2010م - 1444هـ
Understanding Language Series

Series Editors: Bernard Comrie and Greville Corbett





Understanding

Morphology

2nd edition

Martin Haspelmath

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Andrea D. Sims

The Ohio State University





Contents

Preface to the second edition xi

Preface to the first edition xiii

Abbreviations xv

1 Introduction 1

1.1 What is morphology? 1

1.2 Morphology in different languages 4

1.3 The goals of morphological research 6

1.4 A brief user’s guide to this book 9

Summary of Chapter 1 11

Further reading 11

Comprehension exercises 12

2 Basic concepts 14

2.1 Lexemes and word-forms 15

2.2 Affixes, bases and roots 19

2.3 Morphemes and allomorphs 22

Summary of Chapter 2 27

Appendix. Morpheme-by-morpheme glosses 27

Comprehension exercises 29

Exploratory exercise 30

3 Rules 33

3.1 Morphological patterns 34

3.1.1 Affixation and compounding 34

3.1.2 Base modification 35

3.1.3 Reduplication 38

3.1.4 Conversion 39

3.1.5 Outside the realm of morphology 40





viâ•… C O N T E N T S

3.2 Two approaches to morphological rules 40

3.2.1 The morpheme-based model 41

3.2.2 The word-based model 46

Summary of Chapter 3 54

Further reading 54

Comprehension exercises 55

Exploratory exercise 56

4 Lexicon 60

4.1 A morpheme lexicon? 61

4.2 A strict word-form lexicon? 66

4.3 Reconciling word-forms and morphemes 70

Summary of Chapter 4 75

Further reading 75

Comprehension exercises 76

Exploratory exercise 77

5 Inflection and derivation 81

5.1 Inflectional values 81

5.2 Derivational meanings 86

5.2.1 Derived nouns 87

5.2.2 Derived verbs 88

5.2.3 Derived adjectives 89

5.3 Properties of inflection and derivation 89

5.3.1 Relevance to the syntax 90

5.3.2 Obligatoriness 92

5.3.3 Limitations on application 93

5.3.4 Same concept as base 93

5.3.5 Abstractness 94

5.3.6 Meaning compositionality 94

5.3.7 Position relative to base 95

5.3.8 Base allomorphy 96

5.3.9 Word-class change 96

5.3.10 Cumulative expression 98

5.3.11 Iteration 98

5.4 Dichotomy or continuum? 98

5.4.1 Inherent and contextual inflection 100

5.5 Inflection, derivation and the syntax-morphology interface 102

5.5.1 The dichotomy approach and split morphology 102

5.5.2 The continuum approach and single-component

architecture 105

Summary of Chapter 5 106

Appendix. Notation conventions for inflectional values 107