Transcript Слайд 1 - Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy

Qualitative morphological
complexity:
The case of Athabaskan
Andrej A. Kibrik
([email protected])
Growth and Decline of Morphological Complexity
April 27, 2012, Leipzig
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Athabaskan
 About 40 languages
in western North
America
2
Most examples: Upper
Kuskokwim (Central Alaska)
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Welcome to Nikolai
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Crash introduction

Quantitative complexity

Qualitative complexity
 Long words
 Many categories





Almost exclusive prefixation (unusual)
Derivation and inflection are intermingled
One grammeme is conveyed by several devices
Complex morphophonemics: s+l > j
...............................
5
“Standard average Athabaskan”
verb template
 Between 10 and 20 positions/zones
 Lexical and derivational
 Mixed/equivocal
 Inflectional
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Qualitative complexity in
Athabaskan



Entangled morphological structure
Many-to-many correspondences between
meanings and forms
Extreme anti-agglutination

Case studies:
1. Vacillating perfective
2. Travesty inceptive
3. Chameleonic root
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1. Vacillating perfective: *N- > eImpf
Pf
Ø – gh ‘cry’
1Sg Œi-s-trih
1Sg ghi-s-trak
n–n
‘swim’
1Sg ni-s-mash
1Sg ni-s-manh
Ø–z
‘get it’
1Sg Œu-s-nesh
3Sg Œi-trih
1Sg Œu-zi-snech
3Sg gh-e-trak
3Sg Œe-mash
3Sg n-e-manh
3Sg Œu-nesh
3Sg Œu-z-nech
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gh-..-trak ‘cried’
1Sg
ghi-s-trak
2Sg
gh-e-n-trak
3Sg
gh-e-trak
1Pl
ts’i-gh-e-trak
2Pl
gh-wh-trak
3Pl
hi-gh-e-trak
PF “displaced” by
the pre-root
pronoun
PF shows up in
the presence of
a pre-root
pronoun
PF present in
the absence
of a pre-root
pronoun
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gh-..-di-yish ‘breathed’
1Sg
ghi-s-di-yish
2Sg
gh-e-n-di-yish
3Sg
ghi-di-yish
1Pl
ts’o-di-yish
2Pl
gh-wh-di-yish
3Pl
ho-di-yish
PF suddenly
shows up
PF absent in
the presence
of the ditransitivity
indicator
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Vacillating perfective:
conclusions
 Intricate behaviour of the perfective morpheme
 Absent in the z-perfective conjugation
 Absent in the low transitivity verbs
These two features can possibly be explained by
semantic transitivity in the vein of Hopper and
Thompson (1980), but not fully
 Displaced by some personal pronouns, but not all
Can be explained by formal structure, but not fully
 Homophonous to other, entirely different, morphemes in
the same part of the verb word
Low predictability on the basis of either semantic or
formal factors
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2. Travesty inceptive
 Conjunct derivational prefixes: “qualifiers”
(Kari 1989)
 Surprisingly monotonous in structure:
mostly n- and d Some other qualifiers, but incomparably
rarer
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Koyukon (Jette and Jones
2000)
dgender (phytogenic)
‘extend in line, series’
onomatopoetic, ‘be
sound of’
ngender (roundish)
‘flying, going at high
speed’
‘assume sitting, lying
position’
‘in two pieces’
errative, ‘accidentally’
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Navajo (Young, Morgan, and
Midgette 1992: 851-853)
d- (14+ different prefixes)
n- (7+ different prefixes)
movement of arms/legs
terminative
relaxation, opening, closing, addition or
reduction
spherical
elongated object
mind, mental processes
refuge, relief
sight, vision
fire, light
weak, sick, exhausted
mouth, stomach, food, smell, noise, speech
color, size, weight, taste, appearance
pain, hurt
.......................
holiness, faith, respect
color
tilting, slanting, leaning
a “catch-all” for di-prefixes that, even
speculatively, cannot be assigned to one of
the foregoing categories
a category in which are placed sundry
ni-prefixes that cannot be readily 14
identified, even speculatively...
Inceptive
 ghi-s-mał ‘I am swimming’


Prog-1Sg-swim[Prog]
ta-zi-s-manh ‘I am starting to swim’
Inc-Conjug-1Sg-swim[Pf]
ti-ghi-s-mał ‘I will swim’
Inc-Prog-1Sg-swim[Prog]
 di-ti-ni-ghi-ł-dey’ ‘I will write’
dQual-Inc-nQual-Prog-[1Sg-]TI-write
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Navajo inceptive
 d-é-saał ‘I am going to dash’
Inc-1Sg-TI:fly[Pf]
• (Young and Morgan 1987: 309)
 di-ni-sh-dááh ‘I am getting stuck’

dQual-nQual-1Sg-TI:walk[Impf]
di-dí-née-sh-dááł ‘I will get stuck’
dQual-Inc-nQual:Prog-1Sg-TI:walk[Prog]
• (Young and Morgan 1987: 323-325)
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Travesty inceptive:
conclusions

Already very high polysemy of qualifiers in general
Athabaskan
 Significant increase in polysemy in Navajo: the highly
productive and semantically transparent inceptive prefix
merges, violating the principles of historical phonology,
with the vast range of other, etymologically unrelated,
prefixes
 Impossible to define the qualifier positions in
semantic/functional terms
 These are positions for various conjunct derivational
prefixes
 In an extreme, we face the “d-position” and the “nposition”
It IS complexity: opacity of form, entropy
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3. Chameleonic root
“Mode” ‘paddle’
‘PL move’
Impf
2Sg n-e-kash
‘arrive paddling’
2Pl n-wh-dał
‘you guys arrive’
Pf
3Sg n-e-kanh
3Pl hi-n-e-datł’
‘he arrived paddling’
‘they arrived’
Prog
3Sg to-kał
‘he will paddle’
3Pl h-o-dił
‘they are walking’
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Suffixation treatment (Axelrod)
Neuter
Transitional
Momentan.
Peramb
Continuative
Persistive
Reversative
Durative
Consecutive
Repetitive
Directiverepet
Semelfactive
Bisective
Conclusive
Impf
nh
h
sh
sh
Þ
h
h
Þ
Œ
sh
sh
Œ
Þ~nh
Þ
Pf
Œ
t~Œ
nh
nh
nh
h
nh
Œ
Œ
ch
Œ
Œ
Þ~nh
nh
Prog=Opt
Œ
h
È
ch
È
h
h
Œ
Œ
ch
ch
Œ
Þ~nh 19
È
If you think this is not
chameleonic enough
 One Koyukon
verb root
(Jette and
Jones 2000:
17)
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Chameleonic root:
conclusions


Diachronically:
 suffixation, dependent on “mode” and lexical aspect
Synchronically:
 suffixes can only be partly discerned
 extreme allomorphy of verb root
 allomorphy is irregular

Many-to-many correspondences between meanings and
forms
 One meaning (e.g. imperfective) is conveyed by many suffixes
 One suffix corresponds to several mode-aspect combinations
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What all this is good for?
 Awe and pity
 General theory of morphological
complexity
 Typology of morphological complexity
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Theory:
Kinds of simplicity vs. complexity

Quantitative simplicity vs. complexity

Number of relevant phenomena (e.g.
Nichols 2009)
 Qualitative simplicity vs. complexity
 Transparency vs. entaglement of structure
 Roughly, one-to-one vs. many-to-many
correspondence between meanings and
forms
 Structural order vs. entropy
 Agglutination vs. non-agglutination
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Qualitative complexity resulting
from diachronic processes
Meaning
Form
Vacillating
perfective
perfective
2Sg
conjugation
e-/nzero
Travesty
inceptive
elongated
relaxation
fire
sound
...........
inceptive
d-
Chameleonic
root
perfective
progressive

intricate
distribution
t-
-nh
-ch
-Œ
-ł
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Typology of languages:
disposition to complexity
 Various languages have various degrees of



tolerance to complexity
Some languages do not wait too long to
restructure and simplify structure, when too
much complexity accrues
But some other languages seem to “like”
complexity, and even increase it in the domains
that are already very complex
This may be a typological parameter
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Athabaskan
 In terms of quantitative complexity, Athabaskan





is not the champion (Nichols 2009)
In terms of qualitative complexity, I suspect that
Athabaskan is a candidate for championship
This may be related to peculiar social/cultural
factors
Note the Athabaskan resistance even to lexical
borrowing
Athabaskan cultures tend to bring language
contact to a minimum
This kind of linguistic communities can be
expected to accumulate complexity
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