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wordhood

Departamento de Linguística Geral e Românica

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa

Laboratório de Psicolinguística

WordhoodAlina Villalva

www.labpsicoling.com/investigadores/alina-villalva.html

Universals and Typology in Word-FormationŠafárik University, Košice, SlovakiaAugust 16-18, 2009

Alina Villalva

Wordhood is a puzzling subject:

• so much has been said that we can’tescape using old arguments to discuss it;

• so little has comparatively beenachieved that we may wonder if gettingto a conclusion is a feasible task.




The skeptical point of view:

“it has to be admitted that there are difficulties in establishing universals of word

structure when there is so much room for disagreement about wordhood”.

Spencer (2006)

Morphological universals




The assertiveness of common sense:

“The most basic unit of language is the word— the minimal stand-alone pairing of

meaning and sound structure.”MacNeilage and Davis (2000)

On the origin of internal structure of word forms in Science 288




What qualifies as a word?

Innocent native speakers may find the questionspurious - they may eventually recognize that thereis a small fringe of cases that will cast some doubtsinto a positive identification (clitics, idioms, etc).Otherwise, they know pretty well what a word is.

Listeners of an unfamiliar foreign language, as wellas less proficient speakers, may find the task muchharder or absolutely impossible.




Tu ris, tu mens trop

Tu pleures, tu meurs trop

Tu as le tropique

Dans le sang et sur la peau

Geme de loucura e de torpor

Já é madrugada

Accord’accord’accorda

Mata-me de rir

Fala-me de amor

Songes et mensonges

Sei de longe e sei de cor

Geme de prazer e de pavor

Já é madrugada

Accord’accord’accord’accord’

Vem molhar meu colo

Vou te consolar

Vem mulato mole

Dançar dans mes bras

Vem moleque me dizer

Onde é que está

Ton soleil, ta braise

Quem me enfeitiçou

O mar, marée, bateaux

Tu as le parfum

De la cachaça e de suor

Geme de preguiça e de calor

Já é madrugada

accord’accord’accord’acorda




[m]

geme‘moans’== j’aime‘I love’

[dakrdakr]

acorda‘wake up’== d’accord

‘it’s ok’

[maebato]

me arrebatou

‘carried me away’=

=marée, bateaux

‘tide, boats’

The recognition of the language is crucial toword recognition;

consequently, it must be undisputable thatsemantic, syntactic and phonological knowledge,at least, must have something to say aboutwordhood.

______________________________

Let’s review some criteria within these categories.




1. The semantic criteria

Words and word constituents usually have asemantic content. Some, like most connectors,don’t. The distinction is well known and long dealtwith, one way or the other.

One of the problems is that those that have asemantic meaning, don’t really mean much – thesemantics of words and parts of words depends ontheir syntactic outburst and on pragmaticcircumstances.





Ía ‘{I/ he/she} {used/was about} to go’

•O ano passado, ela ía ao cinema todas as semanas.

‘Last year, she used to go to the movies every week.’

•Eu ía agora ao cinema, e tu?

‘I would now go to the movies, wouldn't you?’

Vão ‘{you/they masc/they fem} {go/are going}’

Eles vão muitas vezes ao cinema?

‘Do they often go to the movies? ‘

Vocês vão ao cinema hoje à noite?

‘Are you going to the movies tonight?’

‘ WordhoodAlina Villalva



Verb ir

Indicative

imperfect

past tense

1st or 3rd

person

singular

Verb ir

Indicative

present

tense

3rd person

plural


Esta casinha foi construída pelo meu avô.

‘This housedim was built by my grandfather’




1. ‘a small, simple house’2. ‘a huge, impressive mansion’3. ‘a house that I cherish’


Some words look like bracketing paradoxes, but theyaren’t, since both interpretations correspond tolegitimate structures:

irrealizável




in[realizável]

não pode ser tornado real

‘cannot be made real’

[irrealizá]vel

pode ser tornado não-real

‘can be made unreal’

Unfortunately. thisinterpretation will never berequired by native speakers

of Portuguese


Finally, there is a problem concerning the manypossibilities of saying something of the same kind.

Nominal number inflection, for instance, is aquantification operation:

singular’s cardinal value = 1

plural ‘s cardinal value = more than 1

There are other ways of expressing cardinal values.





(i) pássaro ‘bird’ vs. pássaros ‘birds’

(ii) passarada ‘flock of birds’

bando de pássaros ‘flock of birds’

(ii) tricampeão ‘champion for the third time’

arvoredozinho ‘small grove’




2. The syntactic criteria

Syntactic atomicity (to use Di Sciullo and Williams’sterms) is also certainly relevant for wordhood, butsyntactic atoms are not necessarily words:

rato ‘rat, mouse’

ratoeira ‘mousetrap’

ratax ‘commercial name for arat poison’

raticida ‘rat poison’

mata-ratos ‘rat poison’

605-forte ‘commercial name for arat poison’





rat noun root o thematic index

rat noun root oeir derivational suffix a thematic index

rat noun root ax derivational suffix

rat noun root i binding vowel cid ncroot a thematic index

[mata verb ratos noun] noun

[605 noun forte adjective] noun (phrase?)





‘What belongs to the morphology and what to the syntax may change during times.’

Dieter Wunderlich

Why is there morphology?

The future tense in Portuguese:

stage 1 – hei falar ‘lit. I have talk’

stage 2 – falar(h)ei ‘I will talk’

stage 3 – hei-de falar ‘I will talk’

hás-de falar ‘you will talk’

stage 4 – *hádes falar




If we consider stress domain as a good phonologicalcriteria for wordhood, we know what kind ofproblems we will find:

(i) usually, words will coincide with a stress domain

(ii) in some cases, a word will comprehend morethan just one stress domain

(iii) in some other cases, words will not correspondto a stress domain.




3. The phonological criteria




(i) sumo ‘juice’ natural ‘natural’

[sumu] [ntural]

maçã ‘apple’ uva ‘grape’

[ms] [uv]

(ii) super-sumo ‘great juice’

[suprsumu]

maçãzinha ‘precious apple’

[mszi]

naturalmente ‘naturally’

[nturalmet]




(iii) sumo de maçã ‘apple juice’

[sumudms]

sumo de uva ‘grape juice’

[sumuduv]

(iv) gosto de toda a espécie de maçãs

‘I like all sorts of apples’

gosto destas e daquelas

‘I like these and those’

e gosto de outras espécies de fruta

‘and I like other kind of fruits’

[dt]

= *de estas*[dt]

[dkl]

= *de aquelas*[dkl]

[dotr][djotr]

= ?doutras

Words convey to the sentence meaning unspecifically (just as parts of the word or groups of

words);

they are typically (but not obligatorily) syntactic atoms;

and that they usually provide a stress domain (although sometimes they don’t).

Neither of these criteria define wordhood, nor does the conjugation of the three.




To sum up

Let’s then try to define wordhood as a mathematicalexpression, such as:

[[[Root] [Morpho. Spec.]]stem [Morphosynt. Spec.]]Word




4. The morphological criteria

The 1st level of projectionconcerns pure morphological

specification, such as noun class or verb conjugation

affixes.

The 2nd level of projection concerns

morphosyntacticspecification, that is

inflection.

Simple words are simple roots

livr o s

‘book noun class marker plural’

compr a va mos

‘buy theme vowel imperfect past 1st pp’




Complex words are complex roots

[[X]Base [Y]Suffix]Root

[[livr]Root [ari]Suffix]Root a ‘bookstore’

[[compra]Stem [dor]Suffix]Root a ‘buyerfem’

[[cão]Word [zinh]Suffix]Root o ‘doggy’

[[X]Prefix [Y]Base]Root

[[des]Prefix [lig]Root]Root ar ‘disconnect’

[[X]Base [Y]Base]Root

[[cron]Root o [metr]Root]Root o ‘chronometer’




Problems with the morphological approach

1. How do we know what a root is?

Roots are lexical variables that occur in any root position

except

Roots that occur in simple words may occur in complex words

roots that occur in complex words may or may not occur in simplewords

LAT. PETRA > PT. pedra ‘stone’

LAT. RIVUS > PT. rio ‘river’

LAT. PISCIS > PT. peixe ‘fish’

A. GK IKHTHÚS > PT. icti- ‘fish’




pedr- petr-

pedr+a ‘stone’ -----

pedr+eir+a ‘quarry’ petr+ific+a+r ‘(to) petrify’

peix- icti-

peix+e ‘fish’ -----

peix+ari+a ‘fish market’ icti+os+e ‘ictiosis’

ri- riv-

ri+o ‘river’ -----

ri+acho ‘small river’ riv+al ‘rival’

ceg- cec-

ceg+o ‘blind’ -----

cegu+eira ‘blindness’ cec+ografia ‘Braille printing’

preg- plic-

preg+ar ‘(to) nail’ -----

preg+adeira ‘nailer’ com+plic+ar ‘(to) complicate’




References

A.M. Di Sciullo and E. Williams

1987 On the Definition of Word

Cambridge, Massachusets: The MIT Press

Peter F. MacNeilage and Barbara L. Davis

2000 On the origin of internal structure of word forms

Science 288: 527-531

A. Spencer

2006 Morphological universals

In Ricardo Mairal and Juana Gil (eds), LinguisticUniversals

Cambridge University Press




References

Dieter Wunderlich

Why is there morphology?

23th Annual Meeting of the DGfS, AG 12

A. Villalva

1994 Estruturas Morfológicas. Unidades e Hierarquias nasPalavras do Português

2000 Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

2008 Morfologia do Português

Lisboa: Universidade Aberta




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