Questions tagged [morphology]
The study of the structure and formation of words and their component parts, "morphemes".
365
questions
0
votes
0answers
24 views
Is it correct for the rules of this voice alternations?
I'm a graduate student from Korea. I'm doing some practice about assimilation but I don't know if it is correct.
Here is the question:
"cat" and "cats"
"dog" and "dogs"
"hen" and "hens"
And this is ...
1
vote
1answer
70 views
Are there natural languages that tolerate ambiguity between abilitive and possibilitive modalities?
In other words, is there any language that uses the same mood to convey ability and possibility? For example, is there a language in which a sentence meaning "He'll be able to do that" and "He might ...
0
votes
1answer
68 views
What should the phonological rules be for this alternation?
I'm a graduate student from Korea. :) May I ask you guys a question about phonology?
In the data, divinity and divine, what are the phonological rule and phonological mechanisms for the alternation ...
0
votes
1answer
75 views
Question about the concept of free morpheme
Studying Understanding Morphology, by Haspelmath, couldn't find a reference to the concept of "free morpheme".
Is that concept standard among linguists? What would be a better alternative, in any ...
1
vote
2answers
122 views
How should this type of variation in the root be treated?
It's a bit of a silly question that popped out in my mind as a (quasi-)linguist with a great experience with portuguese (it is also my mother tongue). How should one treat the following alternation in ...
2
votes
3answers
123 views
Learning linguistics from scratch
I am a student of mathematics and physics but have been inspired to learn more about linguistics after having learned a new language this year. I found the subject deeply fascinating. As of now I am a ...
3
votes
3answers
195 views
Case in German Nouns
German has an interesting situation in its noun phrases - articles and adjectives reflect case, but the noun itself does not.
Der große Mann sieht das Haus. ("The big man sees the house," with "the ...
0
votes
0answers
36 views
in search of nouns with a mismatch between morphological and semantic gender [duplicate]
I am currently trying to identify nouns whose morphological gender differs from their semantic gender. Here are three examples I could identify so far:
French: Le laideron - masculine morpho-...
1
vote
1answer
64 views
“Romanticism” in different languages
I noticed that "Romanticism" in French is "romantisme," contrary to my guess of "romanticisme." I was curious how other the word was spelled in other European languages.
Similar to English ("icism")
...
3
votes
1answer
80 views
Is the use of the present participle verb form as adjectives or subjects or objects an example of conversion (a.k.a. zero-derivation)?
This is a pretty straight forward question. But here are some examples:
Baking is my hobby. (used as a subject thing, or as some would call it, a gerund or verbal noun)
I will be a contestant ...
21
votes
1answer
2k views
What is the name for a placename that contains what the thing is in a different language?
For example Mount Maunganui. In Māori maunganui means "large mountain" and thus when literally translated into English it means "Mount Large Mountain". Another example would be the river Avon. In ...
1
vote
3answers
77 views
How can we call a word that matches a few criteria in the question?
What fits the criteria:
ah, okay, good, better, best, green, child, children, student, to study, slow
What does not fit the criteria:
greener, greenest, students, studying, studied, slow down
Why:
...
-3
votes
1answer
73 views
How definitive are “patterns” in grammar across languages?
So when you learn a new language from English like Spanish in school, they make it seem like "hey there's these clear patterns and rules once learned you'll master spanish". So you learn the verb ...
0
votes
3answers
89 views
Is there a database of literal linguistic glosses across languages or per language?
I would like to compare different sentence structures and would like to look up sentence glosses quickly. Are there any databases out there, either for all languages or for individual languages?
In ...
2
votes
0answers
34 views
How do languages express multiple simultaneous applicatives?
Some languages use an applicative voice construction exclusively for certain meanings.
Applicatives may also be the only way of expressing such roles, as in
the Bantu Chaga languages, where ...
2
votes
2answers
110 views
Can I form a morphological condition like this?
I am pretty new to this site. I have a question about setting up a morphological condition. eg.
In a language, we see a pattern that consonant-ending as well as ə-ending words are pluralized with a ...
1
vote
0answers
128 views
What's the difference between lexeme and lexical item?
While studying An Introduction to English Morphology by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, came across this fragment.
Section 2.1 pointed out that we tend to think of words as possessing two ...
4
votes
3answers
501 views
Is the concept of grammatical function related to inflexion?
Studying the book Understanding Morphology by Martin Haspelmath, arrived at this fragment.
The importance of the latter part of the definition is seen in paradigms like insula. Although there are ...
4
votes
1answer
47 views
Lexeme phonological form
I am self-studying morphology and came across this paragraph in Martin Haspelmath book "Understanding Morphology".
Although we must assign names to lexemes to be able to talk about them, lexemes ...
-2
votes
3answers
198 views
Why is the word “idiot” so similar between multiple languages?
Weird question, granted, but I was just looking around on Google Translate and I noticed that the word "idiot" is basically the same across quite a few languages, here are a few examples:
Italian: ...
0
votes
0answers
39 views
Is there a modification of Bloomfield's (1926) definition of a word that would include function words?
Bloomfield (1926) defined a word as the following:
A form which may be uttered alone (with meaning) but cannot be analyzed into parts that may (all of them) be uttered alone (with meaning) (p. 156)
...
4
votes
2answers
115 views
Grammatical category definition
Can anyone provide a good formal definition of the notion of grammatical category?
I am primarily referring to morphological categories, such as case, tense, gender etc., rather than to syntactical ...
1
vote
1answer
174 views
Grammatical case vs semantic case
I'm not sure what these terms mean. In my lecture notes I wrote that grammatical case is used to show the syntactic functions of a nominal syntagm, depending on its relation to the verb. Semantic case,...
1
vote
1answer
108 views
morphology and ill-formed sentences
Can we say that ungrammatical strings are still part of the English language? Like for example Joe sleep not last night.
1
vote
1answer
158 views
Is there such thing as a 'half-plural'?
If yes, does any language have this feature?
By 'half-plural' I mean, somewhere between singular and plural, but not dual, trial, or quadral.
5
votes
1answer
112 views
At what point did the feminine ending fall silent in Semitic languages?
Hebrew and Arabic both mark feminine nouns with a final consonant in writing, which is pronounced /t/ in certain sandhi-conditioned environments (and is otherwise silent). From what little I know of ...
-2
votes
2answers
58 views
What natural symbolic representations could be used for Mathematical constants?
We know mathematics is a language by itself.
But to evoke any constants or any arbitrary values as such to solve anything, prior knowledge of a particular symbol and its usage must be understood.
...
1
vote
1answer
77 views
Do reborrowings and neologisms statistically help the communicative function of the languages or do the cause more confusion?
Rephrasing do reborrowings and neologisms help or bedim the communications?
I am making the distinction of instantaneous or contemporary communications(especialy for scientific use and social) and ...
9
votes
1answer
184 views
Do other languages have an “irreversible aspect”?
Like many languages, Lingála combines tense, aspect, and mood into a single TAM marking. Three of these TAMs pertain to the past:
a-kɛnd-ákí "he left earlier today" (hodiernal/recent past)
a-kɛnd-áká ...
5
votes
1answer
160 views
Does Jespersen's Cycle apply to languages without negative concord?
In this comment, Rethliopuks mentioned something I'd never really connected in my head before.
[Negative concord] is standard in plenty of languages around the world, incl[uding] most Romance ...
3
votes
1answer
253 views
Criteria for judging allomorphs and different morphemes?
I read in Crystal, D. (2008) that “Some morphemes...are realized by more than one morph according to their position in a word or sentence, such alternative morphs [are] called allomorphs” (p.313), and ...
4
votes
2answers
166 views
Historical morphology of Italian nouns from Latin 3rd declension
Italian is commonly analysed as inheriting the nominative forms of nouns from Vulgar Latin, instead of the accusative ones. But what happened to 3rd declension nouns?
It looks like for the majority ...
0
votes
3answers
440 views
Dissatisfaction
I am having a difficult time drawing the chart for the word "dissatisfaction". "Action" is not a suffix, so if you would combine satisf(y) + action to get "satisfaction", you would have two roots. ...
2
votes
1answer
60 views
Is morphology always attributable to phonological processes?
I am wondering if you can justify the development of most/all morphemes to regular phonological processes if you argue that diachronically those environments existed and have just been lost in modern ...
0
votes
1answer
103 views
Theories that can predict the spelling and pronunciation of complex words
Are there theories that can predict, at least for modern English, how a complex word will be realised phonologically and graphically i.e. how it will be pronounced and spelled, given the spelling and ...
3
votes
2answers
60 views
Statistic for root-efficiency in languages
In Esperanto you can construct many new words from a relatively low number of root-word. Example, with from arbo (tree) and aro (set) you can build arbaro (forest).
My question is three folded:
What ...
-1
votes
1answer
145 views
Is *grandmother* a compound?
"Grand is used in a specialized sense in kin terms like grandmother or grandson to indicate a further degree of lineal distance beyond that expressed in the head. Such forms can themselves be modified ...
9
votes
0answers
158 views
How do I gloss a Semitic verb?
"Standard" glossing (following the Leipzig rules) uses a linear model of breaking down words into morphemes. In other words, it assumes you can draw lines between all the morphemes to separate them.
...
-2
votes
1answer
81 views
What does 3MPL refer to?
" b. Ha-yeladim kul-am zarku ʔavanim.
the children all-3MPL threw stones
‘The children all threw stones."
In this example, what does '3MPL' mean?
1
vote
0answers
91 views
Is Haitian Creole morphology fusional?
There are conflicting views regarding how Haitian Creole is classified in relation to its lexifier--French. I am trying to give a good description of Haitian Creole in terms of its morphology. Is ...
0
votes
3answers
203 views
How to record differences in irregular morphemes
Sometimes the spelling of a morpheme changes depending on how it's inflected. For example in English, hat sometimes needs an extra "t", and hate sometimes needs its "e" removed.
Inflections of hat (...
-1
votes
2answers
72 views
Why is “index” as a noun pluralized as “indices” while the present tense verb is “indexes”? [closed]
What is the reason behind this? Do the noun and the verb have different derivations?
2
votes
0answers
50 views
What’s the standard way to gloss a morpheme that provides subject, object and tense?
If there a Leipzig standard to gloss a suffix like
“1st person subject, second person object, past tense”
My best guess is
1.S.2.O.Past
And then what if it’s first person exclusive
1.EXCL.S....
2
votes
1answer
55 views
Synthetic fusional morphology
Are there other languages, apart from those in the indo-european and semitic language families, that have synthetic-fusional morphologies? It seems that the synthetic-agglutinative morphologies are ...
3
votes
1answer
75 views
Identify the status of the word-final -s
I don't understand this question, but we have to classify if each word-final -s or -er is not a suffix or if it is an inflectional or derivational suffix. I specifically don't understand the wording "...
7
votes
4answers
2k views
Examples of words that are monomorphemic in English, but polymorphemic in other languages
I'm looking for words that are monomorphemic in English – preferably basic words describing things in nature such as star, water, tree, grass, etc. – but polymorphemic in other languages. It would be ...
6
votes
1answer
114 views
Are the hebrew prefix letters (משה וכלב) considered a form of agglutination?
An example of this letters can be seen in the word וכשלהתמרמרויותינו
where the וכש at start mean "and during to" (the entire word means "and during to our grumblings).
1
vote
0answers
37 views
Morphology to generate hyponyms or hypernyms
Is there a natural/constructed language which allows us to express hyponyms from hypernyms or hypernyms to hyponyms. For example, pigeon to bird or bird to pigeon, both don't have any relation to them ...
3
votes
1answer
160 views
How common is the “elliptical dual” (or plural) cross-linguistically?
This question on Latin.SE asks about the "elliptical dual", a construction where the dual number doesn't mean "two X" but instead "X and one other". For example, in the Iliad, Aíant-e Ajax-DUAL means ...
5
votes
3answers
320 views
Morphophonology of changing adjectives to nouns
I’m a freshman who is taking Introduction to Language classes at my college. I’m struggling to answer a question but my mind gets confused.
My question is: When the word “secret” becomes another word ...
