Morphology Week 4: Inflection

Morphology Week 4: Inflection

1. General properties of inflection

   • Distinguishable from derivation
     • The syntactic context can demand specific inflection. Syntax never demands a particular derivational affix
       • Example from English: she sings/*sing well you sing/*sings well in a tense clause the verb obligatorily shows up in a form that agrees with the syntactic object
       • Example: in languages with case morphology, the syntactic context can demand a particular inflectional case form
       • Example: syntax never demands that only a verb derived by a suffix such as  -ize (idustrial-ise) or only nouns derived by a suffix such as -ness (cold-ness) appear
   • Contextual inflection
     • inlfection that is sensitive to syntactic context
   • Inherent inflection
     • inflection that is not sensitive to syntactic context
       • Example: pluralia tantum e.g. scissors (however, they cannot appear in syntactically singular contexts so there does still seem to sensitivity here these scissors/*this scissors)
       • Example: where a plural form appears on the left hand part of a component admissions office parks commissioner there is no syntactic context that demands the presence of a plural form

2. Words that are not inflected in a language

   • prepositions
   • conjuctions
   • adverbs
   • Not a universal property!
     • prepositions
       • Example from Celtic languages: prepositions that carry a marker than expresses agreement in person/number with their complementiser

3. Desinences and theme vowels

   • Desinence: nouns
   • Theme vowels: verbs
   • Occur when words are divided in arbitrary classes, showing different morphological realisation of the same type of inflection
     • Example: gender

4. Paradigms

   • Word and paradigm theories (morphology deals with relationships between whole words)
     • Paradigm is a core notion
   • In item and arrangement theories
     • Paradigm is a by-product of the combination of roots and inflectional morphemes
   • Syncretism
     • Where two cells in a paradigm are expressed by the same form
     • As a result of accidental homophony?
       • Syncretism is often systematic though
         • Example from English: in the present tense all verbs are syncretic apart from the 3rd person sing, but this disappears in the past tense in ALL verbs even irregular ones
         • Examples from Dutch: 1sg -- 2sg -t 3sg -t 1pl -en 2pl -en 3pl - en the syncretism of all plural forms could be accidental homophony but the fact that the same occurs in irregular verbs suggests the syncretism is systemised zijn 'to be' 1sg ben 2sg bent 3sg is 1pl zijn 2pl zijn 3pl zijn
     • Rules of referral
     • Rules of feature impovrishment/neutralisation