Transcript Commentary_Ch_7_Crowley_I

Commentary on Crowley
Chapter 7
Grammatical, Semantic and
Lexical Change
Part I – Morphological Change
The world is full of variety, and
grammatical systems are no
exception.
Morphological systems: Type A, B, C, D, ...
Syntactic systems: Type A, B, C, D, ...
In Historical Linguistics, we study how
such variety arises, and we find that
each system evolves from another.
Typological Dance
A
D
B
C
7.1 Typology and Grammatical
Change
 Morphological types (4)
 Accusative and ergative languages
 Basic constituent order
 Verb chains
Morphological types
ISOLATING
INFLECTING
AGGLUTINATING
POLYSYNTHETIC
Morphological types
ISOLATING
INFLECTING
AGGLUTINATING
(The fourth type, polysynthetic, will be discussed later.)
Morphological types
ISOLATING
morphological reduction
INFLECTING
phonological reduction
AGGLUTINATING
morphologial fusion
English as isolating language.
 English: I already gave it to her. (six words)
 Turkish: (one word easily divided into morphemes)
=Agglutinating language
Tagalog as (mostly) agglutinating
language
Nakapagtataka. ‘Surprising’ (Tagalog Verb or Adjective)
taka ‘surprise’ (Noun)
ma- ‘happen to’; na- past tense of ‘happen to’
pag- class marker
CV- Reduplication (ta) ‘continuous aspect’
Note: the ma- na- replacement showing tense is inflectional, not
agglutinative, since it involves morphological fusion.
Tagalog song: “Nakapagtataka”
Latin as inflecting language
Marcellus amat Sophiam.
Sophiam Marcellus amat.
Amat Marcellus Sopham.
Sophiam amat Marcellus.
‘Marcus loves Sophia.’
English inflectional –s as archaic
residue
I like Ike.
You like Ike.
He/She likes Ike.
We like Ike.
You like Ike.
They like Ike.
Has there ever been a more
useless appendage in a language?
She likes Ike.
-s expresses PERSON, NUMBER, TENSE, MOOD, VOICE
Likes represents the 3rd Person Singular Present Indicative
Active form of the verb ‘like’
These categories survive in the verb to be
which has to ‘agree’ with the pronouns.
I am going.
1st Pers Sing Prog Indic (Active) (am+-ing).
You are going. 2nd Pers Prog Indic (Active)
(are+-ing).
She is going. 3rd Pers Prog Indic (Active)
(is+-ing).
We are going. 1st Pers Prog Indic (Active) (are+-ing).
You are going. 2nd Pers Prog Indic (Active) (are+-ing).
They are going. 3rd Pers Prog Indic (Active)
(are+-ing).
These categories all survive in the verb to
be which has to ‘agree’ with the pronouns.
I was evicted.
You were evicted.
She was evicted.
We were evicted.
You were evicted.
They were evicted.
1st Pers Sing Past Indic Pass (am+-ed).
2nd Pers Sing Past Indic Pass (are+-ed).
3rd Pers Sing Past Indic Pass (is+-ed).
1st Pers Plu Past Indic Pass (were+-ed).
2nd Pers Plu Past Indic Pass (were+-ed).
3rd Pers Plu Past Indic Pass (were+-ed).
The process of Melanau becoming
more isolating.
 Suffixes and most infixes were lost between PMP and PM.
 As a result, PM became mostly an isolating language.
 However, remnants of the earlier agglutinating system with a
few inflections still remain as archaic residue.
Tagalog is closer to PMP
Tagalog is mostly agglutinating but is partly inflectional, e.g.
mag- and pag- are difficult to ‘cut’ into morphemes.
Root
Active
Passive
Durative aspect
Completive aspect
Past progressive
bili
‘buy’
mag-bili
‘sell’
pag-bil-hin
‘be sold’
pag-bi-bil-hin
‘being sold’
p-in-ag-bili-Ø
‘was sold’
p-in-ag-bi-bili-Ø ‘was being sold’
Like English, Melanau morphology
is (mostly) isolating.
Melanau ablaut corresponds to Tagalog inflectional infixes:
Root
Active Passive(+Past)
Melanau:
təbaŋ~tubaŋ~tibaŋ
PMP: *təbaŋ~*tuməbaŋ~*tinəbaŋin
The process of change involved syncope and cluster reduction affecting
transitive verbs in Proto-Melanau: *tuməbaŋ > *tumbaŋ > *tubaŋ
*tinəbaŋ > *tinbaŋ > *tibaŋ
Phonological change had
morphological consequences
We are confident about reconstructing this sequence of grammatical
changes because the same changes affected simple roots, e.g.
PMP
PM
(96) *baqeRu > *baqRu > *baɁu ‘new’
(108) *tupelak > *tuplak > *tulak ‘push’
(281) *tuqelaŋ > *tuqlaŋ > *tulaŋ ‘bone’
GLOSS
Melanau dialects are developing a
‘periphrastic passive’ with kəna[h,n]
4. ASHES
B: Talak idun kənah rusuk ŋan abaw puyan.
M: Sumek kənah usuk bak abo.
D: JaluɁ kənan bənərəsi pəbak dabo.
‘Dishes can be washed with kitchen ashes.’
Note that Dalat uses archaic infix -ən- together with paraphrastic
passive marker kənan, revealing the likely path of change from a more
inflecting to a more isolating language.
Another example of grammatical
change: Matu-Daro
64.
GUTS/STOMACH
B: Usus siaw may kiman tənawan.
-i- passive
‘not’
M-D: Nay siaw may kənah kəman tənawan.
(paraphrastic)
‘not’
D: Sup siaw dəbəy kənan kiman tənawan.
‘not’
(mixed)
‘Chicken entrails are not eaten by people.’
Part II – Morpho-syntactic change
(Melanau data is from the 200-Sentence list
available on the Resources web page.)
Fourth morphological type:
Polysynthetic languages
 I sat with the baby last night.  I baby sat last night.
 I saw three owls.  I owl-saw thrice.
 The term for this is INCORPORATION.
 Incorporation fuses verb+object or verb+preposition.
Verb-preposition incorporation in Indonesian
I sat in the chair.  I occupied the chair. (Lexical synonymy)
Saya duduk di korsi  Saya men-duduk-i korsi. (Incorporation)
I sat in chair
I
occupied
chair
I sent a letter to John  I sent John a letter.
(Incorporation
signaled by word order)
Saya kirim surat kepada Jon  Saya kirim-i Jon surat. (Incorporation
I sent letter to John
signaled morphologically)
TO BE CONTINUED