The theory and typology of inflectional morphology

This paper describes structural and distributional properties of alienable and inalienable nouns in Wano, a Trans-New Guinea language spoken in Papua by about 7,000 native speakers. I define differences between alienable and inalienable nouns in §2, where it will be apparent that they can be distinguished in terms of their (i) nominal generalisation (§2.1), (ii) lexical forms (§2.2), (iii) plurality coding (§2.3), (iv) possessive constructions (§2.4), and (v) head-role in a clause (§2.5). Alienable nouns are described in §3. Then in §4, I will demonstrate that inalienable nouns are: (i) restricted on vowel-initial words, and (ii) there is a clear morphosyntax-semantics-pragmatics interface reflected in kin terminologies. The kin term for 'child', for instance, is distinguished with respect to the sex of parents. In expressing the ownership of a child, a father will use the word nabut for the English 'my child' (inflection of: {n-abut} \1s-child.of.male\) and a mother will use nayak 'my child' (inflection of: {n-ajak} \1s-child.of.female\). Terms for kinship relations, body parts, cultural items, and experiential events are inalienably coded. Finally, words that are inalienably marked will be presented in §5. Abstrak Makalah ini membahas properti struktural dan distribusional dari nomina alienable dan inalienable dalam bahasa Wano, salah satu bahasa Trans-New Guinea di Papua dengan penutur asli yang berjumlah kurang-lebih 7.000 orang. Dalam §2, penulis merumuskan perbedaan antara nomina alienable dan inalienable, di mana akan nampak jelas bahwa keduanya dapat dibedakan berdasarkan (i) generalisasi nominalnya (§2.1), (ii) bentuk leksikalnya (§2.2), (iii) penanda jamaknya (§2.3), (iv) konstruksi posesifnya (§2.4), dan tipologi head-role-nya dalam klausa (§2.5). Nomina alienable dibahas dalam §3. Dalam

В статье обсуждаются значение морфологических работ А. А. Зализняка для русской и общей морфологии, анализируется ценность его исследований с точки зрения истории лингвистики и возможности развития его теоретических идей.
The paper is devoted to the contribution of morphological works by the outstanding Russian linguist A. Zalizniak to Russian and general morphology and to possible ways of the development of his ideas.

Basque is a non-Indo-European language with a richly inflected auxiliary system. The principal pattern of verb inflection is periphrastic, where a main (lexical) verb is marked for aspect, and its auxiliary shows tense, mood and obligatory agreement with all arguments. Basque is morphologically ergative and the arguments of a verb may be in absolutive, ergative or dative case. Auxiliaries inflect in four patterns -intransitive, intransitive with an indirect object, transitive and ditransitive. This, combined with present and past tenses and five moods, gives a large range of morphosyntactic words (1735 different forms).

We specify a typology for the extreme of inflectional morphology, namely suppletion (as in go ~ went). This is an unusual enterprise within typology, and it requires a ‘canonical’ approach. That is, we define the canonical or best instance, through a set of converging criteria, and use this point in theoretical space to locate the various occurring types. Thus the criteria establish the dimensions along which we find the specific instances of suppletion, allowing us to calibrate examples out from the canonical. The criteria fall into two main areas, those internal to the lexeme and those external to it. Moreover, we find interactions with other morphological phenomena, and discuss four of them: syncretism, periphrasis, overdifferentiation and reduplication. These remarkable instances of suppletion, particularly when in interaction with other phenomena, extend the boundary of the notion ‘possible word’. Besides laying out the possibilities for the specific phenomenon of suppletion, we show how a canonical approach allows us to make progress in typology, even in the most challenging areas.

The periodisation of the history of the Japanese language 1.2. Abbreviations, symbols, notational conventions 2. Selected bibliography and sources 2.1. Grammars, textbooks and grammatical compendia (G-) 2.2. Dictionaries of pre-modern Japanese (D-) 2.3. Other relevant titles (O-) 2.4. Utilised editions of Classical Japanese texts (E-) 2.5. Consulted translations of Classical Japanese works (T-) 2.6. Sources of textual examples 3. Orthography and phonology 3.1. Orthography 3.2. Vocalic phonemes and their later development 3.3. Consonantal phonemes and their later development 3.4. Customary reading of Classical Japanese texts 4. The morphology of verbs and adjectives 4.1. Basic morphonological changes 4.2. Conjugational groups of verbs and adjectives 4.3. Suffixes as synthetic markers of grammatical categories 4.4. General rules for the selection of allomorphs 5.

This paper aims to refine and broaden the traditional Neogrammarian account of loss
or merger of cases in Indo-European languages between 500BC and 1400AD. Historically this is argued as the erosion of unaccented final syllables in languages with initial-syllable stress.
Modern metrical structure framework theory (after Liberman and Prince, 1977) is used
to account for the fact that case loss does not follow segmental sound change. The basis for this approach is that metrical structure can be the source of phonological changes, and well-known quantity adjustments common to many languages are likely to follow a common sequence. Commencing with a literature review, the paper uses existing data of known sound and prosodic changes from ancient to modern in Germanic, Hellenic and Romance languages.

In conclusion, there is significant evidence for specific sequencing of prosodic changes
driving case loss, with foot structure compliance in particular being directly responsible for major quantity adjustments. However, semantic and syntactic change also play a direct part in the loss of case. Some evidence for word prosody change as a driver of case loss is found, and further research is required into the role of phrasal prosody to mediate between syntactic and morphophonological change.

In this chapter, we shall present a selection of the most relevant phenomena in inflectional verb morphology, i.e. where a debate about their nature has significantly evolved: with respect to the morphology-phonology interface, i.e. morphophonology, we shall basically highlight stem allomorphy. Throughout this chapter, syncretism will play a major role as a prime example and recurrent theme which elucidates the variety of interfaces pertaining to the inflection of verbs – as all important interfaces with morphology are involved: phonology, syntax, and semantics/pragmatics. Other instances of non-canonical morphology discussed include suppletion, periphrases, overabundance, and defectiveness. Lastly, we shall address the notion of the Autonomy of Morphology, i.e. the assumption of an autonomous morphomic level.

A key notion in understanding language is ‘possible word (lexeme)’. While there are lexemes that are internally homogeneous and externally consistent, we find others with splits in their internal structure (morphological paradigm) and inconsistencies in their external behavior (syntactic requirements). I first explore the characteristics of the most straightforward lexemes, in order to establish a point in the theoretical space from which we can calibrate the real examples we find. I then schematize the interesting phenomena that deviate from this idealization, including suppletion, syncretism, deponency, and defectiveness. Next I analyze the different ways in which lexemes are ‘split’ by such phenomena. I set out a typology of possible splits, along four dimensions: splits that are (i) based on the composition/feature signature of the paradigm versus those based solely on morphological form; (ii) motivated (following a boundary motivated from outside the paradigm) versus purely morphology-internal (‘morphomic’); (iii) regular (extending across the lexicon) versus irregular (lexically specified); (iv) externally relevant versus irrelevant: we expect
splits to be internal to the lexeme, but some have external relevance (they require different syntactic
behaviors).
    I identify instances of these four dimensions separately: they are orthogonal, and therefore not
dependent on each other. Their interaction gives a substantial typology, and it proves to be surprisingly
complete: the possibilities specified are all attested. The typology also allows for the unexpected patterns of behavior to overlap in particular lexemes, producing some remarkable examples. Such examples show that the notion ‘possible word’ is more challenging than many linguists have realized.

This article provides a discussion on implicational hierarchies. It presents the examples of typological hierarchies and considers in turn syntactic, morphosyntactic, and lexical hierarchies. A well-known syntactic hierarchy is the Accessibility Hierarchy. The Agreement Hierarchy and the Animacy Hierarchy are the two well-established examples of morphosyntactic hierarchy. The Berlin and Kay Hierarchy is a famous typological hierarchy for lexis. Any proposed hierarchy must be justified by the range of data that it explains and the closeness of fit between the data and the claim made. The use of hierarchies for research on individual languages is described. The article finally deals with the extension of hierarchies and the relation of hierarchies to semantic maps.

The paper discusses a number of theoretical issues related to Russian inflection from a rather technical perspective of building an optimal table for Russian nominal declension. These issues can be divided into three groups. The first group includes the hierarchy of case grams, as well as the order of cases in the table (implied by this hierarchy). The second group includes the inventory of declension classes (determined by allomorphic variation within the markers of one and the same gram), as well as the strategies of representing this allomorphic variation in inflectional paradigms. Finally, the third group includes the status of partitive (or “second genitive”) and adnumerative (or “counting form”) in the system of Russian declension; this latter problem has received relatively less attention, but it is closely related to the previous two groups.

The author uses a 'canonical' approach to offer a new perspective on the complex phenomenon of inflectional classes. This means extrapolating from what there is to what there might be, in order to define the theoretical space into which real instances fit. To do this, the author proposes eight criteria, grouped under two overarching principles. These are: I. distinctiveness: canonical inflectional classes are as clearly distinct as possible; and II. independence: the distribution of lexical items over canonical inflectional classes is unmotivated. The author investigates the various deviations from these principles, by considering in turn the more detailed criteria which exemplify them. While one might reasonably expect that 'canonical inflectional class' is an ideal without exemplars, the author finds an example which comes remarkably close to canonical.

The subject agreement inflection of the Breton verb distinguishes six person-number
forms and a seventh impersonal form. The impersonal has the generic and arbitrary uses of the
class best studied for Germanic man, French on, and Romance se/si, as well as its Irish cognate.
We take up two remarkable aspects of the Breton impersonal. One is recent dialectal extensions
of the impersonal morphology to prepositional and nominal inflections, completing the otherwise
thoroughgoing parallelism of these three systems characteristic of Breton and related languages.
In the theory of impersonals, the extensions have the potential to shed light on the limitation of
this class of impersonals to subjects. Our second focus is the phi-features of the impersonal in
anaphoric dependencies. Breton bolsters the generalisation that this class of impersonals is
deficient in phi-features and thereby unable to antecede personal pronouns. However, recent
dialectal developments have resulted in grammars where different personal pronouns have
become impersonals, and their convergence has created systems where the impersonal antecedes
a remarkably wide but still limited range of pronouns. Our study aims to cover the rich but partial
descriptions of these phenomena over the Modern Breton period, bolstered by corpus examples,
and to extend it by a pilot study of current native speaker competence.

In Slavic languages, as in many other languages, the noun for 'person' has a suppletive paradigm. Yet, as this study shows, in West Polesian (East Slavic) the noun 'person' is a typological outlier not only within Slavic but also cross-linguistically because it combines three stems with a very complex distribution. This paper looks for any regularities in the distribution of these suppletive stems, their cognates among other Slavic languages and how speakers use them in free texts. This survey provides novel insights into suppletion. First, suppletion involving more than two stems is typologically uncommon but the West Polesian noun 'person' combines three. Second, against any expectation of regularity for the sake of learnability, free-text data show that speakers do not distribute the stems homogeneously. Third, notwithstanding the diglossic situation in Western Polesie, the inter-and intra-speaker variation in the choice of stem does not seem particularly conditioned by sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age or social class. In sum, this corpus survey of the suppletive stems of 'person' in West Polesian and Slavic illustrates a rare case in morphological typology where there is a three-stem suppletion combined with overabundance and a vast amount of variation across speakers.

i. Two paradoxes
Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM), Construction Morphology (CxM), Amorphous morphology (A-morphM): There are no morphemes BUT there is morphology. (Inflectional) morphemes are listed as markings (exponents) without meaning in the lexicon.
Thus, e.g., PFM defines form and meaning based on the paradigm function (PF): PF(áL,σñ) = áR,σñ (Stewart & Stump 2007). The PF value of a paradigm cell áL,σñ of the lexeme (L) is the pairing of this cell's realization R with the morphosyntactic property set σ.

Distributed Morphology (DM): There is no morphology by itself BUT there are abstract morphemes.
DM relies on syntactic structures and 'morpheme' is an abstract unit that refers to a syntactic terminal node and its content, not to the phonological expression of that terminal. Morphology is distributed between syntax and phonology. Vocabulary items are exponents that relate form and meaning but they insert late (post syntactically).

ii. Our view
There is morphology and there are morphemes.
There are three possible ways to approach the relation of meaning and form in morphology: A. Form and meaning emerge simultaneously B. The association is from meaning to form C. The association is from form to meaning The most important difference between these scenarios consists in the fact that in scenarios B and C meaning may be assigned at the level of word, i.e. one may claim that morphemes do not have meaning of their own or even that there are no morphemes at all (in scenario B).

Language is a positional system.
With respect to meaning, (forms of) morphemes can be evaluated: 1) in isolation (as building blocks of morphology, e.g. English-s,-en,-ed,-er); 2) based on their position in the word form (i.e. templatically, e.g. inflection is outside derivation; prefixes, suffixes, infixes, interfixes are also established positionally); 3) based on combinations with other morphemes, e.g. E. writer -s but not *small-er-s, thus two different-er suffixes, one that derives nouns (agents) and one that expresses comparative degree of adjectives.

Morphemes associate form and meaning, like in scenario A, but this association is not trivial and involves scenarios B and C at the different stages of derivation and in comprehension and production.

Diese Studie stellt zunächst den von Greville Corbett ausgearbeiteten Ansatz der kano-nischen Flexionsmorphologie als Instrument für die Bewertung flexivischer Komplexi-tät vor. Die umfassende Typologie der Komplexitätsverhältnisse, die in Corbett (2015) am Beispiel unterschiedlichster Sprachen ausgearbeitet ist, wird im Folgenden auf das Flexions system nur einer Sprache angewendet, und zwar auf die obersorbische Schriftsprache im Vergleich mit der niedersorbischen. Die beeindruckende Vielfalt von Komplexitätsverhältnissen, die Corbetts Modell bezeichnet, ist sogar innerhalb einer slawi-schen Einzelsprache nachzuweisen.

This article investigates the phenomenon of inflection by intersecting formatives, that is to say, where an exponence is encoded by a combination of independently distributed phonological increments. Formative independence is defined in terms of conditional entropy. The verb inflection system of Murrinhpatha, an Aboriginal language of northern Australia, is analysed as a particularly complex example of intersecting formatives, and in general we can say that inflectional exponence in this language is highly irregular or unpredictable. Recent information-theoretic approaches to morphology provide us with methods for formalising and measuring the unpredictability of Murrinhpatha verb inflection. We add a distinct formalism that models the probability of correct inflectional prediction given incomplete knowledge of the inflectional paradigms in the language. We argue that this is a particularly relevant model for Murrinhpatha speaker/learners, because the language has a small, closed class of finite verb lexemes, most of which have their own idiosyncratic inflectional paradigm. There are not productively applied inflectional classes. In this model of inflectional predictability, intersecting formatives are in some cases the only chance a learner/speaker has of predicting the correct form.

LEXICAL SPLITS: THEIR SURPRISING TYPOLOGY

Greville G. Corbett
Surrey Morphology Group
University of Surrey

In trying to understand natural language, we need to consider what is a ‘possible word’ (lexeme). We find simple lexemes that are internally homogeneous and externally consistent. On the other hand, there are others with splits in their internal structure and inconsistencies in their external behaviour. I first explore the characteristics of the most straightforward lexemes, in order to establish a point in the theoretical space from which we can calibrate the real examples we find. I then schematize the interesting phenomena which deviate from this idealization: these deviations include suppletion, syncretism, deponency and defectiveness. Next I analyse the different ways in which lexemes are split into two or more segments by such phenomena. I set out a typology of possible splits, along four dimensions: (i) splits based on the composition/feature signature of the paradigm versus those based solely on morphological form; (ii) motivated (following a boundary motivated from outside the paradigm) versus purely morphology-internal (‘morphomic’); (iii) regular (extending across the lexicon) versus irregular (lexically specified); (iv) externally relevant versus irrelevant. I identify instances of these four dimensions separately: they are orthogonal to each other. Their interaction gives a substantial typology, and it proves to be surprisingly complete: the possibilities specified are all attested. The typology also allows for the unexpected patterns of behaviour to overlap in particular lexemes, producing some remarkable examples. Such examples show that the notion ‘possible word’ is more challenging than has generally been realized.

Complex phenomena of grammatical tone, well-described for many African languages, are increasingly attested also in the Tibeto-Burman family. This paper describes the tone assignment rule and two cases of tonal expression of grammatical categories in the Tibeto-Burman language Anal. The typologically unusual rule involves tone spreading, tonal polarity on a non-edge constituent and additional spreading, resulting in constant tonal patterns across grammatical suffixes. In two different cases the combination of the tonal pattern assigned by this rule with peculiar morpho-tonological processes results in a marking of a grammatical category (future and 1SG-person) by grammatical tone, by vowel-length, or only by the overall tonal pattern of the verbal form. Both cases are related to the omission of an explicit marking of the category, although the outcome cannot be explained only by the concept of a floating tone.

Lexemes may be internally consistent, or they may be split into segments. The splits may be ‘motivated’, that is they may correspond to morphosemantic, morphosyntactic or phonological specifications. We recognize this motivation if the cells form a natural class, or if the specification is referred to by a non-morphological rule (typically, the two diagnostics coincide). Alternatively the split may lack such motivation, in which case it is a morphomic split. There are some properties which both types of split share: for instance, both can be seen in terms of Wurzel’s Paradigm Structure Conditions (i.e. they are “predictive”), and both can be stable over long periods of time. But they are also interestingly different, which makes drawing the distinction valuable: our main question, then, is “how do morphomic splits differ from motivated splits?” Four types of difference will be reviewed, varying from conjectures to the well-documented. As we review the differences, the issue of singletons (single cells) will need discussion (cf Aronoff 1994: 25).

1. A morphomic split can be nested under a motivated one, but not vice versa
Russian verbs are split in terms of their inward feature sensitivity: they mark number and gender in the past, and person and number in other tenses. This split is clearly a motivated one. Some verbs, such as peč´ ‘to bake’ also have a morphomic split, a stem alternation involving the 2sg, 3sg, 1pl and 2pl versus the rest. This split is found only in the present tense. Thus the morphomic split is embedded under the motivated one. This situation is consonant with that envisaged in Stump (2006). Furthermore, if singletons are accepted, Russian nouns provide a fine example, in their patterns of stress. The major patterns align with the singular-plural split, the minor patterns which are nested under them are morphomic. We seem not to find the converse. Note, however, that nesting is not essential: we can find orthogonal splits, one motivated and the other morphomic, with neither nested under the other: see Burmeso (Donohue 2001) for the patterning of tense and (morphomic) syncretism.

2. Interaction with semantic splits
These are instances where some cells in a lexeme’s paradigm do not have the meaning that would be predicted given their lexical and grammatical meaning. (A simple example is English grounds, which is not straightforwardly ground  + plural.) Semantic splits may, but need not, run along the line of a morphological split. When they do, such splits follow the line of a motivated split. The Germanic preterite-presents offer good illustrations of this. Alternatively, Serbo-Croat telo ‘body’ has tel-a ‘live bodies’ and tel-es-a ‘dead bodies’, according to Đorđević (1989: 141), showing a split running between singular and plural.

3. Interaction with optionality
As a result of their different origins, the two types of split are rather different here. This suggests the following conjecture:
morphomic splits start out as obligatory and may become optional;
motivated splits start out as optional and may become obligatory.
For example, Old Russian had vъ rucě ‘in the hand’, with a morphomic alternation, later vъ rucě / vъ rukě with an option, which was later resolved as vъ rukě (regular, removing that split); see Matthews (1967: 107, 191), Kiparsky (1967: 85-88, 89-90). In contrast, the motivated split induced by Germanic preterite-presents seems to have arisen as an option, and become obligatory.

4. Inward sensitivity vs external relevance
An interesting type of split is induced by differing sensitivity to incoming feature requirement. This may be morphomic, as in the case of the Archi verb paradigm, which is sensitive to gender and number except in the first/second person plural. It may also be motivated, as shown by the Russian verb which, as noted earlier, marks person and number in the present, but number and gender in the past.
    We would not expect a split within a lexeme to be externally relevant; rather a lexeme “should” have constant properties. Yet we do find splits which are externally relevant. Particularly dramatic is Georgian, where verbs have different case alignment according to their tense, aspect and mood. In a more restricted way, the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian noun oko ‘eye’ has a singular-plural split, having the irregular plural stem oč-i ‘eyes’. This split is externally relevant in that it brings with it a change of gender (neuter in the singular but feminine in the plural). Both are motivated splits. Surely it could not be that a morphomic split could have external relevance? To see what an example would be like, imagine a Romance dialect in which the N-pattern forms required one auxiliary and the remaining forms took another. Yet one possible such example has been found, though it involves a single lexeme and a small paradigm.

Conclusion
At the most basic level, inflectional morphology is entirely about splits in lexemes, since if lexemes have no division into cells we are dealing with an isolating language. But the divisions can be homogeneous. It is the other types of split which prove interesting, whether motivated from outside the morphology, or morphology-internal. First, they show different patterns of nesting, relative to each other. Second, they interact differently with semantic splits. Third, it is conjectured that they behave differently as regards optionality. And fourth, while motivated and morphomic splits may both be differentially sensitive to incoming feature requirements, we would expect that only motivated splits could have external relevance. This is largely true, though there remains a sliver of evidence in favour of a morphomic split being externally relevant.

The present volume aims to argue the following thesis: one of the structural forces that determine the organisation of morphological paradigms is a tendency not to let the relative frequency values of the exponents excessively differ from each other, i.e. a tendency to keep the probabilistic distribution of the exponents as close to the equiprobable situation as possible.
Two apparently unrelated phenomena can be ascribed to this tendency. The first consists of instances of synchronic syncretism traditionally interpreted as related to the Brøndalian principle of compensation, that connects the neutralization of a categorical distinction with the presence of a marked value of a superordinate category (cf., e.g., the massive presence of case syncretism in the dual number of Sanskrit nominals). The crucial datum is that, in “compensative” syncretism, the paradigm cells that share the same exponent are characterised by low frequency values. The second consists of instances of “semiseparate exponence”, i.e. the phenomenon that is found when, within a paradigm that is generally characterised by cumulative exponence (i.e. by non-analysable morphs associated with combinations of morphosyntactic properties), some sets of cells exhibit morphological markers that are decomposable and analyzable as combinations of exponents, with each one of them being insensitive or only partially sensitive to the values of some categories (cf., e.g., the Ancient Greek verb endings 2nd du. active -ton, 2nd du. middle -sthon, 2nd pl. active -te, 2nd pl. middle -sthe, where the alternation between -t- and -sth- correlates with diathesis). Significantly, semiseparate exponence also tends to be found in paradigm cells with low frequency values. Both phenomena allow the system to avoid morphological exponents associated to particularly infrequent cells (i.e. particularly rare combinations of morphosyntactic properties) in a one to one relationship.
The first chapter deals with two preliminary issues: the theoretical status of the morphological units called exponents and the inadequacy of the interpretation of the Brøndalian compensative syncretism in terms of markedness or complexity.
In the second chapter we tentatively propose, on the basis of information-theoretic notions, quantitative measures of morphological equilibrium. We try,moreover, to show that, once the stochastic vector of exponents is considered as a linguistic datum, the way is open for the tendency towards equilibrium to be interpreted as a redundancy minimising (or efficiency maximising) principle concerning the morphological encoding and, at the same time, as a factor increasing the complexity and the structural disorder within the system of relationships between units of expression and units of content. On the other hand, the locus of the pressure towards equilibrium is identified with language change.
In the third chapter, we try to exemplify the manifestations of the equilibrium tendency and to show that some situations of disequilibrium may turn out to be only apparent or less pronounced than they appear to be if we look at all the categorical dimensions involved in the paradigm at issue, whereby distinctions related to inflectional classes or lexical categorisation (like distinctions between noun and pronoun morphology or noun and verb morphology) should also be counted among the possible relevant dimensional axes. We also try to assess whether and how it may be possible to extend our main hypothesis to phenomena where formal oppositions are sensitive to both lexical and morphosyntactic information, i.e. allomorphies of inflectional markers conditioned by inflection classes and stem alternations regulated by the pure morphological level.
The fourth chapter deals with the existence of systemic forces, originating from preferences specific to the phonological, morphological, and morphosyntactic/semantic levels, that may counter the tendency towards equilibrium. In particular, we try to show that a tendency towards the optimisation of phonological encoding systematically conflicts with the equilibrium tendency and is responsible for language developments characterised by an increase in morphological disequilibrium. This happens because phonological optimisation is obtained if the most frequent cells are tendentially associated with the shortest (or phonologically simplest) exponents, a fact that increases the probability of homophony between exponents belonging to high frequency cells. On the other hand, as is argued in the same chapter, organisational principles related to the pure morphological and the morphosyntactic/semantic levels can also conflict with the tendency towards equilibrium.

This year's iteration of the SIGMORPHON Shared Task on morphological reinflection focuses on typological diversity and crosslingual variation of morphosyntactic features. In terms of the task, we enrich UniMorph with new data for 32 languages from 13 language families, with most of them being under-resourced: Kunwinjku

The verbal paradigms of the Daghestanian language Archi are justly famous for their impressive size. I argue, however, that there is a more difficult problem lodged within a small and apparently simple part of the paradigm. It concerns the expression of gender and number, in their interaction with person. I present information on the large scale of the paradigm briefly, and then outline the
problem of person.  The need, or lack of it, for a person feature in Archi has been discussed elsewhere, so that here I can simply summarize the argument.If the need for a person feature is accepted, it follows that the paradigm has an unusual shape. This paradigm is genuinely difficult, as I demonstrate in the main part of the paper.

Krongo, a member of the Kadu family (Nuba Mountains, Sudan), has four agreement classes: feminine, masculine, neuter and plural (Reh 1985). Nominal number-marking prefixes play a key role in class assignment: productive plural prefixes trigger plural agreement, and productive singular prefixes trigger neuter agreement. In most other Kadu languages there is no distinction between the plural and neuter classes. Comparative and typological evidence shows that Krongo represents the older state of affairs. It is argued that the motivation for the merger of these two classes was a morphosyntactic abstraction over agreement rules. Two distinct rules, one for singular prefixes and one for plural prefixes, were replaced by a single rule that assigned the same agreement class to all productive number prefixes, regardless of whether they mark singular or plural. The result is the morphosyntactic mirror-image of an inverse number system, such as is found in e.g. Dagaare (Grimm 2012).

Mazatec is a Mexican language with 12-20 variants spoken in the La Cañada area of Oaxaca. Many variants show asymmetries in the laryngeally modified consonants of the phonemic inventory. Specifically, the laryngeally modified consonants in the phonemic inventory of Íénná, Mazatec of Mazatlán Villa de Flores, ISO 639-3 = vmz, mazateco del suroeste (INALI 2016), are asymmetric.

The Íénná phonemic inventory includes post-aspirated obstruents, [th, nth, kh], voiceless resonants [m̥ , n̥, ɲ̊, ɸ̞ , β̞ ], post-glottalized obstruents [tsˀ , tʃˀ], and pre-glottalized resonants [ˀw , ˀj ]. It includes neither pre-glottalized obstruents such as [ˀt, ˀts], nor post-glottalized resonants such as [mˀ, nˀ, ɲˀ]. Ascribing non-modal voicing to a morpheme feature removes the otherwise unmotivated asymmetry in the phonemic inventory of Íénná and provides evidence that non-modal voicing as a morphemic feature may be an areal phenomenon of Mesoamerican languages, e.g. [+nasal] and [+CG] in Mixtec (Marlett 1992, Macaulay & Salmons 1995), [+CG] in Totonac (Aschmann & Wonderly 1952), Trique (Hollenbach 1984) and Tepehua (Watters 1987), and [+nasal] in Me'phaa (Marlett yNeri 2012).

Based on an analysis of the possibilities of imperfectivation (imperfectivability) of Russian
verbs with the prefixes pro- and u- found in the Russian National Corpus and on the Russian-language Internet,
the paper discusses the regularity of the morphological mechanism of suffixal imperfectivation. In a sense
it is a response to Victor Xrakovskij’s papers of 2015 and 2018 and continues the discussion about the theoretical
model of Russian verb Aspect, i. e. whether it should be considered an inflectional or a derivational
(classifying) category.
В предлагаемой статье на основе осуществленного с помощью Национального Кор-
пуса Русского Языка и русскоязычного интернета анализа возможности имперфективации (импер-
фективируемости) русских глаголов с приставками про- и у- обсуждается регулярность морфологиче-
ского механизма суффиксальной имперфективации. В определенном смысле данная статья является
откликом на публикации В. С. Храковского «Категория вида в русском языке: болевые точки» (2015), «И опять о болевых точках категории вида» (2018) и продолжает дискуссию о словоизменительном
vs. словоклассифицирующем характере русского вида.

Zero marking of inflectional categories (zero exponence) is often regarded as a major source of complexity in morphological systems (cf. e.g. Anderson 1992, Wunderlich & Fabri 1994, Segel 2008). In this paper, we argue that, on the contrary, zero marking is a crucial precondition for the learning of inflectional morphology. By giving a learning algorithm for affix segmentation which profits substantially from assuming zero morphology in specific parts of inflectional paradigms, we show that the expression of present tense by Ø plays an important role in making accessible to learners the subanalysis of past tense forms into tense and agreement markers. Moreover, we present preliminary results of a typological pilot study supporting the claim that human languages always exhibit zero marking at the relevant points of paradigms.

There are fascinating problems at the syntax-morphology interface which tend to be missed. I offer a brief explanation of why that may be happening, then give a Canonical Typology perspective, which brings these problems to the fore. I give examples showing that the henomena could in principle be treated either by syntactic rules (but these would be complex) or within morphology (but this would involve redundancy). Thus ‘non-autonomous’ case values, those which have no unique form but are realized by patterns of syncretism, could be handled by a rule of syntax (one with access to other features, such as number) or by morphology (with resulting systematic syncretisms). I concentrate on one of the most striking sets of data, the issue of prepositional government in Latvian, and outline a solution within Network Morphology using structured case values.

This study aims at contrasting and comparing inflectional bound morphemes of English, Azerbaijani and Persian languages in details to pinpoint any similarities and differences between them. To do so, an inventory of Azerbaijani, Persian and English inflections with examples and illustrations are listed to highlight their similarities and discrepancies. There are restricted numbers of inflections in each language and are utilized to indicate aspects of grammatical function of a word. Results reveal that there are more varieties of inflections in Azerbaijani language than in English or Persian and; they share some common properties as well as several dissimilarities. English and Persian represent more irregularity in terms of plurality for nouns and affixation for verbs; Azeri incorporates numerous inflections into each category as well. The differences are the major source of difficulties for a native speaker of Azeri or Persian to learn English and vice versa. To overcome this, teac...