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The Turkish nominalizer -(y)Iş demonstrates a broad spectrum of functions ranging from a deverbal word-formation device that forms lexicalized nouns with concrete and abstract meanings to an inflectional marker used in nominal clauses, especially in clausal complementation. In some uses, the item conveys manner semantics. While the item itself has been variously investigated and forms an established part of any Turkish grammar description, there is still a lack of consensus on its functional and semantic properties. This article investigates the morphosyntactic functions and the semantic features of the nominalizer -(y)Iş in light of the claims in the linguistic literature on the one hand, which include manner, countable events, factive imperfective, single instance of an event, direct reference to the inner process of an action, etc., and of examples from primary sources on the other, and evaluates the findings from the perspective of grammaticalization. It will be argued that the range of functions of this item and the fact that it seems to resist any straightforward analysis result from its transition from a derivational marker to an inflectional marker with tasks including complementizer functions, a process in which manner semantics will be argued to play a role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief research report presents a comparison of the early verb productions of four children acquiring the Papuan language Nungon as a first language. A previous case study examined only verb productions of the child TO; these are now compared with those from three other children, studied from ages 1;1-2;7 (non-dense corpus; one child, AB) and ages 2;4-2;7 (dense corpora; two children, MK and MF). Two of the most striking features of TO's early verb productions are shown to be outliers relative to the other three children: her 'root nominals' stage and her delayed near future tense production. Neither of these is transparently linked to patterns in her parents' child-directed speech. The other children also display differing strategies into language production. The dense corpus is beneficial for catching tokens of less-frequent inflections, but the frequent long recording sessions may be difficult for at least one child to tolerate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the complex numbers, Plücker's formula computes the number of inflection points of a linear series of fixed degree and projective dimension on an algebraic curve of fixed genus. Here, we explore the geometric meaning of a natural analog of Plücker's formula and its constituent local indices in A1$\mathbb {A}^1$‐homotopy theory for certain linear series on hyperelliptic curves defined over an arbitrary field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing implementation of compliant mechanisms in high-precision and high-accuracy applications, the need to evaluate the positioning performance of the flexure hinges becomes evident. In this paper, the determination of the accuracy of planar flexures is addressed by analyzing and comparing the available criteria presented in literature, including a new criterion based on the pole of the displacements. For uniform flexures, an analytical formulation is developed for end-moment loads, whereas complex loading conditions, resulting in an inflection point, are analyzed and numerically evaluated. The accuracy criteria are also applied for analyzing the positioning performance of the cross-axis flexural pivot. Various relations among the different criteria are determined, and their limitations, such as the non-bijective correspondence with the deformed configurations, are discussed. The criteria are applied to the design of a high-accuracy cross-axis pivot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex systems of inflectional morphology provide a useful testing ground for input-based language acquisition theories. Two analyses were performed on a high-density (12%) naturalistic sample of two Polish-English children's (2;0 and 3;11) and their parents' use of Polish noun inflection: first, each child's use of inflectional affixes and their lexical restrictedness was compared with their father's equalised sample. Second, the children's spontaneous case-marking errors were analysed in context and measured against type and token frequencies in both parents' data and the child-directed speech (CDS) corpus. Findings in both analyses accord with constructivist theory: near adult-like knowledge of Polish inflections hiding a range of use that is more lexically restricted than in their caregivers' speech; low error rates hiding much higher 'pockets of ignorance' for specific inflectional contexts; and patterns of error that correspond closely to token/type frequencies in the CDS, though with the older sibling making some errors that were not frequency-based. Potential effects of syncretism, case ambiguity and semantics are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Person, number and gender features in the Afroasiatic verbal system are sometimes prefixes, sometimes suffixes and sometimes both. This paper attempts to derive the Tamazight and Hebrew systems using syntactic tools and eschewing postsyntactic or morphological linearization rules. My point of departure is that syntactic heads contain a single feature and that features can be assembled into bundles and placed to the left or to the right of a stem by syntactic movement alone. In the simplest case, a feature is prefixal when it is merged above the verbal stem and the verbal stem remains below it and is c-commanded by it and it is a suffix when the verbal stem moves above it. The often-complex combination of prefixes and suffixes in the languages studied arises from the combination of multiple steps of movement which can target the stem alone or a category it pied pipes or is pied piped by. Allomorphy is expressed in terms of selectional restrictions and an alternative to impoverishment is proposed to handle neutralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution addresses a central theme in morphological analysis, namely the relationship between clitics and inflectional elements. Important contributions on the point are due to Anderson (1992) and Marantz (1988), who, in different ways, connect clitics and affixes. We will propose a solution based on the idea that clitics are part of the inflectional arrangement of the verbal head. Specifically, we will investigate two types of data coming from some Romance varieties in which enclisis and mesoclisis phenomena interact with word formation. These phenomena affect the expression of the Internal Argument and lead us to rethink the analysis of enclisis and mesoclisis in terms of the ability of the inflected verb to realize Phasal domains. In other words, morphology is part of the syntactic computation, and morphemic elements, endowed with interpretable content, are introduced by the operation of Merge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between the presence and shape of subject clitics and verbal endings in a sample of 187 Italo-Romance dialects. It is found that in the majority of languages subject clitics outnumber distinctive inflectional endings. The absence of underspecified systems militates in favour of diachronic and synchronic explanations claiming that the presence of subject clitics is related to the richness of inflection. At the same time, however, the predominance of overspecified systems indicates that further factors are at play in shaping inventories of subject clitics. The second result is that, from a geolinguistic perspective, close dialects exhibit more similarities in the inflectional system than in clitic systems. This brings further support to the claim that inventories of subject clitics do not reflect the array of inflectional endings, whereas some further factors are probably involved in the emergence of subject clitics. Such factors might be either feature geometries/filters, as proposed in the previous literature, or third factors in Chomsky's sense, i.e. factors that are related to computational efficiency and/or processing costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the value of derivational information in predicting the inflectional behavior of lexemes. We focus on Latin, for which large-scale data on both inflection and derivation are easily available. We train boosting tree classifiers to predict the inflection class of verbs and nouns with and without different pieces of derivational information. For verbs, we also model inflectional behavior in a word-based fashion, training the same type of classifier to predict wordforms given knowledge of other wordforms of the same lexemes. We find that derivational information is indeed helpful, and document an asymmetry between the beginning and the end of words, in that the final element in a word is highly predictive, while prefixes prove to be uninformative. The results obtained with the word-based methodology also allow for a finer-grained description of the behavior of different pairs of cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper describes how verb stems in Lɛtɛ¹, (Kwa: Ghana) inflect for grammatical categories of tense/aspect, person, negation, mood and motion by employing prefixes. Studies of this nature have been documented with respect to related Kwa languages (Ameka & Kropp-Dakubu, 2008), but no such study has been published on Lɛtɛ, an under-documented language, hence the significance of this paper. Verbal prefixes which are employed to mark the categories include the future morpheme, /bÈ-/; the progressive marker, /dÉ-/; the perfect aspect prefix, /yÈÉ-/; and for negation, the prefix/ bÉ-/. Similarly, other verbal prefixes are used to signal person, mood and motion. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates the influence of the [+/-ATR] vowel harmony principles; homorganic assimilation, and the phonological structure of the verb stem on the surface representation of the prefixes. Data for the study are drawn from a database of Lɛtɛ verb lists and folktales recorded in the speech community by the author, and supplemented with elicitations. The paper adds novel data to the existing literature on the function of verbal affixes in marking inflectional categories in Kwa languages in particular, and the world’s languages in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to propose a treatment of the internal morphological organization of words, based on the idea that morphology is part of syntactic computation. We disagree with Distributed Morphology model, whereby morphology is identified with a post-syntactic component conveying an information 'separated from the original locus of that information in the phrase marker' (Embick and Noyer 2001: 557) by rules manipulating syntactic nodes. We also consider inadequate the costly and complex syntactic structures that cartographic approach maps into inflectional strings. We pursue a different conceptualization assuming that morphology is governed by the same rules and principles of syntax. Sub-word elements, including inflections, thematic exponents and clitics, are fully interpretable and enter (pair-)merge operations (in the sense of Chomsky 2020a,b, 2021) according to their content, giving rise to complex words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are a number of helping verbs in Jordanian Arabic that are confused with light verbs or serial verbs. This paper, first, establishes the criteria on which they have been identified as auxiliary verbs. The paper shows the similarities and differences between the inflection of lexical verbs and AUX’s in JA. It also tackles the loss of θ- assigning properties which is the crucial property that differentiates between AUX and lexical and serial verbs. Second, given the fact that Arabic has rich verbal morphology which provides enough justification for factoring TP into TP and AspP (and perhaps AgrP), the study adopts an articulated version of the IP, in which inflection is separated into its constituent components, each has a maximal functional projection. The study also builds on Ouhalla's proposal (1990, 2005) that auxiliaries originate outside the VP shell. Based on evidence from the distribution of VP adverbs, negation and floating quantifiers, the paper proposes that auxiliaries in Jordanian Arabic are classified under two lexical auxiliary groups. T-aux are borne in a functional projection under T, but raise to T0 to carry and reflect tense, while Asp-aux are base-generated under Asp0 and only raise to T in the absence of a T-Aux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to analyse and describe the nature of morphophonemic variation in the nominal morphology of Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Assam. Previous discussions of morphophonemic variation in the language have focused on the phonological aspects of such variation (Goswami and Tamuli, 2003: 410-13). However, the present study seeks to examine the nature and range of phonological variations within morphemes triggered by nominal morphological processes such as (a) deictic inflections for relational nouns, (b) case inflections for nouns and pronouns and (c) nominal wordformation via derivation and compounding. Identifying the phonological and morphological factors behind the morphophonemic variation in nominal morphology will serve to uncover the patterned nature of the underlying regularities of a major area of Assamese grammar. Moreover, in seeking to align the morphophonemic variations with specific nominal morphological processes rather than treating them in intrinsic phonological terms, this study proposes to highlight the interdependent functioning of the levels of analysis. Such functioning is evident in instances of phonological variations within morphemes that serve to mark different grammatical functions in the language. In addition to such descriptive considerations, the range of variations and their associated morphological processes can also shed light on specific aspects of diachronic change when they are cross-linguistically compared with cognate languages. The study is based mainly on corpus data using the empirical methodology of corpus linguistics. The CIIL-Lancaster Assamese corpus has turned out to be a very important aspect of the information for observing different areas discussed here. Besides the empirical data, supplementary introspective data will also be used where necessary. As the Assamese language has different varieties and the morphophonemic and allomorphic variants differ in their shapes and functions in these varieties, so the data are taken from the Standard Colloquial Assamese (SCA) which is historically referred to the Sibsagar (ħibɔħaɡɔɹija) variety of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that monolingual speakers of English are sensitive to the presence of inflectional morphology when it is applied to nonwords. For example, when a nonword ends in a sequence of phonemes that respect the morphophonological rules regulating tense inflection, speakers are slower in recognizing it. In this study, we investigated whether a similar pattern applies to second language learners as well. 91 learners of English with Czech as L1 were presented with a same/different minimal pairs task containing nonwords with various endings (in one condition, a sequence of phonemes that could be interpreted as an inflectional morpheme). Consistently with research on monolingual participants, the study showed that second language learners are also slower in processing nonwords that contain potential inflectional morphemes. The pattern was observed from low levels of proficiency, suggesting that learners are sensitive to these rules from early stages of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is an attempt to present the morphological processes that have been observed in Sanzari Boro, an eastern variety of the Boro language. Boro belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family. The Standard variety of Boro is mainly spoken in the present Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) of Assam, India but Sanzari Boro speakers primarily reside outside and eastern part of the BTR. For this research data have been collected from native Sanzari Boro speakers of the Nagaon district of Assam. After examining the data, it has been noticed that affixation, mainly suffixation and prefixation, plays important role in the morphological processes in Sanzari Boro. The major morphological processes that have been observed in the language variety are inflection, derivation, compounding, and reduplication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines inflectional markers (signalling number, case and gender) of selected types of NN complexes in Polish, which can be regarded as attributive-appositive (ATAP) lexical units in the cross-linguistic classification of compounds proposed by Scalise & Bisetto (2009). Polish compounds proper show externalization of inflection and take inflectional markers on their right-hand constituents only. In contrast, Polish juxtapositions are expected to display double inflectional marking (on both their components). However, data from the National Corpus of Polish demonstrate that ATAP juxtapositions containing the lexeme widmo 'ghost, phantom' as their right-hand component exhibit variability in their inflectional paradigms. The right-hand (i.e. the modifier) constituent of such juxtapositions either shows number and case agreement with the head noun, or it appears in the default (nom.sg) form. Potential reasons for the instability of inflectional paradigms of such NN juxtapositions are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Moenia: Revista Lucense de Lingüística & Literatura is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is a comparative analysis of existential and standard negation across Northern Dene. There are two strategies for existential negation: some languages use a negative verb, while others use a negative morpheme reconstructed as * də-weˑ. Standard negation involves negative inflection in some languages; most of them require additional preverbal or postverbal negative particles. The languages without negative inflection also fall into two groups. Some use a preverbal morpheme reconstructed as * də-weˑ , while the others use a postverbal negative auxiliary related to the negative verb used in existential negation. The data surveyed here demonstrates that standard negation with * də-weˑ is widespread in the Northern Dene languages, suggesting that it is an older negation strategy than has been assumed in the literature. The author also shows that the postverbal auxiliary is the result of the negative existential cycle and demonstrates that Dene languages share typological tendencies for the placement of negative particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim is to assess the relationship between cervicothoracic inflection point and baseline disability, as well as the relationship between clinical outcomes and pre- to postoperative changes in inflection point. Methods: Cervical deformity (CD) patients with baseline and 3-month (3M) postoperative radiographic, clinical, and inflection data were grouped by region of inflection point: C6 or above, C6-C7 to C7-T1, T1, or below. Inflection was defined as: Distal-most level where cervical lordosis (CL) changes to thoracic kyphosis (TK). Differences in alignment and patient factors across pre- and postoperative inflection point groups were assessed, as were outcomes by the inclusion of inflection in the CD-corrective fusion construct. Results: A total of 108 patients were included. Preoperative inflection breakdown: C6 or above (42%), C6-C7 to C7-T1 (44%), T1 or below (15%). Surgery was associated with a caudal migration of inflection by 3M: C6 or above (8%), C6-C7 to C7-T1 (58%), T1 or below (33%). For patients with preoperative inflection T1 or below, the inclusion of inflection in the fusion construct was associated with improvements in horizontal gaze (McGregor's Slope included: −11.3° vs. not included: 1.6°, P = 0.038). The inclusion of preoperative inflection in fusion was associated with the superior cervical sagittal vertical axis (cSVA) changes for C6-C7 to C7-T1 patients (−5.2 mm vs. 3.2 mm, P = 0.018). The location of postoperative inflection was associated with variation in 3M alignment: Inflection C6 or above was associated with less Pelvic Tilt (PT), PT and a trend of larger cSVA. Location of inflection or inclusion in fusion was not associated with reoperation or distal junctional kyphosis. Conclusions: Incorporating the inflection point between CL and TK in the fusion construct was associated with superior restoration of cervical alignment and horizontal gaze for surgical CD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief reports the analytical modeling and measurements of the inflection in the MOSFET transfer characteristics at cryogenic temperatures. Inflection is the inward bending of the drain current versus gate voltage, which reduces the current in weak and moderate inversion at a given gate voltage compared to the drift-diffusion current. This phenomenon is explained by introducing a Gaussian distribution of localized states centered around the band edge. The localized states are attributed to disorder and interface traps. The proposed model allows to extract the density of localized states at the interface from the dc current measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The currently popular model of decasuative derivation has been criticized on various grounds, both typological and comparative. This paper assesses both the critique and the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis (PTH), which accounts for certain difficulties that learners experience with L2 morphosyntax. We focus on inflection and articles, which have often been accounted for through defective syntactic representations or problems with the interface between morphology and syntax (inflection) and between semantics or discourse/pragmatics and syntax (articles). We argue that some problems in these domains reflect transfer of L1 prosodic constraints: certain forms cannot be prosodically represented as target-like and hence are omitted or mispronounced. We trace how the PTH has developed over time, from its initial instantiation as involving permanent L1 transfer, to currently, where L1 representations are seen as adaptable to the needs of the L2, and new representations can in fact be acquired. We provide an overview of work conducted in this framework and discuss how the theory has been extended beyond production to encompass comprehension and processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues in favor of considering the absence of material exponence (AOME) of grammatical category a morphological mismatch on a par with established categories such as suppletion and syncretism. It is shown that the phenomenon under review can be integrated into the taxonomy of deviations from canonical inflection as proposed within the framework of Canonical Morphology. Empirical evidence from eleven languages of different genetic, geographic and typological background is presented and discussed. Different kinds of AOME are identified. Their interaction with other non-canonical phenomena is discussed additionally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present electrophysiological study investigated irregular versus regular verb form processing in Swedish during reading. In line with previous results from other languages, overregularized verbs, i.e. incorrect irregular stem + regular past tense suffix combinations (e.g. * stjäl + de 'steal + past tense'), elicited a left-lateralized negativity (LAN) relative to correct irregulars (stal 'stole'), suggesting rule-based decomposition of regularly inflected words. Lack of a similar effect for misapplication of the irregular stem formation pattern on regular verbs (e.g. * löft 'lifted' instead of lyfte) suggests the involvement of different processing mechanisms, possibly whole word access, for irregular items, at least to some degree. A P600 showing reprocessing was seen for all incorrect forms. The results add cross-linguistic support for morphological decomposition in the verbal inflection of a language where results from previous neurolinguistic studies of nominal inflection have only suggested the use of full-form access to words. • ERPs of both overregularized and irregularized verbs in Swedish were recorded. • LAN obtained for overregularized verbs suggests rule-based decomposition. • Irregularized verbs elicited only a P600 relative to the correct variant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the notion of paradigm within lexical structures, particularly, but not exclusively, morphological structures. It illustrates that the notion of paradigm includes rather more than is usually considered to fall under this heading. It also shows that, although most of the sub-types of paradigm can be found in both inflection and derivation, there are distinctions between paradigms in the two areas. In either case, their value is related to productivity and to predictability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Most Spanish sex doublets are actually triplets. • Spanish employs three sex coding modes, two lexical and one grammatical. • Syncretism is pervasive in inflectional sex coding. • Sex features may be concealed by gender and declension features. • Genericity is more compatible with plural than with singular number. Abstract Traditional views on how sex is coded in Spanish nouns are revolutionized in this article. To the initial discovery that sex coding yields not only singlets and doublets but also triplets, it is added that Spanish employs three sex coding modes whose productivity correlates with structural cost. The suppletive and the derivational modes require investing in sex-specific morphemes, which makes them costly, whereas the inflectional mode achieves maximal economy by exploiting the exponent of another grammatical category: declension. The transfer of productive sex coding to the grammar is another major innovation. Lexical Specification is appropriate to formalize the suppletive and the derivational modes, but it is defeated by the intricacies of the inflectional mode, for which a semantic process of Sexualization is introduced. It is further uncovered that syncretism is pervasive and obscures the effects of Sexualization partially or fully. Because sex originates at a deeper level than gender and declension, both of the latter categories can conceal it; hence the common misperception that inflectional sex triplets are doublets or even singlets. The analysis also reveals that plurality facilitates genericity and that inflectional markers are generated from features which, for most words, can be grammatically supplied since they are predictable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regularity and irregularity are among the most widely invoked notions in linguistics. The terms are backed up by a long and venerable tradition, and yet (or maybe therefore) different disciplines and authors seem to be using them for very different phenomena and in very different ways. The most frequent usage conflates or replaces other notions such as type frequency, productivity, (non-)concatenative morphology, storage vs. computation, predictability, etc. An assessment of these and other variables in Icelandic verbal inflection reveals that most of them are in practice strongly correlated. I conclude, however, that this is largely unsurprising by virtue of the definitional dependencies holding between those notions. It is empirically doubtful whether there exists a single underlying phenomenon or category which the terms designate. In addition, given their multiple and overlapping senses, and the existence of separate, unambiguous labels for the relevant underlying notions, I contend that the terms 'regular' and 'irregular' should be ideally abandoned in scientific literature in order to avoid ambiguity, sloppy reasoning and misunderstandings and to facilitate cross-linguistic comparison and interdisciplinary dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-linguistic studies show that languages follow clear tendencies in the ordering of morphemes inside a word that have been variously accounted for in the scholarly literature. Morphological structures, however, are not immune to change and the order of morphemes can be altered in the history of a language due to various kinds of processes, thus leading to an unusual order inside the word. The expected order of morphemes can be restored in different ways, one of which is the externalization of inflection. There are interesting examples of this type of processes in the pronominal inflection of the ancient Indo- European languages, which provide relevant information about this type of change. After revising those processes, we focus on the analysis of the *-sm-enlargement -apparently devoid of any semantic content- that appears in the oblique cases of certain Indo-European demonstrative pronouns (such as Skt. tásmai, Goth. Þamma, OPrus. stesmu, etc.) and in some cases of the 1st and 2nd plural personal pronouns (Skt. asmā́n and yuṣmā́n, Gk. hēmeîs and hūmeîs, etc.). We carry out a thorough survey of those forms and provide evidence to support the idea that this -sm-enlargement was originally an emphatic particle that has been 'trapped' between the pronominal stem and the nominal endings and we interpret the data in the light of the processes mentioned above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with linguistic data suggesting that one and the same lexical source of grammaticalization can give rise to different morphological processes, leading not only to compounding and lexicalization but also to derivation, and even to inflection. Based on data from African languages for which little or no earlier written documents are available, the paper argues that even in the absence of historical records it is possible to reconstruct some features of earlier processes of word formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Linguistic Research / Dilbilim Arastirmalari Dergisi is the property of Bogazici University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of the present article is to trace the origin and the evolution of the Tocharian A ending - äṃ , which is the plural marker of a closed class of nouns, whose Tocharian B counterparts are ranged under other inflectional classes. The results of this investigation are twofold: (1) not only is Tocharian A shown to have generally preserved the Proto-Indo-European situation better than Tocharian B, (2) but it is also argued that some members of this closed class are relevant from an Indo-European comparative perspective, since they have refunctionalised the n -form of the PIE * r / n -stems as a plural marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Entropy is adopted to analyze the diachronic change of English inflections. • Modern English is becoming less inflectionally diversified. • The study offers empirical evidence to linguistic theories and hypotheses. Abstract Researchers have long noticed the phenomenon of inflection decay in the evolution of English, which may be driven by the Principle of Least Effort (Millward and Hayes, 2010; Zipf, 1949). However, most studies in this line of research were based on exemplar-oriented observations while few explored the phenomenon from a quantitative perspective. In addition, it remains unclear whether the trend of inflection decay has continued in Modern English. In the present study, an index named Inflectional Entropy was developed to measure the diachronic change of the inflectional trend of Modern English in the 20th century. A trend of inflection decay in Modern English was found based on experiments on several large-scale corpora. The findings provide quantitative evidence to linguistic theories such as Principle of Least Effort, Language Niche Hypothesis (Lupyan and Dale, 2010), and Principle of Entropy Minimization (Ferrer-i-Cancho, 2018). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indefinite and possessive pronouns in German such as ein-es ‘one’ and mein-er ‘mine’ bear strong inflectional endings unlike their determiner counterparts. Following Saab and Lipták (Stud Linguist 70(1):66-108, 2016), I argue that this difference in inflection is due to NP ellipsis, which creates a ‘stranded’ affix that subsequently docks onto the determiner. Assuming that adjectives are reattached by Local Dislocation allows us to account for the descriptive observation that the determiner and pronominal paradigms differ only in the same three exceptional cases where determiners do not bear overt inflection. Furthermore, I discuss how this approach can extend to similar data from Afrikaans, Dutch and English, as well as to split topicalization constructions in German. This analysis provides further support for Saab and Lipták’s proposal that inflection emerges as a direct result of ellipsis, rather than constituting part of the licensing conditions on ellipsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on an English-speaking, aphasic individual (RB) with a spelling deficit more severely affecting orthographically irregular words for which phonologically plausible errors (PPEs) were produced. PPEs were observed for all word forms, with the exception of inflectional suffixes, despite the irregular sound-print mappings of many inflectional suffixes (e.g., walked → /wɔkt/). RB's pattern replicates that reported in Badecker, Rapp, and Caramazza (Badecker, W., Rapp, B., & Caramazza, A. (1996). Lexical Morphology and the Two Orthographic Routes. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 13, 161-176). We extended their investigation by examining RB's spelling of derived words and found a selective deficit for derived words compared to inflected words in writing. This selective deficit did not appear to reflect differences in morphological transparency or suffix frequencies that exist between inflection and derivation. This is the first evidence that distinct neural mechanisms support inflection and derivation in spelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing has long been considered to be dependent on speaking. However, modality-specific dissociations between written and spoken word production imply that word production is supported by distinct neural mechanisms in writing, which can be impaired or spared regardless of the intactness of spoken word production. Rapp et al. (2015). Modality and morphology: What we write may not be what we say. Psychological Science, 26, 892-902 documented a double dissociation where problems with regular inflections were selectively restricted to writing or speaking. We report on two English-speaking aphasic individuals who exhibit this same modality-specific dissociation of inflectional processing, replicating the original findings. We expand on Rapp et al.’s study by examining whether the dissociations observed with regular inflections extend to other morphological forms, such as derivation and irregular inflection. Results showed that the dissociation holds for derivation; however, both participants were impaired with irregular inflections in both output modalities. Implications of these findings for morphological processing and the independence of the orthographic system are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the neuro-cognition of language have provided a strong case for systematic inter-individual variability in event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked during language processing. In the present study, we aimed at extending this evidence to the processing of morphologically complex words. We focused on German plural forms and tested two types of morphological violations: overapplications of regular plural morphemes ('regularizations') and of irregular plural morphemes ('irregularizations'). The group-level results showed a biphasic LAN-P600 response for regularizations, and a P600 for irregularizations. In line with previous reports, our analyses of inter-individual variability suggested that biphasic responses consisting of a negativity followed by a positivity are unlikely to exist at the individual level. Importantly, when analyzing the scalp distribution of ERPs elicited in participants supposed to show negativity-dominant responses, we found this to vary as a function of the type of morphological form: regularizations elicited a left-hemisphere response (LAN), while irregularizations a more widespread negativity (N400). Our results are consistent with dual-route accounts of morphological processing that distinguish between rule-based processing for regular inflection and memory retrieval for irregular inflection. At a more general level, our study shows that complementing group-level results with analyses of inter-individual variability can crucially contribute to a more detailed understanding of brain signatures of language. • Overapplications of regular plural forms elicited a LAN-P600 response at group-level. • Overapplications of irregular plural forms elicited a P600 response at group-level. • Some individuals showed a negativity-dominant, others a positivity-dominant response. • Negativity-dominant individuals showed a lateralized negativity with regularizations. • Analyses of inter-individual variability help to better understand ERP components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is a language that achieves meaning expression through its own form of inflection, focusing on form, and it is one kind of comprehensive language. Analytical language expresses grammatical meaning through function words, word order, and so on. With the development of language, English has a tendency to develop from comprehensive language to analytical language. In this study, it explains the transitional characteristics of English language from comprehensive characteristics to analytical characteristics from following aspects: reduces or even disappears of English morphological change; the ability of English vocabulary meaning expansion; the multi-use of function words; the powerful grammatical function of the article; the fusion of English and Chinese language; the Chinese loanword in English; the Syntactical phenomenon of English and Chinese language, the complexity of English word formation, the theme-highlight sentence pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates morphological awareness for inflected and derived words among high versus low literacy students of English as a foreign language in the 5th, 7th and 9th grades. The study experimented with Arabic L1 students and tested inflectional morphological awareness (IMA) and derivational morphological awareness (DMA) separately using the Word Analogy task. Results demonstrate generally less developed morphological awareness skills in low as against high EFL literacy students. Moreover, significant differences between IMA and DMA in favor on IMA were observed in both groups of students and across all grades. This appears to reflect the distributional and linguistic properties of the two morphological systems. Moreover, though morphological awareness emerged rather early in EFL learning, differences between the two morphological systems decreased, though remained significant, as grade level increased. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings, as well as the potential role of Arabic as L1, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dutch has a construction consisting of a verbal part and something else: ′wɛrksə 'enjoy your work' (< werk 'to work'), ′rujzə 'enjoy your rowing' (< roei 'to row'). According to accepted wisdom, this 'success imperative', as it is known in the literature, consists of an imperative and a pronoun ze 'them'. The paper challenges the standard analysis and investigates two alternatives: an imperative form plus a modal particle, and a verbal stem plus an inflectional ending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Polish auxiliary clitics constitute an interesting set of data which draws attention to cross-linguistic differences among Slavic languages. A general principle for clitic placement in Indo-European languages is the one described by Jacob Wackernagel in his 1892 work. He concluded that clitics appeared in the second position in the clause, after the first word in a sentence. This pattern was true to some degree in Old Church Slavonic1 and still holds for a number of contemporary Slavic languages e.g. Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Czech and Slovak which have second position clitics. Bulgarian and Macedonian have verb adjacent pronominal clitics and Polish has auxiliary clitics (Migdalski 2007, 2010, Pancheva 2005). Also in the older versions of Polish language the above mentioned tendency was strong. In Modern Polish auxiliary clitics attach to the l-participle most frequently. However, one of the unusual properties they possess is the ability to choose almost every clausal element for their host. Polish auxiliary clitics can trigger morphophonological alternations on their hosts, which is an affix-like property; however, at the same time they display clearly clitic-like behaviour when they attach freely to words of any lexical class. The aim of this paper is to present and analyze the morpho-syntactic properties of two kinds of auxiliary clitics: bound and free. The bound clitics carry person-number agreement markers for past tense (the so called 'floating' or 'mobile' inflections). The free clitic is the morpheme by used for conditional and subjunctive mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reply is offered to an article on ''Vocabular Clarity and insular Scandinavian'' by Haukur Þorgeirsson, which appears within the issue. Topics discussed include analysis of Faroese noun inflection such as Faroese genitive, issues of segmentation, and how to deal with zeroes.

Vocabular Clarity is a proposed restriction on the behaviour of inflectional classes and affixes grounded in the idea of synonymy avoidance. The proponents of Vocabular Clarity claim that it holds true for Icelandic and Faroese nominal inflections. In this article, data from these languages is examined and difficulties which have not been previously addressed are pointed out. It is argued that the Vocabular Clarity approach is somewhat vaguely specified. In particular, it needs a clear operational method for distinguishing affixes and stem allomorphy. Without this, it remains uncertain whether it makes any testable predictions. The paper shows that while the theory is intuitively appealing, it is-even under fairly generous assumptions-difficult to reconcile with the insular Scandinavian data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The category of person has both inflectional and lexical aspects, and the distinction provides a finely graduated grammatical trait, relatively stable in both families and areas, and revealing for both typology and linguistic geography. Inflectional behavior includes reference to speech-act roles, indexation of arguments, discreteness from other categories such as number or gender, assignment and/or placement in syntax, arrangement in paradigms, and general resemblance to closed-class items. Lexical behavior includes sharing categories and/or forms and/or syntactic behavior with major lexical classes (usually nouns) and generally resembling open-class items. Criteria are given here for typologizing person as more vs. less inflectional, some basic typological correlations are tested, and the worldwide linguistic-geographical distribution is mapped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction Grammar is a linguistic framework which postulates that all grammar is based on a single, relatively simple entity, the construction, defined as a conventionalized mapping between a form and a meaning. Construction Morphology is a sub-theory of Construction Grammar which deals with the word-level domain. This article shows how Construction Morphology can account for the full range of inflectional types. It argues that Construction Morphology falls into the type of morphological theory which Stump (2001) has designated ‘inferential—realizational’, and which he contends is the only kind of theory that accounts for all the known facts of morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the given article the author speaks about new words that appear in the political discourse and different types of techniques in the process of translation. These two languages belong to the Indo-European family but to different groups. Russian is a Slavic language and English is a West Germanic language which is considered nowadays to be a global lingua franca. At the given moment the English language as well as many other languages, experiences ‘neology boom'. Huge inflow of new words and necessity of their description have caused creation of special branch of lexicology- neology - science about neologisms. The big contribution to neology is brought by the English and American linguists developing lexicographic aspects of neologisms. New words come from a wide range of subject areas, including politics. Politics and current affairs are fertile subject areas for new words. The occurrence of a new word presupposes the struggle of two tendencies: the tendency of development of language and the tendency of its preservation. The world is not reflected directly in language, the world is reflected in consciousness, and the consciousness fixes this reflection in conventional signs. The transformations in translation are needed due to different morphological and grammar structures of these two languages. There is a lot of literature within translation studies about strategies for the translation of problematic terms and concepts. According to our investigation we come to the conclusion that the most convenient and useful ways of translation of neologisms are: transcription and transliteration (transliteration is preferable); loan translation; addition and deletion; explanation and description. Sometimes it is difficult to use only one technique of translation in these cases some techniques are combined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]