Search

This paper presents an overview of the distribution of reflexive-reciprocal syncretism in Eastern Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania. Most Bantu languages encode reflexive and reciprocal constructions by means of two distinct verbal affixes. However, the Tanzanian Eastern Bantu languages under study have developed reflexive-reciprocal syncretism, in which the originally reflexive prefix has developed into a polyfunctional morpheme coding both reflexive and reciprocal constructions, to the detriment of the original reciprocal suffix. In a sample of 79 languages, reflexive-reciprocal syncretism is attested in 27 neighboring languages, thus constituting a clear areal feature. We propose that reflexive-reciprocal syncretism is not a language-internal innovation but was rather adopted from neighboring non-Bantu languages and subsequently spread out to its current distribution. We locate the heart of this contact-induced spread in the Tanzanian Rift Valley, a convergence zone in north-central Tanzania where languages from multiple African language families are spoken and have been in contact for an extensive period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphology plays a crucial role in students' language acquisition. This study delves into the distinctions between inflectional and derivational morphemes, aiming to enhance comprehension of these concepts. By investigating word creation processes and observed alterations, the study illustrates the profound impact of prefixes and suffixes on words, shedding light on their significance in language learning. Students frequently require clarification when distinguishing between inflectional and derivational morphemes during learning. To enhance comprehension of this subject, this present study initially investigated the definitions and subcategories of these two terms outlined in various literary sources. Next, it provided a concise overview of the critical distinctions between inflectional and derivational morphemes. These analyses aim to determine the word created by derivational morphemes, the word formed by inflectional morphemes, the process by which the specified word is formed, and the types of observed alterations. The author implements the descriptive qualitative approach. It will discover that each morpheme possesses its function and influences the base word's meaning, word class, or grammatical function. This study illustrates the impact of prefixes and suffixes on words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with imperfective suffixes in Russian. It argues that there are at least three imperfective suffixes, the progressive morpheme, the iterative marker and the habitual suffix. It is shown that they differ in morphosyntactic and semantic properties. As to their structural properties, the progressive suffix is the lowest marker; the iterative morpheme attaches in a higher position; and the habitual morpheme is structurally the highest element. Thus, the article argues against a unitary approach to the iterative suffix and the habitual morpheme. Semantically, the iterative suffix has a pluractional meaning, whereas the habitual suffix is a vague generic quantifier. As to their phonological properties, the three markers are homophonous; they are spelled out as an -yva- allomorph. In this respect, the suffixes differ from the morphological aspect operator encoding (im)perfectivity in the aspectual head, which is phonologically empty. Further, it is shown that there are certain prefixes in the verbal morphosyntactic structure that are placed between the progressive projection and the iterative projection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many Oceanic languages, middle and reciprocal meanings are expressed by reflexes of Proto-Oceanic *paRi-, a polysemous and polyfunctional prefix with collective, associative, iterative, and reciprocal functions. Traditionally, reflexive constructions in Oceanic languages were marked differently from middles and reciprocals. Where reflexes of Proto-Oceanic *paRi- show a lower productivity or disappeared, Oceanic languages co-opted available morphemes and constructions to express the functions once performed by the prefix. In terms of polysemes, along with the middle/reciprocal one, which is rooted in the history of these constructions, two paths of extension developed over time: (i) from middle/reciprocal to reflexive (with reflexes of Proto-Oceanic *paRi-), and (ii) from reflexive to reciprocal, but different from middle (with innovated markers). The aim of this paper is twofold: (i) to provide a description of middles, reflexives, and reciprocals in Nalögo, a Reefs–Santa Cruz Oceanic language, and (ii) to contribute to the discussion on the typology and diachrony of such constructions within the Oceanic family. In particular, I show that Nalögo has two innovated markers, the reflexive =lëbu (maybe from Proto-Oceanic *[ta]bulo(s) 'turn round, turn back') and the reciprocal - welo. Furthermore, Nalögo displays a so-far unknown path of semantic extension within the Oceanic family: from reflexive to middle. While the reflexive–middle polysemy is widely attested in the languages of the world, it constitutes a typological rarity in Oceanic languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an optimality theoretic analysis, this study offers a conception of the problem of plural realization in Eastern Andalusian Spanish (EAS) where plural suffix /s/ was deleted diachronically that differs from other accounts that assign the EAS plural an underlying suffixal /s/ synchronically. Using alignment constraints, we argue that plural /s/ does not appear in the underlying form synchronically in EAS, but that instead the plural morpheme is represented by a floating [–ATR]PL feature that aligns to the right edge of the word and spreads left. The [–ATR] feature, represented phonetically as a laxing or opening of vowels, applies to all mid vowels, low vowels in word final position, and combines with vowel epenthesis to explain Eastern Andalusian pluralization tendencies in words with final consonants. We discuss the behavior of high vowels, which can be transparent to harmony, and focus in particular on the plural of words that end in a final stressed vowel that have been rarely discussed in the EAS literature. We develop an optimality-theoretic analysis on the Granada variety and extend that analysis to other varieties with somewhat different patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests the morphological gradience theory on Russian prefixed verbs. With the help of a specially designed experiment, I offer evidence that verbs with prefixes that have prepositional counterparts and verbs with prefixes that exist only as bound morphemes reveal significant differences in terms of their morphological decomposition. In the pronunciation of native speakers, there tends to be a significantly longer silent period between prepositional prefixes and bases than between unprepositional prefixes and bases due to the compositional nature of the former and the non-compositional nature of the latter. Drawing on these findings, I contend that Russian prefixed verbs can be analysed as constructional schemas and that the degree of their morphological decomposition depends upon the different levels of activation of their sequential and lexical links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses linking vowels of Hungarian in a paradigm-based approach. We argue that the quality of linking vowels is determined by such a complex interaction of phonological, morphological, and morphophonological factors on both stems and suffixes that attributing them to individual morphemes is not plausible. Instead in the model proposed here linking vowels emerge from the identification of initial and final substrings within and across paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes the analyses of derivational affixes in Ọgba Language. It particularly examines the derivational operations (role) of affixes in the Language. It shows how certain grammatical ideas or notions like reduplication, prefixation and suffixation, interfixation, prefix and miscellaneous coinages and derivative tone are marked by affixes in Ọgba. Some of the derivative affixes (morphemes) in the language used to arrive at this are as follow: ẹ, a, I, o, ọ, u, m, n marking different coinages. Other linguistics processes affected by morphological operations in the language include the derivation of the noun and verb with interfix; coping the consonant of the verb root to construct partial reduplication and tone as derivative morphemes. We believe that this research work would be significant in the development of the Ọgba language, and most pertinently, increase the zeal for the preservation of the language in Rivers State and Nigeria in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on adverbial clause construction in Dobbi language. Dobbi is a member of the Ethio-Semitic subgroup within the Gurage language family which is mostly spoken in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR). Dobbi is one of the least researched and documented languages in the Gurage language family, which is why this study is being done. It is important to note that this study lacks any theoretical foundation, and its data analysis strictly adheres to a descriptive approach. The study relies on the participation of native speakers who were consulted for the collection of data through elicitation techniques. Adverbial clauses can also contribute to the modification of main clauses. Subordinators, acting as logical connectors, generally establish a link with a preceding clause. In the case of Dobbi, there exist two types of subordinators: (1) grammatical morphemes devoid of any lexical meaning and (2) grammatical morphemes carrying lexical content. The usage of a dependent clause verb entails attaching subordinate prefixes and suffixes, along with an agreement marker. Consequently, this research aims to provide an in-depth elaboration on the construction of temporal, spatial, comparative, concessive, and conditional adverbial clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a development of evidential categories derived from a verb related to the auditory sense in the evidential system attested in rGyalthang Tibetan varieties. The language varieties under study possess a morphological distinction of at least five evidentials in the access-to-information category and two evidentials in the source-of-information category. The discussion focuses on one morpheme derived from the Literary Tibetan verb grag 'resound, hear' used for both categories, and examines its process of grammaticalisation and degrammaticalisation. Elicited data illustrate the following functions: (1) grag as a nonvisual sensory evidential suffix that was further degrammaticalised as a copulative nonvisual sensory verb stem; (2) grag as a hearsay marker in a separate syntactic slot, which extended from (1); and (3) grag as a lexical verb stem meaning 'hear' [the common origin to (1) and (2)], which underwent two grammaticalisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effect of prefixation on the syllable and syllabification in Najdi Arabic. It mainly addresses the role of prefixation on the syllable in this variety of Arabic, providing a prosodic representation of it within the context of rule-based phonology. The paper provides a review of the phonological processes that deal with prefixation phenomena in Najdi Arabic, whose domains of application are somewhat subject to syllabification processes and the syllable structure. To achieve this, the paper discusses the three types of prefixation in Najdi Arabic: (a) nominal prefixes, i.e., the definite article/?al/and prepositional prefixes (predominantly fi- 'in', and bi- 'in/at'), (b) the agreement-related prefixes, i.e., verbal prefixes and (c) the adverbial prefix/?ib-/'with', which is prefixed to the host noun and changes its grammatical category to an adverb. The results show that each type of prefixation has its own functions, which are essentially related to the type of the host it attaches to. For instance, the prefix/?ib-/, which is the Najdi Arabic adverbial marker, is a stress-bearing morpheme, given that it is a heavy syllable on its own, which attaches to the initial position at the very beginning of its nominal host. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study of actuality entailments in Balkar (a dialect of Karachay-Balkar, Turkic). The study focuses on the deontic and causal meanings of four morphemes: two suffixes (the causative suffix and the suffix -al ('can/may')) and two verbs (bujur ('order') and qoj ('allow')). In the first half of the paper, I provide empirical support for three generalizations: (a) only causal modals can have actuality entailments (all universal and some existential causal modals); (b) actuality entailments arise whenever a causal modal has a telic interpretation, more precisely, when it is not embedded under an imperfective or a delimitative operator (c) existential but not universal causal modals trigger an anti-actuality entailment under negation. In the second half of the paper, I propose a theory of root modality within the framework of situation semantics. In this framework, root modals describe a situation (the anchor situation) and quantify over situations that stand in a particular semantic relation to it. The proposed Causal Modality Theory (CMT) consists of two assumptions: (a) Causal modals quantify over causal chains initiated by the counterparts of the anchor situation. (b) Some existential causal modals have a conditional presupposition: if any counterpart of the anchor situation caused another situation, then the anchor situation itself caused the same situation. The first assumption explains why all universal causal modals have actuality entailments and why existential causal modals trigger an anti-actuality entailment under negation. The second assumption predicts that some existential causal modals (the ones with the conditional presupposition) also trigger an actuality entailment. CMT treats causal modals as bi-eventive predicates, like (non-culminating) accomplishments. They describe two situations: the anchor situation and a situation caused by it. As a result, causal modals are predicted to behave like (non-culminating) accomplishments, namely, they are predicted to trigger actuality entailments if and only if they are not embedded under an imperfective or a delimitative operator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the morphopragmatic component of the most frequent augmentative suffixes in Mexican Spanish (-ón/a, -azo/a, and -ote/a). It is concluded that augmentative morphemes are polysemic and polipragmatic, and they are mainly used in informal and unplanned contexts. Additionally, it is established that there are significant differences in the distribution of pragmatic functions in the different augmentative exponents, even reaching the exclusive use of the suffix -ón/a for cases of attenuation. The article analyzes cases of augmentatives in Mexican Spanish, specifically in the Michoacan Corpus of Spanish and the PRESEEA corpus of Mexico City, Guadalajara, Mexicali, and Monterrey. [Extracted from the article]

Èwùlù (Igboid: West Benue–Congo, southern Nigeria) is a type 2IU dialect with a rather pervasive advanced tongue root (ATR) effect in its productive affixation morphology. Consequently, all vowels in affixes and those in adjoining root morphemes acquire the same value for ATR feature, with the latter morphemes determining with what specific ATR value the vowels in the former morphemes are specified. This sort of root-controlled ATR/vowel harmony system is yet to be independently explored in western dialects of Igbo (in particular, Èwùlù) spoken in Delta State, Nigeria. The goal of this article, therefore, is to describe the spread of ATR from roots to the adjoining affixes of the endangered dialect, with a view to advancing understanding of a typology of long-distance assimilation of vowel features across a string of vocalic elements in stems despite an intervening string of consonants. In order to insightfully capture the ATR-spread effect from roots to affixes, the study employs autosegmental theory, the mechanism of which uses association lines to link features to their specific melodic units operating independently on different tiers in phonological representations. The finding of this study showed this generalisation: if the dominant harmony feature of a root vowel is [+ATR], the adjoining prefix or suffix takes on the exact feature, otherwise it takes on the opposing feature, [−ATR]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Polish Linguistics is the property of Jagiellonian 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.)

This article presents evidence that alienable versus inalienable possession is distinguished in the morphology of Nuer, a West Nilotic language. Although the distinction in possession type is subtle due to Nuer morphology being mostly non-segmental and is additionally obfuscated by numerous exceptions, we show that Nuer conforms to the well-established typological observation that alienable possessive constructions involve more structural complexity than inalienable ones. We argue that alienable possession is marked on the possessum with a non-segmental suffix owing to the presence of PossP structural layer; in contrast, inalienable possession involves a simple juxtaposition of the possessum and the possessor, which are in a head-complement configuration. These structural assumptions account for several morphological patterns where possessed nouns behave differently based on possession type. We also suggest that the exceptional patterns can be dealt with under a presumption that another non-segmental morpheme – the linker – intervenes between the possessum and the possessor when one of them is larger than a monosyllable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simte is one of the Kuki-Chin languages spoken mostly in Churachandpur and Pherzawl districts of Manipur. This paper attempts to investigate the forms of pronouns and its types in Simte. Data has been collected through elicitation from four Simte elders aged around 50-55. Pronouns in Simte are free forms that function alone to fill the position of a noun phrase in a clause. Since it is a pro-drop language, the pronoun dropping is evident extensively in the reflexive pronoun and reciprocal pronoun. It is realized by the reflexive prefix 'ki-' added to the main verb. The emphatic pronouns, which is a common feature in Kuki-Chin languages, in this language is realized by the suffix '-ma?' added to the subject pronoun. For demonstrative pronouns, Simte employs 'hi' for a proximal distance which is near to a deictic centre while the morpheme 'hu' is employed for a distal one denoting a referent that is located at some distance from the deictic centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine Modern Greek adjectives with the negative prefix α- [a] (also called alpha privative) which are derived from nouns. These formations display formal and semantic properties that cannot be attributed to any overt element of the structure. Following a bottom-up approach, we revisit the question of whether zero morphemes are useful in the realm of derivational morphology. We argue for a zero derivational suffix that accounts for the lexical category and the inflectional properties of the formation and in combination with the negative prefix a- gives a privative reading. As this zero suffix attributes the basic properties of the formations, but it is not part of the overt structure, we raise the question of whether derivational structures can also be exocentric. Many scholars have claimed that exocentricity is a property pertinent only to compounds. However, we argue that there is no reason why the presence of zero morphemes and the notion of exocentricity should be excluded from derivational morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, based on a morpheme segmentation framework, we researched a text keyword extraction method for Uyghur, Kazakh and Kirghiz languages, which have similar grammatical and lexical structures. In these languages, affixes and a stem are joined together to form a word. A stem is a word particle with a notional meaning, while the affixes perform grammatical functions. Because of these derivative properties, the vocabularies used for these languages are huge. Therefore, pre-processing is a necessary step in NLP tasks for Uyghur, Kazakh and Kirghiz. Morpheme segmentation enabled us to remove the suffixes as the auxiliary unit while retaining the meaningful stem and it reduced the dimension of the feature space present in the keyword extraction task for Uyghur, Kazakh and Kirghiz texts. We transformed the morpheme segmentation task into the problem of labeling the morpheme sequences, and we used the Bi-LSTM network to bidirectionally obtain the position feature information of character sequences. We applied CRF to effectively learn the information of the preceding and following label sequences to build a highly accurate Bi-LSTM_CRF morpheme segmentation model, and we prepared morpheme-based experimental text sets by using this model. Subsequently, we used the stem vectors' similarity to modify the TextRank algorithm, subsequent to the training of the stem embedding vector using the Doc2vec algorithm, and then we performed a text keyword extraction experiment. In this experiment, the highest F1 scores of 43.8%, 44% and 43.9% were obtained for three datasets. The experimental results show that the morpheme-based approach provides much better results than the word-based approach, which shows the stem vector similarity weighting is an efficient method for the text keyword extraction task, thus proving the efficiency of morpheme sequence for morphologically derivative languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with a contrastive analysis of mathematical terms, i.e. simple nouns. The research focuses on the term formation within the word class of nouns. Origins of the English and Slovak terms are analysed, described and compared. It is expected that Latin and Greek languages are the original languages of terms in both languages. Furthemore, Slovak terminological equivalents are compared with the English ones in term preference the Latin/Greek term or the native term if exists. According to term formation processes, the following suffixes representing bound morphemes are analysed: -ics, -ity, -ment as well as the Slovak suffixes of the Slovak terms representing possible equivalents. Terms are analysed according to principles for term formation. The following principles should be followed in the formation of terms and appellations, as far as possible and as appropriate to the language: transparency; ⎯ consistency; ⎯ appropriateness, linguistic economy; ⎯ derivability and compoundability; ⎯ linguistic correctness; ⎯ preference for native language. Data are collected from the Slovak National Corpus 10.0, i.e. English –Slovak Parallel Corpus 4.0 en, Slovak –English Parallel Corpus 4.0 sk and the British National Corpus. The research is based on both languages and comparison of terms in both parts of the corpus. Specific trends and tendencies in the strategies of term formation are analysed. Subject of analysis is the terminological level of mathematics in the Slovak and the English language. The methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis are applied, contrastive and comparative approaches are used. Terminology records of terms are examined from lexico - grammatical point of view and on the basis of term-formation tendencies in each analysed language. i.e. Slovak language and English language. Records include entry, identification number, reference to the term, synonyms, subject field, formula, abbreviation, context, reference to the context, definition, reference to the definition. Furthermore, the statistical value ARF (average rate frequency) is taken into consideration in order to identify the frequency of the suffixes. It is a statistical tool representing the average occurrence of words in the corpus. Outcomes on contrastive analysis of terms/simple nouns are discussed and illustrated in the table. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. 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.)

In this paper, we describe a framework for bilingual decoding instruction, with a call for collaborators. Decoding is the ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to pronounce words. We adopt a standard phonological approach for early instruction that could be expanded to include practice with constructive morphemes, like prefixes and suffixes, and reading for meaning. Decades of research have shown that word decoding is a bottleneck in reading comprehension. Unless children develop sight-word reading capabilities, comprehension of texts is severely hampered. The present approach draws on children’s spoken vocabulary knowledge in their native language as a bridge to decoding in a second language. The goal is to develop a tutoring system that draws on current and forthcoming multimedia technologies, and to implement the system in multilingual countries, e.g.: USA, India, Ukraine and across national borders. As a starting point, the authors will use a web platform https://ethicalengineer.ttu.edu designed in 2017 by the USA, Indian, and Ukrainian collaborators, several of them being co-authors of this paper, as a model for the new website for reading instruction. The Ethical Engineer website demonstrates one mechanism through which instructors can reach out to establish connections within and outside their native country around topics and issues of common interest and support educator cooperation and research development. The new model hopes to achieve success comparable to that of the Ethical Engineer. Using computer-based instruction allows for empirical testing of teaching methods, thereby optimizing the educational process. It is important to take advantage of this to ensure the most effective methods are used in early reading instruction for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a corpus study on morphological features of children's books in Turkish. The purpose of the study is to determine derivational and inflectional suffixes in Turkish children books and to identify the common and productive morphemes used in child literature in the light of the information obtained; hence, reach clues about determining the priorities in the process of vocabulary acquisition in children. To achieve this, different literature examples written for children were examined, a corpus was formed by analyzing the derivational and inflectional suffixes, the frequency of use of categories and sub-categories was determined and a comparison between categories was made. The results yielded that inflectional suffixes were used more frequently than derivational suffixes, which could be due to less frequent use of derivational suffixes than inflectional suffixes. Also, derivational suffixes could be less productive in language acquisition process and therefore acquired late. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Humanitas: International Journal of Social Sciences / Uluslararasi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Humanitas: International Journal of Social Sciences 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 article proposes a contribution to the study of the morphology of Sallentinian dialects with particular attention to derivational properties of (nominal and verbal) suffixes. The analysis is carried out with respect to the accentual properties of the morphemes that have been so important over the centuries in the transmission of oral literature (see e.g. the importance of rhymes in versification). Awareness of these relevant facts has given way today to representations that suffer from the underspecification imposed by traditional spelling. Unfortunately, orthographic forms obliterate important distinctions and may lead local authors (when not authoritative Italian morphologists) to often inconclusive mind-bending theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkbilig/Turkoloji Arastirmalari Dergisi is the property of Turkbilig/Turkoloji Arastirmalari Dergisi 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.)

Many different kinds of nominal categorial prefixes are employed in the Bodo, Dimasa, Kokborok and Tiwa languages, such as classifier prefixes, class prefixes, genus prefixes, person possessive prefixes, body part prefixes, nominalizing prefixes, adjectivizer prefixes, etc. Usually, these prefixes have lexical meanings as they are exact or obsolete forms of corresponding existing lexemes. The exact forms are used as free words whereas the obsolete forms are used exclusively as bound morphemes. They may refer to respective classes, genera, species, persons, body/plant parts, etc. because they carry the corresponding meaning. Hence, it is very likely that these prefixes originally belonged to a noun category which have been incorporated to the co-occurring bases; whereas, the other types of categorial prefixes like nominalizer and adjectivizer belong to derivational category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• It is harder to reject complex than simple pseudowords in a lexical decision task. • Morphological processing explains differences between complex and simple pseudowords. • Rejection of low interpretable pseudowords does not require semantic processing. • Children process derivational suffixes in reading pseudowords. • Similar results are observed for children and adults processing simple and suffixed pseudowords. Previous evidence has shown that pseudowords made up of real morphemes take more time to process and generate more errors than pseudowords without morphemes in a lexical decision task. The explanation for these results is controversial because two possible arguments may be posited; the first is related to the morphological composition of the stimuli, and the second is related to the larger semantic interpretability of pseudowords with morphemes in comparison with pseudowords without morphemes (a semantic-based explanation). To disentangle this issue, we conducted an experiment with 92 children and 42 adults. For this purpose, a lexical decision task was implemented, controlling for semantic interpretability while manipulating the morphological status of pseudowords. The results show that the morphological composition of pseudowords generates larger latencies and more errors than pseudowords without morphemes, thereby corroborating that morphemes are activated during pseudoword processing even in the case of young readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voice category is represented by the morpheme method, by means of the suffixes that are brought to verbs/predicates due to the additive structure of Turkish. However, not all of the verbs can enter the system in this way or do not reflect the category of the voice that is intended to be explained. In this case, lexical and syntactic methods come into play. Researches show that most of the verbs in Turkish do not have {-ş} reciprocal suffix, and only some of them present the voice category. This situation necessitates the use of other methods to give the voice category. Idioms with formulaic phrases can also be used for this purpose. Although there is no morphological encoder in it, there are idioms that explain that the action or movement shown by the verb is done together, mutually and jointly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates n-words in Dawurotsuwa, which is classified under the Omotic language family under the Afroasiatic phylum. Speakers of the language are found in Ethiopia, specifically in the southwest part of the country. The study aims to describe n-words in this language, which is one of the scarcely described languages in the area. N-words in the language are formed by suffixing the morpheme - kka/-nne to content question words. These morphemes also mark indefiniteness in the language. These formed n-words express negation in fragmented answers but don't in a complete main clause. In the main clause, they are accompanied by sentential negative markers to transfer negative meanings. In Dawurotsuwa, n-words are not inherently negative. These n-word-forming morphemes -nne and -kka are also used for coordinating conjunction and emphatic coordination, respectively. The morpheme -kka also serves as a scalar focus suffix. They also express a specificity that is indefinite, but when the specificity is definite, the last vowel changes to -o and becomes only -kko. Thus, n-words can be named indefinite pronouns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on visual word identification has extensively investigated the role of morphemes, recurrent letter chunks that convey a fairly regular meaning (e.g., lead-er-ship). Masked priming studies highlighted morpheme identification in complex (e.g., sing-er) and pseudo-complex (corn-er) words, as well as in nonwords (e.g., basket-y). The present study investigated whether such sensitivity to morphemes could be rooted in the visual system sensitivity to statistics of letter (co)occurrence. To this aim, we assessed masked priming as induced by nonword primes obtained by combining a stem (e.g., bulb) with (i) naturally frequent, derivational suffixes (e.g., -ment), (ii) non-morphological, equally frequent word-endings (e.g., -idge), and (iii) non-morphological, infrequent word-endings (e.g., -kle). In two additional tasks, we collected interpretability and word-likeness measures for morphologically-structured nonwords, to assess whether priming is modulated by such factors. Results indicate that masked priming is not affected by either the frequency or the morphological status of word-endings, a pattern that was replicated in a second experiment including also lexical primes. Our findings are in line with models of early visual processing based on automatic stem/word extraction, and rule out letter chunk frequency as a main player in the early stages of visual word identification. Nonword interpretability and word-likeness do not affect this pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the Southern Pomo switch-reference system used in narrative texts. In this genre, switch-reference is shown to be canonical: suffixes applied to dependent verbs indicate whether or not the subject of the dependent verb is shared with a single TAM-bearing main verb. This system is compared with the switch-reference systems (or lack thereof) reported for the other six Pomoan languages. Only Kashaya Pomo is reported to have the same system. The other five Pomoan languages have different systems or none at all. It is asserted that switch-reference was not present in Proto-Pomo and developed in different ways in a subset of offspring languages through entirely internal changes without influence from non-Pomoan language contact. In those languages where switch-reference (whether canonical or not) developed, systems with dedicated bound switch-reference morphemes are hypothesized to have been elaborated around the same two Proto-Pomo suffixes, *-Vn and *-pʰi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Dil Araştırmaları is the property of Journal of Dil Arastirmalari 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.)

Copyright of Estudis Romànics is the property of Institut d'Estudis Catalans 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.)

Future markers from different lexical sources are formed via universal pathways during the process of grammaticalization, which encompasses changes to a lexical item involving desemanticization (loss of meaning), decategorialization (loss of categorical features), and phonetic reduction. This study focuses on the role of grammaticalization in the development of the future marker (b-prefix) from a verb of volition in Najdī Arabic, highlighting the development of the future marker (i.e., “will”) in English from a volition verb. Using synchronic data, the grammaticalization paths of the b-future marker in Najdī Arabic are examined. The article addresses the assumption that the b-prefix derives from two distinct lexical sources: volitional and prepositional, and that the morphological overlap of these two prefixes is a mere overlap. The study concludes that, similar to the grammaticalization processes of the English future markers, the verbal noun of volition has undergone semantic, structural, morphological, and phonological changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morpheme order in Mari declension has been extensively studied in the past, but attempts to explain the large amounts of alternation found here have been constrained by the difficulty of accessing sufficient data to properly elucidate the complexities in this domain. The paper at hand examines the prospect of using the Corpus of Literary Mari, created by an international workgroup around Trond Trosterud and his colleagues and hosted by Giellatekno, and other recently published resources on Mari to efficiently access vast amounts of data to quantitatively study this subject in a manner that had not previously been possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study deals with suffixless nouns in Czech. Two data samples are analysed to demonstrate that suffixless nouns with an action meaning mostly correspond to a pair of verbs with different themes (conveying different grammatical aspects; e.g., skok 'jump' < skočit 'to jump. PFV': skákat 'to jump.IPFV'), whereas non-actional suffixless nouns tend to form a single corresponding verb which uses a prefix to change the aspect (noc 'night' > nocovat 'to stay.IPFV overnight' > přenocovat 'to stay.PFV overnight'). This distinction is applied to a third data sample to determine direction of motivation in pairs of suffixless nouns and verbs. The difference between the deverbal and denominal direction is explained by the part-of-speech category of the root morpheme which is shared by the suffixless noun and the corresponding verb(s). The relations observed are modelled as paradigms recurring across the word-formation system of Czech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article undertakes another analysis of affixation in Polish Sign Language (PJM). This time the question concerns affixes carrying temporal significance. In a previous issue of this journal, negative affixation in PJM was discussed. As it turns out, in addition to these negative morphemes, PJM also possesses suffixes that relate to time: year, day, hour, minute and second. It has been observed that these affixes have undergone partial or complete grammaticalization. As discussed in this paper, there are some restrictions on the use of temporal suffixes, which are caused by numeral incorporation. In addition to these affixes, there are also two morphemes in PJM, which do not represent a time measure. One of these signifies the completion of an educational stage and the other refers to the future performance of an action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses a three-way allomorphic pattern of neuter-gender stems in Czech. We argue that there are two surface alternations involved in the three-stem pattern, i.e. a-e and t-zero, and that the two alternations are driven by two distinct mechanisms, i.e. suppletion and regular phonological computation respectively. We postulate two suppletive stem-building suffixes that are lexically connected via the Nanosyntactic tool of pointers. We argue that the default a-initial suffix spells out the neuter gender and its suppletive e-initial variant is a portmanteau morpheme of the (neuter) gender and (singular) number. We further propose that the suppletive suffix is stored with a floating consonant that does not surface word-finally due to regular phonological computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has shown that seemingly identical suffixes such as word-final /s/ in English show systematic differences in their phonetic realisations. Most recently, durational differences between different types of /s/ have been found to also hold for pseudowords: the duration of /s/ is longest in non-morphemic contexts, shorter with suffixes, and shortest in clitics. At the theoretical level such systematic differences are unexpected and unaccounted for in current theories of speech production. Following a recent approach, we implemented a linear discriminative learning network trained on real word data in order to predict the duration of word-final non-morphemic and plural /s/ in pseudowords using production data by a previous production study. It is demonstrated that the duration of word-final /s/ in pseudowords can be predicted by LDL networks trained on real word data. That is, duration of word-final /s/ in pseudowords can be predicted based on their relations to the lexicon. [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.)

Turkic has many structure from micro level to macro level in terms of having the function or meaning content at the level of phoneme, suffix, word, phrase, sentence and more. Structure knowledge answers how the relevant elements gather around a principle, a rule. The structure of the suffix is the aspect that determines the position and function of this element in the language with the word. There is a structure that structures each suffix with other suffixes in a syntagm and paradigm contrast order. On the other hand, there is no own morphemes in the suffixes as in the words. Since it is a functional element, it determines all the allomorphs it has / may have, the relationship with the word. However, the origin and life of the suffix needs a diachronic and synchronic examination. The suffix + SIrA- is a morpheme that has lived for centuries with its various main and the other functions, from the Orkhon Inscriptions, the first examples of which we have seen, to the examples in contemporary Turkish dialects. In our study, a detailed structure, origin, function examination was made and the content of the suffix was presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I give an account of degree achievements in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I focus on degree achievements that are derived from gradable bases by means of the verbal suffix -cha, e.g., llusk'a-cha-ña 'to straighten' or q'añu-cha-ña 'to dirty'. I provide arguments suggesting that Aymara should be analyzed as a degree language (Bochnak in Semant Pragmat 8(6):1–48, 2015b). I further propose an analysis of Aymara degree achievements in terms of a differential measure function (Kennedy and Levin, in: McNally, Kennedy (eds) Adjectives and adverbs: syntax, semantics and discourse. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 156–182, 2008) The main point argued for in this paper is that this language has two degree morphemes in competition (Heim, in: von Stechow, Wunderlich (eds) Semantik: ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp 487–535, 1991) combining with degree achievements, namely, a covert verbal positive morpheme v.pos and the overt morpheme -su. The latter restricts the standard of comparison to change where maximal values are reached, so it is preferred over v.pos when such values are targeted. v.pos is thus felicitous when the maximum is not reached. I propose an initial typology that distinguishes how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the paper was to investigate whether morphological units – stems and suffixes – influence orthographic processing by modulating visual attention demands to the task. Orthographic processing was measured with a visual one-back task requiring letters to be detected within pseudowords not including stems/suffixes, or containing real stems or real suffixes. Fourth grade children (between 9.5 and 10.5 years old) who read in a transparent orthography of a morphologically rich and agglutinative language (Basque) were tested. The results showed that the presence of morphemes in the strings did not improve letter detection performance though it slightly modulated the distribution of visual attention, showing a bias toward the processing of central letters in the presence of a stem. We suggest that the presence of highly regular and recurrent structures prioritizes stem identification, which when achieved, reduces visual attention deployment across the remaining letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monolingual English speakers and Chinese–English bilinguals were compared on their lexical decision performance in a masked priming experiment where the prime and target ended in the same embedded word. All primes were nonwords where the letters in addition to the embedded word did not form a morpheme (e.g., the sab of sabagree or the ple of plerough). The targets were of two types. In one condition they were prefixed words (as in sabagree–DISAGREE) and in the other they were nonprefixed words (as in plerough–THOROUGH). With an unrelated prime as the baseline, the native speakers showed priming for the prefixed words but not the nonprefixed words, whereas the nonnative speakers showed priming for both types of word. It was concluded from these results that nonnative speakers focus more on the individual letters of a complex word than do native speakers when reading, and the specific processing mechanisms that might underlie this are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nasal harmony in Paraguayan Guarani spreads mostly leftward in a morphological word. This regressive nasalization is triggered by a phonologically nasal consonant or stressed nasal vowel and does not affect voiceless stops. A limited process of progressive nasalization affects morpheme-initial voiceless stops across a morpheme boundary. Many forms that include a causative prefix show this kind of progressive nasalization. However, this nasal spread lacks any obvious nasal trigger and does not occur consistently. In this paper, I propose an explanation of these cases as vestiges of earlier phonological rules from pre-Proto-Tupi-Guarani but not active in Paraguayan Guarani, followed by the emergence of a regressive oralization rule and ending in a reanalysis of the basic form of the causative prefix. In so doing, I will provide a revised sequence of changes involving contour allophones in the reconstruction of Proto-Tupi-Guarani (PTG). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is concerned with derivational morphemes. The derivational morpheme is divided into two types, namely the prefix and the suffix, both of which are found in Donald Trump’s inauguration speech. In conducting this research, descriptive qualitative methods were used. The data consisted of transcripts of Donald Trump’s inaugural speech analyzed based on the derivational morpheme. The results of data analysis showed that there were 17 prefixes found in Donald Trump’s inauguration speech (27%), which can be divided into six types: re-, un-, en-, dis-, im-, and pre. There were 46 suffixes found in Donald Trump’s inaugural speech (73%). So, in total there were 63 derivational morphemes and the suffix was more dominant than the prefix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suffixes have been shown to be recognized as units of processing in visual word recognition and their identification has been argued to be position-specific in skilled adult readers: in lexical decision tasks suffixes are automatically identified at word endings, but not at word beginnings. The present study set out to investigate whether position-specific coding can be detected with a letter search task and whether children already code suffixes as position-specific units. A preregistered experiment was conducted in Italian in which 3rd-graders, 5th-graders, and adults had to detect a target letter that was either contained in the suffix of a pseudoword (e.g., S in flagish) or in a non-suffix control (e.g., S in flagosh). To investigate sensitivity to position, letters also had to be detected in suffixes and non-suffixes placed in reversed position, that is in the beginning of pseudowords (e.g., S in ishflag vs. oshflag). Results suggested position-specific processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes that develop throughout reading development. However, some effects were weak and only partially compatible with the hypotheses. Therefore, a second experiment was conducted. The effects of position-specific suffix identification could not be replicated. A combined analysis additionally using a Bayesian approach indicated no processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes in our task. We discuss potential interpretations and the possibility of letter search being unsuited to investigate morpheme processing. We connect our example of failed self-replication to the current discussion about the replication crisis in psychology and the lesson psycholinguistics can learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study on two kinds of nominal expressions containing the morpheme -kin, the pronouns composed of a stem (jo-, ku-, mi-) and the suffix -kin, and the NP=kin construction in which -kin is a clitic focus particle attached to an independent noun. The starting point is the assumption that the pronouns with the suffix -kin have something in common with the NP=kin construction with respect to their referential properties. The analysis is based on the concept of scanning (Fr. parcours), defined as designating an operation that consists in going through items of a class without stopping at anyone. In addition to the simple pronouns jokin 'something', kukin 'each one', attention is paid to the two-part expressions with distributive meaning, such as milloin mikin 'at different times, different things'. The paper aims to show that the concept of scanning makes it also possible to shed light on the meaning and discourse functions of the NP=kin construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Verba: Anuario Galego de Filoloxia 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.)