Martine Vanhove

Typological approaches to lexical semantics

Abstract 1. Introduction Although the term “lexical typology” is often used as if it were self-explanatory there is not much consensus on what exactly it can refer to, apart from the evident fact that it involves crosslinguistic research on the lexicon. Many linguists will probably agree with Lehrers (1992: 249) widely quoted definition that lexical typology is concerned with the “characteristic ways in which language […] packages semantic material into words” (cf. the overviews in Koch 2001 and Brown 2001). This would make lexical typology a sub-branch of semantic typology concerned with the lexicon, where semantic typology, in the definition of Evans (forthcoming), is “the systematic cross-linguistic study of how languages express meaning by way of signs”. Other definitions of lexical typology, clinging to the apparently safer interface with grammar, focus on “typologically relevant features in the grammatical structure of the lexicon” (Lehmann 1990: 163) or on typologically relevant vs. language-specific patterns of the lexicon-grammar interaction (Behrens & Sasse 1997).

Morphology in language contact: verbal loanblend formation in Asia Minor Greek (Aivaliot)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Turkish verbs are accommodated in Aivaliot, a Greekbased Asia Minor dialect, which belongs to a different typology from the donor language: Aivaliot is fusional, like Greek, while Turkish is agglutinative. The paper demonstrates that loan verbs are adapted to the Aivaliot morphology following specific constraints of the Greek word formation, but they are also affected by features innate to Turkish. In particular, it deals with certain base-driven morphological characteristics, such as stem-based derivation and stem allomorphy, which play a major role in Greek derivation and inflection, and make Aivaliot a good candidate as a case study for languagecontact morphological considerations. Finally, with the help of the Aivaliot data, and in accordance with recent findings in relevant literature, it shows that it is not particularly difficult for verbs to be borrowed, provided that certain structural/morphological conditions are met. 1. Assumptions and premises In language-contact studies, the simplest borrowing is usually considered to be lexical, according to which the lexicon of the recipient language is changed with the addition of the incorporated words (see, among others, Moravçsik 1975, 1978, Thomason 2001, Field 2002, Haspelmath 2008). Haugen (1950) distinguishes three kinds of borrowed lexical items: loanwords, whose form and meaning are copied in the recipient language, loanblends, i.e. words consisting of a copied part and a native part, and loanshifts, where only the meaning is copied. In this paper, I deal with the ‘accommodation’ of loan verbs within a recipient language which is typologically different from the donor. To this end, I examine the verbs of Turkish origin which have been introduced into a Greek Asia Minor dialect, the so∗ The paper is an extended version of a talk which was given at the conference Morphologies in Contact (Bremen: October 1–3 2009). I thank the audience for feedback and most constructive remarks. I am particularly grateful to Metin Bağrıaçık for his assistance with the Turkish data. 1 In this paper, I use the common term ‘borrowing’ to refer to the replication of a lexical item bearing a morphological structure. Note, however, that Johanson (2002) has proposed the term ‘copying’.

Morphologies in contact

This collection of articles takes up the issue of Contact Morphology raised by David Wilkins in 1996. In the majority of contact-related studies, morphology is at best a marginal topic. According to the extant borrowing hierarchies, bound morphology is copied only rarely, if at all, because morphological copies presuppose long-term intensive contact with prior massive borrowing of content words and function words. On the other hand, especially in studies of morphological change, contact is often identified as the decisive factor which triggers the disintegration of morphological systems. However, it remains to be seen whether these two standard treatments of morphology in contact situations exhaust the phenomenology of Contact Morphology. The 14 papers of the present volume shed new light on the behavior of morphology under the conditions of language contact. Fresh empirical data from 40 languages world-wide are presented and new theory-based concepts are discussed. Morphologies in Contact is a first in the history of both morphology and language contact studies. It is meant to mark the beginning of an international research program which explores the entire range of aspects connected to morphologies in contact and thus, paves the way for a full-blown Contact Morphology qua linguistic discipline.

Morphologies in contact: form, meaning, and use in the grammar of reference

It was once thought that in situations of language contact, substance is always borrowed before structure. More recent work, however, has been demonstrating that even under conditions of language maintenance, structure can be copied without substance, as multilinguals replicate categories and distinctions from one language in another. Such replication can be difficult to spot when it is accomplished with native forms. This paper examines contact effects on some fundamental morphological categories and patterns, most without substance, among some languages indigenous to Northern California. The focus is on grammar involving referents and reference: pronominal categories, core argument structure, coreference, and referential continuity across clauses and sentences.