Morphological Typology

Ling 100 – Introduction to Linguistic Science

Guest Lecture – Jonathan Manker
26 February 2016
What is Typology?
• Linguistic typology is a branch of linguistics that attempts to
categorize languages based on similarities in structure (phonological
inventories, grammatical constructions, word order, etc.)
Typological Map of Consonant Inventory Sizes
Morphological Typology
• Languages have a wide variety of morphological processes available
(e.g. different types of affixation, etc.) for creating words and word
forms.

• However, languages vary with respect to what morphological

processes are available, how frequently they are used, and what
types of information can be encoded in these processes.

• In this lecture, we’ll look at differences in morphology among a

variety of languages and learn to categorize these languages based on
their morphological patterns.
What is a word?
• Before we discuss properties of word structure in different languages,
we have to define what it is we mean when we refer to something as
a ‘word.’

• Question: Think about the two strings of sounds below. How many
words are in each?
[ðəkwɪkbɹaʊnfaksd͡ʒʌmpsoʊvɹ̩ðəleɪzidɔg]
[æntaɪdɪsəstæblɪʃmɛnteɹiənɪzm̩]
• So what makes
[ðəkwɪkbɹaʊnfaksd͡ʒʌmpsoʊvɹ̩ðəleɪzidɔg] a sentence, but
[æntaɪdɪsəstæblɪʃmɛnteɹiənɪzm̩] a word? (Both have 7-8 morphemes)

• There is no universal expectation for what words should be like in

different languages. We will see examples in other languages that
are structurally similar to the first, but are considered a single word.
The Phonological Word
• Even for speakers of non-written languages there seems to be a concept of the
word which is in some ways psychologically relevant.

• These intuitions about what words are often coincide with the domain of certain
phonological rules which are sensitive to word boundaries and the word as a unit
of structure and organization. These are usually language specific.

• Stress. In English, each content word will have exactly one primary stress. Do
the following examples all seem like single words? Where is their primary stress?
• dehumidifier
• recapitulation
• antidisestablishmentarianism
Phonological Evidence for the word
• Some languages have vowel harmony that applies to entire words---
for example, in Turkish all the vowels in most words must be all front
vowels or all back vowels. We never find vowel harmony occurring
over entire sentences.
• /el-ler-in/ ‘hand’-PLR-gen. vs. /at-lar-ɯn/ ‘horse,’-PLR-gen.

• We’ve also discussed phonotactic considerations: certain

sequences of sounds cannot occur within syllables, but may be
permissible over word boundaries (e.g. [dzm], above in ‘words
must’)
Morphological Evidence for the Word
• Positional mobility --- word form as a whole can be moved.
• Eg. I love plums, Plums I love. vs. I love dehumidifiers, de I love
humidifiers. (!)

• Uninterruptability --- extraneous material cannot be introduced into

the middle of a word-form.
• Eg. A dehumidifier, a, well, dehumidifier, a de, well, humidifer (!)

• Internal stability --- fixed order of morphemes within word forms

• Dehumidifiers, ifyshumiderde (!)
Morphological types across the world’s
languages
• Linguists can categorize languages based on their word-building
properties and usage of different affixation processes.

• The broadest distinction among languages is whether or not

affixation is allowed at all, or if every word must be a single
morpheme.

• For languages that allow affixation, we can further categorize these

according to their morphological characteristics
Analytic and Isolating Languages
• Analytic languages have sentences composed entirely of free morphemes, where
each word consists of only one morpheme.
• Isolating languages are “purely analytic” and allow no affixation (inflectional or
derivational) at all. Sometimes analytic languages allow some derivational
morphology such as compounds (two free roots in a single word)

• A canonically analytic language is Mandarin Chinese. Note that properties such

as “plural” and “past” comprise their own morphemes and their own words.
• [wɔ mən tan tçin lə]
• 1st PLR play piano PST
• ‘we played the piano’
Synthetic Languages
• Synthetic languages allow affixation such that words may (though are
not required to) include two or more morphemes. These languages
have bound morphemes, meaning they must be attached to another
word (whereas analytic languages only have free morphemes).
• Synthetic languages include three subcategories: agglutinative,
fusional, and polysynthetic.
Synthetic Language Type 1: Agglutinative
• Agglutinative languages have words which may consist of more than
one, and possibly many, morphemes.
• The key characteristic separating agglutinative languages from other
synthetic languages is that morphemes within words are easily parsed
or “loosely” arranged; the morpheme boundaries are easy to identify.
1:many word to morpheme ratio; 1:1 morpheme to meaning
• We often use the metaphor “beads on a string” to describe
agglutinative languages.
Agglutinative languages
• Examples of canonical agglutinative languages include Turkish,
Swahili, Hungarian
• el-ler-imiz-in (Turkish)
• hand-plr.-1st plr.-genitive case, ‘of our hands’
• ni-na-soma (Swahili)
• I-present-read ‘I am reading’
• (also u-na-soma ‘you read,’ ni-li-soma ‘I read,’ etc.)
Synthetic Language Type 2: Fusional
• Fusional languages, like other synthetic languages, may have more than one
morpheme per word
• However, fusional languages may have morphemes that combine multiple
pieces of grammatical information; that is, there is not a clear 1 to 1
relationship between grammatical information and morphemes
• For example, in Spanish:
• [ˈabl-o] ‘I am speaking’ -[o] suffix means 1st person sng., present tense
• [ˈabl-a] ‘s/he is speaking’ -[a] suffix means 3rd person sng. present tense
• [abl-ˈo] ‘s/he spoke’ -[ˈo] suffix with stress means 3rd singular past
tense
Fusional Languages
• Latin fusion: [re:ksisti] ‘you all ruled’
• There are four pieces of grammatical information and four morphs,
however the ‘perfective’ meaning is shared among several morphs.
Synthetic Language Type 3: Polysynthetic
• Polysynthetic languages often display a high degree of affixation (high number of
morphemes per word) and fusion of morphemes, like agglutinative and fusional
languages.
• Additionally, however, polysynthetic languages may have words with multiple
stems in a single word (which are not compounds). This may be achieved by
incorporating the subject and object nouns into complex verb forms.

• For example:
• anin- ɲam-jɔ-te-n (Sora)
• he-catch-fish-nonpast-do ‘he is fish-catching’
• This is called noun incorporation, where the object ‘fish’ is incorporated in the
verb ‘catch.’
Polysynthetic Languages
• Some of the most extreme examples come from Eskimo languages
such as West Greenlandic:

• tusaa-nngit-su-usaar-tuaannar-sinnaa-nngi-vip-putit
• ‘hear’-neg.-intrans.participle-‘pretend’-‘all the time’-‘can’-neg.-
‘really’-2nd.sng.indicative
• ‘You simply cannot pretend not to be hearing all the time’
But in reality…
• So we’ve looked at canonical examples of four types of languages:
analytical, agglutinative, fusional, and polysynthetic.
• But languages often show elements of different morphological types.
• If a language is hard to classify as one of the four main types, it may
be considered “mixed.” The properties that distinguish these types
may in fact be gradient rather than categorical.
Classifying languages into morphological
types
• Ask yourself the following questions:
• 1) How many morphemes can occur in a single word?

• If the answer is one, or usually one, the language is analytical. Otherwise,

it is probably synthetic. A language with a few might be fusional,
agglutinative, or polysynthetic; A language with many is probably
agglutinative or polysynthetic (since fusional morphemes may contain
multiple bits of grammatical information).
Classifying languages into morphological
types
• 2) If the language allows affixation, are the morphemes easy to
divide? Is each piece of grammatical information contained in a
single morpheme (and the reverse)?
Classifying languages into morphological
types
• 3) Does the language allow words with multiple roots (such as noun
incorporation)? If yes, the language is likely polysynthetic.

• These languages may also have a high degree of fusion and may
contain many morphemes in one word (see Greenlandic example) .
Practice – categorize the language
• Ancient Greek

• [lu-o:] ‘I release’
• release-1st person singular present active indicative
• [lu-e:] ‘You should release’
• release-2nd person singular present middle subjunctive
• [lu:-etai] ‘he is being released’
• release-3rd person singular present passive indicative
• Ancient Greek- fusional!
• Each word contains only two morphemes (so it’s not analytical), but
the suffix contains information about person, number, tense, mood,
and voice
Practice – categorize the language
• Aztecan

• [ni-ki-ta] ‘I see it’

• I-it-see

• [ni-ki-ta-k] ‘I saw it’

• I-it-see-past
• Aztecan - Agglutinative!

• Morphemes each contain one bit of information and are easily

divisible
Practice – categorize the language
• English

• ‘The boy will play with the dog.’

• ‘John’s cat eats mice.’
• ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’
• English – mixed

• The first example is mostly analytical

• The second demonstrates some fusional properties
• The third shows a word that seems agglutinative

• Generally speaking, English has very little inflection left and has been
becoming increasingly analytical, although words may contain many
derivational affixes.
Practice – categorize the language
• Han (Athabascan)

‘we’re starting to work’

‘we will hook-

catch (fish)’
• Han – polysynthetic! (noun incorporation. Also a high degree of
fusion)
• (Although interestingly enough, while verbs tend to be polysynthetic,
nouns are almost analytical and can only have a single possessive
prefix--- no case, number, gender, definiteness, etc. is indicated).
Typological Overview of the World’s
Languages – WALS maps
• Looking across the world’s languages, we see groups of languages in
common geographical regions that have similar morphological
characteristics.
Inflectional synthesis of the verb
(modern day languages)
• Is this evidence of languages sharing a language family?
• Sometimes, but not always. Language families are defined by having
a genetic relationship, where elements of the language are passed
down (through time).
• Sometimes features, even morphological characteristics, can spread
among languages that are spoken near each other, even when
unrelated. We call these areal features (e.g., see southeast Asia, N.
America).