do australian languages really have morphemes? issues in

DO AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES REALLY HAVE MORPHEMES? ISSUES IN KA YTEJ MORPHOLOGY

HAROLD KOCH

The morphemic way of thinking about language is going to be hard to outgrow. (C.P. Hockett 1987: 77)

1 . INTRODUCTION

This paperl offers some reflections on the ways in which linguists have described the structure of words in Australian Aboriginal languages, pointing out inadequacies in the application of a framework that relies on the concept of morphemes, and drawing attention to the advantages offered by an alternative framework that employs the more traditional notions of paradigms and morphological processes.

It is generally accepted that, by and large, Australian languages are of the type characterised as agglutinating. In agglutinating languages words are typically constructed of a sequence of fairly discrete chUl.k.s of phonological material, each of which signals a unit of lexical or grammatical meaning. Now in the description of Australian languages modern linguists typically rely on the theoretical construct morpheme, which was defined by Bloomfield (1933 ch. 10) as a minimal unit of grammatical description and whose defmition was further elaborated by post-Bloomfieldian American structuralist linguists (see Matthews 1974 ch. 5; articles in Joos 1 957; textbook treatment in Nida 1949; Gleason 1961). According to this approach, morphemes are minimal elements of phonological substance and meaning. They may be realised as different allomorphs whose selection is conditioned either phonologically (i.e. by the nature of adjacent phonological segments) or morphologically (i.e. by the nature of other (grammatical or lexical) morphemes co-occurring in the same word). Morphemes may be grouped into classes which share the same semantic and distributional properties. Words are described in terms of the sequence and selection of (classes of) morphemes.

A variant of this general morphemic model has been practised since the advent of Generative Phonology (GP), in which recurrent and phonologically related alternations between corresponding phonemes in different aUomorphs are described by means of morphophonemic or 'phonological ' processes or 'rules' applied to an underlying form of morphemes. Words are still represented in their underlying form as a sequence of morphemes, however.

Peter Austin, R.M.W. Dixon, Tom Dutton and Isobel White, eds Language and history: essays in honour of Luise A. Hercus, 193-208. Pacific Linguistics, C- 1 1 6, 1990. © Harold Koch

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Koch, H. "Do Australian languages really have morphemes? Issues in Kaytej morphology". In Austin, P., Dixon, R.M.W., Dutton, T. and White, I. editors, Language and history: Essays in honour of Luise A. Hercus. C-116:193-208. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1990. DOI:10.15144/PL-C116.193 ©1990 Pacific Linguistics and/or the author(s). Online edition licensed 2015 CC BY-SA 4.0, with permission of PL. A sealang.net/CRCL initiative.

194 HAROW KOCH

An alternative model for describing words is the Word and Paradigm (WP) model of traditional grammar. In this approach words are described in terms of a lexeme (traditionally indicated by a citation form) and a set of concomitant morphosyntactic properties; all the words based on the same lexeme constitute a paradigm. Thus the Latin word amavissemus 'we would have loved' is described as the first person plural past perfect active subjunctive of the lexeme amo ' love ' . Whereas in traditional Latin grammar a verbal lexeme was cited in the form which expressed the properties of first person, singular number, present tense, imperfect aspect, indicative mood and active voice, in Matthews' ( 1972, 1974 ch. 8) modern version of the model, lexemes are given as a single underlying stem, e.g. ama-. A set of morpholexical rules specifies explicitly the exponence I

marking I coding I realisation of morpho syntactic properties by means of operations such as affixation, reduplication, modification (of a consonant, vowel, stress or tone) of the stem, subtraction, zero or even suppletion. These operations or 'morphological processes' (for the term see Sapir 192 1 ch. 4; Bloomfield 1933 ch. 13) apply to either the underlying stem of the lexeme or to intermediate stems created by other morpholexical rules (the latter produce either a fully inflected word form or an intermediate stem). There is no requirement that there be a one-to-one relation I mapping between morphosyntactic properties and the phonological chunks or 'formatives' of the resulting word. The same morpholexical rule may simultaneously effect the realisation of two or more properties; on the other hand, one morphosyntactic property may be realised by more than one operation. Finally, after the exponence of morphosyntactic properties is effected by morpholexical rules, morphophonemic rules make phonologically motivated adjustments to the output of the morpholexical rules.

Note that the morphemic model first sketched above is a static model (called by Hockett 1954 an Item and Arrangement (IA) Model). The GP version of morphemics is a mixed model, using static morphotactics and a largely dynamic morphophonemics. The WP model, on the other hand, is totally dynamic, employing processes for the whole generation of a word from a lexical stem; there is no need for word structure formulae.

Matthews ( 1 972) argues that the morphemic model is both inadequate and inappropriate for inflecting languages such as Latin, but allows that it may be appropriate for the description of languages of agglutinating structure. In what follows I will try to show that problems arise in applying the morphemic model even in an agglutinating language such as Kaytej ,2 and will suggest solutions within the WP model. (Where WP analyses are proposed below, I use relatively informal morpholexical rules. Suggestions for more detailed formalism can be found in Matthews 1972; Bauer 1988; Anderson 1982, 1986, 1988a, 1988b.)

2. ORDER

In a morphemic model one expects to be able to set up a word construction as a sequence of classes of morphemes, with members of a class of morphemes occurring in the same structural slot. Now Kaytej kin nouns can include one of a set of mutually exclusive markers of the person of possessor or 'propositus' (for which term see Heath et al. 1982); bound person markers are used only for a singular propositus, non-singUlars being indicated phrasally by an independent pronoun in the DATive case. The problem is that, of this set of markers, two (those for second and third persons) are prefixes, while the first person is signalled by a suffix. This is illustrated in the paradigm for 'older brother' :

DO AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES REALLY HAVE MORPHEMES 195

TABLE 1 : POSSESSED KIN TERMS

1 SG alkere-ye 2 SG ngkalkere

3 SG kwalkere

This typologically odd situation would 'have to be expressed in a morphemic approach by a

formula that allowed two positions or slots for the person morphemes and specified that these slots are mutually exclusive. In illustration ( 1 ) I use a formal device employed in Tagmemics (cf. Elson and Pickett 1965: 60), where + means obligatory, ± means optional but a linked ± and + means that elements are mutually exclusive:

(1) Kin Noun Stem = ± Person +Kin Noun Root + Person

--------,+--------

Generally in Australian languages case is marked further to the periphery of a word than is number (cf. Bybee's ( 1985) principle of relevance). This is for the most part true in Kaytej as well, except when a word is marked for number (DUal or PLural, the singular being unmarked) and ERGative or LOCative case (which are homophonous). Consider the following (partial) plural paradigm for elkwe 'old man' :3

TABLE 2: NON-SINGULAR NOUN CASE PARADIGM

PL DU ERG/LOC elkwe-ng -amerne elkwe-nge -therre(-le) NOM/ACC elkw -amerne elk we -therre OAT elkw -amerne-we elkwe -therre-we

ALL elkw -amerne-warle elkwe -therre-warle ABL elkw -amerne-theye elk we -therre-theye

The majority of forms could be described by the structural formula:

(2) Noun = Noun Stem Number Case

However, to account for the ERG and LOC case forms in the plural, we would need to resort to a device such as that employed for person on kin terms, i.e. allow two positions for case (or perhaps add a rule of morpheme metathesis?). The dual form introduces a further complication; here ERG/LOC case is marked before the number marker as in the plural, but may optionally be marked in the normal (for other cases) final position as well (nge and Ie are allomorphs conditioned by the length of the preceding stem). So it appears we would need a formula

(3) Noun = Noun Stem ERG/LOC case Number Case

with a condition that Case must be empty after the combination of ERG/LOC and PL.

3. ZERO

Some linguists using the morphemic model allow for zero morphemes, which consist of the pairing of a (grammatical) meaning with no phonological segments. In Kaytej one could thus describe the NOMinative/ACCusative case suffix as a zero morpheme, since NOM or ACC case is signalled by the absence of phonological material in the suffix slot where other cases are marked, as can be seen in Table 2 a�ve and in Table 3, which gives the singular paradigm.

.

196 HAROW KOCH

TABLE 3: SINGULAR CASE PARADIGM

EROILOC NOM/ACC DAT ALL ABL

old man dog elkwe-nge aleke-le

elkwe aleke

elkwe-we elkwe-warle elkwe-theye

aleke-we aIeke-warIe aleke-theye

(The situation for number is not the same, it could be argued. The absence of a dual or plural suffix does not signal singular number, since nouns without a number suffix may be used when the referent may in fact be non-singular but not specified as such. This is especially true for nouns referring to inanimates.)

Morphemics also employs zero al/omorphs, where a grammatical meaning is expressed by an absence of phonological material in a certain context but by an overt form in others. Thus in Kaytej the first person singular 'possessor' of a kin term is usually marked by the suffix -ye (cf. Table I above); however, for certain kin terms 'my' must be inferred from the absence of a suffix or prefix.

TABLE 4: POSSESSED KIN TERMS

father mother

1 SO arlweye arrengkwe

2 SO ngk- arlweye ngkarrengkwe 3 SO kw- arlweye kwarrengkwe

An immediate problem arises with the zero allomorph for first person singular. Where in the word is it located? Since it is an allomorph of the -ye, it could be claimed that it is a suffix; on the other hand, since the first person form is distinguished from second and third person forms containing a prefix, should it rather be a prefix? Actually, these first person forms contrast with the second and third person forms by virtue of the fact that no phonological material additional to the root occurs anywhere in the word. A similar problem with the position of zero morphs arises in connection with the NOM/ACC case marker in dual and plural nominals (see Table 2 above). If NOM/ACC is represented as a zero morpheme, one could well ask whether this zero should be located in the first or third suffix slot, or both.

Non-singular personal pronouns are marked for the moiety (M) and generation (0) relations -same (S) versus opposite (0) - between the referents, as described in Koch ( 1982); cf. the following paradigms for the second person dual and plural pronouns.

TABLE 5: NON-SINGULAR PERSONAL PRONOUNS

SMSO SMOG OM

2 DU 2 PL mpwele mpwel-ake mp weI-an the

errw-angkerre errw-akerre errw-an therre

In the dual pronouns, the absence of a suffix signals that the referents belong to the same section (i.e. same patrimoiety and same set of alternate generation levels). One could therefore posit a zero allomorph of the angkerre which occurs after plural roots and locate it in the same slot.

Zero is somewhat of a problem for morphemics because zero hardly fits the definition of a morpheme as the correlation of meaning with phonological substance. It is hard to call a zero morph a form. Furthermore, since they are insubstantial, it is rather nonsensical to talk of zeroes as being


located in a particular place in a word. In the WP approach to morphology, these problems don't arise. Morpholexical rules specify what operations are applied to the underlying form of the lexeme when it occurs with given abstract morpho syntactic properties. For word forms of the type we have been discussing, it simply specifies 'no change' . Table 6 illustrates the application of such rules in the generation of the paradigms of 'mother' and 'older brother'.

TABLE 6: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR KIN NOUNS

Property Domain Operation mother older brother arrengkwe alkere

1 SG 'mo'/, fa' no change arrengkwe

1 SG other kin roots suffix ye alkereye

2 SG all kin roots prefix ngke ngkarrengkwe ngkalkere

3 SG all kin roots prefix kwe kwarrengkwe kwalkere

4. PHONOLOGICALLY UNRELATED ALLOMORPHS

The GP version of morphemics, which is commonly employed in the description of Australian languages, represents each word as a string of morphemes given in invariant underlying forms as far as this is possible. Variant forms of the morphemes are derived from these underlying forms by 'phonological rules' .

TABLE 7: PROGRESSNE ALLOMORPHS CONDmONED PHONOLOGICALLY

p we-rranytye cook

athe-rranytye excrete

ate-ranytye step on

arte-ranytye chop

Thus the different shapes of the PROGressive morpheme, which are illustrated by the forms in Table 7 , can easily be described in terms of an underlying form -rranytye and a rule that replaces the trill/tap IT by the approximant r at the beginning of a morpheme, when the last consonant of the preceding morpheme is apical. Such a rule can be understood as (at least partially) motivated phonologically: the alternating phonemes share phonological features with each other and with the conditioning environment.

Where the altern ant shapes of a morpheme are largely unrelated to each other and to features of their conditioning environment, however, the processes available in the model are of no help; the allomorphs need to be specified by listing them and giving statements about their distribution, as in earlier non-process IA morphemics, even if their selection is based on phonological conditioning. This is true of the Kaytej ergative case allomorphs, which are conditioned by the length of the preceding stem, as shown in Table 8:

TABLE 8 : DISTRIBUTION OF ERGATIVE/LOCATIVE ALLOMORPHS

nge after stems of shape (V)(C)CV le after stems of shape ( . . )CV(C)CV

In a WP framework, morphophonemic rules are employed to describe phonologically motivated alternations, as in GP. All other alterations to the forms are performed by morpholexical rules, which may be sensitive to phonological features of the stem which is being modified. Thus the rule that specifies the exponence of the Case property ERG would have a format something like that of Table 9 :

198 HAROW KOCH

TABLE 9: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR ERGATIVE

Property Domain Operation ERG nominal stems of shape (V)(C)CV suffix nge ERG nominal stems of other shape suffix Ie

Morpholexical rules may likewise be sensitive to semantic or grammatical features of the input stem. Thus for demonstrative stems, of whatever length, the ERG exponent is -Ie. This requires a

morpholexical rule, taking priority4 over those of Table 9, that suffixes -Ie in the domain of demonstrative stems. Similarly for the PROG aspect of verbs, the choice of -rranytye or -rrane is determined by the transitivity of the verb stem. This can be expressed as in Table 10:

TABLE 10: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR PROGRESSIVE

Property PROG PROG

DOmain tr. verb stems intr. verb stems

Operation suffix rranytye suffix rrane

These rules would still be followed by a morphophonemic rule that replaces rr with r, as above (see Table 7).

5. SUPPLETION AND MODIFICATION

One area of the grammar of Australian languages where analysis of words into morphemes typically breaks down is in the case forms of personal pronouns. Here grammatical descriptions typically give paradigms (although the concept of paradigm is alien to the morphemic framework that is being used), then follow these with a discussion which attempts a morphemic analysis or at least points out recurrent elements of phonological substance that are correlated in some way with elements of grammatical meaning. Kaytej singular pronouns have a characteristically unagglutinative structure:

TABLE 1 1 : SINGULAR PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Case ERG NOM ACCIDAT

1 sa 2 SG

atye ayenge atyenge

nte nge ngkenge

3 sa re re kwere

If one looked for recurrent partials here, one could point to a common 'stem' atye in the ftrst person singular ERa and ACCfDAT, an element nge common to the NOM and ACCfDAT of the ftrst and second person singular forms, and an element re shared by the third person singular forms. None of this, however, is very helpful.

In the WP model, suppletion is recognised as a possible morphological process on a par with affixation, no change, modification etc. Thus, if the NOM forms are taken as the base of the lexemes (this allows a generalisation that NOM is everywhere signalled by 'no change'), we could have morpholexical rules that specify suppletion, as illustrated in Table 12 for second person singUlar.


TABLE 12: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR SECOND PERSON SINGULAR PRONOUN

Property Domain Operation Output NOM nge 2SG pronoun no change nge ERG nge 2SG pronoun replace root by nte nte ACC nge 2SG pronoun replace root by ngkenge ngkenge

Since in WP there is no proscription against segment modification (or 'replacive' processes), the exponence of ACCIDA TS for first person singular may be specified by a rule of the type shown in Table 13 .

TABLE 13 : MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR FIRST PERSON SINGULAR PRONOUN

Property Domain Operation Output

NOM ayenge 1 SG pro no change ayenge ACC/DAT ayenge I SO pro change y of root to ty atyenge

Stem suppletion also occurs in Kaytej in demonstrative stems, where the lexical root of the NOM/ACC is replaced in all other cases, as displayed in Table 14.

TABLE 14: DEMONS1RATIVE STEM SUPPLETION

Case NOM/ACC

this that same anye- anhe- wenhe-

other atye- anthe- we the-

In a morphemic approach the stem variants would be considered allomorphs conditioned by the following case morpheme, as follows:

TABLE 15 : STEM ALLOMORPHS OF 'THIS'

anye- before � 'NOM/ACC' atye- before le 'ERG', we 'DAT' etc.

Note by the way that in the ERG form atyele we have mutual conditioning in the selection of allomorphs, since the ERG allomorph is selected by the grammatical/semantic class of demonstrative stems (against the general rule that short nominal stems select -nge). We thus have 'morphological conditioning' in both directions simultaneously.

In a WP approach, the replacement of ny by ty can be described as a morphological process, parallel to affixation or suppletion. Moreover this replacement can be interpreted as a supplementary exponent of ERG, and not regarded as merely 'conditioned by' ERG (and other oblique cases). There is no reason why a property cannot be marked in two places in a word (or equivalently, realised by two different processes/operations.) The morpholexical rules given in Table 1 6 will generate the ERG, NOM and ACC forms of the demonstratives.

200 HAROLD KOCH

TABLE 1 6: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR CASE ON DEMONSTRATIVES

Property Domain Operation 1 Operation 2 NOM all nominal stems no change

ACC all nominal stems

ERG ERG ERG

except personal pronouns anye ' this' (demonstrative) wenhe ' same' (demonstrative) anhe 'that' (demonstrative)

no change change nasal to stop change nasal to stop infix stop after nasal

suffix le suffix le suffix le

The NOM realisation rule for demonstratives is shared with all nominals. The ACC rule applies to all nominals except personal pronouns, whose ACC form is identical to the DAT form. The realisation of ERG involves two processes applying in sequence: a modification of the stem and the suffixation with -leo Although not shown here, the suffixation with -le applies as well to long nominal stems except for personal pronouns, and the modification to the root (operation 1) applies also in the realisation of all the other cases except the NOM and ACC (and optionally the LOC).

6. PORTMANTEAU/CUMULATION

Since Hockett (1947), morphemics includes the notion of portmanteau morphemes to describe the situation where one morph expresses two meanings which, on the basis of the distribution of semantically related morphemes, one would expect to be expressed in a sequence of two forms. Matthews calls this two (or many) to one relation of meaning to substance 'cumulative exponents' or cumulation.

An example of this phenomenon is found in the Kaytej verb paradigm, where the expected sequence of PROG and PAST is realised by an unanalysable suffix -yayne, as illustrated in Table 17 with forms of the verb ' go'.

TABLE 17: VERBAL TENSE-ASPECf PARADIGM

PRES FUT PURP PAST

nonPROG PROG ape-nke ape-ye ape-wethe ape-nhe

ape-rrane ape-rrane-ye ape-rrane-wethe ape-yayne

In Australianist practice, such portmanteau morphs are given a complex gloss which joins the two grammatical meanings without the usual hyphen, e.g. 'go'-PROG:PAST, 'go'-PROG+PAST, or 'go'-PROO PAST versus trimorphemic 'go'-PROG-FUT.

In the WP approach, a single morpholexical rule would be used to code simultaneously the two properties, as illustrated in Table 18 (for further rules involving PROG, see Tables 10 and 21). This rule would take priority over the general rules that code PROG and PAST when these are not in combination.


TABLE 18: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR PROGRESSIVE Property PROG, PAST6 PROG PAST

Domain all verb stems intr. verb stems all verb stems

Operation suffix yayne suffix Trane suffix nhe

In first person non-singular personal pronouns we find a similar instance of cumulative exponence. Only here there is no basis for expecting the meanings to be expressed in any particular order.

TABLE 19: CASE-EXCLUSION PARADIGM FOR PERSONAL PRONOUN

ERG/NOM, INCL ERG/NOM, EXCL DAT/ACC, INCL DAT/ACC, EXCL

1 DU SMOG

ayl ayle-rn ayle-w ayle-k

-ake -ake -ake -ake

As can be seen from Table 19, k simultaneously marks EXCLusive and ACC/DAT case, while we (which is the normal nominal DAT suffix) codes both DAT/ACC case and INCLusive. (On the other hand it could be argued that me marks only EXCL, since NOMIERG is signalled otherwise by 'no change' .)

7. INFIXES

Infixes, though easily fitting the definition of morphemes, are nevertheless difficult to represent in word constructions and interlinear glosses. They also result in a discontinuity of the morphemes in which they are embedded. In a framework that employs morphological processes, however, they are no harder to describe than suffixes or prefixes, except that their insertion points need to be specified. Kaytej nowhere uses infixation as the sole marker of a grammatical property; yet infixation does occur in connection with certain processes of suffixation, as we have already seen in the oblique stem of the demonstrative 'that' (Table 14).

In verb inflection, stems whose final consonant is an apical nasal add a homorganic stop when the stems occurs before certain suffixes, including the PROG (but not the PROG-cum-PAST). Compare the forms in Table 20.

TABLE 20: VERB FORMS INVOLVING INFIXATION PRES PROG (PRES) PROG PAST

eat ayne-nke aynte-ranytye ayne-yayne sit ane-nke ante-yane ane-yayne

In a static morphemic analysis one would probably treat the variant stems as allomorphs 'morphologically conditioned' by the following suffix morpheme. In fact, we have here another case of mutually conditioned allomorphs; ante, for example is conditioned by the following suffix -yane (and a few others), while -yane (rather than -rrane) is selected after intransitive verb stems whose last consonant is an apical nasal. In a GP approach, one could describe the difference as a (morphophonemic) alternation between n and nt and posit a 'phonological rule' that inserts an apical stop after the underlying nasal. But such a rule would need to include grammatical information in its environment - not only morpheme boundary, but also reference to certain particular suffixes, since it applies, for example, before -yane but not -yayne. In a WP analysis, there is no reason not to treat

202 HAROLD KOCH

the infixation morpholexically as a supplementary marker of PROG (plus a few other properties). The realisation of PROG would thus involve a sequence of two morpholexical operations.

Property PROG PROG

TABLE 21 : MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR PROGRESSIVE Domain Operntion l tr. vb stems with apical nasal infix stop after nasal intr. vb stems with apical nasal infix stop after nasal

Operation 2 suffix rranytye suffix yane

8. SUPERNUMERARY MORPHS

Under this heading I discuss the situation where the exponent of one grammatical property includes the exponent of another. Matthews (1972) raises this isssue with regard to the Latin Future (FUT) Active (ACf) Participle (PPL), which includes the marker of (or, in traditional grammar terms, is built on) the Past Passive (PASS) Participle.

Lexeme love

TABLE 22: LATIN PARTICIPLES PAST:PASS:PPL FUT:ACf:PPL ama-t- ama-t-UI-

Here segmentation into morphemes leads to contradictory glosses such as 'love'-PAST:PASS:PPLFUT:ACT:PPL. The word form only signals FUT:PPL even though it includes a formative that (if not followed by -UI-) may encode PAST:PPL.

This kind of situation is actually rather common in Australian languages. Examples are found especially in the case paradigm of personal pronouns, where typically the form that by itself marks the DA T also ' serves as the stem' for the other oblique cases. Kaytej examples of the ABLative and A VERSive ('for fear of') case are given in Table 23:

TABLE 23: OBLIQUE CASES OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS NOM DAT ABL AVERS

I SG ayenge atyenge atyenge-theye a tyenge-ketye 3PL SMOG at-ake

. ate-w-ake ate-w-ake-theye ate-w-ake-ketye

The morphemic glosses for the ABL forms would include both DA T and ABL, whether the DAT is part of a portmanteau with the root or marked by a separate suffix, e.g. ISG:DAT-ABL, 3PL-DATSMOG-ABL.

In a WP description, the morpholexical rule which specifies ABL (and other oblique case properties) would suffix theye etc. to the form previously created by the DA T rule. Thus a form like atyenge functions both as a whole word form realising the abstract representation ayenge 'I' [DA T] and as an intermediate stem in the derivation of atyengetheye, which realises the grammatical word ayenge 'I ' [ABL]. There is no claim that atyengetheye is grammatically both DA T and ABL, since these are contrasting and mutually exclusive values (properties) selected from the same grammatical dimension (category).

Another example of this general problem is found in the COMITative case marker (which indicates ' in the company of'). This consists of -arlenge following the LOC marker (in its appropriate allomorph -nge or -Ie), as illustrated in Table 24. (I use a dot to separate the two components of the COMIT suffix.)


old man woman

TABLE 24: COMITATIVE CASE FORMS

LOC COMIT elkwe-nge arelhe-Ie

elkwe-ng.arlenge arelhe-l. arlenge

In a morphemic analysis, these could be analysed in one of several ways, none of which is very satisfactory: (a) as a sequence LOC-COMIT; (b) as a single COMIT morpheme with two allomorphs -ngarlenge and -larlenge which are conditioned exactly as the LOC allomorphs -nge and -Ie are; or (c) as a stem-forming morpheme with allomorphs -nge and -Ie followed by -arlenge COMIT as in (a). Solution (b) fails to capture the inclusion of the LOC marker; solution (c) provides an alternative label for the LOC marker in a certain context; solution (a) requires the postulation of a COMIT morpheme arlenge which never occurs alone and implies that the word contains two case slots. In fact, since the LOC of pronouns may be built on the DA T, there will be forms that require

three consecutive case slots, such as:

(4) ayle -we -1 -arlenge we 2 DAT:INCL LOC COMIT

A WP analysis would have the morpholexical rule that codes COMIT suffix arlenge to the forms resulting from the application of the rules that code LOC. The derivation of a complex form like that above is illustrated in Table 25 (omitting the domain of the rules).

TABLE 25: MORPHOLEXICAL DERIVATION OF COMITATIVE

Property DAT, INCL LOC COMIT

Operation ayle 'we 2 (SMSG),

suffix we to root aylewe suffix Ie to DA T stem aylewele suffix arlenge to LOC stem aylewelarlenge

In Kaytej verb inflection, the APPREHensional suffix (' lest') consists of the POTential suffix -me(re) followed by -ketye, which is identical to the AVERS case marker in nominals. In a morphemic approach, which of the following glosses should apply?

(5) atnhe -me -ketye atnhe -meketye bite -POT -AVERS bite -APPREH

The answer probably depends on whether the clause containing this verb form can be considered nominalised. At any rate, in a WP approach the word would be represented grammatically as 'bite' [APPREH], but this is no impediment to deriving its realisation via the output of the POT form (see Table 26).

TABLE 26: MORPHOLEXICAL DERIVATION OF APPREHENSIONAL

Property POT APPREH

Operation suffix me to verb stem suffix ketye to POT stem

atnhe atnheme atnhemeketye

A similar situation occurs in what might be labelled 'participles'. These consist of a verb suffix -nge, followed by -Ie (identical to the LOC case marker) when the subject of the subordinate clause is identical to the main clause subject, but followed by -warle (identical to the ALLative case marker) when the subordinate subject is identical to the main clause object. This is illustrated in the example sentences below.

204 HAROW KOCH

(6) Atye aherre are-nhe artnpe-nge.1e I:ERG kangaroo(ACC) see-PAST run-PPL:SS I saw a kangaroo while I was running.

(7) Atye aherre are-nhe artnpe-nge. warie I:ERG kangaroo(ACC) see-PAST run-PPL:DS I saw a kangaroo (while it was) running.

Should the verb form be analysed into stem plus a unitary same-subject (SS) versus different-subject (DS) participle, or should the post-stem complex be segmented rather into nge PPL plus LOC versus ALL case?

A WP analysis could recognise two different abstract morphosyntactic properties within a category PARTICIPLE, say SUBJECT PARTICIPLE and OBJECT PARTICIPLE, and provide rules which realise these properties in two steps, as shown in Table 27.

TABLE 27: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR PARTICIPLES

Property Operation artnpe PPL suffix nge to verb stem artnpenge PPL:SUBJECT suffix Ie to PPL stem artnpengele PPL:OBJECT suffix warle to PPL stem artnpengewarie

Here the bipartite structure of the suffix is recognised, but it is not suggested that the whole word is a marked by case. The double function of warle (as an exponent of ALL case and as a partial exponent of PPL:OBJECT) is recognised only insofar as warie figures in two very similar operations.

9. COMPLEX MORPHEMES

Sometimes morphemes appear to be constructed out of smaller elements. However, since morphemes are defmed as minimal units, this is not really acceptable within a morphemic framework. Such complex forms must then be analysed either as single wholes or as sequences of different morphemes. Consider the partial paradigm of 'associated motion' stems in Kaytej (for further details see Koch 1984).

TABLE 28: ASSOCIATED MOTION PARADIGM PRIOR MOTION: A WAY angke-ye.ne-PRIOR MOTION: HITHER angke-ye.nye-PRIOR MOTION: RETURN angke-y.aIpe-SUBS MOTION: RETURN angke-rr.aIpe-

go and talk come and talk go back and talk talk and go back

Here the constrast between -yalpe and -rraJpe would justify a subdivision of the suffix into aJpe ' RETURN' (which also recurs in this meaning as an independent verb root) and a prior element y PRIOR and IT SUBSequent which distinguishes the time of the motion relative to that of the main verb event. On this basis the first two complexes could also be segmented into ye PRIOR and elements ne GO and nye COME, which do not recur elsewhere.

A worse problem arises when a complex morpheme appears to consist of component elements whose meaning contradicts that of the whole, as in angke-ye.rn.aJpe- ' talk while coming'. Here the identifiable parts of the complex suffix have elsewhere the glosses PRIOR, HITHER, RETURN. Thus we would expect the whole word to mean 'come back and talk' . Only the directional rn(e)


seems to have the correct meaning; ye appears to contribute SIMULTaneous rather than PRIOR for the time of the motion; and alpe contributes apparently just GO or MOVE rather than the expected RETURN. With forms like this it is obviously preferable to speak of the word grammatically in terms of SIMUL T HITHER MOTION and leave the details of the derivation of the form to rules which allow an indirect relation between the chunks of phonological substance and the components of grammatical meaning, as is possible in a WP framework.

Probably the most complex formation in Kaytej is that which expresses the spatial distribution or extension of a verbal activity (usually with some implication of temporal extension as well). The forms for transitive and intransitive verbs are exemplified in Table 29, where tentative (sub)morphemic glosses are given.

Here the complex suffix appears to consist of Ie or TIe (conditioned by the transitivity of the preceding verb stem), followed by a copy of the last (a)(C)CV of the verb stem, followed by a second instance of Ie or TIe, and finally an element arre or nye conditioned by the transitivity of the verb stem occurring four elements away on its left. I have given glosses that reflect a maximal segmentation: LIG stands for ligative, a term used by Yallop ( 1977: 62) for the closely related

Alyawarra language; REDUP is a reduplicative morpheme; ALONG is used for the distributed meaning, reflecting Aboriginal speakers' English glosses like 'eat 'em along' as well as following the usage of Blake (1979: 204) for Pitta Pitta.

TABLE 29: DIS1RIBUTED ACTIVITY kwathe-l.athe.l. arredrink-LIG.REDUP.LIG.ALONG

angke-rr. angke.rre.n yetalk-LIG.REDUP.LIG.ALONG

A minimalist morphemic analysis could describe these forms in terms of a single morpheme having a meaning DISTributed and occurring in two allomorphic shapes conditioned by the transitivity of the preceding verb stem: I V(C)CVIarre and rrV(C)CVrrenye, where V and C are variables to be filled in (somehow) from the preceding morpheme.

A WP analysis is simpler and more revealing. It can describe reduplication as a process on a par with suffixation. It can also derive the word form by means of a sequence of operations. A WP generation of the forms is given in Table 30.

Property DIST DIST

TABLE 30: MORPHOLEXICAL RULES FOR DIS1RIBUTED ACTION Domain Operation 1 Operation 2

tr. vb stems suffix Ie to stem right redup last (a)(C)CVCe intr. vb stems suffix rre to stem right red up last (a)(C)CVCe

Operation 3 suffix arre suffix nye

Notice that, in place of four suffixes in the maximalist morphemic analysis, we need only three operations, since the reduplication operation can copy at the same time the segments of the stem and the 'ligative' . This also has the advantage of copying material from the end of the preceding form without having to 'look over' some segments.

A somewhat related verbal formation expresses concurrent associated motion ('verb while in motion') and consists of a ' suffix' -Ip V(C)CV. Here the segment -Ip- seems to be related (at least etymologically) to the motion verb aIpe- 'return'; the remainder is a copy of the last part of the verb stem. An example is kwathe-Ip.athe 'drink-IN MOTION'. There is no difference in form according to the transitivity of the verb stem. Here too a process description could involve the suffixation of Ipe followed by the reduplication of the last (a)(C)CV.

206 HAROW KOCH

It should be mentioned that the discontinuous reduplication does cause a problem for a process model (as it also does for predominantly static models that use morphemes). If the reduplication operation first makes a copy of the last part of the stem and attaches it immediately to the right of the original, the operation which adds lpe must apply later and infix lpe at a boundary between the two copies. This requires that the reduplication rule leaves a boundary behind; it would be nice if morpholexical rules were not allowed the power to create boundaries.' If on the other hand the lpe is first suffixed, then the later reduplication operation will have to look back past lpe to fmd the relevant segments to copy. How does the rule know where to start counting, unless a boundary was inserted by the first operation? A third possibility could involve: firstly, an operation which makes a copy of the end of the stem but does not attach it anywhere (keeping it where? - in limbo? on a clipboard?); secondly, an operation suffixing lpe to the stem; and finally, an operation that retrieves the duplicate (from wherever) and suffixes it to the output of the lpe-suffixation rule.

9. CONCLUSION

The difficulties encountered with morphemes result from several kinds of causes. One class of problems reflects the fact that, since morphemes are defined as positive formal elements (correlated with meanings), constructs such as zeroes, subtractives, and replacements (modification and suppletion) are inherently incapable of being described in terms of morphemes. Other difficulties stem from the mismatch between units of meaning and units of phonological substance. Morphemics operates on the assumption that a direct one-to-one relation is the norm. Insofar as Kaytej shows a many-to-one relation, it could be said to be not agglutinating in structure. Nevertheless, most socalled agglutinating languages show these characteristics in some measure, especially in personal pronouns. A one-to-many relation of meaning to form is evidenced in 'morpheme complexes' such as 1. VCV.l.arre DIST ACTION. A many-to-many relation is apparent in complex forms such as ye.rn.alpe SIMULT MOTION HITHER.

All these difficulties, I submit, follow from the insistence that the relation of meanings to phonological substance is direct and normally one-to-one. We have seen that this claim is not really tenable. The morphemic model has been tried and found wanting, as a number of scholars (Matthews, Anderson, Hockett (1 987)) have pointed out. This discredited model should no longer form the basis for linguistic descriptions.

If the model is no longer viable, what should take its place in linguistic theory? One approach is to develop a more subtle and powerful concept of the morpheme, as has been done in Autosegmental theory (McCarthy 198 1 ; Lieber 1987). Another solution is to restrict the term 'morpheme' to apply to only the (abstract) meaning element. These 'morphemes' could then be said to be 'realised' in phonological material by means of 'morphological processes'. This seems to be the terminological practice of some European scholars, but has the inconvenience of possible confusion that can always arise when different senses are applied to the same term in different theoretical frameworks. This approach, moreover, comes close to the WP model while using terminology from the morphemic model. A better resolution of the difficulties inherent in the morphemic model is, in my opinion, the total replacement of the model with an alternative. The WP model is available and suitable.

The WP model combines some of the best features of other approaches. From traditional grammar it takes the familiar notions of grammatical category, paradigm, the localisation of grammatical contrasts in the whole word and the separation of morphology from syntax. It includes the 'morphological processes' of Sapir. It describes genuine morphophonemic alternations in terms of


underlying forms and rules, as does GP. It offers advantages over morphemics in that: (a) it treats grammatical meanings as abstract, unordered and different in kind from lexical meanings; (b) it can easily describe the indirect and sometimes complex relation between properties and their exponents or formal expression, and (c) it describes the structure of words in terms of a derivational sequence of processes beginning from the lexical stem. Although it might be thought that the WP model suffers disadvantages in the description of truly agglutinating morphology (containing sequences of discrete chunks of phonological substance paired with unique meanings), this need not be so. In place of order of morphemes, WP would have an ordered sequence of affixation operations; the discrete 'morphemes' have their counterpart in the 'formatives' added by each operation.

When it comes to the description of Australian languages, there has been a lengthy tradition of eclecticism. Few linguists have been slaves to a theoretical framework; linguists have favoured faithfulness to the facts of the language over rigid adherence to a model. (In fact, some linguists have not been explicit about what model they are using!) Does it matter what model we use, I can imagine some colleagues objecting, as long as we produce accurate descriptions that will be understandable to linguists for years to come?

Given the choice between theoretical inconsistency, use of the inadequate morphemic model, and adoption of the more adequate WP model, I propose that we should prefer the WP model. This model has been shown to be superior in describing many facts which are an embarrassment to morphemics; it is fairly easy to understand and use. It has nevertheless hardly been applied yet to agglutinative languages.8 Although application to Australian languages may require some elaboration of the model (e.g. in the use of boundaries), preliminary use of the model with Kaytej suggests

promising results.

NOTES

1 . An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Australian Linguistic Society in Melbourne, 25 September 1989, under the title 'The inadequacy of morphemes for an agglutinative Australian language'.

2. Fieldwork on the Kaytej (Kaititj, Kaytetye) language of central Australia since the mid 1970s has been suported by the Australian National University through its Linguistics Department and its Faculties Research Fund, and by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

3 . The difference between nge and ng is accounted for by a general morphophonemic rule of the form e � " / _ V. This rule will be evident in many of the forms cited throughout the paper.

4. This assumes that some kind of ordering principles are necessary for morpholexical rules. See Anderson (1986) for some proposals.

5 . The notation o f properties as XIY i s to be read as X o r Y.

6. The notation X,Y is to be read as X and Y.

7 . Roberts (1990) has suggested that boundaries should be used in a WP analysis of Gahuku.

8. Roberts (1990) applies WP analysis to the verb structures of Gahuku, a Papuan language with agglutinative and inflectional characteristics. Bauer (1988:161) has the following comments on WP and agglutinative languages: 'It does seem likely ... that precisely those facets of WP descriptions which make them so well suited to languages such as Latin or Potawatomi would

208 HAROW KOCH

remain largely unexploited in the description of languages such as Turkish or Yoruba. There is a suggestion that WP may nevertheless provide useful insights in the description of such languages, but it remains to be clearly exemplified'.

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