspect markers when used as predicates. In Maori, for example, adjectives denoting contingent states can occur as verbal predicates, whereas the ones denoting absolute states can occur only as classifying predicates. There is, however, no distinction between the two when they are used as attributes (Bauer 1993). (30) (a) he puke teitei teena cl hill tall that ‘That is a tall hill.’ (b) he wai paru teenaa cl water dirty that ‘That is dirty water.’ (31) (a) he maa taku whare cl white my house ‘My house is white.’ (a) e maa ana taku whare tense clean tense my house ‘My house is clean.’ This requirement of dynamicity or transience for the occurrence of verbal categories, especially that of tense, is reflected in an interesting tendency called “tensedness constraint” (cf. Stassen 1997; Wetzer 1996), which appears to have the status of a language universal. Languages in which inflection either for past tense or non-past tense is obligatory, do not allow their adjectival predicates to be encoded as verbs; instead, such predicates must occur either with an auxiliary as in the case of predicative nouns, or as modifiers of an (empty) predicative noun. Even in the case of languages in which adjectives are generally indistinguishable from verbs, there are restrictions on the use of tense markers which reflect this constraint. For example, Chalcatongo Mixtec does not allow its temporal marker a and the mood marker -na/-ma to be used with verbs that have an adjectival connotation (Macawlay 1996). In Tümpisa (Shoshone), on the other hand, adjectives functioning by themselves as predicates denote present tense; they require a linking verb like naa⬙- ‘be’ in order to denote other tenses like past or future (Dayley 1989): (32) (a) tangummü tammappüh man crazy ‘The man is crazy.’ (b) tangummü tammappüh naappühantü man crazy was ‘The man was crazy.’

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4.3. Adverbial use Adjectives lose some of their prototypical characteristics and take on characteristics which are not their own when used as adverbs as well. In Kobon, for example, adjectives can be used as adverbs without any modification, but their connotation changes in that they indicate a permanent or normal state when used as adjectives, whereas when

used as adjuncts in an augmented verb phrase, or as manner adverbs, they indicate temporary or abnormal state (Davis 1981: 204). In Konkani, on the other hand, adjectives retain one of their characteristics in that they continue to agree with a noun, which is subject in this case (indicating that their decategorization is only partial) (Almeida 1989: 246):

(33) (a) sáma ber-c ka:m kerta Sham(m.sg) good-m.sg work does(m.sg) ‘Sham works well.’ (b) tacˇi aveI ber-I bhiyeli his mother(f.sg) good-f.sg frightened(f.sg) ‘His mother was very frightened.’

5.

Semantic properties

We can regard lexical items denoting the properties of (a) dimension (such as long, short, big, small, thick, thin, wide, narrow), (b) value (such as good, bad, odd, strange, easy, difficult), (c) age (such as new, old, young, modern) and (d) colour (such as black, red, white, blue, green, yellow) as representing prototypical core adjectives. These are likely to be included in the class of adjectives even in the case of languages in which there are very few members in the adjectival class. For example, Igbo, with a closed class of eight adjectives, has two each of dimension (‘large’, ‘small’), value (‘good’, ‘bad’), age (‘old’, ‘new’) and colour (‘white’, ‘black’) (Dixon 1982). Languages may also include other types of words in the adjectival class, such as those denoting (e) physical property (such as hard, soft, strong, weak, clean, dirty, hot, cold, sharp, blunt) (f) human propensity (such as happy, sad, cruel, proud, rude, wicked), and (g) speed (such as quick, fast, slow, sudden). These are, however, less prototypical than the former, as languages tend to include some of them in the category of nouns (like some of the human propensity words) and some like speed and physical property words in the category of adverbs or verbs. One of the problems that semantic generalizations of the above type have to face is the fact that the occurrence of certain diachronic processes and other conflicting tendencies may introduce different types of exceptions to such generalizations. For example, even though colour terms have been regarded as belonging to the core category of adjectives (Dixon 1982), there are languages in

which these appear to fall outside the adjectival category or show certain special characteristics. This is the case of Chemehuevi in which colour adjectives, but not others, require the support of the auxiliary tu? a ‘become’ or a special stative suffix ka in order to take tense-aspect suffixes (Press 1979); diachronically, this might be due to the fact that the colour terms derive from nouns, as it is the case in certain other languages (Wetzer 1996). Colour terms also show a special characteristic in Koromfe in that the process of reduplication has an opposite effect on them (see 2.1). Another interesting case is that of Limbu in which colour terms are different from other adjectives in their dependency status. Adjectives, in this language, are generally independent words which, in order to occur in the predicative position, require the support of the attributive verb co.kma? ‘be’. Colour terms, on the other hand, are bound forms; there are four of these, namely mak ‘black’, phc ‘white’, het ‘red’ and hik ‘green’; these can occur with co.kma? ‘be’ or lc? ma? ‘appear’ in the predicative position, but in order to occur as independent words (as attributes of nouns or as nouns), they require the prefixing of ku and suffixing of la (van Driem 1987): (34) ku-mak-la ku-brc-ra ku-het-la ku-hik-la

‘black’ ‘white’ ‘red’ ‘green’

Several scholars have suggested the possibility of regarding lexical items belonging to the categories of nouns, verbs and adjectives as forming a continuum, with nouns occurring on one end of the continuum, verbs oc-

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curring on the other end, and adjectives occurring in the middle. Cross-linguistic comparison of languages showing different morphosyntactic characteristics reflecting this continuum has allowed the establishment of the following rules and tendencies (Pustet 1989: 111f.): (a) positionals and feelings/emotions (‘angry’, ‘sad’, ‘happy’, ‘hungry’) are never more “nominal” morpho-syntactically than concepts denoting colour, dimension, value, material and sex; (b) concepts denoting colour, dimension and value are never more nominal morphonouns

再

material sex human-propensities

syntactically than concepts denoting material and sex; (c) concepts denoting shape and physical properties (‘hard’, ‘soft’, ‘heavy’, ‘light’, ‘rough’, ‘smooth’, ‘hot’, ‘cold’, ‘wet’, ‘dry’, etc.) tend to be included in the verbal class (if not included in the adjectival class); (d) properties of human character (‘proud’, ‘cruel’, ‘clever’, ‘generous’, ‘wicked’, etc.) tend to be included in the noun class (if not included in the adjectival class). From these rules and tendencies, an overall continuum such as in Fig. 74.1. may be derived: colour dimension value

positionals feelings emotions

冎

verbs

Fig. 74.1

It is important to note, in this connection, that lexical items belonging to the categories of nouns and verbs also form part of this continuum, and hence they are also divisible into subclasses in exactly the same way in which adjectives have been found to be divisible. Some of these groups would be more “adjectival” than others. The occurrence of adjectives in the middle of this continuum, however, has apparently made it possible for some languages like Nkore-Kiga (Taylor 1985), Koromfe (Rennison 1997) and WestGreenlandic (Fortescue 1984) to split the relevant lexical items into nominals and verbals, and to include the former under the category of nouns and the latter under that of verbs. It would not, however, be justifiable to extend this split (and the inclusion of adjectival words in the other two categories) as the basic structure for all languages.

6.

References

Bhat, D. N. S. (1994), The Adjectival Category. Amsterdam: Benjamins Bhat, D. N. S. & Ningomba, Mangi S. (1997), Manipuri Grammar. Munich: Lincom Europa Boas, Franz (1911), “Tsimshian”. In: Boas (ed.), 285⫺422 Boas, Franz (1911/1922, ed.), Handbook of American Indian Languages. Washington: Government Print Office (Bulletin/Bureau of American Ethnology 40) [Part 1: 1911 /Part 2: 1922] Bolinger, Dwight (1967), “Adjectives in English: Attribution and Predication”. Lingua 18, 1⫺34 Borg, Albert & Azzopardi-Alexander, Marie (1997), Maltese. London: Routledge Campbell, Lyle (1985), The Pipil Language of El Salvador. Berlin: de Gruyter Carlson, Robert (1994), A Grammar of Supyire. Berlin: de Gruyter Cowell, Mark W. (1964), A Reference Grammar of Syrian Arabic. Washington/D. C.: Georgetown Univ. Press Croft, William (1984), Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The Cognitive Organization of Information. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press

Almeida, Matthew (1989), A Description of Konkani. Panaji: Thomas Stephens Konkanni Kendr

Davis, J. (1981), Kobon. Amsterdam: North Holland

Arnott, David Witehorn (1970), The Nominal and Verbal System of Fula. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Dayley, Jon P. (1985), Tzutujil Grammar. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press

Ashton, E. O. (1947), Swahili Grammar. London: Longman Barber, Charles C. (1977), A Grammar of the Balinese Language. Aberdeen: Univ. of Aberdeen [mimeographed] Bauer, Winfred (1993), Maori. London: Routledge

Dayley, Jon P. (1989), Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone Grammar. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (1983), The Turkana Language. Dordrecht: Foris Dixon, Robert M. W. (1982), Where Have All the Adjectives Gone? And Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax. Berlin: de Gruyter

74. Adjective Driem, George van (1987), A Grammar of Limbu. Berlin: de Gruyter Faraclas, Nicholas (1984), A Grammar of Obolo. Bloomington/IN: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club Foley, William A. (1980), “Towards a Universal Theory of the Noun Phrase”. Studies in Language 4, 177⫺199 Fortescue, Michel (1984), West-Greenlandic. London: Crom Helm Goddard, Pliny E. (1911), “Athapascan (Hupa)”. In: Boas (ed.), 85⫺158 Harell, Richards (1962), A Short Reference Grammar of Moroccan Arabic. Washington/D. C.: Georgetown Univ. Press Hopper, P. L. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1984), “The Discourse Basis of Lexical Categories in Universal Grammar”. Language 60, 703⫺752 Jespersen, Otto (1924), The Philosophy of Grammar. London: Allen & Unwin Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1936), “De´rivation lexicale et de´rivation syntaxique (contribution a` la theórie des parties du discours)”. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ de Linguistique de Paris 37, 79⫺92 [reprinted in: Hamp, Eric P. & Householder, Fred W. & Austerliz, Robert (1966, eds.), Readings in Linguistics, Vol. II. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 42⫺50] Lehmann, Thomas (1989), A Grammar of Modern Tamil. Pondicherry: Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture Lorimer, David L. R. (1935), The Burushaski Language. Oslo: Aschehoug Lyons, John (1977), Semantics. London: Cambridge Univ. Press Macawlay, Monica (1996), A Grammar of Chalcatongo Mixtec. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press Meys, W[illem] J[ohannes] (1975), Compound Adjectives in English and Ideal Speaker-Listener. Amsterdam: North-Holland Moravcsik, Edith M. (1978), “Reduplication Constructions”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Human Language. Stanford, California: Stanford Univ. Press, 297⫺334 Osumi, Midori (1995), Tinrin Grammar. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press

769 Press, Ian (1986), A Grammar of Modern Breton. Berlin: de Gruyter Press, Margaret L. (1979), Chemehuevi: A Grammar and Lexicon. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press Pustet, Regina (1989), Die Morphosyntax des “Adjektivs” im Sprachvergleich. Frankfurt/M. etc.: Lang (Continuum 7) Quirk, Randolph & Greenbaum, Sidney & Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan (1972), A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman Rennison, John R. (1997), Koromfe. London: Routledge Saltarelli, Mario (1988), Basque. London: Routledge Sapir, Edward E. (1922), “The Takelma Language of Southwestern Oregon”. In: Boas (ed.), 1⫺294 Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe T. (1983), Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press Stassen, Leon (1985), Comparison and Universal Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell Stassen, Leon (1997), Intransitive Predication. Oxford: Clarendon Press Taylor, Charles (1985), Nkore-Kiga. London: Routledge Thompson, Sandra A. (1988), “A Discourse Approach to the Cross-Linguistic Category ‘Adjective’”. In: Hawkins, John A. (ed.), Explaining Language Universals. Oxford: Blackwell, 167⫺185 Wetzer, Harrie (1996), The Typology of Adjectival Predication. Berlin: de Gruyter Wierzbicka, Anna (1980), The Case for Case. Ann Arbor: Karoma Winfield, W. W. (1928), A Grammar of Kui Language. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal Bhat wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to the Research Council of Antwerp University and to the India Study Center for financial help in preparing this article.

D. N. S. Bhat, Mysore (India) Regina Pustet, Munich (Germany) and Boulder (USA)

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75. Numeral 1. 2. 3. 4.

6. 7. 8. 9.

The numeral as a part of speech Kinds of numeral discourse The unmarked status of cardinal numerals The mathematical structure of cardinal numeral systems The expression of mathematical functions in cardinals Extensions of the cardinal numeral system Cardinal numerals and substantival number Non-cardinal series of numerals References

1.

The numeral as a part of speech

5.

In traditional grammar the numeral is considered, along with the adjective, pronoun and noun, as a part of speech grouped in the superordinate category of substantive and opposed especially to the verb and adverb. A number of observations indicate that a valid insight may underlie this traditional classification. Like adjectives, numerals usually modify nouns. Within complex numerals, expressions that designate bases (and sometimes other higher numbers) frequently have noun-like properties such as having a plural or governing a genitive, e.g. Latin tres milia hominum ‘three:nom.pl thousand:nom.pl men:gen.pl (three thousand men)’. In general, the lower the number the more adjectival its properties; conversely, the higher the number the more it behaves as a noun. (cf. Corbett 1978). Nominal properties are particularly characteristic of bases, especially higher bases (cf. Stampe 1976). As nominal modifiers (their basic syntactic use) they differ from adjectives in a number of ways. The first concerns word order. Numerals frequently precede nouns in languages in which the adjective follows, as indicated by the statistical universal AN J QN. When both numeral and adjective precede the noun, and when they both follow, the numeral is usually the distal modifier, as in three large houses. The probable reason for this is semantic. Whereas an adjective indicates a property of a noun, a numeral is not a property of the object itself but of a set of objects, often a nonce-property, e.g. the five cards that happen to be in one’s hand at a particular point in a game of poker. Where a numeral does act as a property of an object it will be treated differently and will no longer func-

tion as a numeral modifier of the noun, e.g. four-legged table. Both the syntactic relation of a numeral to the noun it modifies, and the numeral’s morphology often differ from those of adjectives. For example, Latin numerals above ‘three’, unlike adjectives, are not inflected for gender. Sometimes the morphosyntax of different parts of the numeral system is diverse and idiosyncratic. It has been stated already that lower numerals often function as adjectives while higher numerals are more noun-like. However, the peculiarities of some numeral systems extend beyond this dichotomy. In Russian, for instance, the masculine nominative of animates and the masculine and neuter nominative-accusatives of ‘two’ are all dva, while their feminine counterparts are dve. No other noun modifiers have these inflectional endings. They are survivals of a dual and govern what is synchronically a genitive singular. They share this syntax but not morphology with ‘three’ and ‘four’ while forms for 5 to 20 are morphologically singular nouns which govern the genitive plural of the noun designating the object counted. Moreover, all of these rules differ when the noun is in one of the oblique cases. In certain languages, it might appear that numerals are kinds of verbs, very much like the claim made for certain languages that adjectives are really stative verbs (Art. 72 and 74). For example, in Yurok, a Penutian language of California, it is asserted that both numerals and adjectives should be regarded as subclasses of verbs (Robins 1958: 68). However, it is also noted that syntactically numerals mostly precede nouns to form endocentric groups. Further, most languages show a reluctance to predicate numerals. In English, one says, There are three people in the house rather than The people in the house are three. From the fact that the morphosyntax of numerals in many languages differs from that of the adjective and even varies within the numeral system, it follows that numerals are generally distinct from adjectives. This distinction is most accurately described in semantic terms. The distinctive characteristic of numerals is ordering, or, more precisely, cardinal ordering. Although adjectives can be graded ⫺ in that a particular object may have more or

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less of a given quality ⫺ such grading remains confined to the semantic range of each adjective. In contrast, a fundamental characteristic of cardinal ordering is the property of “betweenness”. While it makes no sense say that ‘beautiful’ is between ‘good’ and ‘true’, it does make sense to assert that ‘four’ is between ‘two’ and ‘six’. Even more fundamental among properties of the natural numbers is “nextness”. This is captured in Peano’s (1908) famous postulates for the natural numbers. Every integer has a unique successor. Yet the grading within an adjective as positive, comparative and superlative, while possessing “betweenness”, lacks “nextness”. In other words, while the ordering of quality across the semantic range of an adjective is gradual, that of the natural numbers (‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’ …) is discrete. Contrastingly, the set of real numbers has, like adjectives, the property of “betweenness” but not “nextness”. Between 1 and 3 on this continuum there is 2, yet this is but one of an infinity of real numbers within the interval. In human language, the fundamental numeral set is the cardinal or natural numbers. To determine the numerical value of a set of objects is to put its members into one-to-one relation with the words designating the natural numbers in the order of counting. The numeral which completes the set then expresses the number of items in the set. What is outlined here is basically similar to what has been called “the cardinality principle” (Hurford 1987: 305).

2.

Kinds of numeral discourse

What has been said above regarding the numeral as a part of speech refers to what mathematicians call “natural numbers” ⫺ those invoked in counting unit members of a set. These are represented by the cardinal numerals. Their relation to other series such as ordinals is discussed below in section 3. It is important to distinguish numerals from numerical expressions in general, of which the former are a subset. For example, in English sixteen is a numeral expression which is also part of the numeral system, whereas the square of four is a numerical expression which designates the same number (16) but is not part of the numeral system. No one counts one, two, three, the square of two, five… This distinction also allows one to rule out certain marginal numerical expres-

sions such as dozen, score, and googol, which are not part of the counting system in English. In a few languages, there are differences, usually minor and sporadic, between expressions used in counting and those used in context usually as nominal modifiers. Witness Hungarian kettö ‘two’, used only in counting, versus ke´t ‘two’, used as a noun modifier. Such differences never affect the mathematical structure of the system. One may say that counting is a special kind of discourse. In fact, especially in literate societies, there are still other forms of discourse involving numerals which have distinctive characteristics. In regard to counting itself, one may distinguish abstract from concrete counting. The latter entails counting objects of a specific kind. In languages with numeral classifiers (cf. Art. 97) the appropriate classifier is generally used in such instances. Numerals are also used in mathematical discourse. Differences between numeral expressions both in form and syntactic properties sometimes occur within single languages. In Russian the instrumental case of a few numerals, when used to indicate the multiplier, have a stress pattern different from that used in ordinary discourse, e.g. pja´t’ju trı´ ‘five:instr.sg three:nom.pl (five times three)’ as against s pjat’ju´ tova´risˇcˇami ‘with five: instr.sg friend:instr.pl (with five friends)’. Other uses of numerals distinct both from counting and ordinary discourse include nursery rhymes, dates, telephone numbers and names for numerals in written form. One might say, You have written this “three” larger than the other two “threes”. Note that in this case a plural of three is utilized, which is unacceptable in the numeral’s ordinary syntactic use.

3.

The unmarked status of cardinal numerals

Everything asserted up to this point regarding numerals refers to cardinal numbers (those generated by the act of counting). However, there are other numeral series, e.g. ordinal (first, second…), adverbial cardinal (once, twice…), adverbial ordinal (the first time, the second time) and distributives (one each, two each), etc. It is clear from a whole series of facts that cardinals are the basic, unmarked numeral series, and that, when the numeral is said to be a part of speech, reference is to cardinals only. All of the general

772 works regarding numeral systems (e.g. Brandt Corstius 1968, ed.; Hurford 1975; 1987; Stampe 1976) examine mainly or exclusively cardinals. However, studies of IndoEuropean numeral systems, (cf. Szemereńyi 1960; Gvozdanovic´ 1992, ed.) usually include non-cardinal series ⫺ especially ordinals. The reason for this is that there have been historical influences ⫺ mainly analogical ⫺ of one set on another. The non-cardinal series show the typical attributes of markedness (Trubetzkoy 1939; Greenberg 1966). Among these are the greater complexity of expression of the marked series, as shown by affixation to the unmarked cardinal, e.g. English tenth as against ten, or by the use of specialized nouns with cardinals, e.g. English time in the adverbial cardinal four times, or doubly marked in the adverbial ordinal the fourth time. Another symptom of markedness is defectivity. In Slavic languages the collective numerals are not formed above ‘ten’. In some languages higher ordinals involve partial neutralization in which the unmarked cardinal takes the place of the ordinal. An example is English twenty-third in which the member with higher value uses the cardinal in place of the ordinal twentieth. One may contrast Latin vicesimus primus ‘twentieth:nom.sg.m first:nom.sg.m (twenty-first)’ in which both members are ordinal. The data available show also that the text frequency of cardinal numerals is overwhelmingly greater than that of any other series. In languages with very restricted systems lacking multiplicative bases, e.g. those of Australia, it appears that only cardinal numerals exist. The ordinals, which usually function as a subclass of adjectives, deserve special consideration. Some philosophers of mathematics have taken ordinals as primary. For example, ‘five’ might be defined as the fifth number in the counting series of natural numbers. Others, however, have accepted the cardinals as logical primitives. In natural languages the evidence is unequivocal that the cardinals are the unmarked and basic series. This, it may be suggested, derives from the fact that in the real world most things are not naturally ordered sequentially. Sometimes one might want to find out how many apples are in a sack, but in what order individual apples are assigned numbers is irrelevant. All that is required is that the count be complete and that no apple be counted more than once. If there are n ap-

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ples, there are n! possible orderings ⫺ but which one to use is a matter of indifference. One is not normally interested in the nth apple. An interesting example of the way in which ordinary language treats the relationship between cardinals and ordinals (and of the primary status of the former) is furnished by Lotuxo, an Eastern Nilotic language of the Nilo-Saharan family. Here the ordinal is formed from the cardinal by means of a causative prefix. The ordinal has been interpreted to be the number which causes the set to be completed, e.g. ‘fifth’ means that which causes a set to have five members (Muratori 1938: 18). The most important exception to the absence of natural sequencing of entities in the world is time, whether serial or absolute, since it is an inherently ordered asymmetrical relation between the earlier and the later. It is precisely in time expressions that one finds variations within and between languages. In English, dates in years are stated cardinally, but in Russian ordinally. Yet in English, unlike some other languages, ordinals are used for days of the month. English uses ordinals for successive monarchs of the same name, e.g. Henry the Eighth; in French, however, one finds Louis quatorze, which utilizes the cardinal.

4.

The mathematical structure of cardinal numeral systems

All languages have finite systems of cardinals. For example, in American English the highest integer expressible is 1036⫺1 since the lexical item in that numeral system with the highest value is decillion. Of course no one starting with 1 will count up to this number. Counting, however, is a matter of competence rather than performance. The existence of rules, such that given a numeral designating a particular number, one can produce an expression designating the next higher number, is sufficient. As has been shown, the limits of the numeral system are narrower than those of numerical expressions in general. Among extra-systemic resources, by which one can express numbers larger than the limit of the cardinal system proper, are addition, multiplication, and exponentials. For example, one can substitute a thousand decillions for (unacceptable) *undecillion. A system which assigned to every number a simple and distinct lexical expression would

75. Numeral

place great strain on the memory. Hence, except in very simple systems like that of the Botocudo, a Macro-Ge language of Brazil in which a system ‘1, 2, many’ is reported, numbers are expressed as arithmetical functions of a limited set of numeral expressions which in are called the “atoms” or “frames” of the system (cf. Greenberg 1978: 256; Salzmann 1950). An example is ‘twenty-three’ expressed in Mandarin by a succession of three atoms (2, 10 and 3 in that order) and which is interpreted as a function (axb)⫹c in which the argument a has the value 10, b has the value 2 and c has the value 3. From the examples of Botocudo and English one sees that numeral systems differ vastly in their limits. This variation may be the clearest example among very few instances of evolutionary factors at work within language. Typologically, the most simple numerical systems are those without any arithmetic functions. The system of this type with the highest numerical limit noted is Guana, an Arawakan language of South America which counts ‘1, 2, 3, 4, many’. The next simplest systems make use of arithmetic functions ⫺ usually addition but sometimes multiplication ⫺ so that somewhat higher numbers can be expressed precisely. One dialect of Yuman, a California Hokan language, is unusual in its use of sporadic multiplication without addition in a system which counts ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3⫻2, 7, 4⫻2, 3⫻3, 10’. However, in these systems the crucial notion of a numeral base is lacking. The upper limits of systems which use addition and/or multiplication without bases are difficult to determine. This is because there are documented instances of languages in which numeral expressions involve counting first on the fingers and then on the toes, and in which the words are actually the names of (anatomical) digits. In these cases it seems that numerals above the first few are never used without accompanying gestures, and that the gestures are often used without verbalization. One indication of such a system is the use of the same word for more than one number. Auetö, a Tupian language, uses the same word for 4 and 9; the word means ‘index finger’. In such cases it seems doubtful that these expressions are normally used attributively with nouns in sentences, with the probable exception of the very lowest numerals.

773 Even more strikingly, the following “system” is reported by from the Kaliana in South America: meyakan ‘one’, meyakan ‘two’, meyakan ‘three’, in which meyakan means ‘finger’. Systems of the two major types mentioned above (those without arithmetic functions and those with sporadic use of addition and/ or multiplication) are basically confined to hunting-gathering populations which do not possess goods (e.g. cattle) requiring counting to relatively high numbers, and which have no extensive commerce. The vast majority of the world’s languages use multiplicative bases. As can be seen from the earlier example of Yuma, the mere use of multiplication is not sufficient; requisite is the use of expressions formed by multiplication of a base number successively by 1, 2, 3, etc. If the base is 10, then these will be 10, 20, 30, etc., with intermediate numbers expressed by some function (most commonly addition) involving non-base numbers. When the base number itself is reached as a multiplier, e.g. 10x10, the language commonly uses a new lexeme to indicate the square of the base, and so for some still higher powers of the base, e.g. English thousand. Although rarely if ever stated in such terms, the invention of a base for counting is surely one of the great early inventions of humanity. The most common typology of numeral systems is with reference to numeral bases, e.g. quinary (5), decimal (10), duodecimal (12), vigesimal (20), sexagesimal (60). Of these, by far the most common is the decimal. Its origin from finger counting is intuitively obvious, and in a fair number of instances etymologically clear. In some languages the words for ‘one’ are identical with or derived from those for ‘finger’ and terms for ‘five’ are derived in a similar way from ‘hand’. The vigesimal system derives from counting both fingers and toes. In some instances words for ‘twenty’ are identical with or derived from words for ‘man’. No satisfactory theories have been advanced for the occurrence of duodecimal and sexagesimal systems (cf. Ifrah 1985). Many numeral systems are to some extent “mixed”, in that, while a single base predominates sufficiently for classification, other bases exert sporadic influence within the system, either as survivals from earlier baseless systems or possibly as substratum of systems with different bases.

774 In regard to the former, the survival is usually in the form of a serialized augend. In arithmetic terminology the augend is a number to which another number is added; the latter number is called the addend. By a serialized augend is meant a base for addition to which successive numbers are added. Thus in a decimal system 10, 20, 30, etc. are usually serialized augends, in that successive numbers are named by addition to a multiple of 10, e.g. 41 is rendered as ‘forty plus one’, 42 as ‘forty plus two’, etc. However, some serialized augends are not themselves whole multiples of a base, i.e. some serialized augends are not serialized multiplicands. Using concepts of serialized augend and power it is possible to define a “pure” system for a specific base. This has two requirements: every serialized augend must be a multiple of the base (including 1 as a multiple) and all higher bases must be powers of the fundamental base. In this sense Mandarin is a pure decimal system. Examples of decimal systems with non-decimal deviations include Welsh and French. In Welsh, 16, 17, 18 and 19 are lexically interpreted as ‘15⫹1’, ‘15⫹2’, ‘15⫹3’ and ‘15⫹4’. Therefore 15 is a serialized augend which is not a whole multiple of the system’s overall base, namely 10. This evidently involves a quinary principle. However, the term for 15 itself, bymtheg, consists of ‘five’ followed by ‘ten’, and 18 has an alternate form involving multiplication of 6 and 3. In French, quatre-vingt is ‘four-twenty’ and acts as an additive base for numbers 81⫺99. This clearly invokes a vigesimal principle, seen also in the forms for numbers 61 to 79. There are pure decimal and pure duodecimal systems, but no pure quinary systems since 25, 125, etc. have not been documented as higher bases in any language. Although some vigesimal systems, e.g. Mayan, use powers of twenty for higher bases, expressions below 20 ⫺ used additively also in higher numerals ⫺ employ quinary and/or decimal principles. The two basic lexical arithmetic operations are multiplication and addition; both are used in all systems which utilize a numeral base. The inverse of addition, subtraction, occurs widely but is highly marked, as shown by the restrictions to which it is subject. Unlike addition, subtraction is almost never utilized without an overt marker indicating the operation itself, whereas such expressions as German drei-zehn ‘three-ten’ are common. In

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a few cases where no overt mark of subtraction seems to be in use, the process involved is deletion, namely of ‘one’ or of a systemic base (both alternatives are intuitively good candidates for deletion). An example is Efik, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria in which 9 is usuk-kiet. Since kiet is the word for ‘one’, one might be tempted to interpret usuk as ‘ten’. However, the usual word for ‘ten’ is edip and usuk is clearly derived from suk ‘to be left over’. Yet with ‘ten’ deleted usuk might be interpreted synchronically as a suppletive alternant of edip ‘ten’. A further restriction placed on lexical subtraction is that when a number is expressed by subtraction, or when subtraction occurs as a constituent of a complex numeral expression, the subtrahend is never larger than the remainder. If a language analyzed 2 as ‘10⫺8’, this rule would be violated, as the subtrahend, 8, would be larger than the remainder. Subtrahends are never themselves mathematically complex, i.e. instances such as 12 being analyzed as ‘20⫺(5⫹3)’ do not occur; addition is not subject to this constraint, as seen in French soixante-dix-sept ‘sixty-ten-seven’. In cases of subtraction, the minuend is almost always a multiple of the base and involves a continuous sequence of subtrahends beginning with 1. Latin undeviginti ‘one from twenty (nineteen)’, and duodeviginti ‘two from twenty (eighteen)’ are typical examples. There are very few exceptions to these rules (cf. Greenberg 1978: 260f.). The inverse of multiplication, division, is much rarer and subject to even greater restrictions than subtraction. Almost all examples are of forms for ‘50’ expressed as ‘half of 100’. The denominator of the fraction is always a power of 2 and probably does not go beyond 4, as in Oriya, an Aryan language of India, in which subtraction and division are both involved in expressions such as 275 as ‘300⫺((1/4)⫻100)’. The expression for 100 is in this case deleted. Beyond the four standard arithmetic functions is an operation called “overcounting” (cf. Menninger 1969; Hurford 1975: 235). An example is Ostyak, an Ugric language, in which 18 is expressed as ‘eight-twenty’, which is interpreted as ‘8 going-on 20’. Such constructions often involve an ordinal interpretation, as in Estonian, in which the numeral expressing 18 can be interpreted as ‘eight of the second ten’ (with the term for ‘ten’ optionally omitted).

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In considering more systematically the analysis of complex numeral expressions, an important formal difference between addition and multiplication and their inverse processes (subtraction and division) becomes crucial; commutative and associative laws apply to the first pair of processes but not to the last pair. Given that a certain numeral expression in a language designates 8 and does so in an expression whose numerical values are 10 and 2, whether or not the operation of subtraction is indicated by a lexical item such as ‘take away’, the analysis 10⫺2 is unambiguous. However, since by the commutative law of addition a⫹b ⫽ b⫹a, and since such a conclusion can be generalized to any number of addends, then if 7 is expressed by ‘five two’ one can deduce that 5 and 2 are addends but without further analysis, one cannot determine whether 5 has been added to 2 or vice versa. The two possible interpretations correspond to two different pragmatic situations, e.g. placing two objects onto a pile of five objects or placing the latter onto the former. Similarly, if 30 is expressed as a function of 3 and 10, one cannot automatically determine whether a 3 is taken ten times or a 10 is taken three times. The commutative law can be extended to any number of factors, increasing these difficulties. Where there are three or more addends and/or factors, an additional variable enters, namely grouping in accordance with the associative laws (a⫹b)⫹c ⫽ a⫹(b⫹c) and (a⫻b)⫻c ⫽ a⫻(b⫻c). These laws are of course generalizable to more than three addends and/or factors. Different associative groupings have distinct pragmatic correlates. In regard to addition, for example, a person may take three objects, add two more, and then add six more to the resulting set of five, or he or she might first add two objects to a set of six and then add three more to the resulting set. Sometimes the mathematical result shows that only one grouping is possible. This happens in complex numerals involving multiplication and addition together. If, for example, 203 is expressed by functions with the arguments 2, 100, and 3, then the two addends must be (2⫻100) and 3. An analysis as 2⫻(100⫹3) gives the wrong numerical result; one cannot indict a whole people of an arithmetic error! Note, however, that in this instance it is only the parenthesization (i.e. the sequencing of analytic steps) which is determined by the numerical result. The order of

775 the two addends and the order of the factors 2 and 100 can only be ascertained by linguistic methods. A solution is usually (but not always) possible. For details concerning these methods, see Greenberg (1978: 263⫺273). Certain generalizations can be deduced from such analysis. The most important is the following: wherever there are three summands and at least one is a product, parenthesization starts by separating the summand with the largest numerical value from the rest. Thus in English three thousand four hundred and seventy three, one first parenthesizes (3⫻1000) and subsequently adds to that term [(4⫻100)⫹(7⫻10)⫹3)]. Within the second summand one parenthesizes (4⫻100)⫹ [(7⫻10)⫹3]. A number of generative analyses produce phrase structure trees for higher numerals that accord with this analysis (Brandt Corstius 1968, ed.). Note that the preceding generalization does not assert anything about the linear order of the constituents themselves. Regarding this there is another major generalization involving a preference for putting the addends with the higher numerical value before those with the lower. Whenever a language exhibits instances of both the higher preceding the lower and the lower preceding the higher, the latter construction is found in the lower numbers and a distinct and definite switch point or interval of variation occurs within the numeral sequence. There is never more than one switch point or interval. For example, in Italian, given that 16 is expressed by se-dici ‘six-ten’ one might predict that the same order of smaller plus larger will hold for all smaller complex numerals, e.g. quin-dici ‘five-ten’ for 15. In Italian, 16 is the switch point, since 17 is expressed as dicia-(s)sette ‘ten-seven’; all higher numbers have higher before smaller. For example, 375 is tre-cento sett-anta cinque ‘three-hundred seven-ty five’. Note, however, that for 315 Italian has tre-cento quin-dici ‘three-hundred five-ten’, in accordance with a principle discussed below. The generalization here is that there is never more than one switch point or interval and that the switch always involves “lower⫹ higher” for lower values and “higher⫹lower” for higher values. If a language always puts higher before lower (e.g. Mandarin), there is no switch point. Alternately, one might say that the switch point is zero. Such languages are fairly common. Languages with no switch point in which lower always precedes higher

776 are very rare. The only noted example is Malagasy. There is evidently a cognitive principle involved in preference for higher followed by lower. If one expresses a large number such as 3625 with the thousands term first, then the listener knows immediately that the number is within the range [3000⫺4000]. The addition of six hundred further narrows the possibilities. If, alternatively, one begins with five, then all the listener knows is that the number is greater than or equal to 5; further confinement to a finite interval is not normally possible. Hence, while an order “higher⫹lower” orients the listener to ever closer approximations of the final value, the opposite order leaves him or her in the dark until the last item is reached. And even this moment may be ambiguous; in order to close the numerical expression under such a system, the speaker might have to utter a noun or an inflection upon the last numeral. In light of this one can see why natural languages do not utilize place systems, which of course require the use of numeral expressions for zero. Under such systems, either the powers of the base would ascend in order, producing the cognitive processing problem just mentioned, or they might descend, in which case the listener would have the same problem, since an initial 6 might indicate a multiple of any power of the base (down to n0 ⫽ 1), such that 600000 could not be distinguished from 60 until the entire numerical expression was completed. In natural languages, atomic expressions of the base and of at least some of its powers, such as hundred, thousand, trillion, etc. orient the listener with maximal efficiency toward the intended numerical value. A further general principle underlies the organization of all systems of cardinal numerals which utilize a numerical base. This principle was alluded to previously in discussion of Italian tre-cento quin-dici, 315. Given that 15 in Italian is a non-agglutinative union of cinque ‘five’ and dieci ‘ten’, one finds that above some particular base ⫺ frequently, as here, the square of the fundamental base ⫺ there are, as it were, no surprises. Such a base may be called the base for predictable expression. A further example is French, in which the base for predictable expression is cent. In standard French, for instance, in which 70 is expressed as soixante-dix ‘sixty-ten’, one expects that 170 will be expressed using the same term, i.e. as cent soixante-dix, and not,

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say, as *cent-septante. In fact, some non-standard forms of French have septante for 70. In these, in accordance with the principle of base for predictable expression, 170 is in fact expressed as cent septante. For a more rigorous statement of this principle see Greenberg (1978: 280f.).

5.

The expression of mathematical functions in cardinals

The mathematical structure of cardinal numeral systems has now been examined, but not the methods employed by languages to express the mathematical functions of which the individual numbers are arguments. In considering this topic one may distinguish between the internal morphosyntax and the external syntax of cardinal numeral expressions. The two are often intimately connected and therefore cannot have entirely separate systems. The chief reason for this is that the main external use of numerals is to qualify substantives and that in systems which have bases, the base itself is often treated as a substantive. For instance, in Russian the expression for 100 is a neuter substantive sto. Just as the numeral pjat’ ‘five’ in the nominative and nominative-accusative governs the genitive plural of a noun as in pja´t’ dom-o´v ‘five:nom.sg house-gen.pl’, so in the numeral expression for 500, pjat’-so´t ‘five:nom.sghundred:gen.pl’. However, while ‘five houses’ is a phrase, ‘five hundred’ has a single word accent and is orthographically a single word. There is even in Russian what might be called internal inflection, in that agreement in case can occur within the word. This can be illustrated in the oblique cases of numerals like pjatı´desjati ‘fifty’, which is the genitive of pjat’ ‘five’, and desjatı´, genitive of de´sjat’. Both of these are inflected for case like “soft” (palatalized) singular nouns. ‘Of five houses’ is pjatı´ domo´v ‘five:gen.sg house:gen.pl’. Similarly the genitive singular of ‘ten’ is used with the genitive plural of ‘house’. For ‘of fifty houses’ Russian has pjatı´desjati domo´v, in which both ‘five’ and ‘ten’ are in the genitive singular while ‘house’ is in the genitive plural. But once more, even with inflectional endings on both components, the example shows single-word stress and single-word orthography. One sees here, from a phonological point of view, a development (in this case historically documented) basically analogous to

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grammaticalization. From ‘five’ and ‘ten’ Russian has formed a single lexical unit. One might hesitate to call this process grammaticalization, since there is no change in meaning; the earlier form ‘five ten’ and the later term ‘fifty’ have identical meanings. In general, lower complex numerals have a greater tendency ⫺ presumably because of their greater frequency ⫺ to undergo phonological changes, which can exceed simple unification by word accent with retention of inflectional categories of each member. Frequently, there is phonetic loss and change due to loss of accent ⫺ especially in lower units ⫺ which shows that, synchronically, the word has become a single lexical unit, e.g. French quinze [ke˜ z] which is entirely opaque in relation to cinq [se˜ k] and dix [dis], as contrasted with Latin quin-decim < quinque ‘five’, decem ‘ten’. In Latin the mathematical components have, of course, already lost their independence and have undergone change and reduction in the process. In all of the examples considered up to now there have been either original juxtapositions of the mathematical components or some syntactic bond of agreement or government between them, but no morpheme or word designating the mathematical operation itself. This is common ⫺ but far from universal ⫺ with addition or multiplication, but not with the highly marked operations of subtraction, division, or overcounting. A morpheme or word which explicitly indicates the operation itself will here be called a link. For example, in German vier-undzwanzig ‘four-and-twenty’, -und- functions as a link for addition. Here, as in Greek treiskaı´-deka ‘three-and-ten’ there is a coordinator (link) fossilized within a complex numeral expression. The two chief types of links for addition are the associative ‘and’ (or ‘with’) and the superessive, an expression meaning ‘upon’ or something similar. Forms meaning ‘under’ or the like are never used. The metaphor is clearly that of placing one object upon another. The associative link is often a morpheme ‘and’ which is also used to coordinate noun phrases or clauses. It can also be an adposition meaning ‘with’, itself a frequent historic source for words meaning ‘and’. In some languages, e.g. Hausa da, the same word functions as both ‘and’ and ‘with’. Since both ‘with’ and ‘on’ are adpositions, it is not surprising to find that with considerable consistency its position is clearly corre-

777 lated with the adpositional type of the language in question and the permitted positions for absence of the link is like that of coordinators in general. The term deletion is avoided here because its use in synchronic grammar suggests strongly that it was formerly present and this is by no means always the case. The following principles hold for links for addition: (a) A link for addition is never initial in a numeral expression; (b) if a link for addition is final, the language is postpositional; (c) when a link is medial it always goes with the following numeral in a prepositional language and with the preceding numeral in a postpositional language. Note that coordinators are in general more sparingly used in numeral expressions than in phrase- and clause-coordination. For example, although initial coordinators, as stated above, do not occur in numeral expressions, they may occur in non-numeral constructions, e.g. Latin et … et … ‘both … and …’. In English, a prepositional language, coordinators are optionally used in higher numerical expressions, e.g. two hundred (and) fifty six. Note that in English John and William there is an optional pause before and, but not after it; this is just so in numerical expressions as well. A striking example of the validity of this principle is observed in Bedauye, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia, which has borrowed the Arabic wa ‘and’ into its numeral system. In Arabic ⫺ a prepositional language ⫺ wa as a sentence- and phrase- as well as numeral coordinator, is always written with the following word, and may begin a sentence. In postpositional Bedauye, however, -wa is always part of the preceding word. For example, 31 is expressed in Bedauye as mehei taman-wa gal-wa ‘three tenand one-and’. The last -wa can be omitted. The most common syntactic analysis of multiplication treats the base as a noun so that, for example, 30 is expressed by ‘three tens’, in a construction analogous to ‘three houses’. Bantu, with noun class prefixes for singular and plural, shows many clear examples. In Ila, a Bantu language of Zambia, the numeral for 10 is i-kumi (sg.), ma-kumi (pl.), just as the singular of ‘foot’ is i-tende and its plural is ma-tende. Ila expresses 20 as makumi o-bili ‘pl-ten pl-two’ just as ‘two feet’ is ma-tende o-bili. In other instances, multiples of the lowest base, (as in decimal 2⫻10, 3⫻10,

778 etc.) may be expressed in a non-transparent manner although the identity of the lower element remains clear enough, e.g. Latin triginta ‘three-ten’ in which the resemblance of the first element to tre-s ‘three-pl’ is readily apparent while the second part -ginta reappears in other multiples of ten despite being superficially unlike decem ‘ten’. This disparity between forms for 10 and its plurals is commonly attributed to an abstract *(d)k t whose /g/ in Latin in place of /k/ is unexplained. Another alternative is the use of an adverbial, also called multiplicative numeral, e.g. ‘three times’. An example is found in higher Greek numerals, e.g. hex-akis-khı´li-oi ‘six-times-thousand-nom.pl.m’. A common feature of the expression of multiplication is the deletion of 1. Thus in English one does not say a ten or one ten as part of the counting system, but one does say one hundred or a hundred. The reason for the deletion (which might not, of course, be a true historical deletion) is the unique mathematical property of 1, namely that only for a ⫽ 1 is it true that for any n, a⫻n ⫽ n. Thus the use of 1 as a multiplicand is redundant. In fact, it is likely to occur with higher bases which, as has been seen, tend to act as nouns and can therefore be counted. Thus English one thousand is the initial step in counting thousands. As a statistical universal, the overt expression of 1 with lower bases implies its overt expression in all higher bases. In multiplication, bases may also be deleted if there is sufficient other information (e.g. inflectional) to allow it. In Efik, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria which has a vigesimal system, ´ıba` is ‘two’, but a`ba` is ‘twenty’. Here, and for other multiples of tens, the initial a`- (a plural inflection) permits the omission of e´dı´p, 20, without any resulting ambiguity. Presumably the use of plurals of numbers 3 to 10 in Semitic languages, e.g. classical Arabic, permits the conclusion that an expression for 10 has been omitted. Unlike addition and multiplication, subtraction normally involves a separate morpheme ⫺ usually an expression meaning ‘without’, ‘take away’, ‘from’ or even a negative with the subtrahend ⫺ to indicate its operation. An example of the last is Somali laba-ton mid-la ‘two-ten one-not (19)’. Naukan, an Eskimo dialect of Siberia, even has (presumably with ‘one’-deletion in this case) the expression of 9 as ‘ten-not’. Division, which is even more marked than subtraction, is, when observed, primarily by

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two with rare examples of fours. Almost all instances are of 50 expressed as ‘half’ of 100, and these usually appear in vigesimal systems. An example of division by 4 (involving subtraction also) is found in Oriya, an IndoAryan language which expresses 275 as ‘quarter from three hundred’ in which once more an occurrence of a base (here 100) is deleted. In overcounting, the final arithmetic operation encountered, overt expression of the operation is once more required while the base in some language is deleted. Examples are Vogul vat-nup lexurm ‘thirty-towards three (twenty three);’ and Estonian numerals such as kaheksa-tei-st-(kümmend) ‘eight-second-from-ten’, i.e. ‘eight of the second ten (eighteen)’, with optional base deletion. In the preceding discussion the basic topic has been the internal morphosyntactic expression of cardinal numbers. As has been seen, this internal morphosyntax ⫺ akin to processes of grammaticalization ⫺ often involves expressions which have become more or less frozen and reduced in form to a basic syntax similar to that of numeral expression as a whole in relation to a qualified noun, its most frequent use. In its external syntax, numeral expressions share many properties normally associated with the major class of noun-qualifiers ⫺ namely adjectives ⫺ although such qualities may be manifest in patently reduced form, especially in higher numerals. Typically, lower numerals may be morphologically like adjectives, and, where adjectives agree in categories, such as gender, case, and number (singularity/(duality/)plurality), numerals will agree also, though frequently with idiosyncratic morphology and neutralization of categories. In regard to number there may also be agreement. The numeral expression for 1 may agree with a singular noun, that for 2 ⫺ where a dual exists ⫺ itself showing morphological traits of a dual and agreeing with nouns which are themselves in the dual. Numerals larger than 2 also sometimes show morphological plural characteristics and agree with a noun in the plural. A widespread peculiarity is the neutralization of number in the noun, when it is modified by a numeral, so that it is in the singular with all numerals, e.g. Hungarian, Turkish. In some instances, as in Turkish, the noun plural seems not to be a compulsory category. Higher numbers, especially bases, are, as has been seen frequently, morphologically

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substantives. The most common syntactic treatment is for the thing counted to be put in the genitive (most often the genitive plural). Another more unusual syntactic device is affixation to the numeral rather than to the noun, marking the syntactic connection much like the well-known izafet construction in Farsi. An example is Wolof nyar-i nag ‘two-of cow (two cows)’, also employed for multiples of bases, as in nyar-i temer ‘twoof hundred’. When complex cardinal expressions qualify nouns there are two major alternatives regarding the syntactic relation of the numeral to the noun, where higher expressions do not simply take plurals, when they exist, e.g. English twenty three houses. One is that it will take the construction of the expression with the lowest numerical order as in Russian dvadcat’ odin celovek ‘twenty one:nom.sg.m man:nom.sg’. The other is that it will follow the construction of the numeral expression closest to the noun. Thus in classical Arabic, in which multiples of ten govern the accusative singular indefinite of the noun, the numeral expression for 347, expressed as ‘threehundred seven and forty’, will govern the accusative singular indefinite of the qualified noun.

6.

Extensions of the cardinal numeral system

6.1. Mathematical extensions In the development of mathematics, starting from the counting of integers, numerous extensions of the numerical system have been made, e.g. the inventions of zero, fractional numbers, negative numbers, imaginary numbers, etc. Of these, outside of mathematical discourse in technologically advanced societies, the only extension commonly found is to fractions. ‘Half’ is the unmarked fraction, sometimes present when there are no other fractional expressions. Terms for ‘half’ are often derived from those for ‘to split’ or ‘to break’ and are simple lexical expressions. Sometimes a simple expression for quarter is also present. Overcounting is sometimes found in fractions. An example is Ainu, in which e, expressing negation, is used for subtraction in the cardinal system. In similar fashion, 1½ is expressed as e-tup ‘not-two’, 2½ by e-rap ‘not-three’, etc. One may compare such overcounting with German expressions of time like halb drei for 2: 30.

779 Where integral fractions are expressed systematically, the numerator is an expression for a cardinal, and the denominator is frequently an ordinal as in English three fifths. The reason for the ordinal seems to be the following: suppose one has a collection of countable objects and wishes to discover the numerical value of three fifths of the set. One counts ordinally until reaching the fifth member, putting the already counted objects aside, then repeats the operation until either the set is completely counted or a remainder smaller than five is left. Hence also the common use of a word like ‘part’ with the denominator. 6.2. Indefinite and approximative cardinals In addition to the numerals in the counting series of cardinals, there are normally expressions for an undetermined small or large amount, i.e. words like ‘few’, ‘many’, inclusives like ‘all’, interrogatives and expressions for approximatives, such as ‘about twenty’, etc. Of these, the indeterminates and inclusives often share syntactic properties of numerals, usually of the highest set if there is diversity of construction within the system. Like higher numerals, indeterminates and inclusives are often substantivized and may govern genitives. These syntactic properties are often shared with the interrogative(s) for cardinal numbers. Examples are Russian mnogo ‘many’ and skol’ko ‘how many’, both of which govern genitive plurals in the nominative-accusative, but have agreement like adjectives in oblique cases. This is the same pattern observed in higher units of the cardinal system. Approximatives usually employ adverbials or other qualifiers, as about in English about ten. However, in a few instances there are differences in word order. Here it seems that the numeral follows the noun to express indefiniteness of the number. Examples include Russian and Zyryan, e.g. Russian desat’ jablok ‘ten apple:gen.pl (ten apples)’ versus jablok desat’ ‘apple:gen.pl ten (about ten apples)’. Similar examples are found in numeral classifier languages, such as Bengali, in which, however, the numeral precedes the classifier in the exact construction and follows it in the approximative. 6.3. Counting and countables It may also be considered an extension of the cardinal system in a different direction when numerals are used with mass nouns by the

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intervention of units of measure. In such instances there are various indications that this is not counting in the countable-objects sense. Often, with numeral expressions larger than 1, the singular of the measure word is used rather than the plural, as in German drei Pfund Kaffee ‘three pounds of coffee’. Although Pfund has a plural (Pfunde) its singular is used in this construction. The syntax of measure expressions is apparently always identical to that of numeral classifiers in languages which use classifiers (cf. Art. 97). In some instances, as in Akkadian, it is the singular of the noun, rather than of the measure-word, which is used, while the noun plural is employed with non-measure expressions. Weighing figures prominently in such expressions, since countable objects can often be weighed in a separate analytic action, e.g. apples.

7.

Cardinal numerals and substantival number

The category of number in substantives gives essentially the same kind of information as do cardinal numeral constructions, but in a far less determinate way. For example, in a language with the categories of the singular, dual and plural, the first of these is used when one is dealing with a set of objects which has one member, the dual when the set has two members, and the plural when it has more than two. A few languages of the Pacific have in addition a “trial” in pronouns and even an extremely rare “quadrial”. Usually it is more convenient to use a plural of a noun rather than a defined numeral modifier > 2, either because one does not know the exact numerical value or because it is irrelevant to the discourse. Even for someone beset by a plague of ants, knowledge of the exact number of the attacking creatures is usually both uncertain and unimportant. In languages with nominal duals, the use of the numeral expression for ‘two’ is, strictly speaking, redundant, although, of course, one needs a numeral designating 2 in higher complex numbers and for the act of counting itself. The identity of referential meaning of the cardinal number and the substantival category leads to a situation which, in the case of ‘two’, may be resolved by three alternative constructions. In Greek of the classic period, one could use the dual without a numeral ‘two’, one could use both forms (in which

case some discernible emphasis can often be noted or inferred) or, finally, one could rely solely on ‘two’ in conjunction with the plural of the noun. This last usage derives from the fact that in such cases a dual is not necessary, since the fact that a set has two objects is already conveyed by the numeral. This informational redundancy is certainly one of the factors leading to the demise of the dual in many languages and to its subsequent replacement by the plural. Another aspect of this relationship is historical: the numeral ‘two’ (often in reduced form) affixed to the noun is a common source for expression of duality of the noun and/or pronoun. Lithuanian, for example, has developed a dual category in the pronoun by this means, as seen in mu`-du ‘we-two(m)’ and mu`-dvi ‘we-two(f )’. In Tahitian, as in other Polynesian languages, the dual pronouns have a suffix which derives from the numeral expression for 2, while the plural suffix is a reduced form of ‘three’, showing that a trial category formerly existed, and served as the basis for the modern plural.

8.

Non-cardinal series of numerals

Ordinals, as has been noted above, are commonly formed from cardinals with affixes. However, the term for the ordinal related to ‘one’ is commonly not derived from the cardinal ‘one’, but from some word meaning ‘foremost’, or ‘in front’, e.g. English first. The ordinal corresponding to ‘two’ is usually derived from the cardinal but may be derived, like lower ordinals, from some root meaning ‘following’, as is the case with Latin secundus ‘second’, which is derived from sequ-i ‘follow-inf (to follow)’ There is also a term ‘last’ to which no cardinal corresponds. While nominal objects are usually those things counted, additional numeral series arise from the counting of verbal actions. The series that arise in this way are called (variously) multiplicative or adverbial. The division between the adverbial and cardinal series of numerals (the latter of which modify nouns) is independent of the distinction between cardinals and ordinals. There can thus be both adverbial cardinals and adverbial ordinals. For example classical Latin carefully distinguishes between quinquies ‘five times’ and quintum ‘for the fifth time’. While the former is a distinct formation with its own interrogative (quoties), the latter is simply the

75. Numeral

accusative neuter singular of the corresponding ordinal quintus ‘fifth’, and does not have a distinct interrogative. Adverbial ordinals are relatively marked in comparison to the adverbial cardinals, as can be seen in by the defectivity in the absence of an interrogative and other ways. The expression of adverbial cardinals may involve a distinctive affix to the base of ordinary cardinal, as seen above in Latin. Common methods include the use of adverbial cardinals with particular words ⫺ like English time and French fois ⫺ and the incorporation of adverbial cardinals expressions into the corresponding cardinal numerals, as in German dreimal. Adverbial cardinals and their associated ordinals naturally modify stative rather than active verbs, since only actions (and objects) can be counted. Thus to be red twice is ungrammatical or marginal in English. When such an expression occurs, the interpretation of be must be ‘become’ rather than the copula; perhaps the above expression might be used to mean ‘blushed twice’. Such an observation clearly serves to confirm the active versus stative distinction. When the adverbial cardinal is expressed by a noun, this is likely to indicate a general and repeatable action, e.g. classical Arabic marrat-an ‘turn-acc.sg (once)’ which functions as an adverbial accusative. Like cardinals, adverbials can be used for indefinite quantification, e.g. often, seldom, etc. Another method, employed perhaps only in numeral classifier languages, involves the employment of what has been called a verbal classifier (Killingley 1983: 100). An example from Mandarin is ka`n-le liaˇng-yań ‘look-completive two-eye (looked twice)’. There is a possibility here that a language might classify verbs by the nouns it uses with numerals to express the number of times an action takes place. These nouns are often just nominal forms of the verb, as if one said in English jumped two jumps. Such a possibility seems to be realized in Cantonese and other Yüe dialects (Hashimoto 1972: 25). Parallel to the relation of cardinal numerals to the category of nominal number is that of the adverbial cardinals to the category of so-called verbal plurality. Since the usual function of cardinal numerals is to express the integral number of the members of a set of objects, and, as has been shown, the adverbial cardinal, which counts the number of times an action occurs, is highly marked, one

781 thus expects that its conceptual simplification into a grammatical system in which verbs distinguish single and plural acts (with a possible third category of dual) will be correspondingly marked. The category of verbal plurality does exist in a number of the world’s languages, being particularly common in North America. Swadesh (1946: 325), in a grammatical sketch of Chitimacha, a Gulf language of Louisiana, introduces the term occurrence number. Plurality here includes temporal repetition, action by many, and action on many. In regard to these latter, an ergative pattern is common in that the plural category is employed for intransitive subjects and transitive objects but not for transitive subjects. In some languages, a category of dual actions is found (Karok). Where it occurs, suppletion of singular, dual, and plural stems is often found for a restricted set of verb stems, with the common recurrence of various forms of reduplication for dual and plural (cf. Dressler 1968; Durie 1986; Greenberg 1991). Sporadic lexical expression of verbal number often occurs within the lexicon, e.g. English hit vs. beat. With indefinite plurality, e.g. English many times, it occurs in many languages as a frequentative derivational formation. The remaining numeral series to be considered all depend in one way or another on the relativity of the concept of unit. This has already been seen in regard to the more complex numeral systems. At one point in a decimal analysis, ‘tens’ are in effect counted, so that these, rather than individual objects, are the de facto units of counting. A simple example of this is what is sometimes called the proportional numeral, as Latin simplus, duplus, or triplus (corresponding to English single, double, triple) which answers the question “how many times as great as x?” Here the conception of unit varies with the context. If the whole of something is taken as the point of empirical reference, a question arises regarding the degree of internal complexity whose common answer can be given in multiplicatives, e.g. Latin simplex, duplex ‘single’, ‘double/two-fold’, describing how many units compose a larger whole which may again vary with the context. If one thinks of the set more abstractly as any unit which has a certain number of members which are units at a lower level, one arrives at the notion of collective numerals like ‘pair’, ‘triplet’, etc. Collective numerals have a variety of uses which vary interlinguisti-

782 cally. Frequently, no collective form corresponds to ‘one’. A characteristic use of collectives is to modify pluralia tantum or nouns with different meanings in the singular and plural. For example, in Latin littera refers to a single written letter; the plural is litterae. However, the plural form litterae also means a single epistle (viewed as a collection of the letters of which it is composed). In this sense it has a singular meaning despite its plural form. The collective numeral binus is used to pluralize litterae in the sense of epistle; the resulting form, binae litterae, is unambiguous and distinct from duae litterae, meaning two written letters, such as p and r. English, of course, tolerates the ambiguity of two letters, yet utilizes collectives in disambiguating some of its own cases of pluralia tantum, such as pair of scissors vs. two pair(s) of scissors and pair of pants vs. two pair(s) of pants. Collective numerals have a variety of other uses. Besides being adjectival, as when modifying pluralia tantum, they can be substantival or adverbial. Russian dvoje ‘two’ (collective), distinct from dva ‘two’ (cardinal), is inflectionally a neuter singular which governs the following noun in the genitive plural: dva brata ‘two brothers’ versus dvo´je bra´t’jev ‘a pair of brothers’, though in practice the difference between the expressions has become increasingly negligible. Russian vdvojem, a fossilized instrumental of the collective dvoje following v ‘in’, indicates joint action like English together and German zu dritt. Historically, collectives tend to become distributives, and Brugmann (1907), in a monograph concerning IndoEuropean distributives and collectives, claims that certain proto-forms generally labelled as distributives were really interpreted as collectives. The basic notion of distributive is closely related to that of division. Consider, for example, an ordinary deck of 52 playing cards. If there are four players in a game, such as bridge, then 13 cards are dealt to each player. To say that the players receive 13 cards each is a distributive numeral expression consisting, in this case, of the cardinal accompanied by each (or apiece). The two other common methods besides adverbs like ‘each’ are reduplication of the cardinal numeral, as in Hebrew sˇ enayim sˇ enayim ‘two two’ (used Biblically to describe the animals entering the ark, Gen. 7: 9), and adposition, as in Russian po ‘according to’, which governs the cardinal number in the dative.

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Frequently, the total which is distributed is unknown or unexpressed, as in The soldiers marched in rows of five. Since each five is a kind of group, the occasional use or historical change to a collective meaning is understandable. From the foregoing exposition, it seems clear that the numeral should be viewed as a distinctive part of speech whose core consists of the cardinal series. The basic syntactic function of this set is in qualifying nouns. That non-cardinal series such as ordinals belong to other parts of speech, and that some numerals are treated inflectionally and syntactically like nouns, does not nullify the notion of the numeral as a distinct part of speech any more than the existence of participles, infinitives, and verbal nouns destroys the notion of the verb as a distinct part of speech. What is distinctive about the core numerals is that the set is inherently ordered by the notion of unique succession, and that all other numeral expressions can be defined in relation to the cardinals. As the great nineteenth century mathematician Kronecker remarked “God made the natural numbers. Everything else is man’s invention”.

9.

References

Brandt Corstius, H[ugo] (1968, ed.), Grammars for Number Names. Dordrecht: Reidel (Foundations of Language Supplementary Series 7) Brugmann, Karl (1907), Die distributiven und die kollektiven Numeralia der indogermanischen Sprachen. Leipzig: Teubner (Abhandlungen der philol.hist. Klasse der königl. sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 25.5) Corbett, Greville G. (1978), “Numerous Squishes and Squishy Numerals in Slavonic”. International Review of Slavic Linguistics 3.1⫺2, 43⫺73 Dressler, Wolfgang (1968), Studien zur verbalen Pluralität. Wien: Böhlau (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Sitzungberichte 259.1) Durie, Mark (1986), “The Grammaticization of Number as a Verbal Category”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 12, 355⫺370 Greenberg, Joseph H. (1966), Language Universals, with Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton Greenberg, Joseph H. (1978), “Generalizations about Numeral Systems”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. III: Word Structure. Stanford/CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 249⫺295

783

76. Pronoun and article Greenberg, Joseph H. (1991), “The Semitic ‘Intensive’ as Verbal Plurality”. In: Kaye, Alan S. (ed.), Semitic Studies. In Honor of Wolf Leslau, Vol. I. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 577⫺587 Gvozdanovic´, Jadranka (1992, ed.), Indo-European Numerals. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 57) Hashimoto, O. K. Y. (1972), Studies in Yüe Dialects, Vol. I: Phonology of Cantonese. London etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Hurford, James R. (1975), The Linguistic Theory of Numerals. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 16) Hurford, James R. (1987), Language and Number. Oxford, New York: Blackwell Ifrah, Georges (1985), From One to Zero: A Universal History of Numbers. English transl. by Lowell Blair. New York: Viking Penguin [orig. French 1981] Killingley, K. S.-Y. (1983), Cantonese Classifiers, Newcastle-on-Tyne: Grevatt and Grevatt Menninger, Karl (1969), Number Words and Number Symbols. English transl. by Paul Broneer. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press [orig. German 2 1958]

Muratori, Carlo (1938), Grammatica Lotuxo. Verona: Missioni Africane Peano, Giuseppe (1908), Formulario Mathematico. Torino: Bocca Robins, R[obert] H. (1958), The Yurok Language. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press (Univ. of California Publications in Linguistics 15) Salzmann, Zdenek (1950), “A Method for Analyzing Numerical Systems”. Word 6, 78⫺83 Swadesh, Morris (1946), “Chitimacha”. In: Linguistic Structures of Native America. New York: Viking Fund (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 6), 312⫺336 Stampe, David (1976), “Cardinal Number Systems”. Papers from the Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 12.1, 594⫺609 Szemereńyi, Oswald (1960), Studies in the IndoEuropean System of Numerals. Heidelberg: Winter Trubetzkoy, N[ikolai] S. (1939), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Prague (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 7) [⫽21958 Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht]

Joseph H. Greenberg, Stanford (U.S.A.)

76. Pronoun and article 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Pronouns and articles as morphological word classes Pronouns Articles Parallels and correlations References

viewed as parallel systems in terms of the kind of morphological and syntactic information which they encode, and in terms of their function to situate a given participant within discourse.

2. 1.

Introduction

Pronouns are a class of words which include pro-forms, closed class forms with minimal content which substitute for previously mentioned words or constituents, used in anaphora, questions, relative clauses, etc. They substitute for noun phrases syntactically and function to inform the addressee that an individual or group mentioned or known in discourse is a participant in the event or state encoded in the utterance, or to question the identity of such a participant. Articles are a class of words which appear with nouns and function to identify or question the relative discourse or spatial status of the noun. Pronouns and articles can be

Pronouns and articles as morphological word classes

Traditional accounts of pronouns often distinguish “free” and “bound” pronouns. Free or “independent” pronouns are defined by their ability to occupy syntactic positions typically held by noun phrases. Bound pronouns, also called “referential affixes”, are defined by their lack of the ability to do so. Bound pronouns which are arguments of the verb are often attached to the verb, or to independent tense/aspect auxiliaries; a common and relatively uncontroversial example are the Romance object clitics, illustrated here by Span. co´mpramelo ‘buy(imp):obj.1.sg:obj. 3.sg.m (buy it for me)’. It is widely thought that free pronouns, over time, may gradually lose their indepen-

784 dent status, becoming unstressed pronominal clitics (cf. Art. 41), and ultimately lose their pronominal status as well, becoming agreement affixes (cf. Givoń 1976). Since agreement affixes share inherent category distinctions with pronouns, it is often difficult to determine the precise analysis of a morpheme with typical pronominal category information such as person and number. However, accompanying the change in morphological independence are phonological and functional changes. Phonological changes include loss of ability to carry stress and ultimately fusion with other bound morphemes to create portmanteau inflections. Changes in the communicative function of the morphemes occur as well, with free pronouns having an emphatic, contrastive or discoursediscontinuative function, while the less independent bound pronouns and agreement inflections have a discourse-continuative function (Givoń 1984: 354). A useful functional distinction is whether the marker is affected by first mention in discourse: if it is, then it functions pronominally, and if not, it functions as an agreement marker (Ingram 1978: 232). In-depth syntactic analysis is likely to be necessary to make the distinction between bound pronoun and agreement inflection. The primary syntactic diagnostic is the presence or absence of a coreferential free pronoun or noun phrase in the same simple clause as the morpheme in question: if a free pronoun or noun phrase may not occur in the same clause, then the morpheme in question functions pronominally, while if it may occur, the morpheme functions as an agreement inflection (cf. Bresnan & Mchombo 1987). However, syntactic accounts which assume the presence of null pronouns may analyze this configuration differently (cf. Stump 1984; Hendrick 1988). It may not always be the case that a clear distinction can be made for all bound morphemes one way or the other. For example, subject markers in Chicheˆwa may function either as bound pronouns or as agreement affixes (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987). This is not surprising, given the gradual continuum of development from free pronoun to bound pronoun to agreement affix. The widespread occurrence of bound morphs with pronominal category information and multiple functions indicates a complex relationship between independent pronouns and the dependent forms at a particular stage of development.

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Articles, likewise, may be free or bound; when bound, as with bound pronouns, it may be difficult to determine when they are best analyzed as bound articles and when they are best analyzed as definite nominal affixes. For example, in Danish, the definite morpheme appears bound to an unmodified noun but free with a modified noun: hus ‘house’, huset ‘house:def (the house)’, det lille hus ‘def little house (the little house)’ (Anderson 1985: 178). In Norwegian, the bound definite morpheme remains attached to the noun in modified forms in which a free definite article also appears: det store huset ‘def big house:def (the big house)’. Using the same criterion that is used to distinguish bound pronouns from inflectional affixes, the Danish bound form may be considered an article on the basis of its complementary distribution with the free article, but the Norwegian bound form may be considered a nominal affix on the basis of its cooccurrence with the free definite article.

3.

Pronouns

3.1. Personal pronouns Arguably, the most central members of the category pronoun are the personal pronouns, which are a near-universal grammatical category, although some languages, such as Malay, are reported to prefer self-deprecating or honorific nouns over pronouns in polite conversation (Schachter 1985: 27). Typologically, the personal pronouns typically exhibit more pronominal feature distinctions than other pronominal systems. The examination of personal pronouns will be relatively more detailed than the discussion of other pronoun systems. This is justified by the relative centrality of this category, by the relatively more attention and descriptive detail it receives in individual language studies, and the relative attention it has received from linguists in typological studies. Person and number are taken to be the essential categorial distinctions that are found in all systems of personal pronouns (Greenberg 1963: 96; Ingram 1978: 327), though they are not necessarily contrastive in all subsystems of a pronominal system. Other distinctions commonly shown in pronominal morphology are animacy, gender and case. Animacy and gender are considered to be inherently nominal, since they are typically determined by the lex-

76. Pronoun and article

ical and semantic properties of the nominal antecedent, and case is considered to be a relational property of nouns. 3.1.1. Person Person (see Art. 96) refers to distinctions among the narrative participant-referents of the pronouns. Three persons are traditionally distinguished: first person, defined by its function of referring to the speaker; second person, defined by its function of referring to the addressee; and third person, defined by its function of referring to a participant in the events or states denoted in the discourse who is not a speech act participant. The numerals 1, 2, and 3 will be used to abbreviate first, second and third person, respectively. The personal pronouns are divided into speech act participants (1 and 2) and non-speech act participants (3). Third person referents will be called “narrative participants” here, to indicate their origin as arguments in the events and states denoted in utterances of the first person. This functional distinction between speech act and narrative participants, the absence of third person forms in the personal pronoun system of some languages, and the use of a single morphological form for both personal pronoun and deictic pronoun in others, leads some linguists to conclude that third person is a “non-person” (Benveniste 1956: 347). There are also formal distinctions which can be noted between 1 and 2 vs. 3. Cross-linguistically, for example, 1 and 2 are more likely to carry overt number marking, while 3 is more likely to carry overt grammatical gender marking. Either 1 or 2 may take precedence in determining the morphological form of plural pronominal forms (Croft 1990: 136f.). For example, 1 takes precedence in the well-known Indo-European systems ⫺ e.g., in Eng. she and I (3 & 1) or you and I (2 & 1) both correspond to the plural form we (1 ⫹ X), while you and she (2 & 3) corresponds to you (pl.) (2 ⫹ X). On the other hand, in Southwestern Ojibwe (Schwartz & Dunnigan 1986) and other Algonquian languages, you and I and you and he/she correspond to the plural forms kiinawint (2 ⫹ 1) and kiinawaa (2 ⫹ non-1), while she/he and I corresponds to the plural form niinawint (1 ⫹ non-2). Apparently, in no system does 3 take precedence over 1 or 2 to determine the selection of morphemes or the form of plural morphemes in a similar manner.

785 However, there is also ample evidence in some systems to indicate that the language treats 3 forms as part of the personal paradigm. In Balante there is a two-way person distinction of 1 vs. 2/3 which groups forms with narrative reference (3) and forms with speech act reference (2) in contrast to a form with exclusively speech act reference (1) (Wiesemann 1986: viii). Furthermore, verbal person inflections often contain an overt threeway contrast that places 3 forms on a par with 1 and 2 forms (Greenberg 1986: xixf). It is somewhat common for languages to not have independent morphemes for third person. In this case, the gap in the paradigm may be filled by borrowing from the corresponding demonstrative paradigm, or it may not be filled, resulting in a clause with no overt pronoun. For languages of this type, it may be best to analyze the paradigm as incomplete rather than to consider a phonologically null morpheme as a member of the morphological paradigm (Mithun 1986). 2 is intermediate between 1 and 3 (Greenberg 1986: xx). The two-way person contrast in Balante which distinguishes 1 from 2/3 would seem to support this claim. Other similar evidence is the neutralization of the distinction between 2 and 3 in Chitimacha verb inflections for subject and the common 1 vs. non-1 opposition which is the basis of two-term deictic systems (Greenberg 1986: xx). Thus, the three-way person opposition in personal pronouns and related verbal inflections is apparently structured rather than simple, with formal distinctions opposing 1 vs. 2/3 as well as 1/2 vs. 3. Functionally, pronominal categories should serve to allow the addressee to identify more easily the narrative or speech act participant(s) referred to. Thus, it is often claimed that (personal) pronouns agree in number and gender/class with their antecedents or with their referents. While this is generally true, a more precise account of the matching in categorial information between a pronoun and its antecedent or referent must take account of the fact that both overt and covert grammatical features of the antecedent and also semantic features of the referent may play a role in determining the appropriateness of the form of the pronoun. 3.1.2. Number Number (see also Art. 100), like person, is assumed to be present in virtually all systems of personal pronouns. In the encoding of

786 number in pronominal systems, a primary distinction is made between languages distinguishing number lexically and those distinguishing it morphologically (Forchheimer 1953). Some examples of systems in which number is encoded lexically are Eng. I vs. we, or Swahili wewe ‘2.sg’ vs. ninyi ‘2.pl’. In forms where number is marked morphologically, there may be an inflection for plural only, as in Kottish ai ‘1 (I)’ vs. aj-on ‘1-pl (we)’ (Forchheimer 1953: 48), or both singular and plural may be marked morphologically, as in Lappish m-un ‘1-sg (I)’ vs. m-in ‘1-pl (we)’ (Forchheimer 1953: 53). Lexical encoding of plurals seems to correlate with first person, while morphological encoding seems to correlate with third person when a system has both types of plural formation. An example of this is Osmali Turkish, in which first and second person form plurals with the suffix -iz, while third person shares the number suffix -lar with nouns (Forchheimer 1953: 54). This is consistent with the shared function of third person personal pronouns and nouns as denoting discourse participants. Within a system of reference tracking, the potential for encoding person and number distinctions in a single pronominal form leads to a set of formal oppositions in some languages which distinguish between reference sets which include the speaker and addressee, called ‘inclusive’, and sets which include the speaker and exclude the addressee, called ‘exclusive’. For example, in Samoan otsaa-’ua (1 ⫹ 2) contrasts with o-maa-’ua (1 ⫹ 3), and ko-tsaa-suo (1 ⫹ 2 ⫹ X) contrasts with o-maa-tsou (1 ⫹ 3 ⫹ 3 ⫹ …) (Givoń 1984: 358). 3.1.3. Gender Given the referential function of pronouns and given the potential for reference to any of a set of narrative participants, forms which limit the choice of referent have a distinct communicative function. Thus, it is common but not universal that pronominal forms will show gender distinctions (see Art. 98), usually based on a combination of semantic or grammatical categories. In some languages, a simple animate-inanimate distinction is made in third person by the contrast between an overt morpheme and π. In Tagalog, for example, third person pronouns are used for human and pet animal referents, while referents to non-pet animals

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and all inanimates have no overt form (Schachter & Otanes 1972). In still other languages, the gender distinction is more extensive and includes at least some forms in the speech act participant set. In Spanish, for example, first and second person plural familiar (in dialects where these forms are used) distinguish two genders: exclusively feminine and other (traditionally called ‘masculine plural’ but used from any set which is not exclusively feminine; cf. Art. 25), as shown in (1) to (3), using first person for illustration. (1) Yo, Rau´l / yo, Juanita 1.sg Rau´l / 1.sg Juanita ‘I, Rau´l / I, Juanita’ (2) Nosotros, los obreros / nosotros, Rau´l y Juanita / *nosotros, las profesoras 1.m:pl def.m:pl worker:m:pl / 1.m:pl Rau´l and Juanita / 1.m:pl def.f:pl professor:f:pl ‘We, the workers / we, Rau´l and Juanita / *we, the (female) professors’ (3) Nosotras, las profesoras / *nosotras, los obreros / *nosotras, Rau´l y Juanita 1.f:pl def.f.pl Professor:f:pl / 1.f:pl def.m:pl worker.m.pl / 1.f.pl Rau´l and Juanita ‘We, the (female) professors / *we, the workers / *we, Rau´l and Juanita’ Other languages extend gender distinctions into the speech act participants in the singular. In Hausa, for example, all paradigms of personal pronouns distinguish gender in second and third person singular, but gender is not distinguished in the plural. An example of this is the Hausa independent pronoun paradigm shown in Tab. 76.1 (Newman 1987: 714): sg.

pl.

1st 2nd

nıí kaí

muú

2ndf. 3rd m.

keé shıí

3rdf.

´ıta´

kuú suú Tab. 76.1: Hausa independent pronouns

The Spanish and Hausa paradigms show that gender contrasts may occur in the singular but not the plural or vice versa for speech

787


act participants. (In Spanish, the extension of the masculine/feminine gender contrast into the plural forms is quite obviously a function of the transparent morphology of these forms, which are analyzable into first and second person familiar bound object pronouns, nos ‘us’ and vos ‘you’ (pl.) combined with the noun stem otro ‘other’ which shows morphological variation for gender in its nominal form (otro m. sg., otros m. pl., otra f. pl., otras f. pl.). The use in Spanish of the same form for sets whose members are all grammatically masculine and for sets whose members are mixed (both masculine and feminine included in the set) is a common pattern, and represents a common strategy for resolving the problem of how to encode mixed sets, a “resolution rule” (cf. Corbett 1983; 1991). The lack of a morphological gender contrast in the Hausa plural pronouns can also be viewed as a strategy for resolving the gender conflict when referring to mixed sets, in the sense that this system simply encodes all sets with more than one member in the same way, irrespective of the gender of the members. Third person can be considered the locus of morphological gender in personal pronouns, since some languages have gender contrasts only in third person, and it is rarely if ever the case that a language will have gender distinctions in the first and second person but not in the third person. There is another sense in which the third person is the source of gender in the personal pronouns, and that is that the gender of the personal pronoun is based on the grammatical or semantic categorization of its referent ⫺ that is the essential distinctions of the pronouns into speaker, addressee and other imposes only the pragmatic condition that the speech act participants denote human beings (or, by extension, other entities to which human language use is attributed). All other distinctions, then, come from the way in which the nominal system of the language categorizes lexical items, or the biological gender or animacy of the referent of the pronoun. For example, Spanish nominals distinguish two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, as mentioned above. The pronoun system likewise distinguishes two genders depending on the grammatical gender of the lexical antecedent or the biological gender of the referent. (Third person singular nominative pronouns have a third form ello traditionally called ‘neuter’, which is used for abstract concepts.) Hausa also has a

masculine/feminine grammatical gender distinction in nominals. A good example of the elaboration of such a system is the correlation between pronominal and nominal gender found in the Bantu languages. In these languages, the nouns are divided into a large number of classes which distinguish roughly human vs. non-human. For each human class, there is a corresponding 3 personal pronoun; for each non-human class, there is a corresponding demonstrative pronoun which may substitute where a personal pronoun would appear (see the discussion and examples in 3.3). It is sometimes the case that pronouns continue to maintain gender contrasts which are not found in the nominal system. In Modern English, for example, the three-way distinction of the third person singular personal pronouns is not based on a grammatical categorization of nouns in English; rather, the current pronominal distinction is primarily notional: male referents high in animacy are referred to using he, female referents high in animacy are referred to using she and all others are referred to using it, with a few conventional exceptions such as reference to ships using she. It seems that there is a good general correlation between nominal gender and pronominal gender, in that languages with morphologically marked nominal gender strongly tend to have pronominal systems in which similar distinctions are found. 3.1.4. Case Case (see Art. 102) in pronouns, like case in nouns, is not inherent, but rather is derived from the grammatical relations and semantic roles the participant denoted by the pronoun carries in the state or event of its clause. In pronouns, an example of this is the German partial paradigm given in Tab. 76.2.

1st 2nd 3rd m. 3rdf. 3rd n. 1st pl. 2nd pl. 3rd pl.

nom.

gen.

acc.

dat.

ich du er sie es wir ihr sie

meiner deiner seiner ihrer seiner unser euer ihrer

mich dich ihn sie es uns euch sie

mir dir ihm ihr ihm uns euch ihnen

Tab. 76.2: German personal pronouns

788 As with gender distinctions in pronouns, case distinctions are primarily derivative, in that they correlate closely with case distinctions in the nominal morphology. In German, for example, both nominal and pronominal paradigms distinguish four cases, and both have more distinctions in the singular than the plural, although the paradigms differ in which distinctions of the singular are neutralized in the plural. One general area where a discorrelation between nominal and pronominal case occurs systematically is when a language has a splitcase system that is based on the Animacy Hierarchy. This happens in a language where the nominal system shows an ergative-absolutive case-marking pattern but where part or all of the pronominal system shows a nominative-accusative pattern. The favoring of a nominative-accusative pattern for pronouns even when nouns show an ergative-absolutive pattern is claimed to be a consequence of the relatively higher position of personal pronouns in the Animacy Hierarchy (cf. Silverstein 1976; Croft 1990: 111⫺117). 3.1.5. Definiteness In a speech act, the referents of first and second person pronouns are uniquely identifiable and thus inherently definite. This is not so for third person pronouns, where the personal pronouns contrast with indefinite forms. The third person personal pronouns are used when the speaker expects their referents to be uniquely identifiable to the addressee. Thus, in addition to the features of person and number, all personal pronouns are definite. 3.1.6. Social distinctions encoded in pronominal morphology A common distinction found in many pronominal systems is the distinction between familiar and respectful forms, where the selection of a form of address is determined by the social status or relationship of the speech act participants, with the exact circumstances of usage assumed to be culturally determined. This distinction may be made lexically, but it is commonly derivative on the category information already encoded in person and number, as in the tu/usted contrast in Spanish or the du/Sie contrast in German, where Span. usted is grammatically third person singular and Germ. Sie is grammatically third person plural. These examples illustrate

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a general iconic strategy for exploiting the morphological features of the personal pronoun system by using features typically associated with referents removed from the canonical second person singular addressee, either third person, a non-speech act participant, or plural, thus distancing the linguistic form from association with the one-on-one nature of the interaction between speaker and addressee (Head 1978; Green 1987: 253). The next three sections deal with other categories of pronouns which are closely related to the personal pronouns: possessive pronouns (3.2), demonstrative pronouns (3.3) and reflexive/reciprocal pronouns (3.4). 3.2. Possessive pronouns Possessive pronouns carry person and number and are thus closely related to the personal pronouns; they may also show morphological case, when they are free pronouns. In addition to person and number of the possessor, they may also mark categories of the understood possessed, as in Span. el mı´-o ‘def.m.sg poss.1.sg-m.sg’, las suy-a-s ‘def poss.3-f-pl’ Thus, el mıó is interpreted as ‘that thing of mine which is masculine singular’, while las suyas is interpreted as ‘that thing of his/hers/theirs which is feminine plural’. Likewise, in Southwestern Ojibwe, the possessive pronouns are inflected for person and number of the possessor and animacy of the possessed, as shown in intayi’iim ‘1.poss: 3.inan.sg (my inanimate object)’, kitaya’aamak ‘2.poss:3.anim.pl (your (sg.) animate objects)’ (Schwartz & Dunnigan 1986: 300). Possessive pronouns may be bound to the possessed nouns, as in Hausa lı´ttaáfı`-n-ka` ‘book.m-linker.m-2.sg (your book)’ (Newman 1987: 714). 3.3. Demonstrative pronouns Just as the personal pronouns encode primarily the speech act and discourse status of entities, the demonstrative pronouns encode primarily the spatial relations among entities, and, derivatively, the psychological proximity of entities in discourse. The common basis for all such systems is spatial proximity to speaker, illustrated in a very simple two-term system like English in the contrast between pronominal this and pronominal that, where this refers to an object near the speaker, or in discourse, to an object near to the speaker’s attention, and that refers to an object not spatially or attentionally near the speaker. A

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simple three-way system which is based on distance from speaker is Span. e´ste/e´se/aque´l, with e´ste being the nearest member of the contrast, and aque´l used only in contrast to e´se, with aque´l denoting the farthest entity in the contrast (cf. Art. 95). In addition to the inherent deictic features of person and space, demonstrative pronouns may encode morphologically other features such as number (Eng. this sg., these pl. / that sg., those pl.), gender (Span. e´ste m., e´sta f., esto n.), and syntactic categories such as case. All three of these variables are illustrated in the German paradigm in Tab. 76.3.

nom. gen. dat. acc.

m.

f.

n.

pl.

dieser dieses diesem diesen

diese dieser dieser diese

dieses dieses diesem dieses

diese dieser diesen diese

Tab. 76.3: German demonstrative paradigm of dieser ‘this’

In the German paradigm, the demonstrative pronouns show the same morphological category distinctions as the personal pronouns and nouns, but this is not always so. For instance, in Spanish, personal pronouns show morphological case variation but demonstrative pronouns do not, while in English, third singular pronouns show formal variations corresponding to notional gender while demonstrative pronouns do not. In these instances, demonstrative pronouns show less variation than the personal pronouns. This may be related to the typical use of demonstrative pronouns (in contrast to personal pronouns), which is to refer to entities on the low end of the animacy scale ⫺ typically inanimates. These elements are less likely to fill the same range of grammatical roles that higher animates do, and as a result, less likely to be in focus, be continuing discourse topics, etc. Therefore, they may be less likely to carry the morphological marks of number and case which are typically correlated with the marking of higher animacy categories. Languages in which nominal morphology distinguishes gender for inanimates also are likely to have a robust gender morphology in the demonstrative system, where the demonstrative pronouns may function in place of third person pronouns for the inanimate classes. This is a typical pattern in the Bantu

languages, illustrated for Swahili for Class 7/ 8, where the noun class affix is suffixed to the proximal demonstrative base hi-, as in hi-ki ‘this-cl7 (this thing)’, hi-vi ‘this-cl8 (these things)’. 3.4. Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns Reflexive pronouns are defined as members of a special pronominal paradigm whose antecedent must appear in the most restricted syntactic domain, the simplest and most universal case being a special direct object pronoun which is coreferential to the subject of its clause, as in He cut himself. There has been much syntactic research on the definition and universality of this restricted domain (Reinehart & Reuland 1991); there is some evidence that the domain may be correlated or tends to be correlated with the morphological form of the pronouns (Progovac 1993). Reflexive pronouns must be distinguished from other forms which occur in a reflexive syntactic context (the limited domain mentioned above) and which produce a coreferential interpretation. Examples of such forms are Russ. sebja, or Jap. zibun, which show no morphological variation and can cooccur with all variants of person and number of its formal antecedent, or Span. se, which occurs only with a third person antecedent. These forms are thus most appropriately classified morphologically as reflexive particles rather than reflexive pronouns (however, a consideration of reflexive pronouns and reflexive particles together produces some typologically and functionally significant results (Franks & Schwartz 1994). An example of a reflexive pronominal paradigm is that of English, given in Tab. 76.4.

1st 2nd 3rd m. 3rd f. 3rd n.

sg.

pl.

myself yourself himself herself itself

ourselves yourselves themselves

Tab. 76.4: English reflexive pronouns

In English, each member of the reflexive paradigm consists of a person and numberinflected possessive determiner form (my, our, your) for speech act participants or pronominal form (him, her, it, them) for narrative participants, with the addition of gender in-

790 flection in third person singular forms. These combine with a number-inflected morpheme -self, the plural of which is the same as that of the nominal paradigm. It is a common morphological pattern to form reflexive pronouns from personal pronouns or possessives plus a nominal stem like head or body; some languages which form reflexives this way include Fula and Akan (Schachter 1985: 28f.). Reciprocal pronouns also occur in a limited syntactic domain. They require a notionally plural subject and are interpreted as reciprocal actions or events, as in we helped each other. In some languages, like English, reflexive and reciprocal forms are distinct and unrelated. In other languages, reciprocal relations are expressed using the same morphological means which the language uses to express reflexive relations, so that, for example, in Spanish, se ayudaron ‘refl help:perf.3.pl’ may mean either ‘they helped themselves’ or ‘they helped each other’. Reciprocal forms may also be derivationally related to reflexive forms but distinct from them, as in Akan, where the reciprocal is formed by doubling of the reflexive (Schachter 1985: 29). 3.5. Indefinite pronouns All of the pronouns discussed thus far have, in their pronominal use (i.e., excluding deictic uses where the referent is determined from the external context of the speech event), a unique antecedent in the speech act participants or in the participants previously introduced into the discourse context. Another category, the indefinite pronoun, is used to refer to non-uniquely identified members of a set. Since the referents can only be narrative participants, one can conceive of the third person pronouns as divided into definite (the personal pronouns) and indefinite. These can be further divided into “universal” and “partitive” (Quirk & Greenbaum 1973: 108f.). The universal pronouns refer, collectively or individually, to all members of the set, and the partitives refer to individual members of the set. Another useful distinction, more comprehensive than the universal/partitive, is the “ignorative” (cf. Art. 72). The category of quantifiers plays a large and relatively transparent role in the formation and semantics of these pronouns. In English, the quantifiers each, some and all can function pronominally, and in addition, there are compound forms where the singulars consist of a universal (every), partitive

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(some, any), or negative (no) quantifier and a base of -body or -one for higher animates and -thing for lower animates and inanimates. For non-counts and plurals, the quantifier alone fulfills the pronominal function, except for the negative partitive none. We see, then, that animacy and number are morphological distinctions of the indefinite pronouns in English. In German, animacy is distinguished (jemand ‘anybody, somebody’ vs. etwas ‘something’ and niemand ‘nobody’ vs. nichts ‘nothing’) but number is not. We have seen in other German pronominal paradigms that case inflection is very robust; however, this is not so in the indefinite pronouns. Rather, jedermann ‘everybody’ has a genitive form jedermanns but no other case inflection, and jemand and niemand inflect for genitive and only optionally for dative and accusative. None show noun class variation. In Spanish, on the other hand, the universal pronoun todo ‘all’ shows number and gender distinctions, while the partitive pronoun alguien ‘somebody’ shows number but not gender, and algo ‘something’ shows neither. In the negative partitives, nadie ‘nobody’ and nada ‘nothing’ show neither. The contrasts of alguien vs. algo and nadie vs. nada show an animacy contrast. Thus, in Spanish, gender, number and animacy are morphological categories of the indefinite pronouns, with plural correlating with animacy in one part of the system but not another. 3.6. Interrogative pronouns Interrogative pronouns are defined as pronominal forms used in questions in which the speaker requests that the addressee identify the referent. It is claimed that all languages have interrogative pronouns (Ultan 1978: 228). Their function as focus of the clause influences their morphological form, in that they are almost always free rather than bound. Their discourse function also tends to limit their morphological distinctions to syntactic categories, because it is less likely that the speaker can anticipate the nominal features of the referent. Animacy is a systematic exception to this claim. An animacy distinction is almost always present in the interrogative pronouns of a language (Ultan 1978: 229). For example, in German, the three grammatical genders are not distinguished in the interrogative pronouns, but animacy is: wer? ‘who?’ vs. was? ‘what?’. Since case is a semantico-syntactic feature, we would expect that interrogative pronouns will show case mor-

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phology if other nominal forms in a language do. This is true in German, for example, where both wer? and was? show full case distinctions. Another nominal feature which sometimes appears in interrogative pronouns is number. In Spanish, of the three interrogative pronouns ¿quień?/¿quieńes? ‘who?’ (sg./pl.), ¿cua´l?/ ¿cua´les? ‘which?’ (sg./pl.) and ¿que´? ‘what?’, the first two distinguish singular and plural, but the last does not. There is again a rough animacy correlation here, as ¿quień? is used only for the higher animates and ¿cua´l? is used for either animates or inanimates, while ¿que´? is generally confined to use for inanimates or abstracts. 3.7. Relative pronouns Relative pronouns are a special paradigm of pronouns whose antecedent is head of a relative clause. Not all languages have a special

pronominal paradigm of relative pronouns, using instead resumptive personal pronouns or some non-pronominal device in their relative clause formation. Person is not generally distinguished in relative pronouns, but gender is. For example, in English, who is used if the speaker regards the antecedent as being relative high on the Animacy Hierarchy and which is used if the speaker regards the antecedent as being relatively low on the hierarchy. In a language with a more elaborate gender system, we might then expect that the relative pronoun system would likewise be more elaborate, and this expectation is borne out in a language like Swahili, where each noun class has a corresponding bound relative pronoun form that has a unique slot in the Swahili verbal complex. This pronoun occurs in addition to a resumptive pronoun, which occurs in its usual position, as illustrated in (4) and (5) (Hinnebusch 1979: 248).

(4) wa-nawake a-na-o-wa-ona cl2-woman 3.sg.cl1-pres-rel.cl2-cl2-see ‘the women whom he sees’ (5) vi-tabu a-na-vyo-vi-ona cl8-book 3.sg.cl1-pres-rel.cl8-cl8-see ‘the books which he sees’ Note that in Swahili, the relative pronoun varies for noun class and number but not for case; case is manifested on the resumptive personal pronoun (either morphologically or positionally). Since Bantu noun classes are traditionally organized into singular and plural classes, the noun class morphology also encodes number. Number need not be encoded, as in English relative pronouns (the boy who … / the boys who …). Relative pronouns may show case morphology. In German the relative pronouns der and welcher agree in grammatical gender and number with their antecedents and are inflected for case, showing all four case distinctions, as do the personal pronouns. Thus, although we find that in some instances, relative pronouns show the full range of morphological variation in nominal features such as number, gender and case as the nouns or personal pronouns do, there is no necessary correlation in this. There is a tendency that the more robust the nominal inflection is, the more likely that the nominal features will be manifested in the morphology of the relative pronouns.

4.

Articles

Articles are defined as morphemes which appear with nouns and function to identify their relative discourse or spatial status. Demonstratives which accompany a noun are a subcategory of article because demonstratives, like articles, are reference indicators, and they often belong with articles in a single distributional class (Schachter 1985: 40). Likewise, interrogative and possessive morphemes which accompany a noun will be considered to be articles in this discussion. The types and functions of articles, as well as the categorial information which they encode, are strikingly parallel to the personal pronouns. 4.1. Definite and indefinite articles Definite articles are those which mark a noun phrase as having a “uniquely identifiable” referent, meaning that the addressee can identify the speaker’s intended referent from the nominal alone (Gundel & Hedberg & Zacharski 1993: 277). Definite articles, like personal pronouns, are often derived from demonstratives (Greenberg 1985). Not all languages have definite articles, and in lan-

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guages which do not, it is common for the demonstrative articles to function as overt markers of definiteness in contexts where this is important, just as the demonstrative articles are sometimes used in the absence of third person personal pronouns (other nonmorphological means such as word order also compensate to indicate definiteness in a language without definite articles). Indefinite articles function to mark noun phrases which are ‘type identifiable’ in that the addressee must mentally access a representation of the type of object described by the expression (Gundel & Hedberg & Zacharski 1993: 276). They are thus similar to indefinite pronouns in that they are used to identify type rather than individual. Not all languages which have definite articles also have indefinite articles; rather, in some, the contrast is between a definite article and an unaccompanied noun; this is the case, for example, in Welsh dyn ‘man/a man’, y dyn ‘the man’ (King 1996: 15). Another variation on this is found in a language like German, where the indefinite article ein has a full case paradigm in the singular but lacks a plural. For much of the discussion below, it is convenient to combine definite and indefinite articles in examining their morphology. Articles need not show morphological variation: in English, the definite article the and the indefinite article a/an show no variation for either features of the head noun they are in construction with or for the grammatical relation of the nominal construction. Spanish articles are inflected for the gender and number of their head nouns, as shown in Tab. 76.5.

def.m. def.f. def.m. indef.f.

sg.

pl.

el la un una

los las unos unas

Languages also vary as to whether they have articles as a category; if no such category occurs, the discourse function of the definite article may be taken over by a demonstrative article. When this happens, it is ordinarily a distal demonstrative, with variation on which distal demonstrative is favored when a language has more than one (cf. Greenberg 1986: 282). This is the case in German, where there is no difference between the demonstrative determiners and the definite articles. 4.2. Possessive articles Possessive articles are closely related to the personal pronouns and the possessive pronouns. Like personal pronouns and possessive pronouns, they have person and number morphology, and like possessive pronouns, they may be inflected for categories of the possessed noun, leading to the term ‘possessive adjective’, which is sometimes used for them. In Spanish, for example, the possessive articles are inflected for the number of the possessed noun: mi libro ‘poss.1(sg) book(sg) (my book)’, mi-s libro-s ‘poss.1-pl book-pl (my books)’. 4.3. Demonstrative articles Demonstrative articles are articles which necessarily encode features of spatial reference. There is a very high form correlation crosslinguistically between demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative articles, as well as a close historical relationship. The spatial system of demonstrative articles is essentially the same as that for pronouns: relation to speaker is a property of all systems, with the possibility of relation to addressee being encoded as well. Likewise, the inflectional categories associated with demonstrative articles correspond very closely to those found in the parallel demonstrative pronouns. Demonstrative articles may show distinctions in number and class, as illustrated in the Spanish paradigm in Tab. 76.6:

Tab. 76.5: Spanish definite and indefinite articles

German articles are inflected for number, gender and case. Sometimes, the inflection on the article is the only overt morphological manifestation of case found within the noun phrase, as in der Tag ‘def.nom day’ vs. den Tag ‘def.acc day’. Although gender is marked in the singular, it is not distinguished in the plural.

‘this’ ‘that’ ‘that’

sg.

pl.

m. f. m. f. m. f.

este esta ese esa aquel aquella

estos estas esos esas aquellos aquellas

Tab. 76.6: Spanish demonstrative articles

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One might expect that a language with a more elaborate gender system may likewise have this reflected in its demonstrative articles. Thus, in Swahili, the demonstrative article is formed from the near demonstrative hplus the noun class marker or noun class marker plus the distal -le, as in ki-su hi-ki ‘cl7-knife hi-cl7 (this knife)’, ki-su ki-le ‘cl7-knife cl7-le (that knife)’, etc. Likewise, a language with a robust morphological case system likely has demonstrative articles which show case morphology, as in German, illustrated in Tab. 76.3; this example also illustrates the very close morphological parallel between demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative articles. 4.4. Interrogative articles Interrogative articles function to ask for further identification of the referent of the head noun, as which boy? what books? whose gloves? Like interrogative pronouns, it is typical for interrogative articles to formally distinguish animate from inanimate, as in the English example given previously. In Spanish, interrogative determiners may show number variation corresponding to the number of the head noun, but this isn’t uniform: ¿qua´l? ‘which?’ shows number variation only: ¿cua´l libro? ‘which(sg) book:m.sg’ vs. ¿cua´les libros? ‘which:pl book:m:pl (which books?)’, while ¿que´ ‘what?’ shows no variation: ¿que´ libro? ‘what book?’, ¿que´ libros? ‘what books?’ There is no interrogative determiner corresponding to Eng. whose in Spanish; here, possessors are questioned using the nominal pattern ¿de quień? ‘of whom?’ rather than the pattern of the Spanish possessive determiners. In Hausa, gender variation is found in the singular but not the plural: wa`ne` which.m, wa`ce` which.f, wa` Ha`nne` which.pl, corresponding to the general pattern found throughout the nominal and pronominal system. As expected, languages with strong case morphology, like German, the interrogative determiners likewise show case morphology.

5.

Parallels and correlations

Pronouns and articles differ in their distributions, but share a common basic function of relating a noun phrase to participants in discourse. Definite pronouns such as the personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and relative pronouns require a discourse-re-

coverable antecedent, while indefinite pronouns including interrogative pronouns, indefinite pronouns and negative pronouns substitute for unknown or nonexistent participants. Definite articles, deictic articles and possessive articles likewise require a discourse-recoverable antecedent for their noun phrase, while non-definite articles including interrogative, indefinite and negative articles, like the corresponding pronouns identify the noun phrase as unknown to the speaker or nonexistent. There is a significant form correlation between pronouns and articles: the same or similar morphemes are often used in the demonstrative, interrogative, and negative systems of both, representing both historical development and cognitive association. The categorial information encoded in the morphology of pronouns and articles is almost identical. Since both categories relate participants in discourse to participants in the utterance in which they are used, person is found in the personal pronouns and the possessive articles. Both pronouns and articles are nominally-oriented, either substituting for noun phrases or occurring in noun phrases; they may encode the nominal categories of number and gender/class, as well as the relational categories of case and deixis which are associated with noun phrases.

6.

References

Anderson, Stephen (1985), “Inflectional Morphology”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 150⫺201 Benveniste, Emile (1956), “Le nature des pronoms”. In: Halle, Morris (ed.), For Roman Jacobson. The Hague: Mouton, 340⫺347 Bresnan, Joan & Mchombo, Sam (1987), “Topic, Pronoun and Agreement in Chicheˆwa”. Language 63.4, 741⫺782 Comrie, Bernard (1987, ed.), The World’s Major Languages. New York: Oxford University Press Corbett, Greville (1983), “Resolution Rules: Agreement in Person, Number and Gender”. In: Gazdar, Gerald & Ewan Klein & Pullum, Geoffrey (eds.), Order, Concord and Constituency. Dordrecht: Foris, 175⫺206 Corbett, Greville (1991), Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Croft, William (1990), Typology and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Forchheimer, Paul (1953), The Category of Person in Language. Berlin: de Gruyter

794 Franks, Steven & Schwartz, Linda (1994), “Binding and Non-distinctness: A Reply to Burzio”. Journal of Linguistics 30, 227⫺243 Givoń, Talmy (1976), “Topic, Pronoun and Grammatical Agreement”. In: Li, Charles (ed.), Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press, 149⫺188 Givoń, Talmy (1984), Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction, Vol. I. Amsterdam: Benjamins Green, John (1987), “Spanish”. In: Comrie (ed.), 236⫺259 Greenberg, Joseph (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, Joseph (ed.), Universals of Language. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 73⫺113 Greenberg, Joseph (1978, ed.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. III: Word Structure. Stanford: Stanford University Press Greenberg, Joseph (1985), “Some Iconic Relationships among Place, Time, and Discourse Deixis”. In: Haiman, John (ed.), Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 271⫺287 Greenberg, Joseph (1986), “Some Reflections on Pronominal Systems”. In: Weisemann (ed.), xviixxi Gundel, Jeanette & Hedberg, Nancy & Zacharski, Ron (1993), “Cognitive Status and the Form of Referring Expressions in Discourse”. Language 69.2, 274⫺307 Head, Brian (1978), “Respect Degrees in Pronominal Reference”. In: Greenberg (ed.), 152⫺211 Hendrick, Randall (1988), Anaphora in Celtic and Universal Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer Hinnebusch, Thomas (1979), “Swahili”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Languages and Their Status. Cambridge/MA: Winthrop, 290⫺293 Ingram, David (1978), “Typology and Universals of Personal Pronouns”. In: Greenberg (ed.), 213⫺ 248 King, Gareth (1996), Basic Welsh: A Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge

X. Wortarten Mithun, Marianne (1986), “When Zero Isn’t There”. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 12, 195⫺211 Newman, Paul (1987), “Hausa and the Chadic Languages”. In: Comrie (ed.), 705⫺723 Progovac, Ljiljana (1993), “Long-distance Reflexives: Move-to-INFL vs. Relativized SUBJECT”. Linguistic Inquiry 24, 755⫺772 Quirk, Randolph & Greenbaum, Sidney (1973), A Concise Grammar of Contemporary English. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Reinhart, Tanya & Reuland, Eric (1991), “Anaphors and Logophors: An Argument Structure Perspective”. In: Koster, Jan & Reuland, Eric (eds.), Long-distance Anaphora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 283⫺321 Schachter, Paul (1985), “Parts-of-speech Systems”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. I: Clause Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3⫺61 Schachter, Paul & Otanes, Fe (1972), Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press Schwartz, Linda & Dunnigan, Timothy (1986), “Pronouns and Pronominal Categories in Southwestern Ojibwe”. In: Weisemann (ed.), 285⫺322 Silverstein, Michael (1976), “Hierarchy of Features and Ergativity. In: Dixon, R. M. W. (ed.), Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 12⫺171 Stump, Gregory (1984), “Agreement vs. Incorporation in Breton”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Vol. II, 289⫺348 Ultan, Russell (1978), “Some General Characteristics of Interrogative Systems”. In: Greenberg (ed.), 211⫺248 Wiesemann, Ursula (1986, ed.), Pronominal Systems. Tübingen: Narr

Linda Schwartz, Bloomington (U.S.A.)

77. Verb 1. 2. 3.

Introduction The lexical composition of verbs Lexical classes that are morphologically significant 4. Morphology and the function of verbs 5. The formation of verbs 6. Inflectional morphology 7. Implicational universals 8. Grammaticized verbs 9. Uncommon abbreviations 10. References

1.

Introduction

Verbs are semantically defined as describing events, actions and, in some languages, states. Syntactically, verbs constitute the primary relational focus of the clause, specifying the roles and interactions of the participant noun phrases. Morphologically, verbs can be the repository of clause-level morphology,

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such as negative, interrogative, tense, mood, and evidentiality, as well as agreement and the morphological categories of high relevance to the verb such as valence, voice and aspect. Verbs are more often morphologically complex than nouns, and in this article we will examine the general morphological properties of verbs and the way in which the lexical semantics of the verb interacts with morphological categories.

2.

The lexical composition of verbs

No cross-linguistically valid delineation of the semantic domains of nouns and verbs is possible because a concept that in one language is expressed as a verb might in another language be expressed as a noun (see Art. 72). Nonetheless a semantically-based distinction between nouns and verbs is possible if we are willing to accept a prototype model of semantic properties (Hopper & Thompson 1984). The semantics of nouns and verbs can be said to correspond to percepts in the real world such that the prototypical noun corresponds to a percept having time-stability and a prototypical verb corresponds to an “action” or “event”, that is, a percept that lacks time-stability (Givoń 1979). From a functional perspective, a prototypical verb denotes a concrete, kinetic, visible and effective action (Bates & MacWhinney 1982). To the extent that the meanings of verbs deviate from this prototype, and, for example, designate more abstract events or actions, such as mental activities (think, feel), processes (grow, age, develop), internal conditions (itch, ache) or states (know, be old, be able), they are less prototypical and more likely to be expressed

by some other word class, such as adjective or noun. However, since verbs frequently do designate such non-prototypical percepts, the term state-of-affairs can be used to cover the meanings expressed by verbs (see Art. 104). In contrast to concrete objects which are easily isolated perceptually and individuated (it is relatively easy to tell a table from a chair), the boundaries of events are not so discrete. Thus what is included in the meaning of a verb is not a perceptual given, but rather subject to different interpretations in different languages. In a series of experiments, Gentner (1981) found that verbs are less translatable and more mutable in context than nouns are, and thus more subject to language-specific variation in their lexical content. Gentner also found that even within one language, verbs are more subject to variable interpretation than nouns are, as can be seen in the following two sentences where the verb is the lexical element that is subject to an extended interpretation, while the nouns maintain their ordinary interpretations: (1) John ran through the town. (2) The road ran through the woods. 2.1. The conceptualization of event In the following we examine some of the ways in which the lexical semantics of verbs can differ cross-linguistically. We begin by considering the ways in which a sequence of actions can be conceptualized. For instance, English provides a means for describing the act of fetching firewood as one event, even though it actually consists of a series of actions. In the Papuan language Kalam this same ‘event’ is described as a sequence of five discrete actions (Foley 1986: 113):

(3) yad am mon pk d ap ay-p-yn I go wood hit hold come put-perf-1.sg ‘I went and chopped wood and got it and came and put it.’ Most of what we conceive of as events are actually sequences of actions, and languages can divide these sequences in different ways to constitute the meanings of verbs. The division of complex events into their component actions is typical of verbal expression in Kalam and correlates with the fact that the language has fewer than one hundred verb stems, with only about twenty-five of these being commonly used. Needless to say, the commonly used verbs have very general meaning and are applicable to many different

situations. They are used in combination with other verbs and with nouns to designate complex actions. Given the freedom with which individual languages can interpret sequences of actions as events and the mutability of the lexical meaning of verbs in context, it is not surprising that the number of verbs a language has may differ widely cross-linguistically. The number of nouns a language needs is directly related to the number of concrete objects (and abstract concepts) that are culturally im-

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portant, but the number of verbs depends upon how relations between objects are conceptualized and lexicalized. We have just mentioned Kalam, with fewer than one hundred monomorphemic verb stems, but even more extreme examples exist. Among the languages of Australia, especially as one moves away from the east coast, one finds Warlpiri with around 110 simple verb roots, Walmatjari with about forty simple verbs, Gurindji with no more than thirty and some languages in the Kimberleys and Daly River area with only about a dozen verbs to which inflections can be added (Dixon 1980: 280). These are of course used in combination with other elements to produce a wide variety of verbal meaning.

roll, float, bounce; or the shape of the moving object, as in Atsugewi -lup- ‘for a small shiny spherical object (e.g. a round candy, an eyeball, a hailstone) to move or be located’, -qput- ‘for loose, dry dirt to move or be located’, -caq- ‘for a slimy lumpish object (a toad, a cow dropping) to move or be located’ (Talmy 1985). While the incorporation of direction and manner are familiar from European languages, the incorporation of properties of the moved or located object are found in Native American languages, such as Atsugewi (Hokan) and Navajo (Athapaskan), as well as in American Sign Language. In these languages, verbs that incorporate features of the moved or located object are known as classifier verbs.

2.2. Degree of specificity Verbs can also differ cross-linguistically, much as nouns and adjectives can, in the degree of specificity with which similar events are distinguished from one another. While many languages have a verb corresponding to Eng. eat in the Papuan language Yimas (as in other Papuan languages) one verb amcovers ‘eat’, ‘drink’ and ‘smoke (tobacco)’. Such differences are also common in more abstract domains where we find Spanish distinguishing saber ‘to know (a fact)’ and conocer ‘to know (a person or place), to be acquainted with’. It is natural for differences in specificity to result in a difference in selectional restrictions ⫺ the conditions on a verb that determine the type of arguments with which it occurs ⫺ since the meaning of a verb and the type of arguments it takes are closely intertwined. Other differences are possible as well. For instance, English has many more lexical verbs for manner of movement than Spanish does (see also section 2.3). For example, the one Spanish verb brincar covers the general range of the six more specific English verbs bound, dive, hop, jump, leap, and spring (Slobin 1997).

2.4. Valence Perhaps the most important inherent lexical property of a verb is its valence, that is, the specification of the number and role of the arguments that a verb may take. In most languages, whether a verb is transitive, intransitive or ditransitive is a lexical property of the verb (although there are some languages in which verbs may be used as transitive or intransitive without any morphological changes). One way that verbs of similar meaning may differ language-internally and cross-linguistically is in the number and role of the arguments that they require. For instance, while Span. abrir ‘to open’ is a transitive verb requiring an object, Yidiny balan ‘to be open’ is an intransitive verb. In order to use the Spanish verb intransitively, the sentence must be passivized; in order to use the Yidiny verb transitively a suffix must be added. Of course, the choice of valence for a verb is not completely arbitrary, as cognitive factors and shared human experience influence the lexicalization of verbal concepts. One important semantic parameter in verbal meaning is the notion of causation (Gentner 1981; Croft 1990). Events can be viewed as changes of state, and changes of state can have causes. Three prototypical event classes emerge from this view: causatives, inchoatives and statives. Each of these event classes is associated with a typical valence specification. Simple verbs that express cause are typically transitive, specifying an individual acting on another individual. Thus one expects verbs for events such as hitting, killing, kissing, building, etc. to be transitive

2.3. Motion verbs Another way that verbs may differ lexically across languages is according to which of the simultaneous aspects of the event are incorporated into the meaning of the verb. Motion verbs differ across languages according to whether they incorporate the path or direction of motion as in Span. entrar ‘to go in’, salir ‘to go out’, bajar ‘to go down’ and subir ‘to go up’; the manner of motion, as in Eng.

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across languages. Change of state events are typically intransitive, since by definition the cause is not specified. Thus motion events and events such as laughing, coughing, aging, ripening are usually lexicalized as intransitive. Similarly, statives, which describe inherent properties of entities, such as to be old, to be heavy, to be red, are typically lexicalized as intransitive verbs, if they are lexicalized as verbs at all. Thus verbs of commercial activity, ingestion, manipulation and creation strongly tend to be causative, while verbs of motion with incorporated manner tend to be inchoative, and verbs of behavior or color tend to be stative. In many languages, a small subset of causative verbs are ditransitive, that is, they obligatorily take three arguments ⫺ an agent, a patient and a recipient. Such verbs usually correspond to meanings such as tell, give, send, and so on. Despite these generalizations, languages can still have some surprising valence values, as the Guugu Yimidhirr verb for laughing, which is transitive: diinal ‘laugh at’ (Dixon 1980). More systematic differences are found for events that do not fit the prototypes well; they tend to vary in their valence cross-linguistically (Croft 1990). Thus verbs that describe emotional or mental states in some languages take their human participant as the subject, as in Eng. I like beans but other languages make the human participant an object argument or experiencer, as in Span. Me gustan los frijoles. Besides the number and grammatical role of the arguments, the meaning of a verb specifies other characteristics of its arguments. The incorporation of information about the physical attributes of an entity for motion and location verbs has already been illustrated. More common are specifications of animacy or humanness for certain arguments of a verb. Such conditions on the use of verbs with specific arguments are known as selectional restrictions. Another property of participants that is sometimes incorporated into the verb is plurality of the absolutive argument, as in the following pairs of verbs from !Kung (Snyman 1969: 124f.): (4) ⫽’wa˜ guº !o’a g//xo˜

‘pick sg.’ ‘take sg.’ ‘break sg.’ ‘lay sg.’

’kheu n/’hwi kx’oma g⫽a

‘pick pl.’ ‘take pl.’ ‘break pl.’ ‘lay pl.’

The plurality of participants is often related to other aspects of plurality of action, such as distributed or repeated action (see section 5. 3. 5). 2.5. Lexical aspect Another prominent lexical parameter for verbs is aspect or Aktionsart, since the meaning of a verb specifies the temporal contours of the event it is describing (Comrie 1976; Dahl 1985; Art. 109). One distinction that is sometimes regarded as aspectual has already been mentioned ⫺ the distinction between stative and inchoative. This distinction is lexicalized in such English pairs as know and realize. Another type of aspectual distinction occurs between verbs designating only one cycle of an action versus those designating repeating cycles. Thus step constitutes one cycle of which walk designates multiple repetitions. Other examples are hit and beat, snort and snore. 2.6. Dynamic vs. stative A stative situation is one that is extended in time and which involves no change, while a dynamic situation brings about some kind of change. Thus know and be tall are stative predicates in English, while run and buy are dynamic predicates (Comrie 1976: 48f.). Of course there is a certain degree of indeterminacy for situations such as sleeping or standing which might be conceptualized as stative or dynamic, as well as for cases in which a steady state is maintained actively, such as emitting a pure tone or holding one’s breath. The distinguishing factor that has been suggested is that stative situations are maintained until something happens to change them, while dynamic situations require a constant input of energy to be maintained. Thus sleeping and standing would qualify as stative under this criterion, but emitting a pure tone and holding one’s breath would qualify as dynamic.

3.

Lexical classes that are morphologically significant

The two semantic distinctions that are most important for verbal morphology are the transitive/intransitive distinction and the dynamic/stative distinction. Languages such as Nahuatl, which have subject and object markers on the verb, have a different morphological structure for the verb if the verb is transitive rather than intransitive. In some

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languages this difference amounts only to the addition of object markers to the verb along with the subject markers, or ergative in addition to absolutive. The following examples

from Abkhaz illustrate the use of person/ number prefixes for agreement with up to three arguments of the verb: with each added argument a prefix is added to the verb.

(5) intransitive (sara`) s-ce-yt’ (I) 1.sg.subj-go-fin ‘I go.’ (6) transitive (sara bara`) bzeýa be-z-bo´-yt’ (I you) well 2.sg.abs-sg.erg-see:dyn-fin ‘I like you.’ (7) ditransitive s-a`sˇ-cwa a`zˇwabzˇ (ø-)-s⫹a`-r-Øwe-yt’ my-brother:pl news (3.sg.abs-) 1.sg.io⫹to-3.pl-erg-tell-fin ‘My brothers told me the news.’ In some cases the extent of morphophonemic fusion between subject and object markers makes the transitive markers appear quite different from the intransitive ones (e.g. in the Maung language of Australia). In Algonquian languages, the transitivity of the verb determines the nature of the final suffix, and also the interpretation of the person/ number affixes as referring to the subject or the object. In addition, transitive and intransitive verbs differ in the extent to which they can be affected by morphological valence-changing processes, such as causative: in some languages only intransitive verbs may be causativized (for instance, Nakanai [New Guinea]), while in others both transitive and intransitive can be affected (as in Arabic). Passivization is a morphological process that applies typically to transitive verbs, though passivelike constructions are found with intransitive verbs in some languages (e.g. German). The stative/dynamic distinction is usually relevant only for morphological aspect. In some languages stative verbs have fewer aspectual distinctions than dynamic verbs do. For instance, in Abkhaz (Caucasian) stative verbs make no aspectual distinctions in the past, while dynamic verbs distinguish perfective and imperfective aspects. (The past for statives uses the same suffix as the imperfective for dynamics.) Moreover, in this language the present and future tense formations are different for stative vs. dynamic verbs. It is more common, however, for the stative/dynamic distinction to be important in the interpretation of aspectual morphemes,

or in the cooccurrence restrictions that they manifest. For instance, it is common for a perfective morpheme to have a present state interpretation when used with a stative predicate (e.g. in Island Carib [Arawakan], Tahitian [Eastern Oceanic] and Slave [Athapaskan]). A progressive morpheme may have a present state interpretation with a stative predicate (as in Kanukuru [West Chadic]) or it may simply not be used with statives (as in English or Cocama [Tupi]). Cooccurrence restrictions based on the lexical aspect of the verb are common for derivational categories and for grammaticizing constructions that are near the beginning of the grammaticization chain. This is the case for progressives, as mentioned above, but it also applies to iteratives (meaning repetition on one occasion), which apply only to dynamic verbs and at the beginning of their development only to telic verbs. Similarly, resultatives only apply to dynamic verbs, and in fact, are most appropriate with process verbs. On the other hand, inchoatives are restricted to statives. Lexical classes of verbs that are semantically arbitrary also affect the morphology. Some languages, such as Romance languages, have different sets of allomorphs for tense, aspect and mood depending on the arbitrary lexical classification of verb stems, commonly referred to as conjugation classes (see Art. 65). Such affixal allomorphy arises sometimes for phonological reasons, as for instance when some stems end in consonants and others in vowels, or for semantic reasons, as when different auxiliaries that give rise to

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the inflections are used for different verbs (as would be the case if Fr. eˆtre and avoir as used in the passe´ compose´ had become affixes).

4.

Morphology and the function of verbs

In their most prototypical clause-level uses, nouns refer to participants, while verbs show the relation among those participants in the situation. On the discourse level, nouns prototypically introduce participants into the discourse, while verbs assert the occurrence of an event of the discourse (Hopper & Thompson 1984: 708). When a verb serves this asserting, reporting, function, it carries its fullest morphological marking ⫺ person, number, tense, aspect, modality or whatever categories are marked in the languages and is considered to be finite. On the other hand, when it serves other functions its morphological markings are substantially reduced (Hopper & Thompson 1984). Just as the functions of lexical verbs in context may vary along a scale from true assertion to referring to a state of affairs as though it were an entity, so the formal properties of verbs are modified on a scale of finiteness (Givoń 1990). Nonfinite verbal forms, which typically lack some verbal inflection (most often person and number agreement) and may also have an affixal marking, occur in various functions which are not prototypical for verbs. Participles allow verbs to be used in adjectival functions modifying nouns. Aspectual distinctions do occur in participles, as in the present and past participles of English and other Indo-European languages (e.g. eating vs. eaten), and voice distinctions can also occur as in the active and passive participles of Latin. The gerundive, which is a non-finite adjectival passive, conveys some modality sense: for instance Lat. liber legendus ‘a book to be read’ as in librum legendum censeo ‘I finiteness person

finite

1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3.

(eu) canto (tu) cantas (ele) canta (no´s) cantamos (vo´s) cantais (eles) cantam

sg. sg. sg. pl. pl. pl.

regard the book as one to be read, I think one should read the book’. Other nonfinite forms belong to the general category of verbal noun, since they bestow on the verb to a greater or lesser extent the properties associated with nominals allowing the verbs to be used in non-canonical functions. The gerund is a non-finite substantival verb form whose logical subject is usually coreferential with the subject of the main verb or more rarely, the object of the main verb. For example, Coming to the top of the ridge, we saw the valley stretch out before us where the logical subject of coming is we. The infinitive form of the verb rarely has person/number agreement and sometimes lacks tense or aspect (though it may appear in both active and passive voice). As predicted, the infinitive does not appear as the main verb in the asserted clause of a sentence, nor does it present information in the main narrative line of the discourse. Rather an infinitive appears in a context in which it does not bear a syntactic relation to its notional subject (hence the lack of person/ number agreement), as for instance in complement clauses such as I want him to do it (Noonan 1985: 20). It is common for an infinitive to be formed with an adposition or case marker indicating allative, benefactive or dative relations (e.g. in Chuvash [Turkic], Udmurt [Finno-Ugric] and Hebrew [Semitic]) (Haspelmath 1991). Cross-linguistic and diachronic evidence suggest that infinitives develop from the use of a locative element with a verb in constructions indicating movement for a purpose (I went to see him) to general purpose (He saved money to buy a car) and then to complement clauses (He wants to buy a car) (Haspelmath 1991; Bybee et al. 1994). Thus infinitives are widely used in all of these contexts, as well as in other subordinate contexts. While it is uncommon for infinitives to show person/number agreement, a notable exception is the personal infinitive of Portuguese, which has the forms shown in Tab. 77.1: dependent infinitive

‘I sing’ ‘you sing’ ‘he sings’ ‘we sing’ ‘you sing’ ‘they sing’

Tab. 77.1: Portuguese personal infinitive

para para para para para para

(eu) cantar (tu) cantares ele cantar (no´s) cantarmos (vo´s) cantardes (eles) cantarem

‘for ‘for ‘for ‘for ‘for ‘for

me to sing’ you to sing’ him to sing’ us to sing’ us to sing’ them to sing’

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Another term for a type of verbal noun that is used in the Arabic grammatical tradition and also for the description of Caucasian languages is maSdar. In the Arabic tradition the maSdar is a form lacking both person/number agreement and tense but verb-like in that it can govern the nominative and accusative cases. In the description of Abkhaz, a Caucasian language, the maSdar is the only nominalized form of the verb (Hewitt 1979). The notional subject appears as a possessive marker on the Abkhaz maSdar. Nominalizing a verb also allows the verb to appear in non-canonical functions. There are two types of nominalizations, one in which the nominalization names the act, activity or result that corresponds to the verb’s action (e.g. destruction, arrival) and the other in which the meaning of the nominalization reflects the relation between the verb and its arguments. While the latter type includes agentive (baker), instrumental (opener), and patient (payee) nominalizations, by far the most common of these in the languages of the world is the agentive nominalization, which in fact occurs in almost all of the language families of the world (Woodworth 1991). Nominalizing morphemes almost always occur contiguous with the verb stem and it is very unusual to find any inflectional distinctions made within the nominalized verb (Woodworth 1991). Nominalizations, infinitives and participles in combination with an inflected auxil-

iary are commonly found in constructions that give rise to new inflections (see Art. 68), e.g. in the formation of the anterior or perfective (as in Spanish, French, German or Dutch), the progressive (as in English and Spanish), the future (as in Spanish and French) and the passive (as in English). Uncommon in Europe, but widespread in the remainder of the world is the use of serial or medial verb constructions in which a single event is described in terms of a series of verbs, as in example (3). In such constructions the verbs do not have independent expression of tense, aspect and mood; rather, in one type of construction, exemplified in (8), all the verbs in the construction have the same values for these categories, while in the other type, exemplified in (9), only the first or last verb has access to the full range of distinctions and the other verbs have no markings for the inflection categories, or extremely reduced markings (Hopper & Thompson 1984): (8) Akan wo-a-didi a-nom 3.pl-perf-eat perf-drink ‘They’ve eaten and drunk.’ (9) Yoruba ´ -mu´ `ıwe´ boo˜` mo m 1.sg prog-take book come ‘I am bringing the book.’ In Papuan languages the medial verb takes a different person/number affix than the final one, as shown in (10) (Davies 1981):

(10) Kobon Yad be gau am-em kaj pak-nab-in. I forest there go-1.sg.med pig strike-fut-1.sg.fin ‘I will go to the forest and strike a pig.’ Thus in all of these cases where the verb stem is serving a function other than to assert the occurrence of a separate event of the discourse, the verb carries fewer inflectional distinctions. When the verb is performing its canonical function it may be marked for those categories of high relevance to the verb, such as aspect and tense, as well as for categories that have clause-level or discourse-level functions. Since the verb is central to the clause, showing the relation among the participants, it is also the repository of clause-level morphology in many languages, serving as the bearer of markings of epistemic and speakeroriented mood, evidentials, honorifics, negation and interrogation. A discussion of these inflectional categories follows in 6.

5.

The formation of verbs

5.1. Compounding and incorporation One method languages exploit to create new verbs is compounding ⫺ the combination of two lexical stems into one verb (see Art. 87). The two components may consist of any word class plus a verb as head: noun and a verb (Eng. babysit), two verbs (Igbo tuu˜´ -fu` ‘throw-be lost ⫽ throw away’; Mandarin la¯-ka¯i ‘pull-be open ⫽ pull open’), or an adverb or adposition plus verb (as is common in Indo-European languages: Lat. ade¯o ‘toward-go ⫽ approach’, Germ. mitfühlen ‘with-feel ⫽ sympathize’). The entire formation is then inflected according to the (usually

77. Verb

regular) morphological categories of the language, and hence qualifies as a single verb. Directional adverbs that compound with a verb may eventually come to signal aspectual meaning (see section 5. 3. 4). Related to compounding is the process of noun incorporation, which involves the morphological incoporation of a noun into a verbal complex (see Art. 88). Noun incorporation differs from compounding in being restricted to a (sometimes rather large) subset of the available nouns and verbs in the language. In particular, the nouns that can be incorporated include body parts, food or game and cultural products. These items are often at a generic rather than specific level of categorization; that is, proper nouns are never incorporated and a word at the level of categorization of tree is likely to be incorporated, but not a word that names a species of tree. A typical example of noun incorporation is shown in (11). (11) Tiwi (Osborne 1974: 47) ji-meni-alipi-ankina he-me-meat-steel ‘He stole my meat.’ In some languages the incorporated version of the noun is a reduced or even suppletive form of the independent noun. For instance, the free Tiwi noun corresponding to the incorporated form for ‘meat’ in (11) is puninkapa. At times the verb also appears in a reduced form in the incorporation unit. When the direct object is incorporated, the resulting word is an intransitive verb and does not take an independent object (see Mithun 1984 and Art. 88). 5.2. Verbalization processes Another way to form new verbs is to derive them from nouns and adjectives (see Art. 89). Verbs derived from adjectives usually mean ‘to become Q’, as in Span. engrandecer ‘to enlarge’ from grande ‘big, large’, and are inchoatives, which in general specify entry into a state. When such forms are used with a causative agent, they are termed factitives. An English verbalization such as blacken can be used as an inchoative or a factitive. Verbs may be derived from nouns by simply adding verbal inflection to nouns, as in English hammered, or they may be derived by adding affixes to the noun stem. These affixes always occur closer to the stem than inflection does. The most common meanings for verbalizers are ‘to be X’ and ‘to do X’s ac-

801 tion’, with ‘to become X’ and ‘to make X’ also occurring frequently as in the following examples (Woodworth 1991: 190, 201): (12) Modern Greek ‘to do X’s action’ arx-iz-ø-o beginning-vbz-imp-1.sg ‘I begin’ amerikan-iz-ø-o American-vbz-imp-1.sg ‘I mimic an American’. (13) Karok ‘to be X’ ? a:s-hi water-vbz ‘to be wet’ (14) Karok ‘to make X’ ? uhru-hi egg-vbz ‘to lay eggs’ (15) O’odham (Papago-Pima) ‘to become X’ e-hodaz-tcu’D refl-stone-vbz ‘turned himself to stone’ Some languages have verbalizers with more specific meanings, such as Inuit ‘to have few Xs’, ‘to hunt Xs poorly’ or O’odham (Papago-Pima) ‘to break’ or ‘to take X away forcibly’. These more specific verbalizers are undoubtedly related to noun incorporation constructions (Woodworth 1991). 5.3. Verbs derived from other verbs A variety of processes of affixation or reduplication exist that derive one verb from another. These processes involve valence changes, aspectual changes or the addition of locational and directional meaning. 5.3.1. Valence-changing morphology The most common type of derivational morphology for verbs in the languages of the world is valence-changing morphology (cf. Art. 107). Although some languages allow the same verb stem to be used in intransitive, transitive or causative constructions without a change in morphology (e.g. English verbs such as open and boil), most languages do have some morphological means of changing valency. Causative morphology is by far the most frequently-occurring, as in these examples from Syrian Arabic: nezel ‘go down’, nazzal ‘bring down’, na¯m ‘go to sleep’, nayyam ‘put to sleep’. Of course, the effect of causative on an intransitive verb is to make it transitive, and the effect on a transitive verb is to make it ditransitive. Detransitivization or anticausative formation also occurs, as in

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this example from Turkish: acœ -tI ‘open-past’, acœ -Il-dI ‘open-anticaus-past’. A highly generalized valence-increasing process occurs in many Bantu languages. When an affix, called the applicative, is added to verbs it increases the number of ob-

jects that may occur in the clause. In Chishona this added argument can represent a goal, a motive, a prepositional phrase, or even an infinitive or clausal adjunct. The applicative suffix in Chishona is -ir- or -er(Harford 1993).

(16) Applicatives in Chishona (a) Goal: Amaí v-a´ka´-tu´m-ı´r-a´ mu-ko´ma chi-po class1a:mother class2a-rem.past-send-appl-ind class1-older.brother class7-gift ‘Mother sent the older brother a gift.’ (b) Motive: Baba´ v-aka´-u´raý-ı´r-a´ munhu marı´ classIa:father class2a-rem.past-kill-appl-ind person money ‘Father killed a person for money.’ (c) Prepositional phrases: A-no-nzw-ir-a class1-pres-feel-appl-ind tsitisı´ kuna´ va-mwe´ class9:pity towards class2-others ‘He has pity on others.’ (d) Infinitive adjunct: Baba v-aka´-u´raý-ı´r-a´ nyoka´ nokuti class1a:father class2-rem.past-kill-appl-ind snake because y-aka´-nga´ y-aka´-pıńd-a´ mu-mba´ class9-rem-be class9-rem.past-enter-ind class18-in.house ‘Father killed the snake because it had entered the house.’ 5.3.2. Attraction of adpositions to verbs It is also common for prepositions and postpositions to become affixes on verbs, giving them directional or locational meaning, or changing their valence or aspect. In Southern Lwo (Western Nilotic) languages what was previously a preposition occurring with indi-

rect objects has become a suffix on the verb. For instance, in Dholuo, the preposition ni occurs with indirect objects that are full nominals, but when the indirect object is pronominal, the preposition and pronoun are both suffixed (Reh 1986: 123f.):

(17) (a) otieno o-kelo n= odhiambo kitabu Otieno perf-bring dat/ben Odhiamo book ‘Otieno has brought a book to Odhiamo.’ (b) o-kelo-n-a kitabu 3.sg-bring-dat/ben-1.sg book ‘She brings me a book.’ In the related language Lango, the dative/ benefactive marker and the agreement marker are suffixed in all cases. The /n/ of the suffix has assimilated to the final consonant of the stem (Reh 1986: 126): (18) o`-ke`lli da`koˆ 3.sg-bring:ben woman ‘She brought it for the woman.’ In verb-final languages in which adpositions occur after the noun and before the

verb, they may become prefixes on the verb. The following examples from Abkhaz show the instrumental postposition after the noun (19a) and alternatively incorporated into the verb (19b) (Hewitt 1979: 114): (19) (a) a-zˇaØ⬚a` a´-la se-ye`-se-yt’ art-hammer it-with I-him-hit-fin ‘I hit him with a/the hammer.’ (b) a-zˇaØ⬚a` s-a-la-ye`-se-yt’ art-hammer I-it-with-him-hit-fin ‘I hit him with a/the hammer.’

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Other examples of adpositions that become associated with the verb are the separable prefixes of German and Dutch, and the verb particles of English. 5.3.3. Locational and directional morphology Many languages have locational morphemes that affix to the verb indicating the location of the situation described by the verb. Such affixes most commonly use the location of the speaker as the deictic reference point. The location of the hearer is only used in systems which also use the location of the speaker. In the highly elaborated system of Nimboran (North Papuan) such affixes indicate that the situation occurred ‘here’, ‘there’ or ‘far away’, and additionally ‘below’ or ‘above’ (the speaker) (Anceaux 1965: 62⫺64). Systems of directional morphemes may be even more elaborate. Such systems are based primarily on allative and ablative relations, again using the location of the speaker as the primary reference point. Nimboran has eleven directional affixes that specify the possible combinations of movement to and from the five positions listed above (Anceaux 1965: 70⫺79). Other languages have even more specific meanings for directional affixes. For instance in Karok (Hokan) a set of more than thirty directional affixes have meanings as specific as ‘hence upriverward’ and ‘hither from upriver’; ‘horizontally away from the center of a body of water’ etc. (Bright 1957: 95⫺105). In Nicobarese directional affixes indicate movement towards the jungle versus movement towards the village or the sea (Braine 1970: 173⫺176). Of course, such specific meanings for directionals reflect the geographical environment of the cultures in question. At times such directional affixes also take on aspectual meaning, as in the case of the Nicobarese affix meaning ‘into the (21) Imperfective icí ‘to go’ tecí ‘to flow’ pı´sati ‘to write’

jungle’ which also has completive meaning. The Karok affix meaning ‘up to the height of a man or less’ also means ‘to start to’ while the affix meaning ‘down from the height of a man or less’ is used with stative predicates to indicate the action that results in that state (Bright 1957: 97, 102f.). Andative and venitive markings on verbs indicate motion away from and towards to the speaker, or they indicate ‘go in order to do’ and ‘come in order to do’. For instance in Karok, the suffix -ar˜ added to a verb gives the meaning ‘to go in order to’ (? ihar˜ ‘to dance-to go in order to ⫽ to go in order to dance’ [Bright 1957: 106]). The latter meanings sometimes give rise to future markers (as in the southern dialect of Sierra Miwok). 5.3.4. Aspectual derivation One common type of aspectual derivation makes a verb completive. Completive action has been carried out thoroughly and completely, often with an object that has been totally affected or consumed, or with the implication that all objects have been affected. For instance Tucano (Andean-Equatorial) has a suffix peó` which means completive, as in the following words (Sorensen 1969: 173f.): (20) ba-peó`-amÈ´ eat-comp-evi:3.sg ‘he ate all of it’ owha`-peó`-apÈ´ paddle-comp-evi:1.pl ‘(we) paddled all the way over’ Directional particles or adpositions can be used to give completive meaning, as in the English phrases eat up or burn down. If this use of directional morphemes is generalized, it may lead to the establishment of a derivational perfective, as found in the Slavic languages. Thus the perfective forms of verbs in Serbo-Croatian have prefixes that originally indicated direction:

Perfective procí protecí potpı´satı´ natpı´sati prepı´sati

Another common aspect that may be expressed derivationally is the iterative aspect,

‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to ‘to

go through, go past’ flow past’ write under, sign’ write down’ re-write’

defined as the repetition of an action on a single occasion. Iterative is often expressed

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by reduplication and can have as other meanings habitual, continuative, frequentative and distributive (cf. Art. 109). Consider the (22) lya gwa tawa pinga jenda

‘eat’ ‘fall’ ‘tie’ ‘want’ ‘travel’

lyalyalya gwagwagwa tawa-tawa pinga-pinga jenda-jenda

5.3.5. Plurality of action In section 2.4 examples were given from !Kung of lexical differences relating to singular vs. plural participants. Many languages have a derivational category of plurality of action that may refer to the participation of multiple entities as the absolutive argument, or it may signal that the action was distributed over multiple objects, over space or over time. Consider the prefix wa: in Pawnee (Parks 1976: 279): (23) wa:wiua ‘to defecate here and there’ rawa:hat ‘to pass to (various people)’ wa:?u ‘to give (various things)’ Sierra Miwok has a similar ‘distributive’ suffix i:, as shown in the following examples (Freeland 1951: 112): (24) po? :al-i:ma? :at-i:ha? :at-i:-

‘slit.open-distr (to slit open several)’ ‘kill-distr (to kill several)’ ‘toss-distr (to toss away repeatedly or several)’

Such derivational morphemes do not mark agreement with the absolutive argument, but rather signal that the action of the verb itself occurred more than once. As a consequence of the plural action several objects may have been affected, or the action may have been distributed in time or space.

6.

following examples from Mwera (Eastern Sudanic) (Harries 1950: 77):

Inflectional morphology

By far the most common inflections for verbs are for aspect, tense, mood and person/ number. In a sample of 76 maximally unrelated languages (the Gramcats Sample of Bybee et al. 1994) 65 languages have some bound verbal inflection. Of these, 58 languages have person/number inflection, 61 have aspect, 59 have tense and 56 have mood, making these categories so widespread among languages with inflection as to be almost universal. The grammatical mean-

‘eat and eat and eat’ ‘fall and fall and fall’ ‘tie over and over again’ ‘search for’ ‘wander about’

ings counted as aspect were continuative, frequentative, habitual, imperfective, inceptive, inchoative, perfective, and progressive (cf. Art. 109). The tenses are anterior (perfect), future, past and present (cf. Art. 110). The moods and modalities are ability, admonitive, certainty, concessive, desire, hypothetical, imperative, inferred certainty, intention, obligation, optative, possibility, probability, prohibitive, purpose and subjunctive (cf. Art. 111). When these categories are affixed to the verb, they tend to occur with the categories that have the greatest semantic relevance to the verb closest to the stem, that is, from the stem outward: aspect, tense, mood, person/ number (Bybee 1985: 33⫺35 and Art. 39). The categories closest to the stem also show greater morphophonological fusion with the stem, as manifested by the mutual conditioning of allomorphy between stem and affix. The perfective/imperfective distinction is often indicated by major stem changes, but tense, mood and person/number marking rarely are. The latter categories are more often marked with affixes and tend to have only minor effects on the verb stem. Overall verbal morphology is three times more likely to be suffixed than prefixed, and even in SVO and VSO languages there are more suffixes than prefixes, so most of the inflections referred to here are suffixes (Bybee et al. 1990). While person-number markers have an overall tendency to be suffixed, prefixed person-number markers account for about a third of the prefixes in verb-final languages. In verb-medial languages personnumber markers are preposed about half the time. Person and number usually occur together and when they do, it is rarely possible to make a morphological segmentation separating the person markers from the number markers. Especially in first and second person, person and number tend to be represented by a single morph. Person/number

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markers on verbs may either constitute agreement or pronominal arguments of the verb. In the former case, the actual noun phrases are the arguments of the verb and the agreement markers simply index these arguments. In the latter case, the person/number markers are pronouns bound to the verb and represent all the core arguments of the verb. The verb with its inflections, then, represents a complete clause, and full noun phrases func-

sg.

tion only to clarify the referents of the pronominal affixes (Mithun 1986). Person/number markers on verb sometimes include distinctions for gender or noun class. For instance in Krongo, the finite verb has a prefix indexing the subject of the verb. In Tab. 77.2, n- is used for first and second person singular and for neuter, m- is used for feminine, ø- for third singular and k- for plural (Reh 1985).

First and second person

Third person

n-ıíso` a`? a`n

‘sg-run I (I run)’

m-ıíso` (nı´mya`)

n-ıíso` u`? u`n

‘sg-run you (You run)’

n-ıíso` (n`tneéra´) ø-ıìso` (kaáw)

pl.

k-ıíso` a`nna´

‘pl-run we:incl (We run)’

k-ıíso` oów k-ıíso aàka`

‘pl-run we: excel (We run)’ ‘pl-run you:pl (You run)’

k-ıíso (ka´tu´)

‘sg.fem-run (woman) (She [the woman] runs)’ ‘sg.neut-run (dog) (It [the dog] runs)’ ‘sg-masc-run (man) (He [the man] runs)’ ‘pl-run (people) (They [the people] run)’

Tab. 77.2: Person/number markers in Krongo

It is more common for gender to be distinguished in the third person than in second and more common in second than in first person. Negation is almost always marked on or around the finite verb of the clause and tends to precede the verb stem. The most common way to express negation is with a particle preposed to the verb. This type of expression occurs in languages of all word order types, and is the most common means of expression in SVO and VSO languages. Somewhat less commonly, prefixes mark negation, also in languages of all word order types (including SOV). Only consistent SOV languages such as Japanese and Turkish use a suffix for negation. Expressions that use both a preposed and a postposed element also occur in SOV and SVO languages (cf. Art. 113). Interrogative is less commonly marked on verbs as the scope of interrogation is the whole clause. However, in consistent verbfinal languages such as Japanese, it is common to have an interrogative marker as a suffix (often the last suffix) on the verb. Of course, this suffix will also be clause-final, one of the appropriate positions for elements with clausal scope. Languages with lots of prefixing and pronominal arguments affixed to the verb may have interrogative expressed as a prefix in the verb complex (Tojolabal [Mayan] and Cheyenne [Algonquian]).

7.

Implicational universals

Some implicational universals concerning verbs have been proposed, having the form ‘if a language has property x, it also has property y.’ Such statements should not necessarily be taken to imply a causal relation between x and y. One implicational universal that appears to hold true for nouns as well as verbs is that the presence of inflectional morphology implies the presence of derivational morphology (Greenberg 1963). For verbs, this reflects the fact that almost all languages have some ways of deriving verbs, with valence-changing processes, especially causative, being almost universal. On the other hand, some languages have no inflection at all, in particular many Sino-Tibetan and Mon Khmer languages, as well as some Oceanic languages and of course Creole languages. As mentioned above, in the Gramcats Sample of 76 languages, eleven have no verbal inflection at all, while most of these eleven do have some derivational morphology. A more specific implication is that the presence of person-number categories on the verb implies the presence of aspect, tense or mood categories on the verb (Greenberg 1963: 93). Again, this statement follows from the fact that person-number categories occur

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in fewer languages than aspect, tense and mood categories do. That it is not a strict or causal implication is shown by the fact that there are exceptions to this statement. For instance in Trukese (Oceanic) object markers are suffixed to the verb, but subject markers as well as all aspect, tense and mood markers are found in a preverbal auxiliary that is not bound to the verb. Thus the verb has object inflection but no aspect, tense or mood inflection. Similarly, O’odham (Papago-Pima) has object markers prefixed to the verb, but subject markers and aspect, tense and mood are contained in an auxiliary that is not bound to the verb, but rather appears in sentence-second position. Another type of exception is exemplified by Dakota (Siouan), which has an elaborate person-number system incorporated into the verb (prefixed or infixed), but most aspect, tense and mood categories are expressed by particles or auxiliaries. One might expect implicational relations to hold among aspect, tense and mood categories. However, no such relations can be substantiated; rather these three categories are so commonly occurring that almost all languages that have one of them have the other two (see the numerical break-down in the preceding section). In fact, there is some overlap in these categories and it might be more useful to consider the meanings expressed within these categories in looking for universals rather than looking for universals at the level of aspect, tense and mood. For instance, it appears that if a language has inflectional tense or aspect at all, then it has either a perfective or a past morpheme (Dahl 1985; Bybee et al. 1994; Art. 109 and 110). Similarly it might be said that a large majority of languages with inflection have an inflectional means of expressing the imperative. Beyond these statements, however, it is very difficult to find more universal categories of aspect, tense or mood.

8.

Grammaticized verbs

Three types of verb-like entities occur that are more grammatical in their properties than lexical: auxiliaries, copulas and proverbs. 8.1. Auxiliaries Auxiliaries (see Art. 78) are usually derived from lexical verbs diachronically but have arrived at a stage in which they always occur

in a ‘helping’ status ⫺ as the finite verb in a clause that contains a lexical non-finite verb. Auxiliaries typically code a full range of aspectual and modal functions, though they can also be used for passive voice and future tense. They differ from lexical verbs in their inflections: in some cases they code more morphological distinctions than full verbs (as with the English auxiliary verb be, which distinguishes first and second singular in the present, or the Basque auxiliaries); in other cases they code fewer distinctions, (e.g. the English modal auxiliaries lack third person inflection and do not have participles or infinitives) (cf. Steele et al. 1981). 8.2. Copulas Copulas are grammatical words that serve the predicating function in clauses with predicate nominals (Bob is a rancher). The same form often occurs with predicate adjectives (Bob is short) and locatives (Jane is down by the windmill). Semantically, copulas are highly generalized stative predicates, but they are not always totally lacking in meaning, as evidenced by the fact that some languages (e.g. Spanish, Portuguese and Irish) have two copulas, one indicating a permanent or stable state and the other indicating a more temporary state. Copulas often carry the morphological markers of verbs, indicating tense, aspect and person/number. However, they can also be defective, lacking certain markers that appear on other verbs. One source of this defectiveness is the fact that they are stative verbs, and stative verbs often mark fewer aspectual distinctions than active verbs. In some languages (e.g. Russian) the copula is omitted when it occurs in unmarked verbal categories, such as present tense, but it appears in non-present contexts bearing the markers of tense. Another reason for their defectiveness in verbal categories is that some copulas are not derived from verbs at all, but rather from pronouns. Even in these cases, however, person/number or gender agreement with the subject may be present. For instance, in Dakota agreement with plural subjects is marked with the suffix -pi on the ‘defective verb’ e, which is derived from an emphatic pronoun. Complete lack of inflection can arise if one form of the pronominal copula (usually the third singular masculine form) generalizes to be used with all subjects, as for instance in Tigre (Semitic) where the singular masculine pronominal copula tu can be used with all subjects in copula constructions.

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8.3. Pro-verbs Some languages have highly generalized dynamic verbs that can take the place of lexical verbs under certain grammatical conditions. The best-studied situation of this type occurs in English, where the verb do stands for lexical verbs in constructions such as Bob likes ice cream and so do I. The pro-verb do also fills the auxiliary position when no other auxiliary is present in negative constructions (Jane doesn’t like ice cream) and in questions (Do you like ice cream?). Another function for highly generalized dynamic verbs is the formation of new verbs, especially from nouns. For instance, Japanese forms verbs from nouns (especially of Chinese origin) by adding the verb suru ‘do, perform, make’ to the noun: benkyoo-suru (‘study-do ⫽ study’). In Kanuri a large number of verbs are conjugated with the inflected form of the verb ‘to say’ added to their stem.

9.

Uncommon Abbreviations

AGR AGT APPL COMP DIST DYN EVI FIN MED SUBJ VBZ

agreement agent applicative completive distributive dynamic evidential finite medial subject verbalizer

10. References Anceaux, J. C. (1965), The Nimboran Language: Phonology and Morphology. ’S-Gravenhage: Nijhoff Bates, Elizabeth & MacWhinney, Brian (1982), “Functionalist Approaches to Grammar”. In: Wanner, Eric & Gleitman, Lila (eds.), Language Acquisition: The State of the Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 173⫺218 Bright, William (1957), The Karok Language. Berkeley: University of California Press Braine, Jean Critchfield (1970), Nicobarese Grammar (Car Dialect). Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of California at Berkeley Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: Benjamins Bybee, Joan L. & Pagliuca, William & Perkins, Revere D. (1990), “On the Asymmetries in the Affixa-

tion of Grammatical Material”. In: Croft, William & Denning, Keith & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Studies in Typology and Diachrony for Joseph Greenberg. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2⫺42 Bybee, Joan & Perkins, Revere D. & Pagliuca, William (1994), The Evolution of Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Comrie, Bernard (1976), Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Croft, William (1990), “Possible Verbs and the Structure of Events”. In: Tsohatzidis, Savas L. (ed.), Meanings and Prototypes: Studies in Linguistic Categorization. London: Routledge, 48⫺75 Dahl, Östen (1985), Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Davies, John (1981), Kobon. Amsterdam: North Holland (Lingua Descriptive Studies 3) Dixon, R[obert] M. W. (1980), The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Foley, William (1986), The Papuan Languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Freeland, L. S. (1951), Language of the Sierra Miwok. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University (Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics 6) Gentner, Dedre (1981), “Some Interesting Differences between Nouns and Verbs”. Cognition and Brain Theory 4, 161⫺178 Givoń, Talmy (1979), On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press Givoń, Talmy (1990), Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction, Vol. II. Amsterdam: Benjamins Greenberg, Joseph (1963), “Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements”. In: Greenberg, John (ed.), Universals of Language. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 73⫺113 Harford, Carolyn (1993), “The Applicative in Chishona and Lexical Mapping Theory”. In: Mchombo, Sam A. (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of Bantu Grammar, Vol. I. Stanford/CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 93⫺110 Harries, Lyndon (1950), A Grammar of Mwera. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Haspelmath, Martin (1991), “From Purposive to Infinitive: A Universal Path of Grammaticization”. Folia Linguistica Historica 12, 287⫺310 Hewitt, B. G. (1979), Abkhaz. Amsterdam: North Holland (Lingua Descriptive Studies 2) Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1984), “The Discourse Basis for Lexical Categories in Universal Grammar”. Language 60, 703⫺752 Mithun, Marianne (1984), “The Evolution of Noun Incorporation”. Language 60, 847⫺894 Mithun, Marianne (1986), “When Zero Isn’t There”. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual

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Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley/CA: Soc., 195⫺211 Noonan, Michael (1985), “Complementation”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 42⫺140 Osborne, C. R. (1974), The Tiwi Language. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Parks, Douglas. R. (1976), A Grammar of Pawnee. New York: Garland Publishing Reh, Mechthild (1985), Die Krongo Sprache (Nıìno` ` i): Beschreibung, Texte, Wortverzeichnis. BerMo´-D lin: Reimer Reh, Mechthild (1986), “Where Have All the Case Prefixes Gone?”. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 5, 121⫺34 Slobin, Dan I. (1997), “Mind, Code and Text”. In: Bybee, Joan & Haiman, John & Thompson, Sandra A. (eds.), Essays on Language Function and Language Type. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 437⫺467

Snyman, J. W. (1969), An Introduction to the !Xu (!Kung) Language. Cape Town: Balkema (University of Cape Town School of African Studies Communication 34) Sorensen, Arthur P., Jr. (1969), The Morphology of Tucano. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univ. Steele, Susan. et al. (1981), An Encyclopedia of AUX: A Study of Cross-Linguistic Equivalence. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 5) Talmy, Leonard (1985), “Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 57⫺149 Woodworth, Nancy (1991), From Noun to Verb and Verb to Noun: A Cross-linguistic Study of Classchanging Morphology. Ph.D. dissertation, SUNY at Buffalo

Joan Bybee, Albuquerque (U.S.A)

78. Auxiliary 1. 2. 3. 4.

Auxiliaries as a morphological class Paradigmatic vs. syntactic auxiliaries Auxiliaries and verbhood References

1.

Auxiliaries as a morphological class

Auxiliaries reflect in their morphology categories which may also be marked morphologically on (other) verbs. Their distinctiveness lies in their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships with (other) verbs. In much of the linguistic tradition the paradigmatic relationship has been taken to be the salient one. 1.1. A traditional view: helping verbs Traditionally, the term auxiliary is applied to a verb which in combination with another verb regularly supplies part of the paradigm or potential paradigm of the second verb. In such terms, the Latin verb form est in (1d): (1) (a) (b) (c) (d)

monet ‘he advises’ monuit ‘he (has) advised’ monetur ‘he is advised’ monitus est ‘he was / has been advised’

can be described as manifesting an auxiliary: this auxiliary has the distribution and morphology of a verb; and in combination with

another verb, here monere ‘advise’, in its perfect participle form, it supplies a term in the paradigm of the latter which is not expressed morphologically, the passive perfect; it helps complete the paradigm (cf. Vincent 1987; Art. 62). (1b) and (1c) illustrate respectively the (morphological) active perfect and passive present. (1d) is often described as a periphrastic form of the verb monere (cf. Art. 68); and the construction is said to be grammaticalised (cf. Art. 145). The notion of potential paradigm is important here, however. For the English verb form is of (2b): (2) (a) He advises (b) He is advised is likewise described as an auxiliary, even though there is no morphological realisation of passive in present-day English; its expression always requires an auxiliary. Thus, in order to confer auxiliarihood, in this traditional sense, we need to know the set of inherent categories in principle available for expression in the morphology of verbs. It is desirable that this set should be well-defined. At any rate, it will include the categories of tense, aspect, voice, polarity, mood and modality; these, in turn, will require definition, of course, if they are to be identified cross-lin-

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guistically. This is, however, a far from trivial question (cf. 2.4, Art. 108⫺111, 113, and the extensive discussions in Lyons 1977; Tedeschi & Zaenen 1981, eds.; Hopper 1982, ed.; Siewierska 1984; Dahl 1985; Palmer 1986). Moreover, given that it is often difficult to associate particular auxiliaries uniquely with one of these categories, and that the categories themselves, as well as marking semantic oppositions, may also serve to indicate discourse function and/or viewpoint (cf. e.g. Hargreaves 1986, on Newari), these traditional categories may themseves reflect recurrent conjunctions of more primitive universal properties. 1.2. Morphological categories What seem to be relatively uncontroversial cases of auxiliary expression of relevant categories are illustrated in the sections which follow. However, tense, aspect, voice and polarity are not universally present as verbal inflexions or auxiliaries. Negative polarity, as well as being expressed in verbal morphology (as in the Agaw languages ⫺ Appleyard 1984) or by an auxiliary (as in Finnish ⫺ see 2.2), is also typically expressed by non-verbal grammatical items (particles or adverbs). Tense, which is the most likely to be expressed morphologically, is perhaps, along with polarity, least widely claimed to be represented as an auxiliary. It may be that this reflects the empirical situation; but it also, at least partly, has to do with the difficulties in establishing whether a future tense should be attributed to a particular language (given that modality may also be involved ⫺ see Comrie 1985 a: ch. 2.3), as well as the fact that past tense is often cumulated with some aspectual category. (See, however, Comrie 1985 a: ch. 11 on past tense auxiliaries in Bamileke-Dschang.) Auxiliaries of mood and modality are referred to collectively in what follows as ‘modal auxiliaries’, given that how such a distinction is to be drawn remains highly controversial (cf. e.g. Lyons 1977: ch.17); and often the same item can be said to be involved in the expression of either according to the traditional differentiation of subjunctive or optative as moods and necessity or possibility as modalities (cf. May he perish! vs. He may perish; and see 2.3.1); cf. Art. 111. It seems that verbal expression of mood/ modality is also not universal: see further 3.2. Often, as in (1d) and (2b), an auxiliary renders its auxiliate (the form of the verb whose

paradigm it contributes to) non-finite (but cf. 2.3.2 on Greek etc.); and, as the finite form, an auxiliary will also typically show person/ number (and sometimes gender) concord with a particular argument or arguments, typically the subject (as in (1) and (2)), if this is found in the language concerned (cf. Art. 98, 100; see too Art. 77 on finiteness). Where different non-finite forms are available, modal auxiliaries are frequently accompanied by the infinitive, whereas auxiliaries expressing aspect and voice (as in (1)) tend to govern participles: perfects and passives select a perfect/passive participle, imperfects or progressives an active participle ⫺ or a gerund. Participles also often agree with a specific argument in respect of number/gender/ case (see 2.3.2). But such observations, again, are not without exception (particularly outside the Indo-European group for whose description such terms were introduced), and they again depend on cross-linguistic identification of infinitives, participles and gerunds (cf. Art. 77). Notice, for instance, that even in Greek the modern perfect in -i is formed by exi (‘have’) plus what is historically, at least, the aorist infinitive (cf. e.g. Browning 1969: 84). Non-finiteness is one indicator of subordination; but an auxiliate may bear no overt marker of subordination (see 2.4; and, on the complexities associated with subordination, cf. Harman & Thompson 1984). In some languages, such as Wunambal, only an auxiliary can be finite and show concord: (3) (a) Yala ngu-wanban hunt I-aux:pres (b) Ngu-wanban I-aux:pres (3a) illustrates auxiliary use of wanban; (3b) its use as a ‘lexical’ verb (Blake 1987: ch. 7.2). In other languages, the auxiliary, though arguably syntactically finite, in guaranteeing the sentential status of the construction, is ‘impersonal’, and concord is shown on the auxiliate (only): see e.g. Lehmann (1993) on Yucatec Maya, and also 2.3.2. Much thus remains tentative concerning the distribution of auxiliaries in language and the properties they display. On the one hand, as we have noted, their identification and character depend on the establishment of a theory of verbal categories, including the paradigmatic (tense etc.) and syntagmatic (infinitive etc.) categories. Differentiation between

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syntagmatic categories of the verb (gerund, participle) and the marking of deverbal nouns and adjectives is also problematical: witness the debate over ‘syntactic’ vs. ‘lexical’ passives (e.g. Wasow 1977). On the other hand, the drawing of a distinction between affix and auxiliary depends on the cross-linguistic identification of the syntactic word (cf. Art. 26).

2.

Paradigmatic vs. syntactic auxiliaries

Auxiliaries may also exhibit distinctive syntax and/or morphology. But sets of items sharing particular morphosyntactic properties need not coincide with the class of auxiliaries in the traditional sense illustrated in 1.1. It may be, then, that it is necessary to recognise two kinds of auxiliarihood, sharing the feature of expressing certain categories, but distinguished as to other means of identification, paradigmatic vs. (morpho)syntactic. Paradigmatic auxiliaries are suppletive with respect to the morphology of the auxiliate; syntactic auxiliaries are a syntactically distinctive subset of verbs. The notion of syntactic auxiliary is illustrated in 2.1 in relation to the much discussed English situation. A similarly well-defined set of auxiliaries can be established for e.g. Wunambal (Blake 1987: ch. 7.2), Ngäbe´re (Young & Givoń 1990) and Mandarin (Li & Thompson 1981: 173⫺188), but not universally (see 3.1). 2.1. The morphosyntax of auxiliaries in English English have and be, which (paradigmatically) are associated respectively with the expression of the perfect and progressive, as well as, in the case of be, of the passive illustrated in (2b), are distinguished syntactically from other verbs, except do and the modals, by what have come to be called the ‘NICE’ properties, as exemplified in (4): (4) (a) Maggie wasn’t leaving Maggie hadn’t left Maggie couldn’t leave *Maggie leftn’t/left not Maggie didn’t leave (b) Was Maggie leaving? Had Maggie left? Could Maggie leave? *Left Maggie? Did Maggie leave?

(c) They say Neil might have feared it, might might have and he *might have feared did / might have done

冦

(d) Maggie Maggie Maggie Maggie Maggie

WAS laughing HAD laughed COULD laugh LAUGHED DID laugh

Only auxiliaries take the sentential Negative marker (“N”) to their right and have it cliticise to them (4a); except in some residual cases, only auxiliaries Invert (“I”) as in the questions of (4b); only auxiliaries appear in ‘Code’ positions (“C”), such as finally in the truncated second conjuncts in (4c); only auxiliaries coincide with sentential, rather than lexical, Emphasis (“E”) or contrast (4d). do supplies the expression of the relevant parts of the otherwise non-auxiliary paradigm in such circumstances. In these respects, it patterns syntactically with the auxiliaries. And, in so far as it thereby supplies part of the potential paradigm, it might be counted as fulfilling the traditional requirements for auxiliaries too. We return to this in 2.3.1 (and see further e.g. Huddleston 1979; 1984: ch. 4.4). be is also morphologically distinctive, in showing more paradigmatic distinctions than other verbs: (5) (a) am, is, are vs. advise, advises (b) was, were vs. advised (c) I / (s)he / it were (subj.), was (indic.) vs. I / (s)he / it advised and have is at least morphophonologically irregular (have : has : had). Indeed, all of the auxiliaries show irregular third person singular marking (cf. does [dvz], may, etc.); but then so does the non-auxiliary says ([siz]), so that such distinctiveness is not criterial. have and be share other aspects of their distribution with other verbs, as non-finites (6a) and as finites (6b) in non-NICE positions: (6) (a) to advise / be / have, advising / being / having, advised / been / had (b) He advises / is advising / has advised They remain verbal in these respects; and, as auxiliaries in the sense of 1.1, they belong to the same paradigm as the simple form.

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The modals, whose auxiliary behaviour is illustrated in (4) (and at least some of whose members express appropriate categories), additionally lack the third-person singular inflexion found with all (other) verbs, their inherited tense variation is no longer transparently such in most instances, and they occur only as finites: (7) *Dan is canning cope, *Dan has could cope, *Dan should can cope, *Dan’s canning cope is a miracle, *For Dan to can cope would be a miracle The English modals thus share with the nonauxiliaries, as part of their basic distribution, only the position illustrated in (6b). This raises the question, more than in the case of the other auxiliaries, of whether they are indeed verbs. See further 3. 2.2. The non-coincidence of paradigmatic and syntactic auxiliarihood Auxiliaries (paradigmatically defined) need not display marked distributional differences from other verbs such as are illustrated in (4) (whose precise character is, of course, English-specific); though they tend, as commonly used verbs, to be morphologically irregular. Indeed, in many languages it is difficult to motivate syntactically a class of auxiliaries. Thus, the Finnish verb which typically would be translated as ‘be’ and which is used as an adjectival copula in (8): (8) Kivi on kova stone is hard ‘The stone is hard’ is also used to form compound tenses: (9) Olette erehtynyt you:are err:past part ‘You have made a mistake’ Finnish also has a negative verb, as illustrated in (10): (10) Ette ole erehtynyt You:not be err:past part ‘You have not made a mistake’ But these (paradigmatic) auxiliaries are not distributionally distinct from other Finnish verbs, some of which can appear in the same constructions, governing infinitives and participles. And there seem to be particular difficulties in establishing a set of syntactic modals for most languages (cf. e.g. Huber & Kummer 1974 on German; Mufwene & Bo-

kamba 1979 on Lingala; Palmer 1986: ch. 1.5.1). There may be found within a single language a distinction between (paradigmatic) auxiliaries which do and do not show exceptional syntactic behaviour. The English verb get, for example, is arguably, along with be, a periphrastic marker of passive voice, but it is not distributionally like an auxiliary; it behaves, as illustrated in (11): (11) Did Kenneth get caught out? *Got Kenneth caught out? like a non-auxiliary. As noted above, this might lead us to draw a distinction between those auxiliaries which are simply paradigmatically defined (as in Finnish) and those which also meet syntactic criteria. It also raises the question of whether there might be items which meet the syntactic criteria associated with auxiliaries in a particular language but are not appropriate on paradigmatic grounds: see further 2.4. A further apparent discrepancy arises from the observation that in languages with a paradigmatic ‘be’ auxiliary the same verb is typically used as a copula with predicative nominals/adjectivals. And, in English, for instance, the copula displays the NICE properties associated with paradigmatic be. However, the copula can perhaps be regarded as an auxiliary for non-verbal predicators, allowing to non-verbs occurrence in finite and non-finite constructions. ‘Have’ auxiliaries, too, typically can take nominal complements (He has a car). And in English there is variation as to whether in this use have displays the NICE properties (Has he a car? vs. Does he have a car?). Perhaps this is a reflection of its status as a ‘marked’ copula, with locative subject (see further 2.3.2, and cf. Lyons 1968: ch. 8.4). Concurrent or antecedent use as a copula is one cross-linguistic characteristic of tense/ aspect/voice auxiliaries. Another tendency is for auxiliaries, as grammatical elements, to cliticise (cf. Art. 41), particularly to a preceding element, as in English; indeed, in some traditions, cliticisation is criterial for auxiliarihood. In so far as they are otherwise syntactically distinct, auxiliaries can be said to be syntactically ‘more active’. One way of making such a notion more precise is illustrated by the following definition (Emonds 1985: 174): “A verb is an auxiliary if and only if it occurs in some syntactic position where main verbs do not

812 occur, or if it cannot appear in some position where main verbs do occur (deep structure subcategorization for phrasal complements permitting).”

though a set so defined would in some respects be more inclusive than the traditional (either paradigmatic or syntactic) auxiliaries; note too that the definition is accompanied by an assumption that the English modals are not verbs. Alternatively, a more traditional delimitation of syntactic auxiliaries is arrived at if they are said to be preferred to non-auxiliaries in finite use (Anderson 1990). 2.3. Paradigmatic properties of auxiliaries As periphrases, traditional auxiliaries exhibit the paradigmatic (and possibly derivational) properties of terms of morphological categories, otherwise expressed in the form of a word. 2.3.1. Basic properties Auxiliaries are traditionally associated with paradigmaticity. As members of a paradigm, auxiliaries are typically in opposition with other members of the paradigm; the members are semantically mutually exclusive. Even when the meaning distinction between two members is contextually attenuated, as by the addition in brackets in (12): (12) (a) Beryl knits (a lot these days) (b) Beryl is knitting (a lot these days) they remain distinct; the simple form cannot be used to mean the same as the progressive. In this way a distinction might be drawn between ‘true’ auxiliary periphrases like the progressive of I am writing and ‘marked’ periphrases like Italian Sto scrivendo: the latter merely insists on an interpretation available to the simple form (cf. Comrie 1976: ch. 6.1). However, some auxiliary constructions are merely suppletive variants (cf. Art. 52) of particular members of the paradigm: this is the status of periphrastic do in present-day English, which occurs in certain circumstances (especially the NICE contexts) in place of the simple form. Suppletion is one characteristic of inflexional systems, not merely of stems (as in the familiar go / went example, or Greek vle´po / ´ıda ‘see (present / aorist)’, but also of inflexions; this is what in part characterises difference of declensional or conjugational class, as illustrated by the Latin forms in (13): (13) (a) fili-i son-nom.pl.masc (b) host-es enemy-nom.pl.masc This is another reflexion of paradigmaticity.

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Paradigms may also show syncretism (cf. Art. 66), whereby in a certain inflexional class two otherwise distinct terms of a particular category have the same expression. Thus, the form in (13b) also expresses accusative as well as nominative. Non-finite and past forms of have in English show syncretism. Finite non-past have contrasts with the simple past as perfect vs. past, and as such usually rejects definite past-time reference: (14) (a) Bilbo went there (last Tuesday) (b) Bilbo has gone there *(last Tuesday) But (15) shows syncretism of perfect and past: (15) (a) Bilbo seems to have gone there (last Tuesday) (b) Bilbo had gone there (last Tuesday) with both interpretations being available, the latter permitting definite past-time reference. Similarly, cumulation (cf. Art. 64), simultaneous expression of two or more categories, as evidenced, again, in (13), or in the French (past) imperfect (simultaneously past and imperfect) of (16a): (16) (a) Il nageait ‘he was swimming/(habitually) swam’ (b) He used to swim is also found in auxiliary constructions, such as English (16b): used (though perhaps only a ‘marked’ periphrasis) is simultaneously past and habitual. We can, of course, here as elsewhere, associate the signalling of past with the final coronal plosive; but in this instance there is no contrast with non-past (*He uses to swim); used is a paradigmatic unit. Conversely, inflexional paradigms may show multiple exponence (Art. 64), whereby a single category is expounded at more than one place in structure, as in the Old English form of (17): (17) luf-o-d-on love-weakii.past-weak.past-past.pl. indic ‘we / you / they loved’ -o- signals that the form is associated with a verb belonging to a particular conjugational class (weak, sub-class II) and that it is past (-o- being absent from non-past parts of the paradigm ⫺ cf. infinitive lufian); -d- that it is weak and past (strong verbs showing past by ablaut); -on that it is plural and past (no nonpasts or non-plurals end thus), and indicative. Past is expounded (cumulatively) in three different places in structure; weak in two. Multiple exponence can also be attrib-

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uted to auxiliary constructions such as (12b): progressive is expounded, in this case collectively, by both is and the -ing suffix. Further, as with the members of inflexional categories, the occurrence of auxiliaries may be determined rectionally. Thus the subjunctive in the English subordinate clause in (18a) (indicated by the absence of the third person singular -s) is triggered by the presence of a governing verb of a particular class: (18) (a) They insisted that she leave (b) They insisted that she should leave As an alternative to (18a), however, there is an auxiliary construction (18b) (sometimes interpreted as ‘more tentative’). In other circumstances the English modals have replaced the subjunctive, with the archaic (19a) giving way to (19b): (19) (a) If she had had wheels, she had been a bicycle (b) If she had had wheels, she would have been a bicycle The ‘past subjunctive’ (except partially in the case of be ⫺ recall (5c) ⫺ now formally identical with the past indicative) in (19b) is in a suppletive relation with a modal auxiliary. 2.3.2. Bleaching and transparency The reflections of paradigmaticity illustrated in 2.3.1 can be taken as evidence for the traditional idea of auxiliary constructions as ‘forms of’ the simple verb, as periphrases. As members of a paradigm, so grammaticalised, auxiliaries typically show semantic depletion or bleaching; semantically they express simply a (admittedly possibly complex) term of a category that might otherwise be expounded inflexionally. Historical depletion in the evolution of perfect auxiliaries based on ‘have / own / grasp / put’ verbs in various IndoEuropean families and elsewhere is well-documented, as it is in the development of imperfects / progressives based on verbs such as ‘exist / remain / stand’ or (other) locative con-

structions (cf. Meillet 1924; Kuryłowicz 1931; Anderson 1973; Comrie 1976: ch. 5.2; Hargreaves 1986; Green 1987; Pinkster 1987). ‘Have’-perfects are typically associated with transitive verbs, in involving a bleaching of the construction type illustrated by I have it built, with passive complement. In English, perfect have has been generalised to intransitives (including passives, so that (2b), unlike (1d), is not perfect). But in a number of other Indo-European languages (including earlier English), only some intransitives take a ‘have’-perfect, while others require ‘be’, as illustrated by (20): (20) (a) Francesca ha telefonato ‘Frances has phoned’ (b) Francesca e` arrivata ‘Frances has arrived’ This discrepancy in Italian, and other phenomena (such as agreement), has been attributed to the status of the subject of the (20b) type as an underlying object, analogous to the subject of passives, which display similar properties (cf. Burzio 1986: 1.7, who rather misleadingly refers to the (20b) construction as “ergative”, one more generally known as unaccusative). In Basque, in both perfect and imperfect constructions, transitives take a ‘have’ auxiliary and intransitives a ‘be’ (see example (32) in 3.1; and cf. Saltarelli 1988: 1.2.1). ‘Have’ perfects and the ‘have’ copula are not widespread, and, in many cases, at least, they are preceded historically by constructions with ‘be’ ⫹ locative/dative or other oblique marker (Vendryes 1937; van Ginneken 1939; Benveniste 1952; 1960), constructions which, as in (1d), combine perfect and passive. ‘Have’ constructions provide a periphrastic active parallel to the passive perfect of (1d) etc., though, initially at least, concord on the participle continues to reflect the predicative status of the participle vis-a`-vis the object, as in the Latin of (21) (from Pinkster 1987: 210):

(21) Habeo cibum coctum have:1.sg food:acc.sg.m cooked:acc.sg.m Alternatively, passive perfects can develop into an ergative system, resulting in aspectually-split ergativity: accusative imperfect vs. ergative perfect (cf. e.g. Trask 1977). Some languages show a distinction between ‘be’ and ‘become’ or ‘come’/‘go’/‘get’ passives, marking language-particular se-

mantic differences partially related to the semantics of the corresponding lexical verbs (Siewierska 1984: 4.1.1). Another source for passive auxiliaries (illustrated in the Dravidian languages and elsewhere) is in (arguably goal-subject) verbs like ‘suffer’, ‘receive’ or even ‘eat’ (Caldwell 1875: 358). In Viet-

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namese, the verbs bi (‘suffer something unpleasant’) and duoc (‘undergo something not unpleasant’) form alternative passives (cf. Le 1976, who also discusses similar constructions in other languages). The main sources of future/predictive auxiliaries are in distal goal-oriented directionals (‘go to’) and volitionals and obligationals (Bybee & Pagliuca 1987); ‘recent past’ and perfect auxiliaries often derive from a distal source-oriented directional (‘come from’). Perfects also evolve from completive (‘use up’ / ‘finish’) verbs (cf. e.g. Munro 1984, on Muskogean). Epistemic senses for modals and the marking of mood (as in (18b) and (19)) seem to develop later than the less-depleted other senses; and the latter show a range of ‘natural’ sources: ‘know’ / ‘have power’ / ‘be fitted to’ ⇒ ‘be able’ (⇒ ‘be allowed’), ‘owe’ ⇒ ‘have to’, etc. (Standop 1957; Givoń 1982; Shepherd 1982; Traugott 1989).

The development of clitics and morphological forms from earlier verbal auxiliary constructions seems to be well attested (cf. e.g. (on Latin and Romance) Pinkster 1987; Vincent 1987; (on Muskogean) Haas 1977; Munro 1984), and this ‘syntactic depletion’ can indeed be seen as confirming the paradigmaticity of these and other auxiliary constructions. Depletion might also be said to be reflected in the typical transparency of auxiliaries to argument structure. The subject of an auxiliary, for instance, typically does not have its semantic function determined by the auxiliary but by the non-auxiliary with which that auxiliary is associated; auxiliaries typically do not impose selectional restrictions on their subjects or other potential arguments in the overall construction. As already observed (1.2), in some languages (some) auxiliaries are indeed overtly impersonal, as in constructions involving Greek prepi:

(22) Pre´pi na ton do must:3.sg prt 3:acc.sg.m see:aor.subj.1.sg ‘I must see him’ which is invariable for person/number (and governs a finite (subjunctive) clause ⫺ cf. e.g. Mackridge 1985: 2.4.1). 2.4, however, looks at some consequences and limitations of taking transparency as criterial for auxiliarihood. 2.4. Paradigmatic, derivational and syntactic auxiliaries If we associate transparency with auxiliarihood, this would include within the class of auxiliaries all raising-to-subject verbs, such as seem, appear, happen etc. in English. This would mean that an even larger number of (paradigmatic) auxiliaries in English would fail to meet the syntactic criteria discussed above (in 2.1) as NICE phenomena; there would be a marked discrepancy between the sets of syntactic and paradigmatic auxiliaries, the latter set being much more inclusive. And the range of ‘auxiliary notions’ would likewise be more extensive. But perhaps this is appropriate, on grounds of paradigmaticity. A verb like English seem could be seen as the periphrastic equivalent of the (arguably ‘modal’) inferential verb forms of a language like Takelma, as in (23b): (23) (a) Mena` yap⬘a t⬘omo˜-k‘wa bear man kill-3.human.obj ‘The bear killed the man’

(b) Mena` yap⬘a doo˜m-k‘wa-k‘ bear man kill:irr-3.human.obj-inferential ‘It seems that the bear killed the man’ (Chung & Timberlake 1985: 3.3; cf. too Anderson 1985: 2.2.1), where the irrealis stem and the final inferential suffix mark the proposition expressed as not necessarily being vouched for by the speaker. (Comrie 1976: 5.2.2.1) discusses inferential auxiliary constructions in Bulgarian, Georgian and Estonian.) Further, among this more inclusive set of auxiliaries would be a subset, particularly of verbs of ‘objective aspect’ or ‘Aktionsarten’ (Deutschbein 1939), such as the English ones in (24a), which express notions also often expounded morphologically ⫺ cf. (24b) (from Comrie 1985b: 343f.): (24) (a) It started / continued / ceased to fall (b) Russian: za-pet’ (‘start-singing’) Gombe-Fulani: ? o-dø aani-dø aaninto (‘He keeps on falling asleep’) Swahili: lev-uk-a (‘cease to be drunk’) However, the morphological relations expressed here are usually regarded as derivational rather than inflexional (cf. Art. 38). If the finite verbs in (24a) are to be regarded as auxiliaries, they are derivational rather than

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paradigmatic auxiliaries. It is possible, nevertheless, that, in this extended sense of auxiliary, raising-to-subject verbs in general might be included in the class (cf. e.g. Brinton 1988: ch. 3). Both paradigmatic and derivational auxiliaries ⫺ whether or not they are also syntac-

tic auxiliaries ⫺ are usually accompanied by marking of the complement as subordinate, specifically non-finite. Elsewhere, the auxiliate may be uninflected (Blake 1987: 7.2). And, as we have seen, Greek prepi, for instance, takes a finite complement. (25a), with bori, is similar:

(25) (a) Borı´ na fı´gun ta pedja´ may:3.sg prt leave:3.pl:aor.subj def:pl child:pl ‘It’s possible the children will leave’ (b) Boruń na fı´gun ta pedja´ may:3.pl prt leave:3.pl:aor.subj. def:pl child:pl ‘The children are able / allowed to leave’ (Mackridge 1985: 83), but the non-epistemic (25b) shows agreement on both verbs. However, in both (22) and (25), although the complement verb is finite, the clause is marked as subordinate in the construction (though na can also appear in ‘main’ clauses). But in serial verb constructions like the Akan represented by (28): (26) Mede aborow migu msum take:1.sg corn flow:1.sg in-water ‘I poured the corn into the water’ (Schachter 1974: 258), wherein the first verb is arguably a causative derivational auxiliary (cf. again Comrie 1985 b, on causative formations; also Strong 1980, on developments in Romance, again invoking the unaccusative hypothesis ⫺ cf. 2.3.2), there is no overt marking of subordination and the two verbs necessarily agree with the same subject. Causative auxiliaries are one type of valency-increasing auxiliary. The contributions to e.g. Joseph & Zwicky (1990, eds.) illustrate a range of other possibilities, including benefactive, goal and instrumental, as in Barai (27): (27) Fu bureda ije sime abe ufu 3.sg bread the knife take cut ‘He cuts the bread with a knife.’ (Seuren 1990: 19). These and the other constructions discussed in this section thus also introduce some final observations concerning transparency. If bori in (25b) is an auxiliary, then (like non-epistemic may in English) it is not obviously transparent, and this is perhaps reflected in the difference in concord patterns between (25a) and (25b). And, again, with (26), it does not look as if the auxiliary can be said to be transparent. Indeed, if causative (and other valency-increasing) constructions in general are to be

counted as containing derivational auxiliaries, the relevance of transparency to auxiliarihood is very much restricted. And, again, in English many more auxiliaries will fail to display the ‘traditional’ syntactic properties. Conversely, not all uses of syntactic auxiliaries display full depletion and transparency, or paradigmaticity. Not only are there (syntactically defined) English modals, such as dare ⫺ with admittedly a limited distribution as a modal ⫺ which (even in their use as a syntactic modal) have some possibly nonmodal lexical semantics and impose restrictions on their subjects; but also (as noted above) even the hard-core English modals in their non-epistemic uses depart from prototypicality in these respects. Thus, (28a) and (28b) differ in whether an epistemic or nonepistemic reading is more salient: (28) (a) The tower could fall down anytime (b) She could swim when she was five and on the salient reading for (28b) the modal imposes restrictions on its complement and subject. Discussion in terms of epistemic vs. non-epistemic considerably simplifies the issues involved (see again Lyons 1977: ch. 17); but the non-transparency of some uses is apparent. Perhaps it can be said that, as members of a sub-class, prototypical auxiliaries are verbs which exhibit paradigmaticity (or derivationality) with respect to the appropriate categories, associated with depletion and transparency, and which additionally may show a distinctive syntactic distribution; but that there are items which depart from prototypicality either in failing to exhibit these syntactic properties or, despite showing them, in lacking the semantic characteristics of auxiliaries.

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Auxiliaries and verbhood

3.1. The syntactic distinctiveness of auxiliaries have and be in English manifest much of the distribution of verbs; indeed, in so far as they, and not non-auxiliaries, can occur in NICE positions, their distribution is wider than other intransitive verbs that take verbal complements. But, like other such verbs, they determine rectionally these complements: have, for instance requires that the verb it governs assume the past participle form, confirming the status of have as the verb which is the syntactic head of the construction, whatever its role as expounding a term in a paradigmatic category; auxiliaries govern their auxiliates. The apparent optionality of auxiliaries, as well as their transparency, has often been taken as a bar to their status as heads (e.g. by Matthews 1981; Huddleston 1984). But other verbs with obligatory complement might similarly appear to be optional: (29) (a) She tends to like cheese (b) She likes cheese (c) She tends (to) where (29c) (as with She should) can be interpreted only elliptically. Yet the headhood of tends in (29a) is relatively uncontroversial. And auxiliaries, like other heads, are subcategorised for their complement(s), and typically conform to the word order type of the language concerned: in head-left languages, they precede (as heads) their auxiliate; in head-right, they follow them. Say we define the word class verb notionally as the distributionally established class which designates situations, the prototypical situation being an ‘action’ (cf. Art. 77). Then a syntactic subclass like the English auxiliaries can be characterised as a subset of verbs whose prototypical members express the categories associated with paradigmatic (and derivational) auxiliaries and which depart in some respects from the distribution of (other) verbs. Clearly, the delimitation of the allowable ‘respects’ in which such a subclass may deviate is crucial here. Typically, differences between auxiliary and non-auxiliary verbs involve their distribution over finite and nonfinite positions. Frequently, as in English, syntactic auxiliaries have a wider distribution than other verbs, particularly as finites; in English only auxiliaries occur as NICE finites. In these

terms, their verbhood seems to be relatively unproblematic. However, the English modals have distributionally much less in common with non-auxiliary verbs: occurrence as finite in non-NICE positions. The significance of this depends on how finiteness is expressed in the grammar. Within certain frameworks the registration of this distribution has led to the suggestion that the modals are not (specifically, are no longer) verbs (see further 3.2). On the other hand it can be said that all verbs occur in non-NICE finite positions; modals occur in NICE finite positions, but not nonfinitely; non-auxiliaries occur non-finitely, but not in NICE finite positions; non-modal auxiliaries occur in all of these. The English modals can perhaps thus be characterised as (auxiliary) verbs whose prototypical members express mood or modality and which, syntactically, show a limited distribution relative to other auxiliaries. In other languages the dichotomy between auxiliary/non-auxiliary is even more marked, but again, it has been supposed, without necessitating denial of the verbhood of the ‘auxiliary’ items involved. In present-day Basque, for instance, most verbs occur only in non-finite forms: to form a finite clause they must be accompanied by an ‘auxiliary’, as in (30): (30) (a) Ethorri da arrive:part (s)he-is ‘(S)he left/has arrived’ Ethorri zen arrive:part (s)he-was ‘(S)he had arrived’ Ethortzen da arrive:gerund (s)he-is ‘(S)he leaves/is arriving’ Ethortzen zen arrive:gerund (s)he-was ‘(S)he used to arrive/was arriving’ (b) Igorri du send:part (s)he-has-it ‘(S)he sent/has sent it’ Igorri zuen send:part (s)he-had-it ‘(S)he had sent it’ Igortzen du send-gerund (s)he-has-it ‘(S)he sends/is sending it’ Igortzen zuen send:gerund (s)he-had-it ‘(S)he used to send/was sending it’

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(30a) illustrates the use of the auxiliary with intransitive verbs; (30b) the transitive auxiliary. The auxiliary is the locus of tense variation and person and number marking, while the non-auxiliary occurs in a non-finite form, a form which elsewhere is adjectival or nominal. The Basque auxiliaries, as well as forming constructions with verbs (as in (30)), also take non-verbal complements, as in (31): (31) (a) Hirian da town-in (s)he-is ‘(S)he is in town’ (b) Liburua du book-the (s)he-has-it ‘(S)he has the book’ (cf. e.g. Saltarelli 1988: 1.2.1.1), in which situation the Basque forms would be translated as ‘be’ and ‘have’, respectively, with no distinct main verb. The Basque auxiliary verbs may be appropriately described as such: they are distributionally distinctive (with respect to finiteness) and mark distinctions in tense or aspect; and they share with non-auxiliary verbs the possibility of occurring as non-finite, as shown in (32) for the ‘be’ (auxiliary) verb: da (32) Alegera izaiten lively be:gerund (s)he-is ‘(S)he is usually lively’ This distribution as non-finite is common to all Basque verbs. What is striking is that the auxiliaries are the only finite verbs (with the few exceptions noted before), despite being non-prototypical verbs. This striking distributional distinctiveness is in contrast with the situation in Finnish (exemplified in 2.2), where auxiliary periphrases are not distributionally distinct from verb ⫹ complement structures. But a language may lack not merely syntactic distinctiveness for its auxiliaries; it may fail to show a set of auxiliaries altogether. Comrie (1991), for instance, argues that Haruai (Highland Papua New Guinea) lacks a set of items corresponding to the modals of English etc.; i.e. a set of items grammaticalised (in the prototypical cases) to express modalities. The use of the verb form in (33): (33) nagö dy-n-o⁄ -a you go-fut-2.sg-decl “does not necessarily commit the speaker to the view that the referent of the subject will

817 indeed go. [It] may equally indicate that the referent of the subject is obliged to go, that he is permitted to go, or it is possible that he will go” (Comrie 1991: 31). The intended interpretation may be made more specific pragmatically, or by paraphrase, but distinctive modal periphrases are not available. It may be that there are languages which lack auxiliaries altogether: Dyirbal (Dixon 1972) is perhaps such a language. 3.2. Non-verbal auxiliaries The question of the universality of auxiliarihood, however, is intimately bound up with the status of the notion auxiliary, and in particular its association with verbhood. A somewhat weaker position, whereby it is merely claimed that in any language some of the auxiliary notions (assuming again this set to be well-defined) will be expressed grammatically (paradigmatically), by items that are at least historically verbs or by verbal inflexion or by non-verbal closed class items, has a greater chance of universal validity. Particularly in the case of modality, whose notional connexion with verbhood is (perhaps along with tense ⫺ but see Comrie 1985 a: 1.4) arguably less close than in the case of aspect and voice, non-verbal expression of ‘auxiliary’ notions (by ‘particles’) is apparently common (cf. e.g. Palmer 1986: 1.5.3). Such a claim is made rather more vulnerable and interesting by the additional stipulation that expression is associated with a universal syntactic constituent, AUX (cf. Steele 1981, ed.; Ramat 1987), despite such apparent diversity of realisation. One consequence of this hypothesis (though this can and has been proposed independently of it) is that even in relation to a language like English, wherein the auxiliaries are clearly diachronically verbs, it has been argued that these items (or at least the first in any sequence ⫺ the one displaying the NICE properties) are not verbs. Similarly, it has been proposed (Manandise 1987) that the Basque auxiliaries illustrated in (30) ⫺ which appear to lack a verbal root ⫺ are not verbs; and, for example, it has been claimed that in Hausa “a synchronic analysis of auxiliaries as verbs seems questionable” (Schachter 1985: 41). The category status of auxiliaries is particularly opaque in the absence of overt markers of (non-)finiteness, as with the English modals.

818 Consider also e.g. the Greek ‘future’ marker ua, which is accompanied by a finite subjunctive verb: (34) ha su g ra´pso ‘I shall write to you’ Historically, this form is apparently a contraction of he´li na (he´li representing an impersonal use of heli ‘want’) ⫺ cf. (22); but in Modern Greek the form is invariant and bears no morphological mark of finiteness. It has nevertheless been maintained, though controversially, that the auxiliaries of Basque and the modals of English show a verbal distribution, even though it is shared only partially with (other) verbs; the differences can be related to finiteness. However, it does not seem that a set of syntactic auxiliary verbs can be established for every language; and even periphrastic auxiliaries may be lacking in particular languages (see 3.1). But the AUX hypothesis poses the question of universality in a different form: the putatively universal AUX may be realised inflexionally or as an element or elements with no verbal ‘connexion’. AUX is to be identified cross-linguistically in terms of the following definition: “Given a set of language-internal analyses, those constituents which may contain only a specified (i.e. fixed and small) set of elements, crucially containing elements marking tense and/or modality, will be identified as non-distinct.” (Steele 1981: 21)

Thus AUX is a constituent realised by grammatical (rather than lexical) elements some of which express modality and/or tense, a constituent which will, further (Steele 1981: ch. 2), display non-definitional properties, some absolute, some probabilistic. So, the sequence of second-position clitics in the Luisenõ (35): (35) Noo xu n po hunwuti pati I prt prt prt bear:obj shoot ‘I should shoot the bear’ is argued to be a constituent realised by grammatical elements some of which (xu and po ⫺ while n marks subject concord) express modality and tense, and which also display the non-definitional properties of e.g. occurring in a fixed internal sequence not predictable from other regularities of the language and showing attachment (cliticisation) to the preceding element. Part of the argument for the sequence in (35) constituting a constituent is the interaction of the two marginal particles in determining the global modality of the sentence.

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Controversy concerning the AUX hypothesis involves in part the nature of constituency (cf. e.g. Pullum 1981 on Akmajian & Steele & Wasow 1979, replied to in Steele 1981 ⫺ e.g. note 8 to ch.2). It is not clear, for instance, that arguments for AUX in English (e.g. Oehrle 1981) establish a syntactic constituent any more viable than the AUX of (35) rather than a class of items individually satisfying the properties attributed to AUX ⫺ and constituting paradigmatic auxiliaries. Similarly, the semantic argument for AUX in Luisenõ might be regarded rather as evidence of paradigmaticity. More generally, there has been criticism both of the semantic characterisation of AUX (Thrane 1983: ch. 3) and of equivocation in the use of criteria for its establishment in individual languages (4), as well as suggestions (cf. Reuland 1983) that AUX is simply the finite-clause manifestation of the INFL of Chomsky (1981), which therein dominates tense and agreement. The character of INFL and its relation to auxiliarihood have been in turn much debated (cf. e.g. Pollock 1989; Iatridou 1990).

4.

References

Akmajian, Adrian & Steele, Susan & Wasow, Thomas (1979), “The Category AUX in Universal Grammar”. Linguistic Inquiry 10, 1⫺64 Anderson, John M. (1973), An Essay Concerning Aspect. The Hague: Mouton Anderson, John M. (1990), “On the Status of Auxiliaries in Notional Grammar”. Journal of Linguistics 26, 241⫺262 Anderson, Stephen R. (1985), “Inflectional Morphology”. In: Shopen (ed.), 150⫺201 Appleyard, D. L. (1984), “The Morphology of the Negative Verb in Agaw”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1984, 202⫺219 Benveniste, E´mile (1952), “La construction passive du parfait transitif”. Bulletin de la socie´te´ de linguistique de Paris 48, 52⫺62 Benveniste, E´mile (1960), “ ‘Eˆtre’ et ‘avoir’ dans leurs fonctions linguistiques”. Bulletin de la socie´te´ de linguistique de Paris 55, 113⫺134 Blake, Barry J. (1987), Australian Aboriginal Grammar. London etc.: Croom Helm Brinton, Laurel (1988), The Development of English Aspectual Systems. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Browning, Robert (1969), Medieval and Modern Greek. London etc.: Hutchinson Burzio, Luigi (1986), Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht etc.: Reidel

78. Auxiliary Bybee, Joan L. & Pagliuca, William (1987), “The Evolution of Future Meaning”. In: Ramat, Anna Giacalone & Carruba, Onofrio & Bernini, Giuliano (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 109⫺122 Caldwell, R. (1875), A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages. London: Trübner Chomsky, Noam (1981), Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures. Dordrecht, Cinnamon/NJ: Foris Chung, Sandra & Timberlake, Alan (1985), “Tense, Aspect, and Mood”. In: Shopen (ed.), 202⫺258 Comrie, Bernard (1976), Aspect. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Comrie, Bernard (1985 a), Tense. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Comrie, Bernard (1985 b), “Causative Verb Formation and Other Verb-deriving Morphology”. In: Shopen (ed.), 309⫺348 Comrie, Bernard (1991), “Modality without Modals”. In: Kakietek, Piotr (ed.), Problems in the Modality of Natural Language. Opole: The Pedagogical University of Opole, 29⫺33 Dahl, Östen (1985), Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford, New York: Blackwell Deutschbein, Max (1939), Aspekte und Aktionsarten im Neuenglischen. Leipzig Dixon, R. M. W. (1972). The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press Emonds, Joseph E. (1985), A Unified Theory of Syntactic Categories. Dordrecht, Cinnamon/NJ: Foris Ginneken, Jacobus van (1939), “Avoir et eˆtre (du point de vue de la linguistique geńe´rale)”. In: Me´langes de linguistique offerts a` Charles Bally. Gene`ve: Georg, 83⫺92 Givoń, Talmy (1982), “Tense/Aspect/Modality: The Creole Prototype and Beyond”. In: Hopper (ed.), 115⫺163 Green, John N. (1987), “The Evolution of Romance Auxiliaries: Criteria and Chronology”. In: Harris & Ramat (eds.), 257⫺267 Haas, Mary R. (1977), “From Auxiliary to Inflectional Suffix”. In: Li, Charles N. (ed.), Mechanisms of Syntactic Change. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 525⫺537 Hargreaves, David (1986), “Independent Verbs and Auxiliary Functions in Newari”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 12, 401⫺412 Harman, John & Thompson, Sandra A. (1984), “ ‘Subordination’ in Universal Grammar”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 10, 510⫺23

819 Harris, Martin & Ramat, Paolo (1987, eds.), Historical Development of Auxiliaries. Berlin etc: Mouton de Gruyter Hopper, Paul (1982, ed.), Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins Huber, Walter & Kummer, Werner (1974), Transformationelle Syntax des Deutschen, Vol. I. München: Fink Huddleston, Rodney D. (1979), “Criteria for Auxiliaries and Modals”. In: Greenbaum, Sidney & Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan (eds.), Studies in English Linguistics. For Randolph Quirk. London, New York: Longman, 65⫺78 Huddleston, Rodney D. (1984), Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Iatridou, Sabine (1990), “About Agr(P)”. Linguistic Inquiry 21, 551⫺577 Joseph, Brian D. & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1990, eds.), When Verbs Collide: Papers from the 1990 Ohio State Mini-Conference on Serial Verbs. Columbus/OH: Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State Univ. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1931), “Les temps compose´s du roman”. Prace Filologiczne 15, 448⫺453 Le, Tam Duy (1976), “Vietnamese Passives”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 12, 438⫺449 Lehmann, Christian (1993), “The Genesis of Auxiliaries in Yucatec Maya”. Proceedings of the International Congress of Linguists 15.2 (1992), 313⫺316 Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1981), Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Los Angeles, London: California Univ. Press Lyons, John (1968), Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Lyons, John (1977), Semantics, Vol. II. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Mackridge, Peter (1985), The Modern Greek Language. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Manandise, Esme´ralda (1987), “AUX in Basque”. In: Harris & Ramat (eds.), 317⫺344 Matthews, Peter H. (1981), Syntax. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Meillet, Antoine (1924), “Le de´veloppement du verbe ‘avoir’”. In: Antidoron: Festschrift J. Wackernagel. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 9⫺13 Mufwene, Salikoko S. & Bokamba, Eyamba G. (1979), “Are there Modal-auxiliaries in Lingala?” Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 15, 244⫺255 Munro, Pamela (1984), “Auxiliaries and Auxiliarization in Western Muskogean”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (ed.), Historical Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 333⫺362 Oehrle, Richard (1981), “AUX in English”. In: Steele (ed.), 226⫺259

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Palmer, Frank R. (1986), Mood and Modality. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Pinkster, Harm (1987), “The Strategy and Chronology of the Development of Future and Perfect Tense Auxiliaries in Latin”. In: Harris & Ramat, 193⫺223 Pollock, J.-Y. (1989), “Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP”. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365⫺424 Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1981), “Evidence against the ‘AUX’ Node in Luisenõ and English”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 453⫺463 Ramat, Paolo (1987), Introductory Paper to Harris & Ramat (eds.), 3⫺19 Reuland, Erik J. (1983), “Government and the Search for AUXes: A Case Study in Cross-linguistic Category Identification”. In: Heny, Frank & Richards, Barry (eds.), Linguistic Categories: Auxiliaries and Related Puzzles, Vol. II: The Scope, Order, and Distribution of English Auxiliary Verbs. Dordrecht etc.: Reidel, 99⫺168 Saltarelli, Mario (1988), Basque. London etc.: Croom Helm Schachter, Paul (1974), “A Non-transformational Account of Serial Verbs”. Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement 5, 253⫺270 Schachter, Paul (1985), “Parts-of-speech Systems”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. I: Clause Structure. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2⫺61 Seuren, Pieter (1990), “Serial Verb Constructions”. In: Joseph & Zwicky (eds.), 14⫺33 Shepherd, Susan (1982), “From Deontic to Epistemic: An Analysis of Modals in the History of English, Creoles, and Language Acquisition”. In: Ahlqvist, Anders (ed.), Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 316⫺323 Shopen, Timothy (1985, ed.) Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press Siewierska, Anna (1984), The Passive: A Comparative Linguistic Analysis. London etc.: Croom Helm

Standop, E. (1957), Syntax und Semantik der modalen Hilfsverben im Altenglischen ‘magan’, ‘motan’, ‘sculan’, ‘willan’. Bochum-Langendreer: Boppinghaus Steele, Susan (1981, ed.), An Encyclopedia of AUX: A Study of Cross-linguistic Equivalence. Cambridge/MA, London: M. I. T. Press Strong, David R. (1980), “Relational Grammar and the Diachrony of Periphrastic Constructions in Latin and Romance”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 16, 298⫺310 Tedeschi, Philip J. & Zaenen, Annie (1981, eds.), Tense and Aspect. New York etc.: Academic Press (Syntax and Semantics 14) Thrane, Torben (1983), “On the Universality of AUX”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 18, 154⫺200 Trask, R. Larry (1977), “On the Origins of Ergativity”. In: Plank, Frans (ed.), Ergativity. London, New York: Academic Press, 385⫺404 Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1989), “On the Rise of Epistemic Meaning in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change”. Language 65, 31⫺55 Vendryes, J. (1937), “Sur l’emploi de l’auxiliaire ‘avoir’ pour marquer le passe´”. Me´langes de linguistique et de philologie offerts a` J. van Ginneken. Paris: Klincksieck, 85⫺92 Vincent, Nigel (1987), “The Interaction of Periphrasis and Inflection: Some Romance Examples”. In: Harris & Ramat (eds.), 237⫺256 Wasow, Thomas (1977), “Transformations and the Lexicon”. In: Culicover, Peter W. & Wasow, Thomas & Akmajian, Adrian (eds.), Formal Syntax. New York etc.: Academic Press, 327⫺360 Young, Philip D. & Givoń, Talmy (1990), “The Puzzle of Ngäbe´re Auxiliaries: Grammatical Reconstruction in Chibchan and Misumalpan. In: Croft, William & Denning, Keith & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Studies in Typology and Diachrony: For Joseph H. Greenberg. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 209⫺243

John M. Anderson, Edinburgh (Great Britain)

79. Minor word classes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Introduction Adpositions Conjunctions Particles Adverbs Uncommon abbreviations References

1.

Introduction

1.1. Minor word classes Although inflection is most typical of the major word classes noun, verb, adjective and closely related classes such as pronouns,

79. Minor word classes

auxiliaries and numerals (cf. Art. 73⫺78), it is occasionally observed in function words. On the basis of the different functions they express, the following classes can be distinguished: ⫺ adpositions (pre- and postpositions which express grammatical relations, cf. 2), ⫺ conjunctions (sub- and co-ordinators which express the relation between clauses and between phrases, cf. 3), ⫺ particles (elements which express grammatical distinctions such as aspect, negation, and illocution, cf. 4), and ⫺ adverbs (words which further specify events for temporal, locational and other distinctions, cf. 5). In a system of morphologically defined parts of speech, such inflected function words constitute minor word classes. There is not always a clear-cut distinction between one of the minor word classes and other word classes. There may be an overlap between content words and function words. For instance in Arawak loko can be used as a noun meaning ‘cavity’ and it can be used as a postposition to express inner location ‘in’. Hungarian kive´ve ‘except’ is an adverbial participle which is developing into a preposition. In both cases it can take an object. When the form is used as a participle it can have an object in the accusative, as in kive´ve Jańos-t ‘excepting John-acc’. However, the object does not have a case marker when the form is used as a preposition, as in kive´ve Jańos ‘except John’. There may also be an overlap between classes of function words. In Dutch there are elements which can be used as prepositions on the one hand and as particles on the other. Consider for instance op in op de tafel ‘on the table’ and op-bellen ‘to call up’. Different and more complicated is the distinction between particles and a subclass of auxiliaries. There are auxiliary elements which do not have a verbal stem and which consist of one or more grammatical morphemes. The auxiliary in Warlpiri, for instance, can take the following sequence of markers: relative ⫺ tense/mood/ aspect ⫺ subject agreement ⫺ object agreement, or negative ⫺ tense/mood/aspect ⫺ subject agreement as in (Hale 1973: 312): (1) kula-ka-a wawiri pura-mi neg-pres-1.sg kangaroo cook-nonpast ‘I am not cooking the kangaroo.’ The element ka in the “auxiliary” together with the element mi on the finite verb mark

821 the present tense and the progressive aspect. If ka in (1) is considered the root of the auxiliary, one might argue that forms such as kulaka-a are inflected particles. Such an analysis is indeed plausible for the so-called “negative auxiliaries” in Arabic (cf. 4), but elements which carry tense/mood/aspect distinctions together with subject and object agreement markers are better regarded as auxiliary verbs (cf. Art. 78). From a morphological point of view, minor word classes have the following properties: (a) Unlike verbs, which can have inflectional paradigms to mark aspectual, temporal, modal, and person distinctions, or nouns, which can have case inflection, minor word classes do not have their own inflectional paradigms. When inflectional forms in minor word classes are found they always belong to the paradigms of major word classes such as verbs, nouns and adjectives. In Erza Mordvin the postposition can even be inflected with both verbal and nominal affixes (cf. (31) below). However, most elements of the minor word classes do not allow any inflection at all. (b) Typically, inflectional categories are fully productive within a given class. However, they are not fully productive within minor word classes. The main reason for that is that minor word classes are rather heterogeneous. For instance, the class of particles may encompass elements which are neither semantically, syntactically nor formally related. Nevertheless it is quite common to classify elements referred to as verbal particles, question particles, and negative particles under one heading. On the other hand the class of adpositions does not seem to have this kind of diversity. However, languages may have adpositions which originate from verbs and adpositions which originate from nouns. In these cases the deverbal adpositions may show different inflectional morphology than the denominal adpositions. Another reason for the fact that inflectional categories are not fully productive within minor word classes is that these word classes do not have their own inflectional paradigms (cf. (a)). There are instances of derivation within minor word classes. However, these are rare. One example constitutes diminutive formation within the class of prepositions in Arabic. Prepositions in Arabic can be combined with the diminutive infix in the same way as nouns do (Fischer 1987: 134). For that reason

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the prepositions listed in the second column can be considered forms derived from the prepositions presented in the first column: (2) ba’da ‘after’ qabla ‘before’ fawqa ‘over’

bu’yada ‘little after’ qubayla ‘little before’ fuwayqa ‘little over’

(3) biyal ‘sometimes’ maradhal ‘far back (in time)’ dhalan ‘close (in time)’ dhuga:y ‘really, indeed’ yu:dhi ‘excessively’

biyalbu ‘always’ maradhalbu ‘as far back as possible’ dhalanbu ‘as close as possible’ dhuga:ybu ‘absolutely’ yu:dhibu ‘absolutely excessively’

The difference between these forms can be taken to be the result of some derivational process. However, the suffix -bu is also found on elements which belong to other word classes, such as nominals, determiners, and particles. The unified meaning of the suffix -bu seems to be that of universal quantification. In that case, the application of -bu may rather be analyzed as the result of a grammatical operation, hence -bu can be considered an inflectional morpheme. 1.2.

Less clear is the following example from Ngiyambaa. In Ngiyambaa there is a systematic semantic difference between adverbs which have the suffix -bu and adverbs which do not have this suffix (Donaldson 1980: 76f.). Consider:

Inflection of minor word classes

1.2.1. Inherent category The distinctive aspect of inherent categories is that they are not imposed by the structural position occupied by the word and they do not depend on the properties of other words in the structure, for instance the difference between singular and plural. It is not likely to find many examples of this type of category within minor word classes. However, the application of the universal quantifier in Ngiyambaa (see (3) above) may be an example of an inherent category. A second example may be reduplication of ideophones in Turkana (cf. Art. 138 and Dimmendaal 1982). Each verb in Turkana has its specific ideophones. Ideophones of durative verbs can be reduplicated to express ongoing activ-

ity. It is also possible to repeat the ideophones three or four times. For instance: (4) e`-lo`s-i’ ciiim ciiim ciiim ciiim 3.s-go-asp ideop ideop ideop ideop ‘He walks with pride.’ Non-durative verbs do not allow reduplication of ideophones, because these verbs cannot express ongoing activity; they are momentary verbs. Note that (4) shows reduplication of a minor word. 1.2.2. Relational category Relational categories reflect the position the word occupies in larger structures, for instance subject or object, or agent or patient. Prototypically, minor word classes do not occur in this type of position. There are, however, instances in which an element can be involved in more than one relation. In those cases it is possible to find the expression of the different relations realized in one word. Consider for instance Arabic in which the prepositions mitl- ‘like’ and g˙ayr- ‘unlike’, which express the relation between entities, can be marked for different cases to express the relation between the verb and (one of) the entities. The preposition mitl- ‘like’ takes the accusative case in (5a) and the genitive in (5b), whereas the preposition g˙ayr- ‘unlike’ is marked with the accusative case in (6a) and the nominative case in (6b):

(5) (a) qul la-hu¯ mitßl-a dß a¯lika say:imp.sm to-3sm like-acc that ‘Tell him the same.’ (b) ‘ata¯ bi-na¯qat-i-n mitßl-i na¯qatı¯ come:perf.3.sg.m with-she-camel-gen-indef like-gen she-camel:1.sg ‘He brought a she-camel like mine.’ (6) (a) dß ahaba n-na¯s-u g˙ayr-a-na¯ go:perf.3sm the-people-nom except-acc-1p ‘The people left except for us.’ (b) man ’ila¯h-u-n g˙ayr-u lla¯h-i who god-nom-indef except-nom God-gen ‘Who can be a god except for Allah?’

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Different from the Arabic examples is a second example which comes from Arawak (Baarle et al. 1989). The location of events can be expressed by the inner locative postposition loko. Since this postposition is associated with stative states of affairs, the suffix -di is added to the postposition to indicate that the state of affairs designated by the verb is dynamic and not stative. The suffix -di triggers the aspiration of /k/ in lokhodi. (7) lo-kojwa-bo-ka li-sikwa lokho-di 3.m-go.back-asp-tns 3m-house in-dyn ‘He is going up and down in his house.’ Note that in the examples of both languages, it is not the adposition which is the element that is involved in one of the relations. The adpositions seem to be the appropriate place to mark the expression of the second relation. 1.2.3. Agreement The third inflectional category arises by agreement with properties of some other word or phrase. The category of agreement seems to be the most applicable category within the minor word classes. However, if one considers referential affixes a category distinct from the category of agreement, genuine examples are rare. One good example presents Arawak in which there is gender agreement between the conjunction and the second member in a coordination. (8) (a) li wadili matho hijaro art.masc man and:fem woman ‘the man and the woman’ (b) to hijaro mathi wadili art.fem woman and:masc man ‘the woman and the man’ A second example comes from Erza Mordvin in which postpositions can be used as predicates (Erdo˝di 1968). First and second person distinctions of the subject are marked on the postpositions themselves. Third person subjects are expressed by personal pronouns (cf. 3.2). In constructions with third person subjects the postpositional predicate agrees in number with the subject. Consider:

ticle in Arabic: laysa (3sg.m.), laysat (3sg.f.), lasta (2sg.m.), lasti (2sg.f.), lastu (1sg.), etc. See 4 for further discussion of these data.

2.

Adpositions

2.1. Nominal inflection 2.1.1. Introduction Inflected adpositions ⫺ pre- and postpositions ⫺ are found in many languages of the world, as for instance in Abkhaz (Caucasian) (10a), Hixharyana (Amerind; Ge-PanoCarib) (10b), Hungarian (Uralic-Yukaghir) (10c), Tarafit (Afro-Asiatic; Berber) (10d), Breton (Indo-Hittite; Celtic) (10e). (10) (a) a-q’⫹ne` ‘3.sg.nonhum-at (at it)’ (b) k-hoko ‘pl-incl.concerning (concerning us)’ (c) alatt-od ‘under-2.sg (under you)’ (d) gar-s ‘to-3.sg (to him)’ (e) evid-om ‘for-1.pl ‘(for us)’ Adpositions which can be inflected for person distinctions are also called “prepositional pronouns” in Irish (Bammesberger 1983: 56), “prepositions allowing personal endings” in Breton (Press 1986: 116⫺119), and “conjugated prepositions” in Welsh (Williams 1980: 127⫺129). Adpositions that are inflected for person distinctions are referential. In most cases the referential element can be identified as a prefix or suffix attached to an adposition in a similar way as referential affixes or person marking affixes are found on verbs and nouns as for instance in Hungarian: (11) (a) Se´ta´l-ok. (walk-1.sg ‘I walk.’) (b) könyv-ed (book-2.sg ‘your book’) (c) alatt-a (under-3.sg ‘under him / her / it’)

(9) (a) son udalo he after-sg ‘He is after.’ (b) si‹ n´ udalo-t they after-pl ‘They are after.’

Historically, these types of affixes arise by the spelling out of subject, direct object, indirect object and possessor. The motivation to consider referential affixes a distinct category and not a type of agreement is the following. Along the lines of Givoń (1976) and De Groot & Limburg (1986) it can be argued that unstressed pronouns cliticize onto verbs, then become affixes which are however still clearly pronominal in nature, and in the last stage wear down to agreement affixes or zero. This diachronic process can schematically be presented as follows:

A third example may be person and number agreement of the subject on the negative par-

(12) free pronoun J clitic J referential affix J agreement marker J zero

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Thus, phenomena usually referred to as “verbal agreement” are, as a group, less homogenous than the term suggests. A distinction can be made between referential and nonreferential “agreement markers” on the verb. Consider the following paradigms of, in themselves, complete expressions in Dutch, English, and Hungarian: (13) Dutch ik werk jij werk-t hij werk-t wij werk-en jullie werk-en zij werk-en

English I work you work he work-s we work you work they work

Hungarian dolgoz-om dolgoz-ol dolgoz-ik dolgoz-unk dolgoz-tok dolgoz-nak

The verbal endings in Dutch and English can be considered to be the result of a subject agreement rule. The verbal suffixes in Hungarian can be considered referential affixes which are the spelling out of the subjects. Note, however, that the Hungarian examples can be extended with a personal pronoun (cf. (14a)), but also with a noun phrase (cf. (14b)): ˝ k dolgoz-nak. (14) (a) O they work-3.pl ‘They work.’ (b) A fiu´k dolgoz-nak. the boys work-3.pl ‘The boys work.’ In this view the free pronoun in (14a) and the noun phrase in (14b) are considered as extensions of the verbal form and not as overt expressions of the subject (de Groot 1989). Affix-marked constituents are complete in themselves and do not need free NP forms or free pronouns to be well formed. However, they allow these forms as a kind of appositives to the referential affixes (cf. Boas 1911). Consider the following examples with referential affixes on nouns in (15) and on adpositions in (16) in Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979): (15) (a) ye-y⬚ne` 3.sg.m-house ‘his house’ (b) yara` ye-y⬚ne he 3.sg.m-house ‘his house’ (c) a`-cˇ’k⬚’en ye-y⬚ne def-boy 3.sg.m-house ‘the boy’s house’ (16) (a) a-q’⫹ne` 3.sg.nonhum-at ‘at it’

(b) yara` a-q’⫹ne` it 3.sg.nonhum-at ‘at it’ (c) a-je`yas a-q’⫹ne` def-river 3.sg.nonhum-at ‘at the river’ Expressions with referential marking on verbs, nouns, and adpositions which allow optional cross-referential noun phrases and free pronouns as appositives to the person marking elements will be referred to as “appositional constructions” in this article. 2.1.2. Typological assessment Languages with appositional constructions generally show the following distributions of referential affixes over different constructions. It seems that there are languages with appositional constructions at the sentence level but not at the NP- and PP-levels. Also, there are languages with referential affixes at the sentence level and at the NP level, but not at the PP level. Thus, a hierarchy as in (17), where PM indicates “person marker”, seems to be involved: (17) Verb⫹PM > Noun⫹PM > Adposition ⫹PM More often than not, there are strong similarities, up to complete identity, between the affixes marking these different categories. There are strong similarities between the person affix paradigms which mark the subject on the verb, the possessor on the noun, and the object on the adposition. In those languages in which there are different paradigms to express the subject respectively the object there are strong similarities between the object marker, the possessor marker and the object marker on the adposition. The paradigms which mark the possessor on the noun and the object on the adposition show great affinity. As for languages with inflected adpositions, it appears that most of them allow only a limited class of adpositions to be inflected. Limitations on these classes can be explained from a diachronic perspective. There are two developments. In the first one part of the adpositions developed into adpositions which were sensitive to person marking, whereas the other part was not (see 2.1.3). The second diachronic process shows the opposite development: a part of the adpositions loses the possibility to be inflected for person, whereas the other part keeps this possibility (see 2.1.4).

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2.1.3. The rise of inflected adpositions Adpositions may arise historically from nouns and verbs (cf. Mallinson & Blake 1981: 385f.). A straightforward explanation for the occurrence of referential affixes on adpositions and the strong similarities between these affixes with other person marking paradigms may then be the following: adpositional affixes arise from a reinterpretation of verb ⫹ (object) pronominal affix and noun ⫹ (possessor) pronominal affix. It appears that denominal adpositions are better candidates for having pronominal affixes than deverbal adpositions. The reason for that may be that many verbal forms which develop into adpositions are verbal stems, infinitives, and participles, which are not inflected for person distinctions. Nouns which develop into adpositions are typically in the position to be inflected for person distinctions, because they are nouns which occur in, mostly inalienable, possessive constructions. The development runs allong the following lines, where (18b) is the reinterpretation of (18a): (18) (a) NP NP-possessor house inside-3.sg ‘the house its inside’ house roof-3.sg ‘the house its roof’ house back-3.sg ‘the house its back’ (b) NP adposition-person/number house inside-3.sg ‘in the house’ house roof-3.sg ‘on the house’ house back-3.sg ‘back of the house’ A relation of the type between (18a) and (18b) is visible in Turkish, where a number of postpositions are based on forms which can be used as nouns which are used with their own lexical meaning. For instance alt in masanın alt-ı ‘table-gen underside-3.sg (the underside of the table / under the table)’ (Lewis 1967: 80). It is not the case that all adpositions which can be inflected in a language arise in the way sketched in (18). When a person marking paradigm has been established in a language, the paradigm may be applied to other new adpositions which originate from other constructions than possessive constructions. There are cases where a noun

must have become an adposition before bound pronominal forms could be added. In (19) for instance, the noun hely in Hungarian is followed by an old locative case-ending and a pronominal affix. (19) hely-ett-em place-loc-1.sg ‘instead of me’ If a construction of noun ⫹ pronominal affix had been the basis of this construction, one would have expected the order noun ⫺ person affix ⫺ locative. Postpositions may develop into case affixes. In some of the languages which show this development, case affixes may still serve as hosts for person marking affixes. This is for instance the case in Erza Mordvin and in Hungarian. An example of an inflected postposition in Hungarian is (19). The dative case suffix as in Peti-nek ‘Pete-dat (to Pete)’ occurs in inflected forms as in nek-em ‘dat-1.sg (to me)’ or nek-ed ‘dat-2.sg (to you)’. A second example is the comitative/instrumental case as in Petivel ‘Pete-com (with Pete)’ velünk ‘com-1.pl (with me)’ or vel-ük ‘com-3.pl (with them)’. Finnish, another Finno-Ugric language, shows a distribution which is different from Hungarian (20a). Finnish only allows appositonal constructions with postpositions, but does not allow inflected case affixes. Instead pronouns are marked with case affixes (20b) (20)

Postposition (a) (eń⫽)vel-em I⫽with-1.sg ‘with me’ (b) (minu) kanssa-ni I with-1.sg ‘with me’

Case (eń⫽)ben-em I=inessive-1.sg ‘to me’ minu-ssa I-inessive ‘inside me’

The different degrees of morphological boundedness of case markers is also reflected in the order of affixes. Hungarian takes the order person marker ⫺ case marker (üvegem-bo˝l bottle-1.sg-elative ‘from the bottle’), whereas Finnish takes the order of case marker ⫺ person marker (pullo-sta-ni bottleelative-1.sg ‘from the bottle’). 2.1.4. The fall of inflected adpositions The diachronic process sketched in (12) together with the hierarchy (17) predicts that in languages with appositional constructions the referential affixes on adpositions are first in line to wear down to agreement markers and zero. This seems to be correct. The loss

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of person marking affixes goes together with a reinterpretation of the appositional constructions as non-appositional constructions. This goes as follows. In the development of a language the appositional construction, in which the pronominal affix is the head and the noun phrase is the optional extension of the head, is reinterpreted as a construction in which the noun phrase (no longer optional) is the head and the person marking affix is the agreement marker (AM) of the head. Then the agreement marker wears down to zero. Consider: (21) (NP) Adpos⫹PM J NP Adpos⫹AM J NP Adpos The effect of the reinterpretation of appositional constructions with a free personal pronoun (cf. (16b)) may be similar to that of (21) but may also be different. Notice that unlike noun phrases in appositional constructions free pronouns do not give further information. The prototypical use of free pronouns in these constructions is to emphasize the person referred to by the pronominal affix. The reinterpretation may lead to two different patterns, one based on constructions in which person is emphasized and one based on constructions in which person is not emphasized. The reinterpretation of constructions in which person is emphasized may

be similar to that of constructions with an noun phrase as in (22): (22) (Pronoun) Adpos⫹PM J Pronoun Adpos⫹AM J Pronoun Adpos Constructions without emphasis on person may develop into constructions in which the pronoun is not used any longer. There remains the adposition with person marking as the unmarked form: (23) (Pronoun) Adpos⫹PM J Adpos⫹PM Because after reinterpretation no free pronouns are used in this type of construction, the expression of person by means of pronominal affixes will be maintained. These forms may therefore be more conservative than other forms with person marking affixes in the sense that languages may lose the system of pronominal affixing and still have adpositions which combine with person marking elements. This will be suggested for Irish, below. The examples (15) and (16) show that Abkhaz is a language that can have both noun phrases and free pronouns as appositives to referential affixes on adpositions. Hungarian is a language that lost the possibility to have noun phrases as appositives in this type of construction. Constructions with free pronouns do occur. The examples (24) illustrate the development as in (21) in Hungarian:

(24) (a) a ha´z mögött-e (Middle Hungarian) the house behind-3.sg ‘behind the house’ (b) a ha´z mögött (Modern Hungarian) the house behind ‘behind the house’ The following examples illustrate that the person marking suffix applies in cases without a noun phrase. In constructions with emphasis on the person the free pronoun is added to the postposition as a clitic (cf. (25b)). Omission of the person marking suffix yields an ungrammatical form (cf. 25c)). (25) (a) mögött-em behind-1.sg ‘behind me’

(b) eń⫽mögött-em I⫽behind-1.sg ‘behind ME’ (c) *eń-mögött I-behind ‘behind me’ Finally consider Erza Mordvin which has the following features. Like Hungarian, the appositional construction with a noun phrase has lost. For instance:

(26) (a) kudo malaso house beside ‘beside the house’ (b) *kudo malaso-so (hypothetical construction) house beside-3.sg ‘beside the house’

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Appositional constructions with a free pronoun can still be used. However, there is a strong preference to use “pronoun ⫹ adposition” in emphatic cases (cf. (22)), and “adposition⫹PM” in non-emphatic cases (cf. (23)). For instance: (27) (a) mon´ malaso-n (obsolete) 1.gen beside-1.sg ‘beside me’ (b) mon´ malaso 1.gen beside ‘beside ME’ (c) malaso-n beside-1.sg ‘beside me’ A final example of the fall of the system of person marking which effects that class of adpositions comes from Irish (The Christian Brothers 1990). In Irish there are person marking elements on verbs and prepositions. The elements on verbs also express tense/ mood/aspect distinctions, i.e. different elements are fused into one. Only 16 prepositions combine with person marking affixes; the others do not. For instance: ag-am ‘at1.sg (at me)’, as-at ‘out of-2.sg (out of you)’, trı´-nn ‘through-1.pl (through us)’. Moreover, the so-called “prepositional pronoun” paradigms show many irregularities. In other words, the system of person marking affixes in Irish seems to be highly grammaticalized and in the case of prepositions, it is non-productive. Given the lines of diachronic development presented above it can be hypothesized that in Irish the system of pronominal affixing developed into a system of agreement (cf. (12)). The presence of prepositions which can be marked for person distinctions may be explained on the basis of the development summarized in (23), i.e. constructions with non-emphatic pronouns and adpositions with a person marking affix develop into constructions in which the free pronoun is not used any longer. There remains the adposition ⫹ person marker. Since in these constructions person is expressed in the affix and nowhere else, the affix will not develop into an agreement marker, and will not wear down to zero. That is why these forms can still be found in languages which do not have a system of person affixing any longer. It is suggested here that Irish is such a language.

It is interesting to see how person can be emphasized in prepositional forms with person marking affixes in Irish. Emphasis on person is expressed by means of a suffix which attaches to the free pronoun and also to the inflected preposition. These suffixes take a different form for each person: (28) (a) free pronouns non-emphatic: me´ ‘I’, tu´ ‘you’, sinn ‘we’, etc. emphatic: mise ‘I’, tusa ‘you’, sinne ‘we’, etc. (b) preposition⫹person marker non-emphatic: agam ‘at me’, agat ‘at you’, againn ‘at us’, etc. emphatic: agamsa ‘at me’, agatsa ‘at you’, againne ‘at us’, etc. 2.1.5. Case marking Many languages allow the combination of two adpositions to express a location together with a direction or source, as for instance in ⫹ to in English into. Languages which have both adpositions and cases may provide examples of combinations of adpositions with cases. The following examples from Arawak illustrate the independent use of postposition loko in (29a), the directional case-ending -nro in (29b), and the combination of the two lokonro in (29c): (29) (a) konoko loko forest in ‘in the forest’ (b) konoko-nro forest-dir ‘to the forest’ (c) konoko loko-nro forest in-dir ‘into the forest’ Another language in which in a rather productive way cases can be applied to postpositions is Erza Mordvin, for instance: mala ‘beside’, mala-so ‘beside-locative (beside)’, mala-sto ‘beside-ablative (from beside)’, mala-s ‘beside-allative (to beside)’, mala-v ‘beside-illative (towards beside)’, mala-va ‘beside-prolative (from beside away)’. Another ⫺ rather exceptional ⫺ construction in which the combination of adpositions and cases occurs is found in Arabic. This construction is presented in section 1.2.2 above.

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2.2. Verbal inflection There are languages in which adpositions can be used predicatively. In English constructions such as John is in require the auxiliary verb be to mark subject and tense distinctions, as in I am in, They were in, etc. Erza Mordvin does not use an auxiliary verb to mark these types of distinctions. The predicative postpositions in Erza Mordvin combine with person marking affixes, which refer to first and second person singular/plural, the plural agreement marker, and a past tense marker. Erza Mordvin has two person marking paradigms, one to refer to subject, and one to refer to possessor. Postpositions combine with both types: (30) (a) udalo-jan after-1.sg(subj) ‘I am after’ (b) udalo-n after-1.sg(poss) ‘after me’ No person marker goes with third person singular or plural. Instead the free pronoun is used. The predicative postposition agrees in number with the subject (cf. (9) above). Now consider the application of past tense on the predicative postposition in Erza Mordvin: (31) vir´ alo-l´. forest under-past ‘It was under the forest.’ Different from the examples from Erza Mordwin is the following example from Arawak in which a postpositional phrase functions as a predicate. Tense is marked on the most right possible position of the predicate, in this case on the postposition: (32) to marisi dwada loko-ka. the corn pan in-pres ‘The corn is in the pan.’

2.3. Other Attributes of nominal heads in Arawak are marked by the element -tho. The so-called relativization marker -tho applies to for instance adjectives as in (33a) and to postpositional phrases as in (33b): (33) (a) hehe-tho marisi yellow-rel corn ‘yellow corn’ (b) to marisi dwada loko-tho the corn pan in-rel ‘the corn in the pan’ Another example of an inflected adposition is the locative postposition in Arawak which can be marked for occurring in a dynamic state of affairs (cf. (7) above).

3.

Conjunctions

Inflection on co-ordinators is rather exceptional. An example of gender agreement between the second member in a coordination and the conjunction exhibits Arawak (cf. (8) above). Inflection on subordinators is less exceptional. There are examples of case marking, agreement, and referential affixes. Firstly consider case marking on subordinators. In Cuzco Quechua finite relative clauses end with an element cˇay (cf. Lefebvre 1980). This element can be considered a subordinating device and not a relative pronoun. It is related to the deictic pronoun and determiner cˇay ‘that’. The element cˇay which ends the relative clause carries the same case as the coreferential pronoun or deictic pronoun in the matrix clause. Note the comitative case -wan on both cˇay and the pronoun pay in (34). The form pay-wan is followed by an “independent suffix” (indep) which is not relevant for the present discussion. Consider:

(34) warmi hamu-sa-n cˇay-wan, pay-wan-mi rima-saq woman come-prog-3.sg cˇay-com she-com-indep speak-1.sg.fut ‘I will speak with the woman who is coming.’ Also finite complement clauses end with the element cˇay. In object clauses and indirect question clauses the element cˇay is marked

by the accusative -ta, as for instance in the following example:

(35) warmi hamu-sa-n cˇay-ta, ay-ta-puni riku-ni woman come-prog-3.sg cˇay-acc that-acc-indep see-I ‘I see that a woman is coming.’

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Secondly consider the following example from Bavarian German, in which there is agreement between the subordinator and the

second person subject of the embedded clause. There is no agreement with first and third person subjects (cf. Bayer 1984):

(36) (a) du bis daß-st kumm-st is d’-Suppn scho¯ koid. you (nom.sg) until that-s.sg come-2.sg is the-soup already cold ‘By the time you arrive the soup will already be cold.’ (b) ia / e:s bis daß-ts kumm-ts … you(nom.pl) until that-2.pl come-2.pl … Overt expression of the pronouns is not necessary. Still the suffixes -st and -ts are no referential affixes. However, t in -st might originate from du ‘you (nom-sg)’. Thirdly, the data presented by Bennis & Haegeman (1984) show that West-Flemish allows person marking affixes on subordinators. The full paradigm for pronominal affixes which refer to the subject on the subordinator dat ‘that’ is given in (37). The free pronoun is optional. dank (ik) kommen daj (gie) komt datje (jij) komt dase (zie) komt dat (et) komt dame (wunder) kommen … daj (gunder) komt … danze (zunder) kommen

(37) … … … … … …

‘that ‘that ‘that ‘that ‘that ‘that

I come’ you come’ he comes’ she comes’ it comes’ we come’

‘that you come’ ‘that they come’

This type of construction does not allow the extension of a full noun. Inflected subordinators are found in many dialects of German and Dutch. They are not all of the same sort. It is not clear how and under which conditions the inflectional categories arise.

4.

Particles

In many languages the expression of grammatical distinctions with respect to aspect, tense, mood, negation and illocution take the form of particles. In general each distinction corresponds to one particle. The particles themselves are normally not open to inflection. In some cases, in which to grammatical operations are expressed in one particle, one

may find examples of suppletion. Consider for instance the following examples from Irish in which “negation” and “present tense” is expressed by nı´ in (38a) and “negation” and “past tense” by nıór in (38b): (38) (a) nı´ maith le-is cafe neg:pres good with-3.sg coffee ‘He does not like coffee.’ (b) nıór mhaith le-is cafe neg:past good with-3.sg coffee ‘He did not like coffee.’ In Hungarian illocution effects the form of the negation particle. In imperative constructions the negative particle is ne or se. In nonimperative constructions the negative particle takes the form nem or sem. The negator in Erza Mordvin can even take five different forms, four of which can be inflected for subject distinctions. The choice which form is used is determined by temporal, modal, and illocutionary operators. Negative elements which are inflected for subject distinctions are often referred to as negative auxiliary verbs. However, there are languages in which the inflected negative elements can be analyzed as inflected particles and not as auxiliary verbs. One clear case constitutes Arabic negative auxiliary. In negative sentences in Arabic both finite verb and negative element are marked for person, number, and gender of the subject. Negative sentences in Arabic cannot synchronically be analyzed as consisting of two clauses as for instance in the following sense: ‘it is not for us, that we come’ (cf. (39a)). Since negative sentences have a finite verb, the inflected negator cannot also be considered a(n auxiliary) verb, but rather a particle which is inflected through agreement. Consider the following two examples:

(39) (a) lasna¯ nasøilu ’ilay-ka. neg.1.pl come:imperf.1.pl to-2.sg.m ‘We do not come to you.’ (b) ka¯na laysa bi-bahß ¯ıl-i-n. be:perf.3.sg.m neg.3.sg.m with-avaricious-gen-indef ‘He was not avaricious.’

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Note also that tense is expressed on the finite verb and not on the negative element. Also note that the negative particle in Arabic displays stem alternation las/lays as in lasna¯ (neg:1.pl) versus laysa (neg.3.sg.m). As for inflection, the negative particle seems to be the most hospitable one among the particles. Another example comes from Arawak. The negative element can be marked for person in answers to yes/no questions. For instance manda (‘not-I’) manba (‘notyou’) manla (‘not-he’) etc.

5.

Adverbs

Inflection on adverbs is extremely rare. Adverbs which originate from nouns may show some nominal inflection as for instance in Dutch: (40) ’s morgen-s art morning-gen ‘in the morning’ Case marking of nouns in Dutch is obsolete. Only a limited number of petrified expressions show parts of the old case system. Expressions such as (40) cannot be considered ordinary noun phrases in the genitive which serve adverbial functions, but rather adverbial phrases. Erza Mordvin lacks a copula similar to English be. It allows for the predicative use of many word classes, such as nouns (lomanán man-1.sg-pres ‘I am a man’) adjectives (mazi-nén´ pretty-1.sg.past ‘I was pretty’), pronouns (ki-jan? who-1.sg.pres ‘Who am I?’), and also adverbs: (41) (a) toso-jan. there-1.sg.pres ‘I am there.’ (b) toso-jat. there-2.sg.pres ‘You are there.’ Note that the adverb combines with a suffix which belongs to the verbal paradigm.

6. asp com dir dyn

Uncommon abbreviations aspect comitative case directional case dynamic

ideop indep loc nonhum tns

7.

ideophone independent suffix locative case non-human tense

References

Baarle, Peter van & Sabajo, M. A. & Sabajo A. L & Sabajo, L. L & Stap, G. van der (1989), Arhwaka Lokonong Djang: Arowakse taalkursus en woordenboek. Haarlem: Sociaal-culturele vereniging Ikyoshie; Amsterdam: Inst. Voor Algemene Taalwetenschap, Univ. van Amsterdam (Publicaties van het Inst. Voor Algemene Taalwetenschap 55) Bammesberger, Alfred (1983), A Handbook of Irish, Vol. II: An Outline of Modern Grammar. Heidelberg: Winter Bayer, Josef (1984), “Towards an Explanation of Certain That-t Phenomena: The COMP-node in Bavarian.” In: Geest & Putseys (eds.), 23⫺32 Bennis, Hans & Haegeman, Liliane (1984), “On the Status of Agreement and Relative Clauses in WestFlemish.” In: Geest & Putseys (eds.), 33⫺53 Boas, Franz (1911), “Introduction”. In: Boas, Franz (ed.), Handbook of American Indian Languages. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1⫺83 Dimmendaal, Gerrit (1982), The Turkana Language. Ph. D. dissertation, Leyden Donaldson, Tamsin (1980), Ngiyambaa, the Language of the Wangaaybihian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Erdo˝di, Jo´zsef (1968), Erza-mordvin szövegek. Budapest: Tankönyvkiado´ Fischer, Wolfdietrich (1987), Grammatik des klassischen Arabisch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Geest, Wim de & Putseys, Yvan (1984, eds.), Sentential Complementation. Proceedings of the International Conference Held at UFSAL, Brussels, June 1983. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson: Foris (Linguistic Models 5) Givoń, Talmi (1976), “Topic, Pronoun, and Grammatical Agreement.” In: Li, Charles N. (ed.), Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press, 149⫺ 188 Groot, Casper de (1989), Predicate Structure in a Functional Grammar of Hungarian. Dordrecht: Foris Groot, Casper de & Limburg, Machiel J. (1986), Pronominal Elements: Diachrony, Typology, and Formalization in Functional Grammar. Amsterdam: Univ. of Amsterdam, Inst. of General Linguistics (Working Papers in Functional Grammar 12) Hale, Kenneth (1973), “Person Marking in Walbiri”. In: Anderson, A. & Kiparsky, P. (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 308⫺344

79. Minor word classes Hewitt, B[rian] G[eorge] (1979), Abkhaz. Amsterdam: North-Holland (Lingua Descriptive Studies 2) Lefebvre, Claire (1980), “Cases of Lexical Complementizers in Cuzco Quechua and the Theory of COMP”. Journal of Linguistics Research, 1.2, 91⫺ 112 Lewis, Geoffrey L. (1967), Turkish Grammar. Oxford & New York: Oxford Univ. Press Mallinson, Graham & Blake, Barry J. (1981), Language Typology. Amsterdam: North-Holland (North-Holland Linguistic Series 46)

831 Press, Ian (1986), A Grammar of Modern Breton. Berlin etc.: Mouton de Gruyter (Mouton Grammar Library 2) The Christian Brothers (1990), New Irish Grammar. Dublin: Fallon Williams, Stephen J. (1980), A Welsh Grammar. Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press

Casper de Groot, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

XI. Wortbildung I: Grundprobleme Word formation I: Fundamental problems 80. System vs. norm: coinage and institutionalization 1. The need for new words 2. Ways of making new words 3. Word-formation: process or state, diachrony or synchrony? 4. Actual and possible words 5. System and norm and gaps 6. Restrictions on new words and hypostatization 7. Coining new words: terminology 8. Conscious and unconscious coining 9. Institutionalization 10. Institutionalization and lexicalization 11. Conclusion 12. References

1.

The need for new words

The need for new words is not always clear. It might seem that we have done very well with the old words, and that there are already enough words in the language we happen to speak. It might be theoretically clear that there is no fixed limit to the number of possible entities that people might wish to name (Motsch 1983: 101), but this is a hard point to grasp in the abstract. It is only when we look at lists of relatively recent arrivals on the linguistic scene, such as those in (1), that we begin to wonder how we ever managed without them. That is, we recognise that we do have a need for these new words, even in cases where the things the words refer to have existed for some time. (1) acid rain ‘rain made acidic by pollution’ bag lady ‘a homeless woman who carries her belongings in shopping bags’ camcorder ‘video camera with built-in tape-recorder’ community charge ‘British tax designed to replace rates’ expert system ‘computer system for solving problems’ glasnost ‘Russian system of more open government’

hacker ‘person who breaks into government or commercial computer systems’ Sloane Ranger ‘fashionable and conventional upper-class young woman’ yuppie ‘young upwardly-mobile professional person’ The “need” for the words listed here is, in most cases, fairly apparent. There was no need for the word community charge until the tax itself was invented, no need for the word glasnost until the phenomenon arose. There may, however, also be different kinds of “need”. Most obvious are emotional “needs”, of the kind that cause us to create new words which are derogatory or euphemistic. The succession of slang (especially criminal slang) words for ‘police’ over the last hundred and fifty years (including Peeler, flatfoot, rozzer, dick, fuzz and pig) illustrate the former, while words for dead, in both civilian and military contexts, (including gone to rest, passed over, late, MIA, body count) provide a standard example of the latter. There may also be stylistic “needs”, such as that illustrated by Sloane Ranger in (1). Or the needs may be less simple to pin down, having to do with notions such as prestige and power, as in many of the words borrowed from English in Western European language in the late twentieth century. Danish has borrowed computer, French has borrowed charter, Italian has borrowed poster, Japanese has borrowed baseball (as besibaru) and Russian has borrowed jeans (as dz˘insiy). In some cases, the “need” may simply be that an individual has forgotten the usual word, sometimes only temporarily. For some discussion, see Bernard & Delbridge (1980: 192⫺195); Bauer (1983: 43f.). Whatever the need may be, and however trivial it may seem, it is clear that all living languages provide the power to create new words.

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80. System vs. norm: coinage and institutionalization

2.

Ways of making new words

There are basically four ways of producing new words, although the borderlines between them may not always be clear-cut. Firstly, an old word can be given a new meaning, usually being extended by means of metaphor or metonymy. Thus when clinical is used to describe bombing, it is an extension of an existing word, because of a perceived similarity between the bombing and the work of a surgeon. Secondly, a new word can be borrowed from another language, as with glasnost in (1). This is then termed a loan word, although the loan is rarely repaid. Sometimes, words are not borrowed intact, but are translated, such as new wave translated from French nouvelle vague. These are termed loan translations or calques. Thirdly, a new word can be invented with no source except the letters of the alphabet or the phonemes of the language. Such word manufacture is rare, probably because the meaning of the new word is not clear enough (Motsch 1983: 103), and is most frequently found with trade names, such as Kodak. Cowabunga ‘an interjection’ may be a case of word-manufacture (cf. Art. 93). Finally, words may be regularly formed by regular procedures from elements (roots, stems, words, affixes) already available in the language. This is usually termed word-formation although the term does have other uses within generative schools of morphology. Strictly speaking, word-formation means stem formation or lexeme formation (see Art. 26 on lexemes) in this context. Many authorities divide word-formation into compounding or composition on the one hand (see Art. 87) and derivational (sometimes called lexical) morphology on the other (see Art. 89). Word-formation is usually understood to include the formation of new acronyms, clippings (see Art. 92), blends (see Art. 91), backformations as well. (See Art. 86 for an overview of word-formation processes). It is with the creation of new lexemes by word-formation that we will be principally concerned in this article, although the principles also apply to new lexemes from other sources.

3.

Word-formation: process or state, diachrony or synchrony?

Like many terms in linguistics, the term word-formation is used in a systematically ambiguous manner: it can denote either a

state or a process. When we view word-formation as a state, we are usually looking at the language we are concerned with synchronically. We might say, for instance, that in modern English word-formation we find both prefixation and suffixation, but no cases of circumfixation as we do in Dutch and, arguably, in German (Plank 1986). But we can view word-formation as a process either synchronically or diachronically. The diachronic way of viewing processual word-formation is perhaps the obvious one. In this way we can say, for example, that while achievement was borrowed direct from French and does not illustrate English wordformation, excitement is a word coined in English, and shows that the word-formation process of -ment suffixation was productive in the eighteenth century, even if it no longer is in the latter part of the twentieth century (Bauer 1983: 55; see Art. 33 on productivity). Synchronically we can say that the existence of new words such as hacker illustrates the productivity of word-formation by -er suffixation in current English. It is this last approach which has frequently provided problems in the study of word-formation, since it implies a distinction between actual and possible or potential words.

4.

Actual and possible words

Consider the two sentences (2) and (3). (2) Word-formation is such a confused area of study at the moment that it would not be possible to write an uncontroversial introduction to the subject. (3) The study of word-formation is currently so confused that an uncontroversial introduction to it would be impossible to write. (2) is an actually occurring sentence, taken from Bauer (1983: xiii). (3) appears for the first time here. This does not detract from (3)’s status as a sentence, make (3) any less a suitable object of study than (2) or imply that (3) is in any way imperfect. (3) is as much a part of English as (2) is. Both (2) and (3) have to be allowed for in the synchronic description of the rules of English, and it is pure happenstance that (2) is attested, while (3) is not. These days, most morphologists would argue that the same basic principles hold true for word-formation. The fact (if it is one) that commutator is attested but mutator is not

834

XI. Wortbildung I: Grundprobleme

(at least, it has been invented to illustrate this point, and is not listed in the common dictionaries) might say something about the world, but does not have any implications for the synchronic possibility of there being a word mutator. Mutator is, synchronically speaking, a possible word, or a potential one. To use the terminology of Meys (1975), commutator is item familiar (we actually recognise the word), but mutator is type familiar (we recognise the pattern, but not the particular word) (cf. Aronoff 1983; Bauer 1978: 75; 1983: 82⫺84; 1988: 62⫺65; Brekle 1975; Malicka-Kleparska 1987; Rose 1973). Given this distinction, however, it rapidly becomes clear that the stock of potential words is vast. That is, there are large numbers of possible words which have never been attested, probably more of these, in fact, than possible words which have been attested. Some scholars go so far as to suggest that the formations which most clearly show the synchronic regularities of word-formation patterns are words which have been invented on the spur of the moment from this stock of potential words, since they have not been subject to any extraneous influences (Bauer 1978: 75; Brekle 1975: 27; 1978: 70). Others point out that the actual words of a language need not be a subset of those words which, synchronically speaking, are potential (Aronoff 1983: 163; Corbin 1987: 79). This is because of the phenomenon of lexicalization (see Art. 149). Lexicalization is the process by which actual words become idiosyncratic so that some part of their behaviour ceases to be predictable. Typically, words which could no longer be productively generated nevertheless remain as part of the lexicon of a language. For example, the type illustrated in pick-pocket is either unproductive (Lyons 1977: 547) or very nearly so in the production of nouns (Bauer 1983: 205, 211), and yet pick-pocket is an actual word of English, even though a parallel form such as steal-handbag is not a potential word of English. This implies that if pick-pocket did not exist, it would no longer be a potential English word.

5.

System and norm and gaps

In some varieties of structural linguistics, a distinction is drawn between system and norm which, to a certain extent at least, foreshadows the notion of actual and possible words. The best-known version of this dis-

tinction in morphology, especially in the work of German morphologists, stems from Coseriu (e.g. Coseriu 1975). A similar terminology is found in the work of other scholars (e.g. Hjelmslev 1937; 1943), though it is far from clear just how far the coincidence of terminology indicates coincidence of ideas. The notion of norm can be found exploited in a number of works on word-formation, although not always interpreted in precisely the same way (Brekle 1970: 22; Burgschmidt 1977; Kastovsky 1982: 33; Lipka 1990: 96, 169; Marchand 21969: 57). In this view, the system is the underlying set of rules which determines what is possible in a given language. However, actual language does not exploit this system fully: there are always extra possibilities in the system which are not in general use. That part of the system which is exploited in actual use in a language community is the norm. Dictionaries, for instance, list words which are the norm, not the system (Coseriu 1975: 71). The speech (Rede, parole) of the individual is then a realization (possibly an indirect one, LB) of the norm (although it is possible to distinguish a societal and an individual norm: Coseriu 1975: 87). The distinction between system and norm is not necessarily easy to maintain, but in principle we can distinguish between words which are impossible because the system does not permit them to exist (say verbs suffixally derived from other verbs in English, contrast French mord-ill-er ‘to nibble’ from mord-re ‘to bite’) and words which happen not to be part of the normal language of the community because they are not part of the norm, even though they are permissible in terms of the system (say mutator, discussed in 4). This is another way of viewing the distinction between established and potential words. In a different terminology, that of phonology, it is the distinction between systematic gaps and accidental gaps in the lexicon (see also Corbin 1987: 164). The notion of norm also allows us to see that the difference between the British English use of wire wool as opposed to the American steel wool or the British use of postman as opposed to American mail man is not a difference of system, but simply a difference of norm. Furthermore, when we hear untypical taking the place of atypical or normalcy taking the place of normality we can see that this is a change in the norm, and not necessarily a change in the system at all.

835

80. System vs. norm: coinage and institutionalization

6.

Restrictions on new words and hypostatization

Consider the following observation: “To come at it negatively, we would not expect to find regularly derived denominal verbs in any language which have the meaning ‘grasp noun in the left hand and shake vigorously while standing on the right foot in a 2 ½ gallon galvanized pail of corn-meal-mush’.” (Rose 1973: 516)

That is, there are restrictions on what is viewed as a nameable category in the morphological system of any language, and while not all languages will view precisely the same set of categories as nameable (Mangarayi has a suffix attaching to a place-name and deriving a noun that designates a person whose same-sex relative of the grandparents’ generation died at that place (Merlan 1982: 170f.)), these restrictions are likely to be wide-spread on the whole. However, they are not well-explored. They are presumably related to general restrictions on what can be a nameable category. In this area, one suggestion is that “proper names, in any language, must designate objects meeting a condition of spatiotemporal contiguity, and that the same is true of other terms designating objects.” (Chomsky 1965: 29)

However, The United States does not fit this apparently well-motivated condition (Chomsky 1965: 201), in that Alaska, and possibly Hawaii, is not spatially contiguous with the rest of the United States. Others point out that any new word is subject to pragmatic requirements, such as that the speaker must believe it to be uniquely interpretable in context (Clark & Clark 1979: 787). Whether or not these hypotheses are accepted, it seems fairly clear that there are limits to what might count as nameable categories in general, and nameable derivational categories in particular. There are, however, no limits to the categories we can describe using syntactic structures. We can describe, syntactically, the category suggested by Rose in the passage quoted above, even if we cannot name it or have a derivative to denote it. Clearly, describable and nameable categories overlap. We can describe someone as “a conservative, countrified young woman of the upper or uppermiddle classes” or name them as a Sloane Ranger. What is the difference? Perhaps the main difference has been described as hypostatization (Lipka 1977: 161; 1990: 16). Hypostatization is the phenome-

non whereby the use of a word to denote something presupposes the existence of a category. Lipka restricts this to the existence of a single entity, but there are few words beyond proper names which refer to single individuals rather than to categories. So to call someone a Sloane Ranger is to imply the existence of a category of Sloane Rangers to which that person belongs. This is clearly related to the timelessness or habituality which some scholars comment on as a feature of word-formation processes (Bauer 1978: 70; Brekle 1970: 59; 1975). Categories created by word-formation are presented as temporally unbounded, and thus more general than single individuals. This property of words can occasionally give rise to problems. Thus Milner (1990: 57) complains that having a word language “assumes inevitably certain defining properties” and that “to speak of ‘languages’ is […] to conceive of them as capable of being grouped together”, something which Milner wishes to deny. It is for this reason that wordformation is not necessarily a suitable strategy for describing every new event or entity. Creating a new word creates a new category, describing something does not create a new category.

7.

Coining new words: terminology

A new word which is coined to meet some immediate need (as discussed in 1) can be termed a nonce formation. For some scholars, a nonce formation is a transient form, which dies with the immediate need (Jensen 1990: 187; Zandvoort 61976: 43; and thus in the Oxford English Dictionary). If a nonce formation survives, it becomes a neologism, i.e. a word which has belonged to the language system for only a relatively short time. This is the approach usually taken by lexicographers, for instance, where the distinction is of importance. For others, however, this distinction is of no relevance in the cataloguing of new forms, and either term may be used for temporary or permanent additions to the lexicon (Bauer 1983: 45 uses nonce formation in this way; Marchand 21969: 9 uses neologism). For some writers coinage is another equivalent term (Strang 1970: 27), though others use it as equivalent to word manufacture (Cannon 1987: 157).

8.

Conscious and unconscious coining

For some recent theories of productivity (see Art. 33) it is important to know whether a coinage is conscious or unconscious, that is,

836 whether the speaker is aware at the time of coining a new word that a new word is being coined (Van Marle 1985), since conscious coinages are said to be formed creatively rather than productively. Some types of formation are conscious, almost by definition. Acronyms and blends, for example, are normally conscious formations (though blends can arise as errors of production; cf. Art. 91, 92). Conscious formations are frequently marked in written texts (and, for that matter, in spoken texts), either by being set off from the surrounding text by inverted commas (or their intonational equivalent) or by having attention drawn specifically to them. “We’ve got a female Station Chief here. You mean you hadn’t heard? Yup, we’ve got a ‘Chieftess’ running things.” (Deighton 1988: 169) “I’ve always had this feeling that it was all eminently postponeable, if that’s a word”. (Erdman 1986: 141) “It needs such people, what with increased mechanisation and electronification ⫺ if there is such a word.” (Lyall 1988: 47) “In the long term the republicanisation (I’m sorry, Minister) of Jordan is in Russia’s interest.” (Lyall 1988: 52) “They are trying to francophonise (if you’ll excuse the term) the South Pacific.” (Overheard from British female University lecturer, 1991)

And, in exceptional detail, “ ‘Yes. As for attention to detail ⫺ that matters, that is ⫺ Reed would swear you were the greatest attentionist in the business.’ ‘There’s no such word, is there son? No such word as attentionist.’ ‘Then there ought to be,’ said Wanda. ‘There’s an attender […]’ ‘Which among other things means one who pays heed or attention.’ ‘I mean it differently. Anyhow, I’ve coined the word.’ ‘And a very good word, too.’ ” (Clark 1986: 20)

However, while some speakers clearly feel that they need to apologise for imposing a new word upon their listeners, others do not, and on other occasions (perhaps the majority of cases) nonce formations are not marked. Compare francophonise above with the following: “It was before the West Side became Madison Avenue-ized.” (Sanders 1986: 2) “It was difficult to remember which matters were still secret and which had been desecretized.” (Sheckley 1988: 215).

Such a lack of marking does not prove that the form was not created consciously, of course, but it is certainly possible to find nonce formations using the same process of


word-formation which are commented on in some cases, and left unremarked in others. There is one phenomenon which is extremely frequent with new coinages which is clearly related to this. It is the tendency for new words to occur in close textual proximity either to their base words or to another derivative from the same base. “ ‘Maybe,’ he offered, ‘they didn’t want the follower and the followee to meet.’ ” (Littell 1986: 172) “ ‘Then I want no part of the tycoon. If money and power are all that matter in life […]’ ‘That’s only a small part of it,’ Liz said. ‘Tycoonery is a disease.’ ” (McBain 1959: 123) “There is no man alive that is not partially jackass. When we detect some area of jackassery with ourselves, we feel discontent.” (MacDonald 1971: 223)

This phenomenon must clearly help the listener to interpret the new word, but it probably also helps the speaker to coin it, and it may possibly be interpreted as a signal that the word was coined less consciously than it might have been.

9.

Institutionalization

It seems likely that the vast majority of new coinages fade away the moment they have occurred. The only figures on this relate to compound nouns in German, and may not be particularly enlightening for several reasons, one of which is that they may not be typical of other processes and other languages. However, as a guideline, it can be noted that it was found that 62% of compound nouns in the corpus studied were not listed in dictionaries (Thiel 1973). The precise mechanism for the dissemination through society of those words which do survive is obscure. At one level, the words seem to spread from individual to individual in a haphazard way. “But there was not, as one of his colleagues termed it, any chickenshittery about staff meetings, advisers, committees and reviews.” (MacDonald 1984: 19) “ ‘Fandom’, as I believe it is called, attracts some unbalanced persons.” (Peters 1984: 87)

On some occasions, it seems as though the same word (or a very similar word) is coined by several people at about the same time, although it is difficult to find examples where independence is guaranteed. “[…] the various student types […] joiners and doers, druggies and drunks”. (The New York Times, 25 Nov 1970, p. 37; cited in Barnhart et al. 1973)

837

80. System vs. norm: coinage and institutionalization “Presumably they meant the movie to observe […] some of the oddities in our midst ⫺ […] skindheads, druggies, etc.” (The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 18 Dec 1981, p. 21; cited in Barnhart et al. 1973)

Many words seem to spread through their use in the media, both print and electronic. One factor which is frequently mentioned in this context is the perceived prestige of the coiner (e.g. Brekle 1978: 75). It is not clear how important a factor this is. Dontopedalogy ‘the art of opening one’s mouth and putting one’s foot in it’ does not appear to have caught on, despite having being coined and used by the Duke of Edinburgh (Barnhart et al. 1973: 134); Sloane Ranger has caught on, despite a less overtly prestigious coiner (Schwartz et al. 1988, eds.: 1383). The problem of innovation and the general acceptance of a change in a community is, of course, not limited to word-formation, but is present for all kinds of change. The main difference is that it is usually easier to date lexical innovations than other kinds of change. By whatever means, neologisms seem to spread fairly rapidly throughout a community. What typically happens at this stage is that the new word starts to be recognised as a standard word, and in that process becomes more precise in its meaning, less vague. This vagueness requires some explanation. Typically, complex words have a number of possible referents. To judge by the form alone, for example, a hacker could be a hairdresser who does not do a very good job, or an implement like a machete. Where compounds are concerned, this has been referred to as the structural ambiguity of compounding (Barbaud 1971; see Art. 82). To what extent this is actual ambiguity, as opposed to vagueness, is not clear, but the fact that unknown complex words have several possible interpretations is well-established (Bauer 1978: 79⫺86; Downing 1977). Using a complex word in context, however, is usually sufficient to specify which of its multitude of possible meanings is the intended one. As a word changes from being a nonce-formation to being a neologism, it carries this restricted meaning with it into the language system. Hacker now means ‘a person who hacks into computer systems’, and not one of the other things it could mean. This loss of vagueness has been given a number of labels in the literature. Items whose meanings have become fixed in this way are variously referred to as frozen (Bauer

1978: 77; Gleitman & Gleitman 1970: 90), petrified (Leech 1974: 226; Lyons 1977: 536), received (Bauer 1978: 77) or, most frequently, institutionalized (Bauer 1983: 48; Lipka 1990: 95f.; Lyons 1977: 524; Matthews 1974: 193). The term lexicalized is also used with the same meaning, despite its other closely-related meaning (Carroll & Tannenhaus 1975: 50; Corbin 1987: 38; see 10 and Art. 149). Typical of institutionalization is that the words concerned are not consciously analysed by the speaker-hearer (Bauer 1978: 77), that the possible denotation of the words “shrinks” or becomes more specific (Leech 1974: 226), that the words concerned are accepted by speaker-hearers as normal words of their language (Leech 1974: 226; Lipka 1990: 95) and, in the case of compounds, are accepted as being single lexemes (Bauer 1978: 77) rather than as syntactic strings of lexemes. Institutionalized words provide the input for processes of lexicalization (see Art. 149). Institutionalized and lexicalized are both hyponyms of established (Bauer 1983: 50), so that institutionalized words may also be referred to as being established.

10. Institutionalization and lexicalization The distinction between institutionalization and lexicalization is not always clearly drawn in the literature (see 9 on the fact that the terms are sometimes used interchangeably). The clearest distinction is that a word which is institutionalized could in principle still be formed by synchronic rules or word-formation, while one that is lexicalized is one which could no longer be generated by the normal rules of word-formation (Bauer 1983: 48). The term fossilized has also been used for this (Lyons 1977: 547). This can come about either because a given word-formation process ceases to be productive (as with the pickpocket type mentioned in 4, or with abstract nouns using the suffix -th like warmth), or because of subsequent linguistic change affecting a compound or derivative and causing it to become opaque. Where the change is a semantic one, some scholars prefer to use the term idiomatization (Lipka 1977). Thus the name of the religious festival lammas is phonologically lexicalized, since the elements loaf and mass are not synchronically observable in it, and because if a compound of these two words were formed synchronically it could not give the phonological form /læmes/.

838 It is idiomatized because it no longer has any semantic connection with loaves and masses. For further discussion of lexicalization as a diachronic principle, see Art. 149. Here it is important to notice that the diachronic principle has synchronic effects.

11. Conclusion The facts that have been considered in this article are of major importance in deciding what material provides relevant data to base a morphological theory on. It is clear that words listed by a given dictionary (or even a selection of dictionaries) provide dangerous material. Quite apart from the necessarily incomplete nature of dictionary word-lists, and the often inconsistant manner in which morphologically complex words are handled in dictionaries (Corbin 1987: 21⫺80), the fact that dictionaries by their very nature list (and indeed prefer) lexicalized material means that the words they list probably do not give an accurate picture of the synchronic possibilities of word-formation. Moreover, since dictionaries list only established words, the semantic description they provide of the words they list must have more to do with the linguistic norm than with the linguistic system. Nonce formations can provide just as much evidence about the synchronic system, though care is needed with those as well, since playful formations (Bauer 1983: 264) and some literary creations (Dressler 1981) may go beyond the bounds of normal rules specifically to gain effect. Gaining access to the system demands very careful consideration of the limits of the kinds of data employed (see Corbin 1987: 11⫺138 for detailed discussion). Related to this is the notion of an actual word and a nonexistent word. It should be clear that the notion of nonexistent word has to be used with extreme caution. A word like mutator may not be attested, but that does not affect its status as a word as defined by the system. Less clearly, this also throws some doubt on the notion of actual word. Various scholars (Aronoff 1983: 163; Selkirk 1982: 11) comment that speakers have intuitions about whether a word is an “actual” word or not. While it would be foolish to deny that speakers think they have such intuitions, any such intuitions can only be about (a) established words which (b) are part of the experience of the individual speaker. Again, data from actual speakers (as opposed to any ideal speaker) obviously has to be


treated with caution, because no real speakers can know every word which forms part of the norm of their language. But it is also the case that dealing with a notion of actual word appears to ignore the phenomenon of neologism where the new words are in the process of becoming established. (Again, Corbin 1987: 21⫺80 provides a detailed discussion.) The process of institutionalization provides an explanation of these intuitions on the part of speakers and also for the fact that so much morphological study has been based on listings of established words, rather than considering the productive possibilities inherent in the system. The moment a word becomes institutionalized, it has to be memorized, because the semantic specialization has to be listed along with the form. Lexicalization does not increase the burden on memory significantly, since the main outline of a lexical entry must already be held in memory. That is why there is rarely any psychological pressure to prevent lexicalization. It also means that the vast majority of words which a speaker uses are listed in the speaker’s memory (see further Art. 162). This is in contradistinction to the vast majority of sentences, which must be generated afresh (Corbin 1987: 55). There are lexicalized sentences, such as How do you do?, just as there are nonestablished words, but each is exceptional in its field. That is why there is a notion, among professional linguists as well as among lay people, that nonce formations are, in some sense, “not proper words”. They are unusual, in the sense that they are not already known like the majority of words, but in the sense that they simply exploit the synchronic possibilities of the language system, they are perfectly normal, and perfectly respectable objects of study.

12. References 12.1. Linguistic works Aronoff, Mark (1983), “Potential Words, Actual Words, Productivity and Frequency”. In: Hattori, Shiroˆ & Inoue, Kazuko (eds.), Proceedings of the XIII International Congress of Linguists [Tokyo, 1982]. Tokyo: Tokyo Press, 163⫺171 Barbaud, Philipp (1971), “L’ambiguı¨te´ structurale du compose´ binominal”. Cahiers de Linguistique 71⫺116 Barnhart, Clarence L. & Steinmetz, Sol & Barnhart, Robert K. (1973), The Barnhart Dictionary of New English 1963⫺1972. New York: Barnhart; London: Longman

80. System vs. norm: coinage and institutionalization Bauer, Laurie (1978), The Grammar of Nominal Compounding. Odense: Odense University Press (Odense University Studies in Linguistics 4) Bauer, Laurie (1983), English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Bernard, John & Delbridge, Arthur (1980), Introduction to Linguistics: An Australian Perspective. Sydney: Prentice-Hall Brekle, Herbert E. (1970), Generative Satzsemantik im System der englischen Nominalkomposition. München: Fink Brekle, Herbert E. (1975), “Zur Stellung der Wortbildung in der Grammatik”. In: Rix, H. (ed.), Flexion und Wortbildung. Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft Regensburg, 9.⫺14. September 1973. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 26⫺39 Brekle, Herbert E. (1978), “Reflections on the Conditions for the Coining, Use and Understanding of Nominal Compounds”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Meid, Wolfgang (eds.), Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists, Vienna, August 28 September 2, 1977. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, 68⫺77 Brekle, Herbert E. & Kastovsky, Dieter (1977, eds.), Perspektiven der Wortbildungsforschung. Bonn: Bouvier Burgschmidt, Ernst (1977), “Strukturierung, Norm und Produktivität in der Wortbildung”. In: Brekle & Kastovsky (eds.), 39⫺47 Cannon, Garland (1987), Historical Change and English Word-formation. New York etc.: Peter Lang (American University Studies, Series IV, 46) Carroll, John M. & Tanenhaus, Michael K. (1975), “Prolegomena to a Functional Theory of Word Formation”. In: Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 11.2, 47⫺62 [Parasession on Functionalism] Chomsky, Noam (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Clark, Eve V. & Clark, Herbert H. (1979), “When Nouns Surface as Verbs”. Language 55, 767⫺811 Corbin, Danielle (1987), Morphologie de´rivationnelle et structuration du lexique. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Linguistische Arbeiten 193, 194) Coseriu, Eugenio (1975), “System, Norm und Rede”. In: Coseriu, Eugenio, Sprachtheorie und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft: 5 Studien. München: Fink, 11⫺101 [orig. Spanish: 1952] Downing, Pamela (1977), “On the Creation and Use of English Compound Nouns”. Language 53, 810⫺842 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1981), “General Principles of Poetic License in Word Formation”. In: Weydt, Harald (ed.), Logos Semantikos in Honorem E. Coseriu, Vol. II. Berlin: De Gruyter, 423⫺431

839 Gleitman, Lila R. & Gleitman, Henry (1970), Phrase and Paraphrase: Some Innovative Uses of Language. New York: Norton Hjelmslev, Louis (1937), “On the Principles of Phonematics”. In: Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 1935. Cambridge, 49⫺54 [reprinted in: Hjelmslev, Louis (1973), Essais linguistiques, Vol. II. Copenhague: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 14), 157⫺162] Hjelmslev, Louis (1943), “Langue et parole”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 2, 29⫺44 [reprinted in: Hjelmslev, Louis (21970), Essais linguistiques. Copenhague: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 12) 69⫺81 [11959]] Jensen, John T. (1990), Morphology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 70) Kastovsky, Dieter (1982), Wortbildung und Semantik. Düsseldorf: Schwann-Bagel; Berne, München: Francke Leech, Geoffrey (1974), Semantics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Lipka, Leonhard (1977), “Lexikalisierung, Idiomatisierung und Hypostasierung als Probleme einer synchronischen Wortbildungslehre”. In: Brekle & Kastovsky (eds.), 155⫺164 Lipka, Leonhard (1990), An Outline of English Lexicology. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Forschung & Studium Anglistik 3) Lyons, John (1977), Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Malicka-Kleparska, Anna (1987), “Potential Forms and Lexicons”. In: Gussmann, Edmund (ed.), Rules and the Lexicon: Studies in Word-formation. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 103⫺119 Marchand, Hans (21969), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation. München: Beck [11960] Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Matthews, P[eter] H. (1974), Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Merlan, Francesca (1982), Mangarayi. Amsterdam: North Holland (Lingua Descriptive Series 4) Meys, W[illem] J. (1975), Compound Adjectives in English and the Ideal Speaker-listener. Amsterdam: North Holland Milner, Jean-Claude (1990), For the Love of Language, transl. by Ann Banfield. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan [orig. French: 1978] Motsch, Wolfgang (1983), “Überlegungen zu den Grundlagen der Erweiterung des Lexikons”. In: Ruzicka, Rudolf & Motsch, Wolfgang (eds.), Un-

840


tersuchungen zur Semantik. Berlin/DDR: Akademie-Verlag, 101⫺119 Plank, Frans (1986), “Das Genus der deutschen Ge-Substantive und Verwandtes: Beiträge zur Vererbungslehre 1”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39, 44⫺60 Rose, James H. (1973), “Principled Limitations on Productivity in Denominal Verbs”. Foundations of Language 10, 509⫺26 Schwartz, Catherine & Davidson, George & Seaton, Anne & Tebbit, Virginia (1988, eds.), Chambers English Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers; Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Strang, Barbara M. H. (1970), A History of English. London: Methuen Thiel, Gisela (1973), “Die semantischen Beziehungen in den Substantivkomposita der deutschen Gegenwartssprache”. Muttersprache 83, 377⫺404 Zandvoort, R[einhard] W. (61976), A Handbook of English Grammar. London: Longman [11957]

12.2. Sources of data Clark, Douglas (1986), Storm Centre. London: Gollancz Deighton, Len (1988), Spy Hook. London, etc.: Hutchinson Erdman, Paul (1986), The Panic of ’89. London: Sphere Littell, Robert (1986), The Sisters. London: Cape Lyall, Gavin (1988), Uncle Target. Sevenoaks: Coronet MacDonald, John D. (1971), A Tan and Sandy Silence. London, Sydney: Pan MacDonald, John D. (1984), One More Sunday. London etc.: Hodder & Stoughton McBain, Ed (1959), King’s Ransom. London: Severn House Peters, Elizabeth (1984), Die for Love. London: Souvenir Press Sanders, Lawrence (1986), The Eighth Commandment. London: New English Library Sheckley, Robert (1988), Hunter/Victim, London: Methuen

Laurie Bauer, Wellington (New Zealand)

81. Correspondence between formal and semantic relations 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Asymmetries between form and meaning Polyfunctionality Polysemy Synonymy Polyfunctionality: Polysemy and Synonymy References

1.

Asymmetries between form and meaning

In an ideal view on word structure there is a symmetric relationship between the formal structure of complex words and their meaning. This implies that there is a one-to-one relationship between the different parts of the form of a given word and the different elements of its meaning, and that the way in which the form of a word is made up of its parts is paralleled by the way in which its meaning is made up of its elements. Thus in the compound construct-ion site the constituent parts construct, -ion and site correspond to the meaning elements ‘construct’, ‘process of’ and ‘site’. As to the combination of its parts, the compound word [[construct]-ion]

site is made up of the word site and the derived word construct-ion, which is in turn made up of the suffix -ion and the verb construct; and its meaning ‘site for [the process of [constructing]]’ is made up in a parallel way of the elements ‘site’ and ‘process of [constructing]’, which is in turn made up of ‘process of’ and ‘construct’. These two regularities are often formulated for word structure as well as for sentence structure. The first of them is called the one-form-one-meaning principle, and is often attributed to Von Humboldt (Vennemann 1972: 183). The second one is called the compositionality principle (cf. Art. 82). Now, word structure often obeys the two principles, as in the English example given above. But this is not always the case, and this article is concerned with morphological phenomena where there is no symmetric relationship between form and meaning in word structure. In this section I will discuss such morphological phenomena in general. This serves to prepare the ground for the main issue of this article to be discussed in the following sections, to wit a particular form of lack of one-to-one

81. Correspondence between formal and semantic relations

relationships in morphology which has been termed polyfunctionality (cf. Mel’cuk 1973 for a general overview of the theoretically possible kinds of one-to-many and many-to-one relations in morphology). Although much of what I have to say relates to compounding as well as to derivation, I will concentrate on derivation, where the effects are often more dramatic. Consider first the case of complex words where we find one affix expressing several meaning elements or several affixes expressing only one meaning element. This happens particularly in inflected words. The inflected Italian word cante-r-e-bb-e-ro ‘they would sing’ presents the two phenomena (Matthews 1970: 107f.). On the one hand -bb- expresses the conditional and the third person, and -ro expresses the conditional, the third person and the plural. And on the other hand -r-e-bb-…-ro marks the conditional, -bb-…-ro the third person and -ro the plural. Derivational examples of this kind are rarer and are in general more dependent on one’s theoretical assumptions. A relatively straightforward Dutch example of one affix expressing two meaning elements occurs in deverbal nouns such as speel-ster ‘female player’. In deverbal nouns like wandel-aarster ‘female walker’ -aar expresses ‘agent’ and -ster feminity, two meaning elements which are expressed by -ster alone in nouns like speel-ster (Van Marle 1985: 286⫺288). The reverse situation, two affixes expressing one meaning element, obtains in English denominal adjectives like character-ist-ic. Character-ist-ic contains two suffixes, but the semantic relation between character-ist-ic and character is the same as that expressed regularly by a single suffix in such denominal adjectives as oxygen-ic derived from oxygen (Aronoff 1976: 118⫺121). Compare also the rather widespread case of double diminutive suffixing with a single diminutive meaning in French nouns like can-et-eau ‘duckling’, oisill-on ‘little bird’ and oss-el-et ‘little bone’ (Corbin 1987: 239f.). Second, we may find an even more striking kind of non-correspondence where only one affix is at play without a corresponding meaning element or one meaning element without a corresponding affix. Thus, such English verbs as con-cede, con-cur, con-fer, incur, in-fer, pre-cede, pre-fer present a limited number of prefixes (combined with a limited number of roots) which, for the most part, cannot be assigned a particular meaning (Jackendoff 1975: 653⫺655). So these verbs can be considered to be semantically unana-

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lyzable. It can be shown, however (Chomsky & Halle 1968: 94⫺96), that only by recognizing in one way or another their complex status at the formal level can we explain their phonological behavior, in the first place their stress contour con-cu´r, which would otherwise be cońcur like co´vet. The reverse occurs in conversion cases, where a meaning element remains without expression by an affix. Thus English presents causative verbs like to cool ‘to make cool’ derived from an adjective without a suffix, paralleling suffixed deadjectival causative verbs like to hard-en ‘to make hard’. It must be admitted, though, that such conversion cases are not entirely symmetric to those mentioned in the preceding paragraph. In fact, the difference between the verb to cool and the adjective cool is marked formally, be it not by an affix but by a difference of their categories (cf. also Art. 45 and 90). We will see later on that conversion is but one of several non-linear processes of derivation, all of which constitute formal ways of marking a semantic difference by other means than affixation. A third kind of non-correspondence occurs when, contrary to the preceding cases, we find the same number of affixes and meaning elements, but there is a structural lack of correspondence between them. This is what is called bracketing paradoxes, and the standard example is English un-grammaticality (cf. Kiparsky 1982: 28⫺31). The problem here is that for morphological and semantic reasons one must assume a structure like [ungrammatical]-ity, but for (morpho)phonological reasons something like un-[grammatical-ity] (cf. for a detailed discussion of such cases Spencer 1991: 397⫺422, and Art. 82). The three kinds of non-correspondence discussed so far concern either a numerical or a structural non-correspondence between formal constituents and semantic elements in word structure. Their analysis is always reconcilable with the idea that we are dealing with discrete formal constituents, namely roots and affixes, and meaning elements to which they correspond in one way or another. There are, however, a number of nonlinear derivation processes where no discrete formal constituents can be distinguished. One may think for example of vowel change as in English proud / pride, “interdigitation” as in Arabic k-a-t-a-b ‘to wirte’ / k-aa-t-i-b ‘writer, clerc’ (with the base k.t.b, and change of the vowel pattern .a.a. into .aa.i. to derive the agent noun) or reduplication as in Tagalog maglakbay ‘to travel’ / mag-la-lakbay ‘to travel

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(intensive)’ (Anderson 1988: 156). Such cases do not represent lack of correspondence in the sense discussed above. They only show that the correspondence may concern non-linear morphological processes which are more abstract than affixation. See Ch. VIII for a detailed review of linear and non-linear morphological processes. Given the fact that besides affixation there are non-linear morphological processes, the discussion in this article should ideally be formulated in terms of morphological processes and meaning elements. But as affixation is a widespread kind of derivational process, which allows to illustrate what has to be said as well as any other kind of process, one can stick to affixation in what follows. The reader is asked to keep in mind from now on that everything which is said about affixes and their meaning applies to any kind of morphological process and its meaning as well. What has been said until now about correspondence between form and meaning allows us to define by contrast the phenomenon which constitutes the main issue of this article, and which has been termed polyfunctionality of affixes (cf. Moortgat & van der Hulst 1981). The phenomena discussed until now may be considered as illustrating a certain lack of correspondence on the syntagmatic plane. That is, the number of constituents (or processes) or their structural relation on the syntagmatic plane does not correspond to the number of meaning elements or the relation between them. In contrast with this lack of syntagmatic correspondence and independently of it, polyfunctionality must be considered as a lack of one-to-one correspondence between affixes (or processes) and meaning elements on the paradigmatic plane. More precisely, polyfunctionality consists in the fact that one affix can serve to form different semantic types of words, and inversely different affixes can serve to form one and the same semantic type of words. The best known example may well be that of such English suffixes as -al, -ion and -ment. They can all serve to form process nouns: rebuttal, discuss-ion, argu-ment, and at the same time each of these affixes can have several meanings, particularly ‘process’ and ‘result’ (cf. Jackendoff 1975: 651). (1)

‘action’ -al refusal -ion copulation -ment establishment

As to the term polyfunctionality, it might seem that Karcevsky’s term morphological asymmetry (Beard 1984: 51) is preferable, because polyfunctionality expresses less clearly that there may be a one-to-many relation from meaning to form as well as from form to meaning. But the term polyfunctionality seems to be more widely accepted in this broader meaning than the other term, so we can stick to it. Before discussing the formal and semantic relations which may show up in polyfunctionality and their interconnection, we will break down the problem of polyfunctionality into a number of questions concerning the fact that an affix can have more than one meaning (polysemy) and that a meaning can be expressed by more than one affix (synonymy). This will form a useful background against which we can approach later on the theoretical consequences of the phenomena to be discussed: polysemy, synonymy, and polyfunctionality as a combination of the two.

2.

Polyfunctionality

According to many linguists morphology is essentially based on a one-to-one relationship between form and meaning. In such a conception of morphology a derivation process can be analyzed as the combination of a particular affix carrying a particular meaning with a specified class of bases. Thus the English prefix un- means ‘not’ and combines with particular subclasses of adjectives (Aronoff 1976: 63). Given such a conception, however, polyfunctionality comes as a surprise. Why should certain affixes have several meanings and why should certain meanings be expressed by several affixes? This would scarcely be a problem if such cases were exceptional, but in fact polyfunctionality is widespread. A relatively simple example is the one mentioned in the preceding section and illustrated in (1). It concerns a class of deverbal nouns in English, which present a set of suffixes and a set of meanings which crossclassify with these suffixes (Jackendoff 1975: 650): ‘result’ ‘group’ rebuttal discussion congregation argument government

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A somewhat more complex example is given in (2). It concerns French denominal, deadjectival and deverbal abstract nouns, which we may informally term state nouns, quality (2) state nouns

quality nouns

esclav-age ‘slavery’

consul-at ‘consulate’

clown-erie ‘clownery’

he´ro-ı¨sme ‘heroisme’

brusqu-erie ‘brusquerie’ bass-esse ‘lowness’ dur-ete´ ‘hardness’ grand-eur ‘greatness’ chauvin-isme ‘chauvinism’ pleń-itude ‘fullness’ droit-ure ‘sincerity’

The example is simplified to a certain extent in that certain regular meanings are left out. Thus it does not show the fact that French action nouns, like the English ones, can denote among other things results as well as processes: French ouvert-ure, for example, can express both, as can English open-ing. But in its simplified form the example suffices for our purpose. It illustrates in particular the fact that meaning differences may show up across category boundaries as well as within. Thus the meaning opposition between the examples in the first three columns goes hand in hand with the categorial opposition between denominal, deadjectival and deverbal nouns. The meaning opposition between

nouns and process nouns, and denominal collective nouns, denoting respectively ‘state of N’, ‘quality of A’, ‘action of V’ and ‘group of N’: process nouns promen-ade ‘walk’ abatt-age ‘felling’ fianç-ailles ‘engagement’ compar-aison ‘comparison’ naiss-ance ‘birth’ assassin-at ‘assassination’ accusat-ion ‘accusation’ entr-eé ‘entry’ aboi-ement ‘barking’ badin-erie ‘badinage’

collective nouns colonn-ade ‘colonnade’ feuill-age ‘foliage’ valet-aille ‘servants’

abatt-is ‘felling’

caillout-is ‘gravel’

ouvert-ure ‘opening’

chevel-ure ‘head of hair’

e´lector-at ‘electorate’ ram-eé ‘branches’ verr-erie ‘glassware’

state nouns like esclav-age and clown-erie and collective nouns like feuill-age and verr-erie shows up within the class of denominal nouns, and is thus comparable to the meaning opposition between process nouns and result nouns within the class of deverbal nouns. An example such as (2) raises a number of questions with relation to the unity of meaning of affixes as well as to their unity of form. As to meaning, one would first of all like to know what it means to say that a particular affix (or derivational process) has one or more meanings. Supposing that we can determine this in a satisfactory way, the next question is to determine under which conditions we may consider a particular affix with dif-

844 ferent meanings as a polysemous affix and not as two or more homonymous affixes. We will see below that these questions are of another nature with relation to affixes than with relation to roots, which interest us only indirectly. This holds even more for a third question which the examples in (1) raise. As we have seen in (2), a particular affix may show up with different meanings not only in words with the same categorial make-up, such as -age and -erie in denominal nouns, but it may also occur in words with a different categorial make-up, such as -erie in denominal, deadjectival and deverbal nouns. As these three classes of nouns are all abstract nouns, the question arises whether in such cases an affix can be polysemous across category boundaries. These three questions concern one aspect of polyfunctionality, namely the fact that one affix can have several meanings. But we must also consider the other aspect, which is the fact that one meaning can be expressed by different affixes. This raises two kinds of questions. First it is not always immediately clear with how many affixes we are dealing. Thus one may find, besides dur-ete´ with -ete´ in (2), such deadjectival nouns as bon-te´ ‘goodness’ with -te´ on the one hand and ce´le´br-ite´ ‘celebrity’ with -ite´ on the other. And one may wonder whether we are dealing here with one suffix or with more. As French makes a rather clear-cut distinction between nonlearned and learned affixes, it is probable that non-learned -te´ in bon-te´ is an alternant of non-learned -ete´ in dur-ete´, and that learned -ite´ in ce´le´br-ite´ represents another suffix. But nothing hinges here on the answer to this particular question. Second, we see in (2) that the suffixes -ade, -age, -aille(s), -aison, -ance etc. all serve to form, together with a verbal base, process nouns like promen-ade, abatt-age, fianç-ailles, compar-aison etc. The question is then to which extent such affixes fulfilling the same semantic function can be considered to be synonymous. This question is linked to the questions concerning polysemy of affixes in that a possible synonymy, as the one suggested for process noun suffixes, may go together with a possible polysemy. Thus the suffix -age of action nouns may participate at the same time in a relation of polysemy between denominal and deverbal nouns like esclav-age (and maybe feuill-age) and abattage, and in a relation of synonymy between


deverbal process nouns with different suffixes as illustrated in the third column of (2). In other words, there is a cross-classification of affixes and meanings: one affix may have different meanings and one meaning may be expressed by different affixes. It is this interconnection between the two kinds of questions which brings to light the essence of polyfunctionality. In 3⫺5 we will deal with the two kinds of questions concerning polysemy and homonymy and their interconnection.

3.

Polysemy

It is difficult to find satisfactory answers in the literature to the two central questions concerning polysemy mentioned in section 2, namely: how can we determine whether a linguistic form has one or more meanings? and given more meanings for a linguistic form, how can we determine whether this form is a polysemous form or represents two or more homonymous forms? It is well-known how delicate judgements concerning polysemy and homonymy are (Lyons 1977: 522). Lyons argues that “until it has been demonstrated that intuitions of this kind correlate with empirically decidable differences in the use of words, the linguist might well decide that it is preferable to leave the theoretical status of the distinction between homonymy and polysemy unresolved”. He adds, however (Lyons 1977: 553), that of the two ways of circumventing the problem, that is maximizing homonymy or maximizing polysemy, the latter, “on methodological grounds, if for no other reason, […] is preferable”. Fortunately, we do not have to consider these questions in their general phrasing, but we can concentrate on their morphological aspect, namely polysemy of affixes, which constitutes a case apart. At first sight this is a complication rather than a simplification, for the combination of an affix with particular bases may show idiosyncratic features of two kinds: it need not realize all the semantic possibilities of the bases on the one hand, and it may develop idiosyncratic features which are not predictable from the combination on the other hand. Thus to bounce may mean among other things ‘to dismiss’, but the derived noun bounc-er does not regularly denote a dismisser. And on the other hand bounc-er may de-


note, among other things, a person who / a thing which bounces, but also a lie, which is not predictable, or not entirely predictable, from the meaning of to bounce. Such idiosyncrasies are the rule rather than the exception in derivation, and in what follows they will be taken for granted and left aside. What interests us, then, is the regular meaning of affixes. Now, when we consider the regular meaning of affixes, what strikes us immediately is their relative abstractness. Let us compare, for example, the simplex noun man, the compound noun work-man and the derived noun work-er. The root in the simplex noun man can be characterized by a number of conceptual properties like ‘human’, ‘male’ and ‘adult’. In the compound noun work-man we find these same properties, together with those of work, plus a particular relation to be specified below between these two sets of properties. In the derived word work-er we find, besides the conceptual properties of work and the same relation to be specified below, a more abstract property like ‘thing’ or ‘entity’ (cf. Jackendoff 1983: 41⫺56) without such specifications as ‘human’, ‘male’ and ‘adult’ and corresponding to the affix -er. This provides us with some possibilities of analyzing different meanings of an affix as polysemous. First, one may assign an affix a general and vague meaning. And its specific meaning in a particular word may then be determined by context, situation or knowledge of the world. Thus, reduplication in Afrikaans can have a number of different meanings, depending among other things on the category of the base: nominal bottels-bottels ‘bottles-bottles’, for example, can mean among other things ‘many bottles’, and verbal lek-lek ‘to lick-lick’ can mean among other things ‘to lick repeatedly’. These and other meanings of reduplication can be analyzed as manifestations of the general meaning ‘increased value of what the base expresses’, and can be derived from this general meaning by a number of independently motivated semantic rules (Botha 1988: 91⫺152). In other cases it is more adequate to analyze different meanings of a polysemous affix or process in terms of a core or prototypical meaning from which the other meanings can be derived by means of semantic extension rules. This has been proposed for example to account for the polysemy of agentive suffixes like English -er in work-er or or in detect-or (Booij 1986). One might assume that the pro-

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totypical meaning of these nouns is ‘personal agent’, and that there is a semantic extension rule which has the form: ‘personal agent’ ⬎ ‘impersonal agent’ ⬎ ‘instrument’ (Booij 1986: 505⫺507). ‘Impersonal agent’ in that rule would be an intermediate meaning where agentivity is maintained, and which presents itself for example in detect-or in the compound smoke detector. A third way accounting for polysemy of affixes is based on another development in grammatical theory. This consists in the attempt to develop the analysis of the meaning or conceptual structure of complex words on the basis of the argument structure of bases and affixes (cf. Jackendoff 1990). This can be illustrated again on the example of English deverbal -er nouns (cf. Levin & Rappaport 1988). We have seen above that these nouns may mean ‘someone who / something which Vs’, denoting persons (work-er) as well as instruments (heat-er). Moreover they may inherit the syntactic argument structure of the verbal base, as in (3), or not, as in the case of worker and heat-er. (3) (a) an admirer of the Greek poets (b) (Education is) a leveler of class differences In terms of syntactic argument structure this may be represented as follows. A verb can have three arguments, an external argument, a direct internal argument and an indirect internal argument, corresponding globally to the subject, the direct object and the prepositional object. A verb like to put, presenting all three kinds of arguments, can thus be represented as having the argument structure x *y, Pz+, where the angled brackets include the internal arguments and P(reposition) marks the indirect internal argument. The transitive verbs to heat, to admire and to level have the argument structure x *y+, and the intransitive verb to work the argument structure x. What all deverbal nouns in -er have in common, then, is that they correspond to the external argument of the verbal base, which accounts for the meaning ‘someone who / something which Vs’. Thus we find open-er denoting an instrument, because we can say The key opens the door, but not *eater to denote some piece of cutlery, because we cannot say *The fork eats the meat. Moreover, so-called ergative verbs, which denote a non-causative change of state and are supposed to have only an internal argument, like

846 to arrive or ergative to open, cannot serve to form -er nouns: we do not find *arriv-er, and open-er can denote an instrument to open something, but not something which opens after having been closed. The difference between -er nouns which inherit the internal arguments of the verbal base and those which do not can be analyzed as that between -er nouns in which the verbal base receives an event interpretation and those in which it does not. Thanks to its context, destroyer in destroyer of the city denotes someone actually destroying the city, whereas destroyer without such a context may denote someone or something intended for destroying (most typically a specific type of warship) and not necessarily having ever destroyed anything. Non-inheriting -er nouns may specialize to denote either persons or instruments, such as lov-er for persons or heat-er for instruments, with a certain preference for the instrumental interpretation because of the meaning ‘intended for V-ing’. This analysis of English -er nouns differs from the one given before in that the semantic interpretation is based on argument structure. Moreover the primary meanings are now ‘someone who / something which Vs’ and ‘someone who / something which is intended to V’, and the meanings ‘(im)personal agent’ and ‘instrument’ distinguished above are secondary with relation to these. Given the underlying argument structure, it seems adequate to analyze the relation between ‘someone who / something which Vs’ and ‘someone who / something which is intended to V’ as a relation between a prototypical meaning and an extended meaning, and the relation between ‘someone who’ and ‘something which’ as manifestations of a general underlying meaning. Analyses of the three kinds proposed here, which can often be combined as the preceding paragraph shows, can help us to answer the first question mentioned above, concerning the number of meanings, which are (at least) four in the case of deverbal -er. As these meanings are clearly related, it answers also the second question, concerning polysemy: deverbal -er is polysemous in deverbal nouns in which the verbal base receives an event interpretation and deverbal nouns in which it does not, whether they denote a person or a thing depending on the kind of external argument which the verbal base allows. Analyses of the kinds discussed do not hold only for a restricted set of derivation classes in some particular languages, but are


very generally applicable. Thus, when we consider deverbal nouns in general, we find, across languages, a series of possible relations between such nouns and their verbal bases (Comrie & Thompson 1988: 349⫺358). On the one hand there are deverbal nouns denoting processes or states, like arriv-al and establish-ment, which maintain the arguments of the verbal base in a modified form: John establishes the order ⬎ the establish-ment of the order by John. In many languages theses nouns may have a derived result meaning, as in English and French. The same holds for the meaning ‘way of V-ing’, which may be expressed by a special affix in some languages, witness Turkish ye-yis ‘way of eating’ from ye- ‘to eat’. On the other hand there are deverbal nouns denoting some participant (in a broad sense of the term) of the process denoted by the verbal base. Some examples are given in (4) (Comrie & Thompson 1988: 351⫺357): (4) (a) agent: sing-er (b) instrument: Lakhota (Dakota) i-cahinte ‘broom’ from kahinta ‘to sweep’ (c) place: Si-Luyana (Bantu) li-lotele ‘place of dreaming’ from lo´ta ‘to dream’ (d) result: Si-Luyana lu-lot-o ‘dream’ from lo´ta ‘to dream’ (e) reason: Sundanese pang-datang ‘reason for arrival’ from datang ‘to arrive’ We have seen that in English persons and instruments may be denoted by nouns with the same affix. In Hungarian the same affix may serve to form nouns denoting persons, instruments and places. Moreover, even affixes (or more generally derivational processes) expressing processes or states may sometimes also serve to denote participants (in a broad sense of the term) of the process expressed by the verbal base. Thus English process or state nouns, as we have seen, may also serve as result nouns, such as open-ing or, for that matter, dream, derived from to dream by conversion. In all these cases, the question of one or more meanings, related or not, can in principle be answered along the lines indicated above for deverbal nouns in -er. The result nouns mentioned in the preceding paragraph allow us to discuss one more aspect of the meaning of derived words. We have seen that deverbal nouns in -er corre-


spond to a particular argument of the verbal base, that is a participant of the process denoted by the verb which may be realized in the syntax, in this case as the subject. In a comparable way result nouns may correspond to the direct internal argument, as for example paint-ing ‘picture’ or, for that matter, dream ‘what one dreams’. But this is not always the case. Thus coupl-ing ‘link’ denotes the result of to couple, but it does not correspond to the direct internal argument of that verb. The consequence of this must be that the relations between derived words and their bases cannot exclusively be analyzed in terms of syntactic argument structure, but must sometimes be analyzed in terms of semantic or conceptual structure only. This holds clearly also for the place nouns illustrated in (4c), for example. We may conceive the conceptual structure of verbs (cf. Rappaport & Levin 1988; Jackendoff 1990) as the decomposition into a certain set of primitive predicates accompanied by certain participant conditions, as for example to load (cartons onto a truck) ‘x cause y to come to be at z/ load’, where x, y and z denote participants and ‘load’ in abbreviated form the manner in which the action comes about. In this example the participants must be realized in the syntax and are thus arguments: argument structure provides the linking between conceptual structure and syntax. But other participants need not be realized and so are not arguments. Thus the Si-Luyana example in (4c) meaning ‘place of dreaming’, relating to a place participant without argument status, can only be analyzed in terms of conceptual structure. This is the more so as non-derived nouns (and nominal affixes), unlike verbs, do not have in general internal arguments. So the relation between denominal nouns like villager, hom-er ‘home run’, librar-ian, column-ist and gang-ster and their nominal base can only be analyzed in terms of conceptual structure: the nominal suffix means ‘someone / something with relation to’, and the nominal base specifies the person or thing with relation to which the denotee of the derived noun can be characterized. Moreover, nouns as well as verbs may contain not only conceptual relations of the function-argument kind (with conceptual arguments or participants), like the examples given so far, but also of restrictive modification (Jackendoff 1990: 43⫺ 58), as in French garçonn-et ‘little boy’ or,

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with the same suffix, vol-et-(er) ‘to fly a little, to flutter’, where there is not even a conceptual argument. This is also the case for Africaans reduplication discussed above. What is interesting in these cases is that, just as in the case of deverbal -er nouns corresponding to the syntactic external argument, the affixes denote very general relations which receive a specific interpretation depending on the base. Compare villag-er ‘somebody with relation to a village, inhabitant of a village’, hom-er ‘something with relation to the home base, home run’, etc. The same kind of general relations obtain in compounding (Kastovsky 1982: 204⫺209). Thus, the question of one or more meanings, related or not, can be answered in principle in terms of argument structure and conceptual structure along the lines indicated above for deverbal nouns in -er, with the observation that the relations to be analyzed may be other than syntactic or even semantic function-argument relations. This leaves us with the third question concerning polysemy, namely whether an affix can be polysemous across category boundaries, as in the case, illustrated in (2), of French -erie in denominal, deadjectival and deverbal abstract nouns. Let us consider denominal clown-erie ‘clownerie’, deadjectival brusqu-erie ‘brusquerie’ and deverbal badin-erie ‘badinage’. If we admit that nouns, adjectives and verbs can all have external arguments, we see that with all three abstract noun classes this argument may show up as an adnominal complement: (5) (a) la clown-erie de Jean ⬍ Jean est un clown (b) la brusqu-erie de Jean ⬍ Jean est brusque (c) la badin-erie de Jean ⬍ Jean badine What the suffix -erie does, in fact, is transposing a nominal, adjectival or verbal predicate into an abstract noun. The category of the base determines the particular meaning of that noun, but the contribution of the suffix to it is not different in the three cases. Thus it seems warranted to conclude that an affix can have just one meaning across category boundaries. Moreover deverbal -erie can have, besides its process meaning, like most process noun suffixes, a related result meaning: confis-erie ‘confectionery, sweets’. And it seems possible to argue (cf. Zwanenburg 1991) that the state meaning and the

848


collective meaning of denominal -erie are also a case of polysemy. Thus we may conclude that affixes can be polysemous across category boundaries. But even given the possibility to reduce many cases of more than one meaning for an affix to polysemy, there remain certain cases for which this is not possible. Examples of such cases of homonymy would be French -eur in (feminine) deadjectival quality nouns like grand-eur ‘greatness’ and in (masculine) deverbal agent nouns like chant-eur ‘singer’. And the same holds for English -er in deverbal nouns and in the comparative of adjectives like great-er.

4.

Synonymy

As we have seen in section 2 in relation with the examples of French dur-ete´, bon-te´ and ce´le´br-ite´, it is not always immediately clear with how many affixes we are dealing. This holds also for Dutch agent nouns ending in -aar and -er, which show up in such words as handel-aar ‘merchant’ and werk-er ‘worker’. As these latter two suffix forms are in complementary distribution depending on their morphophonological context, we can analyze them as two alternants of the same suffix, and an allomorphy rule may account for the variation in form. But very often there is no way to reduce different affixes with the same meaning in such a way. We have seen already that this seems to be the case for French -ete´ in durete´ and -ite´ in ce´le´br-ite´. And it certainly holds for Dutch -aar/-er and such agent noun suffixes as -ant in particip-ant ‘participant’ and -ator in organis-ator ‘organizer’. We find another illustration of this situation in (2), where for example the suffixes -ade, -age, -aille(s), -aison etc. all serve to form deverbal process nouns such as promenade, abatt-age, fianç-ailles, compar-aison etc. The question is then how we can account for the synonymy of affixes in such cases. In the literature the phenomenon usually shows up in the form of the observation that the choice of a particular affix for a given function, say the derivation of process nouns, depends on the verbal base, and is thus generally unpredictable or predictable to a limited extent only (Comrie & Thompson 1988: 357). This amounts to saying that affixes alternating in such a morphological context are synonymous in that context.

The competition between several affixes with a particular function is often accounted for in terms of blocking: one of the competing affixes may block the others under certain conditions (Aronoff 1976: 35⫺45; see also Art. 85). Such a view is compatible with the idea of a one-to-one relationship between form and meaning, and a conception of morphology in which a derivation process can be analyzed as the combination of a particular affix carrying a particular meaning with a specified class of bases (Aronoff 1976: 63). This idea is seldom worked out systematically, but there are certain attempts to do so. Thus we might analyze in such a way Dutch -e in female nouns such as gids-e ‘female guide’ from gids ‘(male) guide’, and independently Dutch -ster in female nouns such as handelaar-ster ‘female merchant’ from handelaar ‘merchant’. We could then add some formal device to account for their synonymy (cf. Van Marle 1985: 167⫺246). We might distinguish between general and special processes, and say that the general process exemplified by gids-e is precluded in special cases like handelaar-ster, whose suffix is combined only with the subclass of male nouns in -aar and -ier and blocks there the use of -e. For a full appreciation of the synonymy of affixes, however, it is necessary to consider it in combination with their polysemy. This is what we will see in 5.

5.

Polyfunctionality: polysemy and synonymy

Polysemy as plurality of related meanings and synonymy as sameness of meaning, particularly when applied to roots or simplex words, are delicate and much discussed notions. We have seen, however, in 3. and 4. that recent developments in morphology and semantics contribute to give us a little more grip on the notion of polysemy with relation to affixes and to reduce it to some extent, and also that synonymy may be reduced by analyzing certain affix forms as allomorphs of one affix. But this leaves us nevertheless with a massive occurrence of polyfunctionality in the form of one-to-many and many-to-one relations between affixes and meanings. Thus, as the examples in (2) show, each affix may in principle participate at the same time in relations of polysemy (across the columns) and synonymy (across the rows). In


such a case the language users see the polysemy of -age in esclav-age, abatt-age and feuill-age, for example, reinforced by the parallel polysemy of -erie in clown-erie, badin-erie and verr-erie. And correspondingly they see the synonymy of -age and -erie in esclav-age and clown-erie reinforced by their parallel synonymy in abatt-age and badin-erie on the one hand, feuill-age and verr-erie on the other hand. In other words, relations of polysemy and synonymy in the system of affixes are reinforced by being embedded in a network of systematic correspondences. There is a number of proposals to account for the two related aspects of polyfunctionality. First, one may consider to analyze independently the formal and semantic regularities (Jackendoff 1975). This accounts for the fact, illustrated in (1), that English suffixes such as -al, -ion and -ment can all serve to form process nouns: rebutt-al, discuss-ion, argu-ment, while at the same time each of these affixes can have several meanings, particularly ‘process’ and ‘result’ (Jackendoff 1975: 651), or for the somewhat more complex form-meaning relations in (2). Moreover, such an analysis allows us to explain the existence of formal regularities without corresponding semantic regularities and vice versa, as discussed above. Much depends then on the way in which one is able to establish a link between formal and semantic regularities, in a more principled way than has been done in general until now in analyses of this kind. One of the ways to do so is to establish for a given language the universal or languagespecific derivation classes which it may have in terms of categories and meanings. Thus a language may present among other classes deverbal action nouns, deverbal agent nouns etc. One may then establish the set of formal processes expressing the meaning of each of thoses classes, including, besides particular affixes, anything like conversion, particular forms of vowel change, of “interdigitation” and of reduplication, to mention just a few. And then one may formulate for each formal process to which derivation classes it is linked (cf. Beard 1984). What the proposals formulated so far in this respect have in common, is that they account for the two aspects of polyfunctionality. What none of them does, however, is to give us an insight into the possible restrictions on that phenomenon. Is the cross-classification of affixes and meanings purely arbitrary, or are

849

there regularities in the one-to-many and many-to-one relationships which we may find? Or in other terms: how systematic exactly is the cross-classification of affixes and meanings as illustrated for example in (1)? Consider once more example (2). We have seen there that denominal, deajectival and deverbal -erie in clown-erie ‘clownerie’, brusquerie ‘brusquerie’ and badin-erie ‘badinage’ respectively, may be interpreted as being polysemous, as well as -erie with a result meaning in confis-erie and collective -erie in verr-erie. Moreover -erie is in a relation of synonymy with a set of other suffixes for all or part of its meanings, as shown in (2). And all the suffixes of (2) are restricted to abstract meanings like ‘state’, ‘quality’ and ‘action’ indicated in the analysis, to the exclusion of such suffixes as French -ant, -ard, -eur, -ier and -iste, serving to form denominal, deadjectival and deverbal nouns denoting persons or things. This suggests that the interconnection between sets of affixes and sets of meanings is far from arbitrary. Thus the following picture of morphology arises. Morphological processes are in an arbitrary way linked to semantic function-argument and restrictive modification relations in terms of conceptual structure (and, often, argument structure). But arbitrary as the relation between a particular process and a particular semantic relation may be, the interconnection between sets of processes and sets of semantic relations is a complicated interplay of systematic relations, hopefully and probably determined by universal grammar. In such a conception of morphology, the devises discussed in 3. and 4. for analyzing polysemy and synonymy can be embedded in a more general framework relating sets of affixes and sets of meanings instead of individual affixes and meanings. In order to show that this is a reasonable expectation, it must be observed that the kind of form-meaning relations discussed above show up in very much the same way not only in French and English, but more generally in Romance and Germanic languages. It may also be useful to illustrate the manifestation of polyfunctionality in a radically different, nonIndo-European language system, that of Indonesian. Indonesian has denominal, deadjectival and deverbal abstract nouns like French and English, which have such secondary meanings as ‘collective’ for denominal state nouns and ‘result’ for deverbal action nouns. All

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these are formed mainly with the suffix -an, in general accompanied by a prefix: ke-ibuan ‘motherhood’, ke-besar-an ‘greatness’ and pen-jual-an ‘selling’, from ibu ‘mother’, besar ‘great’ and jual ‘to sell’ respectively. On the other hand, there are derived denominal, deadjectival and deverbal nouns denoting persons and things, which are all formed mainly by means of the same prefix, which has a number of alternants: pe-rotan ‘cane user’, pe-nakut ‘coward’, pem-beli ‘buyer’ and pe-latih ‘trainee’, from rotan ‘cane’, takut ‘fearful’, beli ‘to buy’ and latih ‘to train’ respectively. These examples show that in Indonesian too, there is a regular relation between sets of meanings and sets of affixes, which can be shown to to comprise more forms than the most productive ones, -an and pe- (plus nasal) respectively, used here for illustration. It shows at the same time that the same kinds of meanings crop up. This is not to say that languages all have the same kinds of meanings in derived words, but it suggests at least that there is a central set of meanings which a language cannot easily dispense with.

6.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1988), “Morphological Theory”. In: Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Linguistics: the Cambridge Survey, Vol. I: Linguistic Theory: Foundations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 146⫺191 Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Beard, Robert (1984). “Generative Lexicalism”. Quaderni di Semantica 5, 50⫺57 Booij, Geert E. (1986), “Form and Meaning in Morphology: The Case of Dutch ‘Agent Nouns’ ”. Linguistics 24, 503⫺517 Botha, Rudolf P. (1988), Form and Meaning in Word Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968), The Sound Pattern of English. New York etc.: Harper & Row Comrie, Bernard & Thompson, Sandra A. (1988), “Lexical Nominalization”. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 349⫺398

Corbin, Danielle (1987), Morphologie de´rivationnelle et structuration du lexique, Vol. 1⫺2. Tübingen: Niemeyer Jackendoff, Ray (1975), “Morphological and Semantic Regularities in the Lexicon”. Language 51, 639⫺671 Jackendoff, Ray (1983), Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Jackendoff, Ray (1990), Semantic Structures. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Kastovsky, Dieter (1982), Wortbildung und Semantik. Düsseldorf: Schwann-Bagel; Bern etc.: Franke Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “Lexical Morphology and Phonology”. In: Yang, I. S. (ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin, 3⫺91 Levin, Beth & Rappaport, Malka (1988), “Nonevent -er Nominals: A Probe into Argument Structure”. Linguistics 26, 1067⫺1083 Lyons, John (1977), Semantics, Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Matthews, Peter H. (1970), “Recent Developments in Morphology”. In: Lyons, John (ed.), New Horizons in Linguistics. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 96⫺ 114 Mel’cuk, Igor A. (1973), “The Structure of Linguistic Signs and Possible Formal-semantic Relations between Them”. In: Rey-Debove, Josette (ed.), Recherches sur les syste`mes signifiants. Symposium de Varsovie 1968. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 103⫺ 135 Moortgat, Michael, & van der Hulst, Harry (1981), “ ‘Geı¨nterpreteerde morfologie”. In: Knopper, Rob (ed.), Woordstructuur. Dordrecht: Foris, 17⫺53 Rappaport, Malka, & Levin, Beth (1988), “What to Do with Theta-roles”. In: Wilkins, Wendy (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 21: Thematic Relations. San Diego etc.: Academic Press, 7⫺36 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Vennemann, Theo (1972), “Phonetic Analogy and Conceptual Analogy”. In: Vennemann, Theo, & Wilbur, Terence H. (eds.), Schuchardt, the Neogrammarians, and the Transformational Theory of Phonological Change. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum Verlag, 181⫺204 Zwanenburg, Wiecher (1991), “Abstract Nouns and Collective Nouns: The French Suffix -er-ie”. Recherches de linguistique française et romane d’Utrecht 10, 41⫺52

Wiecher Zwanenburg, Utrecht (The Netherlands)

82. Compositionality of meaning

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82. Compositionality of meaning 1. 2. 3. 4.

The compositionality principle Deviations from compositionality Conclusions References

1.

The compositionality principle

According to a well-known Saussurean doctrine, complex and simple words receive their meanings in quite different ways (cf. Saussure 1968: 296). In the case of simple words, meaning is conventional, that is to say arbitrary, and speakers must learn to associate each word with its meaning on an item by item basis. In the case of complex words, meaning is (at least partly) motivated, and speakers need not learn it separately, but can derive it from the meaning of the parts by means of general rules. To the extent that this is actually true, we say that meaning is determined compositionally. One of Saussure’s examples is French dix-neuf ‘nineteen’, which is partially, or relatively, motivated when compared to monomorphemic vingt ‘twenty’. It is still not fully motivated, since the fact that it means 19 (‘10⫹9’) and not, for instance 90 (‘10⫻9’), is arbitrary and conventional. Another simple example which shows that the meanings of the parts do not completely determine the meaning of the whole is provided by the compound sledgedog. This word has the same parts as the compound dogsledge, but the meanings differ. The same applies to the derivations pseudo-anti-intellectual and anti-pseudo-intellectual. Hence the principle of compositionality is stated more carefully (as e.g. in Bach 1989: 46) as follows: (1) Compositionality principle: The meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the operations performed on those parts. In the above examples the parts may be the same, but not the ways in which the parts are combined. The astute reader might object here that not only the parts of the compound sledgedog but also the operation involved in their combination (the compounding operation) are the same as those employed in the formation of dogsledge. Hence we need to be even more precise than we were. We should say that C(sledge, dog), the syntactic operation of compounding applied to the elements sledge and dog, is mirrored in the semantic

interpretation in such a way that if SLEDGE, DOG and C stand for the meanings of sledge, dog and the compounding operation, respectively, then SLEDGEDOG ⫽ C(SLEDGE, DOG). Just as C(sledge, dog) ⫽ C(dog, sledge), there is now no mystery in the fact that C(DOG, SLEDGE) ⫽ C(SLEDGE, DOG). In a more formal exposition, we would say that the syntax and the semantics each form an algebra, with syntactic and semantic elements and operations over these elements, and that there is a mapping between the two algebras which preserves structure. For a worked-out account of the compositionality principle along such lines within the framework of Montague grammar, I refer to the work of Janssen (1983). Notice that regardless of the precise formal details, we must formulate the principle of compositionality in such a way that it not only makes reference to the meaning of the parts, but also to the meaning of the construction(s) in which these parts partake ((1) uses the more dynamic term operations for reasons we will come back to below). To put it in a familiar way, the meaning of the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Another example from the field of compounding may further illustrate this point. The compound poet-painter has two distinct meanings: It either refers to a poet who is also a painter (and vice versa) or else it refers to a painter of poets. In the first case, we are dealing with the construction-type of appositive compounds, in the second with that of deverbal synthetic compounds. The component parts are the same in each case: poet and painter. For some discussion of the two types of compounding, see Hoeksema (1985: Ch. 3⫺5). By using the term operations in the definition of compositionality, we can extend the use of the principle to all kinds of processmorphology, such as reduplication, stemmodification and so on. For example, a large class of nouns in Dinka form their plurals by reversing the vowel-length of the corresponding singulars (cf. Anderson 1974 for discussion). Thus the plural of nin ‘child’ is niin, whereas the plural of cˇiin ‘hand’ is cˇin. It is not possible to identify in the plural words an element which signifies plurality, yet a compositional interpretation is possible if we view the meaning of the plural as the product of combining the meaning of the singular

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base with the semantic interpretation of the exchange rule which produces the plural form. Note also that the “parts” referred to in (1) may be partly hidden or distorted by rules of truncation. For instance, Corbin (1989: 36) notes that French finaliste has a meaning (‘who believes in finality as the explanation of the universe’) which can only be understood if this word is interpreted as a function of the meanings of -iste on the one hand, and finalite´ on the other hand. This requires that we combine these elements in such a way that the suffix -ite´ is deleted. The phenomenon is perhaps most striking in the case of blends such as telethon, which is formed on the basis of television and marathon. It should be mentioned here that not all linguists subscribe to some form of compositionality. For instance, Reichling (1935) denies that affixes have independent meanings and argues instead that whatever meaning they appear to possess, they receive from the word in which they occur. This is precisely the opposite of what the compositionality principle dictates. Reichling in fact argues that words differ from phrases in that their parts have no independent significance. How do we know, he asks (Reichling 1935: 348), if the element un- in a given word is the prefix un- or some meaningless string as it is in under, unless we know what the entire word means? If Reichling were right, it is hard to see how somebody could create a new word and know what it means. After all, the meanings of the parts would not be of any help if parts of words have no meaning. Reichling’s point of view makes more sense from the perspective of the hearer, but even there it crucially depends on some version of what has been called the full-listing hypothesis: if the meaning of a complex word is essentially irreducible, then every complex word in the language must be listed in the lexicon. Such a position is untenable (cf. Anshen & Aronoff 1988 for some psycholinguistic evidence) for many kinds of very productive morphology, such as inflectional morphology in agglutinative languages, since the number of possible complex words is not finite.

2.

Deviations from compositionality

The degree to which one subscribes to the compositionality principle depends on a number of things, including what one takes

the “meaning” of an expression to be and what semantic operations one is willing to admit. In 2.1⫺2.3 I briefly discuss some factors that influence the extent to which complex words are interpreted compositionally. 2.1.

The role of context

2.1.1. The context of utterance Certain aspects of meaning (or what one might plausibly refer to as such) are subject to the influence of context. Much of semantic theory is concerned with the delimination of contextual and convential aspects of meaning. For instance, the past tense is used to indicate some time occurring before the present. But what is the present moment? That depends on the context of utterance. If the utterance is made at midnight, December 31, 1989, then that is the present moment with respect to which the past tense marks a prior time. These aspects of “meaning” (which we might prefer to refer to as “use”) are usually delegated to the domain of pragmatics and it is important to note that they fall outside the scope of the compositionality principle, not by accident, but by definition, because the principle does not make reference to the context of utterance. Likewise, the Latin verb form cogito has two parts, the stem cogit- and the ending -o. Its meaning, ‘I think’, is determined compositionally by the meaning of the stem, ‘think’, and the meaning of the firstperson singular ending. However, the fact that this word, when uttered by me, expresses the proposition that Jacob Hoeksema thinks, is determined contextually, not compositionally. A rather similar phenomenon has been identified in the case of Noun-Noun compounds (see especially Downing 1977 for extensive discussion). A newly created compound, say hothouse-cigar, is interpreted as a predicate of cigars which stand in some unmentioned relation to hothouses. The nature of that relation is not given by the grammar, but is inferred from knowledge about the context (including or in addition to common knowledge about the world). For instance, it might be the case that hothouse-cigars are cigars made from tobacco grown in hothouses. This is a likely interpretation, but by no means the only one. Alternatively, it might be the case that someone has hidden cigars all over his dominions and his servants, trying to find them, refer to them as the hothouse-

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cigars, the basement-cigars, the kitchen-cigars, etc. Similar scenarios can be given to illustrate what appears to be an open-ended class of possible relationships between cigars and hothouses, each of which can play a role in the interpretation of the compound. For novel compounds, the precise nature of this relation, then, is not given compositionally, but contextually. For a novel compound to work, the context must provide sufficient clues to provide a salient relation. When a compound is not new but conventional, the relation in question is also conventionalized. This is most obvious in cases where the relation is not transparent (as it is in e.g. the compound pipe-dream where the relation between dream and pipe is not easy to recover without some historical knowledge about the smoking of opium) but it is also true of more commonplace compounds such as rat-poison (conventional meaning: ‘poison for the extermination of rats’ and snake-poison (conventional meaning: ‘poison produced by a snake’). There are many other types of word-formation besides compounding where context plays a predominant role, such as zero-derivations (conversion). As detailed by Clark & Clark (1979), the meaning of a denominal verb can stand in any contextually salient relationship to that of the underlying noun. For example, the verb milk means something like ‘to remove milk from’ when we are talking about milking cows, but ‘to add milk to’ in the context of preparing tea or coffee. The verb eyeball ‘look at’ uses the noun as a kind of instrumental, while schedule uses it as a kind of locative (to schedule a meeting is to put it on some schedule). A novel verb like to professor might mean ‘to work as a professor’ or ‘to act as a (stereotypical) professor’ or ‘to address as “Professor” ’ (cf. Don’t you professor me, Mother.) or whatever might be a salient reading in the context of utterance. Thus the compositional meaning of nounsturned-verbs merely specifies that the verbs denote some action or process related to whatever the noun denotes. The nature of the relation in question is determined contextually for novel cases. 2.1.2. Context-sensitive interpretation Sometimes it appears that the interpretation of a word or part of a word depends on an expression in its vicinity. This would seem to be a violation of the spirit, if not the letter,

of the principle of compositionality. After all, if a word’s meaning is determined by its internal make-up, why should elements outside it matter? Consider for example the case of the English verbal prefix un-. As examples such as unpack and undress illustrate, verbs of the form unX mean something like ‘cause to be no longer Xed’. However, in some words the prefix appears to be redundant, as in unthaw, which does not mean the reverse of thaw (e.g. to freeze), but rather the same thing, or unskin, which is used alongside the verb skin. So it appears that the prefix un- is meaningless or redundant in the contexts —thaw or —skin. One way of dealing with this kind of problem in a strictly compositional way was sketched in Keenan (1979) and can be called the functional approach. The element with variable meaning contribution is treated as denoting a function whose action depends on the argument it applies to. This can be compared to mathematical functions such as the function which multiplies a number by 3 if it is odd and by 2 if it is even. This is a single function whose definition is not dependent on particular arguments, but the action performed in each case is. In the case of un- one could treat it as a composite function which applies to dress to provide a meaning more or less the reverse of that of dress and when applied to verbs like thaw, it does not change meaning, just as in mathematics the absolute value function 兩n兩 sends negative numbers -n to n but positive n to n itself. In that case, it is not necessary to appeal to context-sensitive interpretation: the function is always the same f, regardless of its arguments, but f(a), the value of f at a, depends, of course, on a as well. This approach will not work if un- verbs can sometimes both have the reversative and the redundant interpretation. However, that does not appear to be the case. 2.2.

Paradigmatic influences

2.2.1. ‘Elsewhere’ effects The position of a complex word in a larger paradigm may have effects on its interpretation which are ⫺ by definition ⫺ non-compositional. For instance, consider the interpretation of plural forms. Normally, a plural affix is used to turn a predicate of individuals into a predicate of groups whose cardinality is at least 2. However, when the paradigm of the plural form also contains a dual, the in-

854 terpretation shifts a little bit: Instead of a cardinality of at least 2, a cardinality greater than 2 is signalled. The further existence of a separate trial would further push the lower bound to at least 4. This paradigmatic effect can be treated in such a way, however, that it does not affect meaning as such. That is to say, we can maintain that plural morphology always marks the fact that groups (and not individuals) are discussed, and that dual always speaks of groups with cardinality 2. Then for the discussion of groups with 2 members we have two rules that we can follow: (2) (a) Use the plural if the cardinality is at least 2. (b) Use the dual if the cardinality is precisely 2. and we have a classic situation where a general rule and a more specific rule are in conflict. If we use Pa¯nø ini’s principle (Anderson 1969), also known as the Elsewhere Condition (Kiparsky 1973), the general rule gives way and the specific rule is obeyed, giving the same effect as if the rules had been: (2) (a⬘) Use the plural if the cardinality is at least 3. (b⬘) Use the dual if the cardinality is precisely 2. The advantage of the rules (2a) and (2b) over (2a⬘) and (2b⬘) is that it makes the correct prediction about language change: if the dual disappears (as it did in the history of Indoeuropean), the plural will take its place. If the actual rules has been (2a⬘) and (2b⬘), there would not have been an automatic take-over by the plural. Both the singular or the plural could have extended their domain to incorporate the domain of the dual. However, since the odds are heavily skewed in favor of the plural in such situations, we prefer the earlier account. For an illustration of such paradigmatic effects on the interpretation of number, consider the noun-class system of Zulu (cf. Doke 41945). In this language, some singular noun classes have a plural counterpart, whereas others do not. Thus, the Bantu noun-class 7 prefix is(i) marks singular number, and the class 8 prefix -iz(i) marks plural number for the same stems, e.g. isihambi ‘visitor’ ⫺ izihambi ‘visitors’; isalukazi ‘old woman’ ⫺ izalukazi ‘old women’. On the other hand, nouns in classes 14⫺17 have no plural coun-


terparts. Hence they can be interpreted either as singular or plural (provided they are countable), cf. e.g. uBuso ‘face(s)’. This is explained readily if we let singular predicates apply to both individuals and groups and plurals to groups only. Any given noun then receives a strictly singular reading just in case it has a special plural counterpart. This also explains why singular is the unmarked number: Frequently, languages have special endings for plural forms, but none for singular forms (Greenberg 1966). This is because the plural marking bears meaning (it singles out the groups from the total space of entities) whereas the singular is essential meaningless: it only receives meaning indirectly, through an opposition with the plural (cf. also Art. 100). Even in the case of the Zulu noun classes, the primary function of the singular prefixes is not to indicate number, but something we might better call gender: membership of semantically (more or less) coherent lexical fields. Somewhat similar examples of paradigmatic effects may arise in the area of derivation, as a result of blocking (Aronoff 1976). To mention just one case, the noun cooker only has an instrumental interpretation ‘device for cooking’ but lacks the otherwise more common agentive interpretation which -er derivations generally have, namely ‘person who cooks’. This is due to the existence of cook, which blocks this particular use of cooker. Whenever cook is missing from the lexicon (e.g. in the speech of young children who have yet to learn this word), cooker shows up with the agentive reading. (For more discussion of the semantics of agent nouns and the factors affecting their interpretation, see Booij 1986.) 2.2.2. Analogy It is often claimed, and perhaps as often secretly held, that much of word-formation proceeds by analogical means. Some even propose that all of word-formation involves analogy (cf. Derwing & Skousen 1989). The whole issue of analogy is complex, and cannot be dealt with here in all its complexity, but the following remarks are meant to shed some light on the question of how it relates to compositional interpretation (cf. also Art. 147 on analogical change). By way of example, consider the treatment that Spencer (1988; 1991) gives of formations such as baroque flautist and transformational gram-


marian. These are sometimes considered to be paradoxical forms, because the word-division suggests the parsing [transformational] [[grammar]ian], whereas the semantics suggests the structure [[transformational grammar]ian]. If we derive transformational grammarian from transformational grammar, how do we then express the phonological fact that ian is phonologically just a constituent of the word grammarian? In addition, if we derive baroque flautist from baroque flute, as the semantics suggests, then how do we capture the observation that flute is replaced by the allomorph flaut, which is otherwise restricted to the word flautist ⫺ and hence is a case of nonproductive allomorphy? In Hoeksema (1985), it is argued that these problems could be overcome by using head-affixation: If the affix -ian is combined with the base transformational grammar by adjoining (suffixing) it to the head of that expression, we can compositionally interpret the result as the combination of -ian and transformational grammar, which yields the correct reading ‘somebody who pursues transformational grammar’, and not the incorrect reading ‘grammarian who is transformational’. At the same time, we derive the desired bracketing [transformational] [grammarian]. Spencer points out cases where an analysis in terms of head-affixation will not work. One of this examples is theoretical linguist. A theoretical linguist is not a linguist who is theoretical (under the intended interpretation), in contradistinction to, say, a fat linguist who is simply a linguist with the property of being fat. Rather, a theoretical linguist is somebody who does theoretical linguistics, just as a linguist is somebody who does linguistics. Spencer assumes that theoretical linguist is derived from theoretical linguistics. The actual mechanism that he proposes is not a rule of -ics deletion, but analogy: given the existence of three words, a fourth is derived by solving the analogical equation A : B ⫽ A⬘ : B⬘. linguistics ø¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¡ linguist ƒ ƒ √ √ √ √ ¬√ ¬√ theoretical linguistics ø¿¿¡ X⫽theoretical linguist Fig. 82.1: Analogical coining of theoretical linguist

Rather than pondering the pros and cons of such an approach, let us consider its implications for compositionality. The rule used in coining the word theoretical linguist might be

855 treated as a three-place operation: In order for the analogical process to apply, there must be three listed items in the lexicon, such that a fourth can be formed solving the equation. Let A denote this process. Formally: A(w,x,y) ⫽ z iff f(w) ⫽ x and g(w) ⫽ y and f(y) ⫽ z for some operations f and g. It is a typical property of analogical word-formation that the operations f and g do not have to be productive morphological rules of the language, but that in principle any mapping might do, including for example the inverse of an actual morphological rule (in case we speak of backformation). It is such an inverse mapping (affix-subtraction) which sends linguistics to linguist. Let that be our f, and let g be the function which modifies a noun by the word theoretical. Then if w ⫽ linguistics, A(linguistics, linguist, theoretical linguistics) ⫽ f(g(linguistics)) ⫽ theoretical linguist. If f and g commute, then also g(x) ⫽ z, but this does not have to be the case in general. Semantically, we assume counterparts A⬘ (the interpretation of A), w⬘, x⬘, y⬘, z⬘, such that A⬘(w⬘, x⬘, y⬘) ⫽ z⬘ iff f⬘(w⬘) ⫽ x⬘ and g⬘(w⬘) ⫽ y⬘ and f⬘(y⬘) ⫽ z⬘. Even if f and g commute, it does not follow that f⬘ and g⬘ also have to commute, and indeed this is often undesirable, as is shown by the different meanings of theoretical linguist played upon in one real linguist is better than ten theoretical linguists. (The meaning of the analogically formed expression is f⬘(g⬘(linguist⬘), whereas the other meaning is g⬘(f⬘(linguist⬘)) ⫺ that is to say, the reading ‘linguist who(se existence) is theoretical’ which results from applying the meaning of theoretical to that of linguist. If we treat analogy in this general way, we maintain the idea behind the compositionality principle that interpretation rules and formation rules have mirror-image structures. Of course, we are now fairly far removed from the simple intuition that the meaning of a word is the sum of the meanings of its parts. In the case of theoretical linguist, the meaning is partly dependent upon that of linguistics, which cannot be said to be a part of this expression. The simple intuition cannot be maintained, but the more flexible and abstract compositionality principle that is derived from it is not refuted by the possibility of analogical word-formation. (For a noncompositional analysis of such cases, cf. Williams 1981, and for arguments against that approach, Hoeksema 1985: Ch. 2).

856 It should be noted here that the term analogy has been used for much more than the fairly transparent relationships that we have looked at above. Consider in this connection the following common development in Dutch elative compounds (cf. Hoeksema 1985). These compounds typically consist of a noun and an adjective, where the noun serves to indicate something which has a high degree of the quality or property that the adjective expresses. For example, ijs-koud ‘ice-cold (very cold)’, pijl-snel ‘arrow-fast (very fast)’, bere-sterk ‘bear-strong (very strong)’. Literally, these compounds mean ‘cold as ice’, ‘fast as an arrow’, ‘strong as a bear’, etc. Now there are also cases where such a paraphrase makes no sense, such as bere-koud ‘bear-cold’ or bere-moeilijk ‘bear-difficult’. The latter cases are formed not directly by using the elative compounding rule with its associated interpretation rule ‘as A as a N’, but by means of analogy. What beresterk is to sterk, berekoud is to koud. The semantic “proportion” governing the analogy is A: very A, the one conventionally expressed by elative compounding, and not A: as A as N, the literal relation underlying the elative construction. 2.3. Idiomaticity Compositionality is lost in idioms. The meaning of kick the bucket (‘die’) has nothing to do with either kicking or buckets. Idiomaticity is found among words as well as phrases, as is evidenced by compounds such as haywire ‘in disorder’ or deadhead ‘fan of the Greatful Dead’ and derivations such as fishy ‘suspect’ and footage ‘amount of film’. There is a gliding scale from fully compositional (or motivated) to fully idiomatic (or conventional). Idiomaticity often arises out of metaphoric interpretation, and for metaphors to work, the literal compositional meaning must still be around. Idiomaticity is a very common thing and as many linguists have pointed out, it is more common in complex words than in phrases, perhaps because words (being generally shorter) can be listed more easily in the lexicon. Others (e.g. Anttila 1985) have suggested that words are inherently different from phrases in that the connections between their parts are tighter and that this more easily leads to loss of compositionality. Another common observation is that more productive rules tend to produce fewer idiomatic cases than unproductive rules (cf. e.g. Aronoff 1976). Especially inflectional


morphology rarely produces idioms. Since idioms must be listed, a natural language can have only finitely many of them. There is no theoretical upper limit, however, to the number of compositionally interpreted expressions.

3.

Conclusions

The principle of compositionality states that semantic interpretation of words reflects their derivational history and internal make-up. It is useful as a guiding principle for semantic analysis (of words as well as phrases), in the sense that a compositional analysis is usually to be preferred over a noncompositional one (for illustrations of this point, see Hoeksema 1985: Ch. 2 and especially Janssen 1983). It is not an empirical constraint on possible interpretations, because it may be violated, as it is in the case of idioms. Moreover, it requires that contextual and paradigmatic aspects of meaning be factored out.

4.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1969), West Scandinavian Vowel Systems and the Ordering of Phonological Rules. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT [published 41971 by Indiana University Linguistics Club] Anderson, Stephen R. (1974), The Organization of Phonology. New York: Academic Press Anshen, Frank & Aronoff, Mark (1988), “Producing Morphologically Complex Words”. Linguistics 26, 641⫺655 Anttila, Raimo (1985), “Dynamics in Morphology”. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 35, 3⫺30 Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word-formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge: MIT-Press Bach, Emmon (1989), Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics. Albany: State University of New York Press Booij, Geert E. (1986), “Form and Meaning in Morphology: The Case of Dutch ‘Agent Nouns’ ”. Linguistics 24, 503⫺517 Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (1989, eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1989. Dordrecht: Foris Clark, Eve V. & Clark, Herbert H. (1979), “When Nouns Surface as Verbs”. Language 55, 767⫺811 Corbin, Danielle (1989), “Form, Structure and Meaning of Constructed Words in an Associative and Stratified Lexical Component”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 31⫺54 Derwing, Bruce & Skousen, Royal (1989), “Morphology in the Mental Lexicon: A New Look at Analogy”. In: Booij & van Marle (eds.), 55⫺71

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83. Inheritance Doke, Clement M. (41945), Text-book of Zulu Grammar. London etc.: Longmans, Green [11931] Downing, Pamela (1977), “On the Creation and Use of English Compounds”. Language 53, 810⫺ 842 Greenberg, Joseph (1966), Language Universals. The Hague: Mouton Hoeksema, Jacob (1985), Categorial Morphology. New York: Garland Press Janssen, Theo M. V. (1983), Foundations and Applications of Montague Grammar. Amsterdam: Univ., Fac. der Wiskunde en Naturwetenschappen Keenan, Edward L. (1979), On Surface Form and Logical Form. University of Trier (L.A.U.T. papers, series A, 63) [reprinted in: Keenan, Edward L. (1987), Universal Grammar: 15 Essays. London: Croom Helm] Kiparsky, R. Paul V. (1973), “ ‘Elsewhere’ in Phonology”. In: Anderson, Stephen R. & Kiparsky, R.

Paul V. (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 93⫺106 Reichling, Anton (1935), Het Woord: Een studie omtrent de grondslag van taal en taalgebruik. Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink [reprint 1967] Saussure, Ferdinand de (1968), Cours de linguistique geńe´rale. E´dition critique par Rudolf Engler, Vol. I. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz [11916] Spencer, Andrew (1988), “Bracketing Paradoxes and the English Lexicon“. Language 64, 663⫺682 Spencer, Andrew (1991), Morphological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Williams, Edwin S. (1981), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’ ”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274

Jacob Hoeksema, Groningen (The Netherlands)

83. Inheritance 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Inheritance phenomena Inheritance and percolation Inheritance of syntactic valency The optionality of inherited arguments Restrictions on inheritance References

1.

Inheritance phenomena

Inheritance is the phenomenon that complex words have properties which are identical to properties of one of their morphological constituents. Thus, complex words can be said to inherit formal properties from their constituents parts. The kind of properties involved are: morphological class, morphosyntactic class, syntactic category, and syntactic valency. 1.1. Morphological class Inheritance of morphological class can be found for complex verbs, nouns and adjectives. For Germanic languages we have to distinguish between a class of regular (or weak) verbs, and a class of irregular (or strong) verbs. Regular verbs create past tense stems and past particle stems by means of affixation, whereas irregular verbs use vowel alternation (and in addition affixation in the case of participles). For instance, in Dutch the past tense stem of regular verbs is formed by suffixation with -te (after stem-final voice-

less obstruents) or -de (elsewhere), and the past participle by means of the discontinuous affix ge- … t/d (t after stem-final voiceless obstruents, d elsewhere). Irregular verbs form their past tense stems by means of vowel alternation, and their past participles by vowel alternation in combination with affixation of the discontinuous affix ge- … -en. The two classes are illustrated in (1). (1) verb past deel ‘share’ deel-de weeg ‘weigh’ woog

past participle ge-deel-d ge-wog-en

The relevant observation is that prefixed verbs appear to belong to the same morphological class as their base verbs, as illustrated in (2) for the base verbs given in (1) (note that Dutch past participles do not get ge- if the base begins with an unstressed prefix): (2) ver-deel ‘to divide’ over-weeg ‘to consider’

ver-deel-de ver-deel-d over-woog

over-wog-en

In other words, prefixed verbs inherit the morphological class of their verbal base. Similar phenomena can be observed for Latin and the Romance languages. Latin verbs are divided into four conjugation classes (with subclasses with irregular patterns), and prefixed verbs belong to the same

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conjugational (sub)class as the verbal base. In addition, the irregularities of suppletive verbs such as ferre ‘to carry’ and essere ‘to be’ recur in the corresponding prefixed verbs. This is illustrated in (3) for irregular specimens of the four conjugations, and for ferre: (3) domo domui ‘to tame’ perdomo perdomui ‘to tame completely’ censeo censui ‘to judge’ re-censeo recensui ‘to assess’ cresco crevi ‘to grow’ de-cresco decrevi ‘to become smaller’ venio veni ‘to come’ ad-venio adveni ‘to arrive’ fero tuli ‘to carry’ con-fero contuli ‘to bring together’

domitum perdomitum censum recensum cretum decretum ventum adventum latum collatum

In languages with declensional classes for nouns the declensional class of a nominal compound is usually the same as that of its head, in Germanic languages the right member (cf. 2). For instance, German nouns transfer their gender, and thus the declensional pattern characteristic of that gender, to compounds of which they form the head. Note, by the way, that the notions morphological class and gender involved in the classification of nouns are related but not identical. This is illustrated by the Latin noun nauta ‘seaman’ that belongs to the masculine gender, as is clear from agreement (nauta magnus ‘big seaman’, with the masculine ending -us in magnus), but is neverthess inflected as a noun of the a-class, most members of which are feminine. Similarly, Dutch has a closed set of 15 nouns with irregular plural forms in -eren. This irregular plural suffix recurs in compounds with such nouns as heads: (4) (a) kind ‘child’ ⫺ kinderen ‘children’ kleinkind ‘grandchild’ ⫺ kleinkinderen ‘grandchildren’ (b) ei ‘egg’ ⫺ eieren ‘eggs’ kippenei ‘hen’s egg’ ⫺ kippeneieren ‘hen’s eggs’

In Afrikaans, adjectives are divided into two morphological classes: some adjectives are obligatorily inflected in attributive position, and hence get the suffix -e, whereas others do not bear an overt inflectional marking in that position. Normally, compound adjectives belong to the same morphological class as their heads (Combrink 1990: 281⫺316): (5) (a) with overt inflection: bedaard ‘quiet’ doodbedaard ‘very quiet’ beroemd ‘famous’ wereldberoemd ‘world famous’ (b) without overt inflection: lui ‘lazy’ aartslui ‘very lazy’ swart ‘black’ pikswart ‘very black’ In other words, complex adjectives in Africaans inherit the morphological class of their adjectival bases. 1.2. Morpho-syntactic class Gender, like number, is to be considered as a morphosyntactic property: it is an inherent property of a noun (and may relate to the declensional class to which a noun belongs) with morphological and syntactic relevance, since it may play a role in selecting the appropriate (form of) lexical items in phrases headed by that noun, e.g. determiners, quantifiers and adjectives. The gender of a nominal compound usually corresponds to that of its head noun. This is illustrated by the fact that Dutch compounds select the same definite article as their heads (het for neutral, sg., de for non-neutral sg.). (6) het vlees ‘the meat’

het soepvlees ‘the soup meat’

de soep ‘the soup’

de vleessoep ‘the meat soup’

Thus, we conclude that Dutch compounds inherit the gender of their heads. 1.3. Word class The word class of a complex word may correlate with that of one of its constituents. In such cases we may consider the word class of the complex word as inherited. This is particularly clear in the case of compounds which have the same syntactic category as their heads, in the examples given here the right constituent: Dutch bloedgeld ‘blood money’ is a noun because geld ‘money’ is a noun, whereas Dutch bloedmooi ‘lit. blood beauti-

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83. Inheritance

ful, very beautiful’ is an adjective because mooi ‘beautiful’ is an adjective. This does not mean that compounds always have a head. For instance, the Italian compound lavapiatti ‘dish washer’ is a combination of the verbal stem lava ‘wash’ and the plural noun piatti ‘plates’. None of the constituents can be the head: lava is an impossible head, since the compound is a noun, and piatti cannot be the head, since lavapiatti is singular, and does not denote a certain kind of plate. A parallel example from French is porte-monnaie ‘purse’, a combination of the verbal stem porte ‘carry’ and the noun monnaie ‘money’. Prefixes can be transparent with respect to the syntactic category of the base, and hence inherit that syntactic category. This is for instance the case with the Dutch prefix on‘not’:

which performs, effects, instigates, or controls the situation denoted by the predicate”; the undergoer is “the argument which expresses the participant which does not perform, initiate, or control any situation, but rather is affected by it in some way” (Foley & Van Valin 1984: 34). It is clear, however, that there is no complete correspondence in syntactic valency between the verb and the nominalizations. In (9b) the actor John must appear in the genitive case, and in (9c) the undergoer-NP the offer has to be preceded by the preposition of. This lack of complete syntactic correspondence is also found in the following pairs of German expressions (Lehmann 1982: 81):

(7) zin (N) ‘sense’ onzin (N) ‘nonsense’ aardig (A) ‘nice’ onaardig (A) ‘not nice’

That is, deverbal nominalizations require prepositions to precede the noun phrase expressing a participant, whereas verbs assign case to those noun phrases. Therefore, the correspondence in participant structure between verbs and deverbal nominalisations appears to relate to a more abstract level of valency, that of argument structure (Amritavalli 1980). Secondly, the actor of refusal can be either omitted or expressed in a by-phrase (9d), or both actor and undergoer can be omitted (9e), unlike the arguments of refuse and refusing, i.e. nominalization introduces a certain optionality in the syntactic expression of the participants. Correspondence in the number of arguments between verbs and deverbal nouns is also found for deverbal nouns in -er: if the verbal base is transitive, the -er-noun allows for a patient argument, in the form of a prepositional phrase, or as the left constituent of a compound:

In Italian, evaluative suffixes such as the diminutive suffix -ino/-ina are also transparent with respect to the syntactic category of the base (Scalise 1984: 132): (8) tavolo (N) ‘table’ tavolino (N) ‘little table’ giallo (A) ‘yellow’ giallino (A) ‘yellowish’ bene (Adv) ‘well’ benino (Adv) ‘so-so’ In this respect evaluative affixation is like inflection, which also does not change the syntactic and morphological properties of its base. 1.4. Syntactic valency The prototypical case of inheritance of syntactic valency in morphology is that of action nouns formed through deverbal nominalization (see Art. 94), where the syntactic valency of the deverbal noun corresponds with that of the verb. Consider the expressions in (9). (9) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

John refuses the offer John’s refusing the offer John’s refusal of the offer The refusal of the offer (by John) The refusal

The transitivity, of the verb refuse can be said to be inherited by the gerund form refusing and the deverbal noun refusal, because these nouns, like the verb, cooccur with an actor argument, John and an undergoer argument, the offer. The actor is “the argument of a predicate which expresses the participant

(10) dem x schenken / Schenkung an x dem x widerstehen / Widerstand gegen x sich des x erinnern / Erinnerung an x

(11) (a) John loves music. (b) John is a lover of music. (c) John is a music lover. Note that the actor argument John of the verb love is not expressed by a separate phrase because the -er-noun itself refers to this actor argument. Moreover, the undergoer argument of love can sometimes be omitted in phrases with the -er-noun, as in the sentence John and Mary are lovers. Although the examples discussed so far suggest that the correspondence between

860


verbs and deverbal nouns is to be seen as a correspondence at the more abstract level of argument structure, there are also inheritance phenomena that suggest inheritance at the more concrete level of syntactic subcategorization, cases of complement inheritance (Moortgat 1987). The Dutch examples in (12) suggest that the subcategorization for the specific preposition with which a complement of adjectives has to begin, is transferred to the corresponding deadjectival noun in -heid ‘-ness’: (12) afkerig van NP ‘averse to’ / afkerigheid van NP bedacht op NP ‘intent on’ / bedachtheid op NP benieuwd naar NP ‘curious about’ / benieuwdheid naar NP English examples of inheritance are the following (from Moortgat 1988: 95): (13) to believe in / believer in magic to search after truth / searchers after the truth to rely on / reliance on Bill accessible to / accessibility to all students Complement inheritance is also found for adjectives that allow for a sentential complement: (14) sure that John would come / sureness that John would come On the other hand, there are also clear cases where arguments are inherited, but not their specific syntactic form. Verbs may allow for both NP-complements and sentential complements, whereas the corresponding derived noun does not allow for a sentential complement: (15) *the promising to Bill that he would receive money the promising of money to Bill In the next sections I will discuss how these observations are accounted for in the literature.

2.

Inheritance and percolation

One formal mechanism that can be used to account for inheritance phenomena is percolation. Percolation is the propagation of properties from a node to a dominating node (upward percolation) or to a node that it dominates (downward percolation). Percolation

is a mechanism used in syntax with respect to morpho-syntactic properties. For instance, in languages with number agreement between subject-NP and verb, the feature value for [plural] has to percolate from the head noun to the dominating NP-node, because it is the head noun that determines the number of the whole nominal phrase, and hence the number of the verb. Percolation can also be used to account for inheritance phenomena at the morphological level, i.e. can be assumed to apply within complex words (Lieber 1981; 1989). In the case of compounds, the inheritance of word class and gender from the head is accounted for by upward percolation of the relevant features to the dominating node. For instance, the word class and gender of compounds with right heads is determined as follows: (16)

X

Y [syntactic category] [gender]

The mechanism of percolation is also used to express the fact that affixes may determine the syntactic category, gender, etc. of the complex words that they form. For instance, the Dutch diminutive suffix determines word class (noun) and gender (neuter) of all diminutives, whatever the word class and gender of the base word: (17) man ‘man’ (N, masc.) blond ‘blond’ (A) speel ‘play’ (V)

mannetje ‘little man’ (N, neuter) blondje ‘blond girl’ (N, neuter) speeltje ‘toy’ (N, neuter)

The same mechanism can be used for inheritance in complex words with transparent prefixes. In theories that conceive of morphology as ‘the internal syntax of words’ (Lieber 1981; Williams 1981 a; Selkirk 1982; Trommelen & Zonneveld 1986; Di Sciullo & Williams 1987) such word class and gender determining affixes are considered as the heads of the complex word they form. Therefore, they are assigned features for word class and gender, and these features are percolated to the dom-

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83. Inheritance

inating node, as illustrated in (18) for the Dutch word blondje ‘blond girl’: (18)

A blond

je [+N, -V] [+neut]

Note, however, that this is not inheritance strictu sensu because the affix only exhibits these properties within a complex word, whereas in the case of compounds there is independent motivation for the morpho-syntactic properties that we assign to the head, since this head also occurs as an independent word (cf. Zwicky 1985 for critical comments on the use of the notion head in morphology). Probably related to this difference between compounding and derivational morphology is that only in compounding semantic considerations may overrule the gender assigned by inheritance, as illustrated by the following data from Dutch: (19) oog ‘eye’ [⫹neut] spleetoog ‘split-eye’ (person) [⫺neut] jongen ‘boy’ [⫺neut] jongetje ‘little boy’ [⫹neut] Although the diminutive noun jongetje denotes a person, it remains a neuter noun, and semantic considerations do not have an overruling effect here, unlike in the case of spleetoog and similar compounds. Although percolation primarily applies to properties of the head, it is assumed to be also possible from the non-head constituent of a complex word, but only if the head is not specified for the relevant morpho-syntactic property (Lieber 1981; 1989; Selkirk 1982; Di Sciullo & Williams 1987). For instance, the Italian evaluative suffix -ino/-ina mentioned in 1.3 has no word class and gender of its own, and thus the features for these categories can be percolated from the non-head, as shown in (20). Percolation from the non-head constituent is called back up percolation. (20)

tavolo [+N] [+masc]

-in-

Percolation may also be used to account for the inheritance of diacritic features. For instance, one might percolate the feature for a specific ablaut class of a Germanic strong verb to the dominating node of the corresponding prefixed verb (cf. Booij 1989). However, it has also been claimed (Lieber 1989) that percolation should be restricted to features for morphosyntactic properties. In the latter approach the past tense forms of strong prefixed verbs are derived by prefixing the past tense stems of the base verb, which is supposed to be listed in the lexicon. Similarly, the irregular plural form kleinkinderen ‘grandchildren’ (cf. (4)) would be derived by attaching klein ‘small’ to be the plural form kinderen ‘children’. Another way of accounting for the inheritance of diacritic morphological properties is the use of so-called head operations (Hoeksema 1986). A head operation is a morphological operation that applies to the head of a morphologically complex word. For instance, if plural formation in Dutch is a head operation, plural formation when applied to kleinkind operates on the head kind, which determines the choice of the irregular plural suffix -eren.

3.

Inheritance of syntactic valency

In 1.4 we saw that in the case of deverbal action nouns inheritance pertains to the level of argument structure. Verbs are predicates with one or more arguments (i.e. participants in the state or event indicated by the verb). For instance, the verb refuse has two arguments, an actor and an undergoer, which may also be expressed in a noun phrase with the deverbal noun refusal as its head. The actor will be realized as a subject, and the undergoer as an object. Therefore, the actor-argument is also referred to as the external argument since it is realized outside of the Verb phrase of which the verb is the head. The undergoer is then referred to as the internal argument: it is realized as a sister-NP of the verb (Williams 1981 b). The list of arguments plus the information on their syntactic realisation in terms of external versus internal arguments is called the argument structure of a word. Like all nouns, the noun refusal has a referential argument because it can be predicated of some referential noun phrase, as in This is a refusal. This referential argument is

862


indicated as R (Williams 1981 b; Higginbotham 1985). Hence, refusal has three arguments: R, actor, undergoer. In other words, the arguments of refuse are contained in the set of arguments of refusal. If we use percolation to account for this kind of inheritance, it is necessary to allow for percolation of arguments from both the head and the non-head to the dominating node (Di Sciullo 1990): (21)

refuse

al

[+V] Actor, Undergoer

[+N] R

In the case of deverbal subject names such as employer, the relation between noun and verb is as follows: the referential argument of employer is identical to the actor of the verb employ. That is, the actor of employ is already expressed by the noun employer, and thus it is only the undergoer argument that receives an independent syntactic expression as in an employer of slaves: (22) employ, Actor, Undergoer employer, R, Actor ⫽ R, Undergoer The inherited undergoer-argument of deverbal -er-nouns cannot only be expressed in the form of a PP-complement, but also as the non-head constituent of a compound in which the deverbal nouns functions as the head (Selkirk 1982): (23) lover of music / music lover eater of pasta / pasta eater Note, however, that if the -er-noun is interpreted as an instrument, the inherited argument can only be expressed as the non-head of a compound: (24) a mower of lawns (only agent interpretation) a lawn mower (agent or instrument interpretation) Deverbal morphological processes do not always exhibit inheritance of argument structure. In particular, when complex verbs are created it appears that the argument structure of such verbs is created rather than inherited. For instance, the Dutch prefixes beand ver- derive obligatorily transitive verbs from verbs, nouns and adjectives. The action

referred to by the complex verb is always directed towards an object in such a manner that the object is affected. Whatever the argument structure of the base word, the output verb is always transitive, because verbs with affected objects are always obligatorily transitive, and the affected object is always realized as an noun phrase (cf. Carlson & Roeper 1981; Booij & Van Haaften 1988; Booij 1992). The following examples from Dutch illustrate the point that the argument structure of the input verb is not relevant for that of the derived verb: (25) (a) lopen ‘walk’ / iets belopen ‘to walk on something’ (b) twijfelen aan iets ‘doubt about something’ / iets betwijfelen ‘doubt something’ (c) iets schilderen ‘paint something’ / iets beschilderen ‘to cover something with paint’ (d) iets roven van iemand ‘rob something from someone / iemand beroven ‘rob someone’ Note also that even when the number of arguments of the input verb and the output verb is the same, the arguments may differ in selection restrictions: one can een meer schilderen ‘paint a lake’, but not een meer beschilderen ‘cover a lake with paint’. As observed in 1.4, a morphological process may be transparent as to the choice of a specific preposition for the inherited complement (cf. (12)⫺(13)). In some cases this preposition might be predictable on the basis of the semantic relation between head and complement. For instance, in travelers to Amsterdam we find the same directional preposition as in the train to Amsterdam, where traveler is derived from the verb travel that also selects to, and train is an underived word. Hence, the use of to in such cases seems to be predictable. Otherwise, the choice of preposition will have to be encoded in the lexical representation of the base word, and will be inherited by the derived word as in fondness of NP I fond of NP. Inheritance also has semantic implications. For instance, in fondness of NP, the semantic interpretation is something like ‘the property such that x is fond of NP’. In other words, -ness has semantic scope over fond of NP, although formally the complement of NP is external with respect to -ness. Several solutions to this asymmetry between formal structure and semantic structure have been proposed

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83. Inheritance

in the literature: head operations (Hoeksema 1986), affix raising at the level of Logical Form, with the effect that e.g. fondness of NP has the structure [[fond of NP]ness] at the level of Logical Form (Pesetsky 1985), and ⫺ in the framework of categorial grammar ⫺ functional composition (Moortgat 1987; 1988). The scheme for functional composition is: (26) X/Y . Y/Z ⫽ X/Z For instance, if N/A is the category of -ness (it takes an adjective to make a noun), and A/PP is the category of fond (it takes a PP to form an adjective), then fondness of NP can be derived by the union of the categories of -ness and fond of NP: N/A.A/PP ⫽ N PP.

4.

The optionality of inherited arguments

As pointed out in 1.4, deverbal nominalization introduces optionality in the syntactic expression of inherited verbal arguments. It may, however, also be the verb itself that introduced optionality. For instance, the verb eat is optionally transitive, i.e. can occur without a syntactically realized object (in that case, the understood object is ‘food’), and hence we also find a corresponding -er-noun without a complement: (27) John eats / John’s eating / John is a big eater Another factor involved is that of lexicalization. Consider, for instance, the transitive verb bake: the corresponding noun baker can occur both with and without a complement: (28) (a) John is the baker of this cake. (b) John is a baker. In (28b) baker is to be interpreted as John’s profession, whereas this is not case in (28a). Contextual factors also play a role in the omissibility of nouns. In the following dialogue (29) Who made this cake? John is the baker the complement of (non-professionally interpreted) baker can be omitted, since it can be identified on the basis of the preceding sentence. In the case of deverbal action nouns like refusal and destruction we might ask the question why we should deal with their (optional) complements in terms of (inherited) argument structure, instead of just con-

sidering such complements as similar to those of simplex nouns. In other words, why is a noun phrase such as the enemy’s destruction of Rome to be seen as different in terms of argument structure from John’s book on Rembrandt. In the latter noun phrase, John also receives an actor-like interpretation, and Rembrandt an undergoer-like interpretation, although book does not possess inherited arguments. One argument for the argument inheritance approach is the phenomenon of specific cooccurrence restrictions for deverbal nouns. Consider the following data: (30) (a) the arrival of John / *by John (b) the destruction of Rome (by the enemy) / (*of the enemy) In (30a) the deverbal noun is derived from a verb with a single actor-argument, and this argument can only be expressed as an of-PP. (30b) shows that in the case of an underlying verb with two arguments, the actor can only be expressed by a by-phrase, not by an ofphrase. Other languages such as French (la description du paysage par Pierre / *de Pierre) and Polish exhibit the same pattern: (31) Polish (from Rozwadowska 1988: 161): zaglada miasta (przez wroga) destruction: city: (by enemy) nom gen ‘The city’s destruction by the enemy’ *zaglada wroga miasta destruction: enemy: city: nom gen gen ‘the enemy’s destruction of the city’ The implicit presence of arguments can also be seen in control phenomena. In (32a) the implicit actor-argument of promise also functions as the implicit actor-argument of the embedded infinitival phrase, whereas a simplex noun like book does not allow for such embedded infinitives since it does not provide a controller for the implicit subject of the infinitive: (32) (a) the promise to write a paper (b) *the book to write a paper The optionality of the realisation of inherited arguments of deverbal action nouns also has to do with the fact that such nouns not only serve to indicate an event or action, but also the result of that event or action. In the latter case, the inherited argument structure gets lost, and the deverbal noun becomes like an ordinary noun in terms of argument struc-

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ture. This explains why the undergoer-argument must be realized if the actor-argument is present: as long as there is an actor, the noun is an event or action nominal, not a result noun (Grimshaw 1990): (33) (a) The enemy’s destruction of the city took a long time. (b) *The enemy’s destruction took a long time. That is, (33b) is ungrammatical if enemy is interpreted as the actor of the destruction. On the other hand, the undergoer-argument can be expressed without the actor-argument, just like in the passive construction: (34) (a) The destruction of the city (by the enemy) (b) The city was destroyed (by the enemy). In both constructions the actor-argument is ‘suppressed’, but can be optionally expressed by a by-phrase (Grimshaw 1990). These observations suffice to show that deverbal action nouns are halfway between verbs and typical nouns (Lehmann 1982: 82). Note that gerunds are even closer to verbs. For instance, in John’s refusing the offer the form of the offer, a bare noun phrase, indicates that refusing still has verbal properties, because nouns do not allow for NP-complements. On the other hand, the fact that John’s appears in the genitive form indicates the (partly) nominal character of gerunds.

5.

Restrictions on inheritance

For some deverbal word formation processes the inheritance of arguments appear to be restricted (Randall 1984; Hoekstra 1986; Booij 1988; Hoekstra & Van der Putten 1988). For instance, English deverbal -er-nouns do not allow for the inheritance of other arguments than the undergoer-argument (Randall 1988: 135): (35) (a) He is a learner of poems. *He is a learner of poems by heart. (b) She is a healer of sick children. *She is a healer of sick children of their diseases. In these cases, the -er-noun can still be formed because the arguments by heart and of their diseases are optional arguments of the base verb. If such arguments are obligatory, the -er-noun cannot be formed, as is shown in (36) for the English verb to put that has an

obligatory location argument (Randall 1988: 134): (36) America put men on the moon. *America put men. *America is a putter of men on the moon. The corresponding word formation process in Dutch cannot be used if the undergoer-argument is not realized as a bare noun phrase, but as a prepositional phrase (Booij 1988: 60) (37) houden van kaas ‘love cheese’ / *houder van kaas wonen in Amsterdam ‘live in Amsterdam’ / *woner in Amsterdam Verbs with sentential complements also do not allow for inheritance: (38) beginnen [te schrijven] ‘begin to write’ / *beginner te schrijven beloven [dat hij komt] ‘promise that he comes’ / *belover dat hij komt So the generalization for deverbal -er-nouns in English and Dutch is that only those arguments can and must be inherited that are realized as bare noun phrases; if an obligatory argument is not a bare noun phrase, the -ernoun cannot be formed.

6.

References

Amritavalli, A. (1980), “Expressing Cross-categorial Selectional Correspondences: An Alternative to the X-Bar Syntax Approach”. Linguistic Analysis 6, 305⫺343 Booij, Geert (1988), “The Relation between Inheritance and Argument Linking: Deverbal Nouns in Dutch”. In: Everaert et al. (eds.), 57⫺74 Booij, Geert (1989), “Complex Verbs and the Theory of Level Ordering”. In: Booij & Van Marle (eds.), 21⫺30 Booij, Geert (1992), “Morphology, Semantics and Argument Structure”. In: Roca, Iggy (ed.), Thematic Structure: Its Relevance in Grammar. Berlin: Foris, 48⫺64 Booij, Geert & Van Haaften, Ton (1988), “On the External Syntax of Derived Words: Evidence from Dutch”. In: Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988. Dordrecht: Foris, 29⫺44 Booij, Geert & Van Marle, Jaap (1989, eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1989. Dordrecht: Foris Carlson, Greg & Roeper, Thomas (1981), “Morphology and Subcategorization: Case and the Unmarked Complex Verb”. In: Hoekstra, Teun & Van der Hulst, Harry & Moortgat, Michael (eds.), Lexical Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris, 123⫺164

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84. Base and direction of derivation Combrink, J. G. H. (1990), Afrikaanse Morfologie: Capita Exemplaria. Hatfield, Pretoria: Academica Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria (1990), “Formal Relations and Argument Structure”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Luschützky, Hans C. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. & Rennison, John R. (eds.), Contemporary Morphology. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 61⫺68 Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria & Williams, Edwin (1987), On the Definition of Word. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 14) Everaert, Martin & Evers, Arnold & Huybregts, Riny & Trommelen, Mieke (1988, eds.), Morphology and Modularity. In Honour of Henk Schultink. Dordrecht: Foris (Publications in Language Sciences 29) Foley, William & Van Valin, Robert (1984), Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Grimshaw, Jane (1990), Argument Structure. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 18) Higginbotham, Jim (1985), “On Semantics”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 547⫺593 Hoeksema, Jakob (1986), Categorial Morphology. New York: Garland Press [reprint of Ph. D. dissertation, Univ. of Groningen, 1984] Hoekstra, Teun (1986), “Deverbalization and Inheritance”. Linguistics 24, 549⫺583 Hoekstra, Teun & Van der Putten, Frans (1988), “Inheritance Phenomena”. In: Everaert et al. (eds.), 163⫺186 Lehmann, Christian (1982), “Nominalisierung: Typisierung von Propositionen”. In: Seiler, Hansjakob & Lehmann, Christian (eds.), Apprehension: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Gegenständen, Vol. I: Bereich und Ordnung der Phänomene. Tübingen: Narr (Language Universals Series 1/I), 66⫺83 Lieber, Rochelle (1981), On the Organization of the Lexicon. Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club [reprinted 1991: New York: Garland]

Lieber, Rochelle (1989), “On Percolation”. In: Booij & Van Marle (eds.), 95⫺138 Moortgat, Michael (1987), “Functional Composition and Complement Inheritance”. In: Hoppenbrouwers, Geer & Seuren, Pieter & Weijters, Ton (eds.), Meaning and the Lexicon. Dordrecht: Foris, 38⫺49 Moortgat, Michael (1988), Categorial Investigations. Dordrecht: Foris Pesetsky, David (1985), “Morphology and Logical Form”. Linguistic Inquiry 16, 193⫺246 Randall, Janet (1984), “Thematic Structure and Inheritance”. Quaderni di Semantica 5, 92⫺110 Randall, Janet (1988), “Inheritance”. In: Wilkins (ed.), 129⫺146 Rozwadowska, Bozena (1988), “Thematic Restrictions on Derived Nominals”. In: Wilkins (ed.), 147⫺165 Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris Selkirk, Elisabeth (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 7) Trommelen, Mieke & Zonneveld, Wim (1986), “Dutch Morphology: Evidence for the Right Hand Head Rule”. Linguistic Inquiry 17, 147⫺170 Wilkins, Wendy (1988, ed.), Thematic Relations. San Diego etc.: Academic Press (Syntax and Semantics 21) Williams, Edwin (1981 a), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’ ”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274 Williams, Edwin (1981 b), “Argument Structure and Morphology”. The Linguistic Review 1, 81⫺ 114 Zwicky, Arnold (1985), “Heads”. Journal of Linguistics 21, 1⫺29


84. Base and direction of derivation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Base and direction of derivation Theoretical background The principle of directionality Bases and morphological units Order of affixation Towards a solution Derivational direction without overt marking 8. Base as basic member of a derivational relationship 9. Problematic phenomena 10. Allomorphy and suppletion 11. References

1.

Base and direction of derivation

In derivational morphology, the term base is usually used to mean a single morphological element (a word, a stem or a root) that carries lexical meaning and on which a wordformation rule operates, modifying its meaning and often changing the word class to which it belongs; or, more precisely, a base consists of a set of such elements whose common syntactic-semantic characteristics make

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them the starting point of a certain derivational process. The principle of directionality recognizes a relationship between two morphological items (a base and a derived word) in which one is characterized with respect to the other because of the adding of extra meaning together with the adding of phonic material. The direction of derivation can therefore be identified with a semantic and morphophonological growth which acts upon a base to form a derived word. The derivative is distinguished from the base because of its greater semantic specificity and more complex morphological structure, which usually reveal themselves in the addition of a morphological element (typically an affix), which increases the phonic body of the derivative and therefore its length with respect to that of the base. (1)

base derivative (a) fair J unfair (b) drink J drinkable

The contribution of the derivational process, apart from being semantic (cf. (1a)), can also be grammatical (cf. (1b)). The direction of derivation is not to be equated with the simple chaining of morphological items. An adverb such as ungracefully is not simply formed by the union of various elements in a linear direction (2) un- ⫹ grace ⫹ -ful ⫹ -ly but through an ordered sequence which starting from the noun grace leads to the adjective graceful, from this to the prefixed adjective ungraceful, and then to the adverb ungracefully, according to a structure which can be represented in the following way (3) [[un][grace]Nful]A]Aly]Adv Word-formation is not a mere adjective process: morphologically complex words have an internal structure. The base is the starting point of a process that conform to a certain pattern and the resulting word is a whole that dominates over the parts.

2.

Theoretical background

The identification of the direction of derivation, which is obtained by comparing two morphologically and semantically related items (a base and its derivative), has as main prerequisites the recognition of the internal

structure of derived words and of a hierarchy among the elements which form them. The principle of directionality was one of the corner-stones of structuralist morphology, and is at the base of the major contemporary theoretical trends. It is adopted by each of the three theoretical models of morphology described by Hockett (1954). Both the Item and Process model and even more the Item and Arrangement model refer explicitly to the direction of derivation when they refer to a base on which derivational rules operate or to which morphological elements are added to form new words. But also in the Word-and-Paradigm model, in which the derivation seems to be arranged in a radial and discontinuous manner, rather than in a linear or consecutive one, the description of paradigm starts from the identification of one or more base-forms with unmarked characteristics (the invariant of the paradigm), from which more morphologically complex items derive. Separationist hypotheses (cf. Beard 1988; 1990) and analogical approaches (cf. Derwing & Skousen 1989; Becker 1990) give less importance to the principle of directionality within the word, preferring the comparison between more or less complex whole words, and tend to keep operations of a semantic kind separate from morphological realizations. Plank (1981) holds a similar position. He adopts the so-called holistic perspective, which emphasizes that the content of a morphologically complex word precedes that of its members, so that the formation of a new item takes place in a downward direction, following a procedure which has already been described by Sturtevant (1917: 113) in the following way: “The problem in the minds of those who originated the noun server was not, ‘What shall we add to the verb serve to name the man who serves?’ but, ‘What is the word that stands to serve as player stands to play?’ ”. The latter views do not tend to contradict the principle of directionality and derivation as a process which relates more or less morphologically complex words to each other, as much as to reduce the theoretical weight of affixes. Affixes have a value only within derived words as signals that a derivation has taken place. Consequently the notion of base itself as a group of elements defined by the selective capacity of a specific affix or class of affixes is reconsidered. Attention is focused on the study of lexical and semantic categories which can be expressed starting from words (bases) with specific characteristics.

84. Base and direction of derivation

3.

The principle of directionality

In all studies on derivational morphology it is generally agreed ⫺ even if often implicitly ⫺ that the direction of derivation normally goes from the shorter word to the longer one. For example, Bergenholtz & Mugdan (1979: 161) state: “Ein Lexem A ist deriviert von Lexem B, wenn der Stamm des Lexems A um genau ein Derivationsmorphem länger ist als der Stamm des Lexems B”. There are no doubts that suffixed or prefixed words such as: (4) disappear, unhappy, ornamental, shorten, worker are derived from the bases: (5) appear, happy, ornament, short, work through the addition of an affix and not the other way round. The joint increase in meaning and form in which the principle of directionality is identified responds to a general semiotic principle of constructional iconicity (defined as diagrammaticity in Natural Morphology, cf. Art. 30 and 31), which associates the changes in the meaning to the changes in the form. This principle is satisfied when both the base and the derivational process are easily identifiable (thanks to the absence of morphophonological modifications or allomorphic alternations) and when the derivational relationship is constant and typical of a series. Given such a principle we can explain why in the world’s languages affixation is indisputably the main and most widespread derivational process. In fact, it allows the bases to remain “at least to a large extent unchanged […] and allows of much more diversity than the process of internal modification which by definition has to affect the underlying form and which is ⫺ exactly for this reason ⫺ limited in its possibilities of formal diversity” (Uhlenbeck 1962: 430). Furthermore, we can also explain why across languages suffixing is more frequent than prefixing, and both are considerably more frequent than infixing. Suffixes are in fact also used in head-modifier languages (i.e. VO languages) while prefixes are not used in OV languages (cf. Hawkins & Gilligan 1988). The overall preference for suffixation results from the way language is processed by its users (cf. Cutler et al. 1985). Suffixes, being added to the final part of bases, allow the word onset (the psychologically more salient part) to remain unchanged,

867 making processing easier for language users. On the contrary, prefixes modify the beginning of words, which are therefore more difficult to be recognized. Even worse, from this point of view, is the behaviour of affixes which interrupt the unity of the base, going against the preference of language users to process bases before affixes: no language uses this type of affix exclusively. Affixation, although it is the main one, is not the only mode of expression of derivation. From the point of view of their formal expression, derivational processes can be divided into two main classes: addition of affixes and modification of the base (cf. Mel’cˇuk 1982: 77⫺80; cf. also Art. 53). The first class must be further subdivided, since, apart from the affixes represented by strings of phonemes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes, transfixes, circumfixes, cf. Ch. VIII), there are suprasegmental affixes as well, which consist in a group of prosodemes, called suprafixes (cf. Art. 61). The use of suprafixes is relatively common in African tone languages, but is marginally present in English too (e.g. ’segment / (to) seg’ment). In the second class, the non-affixal one, the modification of the base can concern either its syntactic category and semantics or its form. Consequently, we have to do either with conversion (the change of syntactic category of the base without an overt marker; cf. Art. 90) or with formal modification of the base. As modifications of the base we have to further distinguish between, on the one hand, replicas, or modifications representable by means of iteration like reduplication (see Art. 57), and, on the other, apophonies and other modifications not representable by means of iteration (cf. Art. 58). The problem of directionality consists in distinguishing bases from derivatives in absence of overt marks, or when there is a discrepancy between a formal and semantic increase, or a deletion of a part of the base word (cf. 9). The most common process in which it can be difficult to identify the direction of derivation is conversion. In cases of apophonies and non segmental changes (e.g. sing, sang, sung, song; (to) im’port / ’import) we indeed have to do with different forms, but we do not know a priori which one is the base and which is the derivative, even if it is sometimes possible to identify some regularities which make it possible to decide, to a certain extent, derivational relationships (cf. Marchand 1964: 11).

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4.


Bases and morphological units

The search of minimal recurrent form/meaning units led structuralist linguistics to oscillate in the choice between morpheme or word as the basic unit of morphology. Focus on the function of rules and processes in generative morphology, rather than on the chaining of morphemes, has recently brought morphologists to decide for the word, as in, for instance, Aronoff (1976), where the choice of the word-based hypothesis is justified by mainly semantic arguments. In brief, Aronoff’s proposal restricts the possibility to function as bases of word-formation rules to words: neither smaller units such as morphemes nor larger units such as phrases can play this role. The choice of the word as the basic unit of word-formation processes has important theoretical advantages, extensive empirical support and a high degree of psychological plausibility. But the hypothesis according to which all derivatives are formed from a base that is a word (in the sense of an independently occuring word form) should, according to Dressler (1988), not be understood as an absolute principle, but as a cross-linguistic preference, a statistic universal to be found in a representative set of languages: there are in fact languages where the specific language type they belong to (as the inflecting and the introflecting one) may favour stem- or rootbased derivational processes. The preference for the word as base of derivational processes can also be explained by functional reasons. First of all, the word responds to the principle of the optimal size of the sign. Too big or too small forms are difficult for the hearer to perceive and to store. The word is to be prefered also because it is a primary sign (i.e. the most basic sign logically and in communication), while morphemes, stems, roots are signs on signs, i.e., are secondary signs (cf. Dressler 1988: 144). But there are marginal exceptions to the primary importance of the word. There can exist bases of word-formation processes either larger or smaller than the word. Phrases (especially lexicalized ones) can be the base for derivation (e.g. Engl. cut-downess, far-outer, Ital. mini-macchina da cucire ‘mini-sewing machine’, pressapochista ‘careless person’). The adoption of suppletion rules (cf. 10). makes it possible to claim that the base of many complex words is a word rather than a bound form (a unit smaller than a word).

Nevertheless there are also words formed according to productive processes that use bound forms: first of all neoclassical compounds (e.g. hydrolysis, pornography, telephone), but also words formed by putting together neoclassical combining forms and words (e.g. biocomputer, cyberspace, technofear). Considering the word as the only possible base for word formation appears therefore to be too strong a claim. Nevertheless, it handles the majority of cases and the core of word formation processes. Cases which are not affected by this restriction should not be considered counterexamples, but indications that the lexicon should include, apart from words, other items, such as bound forms with lexical meaning, and some kind of phrases. Other evidence for the central position of the word in derivational processes concerns their result, which is always a member of a major lexical category (i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs). To understand correctly what is the central building stone of morphology we have to make a terminological specification, since even though it is common to call it word, the more appropriate term is lexeme. And rather than word-based morphology, it would be more precise to talk about lexeme-based morphology. In fact, the term word-based morphology could mean that the base or stem for a word-formation rule has necessarily to be a complete word or free form, instead of a lexeme. According to Aronoff (1994: 1⫺59), a lexeme is a member of a major lexical category, having both form and meaning but being inherently unspecified for those categories that are encoded by inflection. The distinction between word and lexeme is important especially in languages with a more developed inflection, that is, those in which words must always have inflectional endings when used in a sentence and in which therefore stems do not occur as free forms. The usual term for words that appear in a particular syntactic context with the morphophonological realization of inflectional information is grammatical word or word form. A base being any form to which derivational affixes can be added, it can correspond to a single lexeme or to a syntactico-semantical defined set of lexemes with common characteristics. As a lexeme, a base can be identified (depending on the various languages) with a root, with a stem or with a word, even a morphologically complex one (for example, the complex word questionable can act as a

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base for prefixation to give unquestionable and for suffixation to give questionableness). The root is the basic part which is always present in a lexeme. It is morphologically not further analyzable, either in terms of derivational or inflectional morphology. It is defined with respect to a lexeme, while a stem is defined with respect to a word-formation or to an inflectional rule. A stem is the form on which a given derivational process operates to produce a new word. It can also be defined as the part of the word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed, therefore it may also be morphologically complex. The importance of the stem is particularly evident in inflective languages, like Latin or Italian, in which the stem cannot be formed from the root by rule, while agglutinative languages normally use words as bases. In cases of suppletive paradigms, more than one stem may correspond to one and the same lexeme. A notion that does not correspond to any theoretical unit in language analysis is citation form: i.e. the form of a lexeme that is conventionally employed to refer to it in dictionaries and grammars. Citation forms differ from language to language. For example, the verb is referred to by the first person singular of the present indicative tense in Latin and Greek, the infinitive in Italian and Spanish, the third person singular masculine of the perfect tense in the Semitic languages. The choice of citation forms is not completely arbitrary. It is governed by a principle of economy and functionality. The citation form tends to correspond to a single full surface form of a lexeme, and hence uttered in isolation, to which word formation process may apply and from which the inflectional word forms (or an important part of them) may be produced.

5.

Order of affixation

At every derivational stage, the application of a word formation rule should meet the well-formedness condition: that is, it should form a word with all its morphological, semantic, and syntactic characteristics. (6) industrialization [[[[industry]N -al]A -ize]V -ation]N The construction of the meaning of a complex word is parallel to that of its formal construction ordered according to a hierarchy in constituent structure. Note the difference in

meaning between (7a) ‘very powerful small computer’ and (7b) ‘small very powerful computer’ (7) (a) [super[mini[computer]]] (b) [mini[super[computer]]] In the case in which a language uses both derivational prefixes and suffixes, a problem arises in identifying the direction of derivation considered as a sequence of derivational stages. In the case of the Italian verb inutilizzare ‘to make useless’, there are a priori two possibilities (8) (a) [[in[utile]A]Aizzare]V (b) [in[[utile]Aizzare]V]V Of the two, only (8a) is the right one since the Italian prefix inis attached to adjectives and not to verbs, and also because the meaning of inutilizzare ‘to make useless’ has the meaning of the adjective inutile ‘useless’ as base, and not that of the verb utilizzare ‘to make use’. Categorial and semantic criteria allow us to reconstruct the derivational hierarchy of all the main regular processes of word formation (cf. Scalise 1984: 44⫺54, 137⫺146). But there are a few cases in which the decision is less obvious, and exceptional cases, like the french one in (9), in which there are two possible directions of derivation. (9) (a) sime´trie J sime´trique J asime´trique (b) sime´trie J asime´trie J asime´trique The French prefix a- can in fact be used before nouns and before adjectives, and derivation of adjectives in -ique from nouns in -ie is productive and very frequent (cf. Corbin 1976: 61); also the intermediate derivational stages both in (9a) and in (9b) are semantically well formed. Cases of double motivation such as (9) should be distinguished from cases of bracketing paradoxes, which can be defined as the discrepancy between the phonological and the semantic structure of complex words. Comparative adjectives such as unhappier are a typical example: from the point of view of phonology, the morphological analysis of the word must be [un[happier]] due to phonological restrictions on the attachment of comparative suffix -er; yet given that the meaning of the word is [more[not happy]], the word’s bracketing from the semantic point of view should be [[unhappy]er]. An interesting proposal formulated by Bybee (1985: 96⫺98) states that the order of af-

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fixes is governed by principles of relevance and lexical generality. The more an affix directly affects the meaning of the stem and the greater the semantic change involved in the combination of the affix and the stem, the closer to the stem the affix will appear. But such a proposal does not make it possible to decide on the relative order of affixation between a derivational prefix and a suffix in the same word.

6.

Towards a solution

The adoption of the word (lexeme) as basic unit in contemporary morphology makes it possible to solve problems related to the directionality of derivation which were difficult or impossible to explain for the structuralist morphology, which postulated a linear concatenation of morphemes. These problems concern discontinuous affixes (transfixes, circumfixes), infixes, and reduplication. These processes, even if they violate the principle of constructional iconicity, show in any case an increase in phonic form associated with an increase in meaning; therefore they are not in contradiction with the principle of directionality. Reduplication can be considered a special way of making affixes, and it is frequently used iconically to indicate plurality, intensity and repetition. It must be remembered that cases where directionality is not apparent, or operates differently from the parallel formal and semantic increase, are few and have little correspondence with the semiotic principles according to which languages are organized; they are therefore marginal and have little functional load. We will see that processes which do not formally express the direction of derivation nevertheless respect it semantically, and that cases which seem to contradict the principle of directionality, as does back-formation, can be reinterpreted just in the light of this principle.

7.

Derivational direction without overt marking

In cases where overt derivational marks are of no use in identifying the direction of derivation, or where such marks are not present, one can use different types of criteria (cf. Marchand 1963 a; 1963 b; 1964): first of all semantic criteria, but also structural criteria, or even quantitative-distributional evidence,

as well as more external criteria, such as frequency of usage. Of little or no heuristic value is the diachronic criterion of precedence of appearance. The two most important semantic criteria are those of semantic dependence and of semantic range. The first states that the word that is dependent on the content of the other pair member for its analysis is necessarily the derivative. The content analysis of a verb like to knife, analyzable as ‘wound with a knife’, must necessarily include the semantic features of the noun knife, while the noun does not lean on any content features of the verb knife, therefore it is the base, while the verb is the derivative. According to the criterion of semantic range, the derivative is the word with the more specific meaning. That is, the derivative is the word with the smaller field of reference with respect to the base. For example, the verb to cheat has a larger semantic range than the homophone noun. In fact, the noun cheat narrows down the range of the verb as it includes the feature [⫹ habitual] not present in the verb, which does not mean ‘to be an habitual cheater’. Another semantic criterion is that of semantic pattern: certain words have characteristic meanings which mark them as derivatives, for example drop and fall in the meaning ‘distance covered by something’ are clear deverbal nouns, just as to baby ‘treat as a baby’ shows a sense characteristic of denominal verbs. Quantitative-distributional evidence has been highlighted by Aronoff (1976: 116⫺121), who states that if we hypothesize that a class of words B is derived from a class of words A, then for every word b in B there must correspond a word a in the class A, but not vice versa. This criterion makes it possible to decide that between pairs of homograph nouns and verbs such as implement / (to) implement, the direction of derivation goes from nouns to verbs, because there are very many nouns in -ment which have no corresponding homograph verb. Evidence of this kind can also be applied to interpret cases of truncation, a process in which an overt derivational affixation operates in a replacive and not in an additive way. Quantitative-distributional evidence is used for the criterion according to which the relative percentage of words of a certain type is indicative of the primary or derived character. For example, in English composite words of the type blacklist, snowball nouns are much more frequent than verbs. This enables us to reach the conclusion that the type is basically

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a nominal one and that the verbs which are structured in this way are derived. A structural criterion, called Overt Analogue Criterion, is proposed by Sanders (1988: 160f.): “One word can be derived from another word of the same form in a language (only) if there is a precise analogue in the language where the same derivational function is marked in the derived word by an overt (nonzero) form”. This criterion makes it possible to determine that the noun answer is deverbal because it exhibits the following pattern: (10) answerV : [answervπ]N ⫽ announceV : [announcev -ment]N The restrictness of this criterion (which works also to solve problems of direction of allo-

morphic alternation, as in competent / competence compared with the regular good / goodness) is that it can be used only when there are derivational processes which compete with the one we are examining. But this is not always the case. A criterion very similar to that of Sanders is the principe d’orientation des conversions proposed by Corbin (1987: 278). Another structural criterion proposed by Corbin (1976) concerns the possibility of further derivations. According to this criterion, if the verb is the base and the homograph noun is formed through conversion, the noun works as nomen actionis and therefore will not allow to form other suffixed deverbal nouns

(11) Fr. censurer J censure, *censuration, *censurage amnistier J amnistie, *amnistiation, *amnistiage On the other hand, if it is possible to derive a nomen actionis from a verb of the same form of a noun, the verb is denominal (12) Fr. clou J clouer J clouage Restrictions of the forms in which a word can appear can help in determining directionality: the direction of derivation goes from the form with larger range of usage to that with the smaller one. For example, the noun thanks, because it is used in the plural form only, is derived from the verb to thank. Less convincing is the restriction of usage in the sense of relative frequency between two homograph words. The difficulties in applying this criterion depend on the limited capability of speakers in recognising the higher or lower frequency of usage in cases of words of medium or low frequency, and in the possible effect of cumulative frequency between homograph roots. Even if there remain some pairs of words on which there is no agreement between the various authors, for example between Cruse (1986: 132f.) and Marchand (1964: 12) concerning the derivational relationship between (to) saw and saw, the series of criteria discussed above make it possible to determine the direction of derivation in most cases, and consequently to account for the common features of derivation by affixation and derivation by conversion. A minority of authors (Ford & Singh 1984; Lieber 1981) reject the principle of derivational directionality and maintain that a bidirectional morphology is more advantageous and more explanatory than a unidirectional

one. Such a claim is not defendable from a general theoretical point of view, one which considers typological, structural and quantitative aspects of languages.

8.

Base as basic member of a derivational relationship

The functioning of the principle of directionality in derivational processes is supported by studies that try to identify and interpret universal correlations of meaning and expression type in a theory of markedness. One of the most important contributions in this field is Bybee (1985). Using examples taken from languages of various families and linguistic types, Bybee shows that the relationship between unmarked or basic forms and the more marked or less basic forms of an inflectional paradigm or of a derivational relationship is reflected by their morphophonological complexity. The former are morphophonologically simpler or more basic, while the latter are more complex and derived from the simpler forms. Both inflectional and derivational processes tend to assign no overt markers to basic forms. As Roman Jakobson pointed out, there is a close relationship between morphophonological and semantic markedness: “while the marked member of a category signals the presence of a property, the unmarked member is semantically more general ⫺ it may be used to indicate the absence of that property, or it may be used in a neutral way in which nothing at all is indicated about the property […]. So the term poet

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is opposed to poetess by the absence of the property ‘female’, but poet may be used to refer to either a male or a female.” (Bybee 1985: 52)

Since speakers are used to the fact that forms which express more basic concepts are morphophonologically simpler than those which express more complex concepts, they are inclined to restructure their morphological systems, reinterpreting as insignificant those elements which were previously full morphemes, if they appear in positions which their language system considers unmarked (cf. Bybee 1985: 54⫺56). The tendency to search for a morphophonologically simpler and semantically more general base allows us to understand a process otherwise irregular and against common intuition such as that of back-formation.

9.

Problematic phenomena

In sections 9.1⫺9.4 we will present some processes which to different degrees conflict with the principle of directionality. 9.1. Back-formation Back-formation consists of the reanalysis of a longer word which is already in use (e.g. editor, peddler) and the subsequent formation of a new shorter word (e.g. to edit, to peddle) by the deletion of actual or supposed affixes. In synchronic analysis back-formed words are considered as basic forms and the original bases as derivatives. The relevance of the process for our argumentation relies on the fact that, although from a diachronic point of view back-formation seems to work in an opposite way to that predicted by the principle of directionality, from the point of view of the speaker, the motivation for back-formation is essentially to be found in the intuitive search for bases represented by less marked (i.e. shorter) forms (cf. Pennanen 1982: 250). One must therefore ignore historical connection and consider derivational relationship in synchrony. It is important to note that for a back-formation process to take place, the appropriate formation rule must also exist. The back-formation of the verb to edit from the noun editor can take place because pairs such as exhibit / exhibitor exist, in which the deverbal noun is formed by the regular addition of a suffix. Since back-formation follows a process of reanalysis, it can also take place in the case of unproductive rules (e.g. the deletion of suffixes in transcript I transcription, cohese I cohesion).

Marchand (21969: 391⫺395), focusing on the semantic aspect of derivational relationships, shows how words formed by back-formation (hence morphologically less complex) sometimes do not represent bases for words from which they are extracted. For example, the verb to televise is recorded later than the noun television. But even if diachronically the verb is an extraction, synchronically it should be considered a derivative since to televise must be analyzed as ‘put on television’ and not as ‘an act of televising’, which would allow television to be considered a derivative on the model of many other deverbal nomina actionis like to revise J revision. In such cases back-formation contradicts the principle which associates a higher morphological complexity to the character of derivative. 9.2. Clipping Another process which consists in the deletion of a part of the base word is clipping (cf. Art. 92). Not everybody agrees that this constitutes a word-formation process since the form which it produces retains the same meaning and is a member of the same category as that from which it is formed; furthermore the parts deleted are not always morphs. In any case, this is a marginal process that can be explained through economy of expression; its principal consequence is to cause a change of register: the new form is stylistically less formal. (13) lab I laboratory, maths I mathematics, mike I microphone, tec I detective, op art I optical art, Cong I Viet Cong As shown in (13) it is not possible to predict in a regular way how much of a word will be clipped off, even if word reduction appears to correspond mainly to prosodic criteria, where the part retained is the one which bears word stress. 9.3. Subtraction Subtraction (cf. Art. 60) is quite a rare process, in which a morph is removed by a morphological process. It is the most genuine counterexample to the principle of directionality. The most cited example is that of Bloomfield (1933) concerning feminine adjectives in spoken French. (14) masculine laid [le] plat [pla] soul [su]

feminine laide [led] platte [plat] soule [soul]

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According to Bloomfield, for these adjectives it is rather complicated to predict which phoneme will be added to form the feminine starting from the masculine form: the simplest way is to subtract the final phonemes from the feminine form. The majority of the described cases of subtraction are inflectional. Rainer (1993: 81) gives an interesting derivational Spanish example: (15) microbiologıá J microbio´logo ‘microbiology’ J ‘microbiologist’ The strongest argument in favour of a subtractive interpretation is semantic: microbio´logo does not mean ‘a very small biologist’, but ‘a specialist in microbiology’. The correct semantic interpretation shows that the name of the specialist (the shorter and semantically dependent word) derives from the speciality (the longer and semantically more general word). It is to be noticed that the phenomena mentioned here can be explained even without using the notion of subtraction: specifically (14) is clearly a byproduct of phonetic changes in the history of spoken French. 9.4. Truncation Truncation is a rather common process which partially works in contrast with the principle of directionality. It consists in the deletion of a part of the base (usually an affix) triggered by the addition of a derivational affix. (16) Fr. maternel J maternite´ publicite´ J publiciste Although a morphological process has taken place, the derivative is morphologically not more complex than the base: (17) agress-ion J aggress-ive base suffix base suffix In the form of the derivative the manifestation of a certain stage in the derivational history is missing, that is, the semantics of the base is not formally represented completely in the word resulting from the derivational process (cf. Art. 81). (18) audacious J *audaciousity J audacity vivacious J *vivaciousity J vivacity Three different kinds of solution have been proposed to solve this debated problem. Some, as Kiparsky (1982), explain the process in terms of morphophonological rules. Others, such as Lieber (1981: 139⫺144),

think that the bases are bound roots and therefore that it is not necessary for truncation rules to operate. Still others, such as Aronoff (1976), consider truncation a specific derivational process, which operates through two sorts of adjustment rules: truncation rules and allomorphy rules. The attention given by Aronoff (1976) to truncation is required by the choice of a word-based morphology, i.e. a theory in which both the input and the output of word-formation rules must be words. The advantage of adopting truncation is that it permits the unification of the description of morphologically complex words in which the same affix is present. (19) Fr. banal J banalite´ e´ternel J e´ternite´ Since there are the same morphological, semantic and categorial relations between e´ternel and e´ternite´ as between banal and banalite´, it is better to consider the deletion of the final part of e´ternel a formal superficial phenomenon, rather than to analyze e´ternite´ as a non-complex word, or as formed on a bound form etern- which does not have all the features necessary to characterize it as a base (cf. Corbin 1987: 347). It is to be noted that some affixes cause truncation more than others (for example the French suffix -iser, which forms verbs from adjectives). The regularity of truncation and the consequent loss of part of the formal appearance in derivation can be favourable to derivational relationships which are particularly difficult to analyze, like those between words having suffixes -ism and -ist. Apart from the most common case socialism J socialist, in which the form in -ism has semantic and derivational priority with respect to that in -ist, there is the less frequent opposite process: alarmist J alarmism, but also cases in which a form in -ist does not correspond to any in -ism (e.g. machinist), or vice versa: mysticism (cf. Laca 1986: 507⫺519). In cases where words have a root which comes from a foreign ⫺ usually classical ⫺ language, one must decide if the base is a bound form or a current word to which a truncation process is applied. The choice depends on which morphological theory (a morpheme- or a word-based one) is adopted, but is more or less convincing depending on the cases examined. One should consider the degree of allomorphy which derives from the different phonological modifications (e.g. he-

874 resy J heretic versus the more regular German J germanic), which can reach the border of suppletion. One should also consider the degree to which a word can be analyzed in a base and an affix, and this is made easier when it belongs to a paradigmatic series: compare pubic, where pub- recurs in pubescent, puberty and pubis, versus the isolated ludic.

10. Allomorphy and suppletion A crucial factor in determining morphological relatedness between a base and its derivative is the amount of semantic change resulting from the operation on that base: “there is no derivational connection between words if the words have no semantic features in common” (Marchand 1964: 11). Another very important factor is the phonological shape of the forms in derivational relationship. As phonological differences between forms increase, the degree of morphological relatedness decreases. Allomorphy (cf. Ch. VII) is situated between regular phonological alternations (e.g. raising of the low mid vowel in unstressed position in Italian: /1festa/ ‘feast’ /fes1tivo/ ‘festivity’) and suppletion processes (e.g. pig / swine) in which words formed from different roots have close semantic relationships. Differently from phonological alternation, allomorphic variation is not automatically determined by the morphophonological context (e.g. Fr. coupable J culpabiliser but coupablement), even if there is a tendency to retain allomorphy in further derivations (e.g. Fr. culpabilisation), and differently from suppletion (cf. Art. 52) there is a relatively regular formal relationship between base and derivative (cf. Corbin 1987: 286f.). The problem is that it is not clear how much form of how much meaning must be shared before two related words can be considered to stand in a derivational relationship. It is necessary therefore to decide when we are dealing with allomorphy, hence a derivational relationship between a base and its derivative both in content and expression, and when we are dealing with suppletion, hence a morphological relationship expressed only by the semantics but not by the form of the derivative. However, there is an evident cline of relatedness on both the formal and the semantic axis. Between clear cases of allomorphy (20a) and clear cases of suppletion


(20c) there are intermediate cases (20b) which are difficult to classify: (20) (a) Fr. clair / clarte´, idiot / idiotie, e´ponge / spongieux (b) Fr. roche / rupestre, ˆıle / insulaire, loi / le´gal (c) Fr. aveugle / cećite´, prison / carce´ral, jeu / ludique Although we can say that the degree of suppletion is inverse to the degree of similarity between the stem-forms of the base and of the derivative, there is no ready way of grading strength of suppletion (cf. Dressler 1985: 102). Even a solution which seems initially attractive like Bauer’s (1988: 120f.), according to whom an allomorphic relation must be recognized only within productive processes, is not without problems. Bauer himself recognizes that the major disadvantage of his proposal is the loss of generalisation. Many affixation patterns are analyzable without being productive; for example chaste J chastity, divine J divinity show a root allomorphy that is widespread in English, and is to a large extent predictable, yet it is no longer productive. If we do not wish to lose interesting generalizations and to move too much away from linguistic knowledge and speakers’ usage, it is necessary for the classification of the degree of morphological relatedness between two words to take the crucial distinction between analysability and productivity into account. Words which are in a suppletive relationship with a base-word, although they can often be analyzable as derivatives, are formed from a different stem which may not correspond to any current word. These words are borrowed from other languages (in the case of English usually Latin, Greek or French) or formed by affixation of bases of foreign origin. An example is cavalcade, which can be analysed as base caval- plus -cade, although caval is not an English word, since it might be considered as a bound root, given cavalier and cavalry. Affixation on bases of foreign origin is a widely used process in technical and scientific terminologies (e.g. phosphate, phosphin, phosphite, phosphene) and is sometimes also used in common language (e.g. terrestrial) (cf. Bauer 1988: 226). An attempt to scale the continuum from morphophonological motivated alternation to the opposite end of suppletion (a relationship with discrepancies between meaning and form)

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cannot rely on phonological arguments only. If we compare the Italian examples in (21) (21) (a) Faenza ⫺ faentino ‘inhabitant of Faenza’ (b) prudente ‘prudent’ ⫺ prudenza ‘prudence’ one can note that according to the criterion of phonological distance, the stems in both (21a) and (21b) are differentiated by only one feature, respectively /ts/ J /t/ and /t/ J /ts/. But from a morphophonologic point of view, the difference is great: the rule which forms (21a) is now fossilized and lexically restricted, while the affrication of the dental stop in (21b) is a very common rule in Italian mor-

phophonology. Therefore, cases like (21a) are to be distinguished from allomorphy and constitute cases of suppletion, although of a weaker degree of suppletion, characterized by root alternation, which represents the most opaque kind of correlation between related forms, and for this reason is a marginal phenomenon in languages (cf. Crocco Galeàs 1991: 109⫺169 for a grading of the criteria which distinguish allomorphy from suppletion). The morphological relationship between suppletive forms is enforced by frequency in usage in similar contexts and is witnessed by the complementary distribution that they show in derivation. See the Italian examples from Scalise (1994: 279f.) listed in (22):

(22) (a) acqu-oso *acqu-ico acqu-atico *acqu-osi *idr-oso idr-ico *idr-atico idr-osi (b) cavall-eria *cavall-estre *cavall-ico *equ-eria equ-estre *equ-ico *ipp-eria *ipp-estre ipp-ico Only acqua ‘water’ and cavallo ‘horse’ are bases which are current words in Italian, while idr-, equ-, ipp- exist only as bound forms, but, considering their close semantic and morphological connection, we can say that the suppletive forms acqua/idr- and cavallo/equ-/ipp- constitute complex lexical entries in which two or more stems correspond to one lexeme. The possibility of forming a complex lexical entry depends on the degree of connection between a word and its suppletive forms, but also on the model of the lexicon adopted. In fact, there is no agreement on which bound forms may constitute autonomous entries, on the criteria to distinguish between a single lexeme with different stems and different lexemes connected by synonymic relations, and on the hierarchic relationship among different stems of a same lexeme. In general, we can say that the lexicon is the formal representation of a speaker’s knowledge of the lexical units of his/her language, and it includes the listing of entries each of which provides those types of (phonological, morphological, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic) information about lexical items that are not predictable by general rules (cf. Wolff 1984). There is a divergence between those who tend to list all items which show the slightest idiosyncracy and to restrict the postulation of word formation rules to the fully productive processes, and those who use rules (especially re-

dundancy rules) to explain variations of complex words which have a certain amount of idiosyncracy (both formal and semantic) and tend to unify different forms in a single lexical entry.

11. References Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press Bauer, Laurie (1988), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press Beard, Robert (1988), “On the Separation of Derivation from Morphology: Toward a Lexeme-morpheme-based Morphology”. Quaderni di Semantica 9, 3⫺59 Beard, Robert (1990), “The Nature and Origins of Derivational Polysemy”. Lingua 81, 101⫺140 Becker, Thomas (1990), Analogie und morphologische Theorie. München: Fink Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1979), Einführung in die Morphologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language. New York: Holt Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation Between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins Corbin, Danielle (1976), “Peut-on faire l’hypothe`se d’une de´rivation en morphologie?” In: Chevalier,

876 Jean-Claude (ed.), Grammaire transformationelle: syntaxe et lexique. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Publications de l’Universite´ de Lille III, 49⫺91 Corbin, Danielle (1987), Morphologie de´rivationelle et structuration du lexique. Tübingen: Niemeyer Crocco Galeàs, Grazia (1991), Gli etnici italiani. Padova: Unipress Cruse, D. A. (1986), Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press Cutler, Anne & Hawkins, John A. & Gilligan, Gary (1985), “The Suffixing Preference: A Processing Explanation”. Linguistics 23, 723⫺758 Derwing, Bruce & Skousen, Royal (1989), “Morphology in the Mental Lexicon: A New Look at Analogy”. In: Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1989. Dordrecht: Foris, 249⫺265 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985), “Suppletion in Word-formation”. In: Fisiak, Jacek (ed.), Historical Semantics, Historical Word-formation. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 97⫺ 112 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1988), “Preferences vs. Strict Universals in Morphology: Word-based Rules”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 143⫺154 Ford, Alan & Singh, Rajendra (1984), “Remarks on the Directionality of Word Formation Processes”. In: Proceedings of the Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (ESCOL) 1, 205⫺213 Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (1988, eds.), Theoretical Morphology. San Diego, New York: Academic Press Hawkins, John A. & Gilligan, Gary (1988), “Prefixing and Suffixing Universals in Relation to Basic Word Order”. Lingua 74, 219⫺259 Hockett, Charles F. (1954), “Two Models of Grammatical Description”. Word 10, 210⫺231 [reprinted in: Joos, Martin (ed.), Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 386⫺399 [⫽ 41966 Readings in Linguistics. Vol. I. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press] Kastovsky, Dieter (1974, ed.), Studies in Syntax and Word-formation: Selected Articles by Hans Marchand. München: Fink Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “Lexical Morphology and Phonology”. In: Yang, I. S. (ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin, 3⫺91 Laca, Brenda (1986), Die Wortbildung als Grammatik des Wortschatzes. Tübingen: Narr

XI. Wortbildung I: Grundprobleme Lieber, Rochelle (1981), On the Organization of the Lexicon. Bloomington/IN: Indiana Univ. Linguistics Club Marchand, Hans (1963a), “On Content as a Criterion of Derivational Relationship with Back-derived Words”. Indogermanische Forschungen 68, 170⫺175 [reprinted in: Kastovsky (1974, ed.), 218⫺223] Marchand, Hans (1963b), “On a Question of Contrary Analysis with Derivationally Connected but Morphologically Uncharacterized Words”, English Studies 44, 176⫺187 [reprinted in: Kastovsky (1974, ed.), 224⫺241] Marchand, Hans (1964), “A Set of Criteria of Derivational Relationship between Words Unmarked by Derivational Morphemes”. Indogermanische Forschungen 69, 10⫺19 Marchand, Hans (21969), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation: A Synchronic-diachronic Approach, 2nd completely rev. and enl. ed. München: Beck [11960] Mel’cˇuk, Igor A. (1982), Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: Fink Pennanen, Esko V. (1982), “Remarks on Syntagma and Word-formation”. Folia Linguistica 16, 241⫺ 261 Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten: Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 13) Rainer, Franz (1993), Spanische Wortbildungslehre. Tübingen: Niemeyer Sanders, Gerald (1988), “Zero Derivation and the Overt Analogue Criterion”. In: Hammond & Noonan (eds.), 155⫺175 Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht, Cinnaminson/NJ: Foris Scalise, Sergio (1994), Morfologia. Bologna: Il Mulino Sturtevant, E. H. (1917), Linguistic Change: An Introduction to the Historical Study of Language. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press Uhlenbeck, Eugenius M. (1962), “Limitations of Morphological Processes: Some Preliminary Remarks”. Lingua 11, 426⫺432 Wolff, Susanne (1984), Lexical Entries and Word Formation. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club

Claudio Iacobini, Ferrara (Italy)

85. Produktivitätsbeschränkungen

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85. Produktivitätsbeschränkungen 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Vorbemerkungen Übereinzelsprachliche Aspekte Einzelsprachliche regelübergreifende Aspekte Regelspezifische Aspekte Zitierte Literatur

1.

Vorbemerkungen

Keine Wortbildungsregel ist auf beliebige Basen anwendbar. Vielmehr ist die Domäne, d. h. die Menge der möglichen Basen einer Regel, immer mehr oder weniger beschränkt (vgl. den Begriff der qualitativen Produktivität in Art. 33). Im Falle unproduktiver Regeln ist die Domäne extensional definierbar, d. h. die einzelnen Basen können einfach aufgezählt werden. Die Domäne produktiver Regeln hingegen muß intensional, also durch Bezug auf eine oder mehrere Eigenschaften möglicher Basen abgegrenzt werden, womit solche Domänen trotz ihrer grundsätzlichen Beschränktheit im Prinzip infinit sind. Zwischen den beiden Extremen völlig produktiver und unproduktiver Regeln gibt es ein breites Übergangsfeld, in dem die Menge der möglichen Neubildungen besser durch mehr oder weniger lokale Analogie bestimmt wird als durch ein Bündel von wohldefinierten Beschränkungen. Im übrigen ist es gängig, daß auch bei produktiven Regeln ein gewisser Rest der Domäne nur extensional definierbar ist. Für die Abgrenzung der Domäne einer Wortbildungsregel können sehr viele und sehr unterschiedliche Faktoren eine Rolle spielen. Neben den regelspezifischen Beschränkungen (vgl. 4), denen klar die Hauptrolle zufällt, sind häufig auch regelübergreifende einzelsprachliche (vgl. 3) oder sogar übereinzelsprachliche (vgl. 2) Aspekte zu berücksichtigen. Die Abgrenzung der Domäne einer Regel ist daher in komplexeren Fällen durchaus nicht jene triviale „deskriptive“ Angelegenheit, als die sie gerne angesehen wird, sondern impliziert eine Reihe von Entscheidungen bezüglich anderer Teilbereiche der beschriebenen Sprache, der allgemeinen Wortbildungslehre und der allgemeinen Sprachtheorie.

2.

Übereinzelsprachliche Aspekte

Es gibt eine Reihe von im Prinzip für alle Sprachen gültigen Erscheinungen, die die Anwendbarkeit einzelner Regeln über die in den

regelspezifischen Beschränkungen festgelegten Grenzen hinaus einschränken können. Neben der semantischen Unverträglichkeit von Basis- und Regelbedeutung (vgl. 4.2.3) oder Faktoren wie dem mangelnden Bedarf (s. Art. 80) oder der Ablehnung von Neologismen allein aufgrund ihrer Neuheit ⫺ beides universelle Tendenzen mit einzelsprachlich variabler Ausprägung ⫺ sind vor allem drei Phänomene von Bedeutung: Pa¯nø inis Prinzip (vgl. 2.1), Wort-zu-Wort-Blockierung (vgl. 2.2) und universale wortbildungspezifische Beschränkungen (vgl. 2.3). 2.1. Pa¯nø inis Prinzip Schon Pa¯nø ini (s. Art. 5) bediente sich in seiner berühmten Grammatik eines allgemeinen Prinzips, wonach von zwei konkurrierenden Regeln die spezifischere gegenüber der allgemeineren den Vorrang genießt, wobei spezifisch bedeutet, daß die möglichen Basen dieser Regel eine echte Teilmenge der Basen der allgemeineren Regel sind. Seit dem Ende der sechziger Jahre ist dieses Prinzip, das hier mit Zwicky (1986: 306) Pa¯nø inis Prinzip genannt werden soll, in unterschiedlichen Ausformungen und unter verschiedenen Namen (z. B. Elsewhere Condition) wiederbelebt worden (vgl. Janda & Sandoval 1984: 2⫺8), ohne daß bis heute ein Konsens darüber erreicht worden wäre, ob und in welcher Form es in den verschiedenen Grammatikkomponenten Gültigkeit hat. Für die Flexionsmorphologie stehen sich Skeptiker (vgl. Janda & Sandoval 1984) und Befürworter (vgl. Anderson 1986; dazu kritisch Morin 1988 und Stump 1989) gegenüber. Teils wird es sogar zur Regelung der Konkurrenz von syntaktischen und Flexionsregeln herangezogen (vgl. Andrews 1990). Für die Wortbildung ist Pa¯nø inis Prinzip ebenfalls reklamiert worden (vgl. Szymanek 1985; van Marle 1985; 1986 (in einer paradigmatischen Reinterpretation)). Das folgende deutsche Beispiel möge die Wirkungsweise dieses Prinzips in der Wortbildung veranschaulichen. “Gelehrte” deutsche Adjektive auf endbetontes -il fallen grundsätzlich in die Domäne des Abstraktsuffixes -ität (vgl. Senilität, Versatilität usw.), solche auf -phil widersetzen sich jedoch einer solchen Suffigierung (vgl. *Anglophilität usw.). Da die Adjektive auf -phil durch eine positive morphologische Beschränkung an das Abstraktsuffix -ie gebun-

878 den sind (vgl. Anglophilie usw.) und die Adjektive auf -phil eine Teilmenge der gelehrten Adjektive auf -il sind, könnte man die Absenz von -ität bei Adjektiven auf -phil als Folge von Pa¯nø inis Prinzip begreifen und müßte damit diese Adjektive nicht eigens durch eine negative morphologische Beschränkung aus der Domäne von -ität ausklammern. Eine solche Lösung hat den Vorteil, eine redundante negative Beschränkung zu vermeiden und gleichzeitig die Ursache für die Inakzeptabilität von Anglophilität u. ä. explizit zu machen. Ob Pa¯nø inis Prinzip in der Wortbildung allerdings als universales, d. h. ausnahmslos gültiges Prinzip zur Anwendung kommt oder ob es in irgendeiner Weise eingeschränkt werden muß, bleibt zu untersuchen. 2.2. Wort-zu-Wort-Blockierung Seit langem (vgl. schon Paul 1896; zuletzt Iverson & Wheeler 1988; Rainer 1988; Wurzel 1988) ist bekannt, daß die Realisierung eines morphologisch an und für sich wohlgeformtes Wortes durch die Existenz eines Synonyms unterbunden werden kann: so ist die Unüblichkeit von Stehler ⫺ außer im Sprichwort Der Hehler ist schlimmer als der Stehler ⫺ gewiß eine Folge des Umstandes, daß mit Dieb ein etabliertes Synonym existiert. Dieses etablierte Synonym kann dabei selbst nach einer produktiven Wortbildungsregel gebildet sein (vgl. Malicka-Kleparska 1985). Andererseits ist es jedoch ebenso unbestreitbar, daß in vielen Fällen Dubletten toleriert werden: so klingen Demütigkeit, Ebenmäßigkeit, Grimmigkeit, Lernbegierigkeit oder Sachkundigkeit trotz der Existenz von Demut, Ebenmaß, Grimm, Lernbegierde oder Sachkunde durchaus akzeptabel. Ein Vorschlag (vgl. Rainer 1988: 163⫺173) vorauszusagen, wann dieser Blockierungseffekt eintritt und wann nicht, geht davon aus, die blockierende Kraft als eine Funktion der Frequenz des blockierenden Wortes anzusehen. Dies würde z. B. erklären, warum die blockierende Wirkung der eben angeführten relativ seltenen Abstrakta geringer ist als jene der viel geläufigeren Abstrakte Durst, Fleiß, Geiz, Hunger oder Mut, die die potentiellen Konkurrenten Durstigkeit, Fleißigkeit, Geizigkeit, Hungrigkeit oder Mutigkeit effektvoll behindern. Drei Bedingungen müssen also für eine wirksame Wort-zu-Wort-Blockierung erfüllt sein: das blockierende und das blockierte Wort müssen synonym sein, das blockierte Wort muß nach einer produktiven Regel bildbar sein, und das blockierende Wort muß


eine ausreichende Gebrauchshäufigkeit besitzen. Diese letzte Bedingung unterscheidet die Wort-zu-Wort-Blockierung von den auf den ersten Blick ähnlichen und bisweilen mit ihr verwechselten (vgl. Aronoff 1976: 43⫺45, 55f., 60f.) Phänomenen, die hier als Pa¯nø inis Prinzip (vgl. 2.1) und als stipulierte Domänenbeschneidung (vgl. 3.1) bezeichnet werden. Dort handelt es sich nämlich nicht um Blokkierung durch ein einzelnes usuelles Wort, sondern um die Blockierung einer Regel durch eine funktionsgleiche Regel bzw. ⫺ in paradigmatischer Ausdrucksweise ⫺ um die Beschneidung einer Domäne durch eine andere Domäne (vgl. van Marle 1986: 607). So gilt z. B. die in 2.1 erwähnte Beschneidung der Domäne von -ität durch -ie im Bereich der Adjektive auf -phil auch für neologistische Basen: Kanzlerophilie vs. *Kanzlerophilität usw. Die bisherige Charakterisierung der Wortzu-Wort-Blockierung bezog sich nur auf synonymische Blockierung. Wort-zu-Wort-Blockierung kann allerdings auch durch ein existierendes Homonym ausgelöst werden, wenngleich wesentlich sporadischer. So vermeidet man im Italienischen die Diminutive fiorino und fioretto zu fiore ‘Blume’, da ersteres mit der Bedeutung ‘Gulden’ und letzteres mit der Bedeutung ‘Florett’ üblich ist. Die genauen Bedingungen für das Auftreten homonymischer Wort-zu-Wort-Blockierung sind nicht bekannt (vgl. Plank 1981: 165⫺176). Die Motivation hinter der homonymischen Wort-zu-Wort-Blockierung ist klar die Vermeidung von Verwechslungen oder unliebsamen Anklängen, während die synonymische in Wortsuch- und/oder -speicherstrategien ihre Begründung finden dürfte. 2.3. Universale wortbildungsspezifische Beschränkungen Die generative Wortbildungsforschung ist seit Mitte der siebziger Jahre bemüht, in Anlehnung an die Syntaxforschung auch für die Wortbildung universale Beschränkungen ausfindig zu machen, die den Begriff mögliche Wortbildungsregel einer natürlichen Sprache so weit wie möglich einschränken sollten. Für die Beschreibung der Domäne einzelner Wortbildungsregeln hat dies erhebliche Konsequenzen, da Beschränkungen, die als Folge solcher universaler Beschränkungen aufgefaßt werden können, nicht als regelspezifische Beschränkungen kodiert zu werden brauchen. In exemplarischer Form wird dies in Botha (1988) anhand der Reduplikation im


Afrikaans demonstriert, wo der Leser auch die bedeutendsten der bisher vorgeschlagenen universalen wortbildungsspezifischen Beschränkungen diskutiert findet (vgl. auch Scalise 1984: 137⫺165). Ein kurzes Beispiel für diese Wechselbeziehung zwischen universalen und regelspezifischen Beschränkungen muß hier genügen. Als Basen für die Reduplikation können im Afrikaans Substantive, Verben, Adjektive, Adverbien und Zahlwörter dienen. Wenn man nun akzeptiert, daß Wortbildungsregeln allgemein auf offene Wortarten beschränkt sind (vgl. Aronoff 1976: 21) und die erwähnten Wortarten des Afrikaans mit der Menge der offenen Wortarten dieser Sprache zusammenfallen, kann darauf verzichtet werden, die Reduplikationsregel des Afrikaans mit regelspezifischen Wortartbeschränkungen zu befrachten (vgl. Botha 1988: 22⫺33).

3.

Einzelsprachliche regelübergreifende Aspekte

Außer durch die in 2 besprochenen universellen Aspekte kann die Domäne von Wortbildungsregeln auch durch zwar einzelsprachliche, aber über die einzelne Regel hinausgehende Faktoren beschränkt werden. Fünf solcher Faktoren sollen in diesem Abschnitt zur Sprache kommen. 3.1. Stipulierte Domänenbeschneidung Ist eine Domänenbeschneidung nicht durch Pa¯nø inis Prinzip (vgl. 2.1) abgedeckt, so muß sie einzelsprachlich stipuliert werden. Ein typischer Fall wäre etwa der, daß ein Basistyp einerseits durch seine Bedeutung für Regel A geeignet ist, andererseits aber gleichzeitig durch seine Form für Regel B. So fallen z. B. italienische Adjektive vom Typ ultramontano ‘ultramontan’, ateo ‘gottlos’ oder reazionario ‘reaktionär’ von ihrem Wortausgang her in die Domäne des Abstraktsuffixes -ita`/-eta`, während sie gleichzeitig durch ihre Bedeutung Basen des Suffixes -ismo sein können, das Geisteshaltungen bezeichnet und bei Adjektiven, die selbst eine solche bezeichnen, die Funktion eines Abstraktsuffixes übernehmen kann. Interessanterweise findet man mit solchen Adjektiven de facto jedoch fast nur Abstrakta auf -ismo. Da die Domäne dieses Suffixes keine Teilmenge jener von -ita`/-eta` ist, hilft Pa¯nø inis Prinzip hier nicht weiter, und so ist wohl von einer stipulierten Domänenbeschneidung auszugehen. Ob es möglich ist, in

879 solchen Fällen die Dominanz einer Regel über die andere aufgrund allgemeiner Prinzipien vorherzusagen, ist zumindest gegenwärtig nicht bekannt. 3.2. Gleichklangsvermeidung In zahlreichen Sprachen ist eine Tendenz beobachtet worden (vgl. Dressler 1977; Menn & Mac Whinney 1984), akzidentelle Lautwiederholungen zu vermeiden, die durch die Verwendung eines Suffixes nach einer Basis mit homophonem Auslaut entstehen. Wenn eine funktionsgleiche Regel existiert, kann auf diese ausgewichen werden: so wird im Spanischen das Adjektiv zu einem Politikernamen allgemein mit -ista gebildet (vgl. castrista zu Castro), für Batista wird jedoch batistiano vorgezogen, um kakophones batistista zu vermeiden. In anderen Fällen greift man zu haplologischer Kürzung: so wird das Adjektiv zu Schriftstellern im Spanischen allgemein mit -iano gebildet (vgl. kafkiano zu Kafka), für Graciań ist jedoch haplologisches graciano im Gebrauch, um kakophones gracianiano zu vermeiden. Da Gleichklangsvermeidung dieser Art trotz ihrer weiten Verbreitung letztlich einzelsprachlich spezifische Ausprägungen besitzt, wird sie hier Abschnitt 3 und nicht Abschnitt 2 zugeordnet. 3.3. Schichtung des Wortschatzes Der Wortschatz vieler Sprachen ist in zwei oder mehrere Schichten gegliedert, die historisch auf massive Entlehnung zurückgehen und sich synchron durch ein unterschiedliches phonologisches, morphologisches oder stilistisches Verhalten auszeichnen. Für die Wortbildung hat diese Schichtung gewöhnlich die Konsequenz, daß zwar heimische Affixe an heimisches und entlehntes Wortgut treten können, daß sich andererseits aber entlehnte Affixe nur mit ihresgleichen vertragen (vgl. u. a. Booij 1977: 131⫺139). Diese Unverträglichkeit von entlehnten Affixen mit heimischen Basen läßt sich z. B. durch deutsche Kontrastpaare wie Aktivität vs. *Schiefität, Legalität vs. *Kahlität, Rarität vs. *Garität usw. veranschaulichen. Die einzelsprachlichen synchronen Auswirkungen so massiver Entlehnung sind allerdings sehr unterschiedlich. Die Schichtung des englischen Wortschatzes in einen germanischen Grundstock und einen lateinisch-romanischen Überbau wurde von den Vertretern der sogenannten “Level-Ordered Morphology” (vgl. Siegel 1979; Kiparsky 1982) dadurch einzufangen versucht, daß man ⫺ grob gesprochen ⫺ die

880 lateinisch-romanischen Affixe en bloc extrinsisch vor die germanischen stellte, was jedoch ebensoviele Probleme schuf wie es löste und daher heute mehrheitlich skeptisch beurteilt wird (vgl. Strauss 1982; Aronoff & Sridhar 1983: 4f.; zuletzt Goldsmith 1990: 259⫺273). In unserem Zusammenhang sind Ordnungsprinzipien dieser Art insofern von Belang, als sie die regelspezifischen Beschränkungen stark entlasten können. 3.4. Phonotaktische Beschränkungen Morphologisch wohlgeformte Bildungen können allein deshalb unakzeptabel sein, weil sie den phonotaktischen Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Sprache zuwiderlaufen. So ist z. B. im Spanischen eine Folge von zwei mouillierten Lateralen (geschrieben ll) in benachbarten Silben verpönt, weshalb Diminutive auf -illo von Basen, die in der letzten Silbe ein ll enthalten, nicht geläufig sind (vgl. *gallillo zu gallo ‘Hahn’, *pollillo zu pollo ‘Henne’ u. a.). Das Fehlen solcher Diminutive braucht nicht durch eine regelspezifische negative Beschränkung auf -illo festgehalten zu werden, sondern ergibt sich automatisch als Konsequenz des Zusammenwirkens verschiedener Teile der Grammatik. 3.5. Closing morphemes Von manchen Morphologen (vgl. Nida 21949: 85; van Marle 1985: 234⫺238) wird die Existenz sogenannter closing morphemes bzw. last affixes angenommen, d. h. von Minimalzeichen, die die idiosynkratische Eigenschaft haben, weitere Ableitungen zu verhindern. Nach van Marle (1985: 235) etwa wäre das niederländische Adjektivsuffix -en so ein closing morpheme, das weitere Ableitungen verhindert (vgl. z. B. hout ‘Holz’ > houten ‘hölzern’ > *houtenheid ‘Hölzernheit’). Um einem Minimalzeichen diesen Status zu Recht zuerkennen zu können, müßte jedenfalls sichergestellt sein, daß Wörter, die es enthalten, überhaupt mögliche Basen für Wortbildungsregeln sind. So könnte die Unakzeptabilität von houtenheid auch einfach eine Folge der Tatsache sein, daß Abstraktsuffixe wie -heid nur mit prädikativen Adjektiven kombinierbar sind (vgl. 4.2.3). Augenblicklich ist unklar, ob für ein solches diakritisches Merkmal in der Morphologietheorie wirklich Bedarf herrscht. Sollte dies der Fall sein, so wäre darauf zu achten, die auf das Konto solcher Elemente gehenden Unverträglichkeiten nicht als Beschränkungen der blockierten Wortbildungsregeln zu kodieren.


4.

Regelspezifische Aspekte

4.1. Allgemeine Bemerkungen Bei den regelspezifischen Beschränkungen ist es üblich, positive von negativen und Eingabe- von Ausgabebeschränkungen zu unterscheiden. Allerdings ist die Existenz negativer Beschränkungen aus lerntheoretischen Erwägungen (vgl. Pinker 1989) diskutabel, da sie die Verfügbarkeit von negativer Evidenz vorauszusetzen scheinen, d. h. von Information darüber, daß bestimmte Verbindungen, obwohl sie nach anderen positiven Beschränkungen möglich sein sollten, ausnahmsweise nicht wohlgeformt sind. Die meisten in der Literatur beschriebenen negativen Beschränkungen dürften sich einfach durch eine genauere Abgrenzung der Domäne(n) ⫺ das dürfte z. B. für den in Gussmann (1987: 82) beschriebenen Fall gelten ⫺ oder eine Präzisierung der Wortbildungsbedeutung aus der Welt schaffen lassen. Weitere Fälle können, wie wir bereits in 2 und 3 gesehen haben, durch diverse regelübergreifende Mechanismen vermieden werden. Der Ausdruck Produktivitätsbeschränkung ist begrifflich an Theorien geknüpft, die eigene Wortbildungsregeln enthalten, an denen Beschränkungen “festgemacht” werden können. In Theorien, die die Bildung eines neuen Wortes nicht als Operation einer Regel über einer Basis begreifen, sondern als lexikalische Einsetzung von Lexikoneinträgen in eine binäre Baumstruktur (vgl. Lieber 1981) oder einen Phrase-Marker (vgl. Selkirk 1982), werden Beschränkungen als Selektionsbeschränkungen von Lexikoneinträgen ⫺ auch Affixe haben hier Lexikoneinträge! ⫺ interpretiert. Es wird die Auffassung vertreten (vgl. Kiparsky 1983: 17⫺20), daß Regel- und Lexikoneintragstheorien empirisch weitgehend ununterscheidbar und letztere konzeptuell vorteilhafter seien. Dem dürfte nicht so sein. Während es in der Derivation tatsächlich weitgehend belanglos ist, ob man sagt, daß die Regel, die -bar einführt, über transitiven Verben operiert oder daß der gebundene Lexikoneintrag -bar ein transitives Verb als “linke Schwester” erfordert, stehen die Dinge in der Komposition anders. Auch Komposita unterliegen Beschränkungen. So muß z. B. das Erstglied von spanischen exozentrischen adjektivischen Komposita des Typs pelirrojo ‘rothaarig’ (zu pelo ‘Haar’ und rojo ‘rot’) einen Körperteil bezeichnen und zweisilbig sein. Nun ist eine solche Beschränkung aber nicht als Selektionsbeschränkung des Zweit-


glieds kodierbar, da sie von diesem völlig unabhängig ist, sondern nur als Eigenschaft der Kompositionsregel selbst. Dasselbe gilt übrigens für das Fugenelement -i-, das ebenfalls eine idiosynkratische Eigenschaft dieser Kompositionsregel ist (im Gegensatz zu den Fugenelementen deutscher Komposita, die vom ersten Kompositionsglied gesteuert werden und somit als Teil von dessen Lexikoneintrag angesehen werden können). Die Bevorzugung von Produktivitätsbeschränkung gegenüber Selektionsbeschränkung ist in der Wortbildung also nicht nur durch die Tradition, sondern auch theoretisch gerechtfertigt. 4.2.

Typen regelspezifischer Beschränkungen

4.2.1. Phonologische Beschränkungen Phonologische Beschränkungen (vgl. Szymanek 1980), von denen interessanterweise Suffixe in weit stärkerem Maße betroffen sind als Präfixe, können sich prinzipiell auf alle phonologischen Aspekte der Basis beziehen. Der segmentale Aufbau des Wortlauts spielt z. B. ⫺ neben einer stilistischen Beschränkung ⫺ für die Verwendung von dt. -ität eine große Rolle: Rapidität, Frugalität, Durabilität, Kontraktilität, Diaphanität, Kapillarität, Laboriosität, Nativität usw. vs. *Akutität, *Autarkität, *Stereotypität usw. Die diminutivische Reduplikationsregel des Französischen ist hingegen auf einsilbige Basen eingeschränkt: papatte (zu patte [pat] ‘Pfote’), Pompom (zu Pom(pidou)), Tatave (zu (Gus)tave [ta:v]) usw. Mehrsilbige Basen werden vor Anwendung der Reduplikationsregel auf eine Silbe gekürzt. Der Akzent schließlich spielt z. B. bei dt. -heit eine Rolle, das auf endbetonte Adjektive spezialisiert ist: Prallheit, Groteskheit, Amüsantheit, Amorphheit usw. vs. *Schockierendheit, *Etepeteteheit usw. Durch die Existenz einiger Ausnahmen wie Dunkelheit usw. lassen sich die Sprecher von dieser Generalisierung offenbar nicht abhalten, wie die neologistische Evidenz zeigt (vgl. Obligatheit vs. *Diskutabelheit usw.). Die in der Literatur erwähnten angeblichen Fälle von negativen phonologischen Beschränkungen sind interessanterweise praktisch alle auf Gleichklangvermeidung zurückzuführen, wenn auch nicht genau im Sinne des in 3.2 vorgestellten Prinzips. Im Lateinischen wurde nach Basen auf r statt des Adjektivsuffixes -aris die Konkurrenzform -alis gewählt, im Altspanischen nach Basen mit einem Lateral des Diminutiv -ejo anstatt des

881 lateralhaltigen -iello. Im Französischen vermeidet man das Präfix re- vor mit r anlautenden Basen. Im Deutschen nehmen Basen auf l das Diminutivsuffix -chen, solche auf ch hingegen -lein. Im Englischen vermeidet man -ly nach -ly, -ish nach palatalen Reibelauten oder Affrikaten und -ful nach labiodentalen Reibelauten. Im Polnischen werden deverbale Lokative mit Basen, die einen Lateral enthalten, durch -arni(a) anstatt durch -alni(a) gebildet. Solche Unverträglichkeiten (nur) durch regelspezifische und damit arbiträre negative Beschränkungen zu kodieren, wäre sicher problematisch. Eine interessante phonologische Ausgabebeschränkung bietet das spanische Argotsuffix -ata, das nur die Funktion einer gruppensprachlichen Konnotierung erfüllt. Mit einer Ausnahme (camarata zu camarero ‘Kellner’) werden alle Basissubstantive soweit gekürzt, bis das Derivat dreisilbig ist: bocata (zu bocadillo ‘Sandwich’), porrata (zu porrero ‘Marihuanaraucher’), sociata (zu socialista ‘Sozialist’) usw. Eine Reformulierung als Eingabebeschränkung, in dem Sinne, daß man die Basis auf die Anlautsilbe und den folgenden Silbenkopf kürzt, wäre äußerst gekünstelt und würde zudem die Bildung sociata nicht erklären, wo der Gleitlaut i enthalten ist, obwohl er Teil des Silbenkerns ist. 4.2.2. Morphologische Beschränkungen Als morphologisch werden solche Beschränkungen eingestuft, die auf ein bestimmtes Affix oder morphologisches Merkmal der Basis oder auf deren morphologischen Aufbau Bezug nehmen. Eine positive morphologische Beschränkung bindet dt. -ie an Adjektive auf -phil, wie wir in 2.1 gesehen haben. Um wirklich sicherzustellen, daß -phil qua Minimalzeichen ausschlaggebend ist und nicht sein segmentaler Aufbau, was auf eine phonologische Beschränkung hinauslaufen würde, wäre im optimalen Fall nachzuweisen, daß Adjektive auf [fi:l], in denen diese Lautfolge keine Eigenbedeutung hat oder zumindest nicht jene von -phil, nicht in die Domäne von -ie fallen. Dies ist allerdings oft ⫺ so auch im vorliegenden Fall ⫺ mangels geeigneter Kontrastwörter nicht möglich. Klare Fälle negativer morphologischer Beschränkungen sind nicht aktenkundig. Hier wäre nachzuweisen, daß ein bestimmter Basistyp aufgrund zumindest einer seiner Eigenschaften zwar in die Domäne einer Regel fällt, daß die Präsenz eines bestimmten Affi-

882 xes die Anwendung der Regel jedoch ausnahmsweise verhindert. Morphologische Beschränkungen, die auf das Genus oder die Deklinations- bzw. Konjugationsklasse der Basis Bezug nehmen, sind in der Wortbildung offenbar viel seltener als in der Flexion. Ein morphologisches Merkmal, das in der englischen Wortbildung eine wichtige Rolle spielt, ist [latinate] (vgl. Aronoff 1976: 51). Zwei Typen von Beschränkungen, die auf den morphologischen Aufbau von Basen Bezug nehmen, finden in der Literatur Verwendung: solche, die monomorphematische Basen erfordern, und solche, die Komposita als Basen ausschließen. Erstere werden gewöhnlich als regelspezifische Beschränkungen dargestellt (vgl. Fabb 1988: 532⫺534), letztere in bezug auf das Italienische (vgl. Scalise 1984: 115⫺122) als Folge einer regelübergreifenden extrinsischen Anordnung von Derivationsvor Kompositionsregeln, doch wird zumindest für ein japanisches Präfix auch eine regelspezifische Kodierung vorgeschlagen: “miis compatible with bound morphemes […] and words […], but rejects compound words” (Kageyama 1982: 227). Da beide Arten von Beschränkungen in ihrer regelspezifischen Ausprägung voraussetzen, daß Wortbildungsregeln die Möglichkeit haben, die morphologische Struktur ihrer Basen zu analysieren, was gängigen Vorstellungen über Lokalität in der Wortbildung widerspricht (vgl. Scalise 1984: 169⫺178), sollte, bevor diese beiden Beschränkungstypen akzeptiert werden, untersucht werden, inwieweit sie nicht durch Berücksichtigung von Faktoren wie Akzent, Einsilbigkeit, Kürze usw. als Beschränkungen anderer Art reanalysiert werden können (vgl. Anderson 1992: 281 zu Fabb). 4.2.3. Syntaktische Beschränkungen Syntaktische Beschränkungen beziehen sich entweder auf die Wortart oder syntaktische Merkmale der Basis. Daß Information über die Wortart der Basis eine große Rolle für die Abgrenzung der Domäne von Wortbildungsregeln spielt, ist seit jeher bekannt und hat seinen Ausdruck in so geläufigen Fachausdrücken wie deadjektivisch, denominal oder deverbal bzw. Deadjektivum, Desubstantivum oder Deverbativum gefunden. In der generativen Morphologie (vgl. Aronoff 1976: 48) ist es üblich, anstatt mit Wortarten mit den Wortartmerkmalen [N] und [V] zu operieren und die traditionellen Wortarten als Bündelungen solcher Merk-


male aufzufassen. Substantiv wird z. B. als {[⫹N], [⫺V]} definiert, Verb als {[⫹V], [⫺N]} usw. Allerdings ist argumentiert worden (vgl. Sørensen 1983: 10⫺15), daß die so erzielte höhere Ausdruckskraft empirisch nicht gedeckt sei, da mehrere mögliche Mengen solcher Merkmale keine Rolle in der Wortbildung spielen, etwa [⫺V] ⫽ {Substantiv, Präposition} usw. Neben den Wortarten spielen in der Literatur Merkmale wie [transitiv], [prädikativ] usw. bei der Domänenabgrenzung eine Rolle. So wird allgemein angenommen, daß dt. -bar auf transitive Verben (vgl. fällbar vs. *fallbar) und Suffixe zur Bildung deadjektivischer Abstrakta allgemein auf prädikative Adjektive beschränkt seien (vgl. Harthäutigkeit vs. *Heutigkeit). Die Einordnung solcher Beschränkungen unter die syntaktischen ist natürlich theorieabhängig. Beide erwähnten Merkmale werden von manchen Linguisten ja auch semantisch interpretiert. Eine semantische Interpretation liegt besonders beim zweiten Beispiel nahe, da diese Beschränkung offenbar alle Abstraktsuffixe aller Sprachen betrifft, weshalb man sie als logische Folge der Bedeutung von Abstraktsuffixen ansehen sollte, nicht als arbiträre Beschränkung. 4.2.4. Semantische Beschränkungen So wie die Grenze zwischen Semantik und Syntax theorieabhängig ist, so ist es auch jene zwischen Semantik und Pragmatik. In der Wortbildungsforschung werden gelegentlich (vgl. Kastovsky 1986) semantische von pragmatischen Beschränkungen unterschieden, wobei sich erstere auf den “semantischen Kern” und letztere auf die “enzyklopädische Peripherie” beziehen sollen. Ob man eine solche Trennung akzeptiert, hängt natürlich davon ab, ob man die vorausgesetzte Trennbarkeit von semantischer und enzyklopädischer Information für möglich erachtet (vgl. zuletzt Pinker 1989) oder nicht (vgl. Eco 1984: 55⫺ 140). Die beiden Positionen sollen hier anhand des englischen Reversativpräfixes un- dargestellt werden. Un- ist wegen seiner Bedeutung (‘den von der Basis herbeigeführten Zustand rückgängig machen’) nur mit Basisverben verträglich, die einen umkehrbaren Zustand herbeiführen: unfold, unscrew usw. vs. *unswim, *unkill usw. Von manchen (vgl. Thompson 1975: 337) wird nun die Auffassung vertreten, die Inakzeptabilität von unswim gehe auf das Konto einer semantischen Beschränkung, da die Nicht-Resultativität von swim

883


Teil seines semantischen Kerns sei, während die Inakzeptabilität von unkill nur eine Folge unseres enzyklopädischen Wissens um die Unumkehrbarkeit der Tötungshandlung sei. In einer anderen möglichen Welt, wird argumentiert, wo Getötete wieder zum Leben erweckt werden können, wäre unkill ein mögliches Reversativum. Ob dieses Kriterium der Veränderbarkeit in einer anderen möglichen Welt allerdings zu einer interessanten Scheidung von semantischer und enzyklopädischer Information führen kann, bleibe dahingestellt. Semantische Beschränkungen wie jene auf reversatives un- brauchen, soweit sie eine logische Folge der Bedeutung der Wortbildungsregel sind, nicht separat kodiert zu werden. Daneben gibt es aber auch arbiträre semantische Beschränkungen wie jene des spanischen Relationsadjektivsuffixes -uno auf Basen, die Tiere bezeichnen (vgl. auch den Begriff Kryptotyp in Whorf 1963: 116⫺119). Neben Eingabebeschränkungen wie jener auf reversatives un- gibt es im semantischen Bereich auch Ausgabebeschränkungen. So werden nach der spanischen Kompositionsregel vom Typ pelirrojo (vgl. 4.1) gebildete Adjektive vornehmlich von Pferden und Rindern prädiziert, kaum jedoch z. B. von Schweinen, Ziegen, Hühnern, Fischen usw. In anderen Fällen ist es allerdings schwer zu entscheiden, ob man es mit einer semantischen Ausgabebeschränkung zu tun hat oder aber mit einem Bestandteil der Wortbildungsbedeutung selbst. Die Argumentstruktur wird heute ziemlich einhellig als Projektion der semantischen Struktur aufgefaßt (vgl. Art. 83). Es ergibt sich daher die Frage, inwieweit es überhaupt eigene Beschränkungen gibt, die auf die Argumentstruktur Bezug nehmen, oder ob nicht vielmehr alle derartigen Fälle auf semantische Beschränkungen reduziert werden können. Eine solche Reduktion ist gewiß bei spanischen Substantiven des Typs arrendatario ‘Pächter’ (zu arrendar ‘verpachten’) möglich, die immer den Begünstigten der Handlung bezeichnen, der beim Basisverb als indirektes internes Argument realisiert wird. Als Argument für eigene Argumentstrukturbeschränkungen könnte man die niederländischen deverbalen Substantive auf -er ansehen, die nach einer Analyse (vgl. Booij 1986: 507⫺ 509) grundsätzlich von allen Verben gebildet werden können, die ein externes Argument besitzen, unabhängig von der konkreten thematischen Rolle dieses externen Arguments.

4.2.5. Pragmatisch-soziolinguistische Beschränkungen Unter pragmatisch-soziolinguistisch sollen hier jene Beschränkungen zusammengefaßt werden, die die Registerzugehörigkeit oder ähnliche Aspekte der Ein- oder Ausgabe betreffen. Wortbildungsregeln können auf Basen mit bestimmter Registerzugehörigkeit beschränkt sein. So bleiben aus Kultursprachen entlehnte Affixe in der Nehmersprache häufig auf den gehobenen Wortschatz beschränkt. Es ist jeweils zu untersuchen, ob eine solche Beschränkung regelübergreifend funktioniert (vgl. 3.3) oder aber regelspezifisch zu kodieren ist. Ein extremes Beispiel der entgegengesetzten Art für eine pragmatisch-soziolinguistische Eingabebeschränkung wären die diversen “Kromifikationsregeln” des Javanischen, womit Wörter der “plebejischen” Wortschatzschicht durch morphologische Operationen gewissermaßen “salonfähig” gemacht werden (vgl. Becker 1990: 20⫺23). Geläufiger sind pragmatisch-soziolinguistische Ausgabebeschränkungen. So sind viele Wortbildungsregeln registermäßig beschränkt: es gibt gelehrte, volkstümliche, vulgäre, spielerische usw. Wortbildungsregeln. Solche Beschränkungen können übrigens höchst komplex sein: die Diminutive des Spanischen ⫺ aber gewiß nicht nur dieser Sprache ⫺ etwa werden in der Unterschicht häufiger als in der Oberschicht, auf dem Land häufiger als in der Stadt, von Frauen häufiger als von Männern, gegenüber Kindern häufiger als gegenüber Erwachsenen und im vertrauten Gespräch häufiger als in formellen Situationen verwendet. Erst vor diesem komplexen Geflecht von Gebrauchsbeschränkungen gewinnt das einzelne Diminutiv seinen eigentlichen kommunikativen Wert. Solche Ausgabebeschränkungen betreffen übrigens nicht, oder nur indirekt, die Abgrenzung der Domäne einer Regel.

5.

Zitierte Literatur

Anderson, Stephen R. (1986), “Disjunctive Ordering in Inflectional Morphology”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4, 1⫺31 Anderson, Stephen R. (1992), A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Andrews, Avery D. (1990), “Unification and Morphological Blocking”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 507⫺557

884 Aronoff, Mark (1976), Word-formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 1) Aronoff, Mark & Sridhar, S. N. (1983), “Morphological Levels in English and Kannada or Atarizing Reagan”. Papers from the Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society [Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax] 19.2, 3⫺16 Becker, Thomas (1990), Analogie und morphologische Theorie. München: Fink Booij, Geert E. (1977), Dutch Morphology: A Study of Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris Booij, Geert E. (1986), “Form and Meaning in Morphology: The Case of Dutch ‘Agent Nouns’ ”. Linguistics 24, 503⫺517 Botha, Rudolf P. (1988), Form and Meaning in Word Formation: A Study of Africaans Reduplication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1977), “Phono-morphological Dissimilation”. In: Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Pfeiffer, Oskar E. (Hrsg.), Phonologica 1976. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, 41⫺48 Eco, Umberto (1984), Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio. Turin: Einaudi Fabb, Nigel (1988), “English Suffixation is Constrained Only by Selectional Restrictions”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6, 527⫺539 Goldsmith, John (1990), Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell Gussmann, Edmund (1987), “The Lexicon of English De-adjectival Verbs”. In: Gussmann, Edmund (Hrsg.), Rules and the Lexicon: Studies in Wordformation. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnietw Katolikkiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 79⫺101 Iverson, Gregory K. & Wheeler, Deirdre W. (1988), “Blocking and the Elsewhere Condition”. In: Hammond, Michael & Noonan, Michael (Hrsg.), Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics. San Diego/CA usw.: Academic Press, 325⫺338 Janda, Richard D. & Sandoval, Marıá (1984), “Elsewhere” in Morphology. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club Kageyama, Taro (1982), “Word-formation in Japanese”. Lingua 57, 215⫺258 Kastovsky, Dieter (1986), “Word-formation and Pragmatics”. In: Rauchbauer, Otto (Hrsg.), A Yearbook of Studies in English Language and Literature 1985/86. Festschrift für Siegfried Korninger. Wien: Braumüller, 63⫺78 Kiparsky, Paul (1982), “Lexical Morphology and Phonology”. In: The Linguistic Society of Korea (Hrsg.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Selected Papers from SICOL 1981. Seoul: Hanskin, 3⫺91 Kiparsky, Paul (1983), “Word-formation and the Lexicon”. In: Ingemann, F. A. (Hrsg.), Proceedings

XI. Wortbildung I: Grundprobleme of the 1982 Mid-America Linguistics Conference. Lawrence/KA: Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas, 3⫺29 Lieber, Rochelle (1981), On the Organization of the Lexicon. Bloomington/IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club Malicka-Kleparska, Anna (1985), “Parallel Derivation and Lexicalist Morphology: The Case of Polish Diminutivization”. In: Gussmann, Edmund (Hrsg.), Phono-morphology: Studies in the Interaction of Phonology and Morphology. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnietw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 95⫺112 Marle, Jaap van (1985), On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris Marle, Jaap van (1986), “The Domain Hypothesis: The Study of Rival Morphological Processes”. Linguistics 24, 601⫺627 Menn, Lisa & Mac Whinney, Brian (1984), “The Repeated Morph Constraint: Toward an Explanation”. Language 60, 519⫺541 Morin, Yves-Charles (1988), “Disjunctive Ordering and French Morphology”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6, 271⫺282 Nida, Eugene A. (21949), Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press [11946] Paul, Hermann (1896), “Über die Aufgaben der Wortbildungslehre”. Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen oder der historischen Classe der k. b. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, 692⫺713 [Nachdruck in: Lipka, Leonhard & Günther, Hartmut (1981, Hrsg.), Wortbildung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 17⫺35] Pinker, Steven (1989), Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure. Cambridge/ MA: MIT Press Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten: Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 13) Rainer, Franz (1988), “Towards a Theory of Blocking: The Case of Italian and German Quality Nouns”. In: Booij, Geert E. & Van Marle, Jaap (Hrsg.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988. Dordrecht: Foris, 155⫺185 Scalise, Sergio (1984), Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris Selkirk, Elisabeth (1982), The Syntax of Words. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 7) Siegel, Dorothy (1979), Topics in English Morphology. New York: Garland Press Sørensen, Finn (1983), La formation des mots en français moderne: A propos des suffixes -ie`me, -iser et -able. Kopenhagen: Munksgaards (Revue Romane, nume´ro supple´mentaire 26)

85. Produktivitätsbeschränkungen Strauss, Steven L. (1982), “On Relatedness Paradoxes and Related Paradoxes”. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 694⫺700 Stump, Gregory (1989), “A Note on Breton Pluralization and the Elsewhere Condition”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7, 261⫺273 Szymanek, Bogdan (1980), “Phonological Conditioning of Word Formation Rules”. Folia Lingustica 14, 413⫺425 Szymanek, Bogdan (1985), “Disjunctive Rule Ordering in Word Formation”. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 20, 45⫺64 Thompson, Sandra A. (1975), “On the Issue of Productivity in the Lexicon”. Kritikon Litterarum 4, 332⫺349

885 Whorf, Benjamin L. (1963), Sprache, Denken, Wirklichkeit: Beiträge zur Metalinguistik und Sprachphilosophie, hrsg. und übers. v. Peter Krausser. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt [Orig. englisch: 1956] Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1988), “Derivation, Flexion und Blockierung”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 41, 179⫺198 Zwicky, Arnold (1986), “The General Case: Basic Form versus Default Form”. Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 12, 305⫺314

Franz Rainer, Wien (Österreich)

XII. Wortbildung II: Prozesse Word formation II: Processes 86. Die Klassifikation von Wortbildungsprozessen 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Zum Begriff Wortbildung Klassifikationsprinzipien Kombination von Stämmen Affigierung Substitution Subtraktion Konversion Spezifik nichtnativer Einheiten Zitierte Literatur

1.

Zum Begriff Wortbildung

1.1. Wortbildung und Wortschöpfung Wortbildung wird seit langem nach zwei Seiten hin abgegrenzt: einerseits von der Flexion (vgl. Art. 38 sowie Bondarko 1974 zu Übergangserscheinungen wie dem russischen Aspekt und einer Differenzierung von “reiner” und “derivationeller” Flexion), zum anderen von der sogenannten Wortschöpfung (vgl. Naumann 21986: 3⫺7), engl. word manufacture (vgl. Bauer 1983: 239). Wortschöpfung besteht darin, daß Wörter als Lautkomplexe geschaffen werden, die in der Sprache (noch) nicht als Minimalzeichen vorhanden und auch nicht aus einer anderen Sprache entlehnt sind. Solche Prozesse vollziehen sich in den modernen Sprachen kaum noch (vgl. Art. 93). Wortbildung ist die Produktion von Wortstämmen auf der Grundlage und mit Hilfe “vorhandenen” Sprachmaterials, wobei auch besondere ⫺ frei beweglich im Satz nicht vorkommende, “gebundene” ⫺ Bildungselemente verwendet werden. Derartige Wortstämme können zugleich als Grundoder Zitierform des Wortes fungieren; das gilt z. B. im Englischen für alle Wortarten (beim Verb mit Voranstellung von to), im Deutschen und Französischen mit Ausnahme des Verbs (Infinitiv als Zitierform mit den obligatorischen Endungen -[e]n bzw. -er, -ir, -re), im Russischen außer den Indeklinabilia nur für bestimmte Typen des Substantivs.

1.2. Wortbildung und Nominationsbildung Wortbildung ermöglicht einerseits die Bildung von Zeichenkombinationen in Wortstruktur; hierin liegt eine gewisse Parallelität zur Produktion von syntaktischen Wortverbindungen (Phrasen, Wortgruppen) und Sätzen. Andererseits wird ein großer Teil solcher komplexen Wörter zur festen Wortschatzeinheit, was für syntaktische Fügungen nicht in gleicher Weise gilt. So erklärt sich die Auffassung vom “Doppelcharakter” der Wortbildung: einer “syntaktischen” und einer “lexikalischen Funktion” (Motsch 1982: 66). Letztgenannte ist eng verbunden mit der Begriffsbildung in der Schaffung von Nominationseinheiten: Ausdrücken, die einen Wirklichkeitsausschnitt als “Gegenstand” (auch als Relations- oder Prozeßbegriff) auf der Grundlage begrifflicher Klassenbildung fixieren und kommunikativ verfügbar machen oder ihn als Einzelerscheinung identifizieren (vgl. Fleischer 1989). Sie haben nicht nur die Form eines Wortes, sondern auch einer Wortgruppe ⫺ als Phraseologismus (schwarze Liste) sowie als terminologische (schwarzes Loch ‘Himmelskörper mit hoher Verdichtung’) oder onymische Wortgruppe (Mehrwortname: Schwarzes Meer). Daher ist der Begriff Nominationsbildung weiter als Wortbildung (vgl. auch Kubrjakova 1982). Andererseits kann auch die Bildung einer Nominationseinheit in Wortstruktur auf verschiedene Weise erfolgen; nicht alle Verfahren fallen in den Bereich der Wortbildung und sind in diesem Sinne Wortbildungsprozesse (vgl. auch Bauer 1983: 9). (a) Beim semantischen Verfahren ist die Bedeutungsveränderung einer Ausgangseinheit bestimmend; es müssen keine formativstrukturellen Prozesse erfolgen: Feder ‘Vogelfeder’ J Feder ‘Schreibfeder’. Allerdings können sich dabei formativstrukturelle Konsequenzen ergeben, so z. B. in Orthographie und Flexion. Nicht in jedem Fall führt der

86. Die Klassifikation von Wortbildungsprozessen

887

semantische Prozeß zur Homonymisierung und damit zu einem neuen Wort ⫺ nach anderer Auffassung zu einer neuen “lexikalischen Einheit”, nicht zu einem neuen “Lexem” (Lipka 21992: 75). Er erfaßt simplizische wie komplexe Wörter und Wortgruppen (Phraseologisierung) und wird hier nicht ingesamt zum Gegenstand der Wortbildung im engeren Sinn gemacht; doch werden bisweilen Wortkreuzung (vgl. 3.2) und Konversion (vgl. 7) hier zugeordnet (vgl. Lipka 21992: 93). (b) Beim syntaktischen Verfahren ist der Wortartwechsel dominant, ebenfalls ohne obligatorische Inanspruchnahme weiterer, morphologisch-struktureller “Wortbildungselemente”. Der entscheidende Unterschied zwischen (a) und (b) besteht darin, daß (b) obligatorisch mit einer Veränderung der Wortartindizierung verbunden und damit auch die Veränderung der Begriffsklasse gegeben ist: grün als Eigenschaft J das Grün als Gegenstand, Substanz. Neben der Veränderung dieser kategoriellen Prägung muß keine weitere semantische Verschiebung beteiligt sein ⫺ wenn dies auch nicht selten der Fall ist (vgl. 7). Das morphosemantische, auch “morphologische” (so Wilske 1976: 150f.) Verfahren greift in die Formstruktur der Ausgangseinheit ein, in Verbindung mit semantischen und syntaktischen Teilprozessen. Es wird gewöhnlich als die Wortbildung im eigentlichen Sinne betrachtet. Als “zentrale Mechanismen” werden dann Komposition und Derivation von “peripheren Systemen” abgehoben (Kanngießer 1985: 143). Die sog. Zusammenrückung (vgl. 3.1) wird bisweilen als “lexikalisch-syntaktisches Verfahren” gesondert gestellt (Wilske 1976: 150f.). Von einem Doppelcharakter der Wortbildung läßt sich auch in Fällen sprechen, in denen mit dem expliziten Derivat zugleich eine neue Flexionsklasse verbunden ist, z. B. bei der russischen Aspektdifferenzierung (vgl. Bondarko 1974); vgl. auch dt. sofort (Adv.) J sofortig (Adj.).

ausgegangen) wird über “lexembasierte” oder “zeichenbasierte” Wortbildung diskutiert (vgl. z. B. die Auseinandersetzung mit Aronoff 1976 bei Plank 1981: 202⫺219). Wortbildungsarten werden unterschieden nach den modellierbaren Struktureigenschaften der Produkte in Beschaffenheit und Verknüpfungsweise der unmittelbaren Konstituenten bzw. dem Fehlen einer Konstituentenstruktur. Nach diesem ⫺ auch der vorliegenden Darstellung zugrundeliegenden ⫺ Prinzip gliedern sich die Wortbildungsprozesse in: Kombination von Stämmen, Affigierung, Subtraktion, Substitution und morphosyntaktische Verschiebung ohne Eingriff in die Basisstruktur (Konversion). Nimmt man eine Determinans-DeterminatumStruktur eines komplexen Wortes an, wie sie generell bei Subordination die syntaktischen Wortverbindungen (Phrasen) kennzeichnet, lassen sich die beiden Hauptwortarten der Wortbildung unterscheiden als Expansion und Derivation (vgl. Marchand 21969: 2f., 11⫺13, 208). Expansion liegt vor, wenn dem Determinatum (in der Regel die Zweitkonstituente als head) ein Stamm zugrunde liegt, d. h. bei Komposition und Präfigierung: Salzwasser, unschön zeigen nur “morphologische Extension” von Wasser und schön ⫺ ohne Veränderung in Wortart und lexikalischer Subklasse. Derivation liegt vor, wenn das Determinatum ein Suffix ist (wässrig, Schönling). Wortbildungsprozesse mit Produkten ohne Konstituentenstruktur (Substitution, Subtraktion, Konversion) bzw. ohne Subordination in der Beziehung der Konstituenten (Kopulativkomposita: Strumpfhose, taubstumm) können nach diesem Prinzip nicht ohne weiteres erfaßt werden. Auch die hiermit verbundene Einschränkung der Derivation auf die Suffigierung erscheint heute kaum noch akzeptabel. Als ein spezielles Phänomen der Formstruktur läßt sich die Kombination nichtnativer Elemente untereinander sowie mit nativen Elementen als sogenannte Hybridisierung in einem Wort (Absurd-heit, definier-bar) verstehen. Dabei ergeben sich Präferenzen und Restriktionen (vgl. zum Deutschen Fleischer & Barz 1992: 62⫺66).

2.

Klassifikationsprinzipien

2.1. Formstruktur Das am weitesten verbreitete Prinzip der Klassifikation von Wortbildungsprozessen orientiert sich also an der Formstruktur des Wortbildungsprodukts im Vergleich zu der motivierenden Ausgangseinheit; mit Bezug auf deren Charakter (hier wird vom Stamm

2.2. Onomasiologische Struktur Klassifikationen nach anderen Gesichtspunkten setzen mehr oder weniger die formstrukturelle Klassifikation voraus und nutzen sie mit. So ist in onomasiologischer Sicht die Determinans-Determinatum-Struktur als Verhältnis von “onomasiologischer Basis” (⫽ De-

888 terminatum) und “onomasiologischem Merkmal” (⫽ Determinans) ⫺ beides “onomasiologische Kategorien” ⫺ gefaßt worden (vgl. Dokulil 1968). Dabei wird die Rolle der Wortbildung als Nominationsbildung (vgl. 1.2) akzentuiert. Die onomasiologische Basis kann eine mehr oder weniger allgemeine Begriffsklasse bilden (-schiff ‘Wasserfahrzeug’ gegenüber -er ‘Gerät, Transportmittel’ in Frachtschiff ⫺ Frachter); sie wird durch das onomasiologische Merkmal (Fracht-) weiter spezifiziert. Die “onomasiogische Basis” ist nicht identisch mit “Derivationsbasis” als motivierender Ausgangsgröße und daher als Terminus unter Umständen mißverständlich. Wortbildungsprozesse lassen sich unter Berücksichtigung der semantischen Beziehungen zwischen den beiden onomasiologishen Kategorien und damit auch zwischen Derivationsbasis und Wortbildungsprodukt klassifizieren nach “funktional-semantischen Haupttypen” (Wilske 1976: 160) als Modifikation, Mutation und Transposition. Modifikation fügt der Derivationsbasis, deren Wortart und lexikalische Subklasse unverändert bleiben, ein Merkmal hinzu; so bei Motion (Autor⫺ Autorin), Kollektivum (Autor⫺Autorenschaft, vgl. Art. 101), Soziativum (Autor⫺Koautor), Negation (Autor⫺Nichtautor, vgl. Art. 113), Diminution (nur z. T., da auch andere Fälle wie früh⫺Frühchen ‘zu früh geborenes Kind’) und Augmentation (zu beidem vgl. Art. 99). Hierher auch die französischen “Infixverben” (Thiele 1981: 140f.) wie ećriv-ass-er. Ein Gegenstück zu den Kollektiva bilden die Individuativa oder Singulativa (vgl. Wilske 1976: 183f.) wie russ. solominka ‘Strohhalm’ I soloma ‘Stroh’, dt. Stäubchen I Staub. Transposition verändert die Wortart der Basis (und damit auch deren kategoriale Bedeutung: ‘Substanz’ beim Substantiv, ‘Qualität’ beim Adjektiv, ‘Prozessualität’ beim Verb) unter Bewahrung der übrigen semantischen Merkmale (landen J Landung, schön J Schönheit); manche Autoren sprechen von der “gleichen lexikalischen Bedeutung” (Wilske 1976: 161). Mutation liegt vor bei Wortbildungsprozessen, die die lexikalisch-semantische Struktur der Derivationsbasis wesentlich verändern (vgl. Uluchanov 1979: 17f.); in der Adjektivund Verbbildung zugleich stets mit Veränderung der Wortart der Basis (Sand J sandig, Film J verfilmen), in der Substantivbildung z. T. auch ohne Wortartveränderung (Stadt J Städter: Sachbezeichnung⫺Personenbezeichnung). Die onomasiologisch-semasiologische Klassifikation ist in der slawistischen

XII. Wortbildung II: Prozesse

Tradition sehr verbreitet und wird auch in konfrontativen Darstellungen genutzt (vgl. z. B. Ohnheiser 1987; zum Deutschen vgl. Barz 1988). 2.3. Modell und Analogie Die Klassifizierung von Wortbildungsprozessen als “regulär-kompositionell” einerseits und “analog-holistisch” andererseits (vgl. Plank 1981: 251) sucht ihrem Doppelcharakter (vgl. 1.2) gerecht zu werden. Regulärkompositionell sind Wortbildungsprozesse, die nach definierbaren Regeln zu einem Produkt aus unmittelbaren Konstituenten führen (denkbar aus Verbstamm denk- und Suffix -bar). Nach diesem Modell sind ⫺ mit nur geringen Restriktionen ⫺ immer wieder neue Konstruktionen bildbar. Analog-holistisch sind dagegen Wortbildungsprozesse nach einzelnen, gespeicherten Wörtern; sie führen nicht zur Reihenbildung (vgl. Bauer 1983: 96): z. B. Untrigkeit (H. Kant) als okkasionelle Gegenbildung zu Obrigkeit. Das Prinzip dieser Klassifikation findet sich auch in einer Dreiteilung, indem neben “definitorische” und “analogische” noch die “korrelative” Wortbildung gestellt wird (vgl. Kubrjakova 1982: 4⫺8): Als Gegenstück zu versorgen ist gebildet entsorgen, nach Korrelationen wie verflechten : entflechten. 2.4. Ausgangs- und Zielgröße Wortbildungsprozesse vollziehen sich zwischen einer Ausgangs- und einer Zielgröße. Diese ist stets ein Wortstamm, und die Klassifikation kann sich unter diesem Gesichtspunkt daran orientieren, welche Modelle zur Bildung etwa der verschiedenen Wortarten produktiv sind. So ist im Deutschen heute in der Wortbildung des Verbs die Suffigierung nur wenig ausgebaut, die Komposition erheblich restringiert, die Präfigierung und die denominale Konversion dagegen stark entwickelt. Die Ausgangsgrößen der Wortbildung sind dagegen heterogen (vgl. Bauer 1983: 174f.): wortfähige wie nichtwortfähige (gebundene) Stämme sowie (für manche Theorien problematisch) auch nichtsatzwertige Wortverbindungen und Sätze (vgl. 3.1 und 7). Auch mehrere Einzelwörter bzw. -stämme ohne syntaktisch explizierte Beziehung können als Ausgangsgröße dienen; vgl. Kompositionsmetaphern (Ölpest), Komposita als ehrende Benennung (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität), Wortkreuzung (vgl. 3.2) und Reduplikation (vgl. 3.3). Eine Differenzierung der Ausgangsgrö-


889

ßen ist auch unter dem Gesichtspunkt ihrer Wortbildungsaktivität (vgl. Fleischer & Barz 1992: 60) oder Wortbildungspotenz (vgl. Ohnheiser 1987: 15⫺18) relevant. Darunter wird die Beteiligung eines Stammes (bzw. einer Wurzel) an unterschiedlichen Wortbildungsprodukten verstanden: z. B. gering bei heisch[en], stark bei les-[en] (vgl. zu den Perzeptionsadjektiven im Deutschen Barz 1988). Im Russischen sind z. B. die 228 aktivsten Wurzeln an der Bildung von ca. 20 000 komplexen Stämmen beteiligt (vgl. Kuznecova & Efremova 1986: 1122).

durch Zusammenschreibung bzw. Schreibung mit Bindestrich gekennzeichnet; vgl. besonders die “präpositionalen Komposita” (Thiele 1981: 84) oder “compound phrases” (Bauer 1978: 47f., 190⫺198) des Französischen, wie chien de race, avion a` reáction und Fälle wie robe sac, chasse-neige; nebeneinander engl. girlfriend, girl-friend, girl friend (Bauer 1983: 105f.); ital. la non violenza ‘Gewaltlosigkeit’, treno merci ‘Güterzug’ (Schwarze 21995: 607). Das Deutsche kennt systematische Distanzstellung in den finiten Formen komplexer Verben wie abfahren ⫺ er fährt ab, die ⫺ wie entsprechende ndl. Verben ⫺ nach anderer Auffassung als Wortgruppen (Phrasen) behandelt werden (vgl. Booij 1990); vgl. auch die engl. “phrasal verbs” (to get up). Die orthographischen Regeln der Getrennt- bzw. Zusammenschreibung sind allein keine zuverlässige Indikation des linguistishen Status als komplexes Wort oder Wortgruppe, ebensowenig etwa im Englischen der Akzent (Bauer 1983: 106). Spezialfälle sind Zusammenrükkung, Inkorporation und Pseudokomposita. (a) Als Zusammenrückung (russ. srasˇcˇenie, vgl. z. B. Wilske 1976: 150f.) werden in nicht ganz einheitlicher Weise Komposita bezeichnet, die durch “einfache” Univerbierung von benachbarten Elementen syntaktischer Wortverbindungen (nicht von Sätzen) entstehen, also ohne Umstellung der Konstituenten, wie das für zahlreiche Kompositatypen gilt. Sie finden sich im Deutschen nur vereinzelt bei Substantiven (eine Handvoll), sind dagegen charakteristisch für flexionslose Wörter (dorthin, nimmermehr) und für die Kombinationen mit Verben bzw. Partizipien: kennenlernen, preisgesenkt. Die Zusammenrückung bewahrt die syntaktische Rolle der zugrunde liegenden Wortverbindung; daher gehört der Typ auswendig lernen J das Auswendiglernen nicht hierher, sondern ist als Konversion (vgl. 7) zu klassifizieren. Satznamen (vgl. 7) und substantivische Komposita mit einer Wortgruppe als Erstglied (Pro-Kopf-Verbrauch) sind ebenfalls nicht hierherzustellen. (b) Inkorporation (vgl. Art. 88) findet sich z. B. in ozeanischen und nordamerikanischen Sprachen (vgl. Mithun 1984): Eine syntaktische Konstruktion von Nomen und Verb wird zu einer komplexen Wortstruktur vereinigt, indem das Nomen in das Verb “inkorporiert” wird, ähnlich deutschen Verbalkonstruktionen mit substantivischem Erstglied wie danksagen, lobpreisen (anders z. B. Booij 1990). Im Englischen ist dieser Typ kaum vertreten (vgl. Marchand 21969: 96⫺107; Mithun

3.

Kombination von Stämmen

3.1. Komposition Die Komposition ist eine in der Regel binäre Verknüpfung zweier Stämme (z. T. auch Wortformen) als unmittelbarer Konstituenten. Diese können gebildet werden durch: (a) simplizische oder komplexe Stämme bzw. Wortformen, die außerhalb des Kompositums als Wort/Wortgruppe (diese auch als Initialwort [vgl. 6.3]: UKW-Antenne) auftreten können (Großstadt, haushoch, kaltstellen, Langstreckenflug, Ebbe-FlutWirkung); (b) einen nichtwortfähigen, gebundenen in Verbindung mit einem wortfähigen (freien) Stamm (Schwieger-vater, Biogas); (c) zwei nichtwortfähige Stämme, deren Verbindung einen wortfähigen Stamm ergibt (Diskothek). Strukturelle Sonderfälle bilden: (a) Komposita mit einem Buchstaben als Erstglied entweder als Kürzung (S-Bahn aus Schnellbahn oder Stadtbahn) oder als ikonisches Element (T-Eisen) und (b) Komposita mit einem Satz als Erstglied (“phrase compounds”, vgl. Bauer 1983: 206f.): Lauf-dich-gesund-Bewegung. Genus und Wortart des Kompositums werden in der Regel durch das Zweitglied (“Head”) bestimmt: Hochhaus ⫽ Substantiv, haushoch ⫽ Adjektiv; anders bei einem Typ italienischer Komposita (il giornale radio, vgl. Schwarze 21995: 608). Für die Kombination von nichtwortfähigen Stämmen gelten besondere Regeln (vgl. 8). Die morphologische, z. T. auch semantische und akzentuelle Stabilität der kompositionellen Wortstruktur wird in den Einzelsprachen höchst unterschiedlich

890 1984: 847). Anders zu beurteilen ist der Typ der romanischen substantivischen “Verb-Ergänzung-Komposita” (verb-complement compound) wie z. B. frz. tire-boucher (vgl. Bork 1990). Die Stellung der Inkorporation im System der nichtindoeuropäischen Sprachen ist nicht ohne weiteres vergleichbar mit der Stellung des entsprechenden deutschen Kompositionstyps (vgl. z. B. Sasse 1988). (c) Pseudokomposita treten im Deutschen wie im Englischen vor allem im Verbalbereich auf. Sie entstehen durch verbale Konversion (vgl. 7) ⫺ also nicht durch Komposition ⫺ substantivischer Komposita (Frühstück J frühstücken, the spotlight J to spotlight) oder durch Rückbildung (vgl. 6.2) von Substanti˚ sdahl Holmberg 1976; ven zu Verben (vgl. A Marchand 21969: 100⫺107). Ihr auch synchron semantisch erkennbarer “Pseudocharakter” besteht darin, daß ihre Form die Konstituentenstruktur eines Kompositums vortäuscht. Bisweilen wird der Terminus ausgedehnt auf Substantive wie engl. redskin, dt. Rothaut (vgl. Marchand 21969: 13f.), die jedoch üblicherweise als Bahuvrihi oder Possessivkompositum (vgl. Art. 87) aufgefaßt werden. 3.2. Wortkreuzung Die Wortkreuzung oder -mischung (engl. blending, vgl. Art. 91), ist eine “intentionale Kontamination” (Plank 1981: 197⫺199) von (in der Regel zwei) Stämmen, vgl. engl. smog I smoke ⫹ fog, dt. jein I ja ⫹ nein, Demokratur I Demokratie ⫹ Diktatur. Die Bildungen sind nicht nach Wortbildungsregeln prädiktabel, ihre Morphemanalyse ist problematisch und ihre Einbeziehung in die Wortbildungsmorphologie deshalb nicht unstrittig (vgl. Bauer 1988 a: 39). Doch im Englischen begegnet das Verfahren häufig (Bauer 1983: 236f.), im Deutschen weniger (vor allem Expressivbildungen), im Französischen “äußerst selten” (Haensch & Lallemand-Rietkötter 1972: 67). 3.3. Reduplikation Reduplikation (Doppelung, engl. reduplicative compounds) ist eine elementare Art morphologisch-struktureller Erzeugung von Wörtern (vgl. Art. 57). Sie tritt auf als einfache Doppelung (frz. cache-cache), als Ablaut(Wirrwarr, engl. tittle-tattle) und Reimdoppelung (boogie-woogie), in der Regel mit erhöhter Expressivität, abwertend, kosend, diminuierend (frz. chien-chien), meist gebrauchsbeschränkt. Es überwiegen Substantive: im Deutschen ganz deutlich, im Engli-


schen ist daneben z. T. verbaler Gebrauch möglich (to tittle-tattle). Adjektive sind generell selten (dt. plemplem ‘dumm’, frz. foufou ‘ein bißchen verrückt’, engl. girly-girly ‘albern’); als Adverbien bzw. Partikeln vgl. russ. gde-gde ‘wo-wo (überall)’, tak-taki ‘soso (leidlich)’, tuda-sjuda “dorthin⫺hierher (doch)’. Als Erstglied eines Kompositums tritt nichtwortfähige Reduplikation auf in Tippeltappeltour. Reduplikation von Suffixen fehlt im Deutschen und wohl auch sonst weithin; bei Präfixen ist sie selten (ururalt).

4.

Affigierung

4.1. Präfigierung und Suffigierung Die Kombination eines einfachen oder komplexen Stammes (als Derivationsbasis) mit einem Affix ist eine explizite Derivation. Die Derivationsbasis kann auch eine Wortgruppe (Phrase) sein, die in das Derivat ohne Flexionsendung eingeht. Doch im Deutschen sind nicht alle Flexionsendungen “abschließend” (so für das Italienische Schwarze 21995: 603), vgl. Derivationsbasen im Plural wie Kinder-chen (Derivat ⫽ Pluralform), Ärzte-schaft (Derivat ⫽ Singularform) und Komparativformen (ver-besser-n). Neben dem verbalen Präsens-(Infinitiv-)stamm erscheint auch der Präteritalstamm (zugleich 1. und 3. Person Singular) als Derivationsbasis (gab J Gabe, zog J Zögling); departizipiale Derivate tilgen in Abhängigkeit vom folgenden Suffix -en (Gefäng-nis I gefangen) oder bewahren es (Gefangen-schaft, Verlassenheit); das -t schwacher Formen bleibt bewahrt (Geübt-heit). Als Derivationselemente treten Suffixe und Präfixe auf (über Infigierung vgl. Art. 55): Ordn-ung, fröh-lich, Unglück, ver-gießen. Die Zusammenfassung von Suffigierung und Präfigierung unter dem Oberbegriff der expliziten Derivation macht den gemeinsamen Affixcharakter von Präfixen und Suffixen zum maßgebenden Kriterium. Das ist heute allgemein üblich (doch vgl. Bauer 1983: 37f.). Daß es zwischen beiden Affixtypen und damit auch zwischen Suffix- und Präfixderivation nicht unwesentliche Unterschiede gibt (vgl. Art. 54), wird damit nicht in Frage gestellt. Derivation wie in Ge-sing-e I sing[en] durch gleichzeitigen Gebrauch von Suffix und Präfix (die eine diskontinuierliche Konstituente bilden), bezeichnet man als kombinatorische Derivation (vgl. Kühnhold & Wellmann 1973: 126f.) oder als Parasynthese (vgl. Malkiel 1978: 146). Sie ist in Zusammen-


891

hänge unterschiedlicher Affixkombinationen gestellt worden (vgl. Bauer 1988 b). Der Typ Ge-sing-e, in dem beide Affixe zusammen ⫺ als Zirkumfix, eine spezielle Art von Synaffix (vgl. Bauer 1988 b: 23 f.) ⫺ eine semantische Einheit bilden, ist zu unterscheiden vom Typ trans-ozean-isch, in dem Präfix und Suffix semantisch kompositionell analysierbar sind und mit gleicher Semantik auch unabhängig voneinander gebracht werden können. In Bildungen wie Appetithemmer, Farbgebung, breitschultrig, deren zweite Komponente als isoliertes Lexem nicht geläufig ist, kann der Wortbildungsprozeß als Verbindung von Komposition und expliziter Derivation aufgefaßt werden; dafür ist im Deutschen z. T. der Terminus Zusammenbildung (vgl. Henzen 31965: 234; Erben 31993: 34, 114f.), im Englischen synthetic compounds (Marchand 21969: 15⫺19) üblich; (über “synthetische Komposita” vgl. aber auch 8). Bei Annahme einer Wortgruppe als Ausgangsgröße (Appetit hemmen, Farbe geben, breite Schulter) lassen sich diese Bildungen zu den expliziten Derivaten stellen (vgl. Fleischer & Barz 1992: 46f.). Der Typ Appetithemmer wird heute auch als “normales” Kompositum erklärt: Das deverbale Zweitglied -hemmer “erbt” die obligatorische Akkusativergänzung des Verbs hemm[en], die vom Erstglied (Appetit-) übernommen wird (“Argumentlinking”), so daß -hemmer aus diesem Grunde nicht isoliert gebraucht werde (so Booij 1988), doch vgl. z. B. der stärkste Hemmer meines Appetits (Leser 1990: 65). Auch den adjektivischen Typ breitschultrig sucht Leser (1990: 103) mit Hilfe der Unterscheidung von grammatischer Korrektheit und pragmatischer Akzeptabilität als normales Kompositum zu erklären. Die ganze Vielfalt einschlägiger Bildungen mit einer Wortgruppe als Konstituente ist jedenfalls mit den zuletzt genannten Untersuchungen noch nicht erfaßt (vgl. z. B. auch dephraseologische Bildungen wie Inangriffnahme I in Angriff nehmen, Indienststellung I in Dienst stellen).

dan 1979: 64; Bauer 1988 a: 23f.). Wieweit der Begriff ausgedehnt wird auf Elemente zwischen Derivationsbasis und Derivationsaffix (vgl. Malkiel 1978: 144; Dressler 1984), ist zunächst eine Frage der Segmentierung in Konstruktionen wie signal-is-ier[en], Periodiz-ität, kleb-r-ig. Wird das Zwischenelement zum Stamm gerechnet, müßte man zwei Stammvarianten annehmen: signal- und signalis- usw. Das würde im Deutschen vor allem bei nichtnativen Stämmen zu einer kaum überschaubaren Fülle von Stammvarianten führen. Wird das Zwischenelement dagegen zum Suffix gerechnet, so ergeben sich verschiedene terminologische Fixierungen: Suffixerweiterung (vgl. Dressler 1984: 35 zu Bildungen wie frz. congo-l-ais). Suffixvariante (vgl. Fleischer & Barz 1992: 149 zu Bildungen wie Dieb-erei) oder Suffixkombination als eine Art Synaffix (vgl. Bauer 1988 b: 18f., 23 zu Bildungen wie engl. character-istic). Wird das Zwischenelement weder zum vorhergehenden Stamm noch zum folgenden Suffix gerechnet, ist es eine eigene Einheit ⫺ ein Interfix. Die Etablierung dieser spezifischen Klasse von Affixen erlaubt sowohl das Erkennen ihrer Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede als auch die Erarbeitung eines überschaubaren Inventars der Wortbildungsmorpheme. Letzteres wäre wesentlich komplizierter, wenn man entsprechende Suffixvarianten annähme, wie z. B. im Deutschen die Vielgestaltigkeit der Morphemgrenze bei -isch-Derivaten aus nichtnativen Basen zeigt: lexik-alisch, tabell-ar-isch, problem-at-isch, theor-etisch, illus-or-isch u. a. Die Interfigierung ist eine von mehreren Arten morphonologischer Alternation an den wortinternen Konstituentengrenzen. Sie folgt morphonologischen Anpassungsregeln (vgl. 6.1), nicht selten in Verbindung mit Akzentwechsel: Dokumeńt⫺dokumenta´risch. Hier wie auch sonst sind “prototypische von marginalen Fällen” zu unterscheiden (Dressler 1984: 37); epenthetische Vokale bzw. Konsonanten wie in morgen-dlich, wesen-t-lich werden von manchen Autoren eher ausgeklammert (vgl. Dressler 1984: 35f.); mit Bezug auf -t- in frz. bijou-t-er I bijou wird auch von “parasitären Suffixen” gesprochen (Haensch & Lallemand-Rietkötter 1972: 24). Im Unterschied zur Suffixderivation tritt Interfigierung bei Präfixen, die häufiger durch Assimilation verändert werden, kaum auf. Interfixe werden meist als “semantisch leer” bezeichnet (vgl. Dressler 1984: 36; Bauer 1988 a: 24). Der semantische Unterschied zwischen futur-isch und futur-istisch, harmon-ieren und harmon-is-ieren ist

4.2. Interfigierung Von Präfigierung und Suffigierung sowie auch von Infigierung (vgl. Art. 55) prinzipiell zu unterscheiden ist die Interfigierung. Die Begriffsbestimmung von Interfix ist allerdings nicht unumstritten. Es handelt sich um Verbindungselemente an der Morphemgrenze in komplexen Wörtern, typischerweise z. B. die Fugenelemente in deutschen Komposita wie Arbeit-s-zimmer (vgl. Bergenholtz & Mug-

892 nicht mit Bezug auf die Interfixe systematisierbar. Dies macht allerdings ihre Einordnung in die Typologie der Affixe, die ja prinzipiell Zeichencharakter haben, problematisch; deshalb wird ihnen ⫺ zumindest in Komposita ⫺ von manchen Autoren die Semantik eines “besonderen syntaktischen Morphems” zur Indizierung der kompositionellen Verbindung zugeschrieben (vgl. Lopatin 1977: 54⫺57). 4.3. Problematik der Affixbestimmung Die Differenzierung von Stamm und Wortbildungsaffix (vgl. Art. 27), die der Unterscheidung von Komposition und expliziter Derivation zugrunde liegt, ist zwar weit verbreitet, aber nicht unumstritten (vgl. Art. 37). Auf jeden Fall gibt es Abgrenzungsprobleme (vgl. auch Art. 39, 41, 43). Nicht wenige Minimalzeichen weisen in bestimmten Kombinationen distributionelle sowie semantische und z. T. auch phonologische Spezifika zum Affix hin auf, ohne doch bereits in vollem Maße als Affix gelten zu können: augmentatives Riesen- in Riesenproblem, -voll in Adjektiven wie niveauvoll. Solche Einheiten in einer Art Zwischenstellung zwischen Stamm und Affix hat man mit Termini wie Halbaffix (vgl. semi-suffix mit Bezug auf engl. -like in gentleman-like, Marchand 21969: 356) sowie relatives Affix (vgl. Kubrjakova 1974 a: 140⫺143) und zuletzt vor allem Affixoid (Prä-, Suffixoid, vgl. z. B. Stepanowa & Fleischer 1985: 141⫺147) zu fassen gesucht. Dies könnte bedeuten, daß neben die Wortbildungsprozesse der Komposition (von Stämmen) und der Derivation (von Stamm und Affix) als dritter Prozeß die Affixoidderivation (von Stamm und Affixoid) zu stellen wäre. In jüngster Zeit sind jedoch Angemessenheit und Zweckmäßigkeit der Kategorie Affixoid wiederholt in Frage gestellt worden (vgl. z. B. Höhle 1982: 87; Olsen 1986: 5). Insbesondere ist darauf hingewiesen worden (vgl. Schmidt 1987), daß die zweifache Abgrenzung des Affixoids einerseits zum Stamm und andererseits zum Affix nicht einigermaßen nachvollziehbar möglich ist. Wird der Begriff aufgegeben und bleibt es damit bei der Differenzierung von Stamm und Affix ohne terminologische Fixierung einer Zwischengröße, dann ist zu berücksichtigen, daß beide Klassen aus Zentrum und Peripherie bestehen, d. h. aus Einheiten, bei denen die klassenbildenden Merkmale (die Prototypikalität) in unterschiedlichem Maße ausgebildet sind. Für bestimmte Zwecke (z. B. die lexikographische Darstellung, vgl. Mugdan 1984: 239f.) ist übrigens


eine strenge Klassifizierung im Hinblick auf den praktischen Effekt wohl gar nicht angebracht. Als Affixoid oder Pseudoaffix werden bisweilen auch Bestandteile der Wurzel bezeichnet, die einer Affixform gleichen (dt. Hamm-er nach Summ-er, vgl. Malkiel 1978: 145). Ein besonderes Problem bilden Minimaleinheiten, die zwar wortfähig, aber ausgeprägt synsemantisch bestimmt sind und distributionell in hohem Maße zur wortstrukturellen Bindung an Verben tendieren. Das gilt im Deutschen für Einheiten wie ab, an, über, unter u. ä., die daneben auch als freie Präpositionen in substantivischen Präpositionalgefügen auftreten. In der Verbindung mit Verben werden sie in schwankender Terminologie bezeichnet als “Präfixe bzw. Partikel” (Naumann 21986: 70), als Verbzusätze (Höhle 1982: 101) oder als “affixartige Morpheme” (Erben 31993: 25); vgl. auch die zusammenfassende Übersicht über das Präverb bei Sˇimecˇkova´ (1994). Booij (1990: 61) plädiert dagegen mit Bezug auf den ndl. Typ opbellen ‘anrufen’ für eine Qualifizierung dieser Konstruktionen als “phrases that are created in the lexicon”. In der Gesamtheit des verbalen Wortbildungssystems (nicht in jedem Einzelfall) dominiert die funktional-semantische Eigenentwicklung der verbal gebundenen Einheiten (z. B. Ausdruck des teilweisen Vollzugs der Handlung durch an- in anbraten, anzahlen). Sie führt zu Reihenbildung und Distributionsspezifik sowie zur Integration in das System der zentralen (prototypischen) Verbpräfixe (be-, ent-, er-, ver-, zer-). Dies spricht dafür, diese Konstruktionen als Präfixbildungen und damit explizite Derivate zu klassifizieren (vgl. auch Malkiel 1978: 127f.). Daß verbale Präfixe semantisch mit frei gebrauchten Präpositionen übereinstimmen, ist weder im Russischen (vgl. die Tabellen bei Wilske 1976: 199⫺202) noch Italienischen (vgl. Schwarze 21995: 495) noch Französischen (vgl. Bauer 1983: 37f.) ein Grund, ihren Präfixcharakter in Zweifel zu ziehen. Beim Substantiv ist zumindest im Deutschen (vgl. Abgas, Aufwind) wohl anders zu entscheiden (vgl. Fleischer & Barz 1992: 116). Wie die Typikalität von Affixen kann auch die von Stämmen eingeschränkt sein: Periphere Erscheinungen der Kategorie Stamm sind Einheiten, die nicht wortfähig sind, also nur “gebunden” in Kombination mit Stämmen oder Affixen auftreten, ohne weitere ⫺ insbesondere semantische, distributionelle und phonologische ⫺ Merkmale der Kategorie Affix aufzuweisen. Abgesehen von weni-


893

gen nativen Einheiten, z. B. Schwieger-, Stiefin Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen (ausführlicher Fleischer 1995) handelt es sich fast ausschließlich um nichtnative Elemente (bio-, -thek u. ä.), auch als Konfix bezeichnet (vgl. 8). Nichtwortfähige Stämme dagegen, die nur in einer einzigen Kombination auftreten (Him- in Himbeere, -igall in Nachtigall), lassen sich von diesen Konfixen abheben als unikale Restelemente (vgl. Stepanova & Fleischer 1985: 90), engl. blocked morphemes (Marchand 21969: 2) oder auch cranberry morphs (Bauer 1988 a: 40). Bisweilen werden sie mit den obengenannten gebundenen Stämmen als Quasimorpheme zusammengefaßt (vgl. Kubrjakova 1974 a: 60⫺65).

nativen Basen auch als Suffixwechsel oder Suffixtausch bezeichnet (vgl. Erben 31993: 91 und 8); doch vgl. auch native Konstruktionen wie winz-ig J Winz-ling, wider-lich J Widerling und Präfixtausch bei ver-loben J entloben (vgl. Plank 1981: 199).

5.

Substitution

Die Substitution, auch implizite Derivation (vgl. Fleischer & Barz 1992: 51), im Unterschied zur expliziten Derivation ein Wortbildungsprozeß ohne Affigierung, ist, wie die explizite, aber ein Prozeß der Derivation von einer motivierenden Ausgangsbasis. Der Terminus wird bisweilen in einem sehr weiten Sinn verwendet (vgl. Hansen 1982: 125) für Prozesse, die auch als Nullableitung mit einem Nullsuffix (vgl. Art. 45), hier als Konversion (vgl. 7), bezeichnet werden; (vgl. über “innere Wortbildung” auch Erben 31993: 57). Im Unterschied zur Konversion ist die implizite Derivation mit einem Wechsel des Stammvokals verbunden. Beiden Arten, der expliziten wie der impliziten Derivation, ist also ein Eingriff in die Form der Basis gemeinsam, wodurch sie zugleich von der Konversion abgehoben werden. Die Vokalveränderungen hängen historisch mit dem Ablaut und z. T. auch Umlaut zusammen. Die Bildungsweise ist im Deutschen heute nicht mehr modellhaft produktiv. Im Wortschatz ist jedoch in analysierbaren Typen vor allem die deverbale Derivation von Substantiven repräsentiert: Wurf I werfen, Fortschritt I fortschreiten. Bildungen wie Ab-, Hinflug I ab-, hinfliegen (nicht Komposita mit Flug) verdeutlichen, daß in Analogie zu fliegen J Flug durchaus neue Wörter mit der Struktur eines impliziten Derivats entstehen können, obwohl das Grundmodell nicht mehr produktiv ist. Neben der Masse der deverbalen Substantive existiert im Deutschen eine kleine Restgruppe impliziter deverbaler Verbderivate (fällen I fallen). Substitution von Suffixen liegt vor in Fällen wie russ. nem-ec ‘Deutscher’ ⫺ nem-ka ‘Deutsche’ (vgl. Wilske 1976: 181), bei nicht-

6.

Subtraktion

6.1. Grundsätzliches Als subtraktive Wortbildung (Reduktion von Stämmen, vgl. Art. 60) lassen sich Rückbildung (6.2) und Kurzwortbildung (6.3) zusammenfassen. Außerdem können Derivationsbasen an der Morphemgrenze zum Suffix einer morphonologischen Anpassung durch Subtraktion (Tilgung) bestimmter Elemente unterliegen. Es handelt sich um Begleiterscheinungen, nicht eigenständige Wortbildungsprozesse. Im Deutschen betrifft das vorwiegend auf -e und -en auslautende Basen (Sprache J sprach-lich, Bote J Bot-in, Tropen J trop-isch, Wagen J Wäg-lein); hierher auch die verbreitete Erscheinung der Haplologie (Zauberer J Zauber-in, vgl. Plank 1981: 149⫺153). Die Tilgung erscheint auch als Ausfall des unbetonten -e- (Himmel J himmlisch). Im Russischen sind nicht selten auslautende Konsonanten betroffen, z. B. blizk-ij ‘nahe’ J bliz-ost’ ‘Nähe’. 6.2. Rückbildung Rückbildung oder Rückableitung (engl. backderivation, frz. de´rivation regressive) ist Derivation durch Tilgung eines (echten oder scheinbaren) Wortbildungsaffixes, in der Regel mit gleichzeitiger Transposition in eine andere Wortart; im Englischen werden “fast ausschließlich Verben gebildet” (Hansen 1982: 136). Dabei entsteht der Eindruck, das “rückgebildete” Wort sei die ⫺ kürzere ⫺ Derivationsbasis: engl. to vivisect I vivisection, dt. notland[en] I Notlandung, Elast ‘gummiartiger Werkstoff’ I elastisch (vgl. Art. 84). Die Verwendung des Terminus Rückbildung in der synchronen Beschreibung ist strittig (ablehnend z. B. Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 158f.), doch da auch gegenwärtig auf diese Weise immer wieder neue Wörter entstehen, erscheint die Verwendung gerechtfertigt, wenn auch die synchrone Identifizierung einer Rückbildung nur unter bestimmten Bedingungen möglich ist (vgl. Bauer 1983: 230; 1988 a: 33). Als Kriterium für die Entscheidung über die Rückbildung des Typs engl. to brainwash I brainwashing gilt der semantische Bezug auf das Substantiv

894 brainwashing, nicht die kompositionelle Motivation durch brain und wash (vgl. Marchand 21969: 393f.) Als Rückbildung klassifiziert werden bisweilen auch (vgl. Tiefenbach 1984) der Typ Besuch (hier als Konversion betrachtet, vgl. 7) und der Typ Biß (hier implizite Derivation, vgl. 5). Schließlich wird gelegentlich als Erleichterungsrückbildung (Erben 31993: 34) der Typ Erweis in einen Zusammenhang gebracht mit Erweisung; es handelt sich hier um zwei nach verschiedenen Modellen gebildete deverbale Substantive. Ohne Wortartwechsel vollzieht sich auch die “Rederivation” in einem Fall wie russ. zontik ‘Regenschirm’ (Pseudoderivat, entlehnt aus ndl. zonnedek) J zont (gleiche Bedeutung) in Analogie zur expliziten Derivation vint ‘Schraube J vintik ‘Schräubchen’ (vgl. Nemcˇenko 1984: 87f., 127f.). 6.3. Kurzwortbildung Von den bisher behandelten Prozessen ist die Bildung von Kurzformen (vgl. Art. 92) deutlich abzuheben. Sie beruht auf der Reduktion längerer Vollformen: entweder unisegmental als ein kontinuierliches Segment der Vollform (Foto I Fotografie) oder multisegmental in Verbindung mit mehr oder weniger diskontinuierlichen Segmenten der Vollform: Trafo I Tra[ns]fo[rmator] (Bellmann 1980). Die multisegmentalen Kurzwörter erscheinen als Initialwort (Akronym) wie PLZ I Postleitzahl, als Silbenwort (Trafo) oder als Klammerform: ein Kompositum mit Kürzung eines mittleren Segments, vgl. Öl[baum]zweig, russ. ra[diostan]cija. Das Gegenstück stellt die Reduktion der Außensegmente bei Bewahrung des Mittelstücks dar: engl. flu I influenza. Durch die Kürzung tritt weder ein Wortartwechsel noch eine semantische Modifikation ein; es entsteht zunächst kein neues Lexem, sondern eine Lexemvariante ⫺ mit Besonderheiten im Gebrauch. So sind z. B. Initialwörter im Deutschen die einzige Möglichkeit, um Mehrwortbenennungen wie Konferenz für Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa in ein Kompositum zu integrieren: KSZE-Schlußakte. Bestimmte Reduktionsmodelle sind gleichzeitig mit zusätzlicher Suffigierung verbunden, vorwiegend durch -i und -o: Fundi ‘Fundamentalist’, Realo ‘Realpolitiker’. Begünstigt wird das Modell der Kürzungssuffigierung durch die Existenz unisegmentaler Kurzwörter aus initialem Segment wie Uni[versität], Demo[nstration].


7.

Konversion

7.1. Grundsätzliches Die Konversion (“transposition fonctionelle ou hypostatique”, vgl. Art. 90) erfolgt ohne formalen Eingriff in die Basisstruktur (vgl. auch Bauer 1983: 277) als “morphologische Transposition” von Stämmen (Besuch I besuch[en]) oder “syntaktische Transposition” (vgl. Kubrjakova 1974 b: 75) von grammatischen Wörtern (das Fallen I fall[en], der Gute I der gute [Mensch], der Reisende I reisend) oder Wortgruppen bzw. Sätzen mit Univerbierung (ein Dankeschön I ich danke schön). Letzteres wird z. T. als “Erscheinung der Syntax” (Olsen 1988; 1990: 186) und nicht als Wortbildungsprozeß betrachtet, oder die Konversionsprodukte werden als “eher Flexionsformen” (Wurzel 1988: 189), ohne “spezifische Kategoriensemantik” (Wurzel 1988: 197) gewertet. Dem stehen jedoch Argumente entgegen (vgl. z. B. Fleischer & Barz 1992: 49f.): Die substantivischen Konversionsprodukte entsprechen in ihrer Nominationsfunktion (vgl. 1.2) der Kategorie Substantiv, sie verfügen über ⫺ wenn auch im allgemeinen schwach ausgeprägte ⫺ Lexikalisierungspotenz (die Angehörigen, ein gutes Essen), verhalten sich in der Kompositionsaktivität wie Substantive: substantiviertes Denken als Zweitglied (Prestige-, Anspruchsdenken), substantiviertes Adjektiv als Erstglied (Altenheim ‘Heim für Alte’ mit -en, aber Altbau ‘alter Bau’). Konversion ist entweder als ein eigenständiges Verfahren der Wortbildung zu betrachten oder als ein Spezialfall der Derivation. Dies betrifft besonders die “morphologische Transposition”, die dann als Derivation mit einem Nullsuffix (vgl. Lipka 21992: 85f. und Art. 45) aufgefaßt werden kann. Dagegen gibt es allerdings verschiedene Einwände (vgl. Kubrjakova 1974 b: 74; Bergenholtz & Mugdan 1979: 67⫺71; Fleischer & Barz 1992: 44). Basis einer Konversion können, wie gesagt, auch Wortgruppen und Sätze sein. Die sogenannten Satznamen lassen sich also, da Sätze zugrunde liegen, von den Zusammenrückungen (vgl. 3.1) abheben und mit unter dem Oberbegriff der Konversion erfassen: Nimmersatt, Taugenichts, Vergißmeinnicht (vgl. 3.1 und Naumann 1985: 285). 7.2. Zur Problematik der Abgrenzung Ein spezielles Klassifikationsproblem bilden in Sprachen wie dem Deutschen, Französischen und Russischen die Verben, die (anders als im Englischen) stets mit einem Formativ


895

versehen sind (vgl. 1.1). Das infinitivische -en im Deutschen wird heute allgemein als Marker im Paradigma der Flexionsformen aufgefaßt (vgl. z. B. Erben 31993: 72), nicht in einer Doppelfunktion zugleich als flexivisches und wortbildendes Affix. Demnach sind desubstantivische Verben wie filmen und deadjektivische wie faulen affixlos und das heißt durch Konversion gebildet. Problematisch ist auch die Beurteilung der Substantivierung das Lachen I lachen. Neben den unter 7.1 genannten Auffassungen (Konversionsprodukt oder Produkt eines nicht wortbildenden, sondern syntaktischen Prozesses) findet sich noch eine dritte Auffassung: explizite Derivation mit einem eigenen substantivischen Derivationssuffix -en, das homonym, aber nicht identisch mit dem Infinitivmarker ist (vgl. Sandberg 1976). Im Englischen liegen die Verhältnisse etwas anders. Da eine spezifische Infinitivendung fehlt, fehlt auch der Unterschied zwischen Substantivierung des Verbstamms (Lauf ) und des Infinitivs (Laufen). ⫺ Nicht als Konversion zu betrachten (da ohne Wortartänderung) ist die Motion als “affixlose Derivation” (so Schwarze 21995: 518) in ital. amico ‘Freund’ ⫺ amica ‘Freundin’, russ. rab ‘Sklave’ ⫺ raba ‘Sklavin’ (Flexionsparadigma als “Wortbildungsmittel”, vgl. Nemcˇenko 1984: 128⫺131).

problematisch solche Bildungen, die aus wortfähigen Konstituenten (als Kompositum z. B. Konversationslexikon) oder aus der kombinatorischen Variante einer solchen Konstituente (Psychoanalyse, zu Psyche, ebenfalls Kompositum) oder zu einem im Deutschen nicht wortfähigen Synsemantikon (meist einer Präposition wie griech. hyper, dt. Präfix: hyperelegant) bestehen. Problematisch ist dagegen die Behandlung von Bildungen wie Astro-naut, Bio-logie u. ä. Ihre Konstituenten sind im Deutschen nicht wortfähig, sind aber nicht als Affix, sondern als (gebundene) Stämme, “nominale nicht-lexematische Einheiten” (Plank 1981: 218) zu werten, auch als Konfix (vgl. 4.3) bezeichnet. Sie sind kompositions- und/oder derivationsfähig und entsprechen auch lexikalisch-semantisch einem Stamm. So lassen sich die Bildungen entweder als Konfixkomposita (Thermo-stat) oder als Konfixderivate (therm-al, Therm-ik), diese auch als Beispiele für Suffixtausch (vgl. 5), auffassen. Im Englischen wird von “neoclassical compounds” aus combining forms (Bauer 1983: 213⫺216), im Französischen von “recompose´s” aus “gelehrten Stämmen” (Thiele 1981: 75⫺80) gesprochen. Im Italienischen wird diese terminologische Kombinatorik als reguläres drittes Wortbildungsverfahren neben Komposition und Derivation gestellt, es erzeuge synthetische Wörter (Schwarze 21995: 488, 615⫺617). In den romanischen Sprachen handelt es sich nicht um eine Differenzierung zwischen nativen und nichtnativen Elementen, sondern um eine “Zweiteilung des nativen Wortschatzes” in “volkstümliche” und “gelehrte” Formen (Schwarze 21995: 491), wobei die wechselseitigen Kombinationen ähnlich restringiert sind wie im Deutschen die Hybridisierung (vgl. 2.1).

8.

Spezifik nichtnativer Einheiten

Nichtnative Einheiten (Fremdelemente) sind Stämme und Affixe, die in Phonemstruktur, Aussprache und/oder Schreibweise von den heimischen Regeln abweichen (vgl. Art. 151). Die wortbildungsaktiven Fremdelemente des Deutschen werden entweder gewonnen durch die autonome Übernahme eines kompletten Wortes (super, ex u. a.), oder sie werden durch serielle Semantisierung von Segmenten komplexer Fremdwörter zu aktiven Bildungselementen: tele- (aus Telefon u. ä.) in Teleklub, -thek (aus Bibliothek u. ä.) in Diskothek. Die Unterscheidung zwischen kompletter Fremdwortentlehnung und komponentieller Fremdwortbildung innerhalb der entlehnenden Sprache (auch Lehn-Wortbildung) ist nicht immer klar zu treffen: idolisieren ‘zum Idol erheben’ kann im Deutschen zum Substantiv Idol gebildet oder aber als Vokabel nach engl. idolize entlehnt sein. Bei synchroner Klassifikation scheiden natürlich solche Fremdwörter aus, die in der entlehnenden Sprache nicht analysierbar sind, z. B. im Deutschen obszön, Koralle. Ferner sind un-

9.

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896 Bauer, Laurie (1988 a), Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Univ. Press Bauer, Laurie (1988 b), “A Descriptive Gap in Morphology”. In: Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (Hrsg.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988. Dordrecht: Foris, 17⫺27 Bellmann, Günther (1980), “Zur Variation im Lexikon: Kurzwort und Original”. Wirkendes Wort 30, 369⫺383 Bergenholtz, Henning & Mugdan, Joachim (1979), Einführung in die Morphologie. Stuttgart usw.: Kohlhammer Bondarko, A[leksandr] V. (1974), “Formoobrazovanie, slovoizmenenie i klassifikacija morfologicˇeskich kategorij (Na materiale russkogo jazyka)”. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 23.2,3⫺14 Booij, Geert (1988), “The Relation between Inheritance and Argument Linking: Deverbal Nouns in Dutch”. In: Everaert, Martin et al. (Hrsg.), Morphology and Modularity. In Honour of Henk Schultink. Dordrecht, Providence/RI: Foris (Publications in Language Sciences 29), 57⫺73 Booij, Geert (1990), “The Boundary between Morphology and Syntax: Separable Complex Verbs in Dutch”. In: Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (Hrsg.), Yearbook of Morphology 1990. Dordrecht: Foris, 45⫺64 Bork, Hans Dieter (1990), Die lateinisch-romanischen Zusammensetzungen Nomen ⫹ Verb und der Ursprung der romanischen Verb-Ergänzung-Komposita. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag (Rheinische Beiträge zur lateinisch-romanischen Wortbildungslehre 3) Dokulil, Milosˇ (1968), “Zur Theorie der Wortbildung”. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KarlMarx-Universität Leipzig. Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 17, 203⫺211 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1984), “Zur Wertung der Interfixe in einer semiotischen Theorie der natürlichen Morphologie”. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 13, 35⫺45 Erben, Johannes (31993), Einführung in die deutsche Wortbildungslehre. Berlin: Schmidt (Grundlagen der Germanistik 17) [11975] Fleischer, Wolfgang (1989), “Nomination und unfeste nominative Ketten”. Beiträge zur Erforschung der deutschen Sprache 9, 13⫺27 Fleischer, Wolfgang (1995), “Konfixe”. In: Pohl, Inge & Ehrhardt, Horst (Hrsg.), Wort und Wortschatz: Beiträge zur Lexikologie. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 61⫺68 Fleischer, Wolfgang & Barz, Irmhild (1992), Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer Haensch, Günther & Lallemand-Rietkötter, Annette (1972), Wortbildungslehre des modernen Französisch. München: Hueber

XII. Wortbildung II: Prozesse Hansen, Klaus (1982), “Wortbildung”. In: Hansen, Barbara & Hansen, Klaus & Neubert, Albrecht & Schentke, Manfred, Englische Lexikologie: Einführung in Wortbildung und lexikalische Semantik. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie, 43⫺152 Henzen, Walter (31965), Deutsche Wortbildung. Tübingen: Niemeyer [11947] Höhle, Tilman H. (1982), “Über Komposition und Derivation: Zur Konstituentenstruktur von Wortbildungsprodukten im Deutschen”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 1, 76⫺112 Kanngießer, Siegfried (1985), “Strukturen der Wortbildung”. In: Schwarze, Christoph & Wunderlich, Dieter (Hrsg.), Handbuch der Lexikologie. Königstein/Ts.: Athenäum, 143⫺183 Kubrjakova, E[lena] S. (1974 a), Osnovy morfologicˇeskogo analiza (na materiale germanskich jazykov). Moskva: Nauka Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1974 b), “Derivacija, transpozicija, konversija”. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 23.5, 64⫺76 Kubrjakova, Elena S. (1982), “Semantik der Syntax und ihr Zusammenhang mit der Wortbildungstheorie”. In: Danesˇ, Frantisˇek & Viehweger, Dieter (Hrsg.), Probleme der Satzsemantik, Bd. II. Berlin/ DDR: Zentralinstitut für Sprachwissenschaft (Linguist. Studien A 92), 1⫺20 Kühnhold, Ingeburg & Wellmann, Hans (1973), Deutsche Wortbildung: Typen und Tendenzen in der Gegenwartssprache. Erster Hauptteil: Das Verb. Mit einer Einführung von Johannes Erben. Düsseldorf: Schwann (Sprache der Gegenwart 29) Kuznecova, A[riadna] I. & Efremova, T[atjana] F. (1986), Slovar’ morfem russkogo jazyka. Moskva: Russkij Jazyk Leser, Martin (1990), Das Problem der ‘Zusammenbildungen’: Eine lexikalische Studie. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag (Fokus. Linguist.-Philologische Studien 3) Lipka, Leonhard (21992), An Outline of English Lexicology: Lexical Structure, Word Semantics, and Word-formation. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Forschung & Studium Anglistik 3) [11990] Lopatin, V[ladimir] V. (1977), Russkaja slovoobrazovatel’naja morfemika: Problemy i principy opisanija. Moskva: Nauka Malkiel, Yakov (1978), “Derivational Categories”. In: Greenberg, Joseph H. (Hrsg.), Universals of Human Language, Bd. III: Word Structure. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 125⫺149 Marchand, Hans (21969), The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation: A Synchronic-diachronic Approach. München: Beck [11960: Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz] Mithun, Marianne (1984), “The Evolution of Noun Incorporation”. Language 60, 874⫺894 Motsch, Wolfgang (1982), “Wortbildungen im einsprachigen Wörterbuch”. In: Agricola, Erhard &

87. Composition Schildt, Joachim & Viehweger, Dieter (Hrsg.), Wortschatzforschung heute: Aktuelle Probleme der Lexikologie und Lexikographie. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie

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Plank, Frans (1981), Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten: Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr

versitatis Gothoburgensis (Göteborger Germanistische Forschungen 15) Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1988), “Der irokesische Sprachtyp”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 7, 173⫺213 Schmidt, Günter Dietrich (1987), “Das Affixoid: Zur Notwendigkeit und Brauchbarkeit eines beliebten Zwischenbegriffs in der deutschen Wortbildung”. In: Hoppe, Gabriele et al., Deutsche Lehnwortbildung: Beiträge zur Erforschung der Wortbildung mit entlehnten Wortbildungseinheiten im Deutschen. Tübingen: Narr (Forschungsberichte des Instituts für deutsche Sprache 64), 53⫺101 Schwarze, Christoph (21995), Grammatik der italienischen Sprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer [11988] Sˇimecˇkova´, Alena (1994), Untersuchungen zum ‘trennbaren’ Verb im Deutschen, Bd. I. Praha: Univerzita Karlova Stepanowa, Maria D. & Fleischer, Wolfgang (1985), Grundzüge der deutschen Wortbildung. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut Thiele, Johannes (1981), Wortbildung der französischen Sprache: Ein Abriß. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut Tiefenbach, Heinrich (1984), “Fischfang und Rauchfang: Zum Problem der deverbalen Rückbildungen in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache”. Sprachwissenschaft 9, 1⫺19 Uluchanov, I[gor] S. (1979), “Zur semantischen Organisation des Wortbildungssystems”. In: Linguistische Arbeitsberichte (Universität Leipzig) 22, 15⫺24 Wilske, Ludwig (1976), Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart, Vol. IV: Lexikologie. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1988), “Derivation, Flexion und Blockierung”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 41, 179⫺198

Sandberg, Bengt (1976), Die neutrale -(e)n-Ableitung der deutschen Sprache. Göteborg: Acta Uni-

Wolfgang Fleischer, Leipzig (Deutschland)

Mugdan, Joachim (1984 [1983]), “Grammatik im Wörterbuch: Wortbildung”. In: Wiegand, Herbert Ernst (Hrsg.), Studien zur neuhochdeutschen Lexikographie, Bd. IV. Hildesheim usw.: Olms (Germanistische Linguistik 1⫺3/83), 237⫺308 Naumann, Bernd (1985), “Konversion: Zu einem Wortbildungstyp in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache und dessen Benennung”. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 14, 277⫺288 Naumann, Bernd (21986), Einführung in die Wortbildungslehre des Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Germanistische Arbeitshefte 4) [11972: Wortbildung in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer] Nemcˇenko, V[asilij] N. (1984), Sovremennij Russkij Jazyk: Slovoobrazovanie. Moskva: Vyssˇaja Sˇkola Ohnheiser, Ingeborg (1987), Wortbildung im Sprachvergleich: Russisch⫺Deutsch. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Olsen, Susan (1986), “ ‘Argument-Linking’ und produktive Reihen bei deutschen Adjektivkomposita”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 5, 5⫺24 Olsen, Susan (1988), “Das ‘substantivierte’ Adjektiv im Deutschen und Englischen: Attribuierung vs. syntaktische ‘Substantivierung’ ”. Folia Linguistica 22, 337⫺372 Olsen, Susan (1990), “Konversion als ein kombinatorischer Wortbildungsprozeß”. Linguistische Berichte 127, 185⫺216

87. Composition 1. 2. 3. 4.

Definition of composition Theoretical treatments of composition Role of composition in different languages References

1.

Definition of composition

1.1. Composition as a major category of word formation Composition (also: compounding; Germ.: Komposition, Zusammensetzung) is one of the major processes available in language for the

formation of new words. It denotes the combining of two free forms or stems to form a new complex word referred to as a compound (Germ.: Kompositum, Zusammensetzung). During the development of the field of linguistics in the 19th century in Europe, composition was accorded a central role in the historically oriented grammars as one of the two basic categories of word formation next to derivation. The content of the category composition has, however, experienced

898 certain important changes since its origin, induced primarily by the emergence of the new field of synchronic linguistics in the 20th century. Jacob Grimm (1826) in his Deutsche Grammatik, 2. Theil: Ableitung und Zusammensetzung conceived of Ableitung (i.e., derivation) as encompassing suffixation only: Derivation was defined as the addition of a formative to the end of a root with the capability of deriving a further notion from that root. Prefixes, which lack the same transpositional ability as suffixes, were thought to function more like the first element of a compound. As a consequence, prefixation was treated under the heading of composition. Following Grimm’s example, Wilmanns (1896) and Paul (1920) also grouped prefixed words (so-called Präfixkomposita) together with compounds into one category and set this category of composition in contrast to derivation (i.e. suffixation). This division of the major categories of word formation was taken over by Walter Henzen (1947) in the first edition of his Deutsche Wortbildung. Beginning with the second edition in 1957, however, Henzen ⫺ recognizing the similarity of prefixation and suffixation in their analogical function within the synchronic system ⫺ removed the class of prefixed words from the category of compositions and put them in a category of their own, occupying a place between the two major word formation processes of composition and derivation. A similar tripartite division of the word formation categories into composition, prefixation and suffixation is used by Wolfgang Fleischer as the basis for the first editions of his Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache from 1969 to 1982 with derivation encompassing explicit suffixation as well as the implicit transposition of a stem into a new word class. This classification was then revised in Fleischer & Barz (1992; 1995) into one more in line with the consensus of current work on word syntax (cf. 2.1) that prefixation and suffixation together comprise the category of derivation, which is set apart from composition, on the one hand, and conversion and other implicit derivational processes on the other. This is the view found in Erben (1975; 1983), the five volumes of Deutsche Wortbildung (1973⫺1992) and Olsen (1986); whereas Naumann (1986) remains indebted to the original content of the category composition in the sense of the historical grammars outlined above. In summary, composition has come to be viewed in current linguistic work as the pro-


cess of concatenating two existing stems from the lexicon of a language to form a new, more complex stem which has the potential to enter the lexicon as a stable morphological unit. Composition differs in this sense from derivation, which deals with the combination of an affix (i.e. a bound formative) to a stem. Similarities arise between composition and derivation, however, by virtue of their combinatorial or concatenative nature (cf. Art. 37). Non-concatenative word formation processes, on the other hand, derive new stems from existing stems in a non-additive fashion, e.g. by vocalic substitutions or interspersion (Ablaut, binyanim) or by direct conversion into another word class. 1.2.

Delimination of the class of compounds 1.2.1. General characteristics of compounds The largest and most productive class of compounds ⫺ determinative compounds (2.3) ⫺ display a collection of general properties which can serve as a first approximation in delineating compounds from other morphological and syntactic units (cf. Marchand (1969); Ortner & Ortner (1984); Fleischer & Barz (1995): The two constituents of a determinative compound are united under a uniform stress contour in which the heavy syllable of the first constituent receives prominent stress (cf. roádside, lećture series, ho´tline; Germ.: Bućhmesse, Fre´mdorgan); they are often written as one word or hyphenated (website, spark-plug); they do not allow inflectional morphemes marking grammatical categories of case, number, person etc. internally (punchcard vs. *punchedcard; Germ.: Dünnbrett vs. *Dünnesbrett) and cannot be separated by another constituent (a [short] [happy hour] vs. *[happy [short] hour]). Especially noun-noun compounds often depend for their interpretation on an element of meaning that is not overtly expressed in the combination and, as a consequence, are at least potentially ambiguous semantically, cf. sun spots ‘spots on the sun’, ‘spots caused by the sun’ or ‘spots in the shape of the sun’ etc. Furthermore, the first constituent does not refer to an entity distinct from the reference of the second constituent but rather serves as an indefinite or generic specification that further restricts the set of possible denotations of the second constituent, cf. computer industry: ‘industry concerned with computers’. This property accounts for the typical use of a compound as a potential name or categori-

87. Composition

zation for an underlying coherent concept rather than actual description of it. For example, the compound mistle thrush names a bird species (thrush) that ‘typically eats’ mistle (berries); the word is not employed to describe a thrush engaged in the activity of ‘eating or having eaten’ mistle. In addition, compounds often express a more consolidated meaning than an equivalent syntactic phrase. Sweet corn is not just ‘sweet (tasting) corn’ but a category of edible corn opposing field corn (fodder). 1.2.2. Compounds vs. syntactic phrases Inspite of such defining criteria, the boundary between compounds and certain types of syntactic units can often be difficult to discern. The problem can be exemplified with the case of verbal, adjectival and participial collocations in German, cf. Fleischer & Barz (1995). Due to the lack of a distinguishing difference in word order, it is often difficult to tell whether an adverb is functioning as the first constituent of a compound or whether it is a phrasal modifier in combinations like: schwer verständlich, zusammen kommen, mit bestimmen. Spoken with a single stress contour and given a consolidated meaning, such combinations can be considered compounds, indicated as such orthographically by being written together, cf. schwerverständliches Buch. Nevertheless, many boundary phenomena still remain whose status is not rendered entirely clear by the relevant criteria. For example sauberhalten and zurückfahren are written as one word but have the same stress contour in the spoken language as well as the same compositional meaning whether construed as complex verbs or as simple verbs with an adverbial or depictive complement. Noun and adjective combinations, on the other hand, don’t pose the same boundary problem in German because the criteria discussed in 1.2.1 (mainly stress contour and lack of grammatical formatives word internally) force clear distinctions here, cf. Neuland vs. neues Land, fettarm vs. an Fett arm, Punker-Friseur vs. Friseur eines Punkers. The situation is, interestingly, exactly the reverse in English where verbal and adjectival compounds are clearly differentiated from equivalent syntactic phrases in their word order (cf. long-suffering, awe-inspiring vs. suffering long, inspiring awe etc.), but the status of adjective and noun combinations as compounds or phrases is not always clear: brown su´gar, big bu´siness, short sto´ry, and dill pıćkel all have the typical final stress pattern of syn-

899 tactic phrases but denote a unified concept in much the same way that the prestressed compounds ba´ld spot, we´tsuit, dry´dock and blaćktop do. Marchand (1969), Bauer (1988) and Liberman & Sproat (1992) consider the dichotomy between the lefthand and righthand stress patterns to be criterial in indicating whether the collocation is a compound (having lefthand-stress, e.g. blaćktop) or a syntactic phrase (with righthand-stress, i.e. dill pıćkel). Accordingly, they also consider prestressed noun-noun combinations like wıńdow frame, sho´re line, peáce process and ta´x haven to be compounds, while classifying syntagmas such as home vı´deo, summer e´vening, silicon chı´p and basement wıńdow as syntactic phrases on the basis of their final stress which they share with phrases. Selkirk (1984), Ladd (1984), Zwicky (1986), Cinque (1993) differ with this assessment, consenting to the fact that both left and right prominent stress contours occur in compounds, and attempt to find a systematic explanation for the diverging stress patterns inside compounds in English. From a different perspective, the phenomenon of lexicalization (also idiomatic expression; Germ.: Redewendung, Phraseologismus) presses the point even further that the boundary line between morphological and syntactic units (i.e., words and phrases) is often extremely difficult to disentangle. Morphological units are linguistic expressions with properties that make them optimal for memorization and storage in the mental lexicon. As noted in 1.2.1, the initial stem in a compound lacks grammatical markings for inflectional categories such as case, number, person etc. that obligatorily occur on a modifier within a phrase. Furthermore, the first constituent of a compound is referentially inert; semantically it is a predicate, stripped of its potential for reference. These qualities render the compound as a whole suitable for denoting one complex concept that is relevant to a speech community and is at least potentially storeable in the collective mental lexicon of its speakers. Complex words coined in this fashion are retrieved as wholes during speech production and comprehension from the lexicon and not reconstructed from their basic morphemes on each occasion of their use. This is the “once-only” application mode of word formation rules postulated by Aronoff (1976). Syntactic expressions, on the other hand, are not typically stored as wholes, but are repeatedly assembled anew out of an inventory of lexical and grammatical mor-

900 phemes upon each occurrence of use by means of completely regular and productive rules. Jackendoff (1975) uses these different modes of operation as the basis for his fullentry theory of the lexicon: Word formation rules function primarily as redundancy rules operating over complex lexical entries and analyzing their structure, whereas syntactic rules are primarily productive rules of creation. Nevertheless, in non-typical cases the reverse can occur: Word formation rules can be used in a creative manner to coin a new word and syntactic rules can be employed as redundancy rules to analyze the internal structure of a complex lexicalized phrase. Lexicalization, therefore, can affect both morphological and syntactic units, albeit to different degrees. As a consequence, the dividing line between stored morphological units and syntactic idioms can be elusive. Where English uses the compounds ye´llow pages and Whı´te House, the same concepts are expressed in German by means of the lexicalized syntactic phrases Gelbe Seiten and das Weiße Haus. But the reverse can also occur: The English equivalent of the German compounds Berufungsgericht and Tatort are the lexicalized syntactic phrases court of appeals and scene of the crime. Idioms can be found in all types of syntactic categories, not just noun phrases (cf. Eng. to take someone to the cleaner’s or Germ. auf zwei Hochzeiten tanzen as examples of idiomized verb phrases or Eng. on cloud nine and Germ. im siebten Himmel as idiomized prepositional phrases as well as Eng. The cat has got your tongue as a stored sentence). The basic property of an idiom is that the meaning of the whole is not analyzable on the basis of the meaning of its parts. The fact that fixed syntactic expressions of this kind occur renders the question especially intriguing whether certain finally stressed adjective-noun combinations in English are instances of true compounds or whether they are perhaps merely lexicalized noun phrases. Sour creám is a case in point showing a right dominant stress contour which makes it an atypical compound. Does this qualify it as a syntactic phrase? Its German equivalent is indeed rendered as such (saure Sahne) which indicates that this analysis is at least possible. However, this conclusion relies solely on the criterion of stress, which was shown in 1.2.2 to be ambiguous in English. Furthermore, as the examples ye´llow pages vs. gelbe Seiten and Tatort vs. scene of the crime have already demonstrated, lan-


guages can diverge as to which concepts they express by means of complex words and which are rendered by means of lexicalized phrases. The appropriate criteria must be sought language internally. The problem of differentiating a lexicalized phrase from a compound presents itself in the case of English N’s ⫹ N compounds as well. Mo´mma’s boy, cashıér’s check and la´dies’ room have the forestress characteristic of compounds, which sets them apart from noun phrases ordinarily showing final stress (cf. momma’s ca´t, the ladies’ roóm). However, finally stressed cases such as fool’s e´rrand, baker’s do´zen and cat’s cra´dle also occur where the meaning is consolidated enough in the first case and idiomatic enough in the second two, to merit considering them compounds. But, again, what is to say that they are not just phrases with prenominal possessives that have become lexicalized in the appropriate meaning? A final and particularly vexing problem in delineating morphology from syntax which deserves mention in this context is the fact that syntactic phrases can apparently occur inside compounds (cf. Eng.: winner-take-all struggle, question-and-answer session, behindthe-scene effort and Germ.: Trimm-DichPfad, Katz-und-Maus-Spiel). Do such constructions offer evidence that ⫺ contra the lexicalist hypothesis (cf. Lapointe 1980; Selkirk 1982 and DiSciullo & Williams 1987) ⫺ syntactic and morphological rules interact? This is the stance of Toman (1985), Hoeksema (1988) and Lieber (1988; 1992) but is rejected by Wiese (1996) who considers the first elements in such constructions as usualized or ad hoc quotes. 1.2.3. Compounds vs. other morphological constructs The discussion in 1.2.2 has shown that a clear-cut division between composition and syntax is often difficult to make. Attention will now be turned to the comparison of compounds with other morphological phenomena such as demotivated compounds, neo-classical compounds, blends and certain closely related derivations (the so-called affixoids). Compounding as described in 1.2.1 is a productive word formation process that, as a consequence, gives rise to combinations which can be said to be motivated, i.e., related in a rule-governed fashion in form and meaning to their component parts (cf.

87. Composition

Kürschner 1974, Lipka 1979 and Shaw 1979). Next to motivated compounds like dinner hour ‘hour in which dinner is eaten’, compounds can take on idiosyncratic meaning elements to different degrees which are not anchored in the meanings of their constituents: A coffee table is not merely ‘a table for drinking coffee at’ but rather a table of a special design and appearance. It is not uncommon for compounds to become completely demotivated (Germ.: verdunkelt) through the course of historical change. A case in point is Eng. [1kvb⭸rd] which only in its written form (cupboard) reminds speakers of its origin as a compound. Demotivation works to obscure the boundary between compounds and simple words: For instance, in Germ. Imker and Eng. lord, all feeling for the original combination (< OHG imbi ‘Bienenschwarm’ ⫹ kar ‘Gefäß’ and OE hlaˆf ‘loaf’ ⫹ weard ‘warden’) has been lost and speakers are no longer aware of the original sequence. Imker and lord are indistinguishable synchronically from other unmotivated simple stems. In this context of varying degrees of motivation and demotivation, the term cranberry morpheme (also pseudo-morpheme; Germ.: unikales Morphem) was coined to refer to a recognizable unit (such as cran-) in a partially demotivated compound which ⫺ due to its demise as a free word ⫺ no longer occurs freely as a stem and is limited to one particular lexical environment. Other examples are the Germ. Schornstein and Meineid, where the demotivated elements Schorn- (MGH ‘support’) and Mein- (OHG ‘falsch’) have the same status as cran- (MLG ‘crane’) in that they occur only in this one lexical combination in the modern language. Neo-classical compounding is a type of composition in which the units of the combination are not native stems but rather nonnative roots (mostly from the classical languages Latin and Greek) such as bio-, auto-, tele-; scope, -ology, phile etc., cf. Bauer (1988). Such roots must be considered bound elements in English and thus are at times difficult to distinguish from prefixes and suffixes, cf. automobile vs. autosuggestion, autotoxin and lexicology, semiology, philology, ethnology etc. Furthermore, blending (also: contamination, telescoped word, portmanteau word; Germ.: Wortkreuzung, Wortverschmelzung, haplologische Zusammensetzung, Portmanteau-Wort) involves the combination of two words in such a way that one or both of the

901 resulting constituents have less substance than the stems from which they derive. Consequently, they must be considered bound forms as well. In this feature, blends are similar to neo-classical compounds. The process of blending, however, is typically accompanied by a clipping of material from one of the stems to allow the two stems to overlap. The clipped stem serves as the base of the construction, cf. Germ.: Ostalgie < Nostalgie, Bonnflikt < Bonn ⫹ Konflikt. Blending is more extreme than neo-classical compounding as the base constituent, e.g. -algie, -flikt, cannot even be considered a complete root. Blendings have been known to arise as inadvertent mistakes that occur during speech production but are mostly clever neologisms created for their comical effect of bringing two different concepts to mind at once, cf. Gre´sillon (1984). Some recent English examples are: gundamentalist < gun ⫹ fundamentalist, sexcapade < sex ⫹ escapade, stalkarazzi < stalk ⫹ paparazzi as well as the new electronic pocket translator quicktionary < quick ⫹ dictionary. Müller-Schotte (1953) considers blends to be short-lived, nonce formations ⫺ a property which would set them apart from the true process of compounding, which is an abundant source of regular input to the permanent lexicon. Thus, even though some blends do indeed enter the vocabulary as usualized words, cf. e.g., motel, smog, brunch and chunnel, the true distinction between blending and composition must be seen in the conscious creative process associated with blending vs. automatic, unobtrusive and purely concatenative nature of productive composition. One of the biggest areas of potential overlap between compounds and other morphological constructions falls, however, at the boundary of the neighboring category of derivations. Many suffixes and prefixes originate historically as first or second components in compounds (cf. Wilmanns 1896; Paul 1920). This is true, for example, of the Germ. nominal and adjectival suffixes -heit, -schaft, -tum; bar-, -haft, -lich, -sam as well as their etymologically related Eng. equivalents -hood, -ship, -dom; -some (cf. Henzen 1965; Marchand 1969). Henzen (31965) speaks of compound elements as a means of derivation. An originally free word that has entered into a compound can serve as the basis for an entire pattern of like compounds. Once such a pattern takes hold and becomes productive, the original constituent may begin to deviate

902 from its free equivalent in form or meaning and develop into an affix-like element. Fleischer (1982) illustrates this diachronic development with the suffix -heit, which in the modern language is a suffix deriving deadjectival nouns such as Schönheit, Dummheit, Frechheit, Neuheit etc. In MHG, heit occured as a free noun in the sense ‘manner, property, state’, which has been retained in certain NHG dialects (cf. ledicher Hait ‘in ledigem Zustand’). The emergence of its productivity in such adjectival-noun compounds as just mentioned led to the restriction of its use in NHG standard language as a free form. Affixoid (also: semi-affix; Germ.: Affixoid, Halbaffix), therefore, is a term applied to lexical elements caught up in such a transition of status from the constituent of a compound to a derivational morpheme (a prefix or a suffix) such as heit has experienced. Fleischer (1982) views the adjectival lexemes -voll, -reich, -arm, -frei, -leer as well as the nominal morphemes -werk, -zeug, -wesen, -gut as suffixoids in Modern German; Erben (1983) as well as Wellmann (1975; 1978) also work with the category suffixoid and prefixoid and even consider the circumference of these categories to be much larger than Fleischer assumes. Marchand (1969) classifies Eng. -like, -worthy, -ways and -wise as semi-suffixes. Vögeding (1981) and Urbaniak (1983) are classical treatments of the empirical and theoretical problems posed by affixoids, illustrated on the basis of the exemplary suffixoids -frei and -voll in German. All these linguists agree that basic criteria for determining a form as an affixoid are: (a) the form must be involved in a series of like formations (Germ.: Reihenbildung) constituting a pattern and (b) as a result of the analogical meaning of the pattern it must experience a semantic weakening vis-a`-vis its free equivalent, cf. Eng. free vs. stress-free, tax-free, smokefree, crisis-free, fat-free and Germ. Wesen vs. Steuerwesen, Schulwesen, Postwesen, etc. From 1992 on, Fleischer & Barz no longer make use of the category affixoid in their word formation grammar, recognizing that many of the patterns they considered affixlike in earlier editions are in reality based on the relational version of the adjective. As a consequence of this property, a high degree of productivity is to be expected (cf. Olsen 1986 b; 1988). For example, the German ad-


jective arm has as one of its meaning variants ‘arm an x’, where x names the substance which is present only in small quantities. This relational meaning serves as the basis for formations like abgasarm, industriearm, verkehrsarm, kontaktarm, kalorienarm, etc. Other constructions based on non-relational adjectives and nouns are often simply analogical formations on the basis of a specific meaning component inherent to one of the constituents found also in isolation, cf. Zeug ‘utensils’ and Nähzeug, Strickzeug, Rasierzeug, Schulzeug. 1.3. The problem of particle verbs Combinations of a so-called prepositional particle with a verb lead to nearly insurmountable problems in all of the Germanic languages when it comes to determining whether they can be considered a compound (or even a word). Particle verbs are, therefore, a particularly vexing phenomenon at the borderline between syntax and morphology. In German the problem centers around constructions of the type ańrufen, aúfsetzen, aúskippen, a´breißen, eínfordern, du´rchfahren, u´mleiten, etc. with stress on the particle, as opposed to durchfa´hren, umbıńden, überflıégen, etc., with stress on the verb stem. The first group are termed particle verbs, while the second are best considered as prefixed collocations, cf. Olsen (1998; 1998, ed.), Stiebels (1996), Booij (1990), Stiebels & Wunderlich (1994) and Wunderlich (1987). Particle verbs in German can be considered complex verb stems in the sense that they make up a lexical unit semantically and undergo further derivation as a structural unit by means of productive suffixation such as with -bar, -er and -ung: anrufbar, einsetzbar, Abnehmer, Auflöser, Einforderung, Umleitung. However, in independent clauses the finite verb stem occurs separated from the particle and in an initial position in the clause as in (1a). The same phenomenon is illustrated for Dutch and Swedish in (1b⫺c). In English the verb, whether finite or not, may be separated from the particle within the verb phrase, cf. (1 d⫺e): (1) (a) Germ.: Sie näht den Kopf an. (b) Du.: Jan belt het meisje op. ‘John called the girl up’. (c) Sw.: Jan kastade inte in brevet. ‘John threw not in the letter’. (d) Eng.: John tore the sticker off. (e) Eng.: John was told to tear the sticker off.

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87. Composition

The discontinuous position of the two constituents of the putative complex verb violates the most fundamental property of a word, namely that it be an indivisible morphological unit. The difference between a separable particle verb and an inseparable prefix verb formed on the basis of the same prepositional element in German is demonstrated in the examples (2a) and (2b).

where they have the same form. The sentence in (6a) can also be expressed with the variant word order in (6b), where the particle in directly follows the verb and precedes the direct object.

(2) (a) Hans fuhr du´rch. (b) Hans durchfu´hr den Park.

As the ungrammaticality of (6c) shows, this is not a property of adverbs in general, but only of the more restricted class of particles. Since adverbs like often cannot interrupt a combination of verb ⫹ direct object, the verb and particle seems best considered a complex verb stem that can precede the direct object. Other examples of particle verbs in English are put on, send out, carry over, pick up, take down. Whereas both German and English particle verbs are irregular syntactically in the sense that the constituent parts occur separated from one another, particle verbs in German are nevertheless regular morphologically in that they are normal right-headed (cf. 2.1) structures (annehmen) that undergo further productive derivational processes (annehmbar). English particle verbs, however, are morphologically irregular in that they are left-headed word structures (use up) that only sporadically undergo derivational processes which are otherwise productive with complex verb stems. Suffixation by means of -able and -er, for instance, is possible with the prefixed verbs in (7a) but not at all normal with the putative particle verb stems in (7b). The difference between the two verbal structures in (7) that sets English apart from German is that whereas the prefix verbs are rightheaded, the particle verbs have their head on the left:

The inseparable prefix verb of (2b) is accented on its stem and takes the logical object of the underlying preposition durch as its own direct object, cf. (2b) with the related verb and prepositional phrase construction in (3): (3) Hans fuhr durch den Park. The separable particle verb in (2a), on the other hand, has the prominent accent on the particle. In all motivated constructions of this type consisting of a movement verb and a directional particle, the accented particle serves semantically as an intransitive (or “adverbial”) equivalent to the prepositional phrase object of the related simplex verb, cf. (2a) with (3). Even more recalcitrant than the group of complex verbs with simple particles is the group of verbs with double particles (like hindurch, heraus, ’rein) or with potentially independent adverbial elements (such as zurück, weg, fort, etc.): (4) (a) Hans fuhr hindurch / heraus / ’rein. (b) Hans fuhr zurück / weg. Here a formal as well as semantic ambiguity arises: Are these simplex verbs with adverbial complements, i.e. a purely syntactic construction, or complex verbs, and therefore morphological units, cf. Olsen (1997 b)? The situation with particle and verb combinations is puzzling in English as well, cf. Olsen (1997 b) and (1998). Here potential particles (5a) have the same formal shape as prepositions (5b) and adverbs (5c)) (5) (a) She walked in. (b) She walked in the house. (c) In she walked. leading to the question of whether particles and adverbs can really be distinguished as separate categories. The transitive equivalent to (5a) (viz. (6a)) seems to suggest that particles do differ from adverbs even in English,

(6) (a) She took the mail in. (b) She took in the mail. (c) *She sent often mail.

(7) (a) refillable, refiller (b) ?use-up-able, *use-upper (?user-upper)

2.

Theoretical treatments of composition

2.1. Composition as ‘word syntax’ Regular compounds display certain very general formal properties that are also characteristic of other complex linguistic expressions, notably syntactic phrases: They are binarily branching, endocentric, (potentially) recursive structures. This has led some linguists to postulate a stronger connection be-

904


tween morphological and syntactic structures than has been assumed in the past. The idea is that the formal similarity between word structures and syntactic phrases stems from the fact that both types of complex linguistic configurations adhere to the basic tenets of X-bar theory. The idea of word syntax, developed by Selkirk (1982), Toman (1983) and Sproat (1985), assumes that certain aspects of X-bar theory are found in parametrized form in word structures, an idea also pursued by Lieber (1992) and Cinque (1993), while other linguists distinguish between necessarily minimal word structures and the more complex specifier-complement-head configurations of syntactic phrases (cf. Fanselow 1985 a; 1988; Olsen 1986 a; DiSciullo & Williams 1987 and Wiese 1996). The endocentric nature of compounds was recognized early. Marchand (1969) speaks of a determinant-determinatum relationship between the two constituents in his definition of a morphological compound, terms referred to in earlier and contemporary German grammars as Bestimmungswort and Grundwort. The traditional insight that syntagmas are grammatical “extensions” of one of their elements (cf. Marchand 1969) is captured in current analyses of word structure by the notion head, which was introduced into morphological theory from syntactic theory by Williams (1981): The head constituent determines the category and other morpho-syntactic properties of the complex word. This is accomplished by the percolation of features up to the node immediately dominating the head and its sister in a recursive fashion (cf. Williams 1981; Selkirk 1982 and Lieber 1980; 1992). In English, German and Dutch, the head is on the right. The example in (8) ((die) Dorfstraße) illustrates the percolation of the categorial feature N(oun) as well as the gender and number features (feminine singular) associated with the head constituent to the mother node: (8)

N [fem. sg.]

N

N

[neut. sg.]

[fem. sg.]

Dorf

Straße

The binary structure of (8) is retained even in compounds containing more than two constituents as example (9) illustrates. Here the nominal compound [black bean] is concatenated with another noun [[black bean] soup]: N

(9) N A

N

N

black

bean

soup

The recursive structure of compounds leads to different possible constituent groupings which underlie differences in the compositional semantic makeup of the whole, cf. (10): (10) (a) (b) (c) (d)

[[blood alcohol] level] [central [nervous system]] [[rove beetle] [family tree]] [gasoline [[direct injection] engine]]

In complex compounds of three and more elements, different constituent structures are often possible, each reflecting a slightly different compositional reading. (11) (a) [[baggage sizing] device] (b) [baggage [sizing device]] In (11a), for example, the compound denotes ‘a device for baggage sizing’, whereas the structure of (11b) enforces the reading ‘a sizing device for baggage’. Without extending one’s imagination too far, the five part compound in (12) will even allow four different constituent groupings (an exercise left to the reader): (12) White House travel office staff The formal head of the compound generally serves as its semantic head as well, while the first constituent functions either as its complement or its modifier (cf. also 2.2 and 2.3). One result of the endocentric nature of compounds is that a compound external modifier must either modify the head constituent or both constituents together. Odd effects results when an attribute is related only to the nonhead, as verregnete Feriengefahr, Wartezimmer auf den Arzt and fatal disease gene demonstrate (cf. Bergmann 1980; Fabricius-Hansen 1993 and Toman 1983). In German, and to a lesser extent in English, a linking element often occurs between

905

87. Composition

the two components. Such elements, exemplified by the underlined elements in Germ. Eierschale, Universitätsverwaltung, Frauenparkplatz and Eng. bull’s eye, belong to the first constituent but serve no grammatical function in the syntagma other than to mark the boundary between the two constituents (cf. August 1975; Fanselow 1981 a; Fuhrhop 1996). Compounding, like all other productive morphological processes, affects the so-called open class categories of the lexicon, namely noun, adjective and verb. Prepositions are basically a closed-class category and, accordingly, enter compounds only as the nonhead constituent and only as long as they have actual lexical content (on, down) and are not merely grammatical markers (of, with). Selkirk (1982) observes that there are gaps in the patterns of word classes that combine to form nominal, adjectival and verbal compounds in English. The same can be said for German, cf. as (13)⫺(15): (13) (a) (b) (c) (d)

NN: AN: PN: VN:

moth wing high chair underdog search party

Atomkern Fernrohr Umwelt Bratpfanne

(14) (a) (b) (c) (d)

NA: AA: PA: VA:

knee-deep red-hot overripe ⫺⫺⫺

ofenwarm schwerkrank voreilig waschecht

(15) (a) (b) (c) (d)

NV: AV: PV: VV:

⫺⫺⫺ ⫺⫺⫺ overbook ⫺⫺⫺

⫺⫺⫺ ⫺⫺⫺ überbieten ⫺⫺⫺

Compounds of the pattern verb-adjective (VA) do not accur in English but are documented in German (cf. waschecht, gehfähig, fahrtüchtig). The verbal types noun-verb (NV), adjective-verb (AV) and verb-verb (VV), on the other hand, do not occur in either language. These patterns can perhaps be considered systematic gaps that require an explanation. Wunderlich (1986; 1987) assumes that verbs do not lend themselves productively to compounding for semantic reasons. There are only a handful of verbverb coinages in English and German (cf. Eng. stir-fry, drop-kick, freeze-dry and Germ. mähdreschen, lachkeuchen) and, whereas complex verbs with nominal or adjectival first constituents can be observed in the modernday vocabularies, the main source of these forms is arguably not true compounding but a process termed backformation: A verb of

the form to babysit, to mass-produce, to dry clean or Germ. generalüberholen, schutzimpfen does not result from the direct concatenation of the stems baby and sit or general and überholen etc., but is derived from the underlying compound noun baby sitter and Generalüberholung by eliminating the nominalizing suffix -er, -tion or -ing and Germ. -ung to arrive at a complex verbal stem (cf. Marchand 1969; Holmberg 1976; Stiebels & Wunderlich 1994). The regularity that compounds are headed concatenations of stems characterizes the large and productive class of endocentric compounds. Apparently headless words with compound structure also seem to be documented. However, these are often best explained as conversions or substantivizations of different types of syntactic collocations rather than as true instances of composition. One such type of exocentric nominal construction found in English and German consists of a verb and a noun in the relation of predicate and its object, cf. scarecrow, daredevil, pinch-penny, killjoy; Germ. Wagehals, Störenfried, Knickebein, Kratzfuß. These colorful formations typically denote a person or thing with the property expressed by the verbal collocation, e.g. ‘something that scares crows’ or ‘one who wagers his neck’ (cf. Petersen 1914; Törnqvist 1959; Olsen 1990). Another type of headless substantivization is even further removed from the class of genuine compounds in that these constructions are not even necessarily binarily structured. This last feature reveals their heritage as sentential and phrasal substantivizations (Germ. Zusammenrückungen) rather than as morphological concatenations: Eng. good-fornothing, ne’erdowell, forget-me-not; Germ. Dreikäsehoch, Rührmichnichtan, Springinsfeld. These words are similar on a semantic level to the previous class of exocentric verbnoun compounds in that they characteristically describe a property of a person or thing which is then used metonymically or synecdochically to name that entity. English, furthermore, displays compound nouns converted from particle verbs (cf. 1.3), cf. blackout, melt down, screw up which again, by virtue of being conversions, do not possess a formal nominal head. 2.2. Syntactic approaches to composition Grimm (1826) introduced the terms genuine and artificial compound (Germ.: eigentliches und uneigentliches Kompositum) to character-

906 ize two different types of composition according to their historical genesis. Genuine compounds represent the oldest type resulting from the juxtaposition of two stems without any use of inflection cf. OHG taga ⫹ licht. This process represented the true mode of composition for Grimm, whence his term eigentlich. The second type of compound ⫺ artificial compounds ⫺ on the other hand, result from a younger mode of composition that is based on an inflectional or case relationship between the first and second elements of the compound. In NHG Tageslicht and Sonnenschein, for instance, the combination is patterned on an underlying (genitive) case relationship between the head and attribute along the lines of the literal English glosses ‘day’s light’ or ‘sun’s shine’. Due to the weakening of morphological case markings on nouns, this division is no longer relevant to synchronic treatments of compounds in the modern language. Nevertheless, the notion of case compounds generated a long tradition whose attempt to explain the interpretation of compounds consists in relating the different semantic classes of compounds to different underlying case and prepositional relations. In this view, compounds are reduced syntactic structures, and, as such, explainable on the basis of more explicit phrasal paraphrases. Marchand (1969: 18), for example, states: “[…] all compounds are explainable on the basis of syntactic relations underlying them in sentences […]”

What Marchand has in mind is that compounds arise on the basis of an underlying sentence by means of a topicalization rule that picks out of the topic and assigns it the status of determinatum (or: head) of the compound. Further reduction of the sentence isolates the determinant (i.e. nonhead) and allows it to “expand” the determinatum into a compound syntagma. Both members of the compound retain their original grammatical relations in the reduced construction. The compounds apple eater, apple eating and eating apple, for example, are derivable from the underlying sentence someone eats the apple, in which someone functions as the subject, apple as the object and eat as the predicate. Their difference lies in which element is topicalized to become the determinatum ⫺ the subject of the sentence (apple eater), the predicate itself (apple eating) or the object (eating apple). More extensive discussion of this ap-


proach can be found in Brekle (1970), Lipka (1971) and Kastovsky (1977; 1982). Marchand (1969: 22), furthermore, differentiates two principal types of compounds, verbal nexus compounds and non-verbal nexus or primary compounds: “Verbal nexus combinations are those which are made up of a verbal and a nominal element provided the two form a direct syntagma in an underlying sentence.” (Marchand 1969: 22)

Primary compounds are: “combinations in which a verbal nexus is not overtly expressed but implicitly contained […]” (Marchand 1969: 22)

One of Marchand’s examples of a verbal nexus compound is car dealer ‘one who deals in cars’, where the predicate ‘deal’ is explicitly present in the determinatum dealer. Primary compounds, on the other hand, pattern like car thief ‘one who steals cars’, where the predicate ‘steal’ is only implicitly present in the meaning of thief. The first extensive syntactic analysis of word formation actually preceded Marchand and goes back to Lees (1960), who, working within the formalized framework of transformational grammar, employed a set of reduction transformations to derive compounds and other related nominalizations from underlying independent sentences. Similar analyses can be found in Motsch (1970) and Thiel (1973). Lees’ approach came under criticizism by Rohrer (1966) and Brekle (1970) (and later also by Fanselow (1981 a). Brekle (1970) argued that more abstract underlying representations were needed for the derivation of compounds which he termed sentence radicals (Germ. Satzbegriffe). As opposed to Lees’ full sentential deep structures, Brekle’s sentence radicals lacked the grammatical categories of tense, quantification, aspect, modality and negation which he assumed not to play a role in compounds (but cf. Fanselow 1981 a) for critical discussion of this point). In Lees (1970), Lees revised his initial syntactic analysis of compounds to take the underlying semantic roles of the component nouns into account. In this new version, a semantically uniform class of compounds such as windmill, steamboat, hydrogen bomb etc. is assigned an underlying structure of the type V-O-I. The symbols O and I stand for the semantic roles which the two constituents assume (where O ⫽ object, I ⫽ instrument). The symbol V encompasses

907

87. Composition

a class of ‘generalized verbs’ like impel, energize, activate, power, propel etc., which together are meant to circumscribe the minimal set of semantic features which characterize the implicit predicate involved in all the compounds of the semantic class. Kürschner (1974) capitalizes on Lees’ idea of generalized verbs in his extensive analysis of German compounds in which he divides nominal compounds into three basic types: In type I and III an explicitly relational element is present, similar to Marchand’s verbal nexus compounds (cf. Klebstoff and Mondfahrt). Type II encompasses purely nominal compounds lacking an explicit verbal relation (cf. Marchand’s primary compounds). For type II Kürschner (1974) postulates a series of proverbs, similar to Lees’ generalized verbs, as the implicit predicates linking the meanings of the two nominal constituents. Fischfrau is, for example, traced back to a relative clause consisting of the head noun Frau modified by a reduced proposition (much in the sense of Brekle’s (1979) sentence radicals). This bare proposition encompasses Frau as its agent, Fisch as its object and the proverb [transferier], which stands for the common semantic denominator of true lexical verbs like vertreiben, austragen, bringen, verkaufen, etc. but does not take on lexical form. A transformation then reduces the relative clause to Fisch and Chomsky-adjoins Fisch around the head Frau to become its modifier. As Lees before him, the intention behind Kürschner’s use of proverbs is to keep the ambiguity of primary compounds to a minimum: Rather than characterizing Fischfrau as potentially four (or more) ways ambiguous (cf. Frau, die Fisch vertreibt / austrägt / bringt / verkauft), Kürschner’s analysis classifies it as belonging to one general semantic class. Within the theory of word syntax, Selkirk (1982) generates compound structures of the types documented in (13)⫺(15) in 2.1 by means of category specific context-free rewriting rules. The head is the rightmost element that belongs to the same category as the whole compound. Features percolate first along the head projection. Any feature specification left unassigned after head percolation can percolate up to the dominating node from the nonhead. The analysis is aimed primarily at developing an account for the interpretation of verbal compounds. Like Marchand (1969), Selkirk (1982) differentiates between verbal compounds (time-saver) which display a specific, grammatically char-

acterizable range of meanings and nonverbal compounds (apron string) which have a large range of potential meanings that don’t lend themselves to a grammatical characterization (cf. also Dowty 1979; Downing 1977; Allen 1978; Günther 1981; Zimmer 1981). Both compound types have the same underlying structure. N

(16) N

tree

N V

Af

eat

er

I.e. tree eater can belong to either semantic class; it can mean ‘something that eats trees’ or ‘something that eats (something) in trees’. The first (⫽ verbal) meaning arises as a result of the fact that the deverbal head eater inherits the internal (i.e. theme) argument of its base verb eat. This argument can be assigned to the nonhead of the compound, yielding the correct meaning. The nonverbal reading occurs because the inherited theme argument is optional. When it is not assigned, the first constituent is interpreted as a typical modifier. The similarly structured compound tree devourer, by way of contrast, can only have a verbal reading by virtue of the fact that the internal theme argument of devour is obligatory, cf. *He devoured vs. He ate. To account for the verbal interpretations, Selkirk (1982: 37) formulates the First Order Projection Condition given in (17): (17) “All non-SUBJ arguments of a lexical category X, must be satisfied within the first order projection of Xi.” This condition predicts that pasta tree eating as well as tree eating of pasta are ill-formed: N

(18) N

pasta

N N

N

tree

eating

908


NP

(19) N N

PP N

P

NP N

tree

eating

of

pasta

This is because the internal argument of eat (⫽ pasta) is not satisfied in either case within the first projection of the head (⫽ eat) but rather occurs outside of the collocation of locative modifier and head. The First Order Projection Condition captures the regularity that the head amalgamates directly with its internal argument, after which other modifiers may combine with this unit, cf. pasta eating and pasta eating in trees. 2.3. Semantic approaches to composition Most traditional word formation grammars make use of a semantic classification based in part on categories developed to describe the meanings of compounds in Sanskrit: determinative (also endocentric), possessive (also: bahuvrihi or exocentric) and copulative (also: dvandva) compounds. Determinative compounds were discussed in 1.2.1. Their grammatical head functions also as their semantic head which is modified by the other constituent so that e.g. business district is a ‘district’ in some sense restricted by the notion ‘business’. Possessive compounds have the same structure as determinative compounds but are used exocentrically to name an entity possessing the attribute they express: Greybeard literally refers to a ‘grey beard’ but denotes in its possessive reading something (a seal) having a ‘grey beard’. Other examples of possessive compounds are greenback (dollar bill), hatchback (car), turtleneck (sweater), skinhead (person), birdbrain (person), butterball (person), Yellow Robe (indian chief); Germ. Dickkopf (person), Milchgesicht (person), Silbermund (snail). The term bahuvrihi is itself a relevant example. In Sanskrit it literally means ‘much’ (bahu) ‘rice’ (vrihi) and is used to refer to a wealthy person (i.e. someone possessing ‘much rice’). Copulative compounds (or pseudo-dvandvas,

as Fanselow 1981 a) terms them) are compounds in which the individual constituents are equally predicated of the entity to which the compound as a whole refers (cf. Neuß 1981). Some recent coinages are actor-houseguest, gangster-buisnessmen, host-mediator, explorer-anthropologist, tent-office and KosherCajun. An actor-houseguest is someone who is both an actor and a houseguest; a tent-office is something that is both a tent and an office and Kosher-Cajun refers to a type of cuisine possessing the characteristic attributes of both manners of preparing food. Sanskrit dvandva (literally ‘two ⫹ two’) is once again a relevant example meaning ‘a pair’. All three types of compounds are productive in English and German. Fanselow (1985 a) points out that they stand in an implicative relationship to one another: A language having determinative compounds will also have copulative compounds (i.e. German) but not vice versa (French). A language with productive possessive compounds will also have determinative compounds (Sanskrit), cf. also Fanselow (1985 b). Turning now to recent semantic-theoretical treatments, a number of linguists have pointed out that verbal compounds are adequately characterized semantically as compounds whose interpretation is based on the argument structure of the compound’s head, as the above discussion of Marchand (1969) and Selkirk (1982) has shown, cf. also Lieber’s (1983) idea of argument linking and Boase-Beier & Toman’s (1987) notion of theta compounds: Speech recognition, air sniffer, collision coverage, baggage claim and climate change are, accordingly, verbal compounds that receive their interpretation via the semantic structure of their head. In the first four cases speech, air, collision and baggage are the objects of recognize, sniff, cover and claim respectively, whereas in the fifth case climate is the subject of change. The constituent in head position inherits the argument structure of its verbal base in a systematic way via the affixation process that converts the underlying verb into the given nominal form, cf. Bierwisch (1989). One of the merits of Fanselow (1981 a) is his demonstration that the interpretation of a group of purely nominal compounds (nominal relational compounds; Germ. nominale Rektionskomposita) arises in a similar fashion. In the German compound Professorensohn, the head noun is also inherently relational: Sohn is a

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two place predicate semantically, denoting a particular relation between two people, cf. son (x, y). In the compound, the second place of the son-relation (⫽ y) is filled by an existentially quantified version of the predicate professor, hence the compound denotes ‘one who is the son of a professor’. The internal argument position of Sohn can also be expressed syntactically which results in the explicit phrase Sohn eines Professors. In both cases the meaning arises by applying the relational meaning of the head to either the covertly quantified meaning of the first constituent of the compound or to the overtly quantified complement of the head noun in the noun phrase. The same interpretation holds for Mafiaboß, Dorfbürgermeister, Tischkante, etc. and can be found in English roadside, gene sequence, sea surface and lecture series as well. Side is e.g. a relational noun possessing an internal argument position which is satisfied by road in roadside. Hence, the interpretation of both verbal and nominal relational compounds is grammatically characterizable on the basis of the semantics of the head component. Things are much more difficult, however, when examining nonverbal or primary compounds, where no such relational element is overtly expressed. The general consensus is that the implicit relation must be inferred by the speaker on the basis of its relevance with regard to the compound’s constituents and/ or the context of its use. Downing (1977), Günther (1981), Zimmer (1981) and Dowty (1979) all assume that almost any relation is possible as long as it is plausible in the given situation. (Levi (1978), on the other hand, assumes that all compound types are based on just nine recoverably deletable abstract predicates.) Dowty formalizes the idea of a ‘connected-with’ relation in such a way that an underspecified variable for an abstract relation is introduced into the semantic structure of a noun-noun-compound, cf. (20). This variable R can be instantiated by a typical relation whose content is in some way connected with the meaning of the variable’s arguments (i.e. the semantic representations of the two nouns x and y). The ‘connected with’ relation ⫺ as it has become known ⫺ therefore can glean its specific content from the linguistic or situative context in which it occurs. (20) lx [b⬘ (x) ∨ ∃R ∃y [a⬘ (y) ∨ appropriately-classificatory’ (R) ∨ R (x,y)]]

Fanselow (1981 a) proposes contra Dowty that the implicit relation in a compound made up of two common nouns isn’t a general ‘connected with’ relation but has actual content. It is in fact inferred for each specific compound on the basis of the meanings of the compound’s parts. Working within the framework of Montague grammar, Fanselow formalizes a series of interpretation rules for a large empirical basis of German data. In Fanselow (1981 b) the general interpretation strategy for nonverbal compounds is summarized in the following rules: (21) Supply a basic relation that exists independently of the meaning of the constituents such as AND, PART—OF, PLACE—OF. Possible examples are athlete-partner (AND), broom stick (PART—OF) and neighborhood restaurant (PLACE—OF). (22) Induce a prominent relation from the initial or final constituent and apply it to the meaning of the other constituent. In trail dust the dust ‘originates from’ the trail; in job tension the job ‘causes’ the tension and in meat knife the relation ‘cut’ is inferred from the function of knives. (23) Modify the induced relation locally. A lowland fox ‘lives’ ‘in’ the lowland; a lobster pot is for ‘cooking’ lobster ‘in’ and a neck-tie is ‘worn’ ‘around’ the neck; while air traffic ‘moves’ ‘through’ the air. (24) Induce on the basis of the first constituent a property that can be applied to the second constituent. Possible examples here are: sponge cake (texture), sperm whale (shape), snail mail (speed), buttercup (color), snake dance (figure), skunk cabbage (smell) and grandfather clause (age). The crucial point is that a prominent relation (or stereotype) is inferred from the meaning of the constituents in rules (22)⫺ (24) or induced on the basis of a basic (logical) relation in rule (21). Fanselow defines the basic relations (Germ. Grundrelationen) as relations that are not associated with the lexical meaning of words but independent of them. They are part of the mental algebra that processes meanings combined with other meanings. For instance, language users know independently of their knowledge of the lexical meaning of objects, that they can be con-

910 joined with one another to form new objects, that they are located with respect to one another in space or time and that they have a material constitution, etc. The basic relations stand in opposition to the stereotypical relations that arise from associations speakers have with the referents of the words. In Fanselow’s system, every compound is potentially ambiguous, but the ambiguity is meaning-driven and contained within the limits of plausible connections between the constituent meanings. For example, a space scientist could be a scientist who ‘studies’ space (rule (22)) or a scientist ‘working in’ space (rule (23)) and a hedgehog gene could be an individual unit of the genome of a hedgehog (rule (22)) or a gene that has the ‘shape’ of a hedgehog (rule (24)), its actual meaning in scientific circles. Unwanted meanings, Fanselow argues, don’t arise. If one were to interpret Germ. Haushund by means of rule (21) using the AND relation, a contradiction would occur since there is no possible referent of the compound that can be both a house and a dog simultaneously. Such a contradiction of our world knowledge disqualifies this meaning as a possible interpretation. Furthermore, Küchenmesser or Eng. kitchen knife can only be interpreted locally; interpretation by means of the stereotype of a knife (i.e. that it ‘cuts’) yields an absurd result. On the other hand, Bergdenkmal and factory violin could ⫺ given the right context ⫺ be interpreted as a ‘monument that depicts a mountain’ or a ‘violin for playing in a factory’. The rule system developed allows for these contextual readings as well; however, Fanselow considers them contextually dependent as opposed to the contextually independent readings generated in isolation of a context. The semantic regularities just discussed concerning noun-noun compounds apply to compounds containing a verb stem as well. In the case of verb-noun compounds, the verbal stem can be the explicit source of the relation on which the interpretation is based (cf. Germ. Singvogel, Ziehbrücke and Eng. search party, drawbridge). Another possibility is that the head noun itself denotes a function and the verbal meaning serves as its object, cf. Redeverbot ‘prohibition against speaking’. Finally, the verb-noun compound can enter into the stereotype rules discussed above as in Fahrschule ‘school teaching driving’.


Meyer-Klabunde (1994; 1996) is interested in the meanings of nominal compounds precisely because of the role contextual information as well as conceptual knowledge plays in their interpretation. He concedes that in isolation the preferred interpretation of a compound with a deverbal head like Nachrichtenvermittler is without doubt the verbal reading ‘supplier of news’. But even in the case of verbal compounds, conceptual knowledge plays a role in guiding the interpretation, as his example Patientenbesitzer ‘patient owner’ demonstrates. The verbal reading ‘patient owner’ is blocked by our conceptual knowledge that one can’t possess other people, even though the argument structure of the head noun Besitzer provides the basis for such an interpretation. Many nouns are, furthermore, polysemous in the sense of Bierwisch (1983). The relation on which the compound’s interpretation depends, depends itself on which of the several related meanings is the correct one. Museumsbuch, for example, can be a book ‘about’ museums. In this case book is interpreted in the abstract sense as an information structure and museum is not further specified (i.e. as either a building, an institution or a process of exhibition, etc.). If Museumsbuch, however, is interpreted as a book ‘sold’ in a museum, then book is construed as a concrete object and museum must be specified as a concrete object as well, namely a building. The options of ‘information structure’ for book and of ‘institution’ or ‘exhibition process’ for museum are no longer plausible. Meyer-Klabunde (1996) argues, furthermore, that abductive inference plays a key role in deciphering the meaning of a compound in a context. Informally stated, abduction is an inference performed on the basis of incomplete knowledge. Meyer-Klabunde’s point is that this type of reasoning is often used in establishing the meaning of complex linguistic expressions. Consider the context in (25) from DER SPIEGEL which contains the compound Dichterfreund: (25) Der Dichter Heiner Müller hatte Geburtstag. Der Regisseur Neuenfels schenkte seinem Dichterfreund einen Blumenstrauß. Dichterfreund is a nominal relational compound in Fanselow’s (1981 a) sense since the head Freund is a relational noun. Its preferred reading in isolation is therefore relational, namely ‘friend of a poet’. Nevertheless in the context of (25) it has a copulative inter-

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pretation ‘friend and poet’. Meyer-Klabunde’s explanation for this is based on an abductive reasoning process which he formalizes within the framework of Kamp & Reyle’s (1993) Discourse Representation Theory, which will only be recapitulated informally here. The problem is to find the appropriate relation R in the compound meaning R(w, v). The compound serves in the context of (25) as the head of a definite noun phrase. This grammatical fact signals that the head constituent w ⫺ and perhaps the nonhead v as well ⫺ is likely to have an antecedent in the previous text. The antecedent relation is therefore less costly in the process of abductive reasoning than the argument-head relation and hence has preference over it. Since Dichter has also already been introduced into the discourse, its second occurrence as the first constituent of the compound (⫽ v) is unified with the first. The reflexive pronoun sein indicates that the referent of the compound’s head Freund (⫽ w) cannot be Neuenfels. Consequently v and w are both identified with Heiner Müller. The most plausible instantiation of the relation R in the formula R(w, v) where both w and v ⫽ Heiner Müller is that of identity. This is the source of the copulative reading ‘friend and poet’. With this discussion, Meyer-Klabunde is able to put his finger on several important generalizations such as the following: (a) If both constituents of the compound have an antecedent in the previous text, the relation between them is likely to be taken over by the compound; (b) if only one constituent functions anaphorically in the text, the relation is abduced by means of stereotypical knowledge; (c) in case both the constituents are non-anaphoric, the compound is interpreted on the basis of the relation that would be preferred in isolation. Meyer-Klabunde is arguing in general for a cognitive theory of semantics in which meaning is envisioned as a mental representation incorporating linguistic knowledge into general conceptual knowledge. In the particular case of nominal compounds, his point is that the relation between the two constituents can only be induced via situative and conceptual knowledge using a dynamic reasoning process such as abductive inference.

3.

Role of composition in different languages

Does composition play a different role in different languages? Are there languages that lack compounds altogether or make little use of compounding? Do certain languages make extensive use of composition? Are there leftheaded as well as right-headed compounds and, if so, how much of an affect does the position of the head have on the productivity of composition? This final section is an attempt to scan some relevant data and summarize in an exemplary fashion some literature that may shed some light on questions such as these. It is known that compounding was both very pronounced and quite diversified in Sanskrit but played a negligible role in Latin, both languages belonging to the Indo-European language family. Within Modern Germanic, English, German, Dutch and Scandinavian make wide use of composition. Compounding in neighboring Romance, however, is quite restricted. Selkirk (1982) suggests that French has compounds of the sort given in (26a) and that these are left-headed, cf. (26b) where the plural marker occurs on the left constituent. (26) (a) timbre poste, rose the´, chef-d’oeuvre (b) timbres-poste, roses the´, chefs-d’oeuvre DiSciullo & Williams (1987) suggest contra Selkirk that the Romance languages French and Spanish lack composition altogether. They view the constructions in (26) not as compounds but as lexicalized phrases precisely because the head is on the left and would therefore have to accept inflection word internally, if these were morphological objects. This would defy the definition of a word as a morphological unit. Following this logic further, DiSciullo & Williams also consider the formations in (27) as lexicalized phrases, i.e. syntactic words without the internal structure of morphological objects. These complex nouns are exocentric: the element on the left is a verb stem followed on the right by a noun, adjective, adverb or preposition. They clearly display the semantics of a verb phrase, ‘wipes windshield’, ‘carries word’, ‘passes through all’ respectively: (27) essui-glace, porte-parole, passe-partout Yet another type of exocentric complex noun is illustrated in (28). These are conversions of an entire verb phrase or noun phrase

912 into a complex noun. The syntactic phrases on which these nouns are based contain further complete syntactic units such as a noun phrase with its article in object function or a prepositional phrase in attributive function, with the meanings ‘deceive the eye’, ‘cease the fire’, ‘put in focus’ respectively: (28) trompe-l’œil, cessez-le-feu, mise-au-point Both (27) and (28) differ from phrasal idioms like voir en de toutes les couleurs ‘to have a hard time’ in that a phrasal idiom retains its phrasal transparency in spite of losing its semantic compositionality and hence is not “syntactically atomic” as (27) and (28) are. This difference is shown in (29) where the productive clitic rule in French applies to the clitic en of the phrasal idiom shifting it out of the verb phrase into a higher constituent of the sentence. (29) (a) [VP voir en de toutes les couleurs] (b) Jean en [VP voit de toutes les couleurs] As discussed in 2.1, English has exceptional types of left-headed exocentric constructions similar to (27) and (28), cf. cutthroat, pick-pocket as well as forget-me-not, ne’erdowell, etc. There are also noun-noun stem combinations that occur productively in French and seem to be candidates for the copulative type of compound, cf. hommegrenouille ‘man-frog (frogman)’. Interestingly however, the plural form ‘frogmen’ is formed by pluralizing both constituents: hommesgrenouilles ‘man:pl ⫺ frog:pl’ and hence again is problematic when compared to typical right-headed compounds which prohibit inflection word-internally. Spanish is quite similar to French. It has a few left-headed compounds similar to the putative left-headed French compounds in (26), cf. anõ luz ‘year light (light year)’. However, according to Rainer (1993) these formations aren’t productive. In fact, Spanish only has the two productive compound types shown in (30). (30) (a) cantante-actor ‘singer-actor’ (b) sacacorchos ‘pulls:corks (corkskrew)’ Noun ⫹ noun compounds of the type in (30) are copulative. When referring to a person, the compound is masculine or feminine as required by the referent: un cantante-actor designates a male, una cantante-actriz a female. Otherwise, especially when designating an object, the compound has the default gender


masculine. However, when naming animals or plants the compound can take the gender of the hyperonym: words for plants are feminine like their superordinate designation, cf. la planta or la flor. According to Rainer, there are three ways of forming the plural of N ⫹ N compounds in Spanish. First of all, both constituents can be pluralized, cf. (31). This arises when the meaning is purely copulative ‘an A that is also a B’. Adding the plural morpheme only to the first constituent in such cases would yield an ill-formed structure, cf. *actores-bailarıń. (31) (a) actor-bailarıń > actores-bailarines ‘actor-dancer’ (b) amigo-enemigo > amigos-enemigos ‘friend-enemy’ (c) panaderıá-pastelerıá > panaderıáspastelerıás ‘bakery-pastry store’ When the meaning deviates from the pure copulative sense to become ‘A that serves as a B’, both plural formations are often possible but the tendency is toward pluralizing the first constituent only: coche-casa ‘carhouse (camper)’ > coches-casa or coches-casas. Finally, there are constructions further removed from the true copulative meaning approaching a determinative sense like hombre rana ‘man-frog (diver)’. The meaning here is ‘an A like B’. In this case, it is the first constituent that carries the plural morpheme, cf. hombres rana vs. *hombres ranas. This apparent left-headedness holds as well for the few noun ⫹ noun compounds in Spanish that are not copulative such as anõ luz > anõs luz ‘light year’ and pez espada > peces espada ‘sword fish’ which are pluralized on the left constituent. The second type of productive composition in (30b) is an exocentric verb ⫹ noun pattern where the noun functions as the internal argument of the verb, cf. cuentachistes ‘tells:jokes (joke teller)’, abrepuertas ‘opens: doors (door man)’, friegaplatos ‘washes:dishes (dish washer)’, etc. The plural is usually expressed on the end of the word, cf. girasol > girasoles ‘sunflowers’, but since many of these formations have a plural second constituent, pluralization often invokes no change, cf. un friegaplatos > unos friegaplatos. In summary, left-headed and exocentric compounds in Romance pose structural problems for the morphological system which

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marks the morphosyntactic feature plural by means of the inflectional suffix -s. Leftheaded compounds must display the plural marker word internally, cf. (26) and (31), which breaks up a would-be morphological unit, thus introducing irregularity into the system. Exocentric compounds, on the other hand, have no way of indicating plural on the noun itself but only on the article, cf. el sacacorchos, los sacacorchos, which is also exceptional in the system. Furthermore, the grammatical category gender must also be assigned by default and can’t be derived via percolation of features from the head, cf. the masculine singular el abrepuertas inspite of the noun puertas being feminine plural. This type of structural irregularity undoubtedly creates tension in the overall system which can function to keep the productivity of a pattern in check. Left headed verbal derivations in English are a case in point. Suffixation with -er is productive with simplex and (right-headed) prefixed verbal stems, cf. scanner, rewriter. The exceptional left-headedness of particle verbs, however, forces speakers into a double marking such as breaker upper (< to break up) if the complex left-headed stem is to be used in the pattern at all. Similarly, both French and Spanish resort to a duplication of the plural marker in leftheaded copulative constructions, cf. hommesgrenouilles and amigos-enemigos. Left-headed structures are problematic in general for languages that have inflectional suffixation. What about the opposite phenomenon of extensive use of composition? Skalicka (1979) reports that Chinese makes extensive use of compounding. In fact, the number of compounds in Chinese surpasses the number of simplex words. The reason for this, he suggests, appears to be that morphemes of Chinese are monosyllabic and the syllables are quite limited in shape. A syllable begins with an optional consonant then has a vowel (or diphthong or triphthong) and ends with -n or -ng, i.e. fan, fang, fen, feng, etc. The monomorphemic nature of Chinese words leads to proliferating homonymy where one form may have a large number of potential meanings: The morpheme schi, for example, occurs in 23 different meanings. Such morphemes may be disambiguated by intonational patterns (cf. dan with 4. accent means ‘burden’ but with 2. accent ‘to carry’). An important means of disambiguation is, therefore, the concatenation of morphemes to form com-

pounds: hsi-dsau (lit. ‘wash-bathe’) means ‘to bathe’, sou-hsün (lit. ‘search-search’) means ‘to search’ and laufa (lit. ‘make an exert-tired’) means ‘to exert’. In accordance with these restrictions on its morphemes, Chinese doesn’t even lend itself to adopting loan words from other languages. New artifacts and ideas from the Western cultures are translated directly into native compounds, cf. yin-hang ‘money-order (bank)’ and dschi-piau ‘loannote (check)’.

4.

References

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XII. Wortbildung II: Prozesse Günther, Hartmut (1981), “N ⫹ N: Untersuchungen zur Produktivität eines deutschen Wortbildungstyps”. In: Lipka, Leonhard & Günther, Hartmut (eds.), Wortbildung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 258⫺280 Henzen, Walter (1947, 21957, 31965), Deutsche Wortbildung. Tübingen: Niemeyer Hoeksema, Jack (1988), “Head-types in Morphosyntax”. In: Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1988. Dordrecht: Foris, 123⫺137 Holmberg, Märta A. (1976), Studien zu den verbalen Pseudokomposita im Deutschen. Lund: Bloms Jackendoff, Ray (1975), “Morphological and Semantic Regularities in the Lexicon”. Language 51, 639⫺671 Kamp, Hans & Reyle, Uwe (1993), From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer Kastovsky, Dieter (1977), “Word-formation, or: At the Crossroads of Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and the Lexicon”. Folia Linguistica 10, 1⫺33 Kastovsky, Dieter (1982), Wortbildung und Semantik. Düsseldorf: Schwann-Bagel Kürschner, Wilfred (1974), Zur syntaktischen Beschreibung deutscher Nominalkomposita. Tübingen: Niemeyer Ladd, Robert (1984), “English Compound Stress”. In: Gibbon, Dafydd & Richter, Helmut (eds.), Intonation, Accent and Rhythm. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 253⫺266 Lapointe, Steven (1980), “A Theory of Grammatical Agreement”. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Lees, Robert (1960), The Grammar of English Nominalizations. Bloomington: Indiana University Lees, Robert (1970), “Problems in the Grammatical Analysis of English Compounds”. In: Bierwisch & Heidolph (eds.), 174⫺186 Levi, Judith (1978), The Syntax and Semantics of Complex Nominals. New York: Academic Press

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Neuß, Elmar (1981), “Kopulativkomposita”. Sprachwissenschaft 6, 31⫺68

Stiebels, Barbara & Wunderlich, Dieter (1994), “Morphology Feeds syntax: The Case of Particle Verbs”. Linguistics 32, 913⫺968

Olsen, Susan (1986 a), Wortbildung im Deutschen. Stuttgart: Kröner Olsen, Susan (1986 b), “Argument-Linking und produktive Reihen bei deutschen Adjektivkomposita”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 5, 5⫺24 Olsen, Susan (1988), “Flickzeug vs. Abgasarm: Eine Studie zur Analogie in der Wortbildung”. In: Gentry, Francis (ed.), Semper idem et novus. Festschrift für Frank Banta. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 75⫺97 Olsen, Susan (1990), “Zum Begriff des morphologischen Heads”. Deutsche Sprache, 125⫺147 Olsen, Susan (1997 a), “Über den lexikalischen Status englischer Partikelverben”. In: Rauh, Gesa & Löbel, Elisabeth (eds.), Lexikalische Kategorien und Merkmale. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 45⫺71 Olsen, Susan (1997 b), “Zum Status der Kategorie ‘Verbpartikel’ ”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 119.1, 1⫺32 Olsen, Susan (1998, ed.), Semantische und konzeptuelle Aspekte der Partikelverbbildung mit ein-. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Olsen, Susan (1998), “Prädikative Argumente syntaktischer und lexikalischer Köpfe: Partikelverben im Deutschen und Englischen”. Folia Linguistica 31, 301⫺329

Stiebels, Barbara (1996), Lexikalische Argumente und Adjunkte. Berlin/DDR: Akademie Verlag Thiel, Gisela (1973), “Die semantischen Beziehungen in der Substantivkomposita der deutschen Gegenwartssprache”. Muttersprache 83, 377⫺404 Törnqvist, Nils (1959), “Zum Wortbildungstyp Wagehals, Taugenichts”. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 60, 12⫺28 Toman, Jindrich (1983), Wortsyntax. Tübingen: Niemeyer Toman, Jindrich (1985), “A Discussion of Coordination and Word-syntax”. In: Toman, Jindrich (ed.), Studies in German Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris, 407⫺432 Urbaniak, Gertrud (1983), Adjektive auf -voll. Heidelberg: Winter Vögeding, Joachim (1981), Das Halbsuffix “-frei”: Zur Theorie der Wortbildung. Tübingen: Narr Wellmann, Hans (1975), Deutsche Wortbildung: Typen und Tendenzen in der Gegenwartssprache, Vol. II: Das Substantiv. Düsseldorf: Schwann Wellmann, Hans (1978), Deutsche Wortbildung: Typen und Tendenzen in der Gegenwartssprache, Vol. II: Das Adjektiv. Düsseldorf: Schwann

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Wiese, Richard (1996), “Phrasal Compounds and the Theory of Word Syntax”. Linguistic Inquiry 27, 183⫺193 Williams, Edwin (1981), “On the Notions ‘Lexically Related’ and ‘Head of a Word’ ”- Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245⫺274 Wilmanns, Wilhelm (1896), Deutsche Grammatik, Abt. 2: Wortbildung. Straßburg Wunderlich, Dieter (1986), “Probleme der Wortstruktur”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 5, 209⫺252

Wunderlich, Dieter (1987), “An Investigation of Lexical Composition: The Case of German beverbs”. Linguistics 25, 283⫺331 Zimmer, Karl (1981), “Some General Observations About Nominal Compounds”. In: Lipka, Leonard & Günther, Hartmut (eds.), Wortbildung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 233⫺257 Zwicky, Arnold (1986), “Forestress and Afterstress”. Ohio State Working Papers in Linguistics 32, 46⫺62

Susan Olsen, Leipzig (Germany)

88. Incorporation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Characteristics of noun incorporation Delimitation of the construction Some theoretical issues Diachrony Areal extent Uncommon abbreviations References

1.

Characteristics of noun incorporation

The term incorporation has traditionally been used to refer specifically to noun incorporation, a construction in which a noun stem is combined with a verb to form a new, morphologically complex verb (Sapir 1911). The effect of the process can be seen in the sentences in (1) from Tuscarora, an Iroquoian language of New York State and Ontario. (1a) contains a basic transitive clause, (1b) contains its counterpart with incorporation of the noun stem /-re˛ {n-/ ‘tree, log’. (1) Tuscarora (Elton Greene, speaker) (a) /u-ree˛´ :{n-e wa{-t-k-u`:re˛ -{/ n-log-nom.suff aor-du-1.sg-split-pfv ‘I split a / the log, logs.’ (b) /wa{-t-k-re˛ {n-u`:re˛ -{/ aorist-dualic-1.sg-log-split-pfv ‘I split a / the log, logs.’

Incorporation is often found within polysynthetic languages, those with a high average number of morphemes per word. Of course incorporation itself adds to the degree of synthesis, but the two features are not necessarily linked otherwise. Many polysynthetic languages lack incorporation entirely, while some more analytic languages show it. Noun incorporation appears in a large number of the world’s languages with similar formal and functional features. These features are described in Kroeber (1909; 1911), Sapir (1911), Mardirussian (1975), Merlan (1976), Hage`ge (1977; 1978; 1980), Mithun (1984; 1985; 1986 a; 1986 b), Baker 1988, and many others. 1.1 Formal characteristics In prototypical incorporation, the noun-verb compound constitutes a single phonological word, conforming to the general phonological patterns of other words in the language. If the language has vowel harmony, for example, this may extend across the noun-verb complex. The effect of vowel harmony can be seen in the sentences in (2) from Chukchee, a Luoravetlan language of Siberia. As an independent noun with instrumental suffix, ‘trap’ appears as /utkucˇ’/, but incorporated, it has the shape /otkocˇ’/.

(2) Chukchee (Polinskaja & Nedjalkov 1987: 257) (a) /Gam-nan te-ntewat-e-rken utkuc{-en/. 1.sg-erg 1.sg-set-0-present trap-abs ‘I am setting a trap.’ (b) Gem t-otkocˇ{e-ntewat-e-rken 1.sg.abs 1.sg-trap-set-0-present ‘I am trap-setting.’

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Such noun-verb compounds also behave as single words with respect to stress. In Tuscarora, stress is basically penultimate; in isolation, both verbs and nouns are stressed on the next to the last syllable, as in (1a) above. The verb with incorporated noun receives a single, penultimate stress, as in (1b). Normally only the noun stem is incorporated. In some languages noun stems have the same form as independent nouns. In others, however, stems never appear as independent words. The Tuscarora noun ‘log’ in (1a), consists of the neuter prefix /u-/, the stem /re˛ {n-/ ‘log’, and a nominal suffix /-e/. As can be seen in (1b), only /-re˛ {-/ is incorporated. Whatever the nominal morphology of a language, number affixes, case markers, determiners, quantifiers, and other modifiers are not normally incorporated with the noun. The absence of these markers reflects an important syntactic difference between incorporated nouns and their independent counterparts. Incorporated nouns do not constitute noun phrases and do not function as syntactic arguments of their clauses. This difference can be seen in the Chukchee examples in (2). Case marking in Chukchee follows an ergative pattern. The first person pronoun in /gem-nan/ ‘I’ in (2a) is in the ergative case. The noun /utkucˇ{-en/ ‘trap’ is in the absolutive case. The clause is grammatically transitive. In (2b), however, the first person pronoun /gem/ ‘I’ is in the absolutive case. The noun /otlocˇ{-/ carries no case marking and bears no case role within the clause. The clause is grammatically intransitive. Incorporated nouns can bear several kinds of semantic relationships to their associated verbs. Most commonly they denote semantic patients of otherwise transitive verbs, as in (1) and (2) above. In many languages, intransitive verbs also incorporate, as in (3). (3) Tuscarora (Elton Greene, speaker) /Ka-hse´har-ahkwahst/ neuter-ash-be.good ‘They are good ashes.’ Not all intransitive verbs are likely to incorporate. Most commonly, those with semantic patients incorporate, although exceptions have been noted. In some languages, incorporated nouns represent semantic instruments or locations. In the sentence in (4) from Koyukon, an Alaskan Athabaskan language, the incorpo-

rated noun ‘raft’ implies a kind of instrument. (4) Koyukon (Axelrod 1990: 181) /neelan enoh⁄gh⁄tghe{ot/ meat pp-iter-raft-asp-handle.compact ‘He’s bringing meat home by raft.’ In (5) from Kiowa, a Tanoan language of Oklahoma, the incorporated noun ‘town’ (a loan), indicates a locative goal. (5) Kiowa (Watkins 1984: 227) /e`-khc` le´·⫹tha`·c` n⫹ba`·-t’c` ·/ 1.pl-together⫹town⫹go-fut ‘We will go to town together.’ 1.2. Typical functions The basic function of incorporated nouns is to modify the verb, narrowing its scope semantically. Thus while the Tuscarora verb /ure˛ -/ in (1) denotes any splitting, the compound verb /-re˛ {n-ure˛ -/ denotes a more specific kind of activity, logsplitting. While the Chukchee verb /-ntewat-/ in (2) has the general meaning ‘to set’, the verb /-otkocˇ{ntewat-/ means specifically ‘to trap-set’. Most commonly, noun incorporation is used as a basic word formation device. It provides a means of creating new lexical items for unitary concepts: recurring, nameworthy events or states, like splitting logs and setting traps. As qualifiers, incorporated nouns do not specify referentiality. As a result, they are often used for nonreferential, nonspecific, indefinite, unindividuated items. They appear in verbs describing habitual or generic activities, rather than for particular events involving specific patients. This distinction can be seen in the sentences in (6) from Comanche, a Uto-Aztecan language of Oklahoma. In (6a), the noun ‘quilt’ refers to a specific object and appears outside of the verb. In (6b), the complex verb simply describes a kind of activity. (6) Comanche (Charney 1989: 179) (a) /uhka nÈÈ sone marÈkai/ that.obj I quilt.obj finish.compl ‘I finished the quilt.’ (b) /tÈasÈ nÈÈ sona{ai{etÈ¯/ also I quilt-do-distr.gen.asp ‘I also do quilting.’ Because analytic forms like that in (6a) are used when the noun and/or verb merit individual attention, they can, in some languages, carry an implication of deliberateness. Axel-

918


rod notes that in Koyukon, certain analytic constructions like that in (7a) “work to individuate the activity, bringing the pieces of it

into sharper focus. The activity has the feeling of being more careful, studied, deliberate” (Axelrod 1990: 191).

(7) Koyukon (Axelrod 1990: 192) (a) /sekkaa’ beyeeghestleyh/ /se⫹kkaa’ be⫹yee-ghe⫹se⫹tleyh/ 1.sg.poss⫹foot 3.obj⫹in-asp⫹1.sg.su⫹place.long.obj ‘I manually picked up my foot (because, e.g., it was asleep, paralyzed) and put it in it.’ (b) /beyeekkaaghestleyh/ /be⫹yee-kkaa-ghe⫹se⫹tleyh/ 3.obj⫹in-foot-asp-1.sg.su⫹place.long.obj ‘I stuck my foot in it.’ Noun incorporation is used in many languages for another purpose. Since it can alter the argument structure of a verb, it is utilized to manipulate the case roles of participants. This use is especially frequent with terms for body parts. Events and states affecting body parts generally affect not simply the part, but also the owner, an effect that is typically more pertinent to a discussion. With incorporation, the body part term is backgrounded and the owner has the status of a core argument (subject, object, patient, absolutive), rather than a simple possessor. The Tuscarora verb /yune˛ hwa´:kne{/ ‘it is painful, it aches’, for example, can be used of a body part. This verb could be combined with a separate possesed noun such as /kta´{reh/ ‘my head’ to yield the sentence ‘my head hurts’ but speakers usually incorporate, as in (8). (8) Tuscarora (Elton Greene speaker) /Wak-ta{ranee˛´ hwa:ks/ 1.patient-head-ache ‘I have a headache.‘

Similar effects can be achieved with transitive verb roots. The Tuscarora verb /wa´{kkwaht/ ‘I cut (it) off’ could be combined with an independent noun identifying an object. If one is cutting someone’s hair, however, it is more idiomatic to incorporate the root ‘hair’. (9) Tuscarora (Elton Greene, speaker) /Wa{khe-kye´{w-akwaht/ aorist-1.sg/3-hair-cut.off ‘I hair-cut him, gave him a haircut.’ With incorporation, the hair has no grammatical case role, but the owner of the hair, a more significant victim of the haircut, is the grammatical patient. Of course if the focus of attention is on the body part itself, it will be expressed as an independent noun. A speaker of Mayali, a Gunwinggun language of Australia, recounted that when a magpie goose would come up, he would throw a goose stick at it.

(10) Mayali (Evans 1996) /kun-beri a-bakke-yi, yika kun-kun-kom a-bu-ni,/ iv-wing 1.min/3.min-break-pi or iv-neck 1.min/3.min-hit-pi ‘I might break its wing, or I’d hit it in the neck, /yika kun-keb a-keb-badjdji-ni/ or iv-beak 1.min/3.min-beak-smash-pi or I’d smash its beak.’ The choices in argument structure provided by incorporation are not limited to body part terms. In the Chukchee sentence in (11a), a bear is cast in a salient core case, the

absolutive. In (11b), the bear is backgrounded by incorportation and the son is cast in the salient absolutive case.

(11) Chukchee (Polinskaya & Nedjalkov 1987: 244) (a) /Tumg-e key-n akka-gt t m-nen/ friend-erg bear-abs son-dat kill-3.sg/3.sg ‘The friend killed a bear for his son.’ (b) /Tumg-e ek k key -nm -nen/ friend-erg son.abs bear-kill-3.sg/3.sg ‘The friend bear-killed for his son.’

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A somewhat more unusual kind of case manipulation is reported for Koyukon. Nouns for ‘wind’, ‘water’, etc. cannot appear as agent subjects of certain volitional verbs

that imply intent. They may be incorporated into such verbs, however, to indicate their instrumental role in bringing about an event.

(12) Koyukon (Axelrod 1990: 186) (a) /tohebetaatltaanh/ /to-hebe⫹tele⫹ł⫹taanh/ water-3-pl.obj⫹asp⫹cl⫹animate.lie ‘They floated away.’ (b) */too hebetaatltaanh/ /too hebe⫹tele⫹l⫹taanh/ water 3.pl.obj⫹asp⫹cl⫹animate.lie In many languages, incorporation is used extensively to manipulate the relative salience of nouns. Those representing significant information, worthy of individual attention, may appear as independent words, while those representing less newsworthy information may be backgrounded by incorporation. The use of this device can be seen in the Tuscarora passage in (13). A fox had sum-

moned his friends to watch him compete in a contest. He told them to watch his tail. As long as it stood up, he would be winning, but if it fell, they should escape. When he first directed their attention to the tail, an independent noun was used. Once the reference was established, the noun was incorporated.

(13) Tuscarora (Elton Greene, speaker) /-wa-atka´hthu kyenı´:ke˛ k-i{rwee˛´ hueh e˛ -u-wa-ke˛ { kyenı´:ke˛ e˛ -yu-{na{nı´hrik Ha{ u`:ne˛ / 2-pl-watch this 1-tail fut-2-pl-see this n-stand the then ‘You watch my tail. You will see it standing upright. (This means that I am winning.) /kahnee˛´ {kyeh e˛ -k-i{rwee˛´ hu-e˛ { e˛ -uwa{ne´{ku{/ whenever fut-1-tail-drop fut-2-pl-escape Whenever I drop my tail, you will run away.’ Discussion of the pragmatics of noun incorporation in Eastern Cushitic languages can be found in Sasse (1984). In some languages, incorporated nouns can qualify the meaning of the incorporating

verb without affecting its argument structure. In (14), the verb ‘gather’ appears with an incorporated noun ‘group’, but the resulting stem is still transitive. It even appears with an independent patient nominal.

(14) Tuscarora (Elton Greene, speaker) /Wa-hra-{tey-aru´tsˇre˛ -{ ha{ tı`:wa{u ne-ka´-{ne˛ h/ aorist-m-group-gathered-pfv the those du-n-fly ‘He gathered together those who fly.’ The incorporated root qualifies the meaning of the verb as a kind of collecting, assembling a crowd, while the independent nominal indentifies the particular patient. Structures like that in (14), with both incorporated and independent nouns, are sometimes called classificatory (Woodbury 1975; Mithun 1984; 1986 a; 1986 b; Rosen S. T. 1989; Derbyshire & Payne 1990). The incorporated noun root, usually relatively general in meaning, is a semantic hypernym of the more specific independent noun phrase. Incorporated nouns may even have a more general meaning when incorporated as classifiers than when independent. In Mund-

uruku´, for example, a Tupı´-Guaranı´ language of Brazil, many body part and plant terms indicate shape when incorporated as classifiers. The term /ba4/ ‘arm’, for example, is used as a classifier for long rigid objects (Gonc˛ales 1987). As verbal qualifiers, these incorporated nouns actually classify predicates. In some languages this classification can be extensive. Among the Iroquoian languages, large numbers of verbs incorporate the noun */-ya{t-/ ‘body‘, */-{niko˛hr-/ ‘mind’, or */-rihw-/ ‘matter, idea’. They effectively partition a portion of the vocabulary into events and states affecting human beings physically

920


(bodily), those affecting humans mentally, and those with more abstract effects (Mithun 1986 a; 1986 b; Bonvillain 1989). Good discussion of classificatory incorporation in a number of Amazonian languages can be found in Derbyshire & Payne (1990). For comparison with the lexical patterns termed classificatory verbs see Art. 97.

2.

Delimitation of the construction

Incorporating constructions with the forms and functions described in 1. appear in a large number of genetically and geographically diverse languages. Several other constructions also exist that share certain formal and functional similarities with incorporation. The resemblances suggest that for many purposes they might be considered kinds of incorporation. At the same time, their differences indicate that for other purposes they should be kept distinct.

2.1. Phonological cohesion As noted in section 1.1, prototypical noun incorporation involves the coalescence of a noun and verb into a single phonological word. A number of languages exhibit constructions similar in many ways to incorporation, though the associated noun and verb retain their individual phonological integrity as separate words. Such constructions have been termed noun stripping (Miner 1983; 1984; 1986; 1989), presumably because the nouns appear without inflectional marking. Examples of stripping can be seen in Tamil (Steever 1979). Stripped nouns in Tamil retain their status as independent phonological words. Like incorporated nouns, they do not appear with number markers, case markers, or adjectives. They can affect the argument structure of the verb. The first person pronoun in (15a) in genitive, but that in (15b) is in the unmarked nominative case.

(15) Tamil (Steever 1979: 280⫺1) (a) /enß (-nß utøaiya) mukam malarntatu/ 1-gen face bloom.past.3.n.s ‘My face bloomed.’ (b) /na¯nß mukam malarnte¯nß / 1(nom) face bloom.past.1.sg ‘I face-bloomed’ ⫽ ‘I experienced pleasure.’ In (16), the combination of the verb ‘show’ and the noun ‘mark’ yields a transitive verb

‘identify’ that can take a new direct object, here ‘boy’.

(16) Tamil (Steever 1979: 284) /na¯nß oru payanß ai atøaiya¯ølam ka¯tøtøinß e¯nß ./ I one boy.acc mark show.past.1 ‘I identified a boy.’ A variety of syntactic tests indicate that the stripped nouns bear no grammatical relations to the verb and do not function as noun phrases in other constructions. They do not serve as the antecedents of reflexives, trigger agreement, control equi-NP deletion, or host quantifiers or conjunctions. They may not be conjoined to other nominal constituents in a clause or be clefted. They appear in one position only, before the verb. Steever notes that “although the productivity of this construction appears to be limited only by the ingenuity of Tamil speakers, a number of common verbs recur: / panø nø a/ ‘work’, /cey/ ‘do’, /atøi/ ‘strike’, /po¯tøa/ ‘put’, / vitøa/ ‘leave’, /pitøtikka/ ‘grab’, etc. Nouns, both native and foreign, seem to be drawn from a wide

variety of semantic fields; body parts, for example, appear incorporated frequently.” (Steever 1979: 287)

A number of combinations are lexicalized. Steever points out that since stripped nouns are not referential, they do not distinguish definiteness or specificity. “If an internal noun receives a specific or definite reading (e.g. for /penø par/ ‘see a bride-prospect’), it is due to a conversational implicature from contextual knowledge (one interviews girls as brides one at a time).” (Steever 1979: 285)

The Tamil construction thus looks much like prototypical noun incorporation in both form and function. It does differ in one detail. The emphatic particle /ta¯n/ ‘indeed’ may

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appear between the stripped noun and verb, but it may not separate bound morphemes. (17) Tamil (Steever 1979: 285) (a) /avanß ve¯lai ta¯nß ceyta¯nß ./ he work emp do.past.3.m.sg ‘He really worked.’ (b) */avar-ta¯nß -kalø sne¯kitarkalø./ they-emp-pl friends-pl *‘They really all are friends.’ Nade¨b, a Brazilian language of the Maku´Puinave family, also shows a stripping construction. Like that in Tamil, it shares a number of formal and functional characteristics with prototypical noun incorporation, but it also shows some important differences. An example is in (18b). (18) Nade¨b (Weir 1990: 323) (a) /tug łi da-te´s/ tooth 1.sg.poss theme-hurt ‘My tooth hurts.’ (b) /łih tug da-te´s/ 1.sg tooth theme-hurt ‘I tooth-hurt’ ⫽ ‘I have a toothache.’ The argument structure of the verb complex is altered, as in prototypical incorporation. The speaker, considered more significantly affected than the body part, assumes a core case role. A few of the noun-verb constructions have idiomatic meanings, such as /mooh wu´t/ ‘hand/arm be in movement (work)’ (Weir 1990: 335). Some nouns appear only in these constructions. Some nouns show more general meanings in these constructions than independently, as is common in classificatory incorporation. The noun /nuuh/ ‘head’ often pertains to spherical objects in general.

The positions of proclitics and prefixes indicate that the nouns in these constructions form syntactic but not morphological units with their associated verbs. Proclitic pronouns precede the entire noun-verb complex, as can be seen in (18b), but prefixes like the negative directly precede the verb. The Nade¨b construction differs in several ways from prototypical incorporation. First, it is limited to possessed nouns, as in (18). Second, the noun involved may be plural if a plural form exits. Finally, although nouns in this construction are seldom animate, just as in prototypical incorporation, they may be semantic agents of intransitives in one context. Weir reports that relativization in Nade¨b is limited to subjects, direct objects, and adverbials. The effect of the stripping construction in altering grammatical relations is exploited as a device for casting participants in the role of subject or object to render them eligible for relativization. In relative clauses, then, stripped nouns can represent semantic agents of intransitives, as in (19). (19) Nade¨b (Weir 1990: 326) /txaah hing doo/ son go.downriver the.one ‘the one whose son went downriver’ A third kind of stripping construction appears in Indonesian. It resembles incorporation in that a noun ‘occurs directly next to the verb (although orthographically separate), receives no case marking (such as oleh ‘by’), and cannot freely move away from the verb. Additionally, it ceases to behave like an argument of the verb (Myhill 1988: 115). The verb-noun combination functions as a unit with respect to the focus postclitic -lah and manner adverbs like perlahan-lahan ‘slowly’.

(20) Indonesian (Myhill 1988: 116) Se-buah talam yang ber-isi penganan di-angkat orang-lah … a-classifier tray relativizer middle-contents snack passive-bring person-by ‘A tray full of snacks was brought (by a person) …’ This construction serves the typical discourse function of incorporation, backgrounding the noun. The person bringing the tray in (20) is “so backgrounded that it is difficult to include it at all in English” (Myhill 1988: 117). Nouns in the construction typically represent participants that are low in individuation and specificity. The construction differs from prototypical noun incorporation in a significant way: only semantic agents are involved. It is a device

for further backgrounding the ag

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