Representing word structure
المؤلف:
PAUL R. KROEGER
المصدر:
Analyzing Grammar An Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
P14-C2
2025-12-04
35
Representing word structure
In discussing the Isthmus Zapotec data, we predicted that there might be a word of the form kañeeluʔ meaning ‘your feet,’ even though it was not found in the data. Of course, a hypothesis of this kind must be held very lightly until it can be confirmed with a native speaker– the phonological shape of a morpheme may change in certain environments, sometimes in unpredictable ways, and there may be other surprises as well. But the very fact that we could make such a prediction indicates that we have recognized a pattern that governs the way words are formed in Zapotec. We will present a simple method for representing such patterns.
The Zapotec data set (including a few additional forms) is reproduced in (14). The meaningful elements that we can identify in this data are listed in (15).
If we study the distribution of these affixes, we can make the following generalizations:
a no word contains more than one prefix or more than one suffix;
b morphemes which identify the possess or a real ways suffixes; the only prefix is the plural marker;
c a word which contains no plural marker is interpreted as being singular;
d no word contains more than one possessor marker (this follows as a logical consequence of (a) and (b));
e the plural marker may occur with or without a possessor marker, and vice versa.
Most of this information is summarized in the simple chart shown in (16).
This type of chart is called a POSITION CLASS CHART. Each column in the chart represents a position in which a certain class of morphemes can occur. The four possessive suffixes belong to the same POSITION CLASS, because they all occur in the same place in the word, and only one of them can occur at a time. In general, any two elements that belong to the same position class are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, meaning that they cannot occur together in the same word.
The arrangement of the columns in the chart (from left to right) indicates the linear order of elements in a word. So, whenever morphemes from different position classes co-occur, the one whose position is shown as being furthest to the left will occur first in the word. Rather than numbering the columns from left to right, linguists frequently assign numbers from the inside out, starting with 0 for the root position and using negative numbers for prefixes, positive numbers for suffixes. (These numbers have no special significance; they are only used for ease of reference.)
More significant than the position numbers are the labels at the top of each column. In the simplest case, all the elements belonging to a particular position class will have closely related meanings. In this example, all the elements in position+1 identify a possessor in terms of person (first, second, or third) and number (singular or plural). We normally try to assign each position in the chart a label which expresses the grammatical category or function that is shared by all the elements in that position class (in this case, “POSSESSOR”).
Notice that we have not listed the root morphemes in their column. This is because roots belong to an open class (in this case, the class of common countable nouns). Even though only five roots are found in this corpus, in principle any number of other roots could occur in the same position, and it would be impossible to list them all. Affixes, however, belong to small closed classes, so it is normally both possible and helpful to list them all in their position in the chart.
There is still an important aspect of word structure in Zapotec which our chart does not reflect: every noun contains a root, but many nouns have no prefix, others no suffix, and some have neither prefix nor suffix. In other words, the root is OBLIGATORY (there must be an element in this position) whereas the prefixes and suffixes are OPTIONAL. A common way of indicating optionality is by using parentheses. So, we might revise our chart slightly as follows:
In point (c) above we noted that a word which contains no plural marker is always singular. The chart in (17) shows that the plural prefix is optional, and that when it is present it indicates plurality; but it doesn’t say anything about the significance of the lack of a prefix. One way to tidy up this loose end is to assume that the grammar of the language includes a DEFAULT RULE which says something like the following: “a countable noun which contains no plural prefix is interpreted as being singular.”
Another possible way to account for the same fact is to assume that singular nouns carry an “invisible” (or NULL) prefix which indicates singular number. That would mean that the number prefix is actually obligatory for this class of noun. Under this approach, our chart would look something like (18):
The use of null morphemes is a somewhat controversial issue. In general, this analysis is most plausible where the lack of an affix can be associated with a definite, specific meaning. For example, Turkish verbs carry an AGREEMENT suffix which indicates the person and number of the subject. The suffixes are: -Im ‘1sg,’-sIn ‘2sg,’-Iz ‘1pl,’-sInIz ‘2pl,’-lAr ‘3pl.’2 When the subject is third person singular, there is no visible agreement suffix on the verb. In this case the lack of a suffix has a definite and specific meaning. By associating that meaning (third person singular) with a null morpheme, we can fill an otherwise puzzling gap in the PARADIGM (or set) of Turkish person–number agreement markers.
Contrast this pattern with the marking of English verbs, which take a suffix-s in the simple present tense when the subject is third person singular.
The absence of this suffix simply means that the verb is not a third person singular simple present form. The subject may be first- or second-person singular or a plural of any person, or the verb may be an infinitive, past or future tense, etc. Clearly no specific meaning can be associated with the lack of-s in this case, and it would not be appropriate to assume a zero suffix for these verbs.
English nouns can also take a suffix-s to indicate plural number. Here the lack of a suffix can be given a very specific interpretation, namely sin gular number, which might lead us to assume the presence of a zero suffix. On the other hand, there are many nouns (called MASS nouns) which do not normally take the plural suffix: air, wheat, courage, static, etc. For these nouns there is no contrast between singular and plural, and it seems odd to suggest that they always carry a null suffix. It seems preferable to assume that the singular is the “unmarked” or default number cate gory for English nouns, as proposed for Zapotec under the analysis shown in (17).
2. The capital letters here indicate that the vowel quality in the suffix depends on the vowels in the root.
الاكثر قراءة في Morphology
اخر الاخبار
اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة
