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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000">
<DIV>Obviously “Nothing is ‘encoded’ in language. Morphemes, like all other
linguistic features, are tools”. Nevertheless these tools are
coded/ordered into the language morphology, and you can’t decide at random
which morpheme to use. I don’t think that the Workshop proponents think of
morphemes as “boxes which contain meaning and from which a certain meaning can
be taken”, but a radical constructional approach does not help to understand the
very nature of morphemes. <FONT face="Times New Roman">“<FONT
face=Calibri>A hearer constructs their own meaning in their own brain”. This is
also abvious, but the hearer -as well as the speaker- needs an array of tools
for constructing the meaning. Add to the bibliography Claude Hagège,
<EM> </EM></FONT><EM>The Language Builder: an Essay on the Human Signature
in Linguistic Morphogenesis</EM>, 1992.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">Best,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000">Prof.Paolo
Ramat<BR>’Academia Europaea’</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000">Università
di Pavia<BR>Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia)<BR></DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=seinobreugel@gmail.com
href="mailto:seinobreugel@gmail.com">Seino van Breugel</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, October 11, 2016 6:42 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=stela.manova@univie.ac.at
href="mailto:stela.manova@univie.ac.at">Stela Manova</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Cc:</B> <A title=LINGTYP@listserv.linguistlist.org
href="mailto:LINGTYP@listserv.linguistlist.org">LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Lingtyp] CfP WS at SLE2017: What is in a morpheme?
Theoretical, experimental and computational approaches to the relation of
meaning and form in morphology</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV dir=ltr>Dear Stela.
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I think that the question "What meaning is encoded in a morpheme?" is a
wrong question. Nothing is "encoded" in language. Morphemes are not boxes which
contain meaning and from which a certain meaning can be taken (see Ready 1979).
Morphemes, like all other linguistic features, are tools, which are used to
restrict the number of possible inferences the hearer needs to make in order to
guess what the speaker's communicative intentions are. A hearer constructs their
own meaning in their own brain. The communicative process of Ostension and
Inference is very clearly described in LaPolla 2003 and 2015. I think it would
certainly be worthwhile to take this literature (and references therein) into
account in the preparation of this very interesting conference.<BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Yours faithfully,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Seino van Breugel</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>REFERENCES<BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>LaPolla, Randy J. 2003. Why languages differ: variation in the
conventionalization of constraints on inference. In: David Bradley, Randy
LaPolla, Boyd Michailovsky & Graham Thurgood (eds.). <I>Language variation:
papers on variation and change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in honour
of James A. Matisoff</I>. Pacific Linguistics. Canberra: Australian National
University. 113-144.</DIV>
<DIV><SPAN lang=EN-AU><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN lang=EN-AU>LaPolla, Randy. 2015. </SPAN>On the logical necessity of a
cultural and cognitive connection for the origin of all aspects of linguistic
structure. In: Rik De Busser & Randy LaPolla (Eds.). Language Structure and
Environment: Social Cultural and Natural Factors. John Benjamins.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Reddy, Michael J. 1979. The conduit metaphor – a case of frame conflict in
our language about language. In: Andrew Ortony (ed.) <I>Metaphor and
thought.</I> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . 284–324.</DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_extra>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_signature data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr>Dr. Seino van Breugel<BR><A
href="https://independent.academia.edu/SeinovanBreugel"
target=_blank>https://independent.academia.edu/SeinovanBreugel</A><BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><A href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHfiZwqyWC7HfZUAQ1RH1ew"
target=_blank>https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHfiZwqyWC7HfZUAQ1RH1ew</A></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 5:34 PM, Stela Manova <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:stela.manova@univie.ac.at"
target=_blank>stela.manova@univie.ac.at</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word"><B>What is in a morpheme? Theoretical,
experimental and computational approaches to the relation of meaning and form
in morphology <BR></B><BR>Dates: 10 – 13 September 2017 (50th SLE
Meeting)<BR>Location: Zurich, Switzerland<BR>Call Deadline: 11 November
2016<BR><BR><B>Organizers:</B> Stela Manova1, <WBR>Harald Hammarström2 and
Itamar
Kastner3<BR>
1University of Vienna (Vienna), stela.manova (at) <A
href="http://univie.ac.at/"
target=_blank>univie.ac.at</A><BR>
2Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Jena), hammarstroem
(at) <A href="http://shh.mpg.de/"
target=_blank>shh.mpg.de</A><BR>
3Humboldt University (Berlin), itamar.kastner (at) <A
href="http://hu-berlin.de/" target=_blank>hu-berlin.de</A><BR><BR><BR>
<DIV>There are enough examples in science that obvious things are the most
difficult to explain: issues such as how inorganic matter turns into organic
or how a child learns to understand language. There is a similar problem in
morphology. It is well known that morphemes consist of phonemes but only the
former can be associated with meaning (systematically); and it is a
non-trivial question how exactly this association happens.
<BR> </DIV>
<DIV>There are three possible ways to approach the relation of meaning and
form:<BR>A. Form and meaning emerge simultaneously;<BR>B. The
association is from meaning to form;<BR>C. The association is from form to
meaning. <BR><BR>The most important difference between these scenarios
consists in the fact that in scenarios B and C meaning may be assigned at the
level of word, i.e. one may claim that morphemes do not have meaning of their
own or even that there are no morphemes at all (in scenario B). (Information
(syntactic/morphological/<WBR>morphosyntactic) that does not refer to
(phonological) form is called ‘meaning’ in this proposal.)<BR><BR>Theoretical,
experimental and computational linguistics approach word structure from
different perspectives and seem to diverge with respect to which is the
“right” scenario. Theoretical linguistics is interested in generalizations
over meaning (features) (scenarios A and B), both within languages and
typologically: e.g., only a language with plural can have dual; or <WBR>no
language makes more gender <WBR>distinctions in the non-singular than in the
singular (Greenberg 1963). Experimental linguistics researches perception,
parsing, processing and production of word structure; computational
<WBR>linguistics is focused on parsing and distribution of word structure.
Consequently, both experimental and computational linguistics follow scenario
C and their findings seem to contradict theoretical linguistics (see below).
Nevertheless, <WBR>theoretical linguists (seem to) agree that speakers have
somewhat reliable intuitions about n-gram frequency over sub-word units. Thus,
the goals of this workshop are threefold: to encourage interdisciplinary
discussion; to clarify and unify assumptions; and to pave the way for
collaboration.<BR><BR>Let us first illustrate the different scenarios.
<I>Minimalis<WBR>t Morphology (MM)</I> (Wunderlich 1996) is an example of
<B>scenario A</B>. In MM, a morpheme has form and meaning; (inflectional)
morphemes are heads; a(n) (inflectional) morpheme minimally includes a
representation of its phonological form, a specification of the base’s
category, and an output specification. (1) gives the specification of the 2 Sg
marker -st in German (Stiebels
2011):<BR><BR>(1)
/st/; [+min]; [+2]/+V <BR> <BR>[+min] indicates that
the form is bound, i.e. a morpheme; [+2] means that it contributes the
specification of 2 person and “+V” indicates that -st attaches to verbs.
The slash / stands for “output/input”.<BR><BR>In <I>Realizational Morphology
(RM)</I>, theories such as <I>Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM) </I>(Stump
2001) and <I>Distributed Morphology (DM) </I>(Halle & Marantz 1993),
meaning and form are modeled separately and semantic derivation precedes
formal derivation, the so-called late insertion (<B>scenario B</B>). Roughly,
one can predict form based on meaning, while the opposite does not hold and
therefore the form-to-meaning direction is not activated in RM.<BR><BR>PFM
manipulates morphosyntactic property sets (2). A PFM representation from
Stewart & Stump
(2007):<BR><BR>(2)
PF(⟨L, σ⟩) = ⟨R, σ⟩<BR><BR>The value of the paradigm function (PF) of a
paradigm cell ⟨L, σ⟩ (L stands for ‘lexeme') is the pairing of this cell’s
realization R with the morphosyntactic property set σ. Such a theory does not
necessarily need morphemes, although in the different versions of PFM one
finds ‘roots' and ‘stems'.</DIV>
<DIV><BR>DM relies on syntactic structures and ‘morpheme’, [past] in (3)
below, is an abstract unit that refers to a syntactic terminal node (INFL in
this case) and its content, not to the phonological expression of that
terminal. A DM representation from Bobaljik
(2015):<BR><BR>(3) Vocabulary of English
(fragment)<BR> a. [past]
↔ -t /]V __ ; where V ∈ {dream, dwell
etc.}<BR> b. [past] ↔ Ø
/]V__ ; where V ∈ {run, hit, fly
etc.}<BR> c. [past] ↔ -d
/] V__<BR><BR>To explain the fact that in DM syntactic structure derives
morphological structure, Müller (2016) refers to the meaning-form dichotomy as
two different dimensions of a linguistic unit: a representational and an
algorithmic one respectively.<BR><BR>In the RM literature, the assumption that
semantics precedes exponence is claimed to make RM superior in comparison to
incremental theories of morphology that follow scenario A because in RM one
manipulates the semantic side of the derivation, which takes place at an
abstract level and is always compositional, while exponence (formal
derivation) often entails idiosyncrasies.<BR><BR>On the other hand, affixes
are directly accessible through their form, i.e. affixes can be identified and
processed even without having a contentful stem to attach to, as evidenced by
recent <I>psycholinguistic studies</I>, which speaks in favor of <B>scenario
C.</B> For example, Crepaldi et al. (2016) uses as primes non-words and
demonstrates that they facilitate lexical decisions to target words ending
with the same suffix as well as that the priming effect depends on the affix
position in the non-word, i.e. a prefix in the non-word does not facilitate
the recognition of a suffix in the target word, even if the prefix and the
suffix share the same form. Lázaro et al. (2016) uses suffixes as primes and
shows that the prime suffix facilitates the recognition of words ending with
that suffix. Both studies conclude that the priming effect of suffixes is not
orthographic but morphological, i.e. the effect holds for derived and
pseudo-derived words (such as corn:er) but was not found for simplex words as
targets. Findings similar to those in Crepaldi et al. (2016) and Lázaro et al.
(2016) are also reported in Beyersmann et al. (2016). Additionally,
Manova & Brzoza (2015) shows that native speakers, if provided with a list
of existing and non-existing suffix combinations without bases (i.e. without
semantic cues), can, with a remarkably high accuracy, judge which combinations
exist and which do not.<BR><BR>In <I>computational linguistics</I>, the
“emergence” of morphological structure invariably starts from form, since
corpora are not annotated for meaning (Baroni 2003, among others). An approach
called Unsupervised Learning of Morphology (ULM) takes raw data such as an
unannotated corpus and provides a list of affixes and stems that occur in
those data. The most popular strategies on which ULM relies include
comparison, grouping and weighting of substrings (of letters), see Hammarström
and Borin (2011) for an overview of ULM research. Only after the extraction of
potentially related forms, semantics (in terms of semantic similarity) can be
assigned (Baroni et al. 2002).<BR><BR>The workshop will provide a platform for
exchange of ideas and for an interdisciplinary discussion of the meaning-form
issue in morphology. It will bring together theoretical and computational
linguists (including computer scientists), psycho- and neurolinguists
(including psychologists), fieldworkers and typologists. The questions to be
addressed include, but are not limited to, the
following:<BR><BR>1. What information is encoded in a
morpheme?<BR>2. Does an analysis with emphasis on
either meaning (scenario B) or form (scenario C) provide evidence for a
(complete) separation of form and meaning in the
morpheme?<BR>3. Could it be that a morpheme relates
meaning and form and semantic stimuli activate derivation through meaning,
while formal stimuli activate access through
form?<BR>4. How does morphology “emerge” in fieldwork,
i.e. how does a fieldworker decide that something is a morpheme, is it
according to A, B or C?<BR>5. How does morphology
“emerge” in child language?<BR>6. What exactly does a
language borrow when it borrows morphological structure such as, e.g., a
plural nominal marker, if that language already has ‘plural' and its speakers
are not expected to be able to perform a morpheme analysis of </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN>the donor language’s
words?<BR>7. If important generalizations are
(necessarily) stated over either meaning or form, how are the two types of
generalizations related to one another; and are they both needed for an
adequate characterization of speakers' knowledge of their </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN>language?<BR>8.
Can a computational analysis based on n-gram frequency distributions and
distributional semantics account for the kinds of generalizations that
interest theoretical linguists and motivate the B (or A)
perspective?<BR><BR>As an alternative, non-linguistic source of inspiration,
we would like to turn your attention to the following video on how computers
learn to understand pictures: <A
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40riCqvRoMs"
target=_blank>https://www.youtube.<WBR>com/watch?v=40riCqvRoMs</A> (the
speaker, Fei-Fei Li, is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford
University). Computer vision is one of the most important areas of research in
machine learning and many striking analogies with linguistic analyses can be
made.<BR><BR>We invite abstracts that are no longer than 300 words, excluding
examples and references, and tackle any aspect of the form-meaning issue in
morphology. Papers that report recent psycho-, neuro-, computational and
theoretical linguistics research are particularly welcome. Please submit a pdf
of your abstract to <A href="mailto:stela.manova@univie.ac.at"
target=_blank>stela.manova@univie.ac.at</A> <WBR>by November 11,
2016.<BR><BR><BR><B>Important Dates</B><BR><B>11 November 2016: deadline for
submission of 300-word abstracts to the workshop organizers</B><BR>20 November
2016: notification of acceptance by the workshop organizers<BR>25 November
2016: submission of the workshop proposal to SLE<BR>25 December 2016:
notification of acceptance of workshop proposals by SLE<BR>15 January 2017:
deadline for submission of full abstracts to SLE for review<BR>31 March 2017:
notification of paper acceptance<BR>10-13 September 2017: SLE conference in
Zürich<BR><BR><BR><B>References</B><BR><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11px">Baroni,
M. (2003). Distribution-driven morpheme discovery: A
computational/experimental <WBR>study. In G. Booij and J. van Marle (eds.),
Yearbook of Morphology 2003, 213-248. Dordrecht: Springer.<BR>Baroni, M.; J.
Matiasek and H. Trost. (2002). Unsupervised discovery of morphologically
related words based on orthographic and semantic similarity. In Mike Maxwell
(ed.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Morphological and Phonological Learning
of <SPAN class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN> <SPAN
class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN> </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11px"><SPAN
class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN>ACL/SIGPHON-2002, 48-57. East Stroudsburg
PA: ACL.<BR>Beyersmann, E; JC Ziegler; A Castles, M Coltheart, Y Kezilas &
J Grainger (2016). Morpho- orthographic segmentation without semantics.
Psychon Bull Rev 23(2): 533-9. Abstract available at: <A
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26289649"
target=_blank>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.<WBR>gov/pubmed/26289649</A> <BR>Bobaljik,
J. (2015). Distributed <WBR>Morphology. Ms. University of Connecticut.
Available at: <A href="http://bobaljik.uconn.edu/papers/DM_ORE.pdf"
target=_blank>http://bobaljik.uconn.edu/<WBR>papers/DM_ORE.pdf</A><BR>Crepaldi
D., L. Hemsworth, C. J. Davis & K. Rastle. (2016). Masked suffix priming
and morpheme positional constraints. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 69(1): 113-28.
Abstract at: <A href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25760942"
target=_blank>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.<WBR>gov/pubmed/25760942</A> <BR>Greenberg,
J. H. (ed.) (1963). Universals of Human Language. Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press.<BR>Halle, M. & A. Marantz (1993). Distributed morphology and the
pieces of inflection. In Hale K. and S. J. Keyser (eds.), The view from
building 20, 111-176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<BR>Hammarström, H. & L.
Borin (2011). Unsupervised Learning of Morphology. Computational
<WBR>Linguistics 37(2): 309-350.<BR>Lázaro, M, V. Illera & J. Sainz
(2016). The suffix priming effect: Further evidence for an early
morpho-orthographic segmentation process independent of its semantic content.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 69(1): 197-208. Abstract at: </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11px"><SPAN
class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN><A
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25801451"
target=_blank>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/<WBR>pubmed/25801451</A> <BR>Manova,
S. & B. Brzoza. (2015). Suffix combinability and the organization of the
mental lexicon. Paper presented at the 10th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting
(MMM), Haifa, Israel, 7-10 September 2015. Handout available at: </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11px"><SPAN
class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN><A
href="http://homepage.univie.ac.at/stela.manova/uploads/1/2/2/4/12243901/manova_brzoza_mmm2015.pdf"
target=_blank>http://homepage.univie.ac.at/<WBR>stela.manova/uploads/1/2/2/4/<WBR>12243901/manova_brzoza_<WBR>mmm2015.pdf</A> <BR>Müller,
G. (2016). Minimize <WBR>Satisfaction in Harmonic Serialism. Paper presented
at the workshop The Word and the Morpheme. Humboldt University zu Berlin,
22.9-24.9.2016. Abstract available at: <A href="https://www.angl.hu-/"
target=_blank>https://www.angl.hu-</A></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11px"><SPAN
class=m_-5561741404034684476Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN><A
href="http://berlin.de/department/staff/artemis_alexiadou/abstracts/muller.pdf"
target=_blank>berlin.de/department/staff/<WBR>artemis_alexiadou/abstracts/<WBR>muller.pdf</A> <BR>Stewart,
T. & G. Stump (2007). Paradigm Function Morphology and the
Morphology–Syntax Interface. In G. Ramchand & C. Reiss (eds.), The Oxford
handbook of linguistic interfaces, 383-421. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.<BR>Stiebels, B. (2011). Minimalist Morphology. Ms. University of
Leipzig. Available at: <A
href="http://home.uni-leipzig.de/stiebels/papers/handbook_morphology_stiebels_mm-2011.pdf"
target=_blank>http://home.uni-leipzig.<WBR>de/stiebels/papers/handbook_<WBR>morphology_stiebels_mm-2011.<WBR>pdf</A> <BR>Stump,
G. T. (2001). Inflectional morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.<BR>Wunderlich, D. (1996). Minimalist morphology: the role of paradigms.
In G. Booij & J. van Marle (eds.),Yearbook of Morphology 1995, 93–114.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11px"><SPAN
class=m_4603786906454977465Apple-tab-span
style="WHITE-SPACE: pre-wrap"></SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV><BR>______________________________<WBR>_________________<BR>Lingtyp
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