Lexical Morphology

8/2/2019 Lexical Morphology

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Lexical Morphology

Ling 4/510 Morphology

Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D.

2010

Morphology: The Dark Years

Both Structuralism and early Generative

Grammar ignored morphology

Morphology was dealt with either as part

of syntax or as part of phonology.

Lexicalist Morphology

Lexicalist Morphology: rescuedmorphology from other components ofgrammar

Posited that derivational morphology (andpossibly inflectional morphology) shouldbe handled in the lexicon

Note most of the citations are from the1970s, and a few from the 1980s. Whatdoes that tell you about this theory?


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Early Generative Accounts

In early Generative Syntax, sentence that wererelated in meaning, but had different order ofelements were derived from one another.

Transformations were used to derive sentences

Example: Passive

NP V+ tense NP1 2 3 4 4 be 3 2+en by 1

The dog bit the childThe child was bitten by the dog

This rule specifies both the order of elementsand the morphemes needed

Extending transformations tomorphology

If sentences can be derived viatransformations, why not words?

Example: transformations were used todescribe the differences between verbsand their related nominal forms (a.ka.Nominalizations)a. Robin is devoted to her mother.

b. Robin's devotion to her mother.

Write a rule to derive (b) from (a)

Arguments against lexicaltransformations

Nominalizations changes meaning andviolate constraints on transformations transformations should not change meaning

A general rule cannot be determined;some verbs have two nominalizations thatdo not mean the same thing, e.g.,

Commit (v.) committal, commitment

Affect (v.) affect (n.), affection


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Arguments against transformationallyderiving nominals

Some verbs do not have corresponding nounforms. Robin amused the children with stories.

*Robin's amusement of the children with stories.

Syntactic transformations are supposed to applyto allmembers of a word class.

How can you have a syntactic transformationthat only applies to some verbs?

More evidence for separatingmorphology from syntax

Rules of syntax generally do not refer to

phonological structure or make referenceto the output of phonological rules.

Morphological rules do, e.g.,

Infixes that insert into the onset of a syllable

German diminutive -chen that cannot attachto bases ending in [x]or [ng].

The result?

Deriving nominals should be handled in a

different area of grammar.

What is that area?

Morphology!

If you have a morphology for nominals, itmakes sense to extend it to all word

formation.


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Lexical Morphology

The goal of morphology, according to

Aronoff (1976) is the "enumeration of theclass of possible words of a language" (p.170), or to tell us what sort of words can

be formed.

Lexical Morphology

Lexical Morphology primarily studies:

Potential word forms

Rules and constraints on word formation

Parallel to thinking in Syntax, themorphology "overgenerates" words

(creating potential words); non-words areruled out by constraints.

Important Constructs in LexicalMorphology

Full Entry Theory

Stratal Ordering

Heads of Words & Feature Percolation Constraints on Word Formation Rules

(WFRs)


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The Full Entry Theory

Full entry theory: theory of the lexicon

which states that every word that 'exists' islisted in the lexicon.

What does it mean for a word to exist?

Words that have been created, and used byan individual are stored in their lexicon.

Lexicons are individualized

Whats stored in the Full EntryLexicon?

In some versions of this theory, the lexicon

contains:

all words that exist

stems

affixes

Advantages to a full entry lexicon

It can explain why a speaker can know two

words without knowing the derivationalrelationship between them.

Are repair and reparations derivationalrelated?

It makes sense for non-productivemorphology/non-compositional forms


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Problems with the Full EntryLexicon

Whats really stored?

Are all novel compounds stored once theyremade?

What about Grammar Function ChangingMorphemes?

Some GFC morphemes are rarely if ever used. Areforms

What about paradigms? Some versions of the Full Entry lexicon store all

forms in a paradigm. Really? That could lead to1000s of forms to store for 1 verb/noun

Updated Lexicalist Views of theLexicon

Aronoff & Anshen (1998):

Morphology deals with the internalstructure of words and the creation ofwords

The lexicon stores existing words. Thisincludes: Non-compositional forms

Affixes

Idioms

Updated Lexicalist Views of theLexicon (Aronoff & Anshen, 1998)

Examples of words that would be stored in thelexicon: bamboozle (no internal structure)

hornswoggle horn is recognizable, but swoggle isnot

hoodwink recognizable parts, but not compositional,so stored.

Contrast with: rigidification Rigidification is clearly created from parts, and

compositional in meaning.

It will not be listed in the hearer/speakers


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Stratal (Level) Ordering

Recall: Languages appear to have more

than one type of affix: Neutral # (a.k.a. Primary, Level I) Non-neutral + (a.k.a. Secondary, Level II)

Non-neutral affixes: Change stress pattern

Change pronunciation of base

Show obligatory phonetically conditionedallomorphy

Level Ordering

One way to account for differences

between the effects of affixes is to orderaffixation:

Level 1 affixes added

Then phonological rules (e.g., stress) applied

Level 2 affixes added

Level Ordering

Predictions from Level Ordering

Level 1 affixes are always closer to the basethan level 2 affixes

Level 2 affixes should always appear furtherfrom the base than Level 1 affixes.

Recall: This distinction between affixes

holds for other languages as well.


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Level Ordering, More Complex

Allen (1978) argued that compounding is

carried out in a 3rd stratum (level), afterLevel 2.

This predicts that there derivationalmorphemes must be added beforecompounding. *[street-music]al, *[war-hero]ic, etc.

What about inflectional affixes? Addedafter compounding

Levels of Morphology

Root

Phonological rules

Inflection Level 4

Compounding Level 3

Neutral Affixes (#) Level 2

Non-neutral affixes (+) Level 1

Problems with Stratal/Levelordering

Affixes appear to be added to bases that don'texist,

e.g., enlivencan you livensomething? can you

enlivesomething? So is en- or -enadded first? Orderings of affixes are found that are not

predicted by the level order hypothesis.

For example, level 2 suffixes are found inside level 1suffixes, e.g., governmental (#ment+al), orderviational suffixes outside compounds, e.g.,nonsensical.


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Problems with level ordering

Most English affixes show evidence of

being on more than one stratum. It accounts for a relatively small portion of

the data.

Feature Percolation

Another major construct of LexicalistMorphology is: Feature Percolation

The features of the head of a worddetermine the feature of the whole word.

Right-hand Heads

Head: the element in a compound which

determines the gender and declension/conjugationclass

carries inflectional elements that apply to the wholecompound,

denotes the superordinate of the whole compound(i.e. major meaning)


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Whats the head?

In compounds: the right hand element :

It determines the type/class of the element The semantic information associated with the

right-hand element is associated with thecompound as a whole.

Example: laundry basket Is a type of basket (hyponym)

Is a noun

Whats the head?

In derived words, the head is usually the

derivational suffix.

With inflectional affixes, it's less clear.

Heads and Features

The features of the head percolate up the

structure

The features of the daughter nodes areavailable to the mother

Examples with plurals

Coffee mug has the plural: coffee mugs

Mailman has the plural: mailmen


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Feature Percolation

If the features from both parts are in

agreement, they will both percolate up tothe mother node.

If the features conflict, then the mothernode will take the features from the head.

Example of Feature Percolation:German Compounds

Der Landesmusikdirektor = state music

director

It consists of 3 parts:

das Land(es)

die Musik

der Direktor

German compounds

Der Landesmusikdirektor

The head = direktor:

Determines gender (der)

Determines word class (noun)

Type of meaning (a type of control)


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Landesmusikdirektor

Your turn: Draw a tree, indicatinggenderfeatures percolation

Arznei+mittel+ausgaben+begrenzungs+gesetz medicine distribution control law die Arznei -medicine

das Mittel - remedy

die Ausgabe - distribution/dispersement

die Begrenzung - restrictions

das Gesetz - law

Assume theyre added in order of occurrence

[[[[[arznei]+mittel]+ausgaben]+begrenzungs]+gesetz]

English compounds

Lest you think that German has cornered

the market on long compounds, let's lookat: Neoorthodox existentialist theology

Whats the head?

Whats the structure?

What features percolate from the head?


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Feature Percolation and Derivation

The notion of feature percolation was

generalized from endocentric compoundsto all word formation.

With derivational affixes, the derivationalaffix contains the features that percolateup.

Feature Percolation & Derivation

Issues with feature percolation

Does feature percolation apply to

inflectional morphology?

How do you recognize the head?

English: Right-hand Head Rule

All other things being equal, the head in anEnglish word is the right-hand element in thatword.


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Issues with feature percolation

Feature percolation works well for

endocentric compounds and derivationalsuffixes.

It works less well for exocentriccompounds and derivational prefixes.

It's also not clear how to generalize this toother languages.

Constraints

Another major feature of Lexicalist Morphologywas constraints on output, e.g.,

Generalized Lexicalist Hypothesis(Lapointe,1981: 22):

Syntactic rules are not allowed to refer to, and hencecannot directly modify, the internal morphologicalstructure of words.

The Adjacency Condition(Allen, 1978: 155):

No rule of word formation can involve X and Y, unlessY is uniquely contained in the cycle adjacent to X.

Conclusions

Lexicalist Morphology needs to explain:

Status of the lexicon

Issues with ordering

Contributions of Lexical Morphology:

Made a case for a separate morphology,especially for derivational morphology

Started the search for universals of wordformation

Documents

Lexical Morphology