29.3608, Review: Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Psycholinguistics; Syntax: Baerman (2017)

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Subject: 29.3608, Review: Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Psycholinguistics; Syntax: Baerman (2017)

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Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2018 14:49:12
From: Alexandra Galani [algalani at uoi.gr]
Subject: The Oxford Handbook of Inflection

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-4039.html

EDITOR: Matthew  Baerman
TITLE: The Oxford Handbook of Inflection
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Alexandra Galani, University of Ioannina

SUMMARY 

“The Oxford Handbook of Inflection”, edited by Matthew Baerman, is a
collection of twenty-four chapters on various inflectional morphological
phenomena. The book is divided into six parts. It includes lists of
abbreviations, contributors, references as well as author, language and
subject indexes.   

In Chapter 1, “Introduction”, Matthew Baerman briefly states that inflection
has been seen as either a distinct morphological component or a system the
properties of which are not too divergent from those which characterise
language as a whole. The way inflection is distinguished from derivation also
leads to different treatments (i.e. inflection as an independent component or
not). He summarises the book’s structure and the phenomena discussed in the
volume, making clear that the discussion is theory-neutral.    

Part I: Building Blocks 

Chapter 2, entitled “The morpheme: Its name and use” by Stephen R. Anderson,
discusses the origins of the term “morpheme” and the properties attributed to
it. Saussure (1916 [1974]) has been the first to capture its notion as an
irreducible, minimal sign. This view contradicts Baudouin de Courtenay (1895
[1972]) for whom a morpheme subsumes roots and affixes. On the contrary, basic
lexical items are not seen as morphemes according to Meillet and Vendryès
(1924). Anderson also refers to how morphemes are seen in Bloomfield (1933)
and briefly sketches some of the problems these treatments face. He further
calls into question whether there is a one-to-one correspondence between
meaning and form by presenting evidence from languages which exhibit patterns
of circumfixation, multiple exponence, empty, superfluous, zero, overlapping
and cumulative morphs as well as subtraction and metathesis (i.e. in Batsbi,
Spanish, Indonesian). The treatments of morphemes in Halle (1973), Aronoff
(1976), Selkirk (1982) and Halle and Marantz (1993) are also briefly
presented. 

In Chapter 3 “Features in inflection”, Greville G. Corbett brings evidence
from Russian and Latvian to discuss how morphological features (i.e. tense,
number, voice, gender, case, inflectional class) may determine inflectional
morphological paradigms. He briefly shows how these features explain cases of
syncretism, defectiveness and deponency. He also notes that historical changes
may also influence the morphological system of a language synchronically. 

Jochen Trommel and Eva Zimmermann in Chapter 4, entitled “Inflectional
exponence”, discuss the different types of exponence (additive,
transformational, templatic) and the relation between them. Examples from
Hungarian, Jamsay and Alabama are brought to exemplify additive exponence.
Exponence patterns cannot always be clearly identified as they show
characteristics also shared by other components: i.e. tonal features in
Jamsay. Additionally, there are cases, such as phonological lengthening (i.e.
in Alabama), which can be also analysed as transformational exponence.
Examples from Modern High German, Aka, Hausa, Indonesian, Mokilese, Tohono
O’odham, Taubergrund German and Saanich are brought to exemplify
transformational exponence, whereas templatic expositional patterns are
discussed in languages such as Cupeno and Central Sierra Miwok. Non-additive
exponence has been treated in the literature as “a consequence of phonological
rules or constraints which are restricted to specific morphological contexts”
(p. 61) or under the Concatenativist Hypothesis (Lieber 1992; Stonham 2006;
Bye and Svenonius 2012). Finally, they discuss the problems the Strict
Segmental Adfixation Hypothesis creates due to the rich infixal patterns
exhibited in languages, such as Tagalog, Ilokano, Alabama, Quileute, Chaca,
Bukusu and Huave. They conclude that the development of empirical research
methods is a fertile ground for future investigation.  

Part II: Paradigms and their variants
 
In Chapter 6, entitled “Inflectional paradigms”, James P. Blevins first
discusses the pieces of inflection which are organised in paradigms (i.e.
units which represent case, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice) and
sub-paradigms (e.g. dual versus plural, grammatical versus semantic cases). He
explains that there are no specific criteria which serve as ways to organise
paradigms. Rather paradigm organization depends on the theoretical view one
takes of them (e.g. A-morphous morphology (Anderson 1992), Paradigm Function
Morphology (Stump 2001). He also discusses the constraints that may be applied
to the their organisation. He shows what the Paradigm Economy Principle
(Carstairs 1983) has to say about paradigmatic relations as far as German
gender features and Finnish partitives are concerned. Finally, he further
explains how information represented in a paradigmatic cell may reduce
morphological uncertainty (i.e. allomorphy) in other cells. To that extent,
entropy in information theory could well explain such allomorphic patterns.

In Chapter 6, Gregory Stump presents “Inflection classes” in a clear and
concise way. Their main characteristics are described through data in
Icelandic. He shows that lexemes with the same morphological representation
may belong to different classes. Moreover, apart from the main inflectional
classes, languages organise their nominal or verbal forms in segregated
inflectional classes, metaconjugations, heteroclisis, and heteroclisis with
deponency. Inflectional class membership is assigned by stem alternations or
by the exponents’ inventories marked on the stem. Nevertheless, membership may
also be determined upon phonological features (i.e. Monu), syntactico-semantic
properties (e.g. in Muna), or voice (e.g. in Sanskrit). New classes may emerge
and old ones may disappear due to sound changes (i.e. Vedic) or the reanalysis
of elements (i.e. Indo-European). The discussion is rounded off by reference
to a theoretical question: should inflectional class representation be treated
as labels or principal parts?  

Matthew Baerman, in Chapter 7 “Paradigmatic deviations”, discusses cases of
syncretism in Murrinh-Patha, Caybaba, Matses, Skoy, Chipaya, Dhaasanac,
Kaluli, Uduk, Ayutla, Mixe and Polish. On the other hand, deponency patterns
are discussed in languages such as Latin, Serbo-Croatian and Gulmancema.
Finally, defectiveness phenomena are met in Russian, Turkish, Finnish,
Chickasaw, Tuareg and Witsuwet’en. The frequent occurrence of these deviations
in such a great number of languages shows that they are morphological
phenomena which must be taken into account when theoretical models are
formulated.  

Chapter 8, entitled “Phonology” by Gunnar Ólafur Hansson, sheds light onto the
morphology-phonology interface. The author first offers a review of the
mechanisms by which morphological structures may affect phonological patterns
in various theoretical models: i.e. morphology precedes phonology so that
phonology computes the morphological output versus the two structures
(phonology and morphology) computed in parallel. Reference is made to Lexical
Phonology (Kiparksy 1982a, b; Kaisse and McMachon 2011) and Optimality Theory
(McCarthy and Prince 1995, Smith 2011). Examples from Palestinian Arabic,
Turkish and Shona are brought. Levelling and Paradigm Uniformity, paradigm
anti-homophony effects, phonotactics, paradigm gaps and alternations, as well
as phonologically conditioned allomorphy, are discussed through
exemplification in Palestinian, Damascus and Moroccan Arabic, Norwegian,
Spanish, Russian, Icelandic, Basque, Kaititj and Haitian Creole. The author
points out that research on the morphology-phonology interface still has much
to offer.     

In Chapter 9, entitled “Periphrasis and inflection” by Andrew Spencer and
Gergana Popova, the features which may be expressed periphrastically in verbs,
nouns and adjectives are first briefly discussed. Then they look at the
canonical types of intersective periphrases –such as periphrasis in Latin when
passive and perfective are both represented. Moreover, there are non-canonical
cases of intersective periphrases: in Classical Greek in the mediopassive,
when verb stems end in a consonant, the third person plural is expressed
periphrastically by the use of the participle and the verb “to be”. On both
cases, the periphrastic forms occupy a cell in the inflectional paradigm, so
periphrases realise the content of that cell. They note that it is not always
clear how to distinguish periphrases from purely morphological, syntactic and
clitic constructions. They review Ackerman and Stump’s (2004) criteria and
conclude that it is not easy to define clear-cut characteristics.  

Part III: Change 

In Chapter 10, entitled “Diachrony”, Claire Bowern examines different types of
morphological changes: suffixes’ allomorphic patterns due to sound changes,
stem alternations due to semantic ones, grammatical “trapping” (where a
morpheme or a clitic is not preserved in all phonologically conditioned
environments), morphological alternations due to boundary placement changes
(i.e. case marking fossilisation in adverbials), loss or creation of
morphological categories due to language contact, diachronic changes or
grammaticalisation. The order of morphemes or even their semantic meaning may
be also altered. The discussion is rounded off by reference to the role
inflectional morphology may play in language classification. 

In Chapter 11, entitled “Contact-induced change” by Maarten Kossmann,
morphological changes due to language contact are investigated. More
specifically, concomitant borrowing (present in languages such as Ghomaran
Berber, Tasawaq, Michif and Tuareg), additive borrowing (that is, material
introducing or changing the categories expressed in morphology) and
substitutive borrowing (that is, material that comes in place of existing
forms which nonetheless causes no further changes) are presented. Evidence is
brought from various languages, such as Megleno-Romanian, Cappadician Greek,
Turkish, Copper Island Aleut, Standard Tajik, Belanda Bor and many others.   

Part IV: Computation 

In Chapter 12, “Modelling inflectional Structure”, Dunstan Brown exemplifies
how one can compute inflectional morphology via DATR (Evans and Gazdar 1996).
He points out that such a computational analysis can evaluate the theoretical
claims and morphological analysis of a language’s inflectional system. He
first clarifies which features need to be taken into account and then he
refers to the computation methods (finite state morphology and
inheritance-based modelling of morphology). He briefly accounts for the verbal
morphology in Turkish and nominal morphology in Polish. The discussion is
rounded off by a sketch analysis of inflectional classes, stem classes and
deponency patterns, phenomena which cause difficulties in morphological
analyses. 

Chapter 13, entitled “Machine learning of inflection” by Katya Pertsova, looks
into the input and constraints computational learning models need to be fed
with. Memory resources, storage economy and error patterns are facts that need
to be taken into account. She suggests that there are specific learning
techniques that need to be avoided in inflection learning (i.e. lists and
patterns’ memorisation). On the other hand, finite-state automata are widely
used in models. Finally, learning biases, such as simplicity, locality and the
conjunctive bias, can account for irregular patterns.     

In Chapter 14, “Machine translation” by Ondřej Bojar, first looks at how
morphological richness is measured. She explains that inflectional
morphological differences between source and target language -in addition to
the target language’s vocabulary size- increase the complexity in machine
learning systems. There are rule-based and corpus-based systems. Learning is
based on parallel corpora (source and target language), machine translation
pipeline (statistical phrase-based system applied to data-driven paradigms)
and phrase-based machine learning. Inflectionally rich languages cause a word
alignment problem when translating languages which do not share the same
morphological patterns or the morphological realizations are covert. Another
problem has to do with the way a dictionary is compiled, especially when
information is extracted from morphologically rich language data. Machine
translation evaluation and tuning are in the heart of current systems. The
chapter’s final part discusses the ways machine translation systems handle
rich morphology.    

Part V: Psycholinguistics 

In Chapter 15, entitled “Inflectional morphology in language acquisition”,
Sabine Stoll looks at the strategies and mechanisms by which children acquire
morphological structures. She first explains that productivity of specific
features needs to be determined through experimental set-ups (i.e. nonce
words, use of specific markers for different items, entropy). A child’s
behaviour as adult-like as well as a comparison between inflectional markers
used by children and adults may serve as elements to test productivity.
Cross-linguistic comparisons of inflectional morphology acquisition are a lot
harder to test. Moreover, it is challenging to investigate how children cope
with complex morphological diversity (e.g. noun or verb preference,
acquisition of large paradigms). The rest of the chapter discusses the
acquisition of number, case and noun classes in nominal morphology, as well as
tense, aspect and passives in verbal morphology. It is shown that children are
sensitive to input frequency, functional needs and the use of morphological
markers in specific constructions. Acquisition is not only sensitive
cross-linguistically but also within the language. Stored lexical chunks are
more easily acquired (contrary to the operation of abstract rules).   

Chapter 16, entitled “Disorders” by Matthew Walenski, presents a comprehensive
review of the neurocognitive theories of inflection, namely dual systems
models (emphasis is given to the declarative/procedural model (Ullman et al
1997)) and the single mechanisms models. He explains that the two approaches
make the same predictions for the processing of regular and irregular
inflectional morphology for patients with focal brain damage but they differ
in the functional roles attributed to specific brain regions. For both
approaches, semantic memory is related to irregular forms, but the treatment
of regular forms (especially for patients with frontal/basal-ganglia damage)
is different. More specifically, disorders  (such as Alzheimers, semantic
dementia, Herpes Simplex Encephalitis) affect the temporal lobe and semantic
memory whereas Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Tourette’s Syndrome the
frontal/basal-ganglia circuits and motor function. The production of
inflectional forms of patients with Williams syndrome is similar to the one by
patients with a semantic memory disorder, whereas for patients with autism and
Schizophrenia similar to frontal/basal-ganglia disorders.     

Part VI: Sketches on individual systems 

Chapter 17, entitled “Verbal inflection in Iha: a multipilicity of alignments”
by Mark Donohue, looks at the verbal inflectional patterns in the language.
Inflection is met in a nominative, an undergoer, an accusative and an
intransitive argument category. A set of verbal suffixes may also represent
beneficiaries. Final suffixes represent agreement/tense-aspect. Their presence
in monovalent or bivalent verbs does not affect them. Prefixes, on the other
hand, represent agreement for local persons and their selection depends on the
presence of features such as person and monovalent verbs which take patientive
arguments. When the verb takes a beneficiary argument, a different set of
verbal suffixes is selected. Furthermore, the suppletive verb “give” changes
its stem depending on the person and number of the object. Finally, there are
three conjugational classes where valency or agency does not play a role.
Conjugational markers are overt and differentiate the person and number of
objects marked on the verbal form in cases where number morphology is poor. 

In Chapter 18, “Inflection in Pulaar”, a primarily suffixing language, Fiona
Mc Laughlin provides a sketch of the inflectional features represented.
Reduplication is not very productive, whereas stem alternations (i.e.
singular/plural noun pairs) are present. Gender, case, number,
voice-aspect-polarity, and salience are the inflectional features in the
language. She looks at noun class agreement in adjectives, cardinals, third
person pronouns. Case is not inflectionally marked on nouns, whereas there is
a singular/plural distinction. Voice, aspect and polarity are marked
cumulatively. There are five noun classes in the language and the paradigm
includes singular, plural and singular augmentative forms.  
  
Chapter 19 looks at “Lithuanian inflection”. Axle Holvoet notes that
inflectional features are mainly marked on suffixes, although prefixation also
occurs in verbal morphology. A nasal infix marks inchoative verbs. A stem’s
vocalic expansion marks declension classes in which different sets of endings
are used. Verbs are synthetically marked for tense and mood. Participles
(marked for tense and voice) and converbs are also present in the system.
Verbs are divided into conjugational classes. Reflexive forms in Lithuanian
present an interesting case as it is not clear whether they should be treated
as clitics or affixes. Moreover, evidential structures or forms are found in
the language. Finally, there is much debate in the literature whether aspect
is a lexical or a grammatical category.     
 
Chapter 20 is a sketch of the “Chamorro inflection” by Thomas Stolz. Chamorro
is a morphologically rich, concatenative and agglutinative language. Stolz
discusses the three major word classes, the prefixes, infixes and suffixes
available in the inflectional system as well as their functions. Reduplication
is also present. The chapter concludes with a brief comparison between
Chamorro and Tagalog. 

In Chapter 21, entitled “Inflection in Murrimj-Patha”, Rachel Nordlinger first
offers a brief summary of the language’s main characteristics, i.e. it is a
polysynthetic, head-marking language. Nominals appear mostly uninflected for
case, whereas verbs are morphologically complex forms. Predicates are formed
by lexical stems which are combined by thirty-eight paradigms of classifier
stems. Subject person and number as well as object person and number are
inflectional markers on verbs. Moreover, the reflexive/reciprocal marker
appears in a verbal form. Tense-aspect-mood markers appear on classifier
stems. As far as nominal inflection is concerned, there are two case markers
–the agentive and the instrumental. Nominals can also be used as predicates.  
  

Chapter 22 is on “Aymara inflection”. Matt Coler provides a sketch of the
nominal and verbal inflection in this agglutinative suffix-only,
morphologically rich, language. Morpheme-final vowel deletion is one of the
most unusual characteristics of Ayamara. Inflectional and derivational
suffixes are intermixed. Possession, number, location and case are the
relevant features to nominal inflection. Case markers also appear in verbal
morphology. There are four possessive suffixes and three suffixes which
represent location. As far as case is concerned, there are thirteen cases.
Person/tense, number and mood are represented in verbal forms. Verbal
derivation precedes inflection. Finally, only the counterfactual mood is
expressed in the language, whereas the suffixes in which imperatives are
represented, coincide with the second and third person possessive suffixes. 

In Chapter 23, Nicholas Evans looks at “Inflection in Nen”. He first offers
the general typological, phonological and morphophonemic characteristics of
the language alongside basic information about the exponence patterns
distributed across prefixes, suffixes, stems and pronouns. Pronouns and nouns
are similar in their morphological behaviour, whereas verbal morphology is the
most complex. Verbs are divided into two categories, the prefixing
(person/number is represented in prefixes) and the ambifixing (person/number
is represented in prefixes and suffixes). Aspect is the feature according to
which verbal suffixes are organised and they are further subdivided in terms
of their thematic and desinences.     

In Chapter 24, entitled “Stem-internal and affixal morphology in Shilluk”,
Bert Remijesn, Cynthia L. Miller- Naudé, and Leoma G. Gilley discuss the
patterns of stem-internal alternations due to vowel length, tone and advance
tongue route features in verbs. Exponence patterns may also affect stem-final
consonant in nouns. They pay attention to affixal exponence in transitive
verbs and nouns. The chapter concludes with notes on the development of
stem-internal morphology in Western Nilotic, the language family Shilluk
belongs to.    

EVALUATION

The volume covers a wide range of inflectional phenomena in various languages
and language families. It tackles inflection from different perspectives, from
theoretical to applied. The chapters are well-organised and referenced, and
there are also good cross-references throughout the volume. The analyses are
mostly well-supported by data. All chapters exemplify the complexity and
richness of inflectional morphology. The discussion in some chapters (i.e. the
ones in Part IV: Computation) may seem somehow hard to follow but this is due
to the fact that it requires knowledge from other disciplines or it might be
slightly technical. 
The book will be of interest to researchers working on theoretical issues
around inflectional morphology or academics in search of data for
courses/assignments. It is also a very good source of references for those who
need information about inflectional patterns in various languages. Moreover,
it is very helpful to those who would like to be introduced to new areas, such
as computational and psycholinguistic analyses of inflectional morphology.
Finally, areas for future research are highlighted in some parts of the
volume.   

REFERENCES

Ackerman, F. and G. Stump. (2004). “Paradigms and periphrastic expression: A
study in realization-based lexicalism”. In L. Sadler and A. Spencer,
Projecting Morphology. Stanford: CSLI Publications. pp. 111-157. 
 
Anderson, S. R. (1992). A-morphous morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Aronoff, M. (1976). Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge: MIT
Press. 

Saussure, F. de ([1916] 1967). Cours de linguistique générale. Paris : Payot.
[prepared by Tullio de Mauro].

Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan. (1895 [1972]). An attempt at a theory of phonetic
alternations. In Edward Stankiewicz (ed.), A Baudouin de Courtenay anthology,
144-212. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 

Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. New York: Henry Holt.

Bye, P. and P. Svenonius. (2012). “Non-concatenative morphology as
epiphenomenon”. In J. Trommer (ed.), The Morphology and Phonology of
Exponence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 427–495. 
Carstairs, A. (1983). “Paradigm economy”. Journal of Linguistics 19: 115–125.
Evans, R. and G. Gazdar. (1996). “DATR: A language for lexical knowledge
representation”. Computational Linguistics 22: 167-216. 

Halle, M. (1973). “Prolegomena to a theory of word-formation”. Linguistic
Inquiry 4: 4-16.

Halle, M.  and A. Marantz. (1993). “Distributed morphology and the pieces of
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Kaisse, E. M. and A. McMahon. (2011). Lexical phonology and the lexical
syndrome. In M. van Oostendorp et al, (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to
phonology, vol. 4. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp.2236-2257.

Kiparsky, P. (1982). “From Cyclic to Lexical Phonology. The structure of
phonological representations”. In H. van der Hulst and N. Smith (eds.), The
structure of phonological requirements, vol. I. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
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Kiparsky, P. (1982). “Lexical morphology and phonology.” In In-Seok Yang
(ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin. pp. 3-91.

Lieber, R. (1992). Deconstructing morphology: Word formation in syntactic
theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Meillet, A and Vendryes, J. (1924). Traité de grammaire comparée des langues
classiques. Paris : Honoré Champion.

McCarthy, J. and A. Prince. (1994). “The emergence of the unmarked: optimality
in prosodic morphology. In M. Gonzàlez, (ed.), Proceedings of the North East
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pp. 333–379

Selkirk, E. (1982). The syntax of words. Cambridge: MIT Press. 

Smith, J. (2011). “Category-specific effects.” In M. van Oostendorp, C. J.
Ewen, B. Hume and K. Rice (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp.2439-2463.

Stonham, J. (2006). “Metathesis”. In K. Brown (ed.), Elsevier Encyclopedia of
Language and Linguistics 8. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 92-9. 

Stump, G. (2001). Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Ullman, M.T., S. Corkin, M. Coppola, G. Hickok, J. H. Growdon, W. J. Koroshetz
and S. Pinker. (1997). “A Neural Dissociation within Language: Evidence that
the mental dictionary is part of declarative memory, and that grammatical
rules are processed by the procedural system”. Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience 9: 266-276.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Alexandra Galani is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Ioannina
(Greece). Her main research interests are in morphology, its interfaces and
language acquisition.





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