Dunstan Brown

Network Morphology: A Defaults-based Theory of Word Structure

1. Options in constructing a morphological framework 2. A framework for morphological defaults 3. Inflectional classes 4. Syncretism 5. Morphological mismatch and extended deponency 6. Defaults and paradigmatic restructuring 7. Derivation 8. Conclusion.

Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis

This paper has three goals. First we wish to elucidate the complex paradigms of Dalabon. In languages like Dalabon, which encode information about multiple pronominal arguments on adjacent slots on the verb, the two slots are frequently merged. The resultant set of combinations typically lies somewhere between an irregular paradigm and a set of forms derivable by combining subject and object elements according to some set of rules. These paradigms are potentially vast — in Dalabon, which has a rich set of person, number and kinship categories in its pronoun system, there are 102 possible subject/object combinations, each of which further distinguishes six tense/aspect/mood categories. Most languages of this type reduce the number of forms by widespread identities of form within the paradigm. However, it is not always clear whether the formal collapse is accidental homophony or principled syncretism.

Canonical Morphology and Syntax

This is the first book to present Canonical Typology, a framework for comparing constructions and categories across languages. The canonical method takes the criteria used to define particular categories or phenomena (eg negation, finiteness, possession) to create a multidimensional space in which language-specific instances can be placed. In this way, the issue of fit becomes a matter of greater or lesser proximity to a canonical ideal. Drawing on the expertise of world class scholars in the field, the book addresses the issue of cross-linguistic comparability, illustrates the range of areas - from morphosyntactic features to reported speech - to which linguists are currently applying this methodology, and explores to what degree the approach succeeds in discovering the elusive canon of linguistic phenomena.

Defining ‘subgender’: Virile and devirilized nouns in Polish☆

Abstract As a contribution to morphological typology, we analyse dependencies between grammatical categories within a formal framework, namely Network Morphology. The dependencies are expressed by Category Dependency Constraints of the framework, and they determine the dependency of case on number, of gender on number, and of gender on case. Within this area a particularly interesting challenge is the notion of ‘subgender’, which is an additional gender distinction within a minimal subset of the paradigm (Corbett, 1991: 163). In certain instances it may not be clear whether one is dealing with a main gender distinction or one involving subgender, as in the difficult case of Polish masculine-personal nouns. Progress with regard to this question can be made by applying Category Dependency Constraints. We must recognise the ‘structured gender’ masc person as one of the values of the main gender system, and also three different values for the subgender of animacy, inanimate, animate and person. The person subgender fuses with masc to create the new structured gender masc person when it spreads to the nominative case, and from there to agreement targets which do not realise case. Category Dependency Constraints predict that subgender could only arise in languages with morphological case, because otherwise the important minimal subset criterion would not be fulfilled. The examples of ‘devirilized’ nouns show that our approach is justified, as they may take either the exceptional case default for the main gender, or, less often, the exceptional case default for subgender. This article is therefore a contribution to the investigation of universals in grammatical categories. Moreover, since it is based on a formal analysis (in Appendix) which has been checked computationally, this demonstrates that the theory outlined here makes the correct predictions.

Conditions on pronominal marking in the Alor-Pantar languages

Abstract We examine the varying role of conditions on grammatical relations marking (namely animacy and volitionality) by looking at different languages of one family, using both existing descriptions and working with specially prepared video stimuli. This enables us to see the degree of variation permitted within closely related languages. We look at four Alor-Pantar languages (Teiwa, Adang, Kamang, and Abui), Papuan languages of eastern Indonesia. The conditions on argument marking are manifested in different ways. Those languages with syntactic alignment index objects with a prefix, those which have semantic alignment index objects and some subjects with a prefix. In 42 video clips we systematically varied animacy and volitionality values for participants in one and two-participant events. These clips were used in fieldwork to elicit descriptions of the events. The data show that animacy of the object is an important factor which favours indexation of the object on the verb in all four languages to varying degrees. Volitionality, on the other hand, is a factor in the semantically aligned languages only. While the presence of a prefix on the verb is semantically motivated in many instances, marking is not directly determined by verbal or participant semantics, and lexical factors must also play a role.

Grammatical Typology and Frequency Analysis: Number Availability and Number Use

The Smith-Stark hierarchy, a version of the Animacy Hierarchy, offers a typology of the cross-linguistic availability of number. The hierarchy predicts that the availability of number is not arbitrary. For any language, if the expression of plural is available to a noun, it is available to any noun of a semantic category further to the left of the hierarchy. In this article we move one step further by showing that the structure of the hierarchy can be observed in a statistical model of number use in Russian. We also investigate three co-variates: plural preference, pluralia tantum and irregularity effects; these account for an items behaviour being different than that solely expected from its animacy position.

A Large-scale Inheritance-based Morphological Lexicon for Russian

In this paper we describe the mapping of Zaliznjaks (1977) morphological classes into the lexical representation language DATR (Evans and Gazdar 1996). On the basis of the resulting DATR theory a set of fully inflected forms together with their associated morphosyntax can automatically be generated from the electronic version of Zaliznjaks dictionary (Ilola and Mustajoki 1989). From this data we plan to develop a wide-coverage morphosyntactic lemma-tizer and tagger for Russian.

Mian and Kilivila Collection

The Mian and Kilivila Collection contains information pertaining to the nominal classification systems of two indigenous languages of Papua New Guinea, Mian and Kilivila. Kilivila has a single system of classifiers, with a great number of distinctions, while Mian has a dual system, which combines four genders and six classifiers. The Digital Collection on this website permits users to gain a greater understanding of these systems by exploring images of Mian and Kilivila objects and people. Users are also able to test what they have learnt about the classifications systems of these two languages by taking the online Quiz.