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Nonconcatenative morphology, also called discontinuous morphology and introflection, is a form of word formation and inflection in which the
root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
is modified and which does not involve stringing
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...
s together sequentially.


Types


Apophony (including Ablaut and Umlaut)

In English, for example, while
plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
s are usually formed by adding the suffix -s, certain words use nonconcatenative processes for their plural forms: *foot → feet ; Many irregular verbs form their past tenses, past participles, or both in this manner: *freeze → froze , frozen . This specific form of nonconcatenative morphology is known as ''base modification'' or ''
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
,'' a form in which part of the root undergoes a phonological change without necessarily adding new
phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
material. In traditional
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
ist usage, these changes are termed ''ablaut'' only when they result from vowel gradations in
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
. An example is the English stem ''s⌂ng'', resulting in the four distinct words: ''sing-sang-song-sung''. An example from German is the stem ''spr⌂ch'' "speak", which results in various distinct forms such as ''spricht-sprechen-sprach-gesprochen-Spruch''. Changes such as ''foot/feet'', on the other hand, which are due to the influence of a since-lost front vowel, are called umlaut or more specifically
I-mutation I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is a type of sound change in which a back vowel is fronted or a front vowel is raised if the following syllable contains , or (a voiced palatal appro ...
. Other forms of base modification include lengthening of a vowel, as in
Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
: * "die" ↔ "kill" or change in tone or stress: *Chalcatongo
Mixtec The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Culture w ...
"filth" ↔ "dirty" *English ''record'' (noun) ↔ "to make a record" Consonantal apophony, such as the initial-consonant mutations in Celtic languages, also exists.


Transfixation

Another form of nonconcatenative morphology is known as ''
transfix In linguistic morphology, a transfix is a discontinuous affix which is inserted into a word root, as in root-and-pattern systems of morphology, like those of many Semitic languages. A discontinuous affix is an affix whose phonetic components ...
ation'', in which vowel and consonant morphemes are interdigitated. For example, depending on the vowels, the
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
consonantal root k-t-b can have different but semantically related meanings. Thus, 'he wrote' and 'book' both come from the root k-t-b. Words from ''k-t-b'' are formed by filling in the vowels, e.g. ''kitāb'' "book", ''kutub'' "books", ''kātib'' "writer", ''kuttāb'' "writers", ''kataba'' "he wrote", ''yaktubu'' "he writes", etc. In the analysis provided by McCarthy's account of nonconcatenative morphology, the consonantal root is assigned to one tier, and the vowel pattern to another. Extensive use of transfixation only occurs in Afro-Asiatic and some Nilo-Saharan languages (such as Lugbara) and is rare or unknown elsewhere.


Reduplication

Yet another common type of nonconcatenative morphology is '' reduplication'', a process in which all or part of the root is reduplicated. In Sakha, this process is used to form intensified
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s: "red" ↔ "flaming red".


Truncation

A final type of nonconcatenative morphology is variously referred to as truncation, deletion, or subtraction; the morpheme is sometimes called a
disfix In linguistic morphology, a disfix is a subtractive morpheme, a morpheme manifest through the subtraction of segments from a root or stem. Although other forms of disfixation exist, the element subtracted is usually the final segment of the stem ...
. This process removes phonological material from the root. In French, this process can be found in a small subset of plurals (although their spellings follow regular plural-marking rules): /ɔs/ "bone" ↔ /o/ "bones" /bœf/ "ox" ↔ /bø/ "oxen"


Semitic languages

Nonconcatenative morphology is extremely well developed in the
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...
in which it forms the basis of virtually all higher-level
word formation In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word for ...
(as with the example given in the diagram). That is especially pronounced in
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, which also uses it to form approximately 41% of plurals in what is often called the broken plural.


See also

*
Autosegmental phonology Autosegmental phonology is a framework of phonological analysis proposed by John Goldsmith (linguist), John Goldsmith in his PhD thesis in 1976 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a theory of phonological representation, autos ...
*
Apophony In linguistics, apophony (also known as ablaut, (vowel) gradation, (vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, internal inflection etc.) is any alternation wit ...
*
Transfix In linguistic morphology, a transfix is a discontinuous affix which is inserted into a word root, as in root-and-pattern systems of morphology, like those of many Semitic languages. A discontinuous affix is an affix whose phonetic components ...
*
Disfix In linguistic morphology, a disfix is a subtractive morpheme, a morpheme manifest through the subtraction of segments from a root or stem. Although other forms of disfixation exist, the element subtracted is usually the final segment of the stem ...


References


External links


''Alexis NEME and Eric Laporte (2013), Pattern-and-root inflectional morphology: the Arabic broken plural'' , year= ''Alexis NEME and Eric Laporte (2015), Do computer scientists deeply understand Arabic morphology? – هل يفهم المهندسون الحاسوبيّون علم الصرف فهماً عميقاً؟'', available also in Arabic, Indonesian, French
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nonconcatenative Morphology Linguistic morphology Semitic linguistics