Introduction
to
Linguisti
cs
VIII
Morphology
Introduction
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Reminder: The basics of morphology
Linguisti
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Morphology = the structure of words
The basic unit of Morphological analysis is morpheme: the minimal meaning-bearing unit in a language
Affix (‫)מוספית‬
Demoralization
Suffix (‫)סופית‬
Friend-ly
prefix (‫)תחילית‬
Un-happy
Infix (‫)תוכית‬
Abso-fuckin-lutely
[de + [moral + ize]] + ation
Root
Prefix
Stem
Stem
reuseable
unuseable
adj
adj
Suffix
verb
re
use
adj
able
un
use able
Introduction
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Productivity
productivity - the degree to which native speakers use a particular
grammatical process, especially in word formation
English
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Turkish
Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız
"You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage
to convert to a Czechoslovak"
Hebrew
‫מכתב‬
‫ ים‬+ ‫מכתב‬
Arabic
kitāb (book)
kutub (books)
Broken plurals
Linguisti
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Inflectional vs. Derivational Morphology
Inflectional morphemes:
Derivational morphemes:
vary (or "inflect") the form of words in
order to express specific grammatical
features
makes new words from old ones
Introduction
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Linguisti
cs
[nafal] + [ti]
[dibur] + [it]
[sod] + [i]
[kartis] + [im]
[Kartis] + [an]
[memuʃax] + [ot]
[gag] + [ot]
[gag] + [on]
[tafkid]
[xaver] + [a]
do not change basic
lexical category
[xaver] + [ut]
change the basic meaning of a
word and / or its lexical category
Semantically ambiguous
Introduction
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Inflectional vs. Derivational Morphology
Linguisti
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Character
Inflection
Derivation
Change in lexical category
---
Sometimes
Obligatory to syntax
always
---
Productivity and Regularity
Almost always
partially
One-to-one relation
Almost always
partially
Semantic transparency
Always
partially
Introduction
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Recursive derivation
Linguisti
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sensationalizationalize
sensation
sensational
sensationalizational
sensationalize
sensationalization
sensationalization
sensationalize
sensationalizational
sensationalizationalize
…
sensational
sensation
al
ize
ation
al
ize
Recursive derivation II
missile
anti-missile missile
anti-anti-missile missile missile
anti-anti-anti-missile missile missile missile
anti anti anti missile missile missile missile
Introduction
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Linguisti
cs
Introduction
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Compounds
• The combination of lexical categories is called compounding.
Linguisti
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• It consists of nouns, adjectives, verbs, or prepositions.
• The morpheme which determines the category of the entire word is called the head.
• In English: the right-hand member of a compound determines the lexical category
(V)
‫בית אבות‬
‫עורך דין‬
Breast-feed
(N)
Jumpsuit
(A)
Nation-wide
breast
feed
Jump
suit
Nation
wide
N
V
V
N
N
A
Regularity in Inflectional Morphology
• Inflectional morphology can be captured by rules and exceptions
Regular inflection
V+ed = Vpast
to
Linguisti
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Irregular inflection
walked
go --- > went
posted
eat --- > ate
buzzed
Introduction
bring --- > brought
Over regularization:
Father: Where’s Mommy?
Child: Mommy goed to the store.
Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Father: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?
Introduction
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Allomorphs
Linguisti
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An allomorph is an alternate phonetic pronunciation of a morpheme in a
particular phonological environment.
Just as an allophone is a variation of a single phoneme, an allomorph is a variety of a single morpheme.
-ed
Morpheme: the affix as it is stored in memory -ed
/d/
Allomorph: the affix as it is actually pronounced ([-d], [-t], [-ɨd])
[-d] [-t] [-ɨd]
Voiced _
Grab  Grabbed
Call  Called
Buzz  Buzzed
Voiceless _
[gɹæbd]
[kɑld]
[bʌzd]
Alveolar stops _
Bake  Baked [bejkt]
Fold  Folded
[fowldɨd]
Kiss  Kissed [kist]
Lift  Lifted
[lIftɨd]
Jump  Jumped [d͡ʒʌmpt]
Words & Rules
The Words and Rules (WR) theory
claims that the regular–irregular
distinction is a reflection of the distinction
between lexicon and grammar made in
most traditional theories of language
irregular forms must be
stored in memory (lexicon)
regular forms can be generated by a rule
that suffixes –ed to the stem (grammar)
Introduction
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Linguisti
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Words & Rules
When a word must be inflected, the lexicon
and grammar are accessed in parallel.
If an inflected form for a verb (V) exists
in memory, as with irregulars (e.g. held),
it will be retrieved;
a signal indicating a match blocks the
operation of the grammatical suffixation
process via an inhibitory link from lexicon
to grammar, preventing the generation of
holded.
If no inflected form is matched, the
grammatical processor concatenates
the appropriate suffix with the stem,
generating a regular form.
Introduction
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Linguisti
cs
Words & Rules
The Words and Rules (WR) theory
claims that the regular–irregular
distinction is a reflection of the distinction
between lexicon and grammar made in
most traditional theories of language
irregular forms must be
stored in memory (lexicon)
regular forms can be generated by a rule
that suffixes –ed to the stem (grammar)
But they don’t necessarily have to:
dive
dived/dove
dream
dreamed/dreamt
Introduction
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Linguisti
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Introduction
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The connectionist model - RMM
Rumelhart and McClelland challenged the W&R premises with a pattern-associator
model (RMM) that learned to associate phonological features of the basic form of
the verb with phonological features of its past-tense form
Linguisti
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sing, ring, spring
sang, rang, sprang
blow, throw, know
blew, threw, knew
Rumelhart & Mcclelland, 1986
Introduction
to
Words & Rules
Linguisti
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Systematic regularization:
Endocentric compound
workman
workmen
Exocentric compound
Walkman
Walkmans
walk
man
The declarative/procedural model
According to the D/P hypothesis lexical
memory is a subdivision of declarative
memory, which stores facts, events and
arbitrary relations
Hippocampus
(Consolidation of new declarative memories)
temporal and temporo-parietal regions
(Long-term retention)
Grammatical processing, by contrast, depends
on the procedural system, which underlies the
learning and control of motor and cognitive
skills, particularly those involving sequences
Basal ganglia, and Broca’s area
FCL’s lesion site
(agrammatism)
Introduction
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Linguisti
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JLU’s lesion site
(anomia)
Morphological Decomposition
Introduction
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Linguisti
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Subjects: two aphasic patients (J.G. and D.E.) with well
documented difficulties in the comprehension and production
of inflected forms in English
Method: the two patients and six age-matched normal controls
were tested in an auditory priming experiment that contrasted
priming effects for regular and irregular past tenses
Results: the subjects showed normal priming for irregular pasttense pairs like found/find, but significantly reduced priming for
regular pairs like joined/join.
Marslen-Wilson & Tyler 1997
Introduction
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Another priming experiment
• Participants: four patients with regular past tense deficits
and matched controls
jumped-jump
thought-think
• Auditory-Auditory semantic priming task
• Conditions:
1. regular past tense pairs (blamed/accuse)
2. verb stem pairs (hope/wish)
Semantic priming
3. Irregular past tense pairs (shook/tremble)
This is a task where successful priming requires rapid access to the meaning of the
prime, followed by equally rapid access to the form and meaning of the target, such
that the semantic relatedness between the two can be accessed and used to facilitate
responses to the target
Longworth et al. 2005
Linguisti
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Another priming experiment
• Results:
Longworth et al. 2005
Introduction
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Linguisti
• Conclusions:
cs
These results also suggest that the regular
inflected ‘whole form’ cannot be stored as the
perceptual target for lexical access.
If the access route for joined were via a representation
of joined as a whole form, then there would be no
reason for access to fail here when it was succeeding
for other whole-form representations like found or
stem representations like hope
Problems with forms
requiring decompositional
processing
No problem mapping stems
and whole forms onto
lexical representations
-- > inflected regular forms must be subjected to
some form of morpho-phonological parsing, which
breaks down the surface full form into its stem + affix
components
Without such decomposition, the full inflected form is an illformed input to the lexical access process, not matching fully
with any stored representation.
Limitations of neuropsychological evidence
Owing to the heterogeneous nature of the lesions involved and
the size of the left perisylvian lesions in some of these patients,
this patient group is only weakly informative about how
these functions relate to specific brain systems.
To move beyond this, in order to establish an adequate
neurocognitive model of these phenomena, we need to:
1) map these processes onto an anatomically more specific
neural substrate
2) carry out the appropriate tests, using behavioural and neuroimaging
techniques, to evaluate these claims in the context of the undamaged
brain
Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 2007
Introduction
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Linguisti
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brain–behaviour relationship
Participants:
22 Left Hemisphere damaged patients
(were not pre-selected on the basis of their linguistic performance)
Introduction
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Linguisti
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Task:
auditory–auditory repetition priming task
Analysis:
Find voxels where variations in signal density
correlates with priming for regularly inflected
words at three significance levels:
P<0.05 (red)
P<0.01 (blue)
P<0.001 (green)
Tyler et al. 2005a
brain–behaviour relationship
Results:
Variations in priming performance for regular pairs correlate with
variations in tissue density in the left IFG, with the maxima in BA 47,
extending superiorly into BA 45 (Broca’s area).
Introduction
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Linguisti
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when the correlation with regular priming
scores is plotted at a slightly lower statistical
threshold, we see more extensive and
posterior region of the LH being implicated.
these results point to a core decompositional
network involving LIFG and posterior left
temporal-parietal regions, centered around
the dorsal processing stream
Tyler et al. 2005a
Imaging morphology - fMRI
Task: for each pair say whether it is the same or not
Introduction
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Linguisti
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regulars < irregulars
Tyler et al. 2005b
Imaging morphology - fMRI
ROI analysis:
Irregulars > baseline
Introduction
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Linguisti
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Regulars > baseline
Regulation of processing between
left frontal and temporal regions
Reflects the greater demands
of such regulation in parsing
words into stem + affix?..
Tyler et al. 2005b
Imaging morphology - ERP
• Procedure: Subjects were presented with correct
and incorrect sentences of four conditions:
A. Regular past tense
B. Irregular past tense
C. Phrase structure violations
to
Linguisti
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Yesterday I frowned at Billy
* Yesterday I frown at Billy
Yesterday I ground up coffee
* Yesterday I grind up coffee
Yesterday I drank Lisa’s brandy by the fire
* Yesterday I drank Lisa’s by brandy the fire
D. Lexical violations
Introduction
Yesterday Daniel sipped from the coffee
* Yesterday Daniel sipped his sarcasm for hours.
• Task:
Is it well-formed English? (“good or Bad?”)
Newman et al. 2007
ERP experiment
• Results:
Introduction
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Linguisti
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ELAN and LAN
P600
N400
ERP experiment
• Results:
Introduction
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Linguisti
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ELAN and LAN
P600
Enhanced negativity over left anterior electrodes for regular
but not irregular violations from approximately 300–500 msec
ERP experiment
Introduction
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Linguisti
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Introduction
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ERP experiment
Summing Up the Results
• In comparison to correct control
sentences, regular past tense violations
elicited a left anterior negativity (LAN)
followed by a late positivity (P600)
• Irregular past tense violations elicited
only the later positivity (P600).
• Phrase structure violations also elicited
a LAN followed by a positivity
• Lexical semantic violations elicited an
N400.
Conclusions:
Linguisti
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• The presence of a LAN for violations of regular
past tense and phrase structure, but not of irregular past
tense suggest the existence of compositional processes
across linguistic domains (morphology and syntax).
• Regular, irregular, and phrase structure violations all elicited
later positivities that were maximal over right parietal sites
(P600s), and which seem to index aspects of controlled
syntactic processing.
• The presence of an N400 only for lexical semantic
violations suggests that none of the other violations
depend on the same processes as this condition.