[Lingtyp] Free (=unexplained) morpheme ordering
Martin Haspelmath
martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de
Wed Dec 13 16:08:12 UTC 2023
Dear all,
As Vladimir and Tim say, I noted in 2011 that the various criteria for
affixhood do not always converge, and this has been confirmed by more
recent research (e.g. van Gijn & Zúñiga 2014; Bickel & Zúñiga 2017;
Zingler 2022; Muysken 2023).
But I think that the conclusion from this cannot be either (i) that we
stop using the term "affix" (though I originally said this, like
Vladimir in his post), or (ii) that we accept that "it is difficult to
define affixes" (as in Tim's post).
I now think that "affix" is a comparative concept term that we expect to
understand in the same way across languages, so there should be a
definition that applies to all languages. I provided such a definition
in my 2021 paper (see also the definition of "word" in the 2023 paper).
These definitions will not make everyone happy, but I wrote these papers
to emphasize that it is not an empirical question what the terms "affix"
or "word" mean. Whether flags, adpossessive indexes and plural markers
may occur in a free order in languages is an empirical question
(Jeremy's original question), and for this question, one doesn't need to
define "affixes". (However, if one adopts my 2021 definition of "affix",
one can go on to ask to what extent affixes are mobile, because fixed
order is not part of the definition.)
Martin
*References*
Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Bound forms, welded forms, and affixes: Basic
concepts for morphological comparison. /Voprosy Jazykoznanija/ 2021(1).
7–28. (https://zenodo.org/record/4628279)
Haspelmath, Martin. 2023. Defining the word. /WORD/ 69(3). 283–297.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2023.2237272.
On 13.12.23 16:04, Zingler, Tim wrote:
>
> Hi Jeremy,
>
>
> I’m not sure if any of the sources below meet your requirement. From
> what I remember, most if not all of them point out that there are
> serious and identifiable restrictions on the order of the allegedly
> free items (and/or the process just affects a very limited number of
> affixes in the first place).
>
> But I would like to highlight that the most remarkable part about the
> Mari/Uralic examples might be that they concern nouns. If I remember
> correctly, the sources below all talk about verbs. And that’s
> understandable because in order to have free ordering of affixes, you
> need at least two (types of) affixes, and nouns in so many languages
> do not meet that necessary criterion.
>
> Also, there is a new edited volume on free variation in morphology and
> syntax that I haven’t gotten around to yet (Kopf & Weber 2023). The
> ToC does not suggest that there is anything immediately relevant to
> you in there, but I don’t know.
>
> Lastly, I agree that it's difficult to define what an affix is. But
> fixed order is just one of the criteria used to determine that, as
> Haspelmath (2011) also discusses. If the other criteria argue for the
> affix status of an item, then it would be fine with me at least to
> call them affixes (and then pointing out the part where they diverge
> from the prototype). The term "mobile affix" suggested by one of the
> sources below is an example of that kind, I would think.
>
> Best,
>
> Tim
>
>
> Cinque, Guglielmo. 2001. The status of “mobile” suffixes. In Bisang,
> Walter (ed.), Aspects of typology and universals, 13–19. Berlin:
> Akademie Verlag.
>
> Crysmann, Berthold & Olivier Bonami. 2016. Variable morphotactics in
> information-based morphology. Journal of Linguistics 52(2). 311–374.
>
> Good, Jeff & Alan Yu. 2000. Affix-placement variation in Turkish.
> Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 25. 63–74.
>
> Good, Jeff & Alan Yu. 2005. Morphosyntax of two Turkish subject
> pronominal paradigms. In Fernando Ordóñez & Lorie Heggie (eds.),
> Clitic and affix combinations: Theoretical perspectives, 315–341.
> Amsterdam: Benjamins.
>
> Kim, Yuni. 2008. Topics in the phonology and morphology of San
> Francisco del Mar Huave. Berkeley: University of California PhD
> dissertation.
>
> Kim, Yuni. 2010. Phonological and morphological conditions on affix
> ordering in Huave. Morphology 20(1). 133–163.
>
> Kopf, Kristin & Thilo Weber (eds.). 2023. Free variation in grammar:
> Empirical and theoretical approaches. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
>
> Mansfield, John, Sabine Stoll & Balthasar Bickel. 2020. Category
> clustering: A probabilistic bias in the morphology of verbal agreement
> marking. Language 96(2). 255–293.
>
> Rice, Keren. 2011. Principles of affix ordering: An overview. Word
> Structure 4(2). 169–200.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Von:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> im Auftrag
> von Vladimir Panov <panovmeister at gmail.com>
> *Gesendet:* Mittwoch, 13. Dezember 2023 15:05
> *An:* Jan Rijkhoff
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] Free (=unexplained) morpheme ordering
> Dear Jeremy & others,
>
> Let me remind you of an important issue which has to do with the
> question of this thread.
>
> When we want to say that there are languages with affixes which
> exhibit a degree of ordering freedom there is a tacit assumption that
> we know what it means to be an affix. However, as Martin Haspelmath
> (2011 etc.,
> https://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/content_files/staff/haspelmt/pdf/WordSegmentation.pdf)
> has argued, we atually don't and our ideas about "words", "affixes"
> and "clitics" are very much inflenced by spelling conventions of
> modern European languages (and it doesn't solve the problem). So why
> not take a bottom-up approach and describe the morphemes in questions
> of Mari in their own terms establishing their relevant morphosyntactic
> and phonological properties instead of labeling them "affixes"?
> Otherwise, we should acknowledge that "affixes" exist independently of
> particular languages as a natural kind out there in a metaphysical
> space and are somehow "instantiated" in Mari in a wrong (free-ordered)
> way. But if we do without "affixes" (which are normally thought of as
> appearing in a fixed order) then there is nothing surprising in their
> free orderedness any longer. The formulation "languages with
> concatenative morphology" suffers from the same kind of circularity -
> as if we knew where morphology ends and syntax begins.
>
> I am also attaching my own paper which discusses very similar issues
> regarding so-called "particles" whose main argument is completely
> parallel.
>
> I know many don't share this view but I consider it my duty to raise
> this argument again and again.
>
> Best,
> Vladimir
>
>
>
> ср, 13 дек. 2023 г. в 13:49, Jan Rijkhoff <linjr at cc.au.dk>:
>
> Dear Jeremy,
>
> On this topic, see for example also the attached article by Bickel
> et al. from 2007.
>
> Best,
> Jan R
>
> J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor (emeritus), Linguistics
> URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr@cc.au.dk
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on
> behalf of Jeremy Bradley <jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2023 12:11 PM
> To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> Subject: [Lingtyp] Free (=unexplained) morpheme ordering
>
> Dear all,
>
> It's a fairly well-described feature of Mari (Uralic) that there
> is a lot of variation in the ordering of case suffixes (Cx),
> possessive suffixes (Px), and number suffixes (Nx), with multiple
> arrangements oftentimes being permissible and the factors
> determining this distribution being completely opaque, e.g.
> (examples from corpus):
>
> a.
> joltaš-em-βlak-lan
> friend-1SG-PL-DAT
> ‘to my friends’
> (Px-Nx-Cx)
>
> b.
> pire-βlak-et-lan
> wolf-PL-2SG-DAT
> ‘to your wolves’
> (Nx-Px-Cx)
>
> c.
> joč́a-βlak-lan-že
> child-PL-DAT-3SG
> ‘to his/her/their.SG children’
> (Nx-Cx-Px)
>
> Jorma Luutonen gave a detailed, quantitatively based overview of
> this phenomenon in his 1997 dissertation (The Variation of
> Morpheme Order in Mari Declension); a student of mine recently
> revisited the question with the now existing corpus
> infrastructures (edited by me and published at
> https://doi.org/10.7557/12.6373) ... and in both cases, the
> surveys didn't really succeed to find the actual factors
> determining this distribution outside of a few shards of
> explanations (e.g. the "later" the Px, the less likely it is that
> it expresses possession) here and there.
>
> My question: does anybody else know of examples of languages with
> concatenative morphology in which there are degrees of freedom
> like this, with the factors determining the arrangement being (for
> now) completely non-transparent? We keep saying in Uralic studies
> that this makes Mari unusual (plenty of other Uralic languages
> have variation in the arrangement of suffixes, but I don't know of
> any others having these degrees of freedom), but I am curious how
> much this holds on a larger stage.
>
> Best,
> Jeremy
>
> --
> Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D.
> University of Vienna
>
> http://www.mari-language.com
> jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at<mailto:jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at>
>
> Office address:
> Institut EVSL
> Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
> Universität Wien
> Campus AAKH, Hof 7-2
> Spitalgasse 2-4
> 1090 Wien
> AUSTRIA
>
> Mobile: +43-664-99-31-788
> Skype: jeremy.moss.bradley
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--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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