Week 10: Theoretical Issues

LINB10 WINTER 2023

SHOHINI BHATTASALI
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SCARBOROUGH
 • Online Quiz 5 (last one!)
• Due March 23 (Thursday)

• Final exam: April 14

Announcements
 • Morphosyntax

• Voice:
• Passive voice
• Antipassive voice
• Causative voice
Recap • Applicative voice

• Noun incorporation

• Clitics, phrasal verbs, phrasal

compounds
• Morphology or syntax?
 • How can we characterize morphological
rules?
Today's
• What are some theoretical
topics controversies?
• Competition, blocking, analystical
paradoxes, semantic precision
What are morphological rules?

• When a complex word is formed, what exactly happens:

• In the native speaker’s mind? What is their linguistic faculty doing?
• What is stored? vs. what are the processes?
What are morphological rules?

View 1
• all morphemes are stored
• rules arrange morphemes into
words
• all morphemes, both free and
bound, are stored as
independent items in the lexicon

Item-and-Arrangement theories
What are morphological rules?
View 1
• all morphemes are stored
• rules arrange morphemes into
words
• all morphemes, both free and
bound, are stored as independent
items in the lexicon
Item-and-Arrangement theories
View 2
• free morphemes are stored
• rules realize derived/inflected
forms
• only underived lexemes are stored
as independent items in the lexicon
Item-and-Process / Word-and-
Paradigm theories
What are morphological rules?

• View 1 vs. View 2:

• What is stored vs. What are the rules?

• Why does it matter what morphological rules look like?

• prediction for “ideal language types”
• acquisition / learnability
Lexical integrity
• Is morphology a self-contained subsystem in the human language faculty?
• View 1: no syntactic rule can refer to elements of morphological structure.
• first, morphology forms words > then, syntax forms sentences from those words
• “assembly line” / “no-peeking-down”
Lexical integrity
• Is morphology a self-contained subsystem in the human language faculty?
• View 1: no syntactic rule can refer to elements of morphological structure.
• first, morphology forms words > then, syntax forms sentences from those words
• “assembly line” / “no-peeking-down”

morphology??

the “Y model” of the human language faculty (Chomsky 1995)

Lexical integrity
• Is morphology a self-contained subsystem in the human language faculty?
• View 1: no syntactic rule can refer to elements of morphological structure.
• first, morphology forms words > then, syntax forms sentences from those words
• “assembly line” / “no-peeking-down”

morphology??

A greenerhouse vs. A greener house

Lexical integrity
• Is morphology a self-contained subsystem in the human language faculty?
• View 1: no syntactic rule can refer to elements of morphological structure.
• first, morphology forms words > then, syntax forms sentences from those words
• “assembly line” / “no-peeking-down”

• Why might phrasal compounds pose a problem for this view?

‘the I-don’t-care-I-just-want-an-A attitude
towards university education’
morphology??
Lexical integrity
• Is morphology a self-contained subsystem in the human language faculty?
• View 2: the boundary between morphology and syntax is not absolute
• more work for theory!
• Distributed Morphology (DM): syntax and morphology are one and the same
system

morphology??
Lexical integrity
• Is morphology a self-contained subsystem in the human language faculty?
• View 2: the boundary between morphology and syntax is not absolute
• more work for theory!
• Distributed Morphology (DM): syntax and morphology are one and the same
system

• what is the difference? morphology??

• languages do not always maintain
strict word-sentence distinction!
 Lexical integrity
• Is morphology a self-contained subsystem in the human language faculty?
• View 2: the boundary between morphology and syntax is not absolute
• more work for theory!
• Distributed Morphology (DM): syntax and morphology are one and the same
system

• what is the difference?

• languages do not always maintain
strict word-sentence distinction! morphology??

CHUKCHI:
t-ə - meyŋ-ə- levt -pəɣt -ə-rkən
1-SG.SUBJ- great- -head-hurt- -PRES.1
I have a fierce headache.
So far

• Challenge 1: What are morphological rules?

• Challenge 2: Lexical integrity

Next:
Challenge 3: Non-deterministic processes e.g., “competition,” “affixal
rivalry,” etc.
Non-deterministic processes

• Demonyms: a noun used to denote natives or inhabitants of a

particular area/city/country

• E.g.: New Yorker to describe someone from New York

 Activity 1
Pair up with a classmate & write down the demonyms of the following places:

Canada Toronto Ontario Michigan

Haiti Milan Pittsburgh Shanghai

Karachi Hong Kong Israel Delhi

Berlin Dhaka Iceland Uzbekistan

Non-deterministic processes

• whether certain morphological processes can and do occur is black-

and-white → non-deterministic
• Again: more work for theory!
Non-deterministic processes

• whether certain morphological processes can and do occur is black-

and-white → non-deterministic
• Again: more work for theory!
• common non-deterministic morphological patterns in English
• nominalization of adjectives
• nominalization of verbs
Non-deterministic processes

• different underlying mechanisms for non-determinism:

• blocking the existence of process A blocks the application of process B
• competition various plausible forms compete against each other
Analytical Paradoxes

• Also referred to bracketing paradox

blue eye -d
un- happy –er
Analytical Paradoxes

• Also referred to bracketing paradox

blue eye -d
un- happy –er

• the semantic interpretation or the phonological organization of a

word seems to conflict with its internal structure.

• Multiple possible analyses, but each runs into a certain non-trivial

issue
• Chapter gives details about each
• Ongoing, unresolved debate
Semantic precision

• Affixal polysemy (Week 3)

• the tendency for affixes to have several closely related meanings
Semantic precision

• Affixal polysemy (Week 3)

• the tendency for affixes to have several closely related meanings

The reason that -er and -ant

display the range of meanings is
because they are linked to the
subject argument of the verb
What is theory?

• These topics barely scratch the surface of theoretical questions that

linguists can raise about morphology.

• What is important to keep in mind, though, is that there are many

theoretical issues that come up only when we look beyond English to
the analysis of other languages.
 • Are the following words bracketing
paradoxes?

Activity 2 three-wheeler
whitewashed
transformational grammarian
nuclear physicist
 • The suffix -ee is usually said to form ‘patient
nouns’, that is, nouns that denote the person
who undergoes or is subject to the action
denoted by the base verb. Consider the following
examples; does -ee exhibit affixal polysemy?

Activity 3 employee
nominee
standee
escapee
addressee
amputee
 Challenges:

• What are morphological rules?

Summary • Lexical integrity

• Non-deterministic processes

• Analytical paradox

• Semantic precision
Final Exam structure
Worth 35%

Total time: 2 hours

• Please confirm with UTSC AccessAbility if you need accommodations

• Ask for Scantron!

15 multiple choice questions; 1 point each

• Similar to online quiz

2 data analysis questions; 10 points each

• Similar to problem sets

 • Participate in experiments
through SONA

Extra-credit • 1.5 credit hours = 2% on final

opportunity course grade

• Further information posted on

Quercus!
 • Week 11:
• Morphology & language change

• Week 12:
• Review
For next time: • Please bring in questions or post on
Piazza
• Final exam will cover all topics from
Week 1 onwards

• Online Quiz 5 due this Thursday

• Students only have 3 late days