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Examination Study Questions

Ling 420, Morphology

Be prepared to give brief answers to the following questions. (A single asterisk [*] preceding a question indicates that it will not be covered by the midterm, but may well be covered by the final examination.

• What are the significant characteristics of an agglutinating language?
• How does a fusional language differ?
• Traditional grammars usually present Latin verb conjugations using a combination of two typefaces, with roman type for the first part of each word-form, and italic type for the ending, thereby implying a certain segmentation. If you were to segment the paradigms found for the Present Active Indicative in A Student's Latin Grammar (Cambridge U. Press, 1992) along these lines, how should the results be characterized?
• Is a different segmentation of the same paradigms possible that would have a single set of endings for all conjugations? How should it be characterized?
• Which of the three models of grammatical description referred to by Hockett (1954) do the results of the preceding segmentations conform to most closely? What would be necessary to convert them to either of the other two models?
• Distinguish among five views of the morpheme: those held by Bloomfield, post-Bloomfieldians, Robins, Aronoff, and the more abstract view held by certain linguists today.
• *The solution to Latin 10 presented on the Web gives a list of stems and variants, two tables of suffixes, and a small set of sandhi rules. What gave rise to the necessity for most of the stem variants and sandhi rules?
• What alternations are apparent in the nominative and genitive singular forms of the third declension Latin noun ge:ns, gentis 'race' f.? Is there evidence that either is automatic?
• Using your copy of A Student's Latin Grammar (Cambridge U. Press, 1992) and the vocabulary that will be furnished together with the sentences, be prepared to translate given Latin sentences. Be prepared also to identify significant points of grammar that a given sentence exemplifies, and to identify the instances of agreement.
• By what criteria, if any, are the following words compounds: breakfast, cupboard; "sparrow grass," bridegroom; lady, lord; madman, postman; socio-economic, Francophile; heir apparent; look up, make out (= 'perceive'); Main Street, Seventh Avenue. Add to this list the 30 words of 10b. in the Study Questions over Matthews Ch. 5.
• Distinguish between endocentric and exocentric compounds in English, giving examples.
• Why does Matthews prefer the term "word-formation" for what others call "derivation?"
• What is the status of gender in Italian nouns? In Italian adjectives?
• Describe Turkish vowel harmony as precisely as possible in a brief prose statement. Be sure to distinguish between the patterns of high-vowel suffixes and low-vowel suffixes, and identify precisely the location of the vowel with which a suffix vowel harmonizes.
• How are Welsh nouns inflected for possession? What processes are involved? Are they phonological or morphological?
• Where both infixation and reduplication appear to have been involved in determining the shape of certain Tagalog verb forms such as the following, which process appears to occur first, and why? hinuhugasan 'is/are washing', pinapagaralan ~ pinagaaralan 'is/are studying X', tinatagalog 'is/are saying X in Tagalog', ikinakatakbo ~ ikinatatakbo 'is/are causing to run'. How is the portion to be reduplicated in such forms determined? What accounts for the variation in the forms given here?
• What is the significance of the distribution of the variation to be found in the Tagalog exercise? What sociolinguistic questions are raised by this variation?
• * The instructions in several of our problems that deal with paradigms recommend the use of an operation known as "matrix permutation" as part of arriving at an optimal solution. What is the purpose of this operation, and how does it help the analysis?
• *A number of the 3rd Declension Latin nouns we have examined show syncretism between the dative and ablative plural forms in their paradigm, with identical forms both in -ibus. According to markedness theory, what does this tell us about the semantic distinction between dative and ablative? Neuter nouns show syncretism between the nominative and accusative. What does this tell us about the semantic distinction between nominative and accusative?
• *Syncretism parallel to that between the dative and ablative often does not take place in the singular. What does the fact that this syncretism occurs in the plural but not in the singular tell us about the plural?
• *Historically, English dive was a weak verb that formed its past by regular -ed suffixation. For many speakers today, dive has become a strong verb, with the past tense dove. How might this have come about? (Hint: consider verbs such as connive, drive, derive, strive, thrive, ride, abide, decide, oblige.)
• *In comparing Latin momordi: 'I bit, I have bitten' with mordeo: 'I bite', and monui: 'I advised, I have advised' with moneo: 'I advise', etc., what are some of the problems in identifying a 'perfect' morpheme of the Bloomfieldian or Neo-Bloomfieldian variety?
• *Given a copy of the diagram used as a basis for Latin 5, be able to locate within stem, increment, suffix, or some combination of the three, where the exponents of a given feature--such as +future, +past, +perfect, +subjunctive, +passive, +speaker, +addresses, +plural (person)--are located.
• *When presented with pairs of present and perfect stems for a given Latin verb, be prepared to identify each of the processes involved in forming the perfect stem from the present stem that should be indicated somewhere in a sort handle, if one were sorting a number of such pairs into types.
• Distinguish between phonological processes and morphological processes. Give examples.
• *Give four answers to the question, "What are words?"
• *Be able to match the following terms with their definitions, or with language examples. Furthermore, when an example of the phenomenon from a given language is presented for matching, be able to indicate whether the example involves Inflection (I), Compounding (C), Derivation [or another type of word-formation other than compounding] (D), or whether these distinctions are Not Applicable (NA).
  • ablative
  • ablative absolute
  • ablaut
  • accusative
  • acronym
  • active
  • affix
  • agglutinating type of language
  • allomorphy
  • alternation
  • *analogical change
  • *analogy
  • analytic type of language
  • *antepenult
  • *apocope
  • aspect
  • *assimilation, progressive
  • *assimilation, regressive
  • automatic alternation
  • back-formation
  • base
  • blocking
  • Bloomfield's morpheme
  • case
  • **cohesiveness; counterexample of same
  • complementary distribution
  • compound words
  • conjugation
  • consonant ablaut
  • conversion
  • dative
  • declension
  • deponent verb
  • diacritic feature
  • *dissimilation
  • distribution
  • double articulation of language
  • * ellipsis
  • * elsewhere condition
  • enclitic
  • endocentric compound
  • *epenthesis
  • *equipollent terms
  • *etymological information
  • exocentric compound
  • *exponence
  • *facultative expression
  • *fixed ordering; counterexample of same
  • formative
  • fusion
  • fusional type of language
  • gender
  • genitive
  • gerund
  • gerundive
  • *grammatical representation
  • grammatical word
  • haplology
  • homonym
  • idiom
  • imperative
  • * inalienable possession
  • **inchoative
  • * incorporating type of language
  • * index of fusion
  • * index of synthesis
  • indicative
  • infinitive
  • infixation
  • inflection
  • inflectional classes
  • isolating
  • Item and Arrangement model
  • Item and Process model
  • jussive
  • *leading form
  • lexeme
  • *locative
  • *marked term
  • metathesis
  • *minimal free form; counterexample of same
  • modern morpheme
  • modification
  • mood
  • morphological conditioning
  • morphological processes
  • morphology
  • morphophonemics
  • morphosyntactic category
  • morphosyntactic property
  • X neologism
  • *nonrecursion; counterexample of same
  • neutralization
  • *nominative
  • number
  • paradigm
  • *parasynthesis
  • partial reduplication
  • participle
  • passive
  • *periphrasis
  • phon(a)estheme
  • phonological conditioning
  • phonotactics
  • popular etymology
  • *polysynthetic type of language
  • *portmanteau morph
  • Post-Bloomfieldian morpheme
  • prefix
  • primary articualtion of language
  • principal parts
  • *privative terms
  • *proclitic
  • productivity
  • *progressive assimilation
  • *radical
  • recurrent alternation
  • reduplication
  • Robins's morpheme
  • *root
  • sandhi
  • secondary articulation of language
  • stem
  • *strong morphological class
  • subjunctive
  • *subjunctive vowel switch
  • suffix
  • suppletion
  • *syncope
  • *syncretism; its relation to markedness
  • *syntax
  • tense
  • tmesis
  • umlaut
  • *unmarked term
  • vocative
  • voice
  • vowel ablaut
  • vowel harmony
  • *vowel reversal
  • *weak morphological class
  • *Word and Paradigm model
  • word-form
  • word-formation
  • zero allomorph
  • *zero expression

  Note

  What constitutes agreement in Latin. Ch. 17 in SLG lists four types of agreement.:

  1. agreement (in number) between nominative noun and verb
  2. agreement (in case, gender, and number) between noun and adjective
  3. agreement (in case) between one noun . . . and another
  4. agreement (in gender and number) between noun (or pronoun) and relative pronoun

  The last is probably over-specific in stipluating a relative pronoun, and should be broadened to include the agreement existing generally between pronouns and their antecedents, as for example in the following sentence, where ei:s 'them' agrees with its antecedent pueri: 'boys' in gender and number. (Ei:s, as a form of is, is a pronoun, but not a relative pronoun.)

  senecs cuius pecu:niam pueri: inve:nerant gra:tia:s macsima:s ei:s e:git.
  'The old man whose money the boys had found gave them very great thanks.'

  Note that in 2. the word "adjective" should be interpreted as including participles. That is, particples agree with the nouns they modify, and this includes perfect passive participles that help make up the "perfect passive" forms of verbs. Thus, when perfect passive participles function together with forms of sum 'be' to make up the "perfect passive" forms of verbs, such participles agree with the nominative subjects of these periphrasitc verbs in person, number, and gender, inflected like adjectives of the 1-2 ("first and second declension") variety.

  Some students have wondered why 1. above does not also stipulate "in person" as well as "in number," since verbs in most of the sentences we are translating are inflected for "3sg" or "3pl," not simply "sg" or "pl." The answer here seems to be that the agreement is only in number because the noun subjects are not inflected for person, and agreement implies that both agreeing words should be inflected for the feature in common. (Although a case could be made for pronouns such as ego, tu:, is, no:s, vo:s being inflected paradigmatically for person, common nouns can hardly be fit into such a scheme and declared as all being marked for 3rd person.)

  What does not constitute agreement in Latin? Certain types of "governance" do not:

  To say that a certain verb requires its object to be in the ACCUSATIVE case, while another verb requires its object to be in the DATIVE does not constitute agreement, because the verbs are not themselves inflected for these cases. Agreement exists when two words are inflected for a feature in common (by design and not by accident).

  The same can be said for a preposition that requires its object to be in a certain case. The object will be inflected for that case, but not the preposition. There can be no agreement unless both are overtly inflected for a feature in common.

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