32.2424, Review: Morphology: Lieber (2021)

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Subject: 32.2424, Review: Morphology: Lieber (2021)

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Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 22:16:59
From: Alexandra Galani [algalani at uoi.gr]
Subject: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology (volume 1)

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-359.html

EDITOR: Rochelle  Lieber
TITLE: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology
SUBTITLE: 3-volume set
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Alexandra Galani, University of Ioannina

SUMMARY 

“The Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology” by Rochelle Lieber (Editor-in-Chief)
is a three-volume set, organised into fourteen sections. This is a review of
the first volume. 

Morphological Units

Laurie Bauer in “Morphological Entities: Overview and General Issues”
introduces some of the most fundamental morphological concepts:
formal/semantic/morphological/dictionary words, morphemes, lexical/functional
affixes, processes (i.e. reduplication, internal modification) and formatives
(e.g., splinters, extenders, interfix). 

In “The Status of the Morpheme”, Thomas Leu discusses conceptual issues as far
as the notion “morpheme” is concerned, such as the emergence of the term,
views about the relation between form and meaning, morphs’ relations and
shapes, and how morphemes are treated in various theoretical models. 

Paul Kiparsky in “Morphological Units: Stems” presents the main principles of
Paradigm Function Morphology, Distributed Morphology (DM) and Minimalist
Morphology, focusing on the stand they take on stems. An analysis of the
English verb inflection is sketched according to the principles of each
framework, whereas the effectiveness of the Level-Ordering Hypothesis is also
highlighted.   

Paolo Ramat in “Morphological Units: Words”, refers to various definitions of
word, the “wordhood” debate and cross-linguistic definitions proposed in the
Association for Linguistic Typology (LINGTYP), the characteristics of
multi-word expressions and compounds as well as Haspelmath’s (2011) “wordhood”
criteria to conclude that a prototypical approach can best account for the
morphological complexity. This approach, though, leaves out splinters and
blenders. Word classes are seen as typological categories.   

Inflection

Gregory Stump refers to the criteria which distinguish “Inflectional
Morphology” from derivational, to inflectional exponence (IE), periphrastic
expressions, clitics, theoretical treatments of IE, the canonical relation of
content to form in inflectional paradigms and their deviations (i.e.,
inflectional classes in Latin and Sanskrit, morphomic properties) as well as
to what the deviations have to say about the interface of inflection with the
grammatical components within DM and lexeme-based approaches.  

Michael Daniel in “Person in Morphology” discusses how person is expressed in
pronouns and affixal units, the properties of third person, person as a
morphosyntactic category expressed in verbal and possessive constructions,
issues related to treating person indexes as pronominal reference or agreement
markers, the interaction of person with number, mood, modality, case
alignment, grammatical gender and spatial deixis, person hierarchies and
pragmatics (politeness, logophoricity, egophoricity). 

“Number in Language” is explored by Paolo Acquaviva who touches upon how
number generally functions in languages, how it is expressed across word
classes, general number, number values (e.g., cardinality, approximative) and
variation in morphological (i.e., number/noun classification, inverse number),
syntactic (i.e., plurality and classifiers, numerals and quantity expressions)
and semantic contexts (e.g., “oneness”, genericity) as well as theoretical
treatments. 

Jenny Audring in “Gender” examines gender as a noun classification and
agreement feature, its interaction with person, its canonical properties,
gender parametric variation (i.e., number of gender values, gender assignment
rules, gender in sign languages), the development of gender systems, how it is
acquired in first/second language and relevant theoretical issues (e.g.,
gender regularity, psycholinguistics). 

Andrej L. Malchukov refers to various definitions of “Case”, morphological,
syntactic, structural and semantic case, the conflation of syntactic, semantic
and discourse-pragmatic case, case hierarchy and the semantic map approach to
the study of meaning of cases (p.191).   

Marianne Mithun discusses “Tense and Aspect in Morphology” by exemplifying
tense inventories in various languages, the shift of deictic centers, nominal
tense, aspect inventories, obligatoriness, aspectual category comparability,
aspectual markers’ richness and nominal aspect.   

Tyler Peterson explores the origin of the study of “Mirativity in Morphology”
and highlights its diversity cross-linguistically as well as issues related to
the testing, the analysis and (functional/historical, formal/theoretical)
explanations of the phenomenon.    

Rik van Gijn defines notions related to “Switch Reference in Morphology” (SR)
and discusses pivots and SR markers of agreement cross-linguistically, the SR
morphological (i.e. affixes, clitics, enclitics, non-linearity, exponence) and
paradigmatic (markedness, asymmetry) nature and its development.    

Peter Milin and James P. Blevins offer some notes on the role of “Paradigms in
Morphology” in terms of grammar organisation. Paradigms are discussed from a
linguistic (Word-and-Paradigm (WP), realisation approaches), psychological,
computational (e.g., classes, inflectional exponents, relations between words
and paradigms or word families/classes) and learning-based perspective
(memory-based/error-driven learning, learning theory). 

Pavel Caha in “Syncretism in Morphology” exemplifies accidental versus
systematic and absolute versus contextual syncretism, shows how syncretism is
modeled (e.g., decomposition, marker competition) and presents analyses which
explain possible restrictions of syncretism (e.g., linear adjacency
constraint, feature hierarchies).      

Antonio Fábregas looks at “Defectiveness in Morphology” and, more
specifically, at gaps due to syntactic, phonological and semantic restrictions
or lexical specification to distinguish such constructions from narrow
defectiveness. He concentrates on what differentiates defectiveness from
syncretism, the challenges it imposes for language acquisition,
competition-based and neoconstructionist approaches, its properties, what
causes defectiveness, the role attestations play and how it is accounted for
in morphological theories. 

Ljuba N. Veselinova discusses the origin of “Suppletion”, genuine/pseudo,
affixal/stem, strong/weak and overlapping suppletion, suppletion in inflection
and derivation, suppletion according to polarity, lexicalisation of negation
and how suppletion is accounted for theoretically. Suppletion in verb, nominal
and adjectival paradigms and ordinal numbers’ derivation support the view that
suppletion is a frequent cross-linguistic phenomenon.  

Laura Grestenberger in “Deponency in Morphology” shows how the canonical
distribution of morphological patterns has driven various definitions of
deponency. Deponence (real or spurious) can(not) serve as evidence for the
claims that morphology is/is not autonomous. Semi-deponency in Greek and
Latin, semi-deponency triggered by finiteness in Latin participial forms and
the role diachrony plays for deponency are also discussed.   

Anna M. Thornton in “Overabundance in Morphology” explains that different
terms have been used to refer to related phenomena. Exceptional and systematic
cases of overabundance, frequency ratios, the conditions and manifestations
facilitating overabundance patterns, the environments in which it occurs, what
gave rise to the phenomenon (i.e., loss/non-acquisition of phonological
conditions) and an evaluation of the (in)adequacy of theoretical approaches to
account for overabundance are the main discussion topics. 

Patricia Cabredo Hofherr in “Agreement in Morphology” shows that if the
asymmetric view on agreement is adopted, issues (i.e., the identification of a
controller, the absence of a lexical controller, grammaticalised agreement
mismatches) arise. Agreement targets and features, the agreement domain, the
conditions on the choice of agreement markers, semantic and syntactic
conditions, default agreement, agreement on coordinations definiteness,
respect/politeness and wh-agreement as agreement features are explored.    

Derivation

Rochelle Lieber in “Derivational Morphology” exemplifies the differences
between derivation and inflection/compounding and inversion, its morphological
patterns (e.g., affixation, reduplication, subtraction), its semantic
categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, relational/prepositional meanings),
issues related to the semantics of derivation, its typological characteristics
and theoretical (i.e., productivity, blocking) and psycholinguistic issues. 

In “Nominalization: General Overview and Theoretical Issues”, Rochelle Lieber
explores lexical nominalisations, the pervasiveness of polysemy, theoretical
approaches to nominalisation (generative, cognitive, functional) as well as
competition and blocking in nominalisation. 

Artemis Alexiadou in “Event/Result in Morphology” discusses Grimshaw’s (1990)
proposal for nominalisations, the problems associated with this treatment
(i.e., argument structure and de-adjectival nominals, nominalisation and
argument structure, conversion cross-linguistically) and shows how specific
semantic and structural approaches account for event and result
nominalisation.   

Marios Andreou looks at “Personal/Participant/Inhabitant in Morphology”
focusing on inhabitant derived nouns, their semantic classification
((a)thematic), their polysemous function, syntactic/non-syntactic/cognitive
and functional theoretical approaches as well as issues for future research.  

Livio Gaeta examines “Collective/Abstract in Morphology” by looking at
abstract nouns, deverbal nouns and their typification, the way verbal
arguments are expressed, semantic shifts, the verbal base’s semantic
properties, abstract deadjectival and denominal nouns, collective as an
inflectional feature and collective nouns in word formation.    

Mercedes Tubino-Blanco in “Causative/Inchoative in Morphology” discusses
causative/inchoative alternations and their universal status, lexical/semantic
(i.e., the unaccusativity of the intransitive variant) and morphological
issues (e.g., morphological coding, reflexive morphology on anticausative
markers), theoretical approaches (lexical, syntactic) and questions which
remain open for future research. 

In “Denominal Verbs in Morphology”, Heike Baeskow explores their formation by
overt derivation (i.e., phonological/morphological constraints, the semantics
of English denominal verbs) and conversion (e.g., generic knowledge, lexical
propositions, recategorisation, qualia structures, Neo-Construction Grammar). 

Petra Sleeman examines formal and semantic aspects of “Adjectivalization in
Morphology” (e.g., nature/category of the base, semantic distinctions), the
categorial ambiguity expressed in deverbal adjectives, adjectival and nominal
suffixes, adjectivisation in relation to the native/non-native distinctions
between suffixes and Level-Ordering in French and Dutch.  

In “Functional Categories: Complementizers and Adpositions”, Lena Baunaz shows
that illocutionary force of the clause, factivity and modality are properties
of complementisers cross-linguistically. Finite complementisers can be
identical to nominal, verbal or prepositional categories which may also
co-occur in a language. According to recent approaches, complementisers can be
decomposed into smaller pieces.    

Olaf Koeneman and Hedde Zeilstra in “Form and Meaning of (Indefinite)
Pronouns” refer to indefinite pronouns, their functions and their
classification (negative polarity items, free-choice items, negative and
positive indefinites). They propose that evidence about indefinite pronouns
from morphologically rich and poor languages can be extended to the study of
the properties of definite pronouns.      

Nicola Grandi in “Evaluatives in Morphology” draws on the properties of
evaluative morphology (ΕΜ) as identified by Scalise (1984, 1994), Dressler and
Merlini Barbaresi (1994) and Jurafsky (1993, 1996). He defines ΕΜ based on
parameters he identifies for quantitative and qualitative evaluation--and
explores the properties of evaluative suffixes based on cross-linguistic
evidence and the position of evaluatives in the morphological component.

Karen De Clercq in “Negation in Morphology” looks at low-scope negative
markers (LSNM) in English, wide-scope negative markers (WSNM) in Korean and
syncretisms between LSNM and SSNM to support the view that negation should be
treated in a single grammatical component.  

Gianina Iordăchioaia in “Quantitative Derivation in Morphology” covers the
following topics: quantifiers, phrasal expressions of quantity, nominal and
verbal plural, pluractional markers and the properties they express (i.e.,
distributivity), their differences with nominal expressions of plurality, the
prefix re- in English, collective nouns from verbs and nouns, noun classifiers
with -ful, nominal gender morphology, nominalising suffixes and their semantic
properties, quantitative prefixes and suffixes in English, adjectives
diminutives and augmentatives, syntactic and lexicalist treatments, formal
approaches to pluractionality. 

“Numerals in Morphology” are discussed by Ljuba N. Veselinova who looks at
cardinals and their morphological characteristics (heads, markers of number
and agreement), their behavior in derivation (i.e. complex numerals,
distributed/ordinal numerals, numerals expressing indeterminate/large
quantities) and directions for future research. 

Compounding

Pius ten Hacken’s discussion on “Compounding in Morphology” revolves around
four axes: delimitation, classification, formation and interpretation. He also
looks at expository and substantive issues of compounding. 

In “Subordinate and Synthetic Compounds in Morphology”, Chiara Melloni reviews
the classification and the features of subordinates and synthetic compounds
alongside with their theoretical treatments. A cross-linguistic discussion of
the input units’ lexical category and their morphological form, compound
markers and derivational suffixes in synthetic compounds as well as issues
related to headedness, interpretation and recursivity are explored.

“Coordination in Compounds” is discussed by Angela Ralli who reviews the
criteria according to which coordinative compounds are distinguished, their
semantic features and transparent nature, their structural status and their
typological distribution. N-N, Adj-Adj, V-V and Adv-Adv compounds are
discussed.     

In “Exocentricity in Morphology” by Maria Irene Moyna explores the notion of
head, the criteria according to which headedness is established, semantic and,
mainly, syntactic (in possessive, deverbal nominal, concatenative compounds)
exocentricity, the semantic properties of syntactic exocentricity and the role
conversion plays in exocentric compounds, theoretical approaches and, finally,
a note on syntactic freezes in Spanish. 

Formal Morphological Means

Claudio Iacobini in “Parasynthesis in Morphology” sketches the relation
between parasynthesis and circumfixation. Verbal parasynthesis in the Romance
languages is exemplified: from the establishment of the term to the
characteristics of parasynthetic verbs, verbs with prefixes expressing an
egressive meaning, the origin (from Latin to the Romance languages) and the
types of parasynthetic verbs. The analyses of verbal parasynthesis within the
Item-and-Process and the WP models and notes about adjectival and nominal
parasynthetics as well as parasynthetic compounds conclude the discussion. 

In “Conversion in Morphology”, Sandór Martsa outlines major and partial
conversion and lookalike types of conversion (i.e., grammaticalisation,
category indeterminacy, multifunctionality, semantic specialisation/
transfer). Input and output homonymy in conversion is examined from a
cross-linguistic perspective. Semantic issues (i.e., semantic changes, the
syntax-semantics interaction, conceptual shifts) and issues related to the
productivity of conversion (e.g., morphosemantic transparency, constraints,
conversion rules) are also presented.  

Suzanne Urbanczyk in “Phonological and Morphological Aspects of Reduplication”
reviews total, foot/syllable-sized and a-templatic reduplication, segmental
(non-)identity patterns of reduplication, its morphological structure,
exfication as well as phonological and morphological repetition. A critical
evaluation of the Morphological Doubling Theory and the Correspondence Theory
Model of Reduplication in terms of the stand they take on the afore-mentioned
behaviour of reduplication is also offered.     

Outi Bat-El in “Templatic Morphology (Clippings, Word-and-Pattern)” offers a
sketch of the concept. Prosodic templates (PT) are reviewed on the basis of
the root as a word-size restriction. Clippings might consist of a PT or a PT
and a suffix, a PT and a vocalic pattern or a combination of the above. As far
as the structural relations of such configurations are concerned, it is shown
that anchoring and stem modification is relevant.  

EVALUATION

As stated by the Editor-in-Chief, Rochelle Lieber, in the Preface, “(W)hat
makes the Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology different is not the kind of
articles per se but rather the scope of the volume, in terms of both breadth
and depth of coverage” (p. xiv). This is exactly the first impression you get
once the book set is in your hands. The first volume discusses morphological
units and processes. Each article is well-structured, includes ample
references to studies, theoretical frameworks and rich (cross-) linguistic
data. As a result, readers can grasp not only a better understanding of the
topic but also an overall picture of the research conducted in the field.
Areas for future research are also highlighted. The volume is well-written and
the discussions are easy to follow. In some instances, when reference to
theoretical frameworks/questions is made, depending on the reader’s degree of
familiarisation, the discussion may not be that straightforward. This is
completely understandable, though, given the diversity of topics and the scope
of the book set. So, based on the first volume, it seems that “The Oxford
Encyclopedia of Morphology” will satisfy the needs of experts or newcomers to
the field, who will certainly find something interesting to challenge
themselves with. A minor point is that the section “Formal Morphological
Means” concludes in the second volume, although it would have made sense to
include the remaining five articles in the first volume. 

Typos: p.15 (in Bell): Tsoulos should appear as Tsoulas. p.640: there is no
section 1.3. 

REFERENCES

Dressler, W. U. and Merlini Barbaresi, L. (1994). Morphopragmatics:
Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. New
York: De Gruyter Mouton. 

Grimshaw, J. (1990). Argument structure. Cambridge: MIT Press. 

Haspelmath, M. (2011). “The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature
of morphology and syntax”. Folia Linguistica, 45, 31-80. 

Jurafsky, D. (1993).  “Universals in the Semantics of the Diminutive”.
Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics
Society. 19 (1): 423-436. 

Jurafsky. D. (1996). “Universal Tendencies in the Semantics of the
Diminutive”. Language 72(3): 533-578. 

Scalise, S. (1984). Generative morphology. Dordrecht: Foris. 

Scalise, S. (1994). Morfologia. Bologna: Il Mulino.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

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





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