[Lingtyp] Free (=unexplained) morpheme ordering

Thu Dec 14 08:38:09 UTC 2023

Dear Jeremy,

For Atong (Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan, Northeast India), I described in
Section 22.1 of my grammar that "there are 11 columns of phrasal enclitics.
Morphemes that appear in the same column are not attested to occur
simultaneously. The columns represent a strong tendency, not an absolute
order. Variations in the order of enclitics from different columns does
occur." The same goes for the derivational suffixes described in Section
21.1. I have a strong suspicion that there is some degree of free variation
for all of these morphemes, both the enclitics and the suffixes, and that
the order is not a matter of scope.

Met vriendelijke groet / Kind regards,

Seino
_________________
Dr Seino van Breugel
Assistant Professor in Linguistics
University College Roosevelt
Middelburg, The Netherlands

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 5:08 PM Martin Haspelmath <
martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de> wrote:

> 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>
> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> im Auftrag von Vladimir Panov
> <panovmeister at gmail.com> <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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>>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6
> D-04103 Leipzighttps://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
>
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