36.2845, Confs: Workshop at the International Morphology Meeting 22: The Evolution of Non-Concatenative Morphology (Hungary)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2845. Tue Sep 23 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 36.2845, Confs: Workshop at the International Morphology Meeting 22: The Evolution of Non-Concatenative Morphology (Hungary)
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Date: 22-Sep-2025
From: Matthew Baerman [m.baerman at surrey.ac.uk]
Subject: Workshop at the International Morphology Meeting 22: The Evolution of Non-Concatenative Morphology
Workshop at the International Morphology Meeting 22: The Evolution of
Non-Concatenative Morphology
Date: 28-May-2026 - 31-May-2026
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Contact: Matthew Baerman
Contact Email: m.baerman at surrey.ac.uk
Meeting URL: https://nilomorph.eu/imm-workshop-2026/
Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Phonology
Submission Deadline: 09-Jan-2026
Invited speaker: Pavel Iosad (University of Edinburgh)
Morphological alternations can be realized through the concatenation
of affixes, or through non-concatenative processes that do not involve
the addition of segmental material, such as modifications of
suprasegmental features (e.g. length or tone), or the featural
constituents of segments (e.g. vowel height, consonantal manner of
articulation). The two nouns below, from Nuer (a West Nilotic language
of South Sudan and Ethiopia), illustrate the contrast: the plural of
‘pelican’ is formed by concatenation of a suffix, while the plural of
‘snail’ is formed by a suite of non-concatenative operations:
lengthening, a change in tone, raising of the vowel, and lenition of
the final consonant.
bǒ̤ːŋ ‘pelican’ ~ bǒ̤ːŋ-ní̤ ‘pelicans’
lwɛ̀k ‘snail’ ~ lwêːːɣ ‘snails’ (Bond et al.
2020)
Accounts of morphological alternations generally regard the
concatenation of affixes as the typical case. Linguistics textbooks
and handbooks will typically introduce the concept of morphology
through the use of suffixes, reserving examples of non-concatenative
morphology, such as stem-vowel alternations, for later and more
advanced stages of the discussion. Some theoretical approaches also
reflect this asymmetry, taking concatenation as not just typical but
as underlyingly primary, with non-concatenative process as a surface
epiphenomenon (see various contributions to Trommer 2012). On the
other hand, a growing body of work within a Word-and-Paradigm
framework that focuses on the discriminative properties of
morphological contrasts makes no principled synchronic distinction
between concatenative and non-concatenative operations (Carroll &
Beniamine 2025).
But even if one rejects the idea that non-concatenative morphology is
somehow subordinate and therefore atypical, a curious asymmetry still
emerges. Nearly every type of non-concatenative morphological
alternation has a demonstrated or at least plausible origin in
segmental material which has undergone phonological erosion and
transformation. Thus the alternations in (1) can be traced to the
phonological influence of former suffixes (Andersen 1990, 1999),
likewise other familiar examples such as Indo-European ablaut (Zhivlov
2019), Germanic umlaut, or the templatic morphology of Semitic (Wilson
2020). That means it may be possible to explain all non-concatenative
morphology as diachronically secondary, whatever our take on
synchrony. This workshop is dedicated to exploring this proposition,
and is structured around two themes:
1. Pathways to non-concatenative morphology, where we ask what the
typological tendencies are and what constraints there are, if any.
Possible questions include: (a) Which kinds of units or domains tend
to be lost or preserved? For example, it has been suggested that these
typically align with prosodic categories like feet, syllables, or
morae, rather than morphological or morphosyntactic categories. (b)
What role does morphological redundancy play? Non-concatenative
processes often emerge in conjunction with segmental marking.
Redundancy is then often resolved by losing the segment while the
secondary phonological cue is retained and reinterpreted as
morphological. Alternatively, prosodic material may be sacrificed
instead, triggering processes like mora-sharing,metathesis,
infixation, etc. (c) What role does metrical structure play? For
example, languages with initial metrical prominence will be more prone
to erosion of suffixal segmental material. (d) How does
morphophonological typology affect the diachronic trajectory? For
example, it is likely that systems with inward-directed phonological
processes (targeting the root) will be more prone to develop
non-concatenative morphology than systems with outward-directed
processes.
2. Synchronic typology, where we ask how much of the attested
typological landscape of non-concatenative morphology can be
attributed to the diachronic transformation of affixes. Questions
include: (a) Are there non-concatenative processes that cannot be
explained by diachrony, and must be recognized as fundamental
primitives? If so, how would this affect models of synchronic
morphology? And if not, would this confirm the view that all
morphology is underlyingly concatenative? (b) Are there
non-concatenative processes that the laws of sound change could
plausibly produce but which are unattested?
We invite papers (20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions)
addressing any of the above themes. Please send an abstract of no more
than one page to evoconcaten8 at gmail.com by 05 January 2026. Abstracts
should be anonymous and in pdf format, with identifying information in
the body of the email.
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