In and out of paradigms: How to do everything with very few affixes

Marko Simonović Boban Arsenijević

Utrecht University University of Niš

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Aim of the talk

• Present data from Serbo-Croatian (S-C) about phonologically identical or similar suffixes traditionally analyzed as unrelated.

• Argue for the minimal analysis, treating the sets of similar suffixes as single suffixes.

• Explain the phonological and semantic differences in terms of paradigm membership.

• Point to the crucial role paradigm membership and surface generalizations play in processing, and in language change.

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Part I: Adjectives and participles

• Five traditional grammar’s endings, related by sharing an –n, figure in the derivation of passive participles and adjectives in S-C.

• Participial: -en, -an.

Adjectival: -en, -an, -(a)n (the fleeting /a/).

• We argue that there are only two endings involved, -n and -a/e (the latter with two variants selecting complementary phonological contexts).

• Uniform semantics, sensitivity to paradigms.

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Passive participle

• Regularly derived Serbo-Croatian passive participles end in an /n/.

• Traditional grammar recognizes two different endings: –an and –en.

• –en goes only to palatal contexts, –an mostly to the non-palatal ones (to –a stems).

(1) gleda-an -> gledaan voli-en -> voljenwatch-an love-enwatched loved

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Semantics

• Semantically, the two endings are equivalent.

• They derive participles, expressions with hybrid,

verbal and adjectival semantics.

• The ‘adjectival semantics’ of participles is non-

gradable (their gradable dimensions inherited

from the verbal stem, as in well/better educated,

are ignored as irrelevant, cf. Kennedy & McNally).

(2) lepljen #lepljen-iji bolje lepljen

glued glued-Comp better glued

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Adjectives in -n

• A majority of S-C adjectives ending in an /n/.

• In traditional grammars, 3 different endings: 1) the ending –an, limited to palatal contexts of primitive stems, 2) the ending –en in non-palatal primitive stems, 3) the unconstrained ending –(a)n.

(3) pliš-an glin-en mir-(a)nvelvet-an clay-en peace-(a)nvelvetAdj, clayAdj peaceful

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Semantic asymmetries

• –an and –en endings derive non-gradable adjectives (in most cases the material something is made of, or other defining property).

• Endings reserved for classificational adjectives?

• –(a)n adjectives are unconstrained in this sense.

(4) a. #led-en-ija figura, b. #košt-an-ija sržice-en-Comp figure bone-an-Comp core

c. mir-n-iji krajpeace-n-Comp neighborhood‘a/the more peaceful neighborhood’

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Classificatory

• Arguments in favor of treating –en/an as an

ending deriving classificatory adjectives.

• –en/an adjectives do not nominalize.

(5) kopn-en(*-ost/*-stvo/*-ina/*-ota…)

land-en N N N N

• –en/an endings are in complementary

distribution with the classificatory –ski.

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Phonological asymmetries

• -en only in non-palatal contexts

• -an only in palatal contexts

• -(a)n has an epenthetic /a/, inserted when

the ending is word-final.

(5) smeš-an smeš-n-og

laugh-an laugh-n-GenMSg

‘funny’

• /a/ is epenthetic ⇒ the actual ending is –n.

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Semantics

Participles-en

non-gradable

adjectives-an

Adjectives

-ennon-gradable

adjectives-an

-n any

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Phonology

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Participles-an -a contexts

-en palatal contexts

Adjectives

-an palatal contexts

-en non-palatal contexts

-n any context

How many suffixes?

• Ockham’s razor.

• –en/an is one suffix across the board, and –nis a separate suffix?

• –en/an derives non-gradable adjectives specifying an absolute, pervading, presence of a property on/in the argument .

• –n derives possibly gradable adjectives specifying an underspecified relation between the argument and the meaning of the stem.

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Or even simpler

• Two suffixes, –n and –e/a?

• –n is semantically the lightest adjectival ending, specifying an uncostrained relation between the argument and the meaning of the stem.

• –e/a subspecifies that the relation is of a particular type: a total, absolute, pervading, presence of a property on/in the argument (therefore non-gradable).

• Problem: the inverse phonological distribution of –en/an between participles and adjectives.

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Argument 1

• Let us first present two arguments in favor of

the simpler analyses presented.

• Argument 1: Whenever there is a pair of

adjectives, one with the ending –n and the

other with the ending –en/an, their semantics

is strictly as predicted.

(6) a. med-n-i b. med-en-i

honey-n-PL honey-en-PL

‘related to honey’ ‘made of honey’

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Even participles

• Additional support that –en/an is the same

across the board comes from the fact that

(adjectival) participles can be members of the

same kind of pairs.

(7) a. od-seč-n-i b. od-seč-en-i

off-cut-n-PL off-cut-en-PL

‘abrupt’ ‘cut off’

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Argument 2

• No –en : –an adjective pairs attested.

• Also phonological reasons: the two suffixes

appear in different phonological contexts.

• But this only strengthens the argument: two

items in complementary phonological

distribution, sharing semantic effects are most

probably two phonological variants of the

same item.

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Argument 3

• Participles aside, –en/an suffixes take only

monomorphemic stems, while –n may also

combine with the more complex ones.

(8) a. vun-en-i c. ne-pri-seb-n-i

wool-en-PL not-by-self-n-PL

‘woolen’ ‘nervous, uncalm’

b. iskr-en-i d. bez-po-treb-n-i

sparcle-en-PL without-over-need-n-PL

‘frank’ ‘unnecessary’

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Explaining away the problem

• –en only in palatal contexts in participles, only in non-palatal in adjectives; –an almost the oposite.

• Arsenijević & Simonović (2013): different phonological constraints in and out of paradigms.

• Paradigm: the maximal set of forms productively derived from a morphosyntactic class, while preserving semantic transparency.

• Participles are part of the verbal paradigm, –en/an adjectives are not members of their stems’ paradigms.

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Paradigm-membership marking

• The inverse distribution: an emergent regularity between phonological and morpho-syntactic factors that facilitates the different effects/processing of the same suffix in paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic domains.

• This also explains the very fact that there are two variants, since their inverse distribution clearly shows that there’s little phonological reason to have them both.

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Part II: Nominalizations

• Ending –je derives collective nouns from

nouns, NPs , PPs and participial VPs.

• In its deverbal nominalizations, derived nouns

take different prosodic patterns depending on

the aspect of the verb.

• We argue that this split again corresponds to

the split between within paradigm derivations

and those with some idiosyncratic properties.

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The collective -je

• Collective nouns are not productive in S-C any more, hence also not paradigm members.

(9) a. list + -je > lišće b.crep + -je > *crepjeleaf roof tile

• They have the syntactic and semantic properties of mass nouns (singularia tantum, much/*many, cumulative and divisive),

• while still preserving the meaning of an assembly (e.g. compatible with one by one).

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Prosody

• By a rule, –je nominalizations take a prosodic

pattern different from that of the base.

(10) a. kAmeen : kAmEEn-je

stone stoneColl

b. sa zvEEzdA : sAA-zvEEzd-je

with stars constelation

c. jEzIk slOvo : jEzik-o-sloov-je

language word linguistics

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Deverbal nominalizations

• Regular gerunds in S-C: past participle + –je.

• S-C verbs usually come in aspectual pairs (a

perfective and an imperfective).

• Gerunds are derived from the imperfective

variant.

(11) a. jed-en(-je) b. po-jed-en(*-je)

eatimpf-en-je over-eatperf-en-je

‘eating’ int. ‘eating up’

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Perfective nominalizations

• There is a limited set of –je nominalizations

derived from perfective verbs.

• Resultative semantics (Ignjatović 2013).

• Virtually all lexicalized (idiomatic).

(12) u-stolic-en-je

in-chair-en-je

‘enthronement’ (not generally placing

something or someone in a chair)

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Prosodic asymmetries

• Perfective nominalizations behave like other

–je nominalizations, in taking up a different

prosodic pattern, imperfective nominalizations

preserve the prosody of the stem.

(13) pOstA-ti (infinitive)

a. pOstA-ja-an-je b. postA-An-jE

becomeperf-Impf-an-je becomeperf-n-je

‘becoming’ ‘creation’

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Paradigms

• Explanation: imperfective nominalizations belong to the verbal paradigm.

• S-C nominalizations preserve lexical prosody within the paradigm, and drop it otherwise (Arsenijević & Simonović 2013).

• In this way, gerunds (paradigm members) are distinguished from resultative (and other) nominalizations, even though derived by the same suffix.

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Support

• Even with an imperfective nominalization, if it

is idiomatic, the prosodic pattern may change

with its leaving of the paradigm (by receiving a

count interpretation):

(14) pUtova-ti (infinitive)

a. pUtova-an-je b. putovA-An-jE

travelimpf-an-je travelimpf-an-je

‘traveling’ ‘trip’

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Theoretical consequences

• Arsenijević & Simonović (2013): structurally complex stems within the paradigm, primitive ones outside (cf. Marvin 2002, Roy 2010…).

• Phonological correlates of semantic/syntactic properties: (via) surface generalizations and selective lexicalization, (to) grammatical constraints.

• The ontological status of classificatory properties, in views taking the syntactic and morphological behavior as evidence?

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Conclusion

• Phonology is sensitive to paradigm membership.

• As paradigms are special interpretation domains (transparency, inheritance of semantic properties of the stem etc.), phonology of the derived forms closely correlates with their semantics.

• Suffixes have an ever-applicable version for paradigm members and a more demanding one for word formation.

• Productive suffixes get ‘recycled’ in less productive domains.

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Thank you!

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