Mark Aronoff

Body as subject

The notion of subject in human language has a privileged status relative to other arguments. This special status is manifested in the behavior of subjects at the morphological, syntactic, semantic and discourse levels. Here we bring evidence that subjects have privileged status at the lexical level as well, by analyzing lexicalization patterns of verbs in three different sign languages. Our analysis shows that the sublexical structure of iconic signs denoting state of affairs in these languages manifests an inherent pattern of form-meaning correspondence: the signers body consistently represents one argument of the verb, the subject. The hands, moving in relation to the body, represent all other components of the event - including all other arguments. This analysis shows that sign languages provide novel evidence in support of the centrality of the notion of subject in human language. It also solves a typological puzzle about the apparent primacy of object in sign language verb agreement, a primacy not usually found in spoken languages, in which subject agreement ranks higher. Our analysis suggests that the subject argument is represented by the body and is part of the lexical structure of the verb. Because it is always inherently represented in the structure of the sign, the subject is more basic than the object, and tolerates the omission of agreement morphology.

Restricting suffix combinations in German and English: Closing suffixes and the monosuffix constraint

In both German and English many fewer combinations of derivationalsuffixes exist than should be possible, given the types of selectional restrictionsthat have been posited in the existing literature. For each language we found a pervasiverestriction that is responsible for the missing combinations: German has closing suffixes,which individually prevent further suffixation. English allows only one Germanic suffix per word. In bothlanguages the restriction holds for inflection and forclitics as well. For German, we also found that all closing suffixes are followed by linkingelements in compounds, and that this constitutes the major productive use of linking elements.For English, we also found that Latinate suffixes are much more susceptible to combination,so that the Germanic and Latinate suffixes follow complementary patterns. Our findingsfor English show that the often-repeated observation that English inflectional morphology is simpler than that of related languages extends to derivation as well.

Morphological universals and the sign language type

We have shown that established sign languages comprise a morphological type. In all these languages, visuo-spatial concepts and relations are represented in a motivated yet rule-governed and linguistic morphological system. Developed sign languages also show non-motivated, grammaticalized morphology, but to a limited extent, because they are young. ABSL shows neither the motivated nor the arbitrary morphology found in more developed sign languages. The lesson from ABSL is therefore that even the motivated morphology that we find in all established sign languages requires social interaction over time to crystallize. ABSL thus vindicates the new language prototype: little or no systematic morphology. This prototype was originally formulated on the basis of creole languages, but the formulation has run into empirical difficulty in recent years, as we noted above. Because ABSL is a completely new language, it allows us to distinguish between relatively young languages (established creoles and sign languages) and new languages, and to realize that the prototype holds of the latter.

TESTING MORPHOLOGICAL PRODUCTIVITY

We have shown how an experimental technique borrowed from cognitive psychology, the Lexical Decision Task, can be used to study morphology. In particular, we have shown that native speakers of English respond positively more often to novel words of the form Xiveness than they do to words of the form Xivity, a result which was predicted from the greater productivity of the former pattern, as determined by techniques of linguistic analysis. Our finding holds true under a variety of instructions. While the result of our study is not particularly surprising, we hope that in demonstrating that the Lexical Decision Task is a reliable tool in the study of morphology we will encourage further research along the lines that we have developed.

Competing iconicities in the structure of languages

Abstract The paper examines the role that iconicity plays in the structuring of grammars. Two main points are argued for: (a) Grammar does not necessarily suppress iconicity; rather, iconicity and grammar can enjoy a congenial relation in that iconicity can play an active role in the structuring of grammars. (b) Iconicity is not monolithic. There are different types of iconicity and languages take advantage of the possibilities afforded by them. We examine the interaction between iconicity and grammar by focusing on the ways in which sign languages employ the physical body of the signer as a rich iconic resource for encoding a variety of grammatical notions. We show that the body can play three different roles in iconic forms in sign languages: it can be used as a naming device where body parts represent body parts; it can represent the subject argument of verbal signs, and it can stand for first person. These strategies interact and sometimes compete in the languages under study. Each language resolves these competitions differently, which results in different grammars and grammatical structures. The investigation of the ways in which grammar and iconicity interact in these languages provides insight into the nature of both systems.

Orthography and Linguistic Theory: The Syntactic Basis of Masoretic Hebrew Punctuation

The punctuation (accent) system of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible contains a complete unlabeled binary phrase-structure analysis of every verse, based on a single parsing principle. The systems of punctuation, phrase structure, and parsing are each presented here in detail and contrasted with their counterparts in modern linguistics. The entire system is considered as the product of linguistic analysis, rather than as a linguistic system per se; and implications are drawn for the study of written language and writing systems.*

Noun classes in Arapesh

For some Latin nouns, gender is correlated with conceptual categories; for example, nouns denoting plants are routinely feminine. For others, gender is correlated with the phonology of the stem; thus, third declension nouns whose stems end in -c, -e, -l, -n, -t, -ar, -ur, -us and -uus are characteristically neuter, a fact that schoolchildren were long forced to memorize. This curious observation might seem to be just that, an accident, were it not for the existence of languages whose entire gender and declension systems are organized along phonological lines. This article is devoted to one of these languages, Arapesh, a language of the Torricelli family, spoken near the north coast of Papua New Guinea. My discussion of Arapesh is based entirely on Reo Fortune’s (1942) grammar.

COMPUTER METHODS FOR MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

This paper describes our current research on the properties of derivational affixation in English. Our research arises from a more general research project, the Lexical Systems project at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research laboratories, the goal for which is to build a variety of computerized dictionary systems for use both by people and by computer programs. An important sub-goal is to build reliable and robust word recognition mechanisms for these dictionaries. One of the more important issues in word recognition for all morphologically complex languages involves mechanisms for dealing with affixes.

Using dictionaries to study the mental lexicon.

The notion of a mental lexicon has its historical roots in practical reference dictionaries. The distributional analysis of dictionaries provides one means of investigating the structure of the mental lexicon. We review our earlier work with dictionaries, based on a three-way horserace model of lexical access and production, and then present the most recent results of our ongoing analysis of the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition on CD-ROM, which traces changes in productivity over time of the English suffixes -ment and -ity, both of which originate in French borrowings. Our results lead us to question the validity of automatic analogy from a set of existing words as the driving force behind morphological productivity.

A Realization Optimality Theory approach to blocking and extended morphological exponence

Blocking in inflection occurs when a morphological exponent prevents the application of another exponent expressing the same feature value, thus barring the occurrence of multiple exponents of a single morphosyntactic feature value. In instances of extended exponence, more than one exponent in the same word realizes the same feature value. We provide a unified account of blocking and extended exponence that combines a realizational approach to inflection with Optimality Theory (Realization Optimality Theory), encoding morphological realization rules as ranked violable constraints. The markedness constraint *F eature S plit bars the realization of any morphosyntactic feature value by more than one exponent. If *F eature S plit ranks lower than two or more realization constraints expressing the same feature value, then we observe extended exponence. Otherwise, we find blocking of lower-ranked exponents. We show that Realization Optimality Theory is superior to various alternative approaches to blocking and extended morphological exponence.