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Morphophonological asymmetries in affixation concern systematic correlations between morphological properties of affixes (e.g. combination with bound versus free stems, position relative to stem (suffixes versus prefixes)) and their phonological properties (e.g. stress behaviour). The arguably most insightful approach to capturing relevant asymmetries invokes a notion of affix coherence, first introduced by Dixon in connection with his work on Yidiɲ, a nearly extinct language spoken in Northern Australia. This notion is based on a categorical division of affixes into ones that integrate into the phonological word of the stem and ones that do not. The integration of affixes is envisioned as being fully determined by phonological and morphological structure in a given language and verifiable by diagnostics relevant to phonological word domains (primarily the syllable and the foot structure). The assumption of two types of prosodic domains characterized by integrated versus non-integrated affixes is manifest in consistent asymmetries that pertain to morphophonological, phonological, and phonetic rules. This consistency constitutes compelling evidence for the structure-based analysis of the impact of various affixes on derived words, as opposed to alternative approaches to capturing these effects by associating affixes with diacritics (morpheme versus word boundary, class 1 versus class 2, stratum 1 versus stratum 2). The present entry aims to demonstrate, mostly on the basis of data from Germanic languages, the breadth of the empirical evidence in support of a fundamental role of affix coherence. Moreover, it aims to draw attention to the various implications of affix coherence for modeling relevant generalizations, in particular the necessary reference to a level of phonological representation characterized by a specific degree of abstractness (‘phonemic’).
Head alignment in German compounds: Implications for prosodic constituency and morphological parsing
(2022)
The notion of head alignment was introduced to account for the observation that in a word with multiple feet, one is more prominent than the others. In particular, this notion is meant to capture the characteristic edge-orientation of main stress by requiring the (left or right) word boundary and the respective (left or right) boundary of the head foot to coincide (McCarthy & Prince 1993). In the present paper the notion of head alignment will be applied to compounds, which are also characterized by the property that one of their members, located in a margin position, is most prominent.
The adequacy of an analysis in terms of head alignment hinges on the question of whether observable prominence peaks associate with the boundaries of independently motivated constituents. It will be argued that such links exist for German compounds, indicating reference to at least three distinct compound categories established on morphological grounds: copulative, phrasal, and a default class of “regular” compounds. The evidence for the relevant distinctions sheds light on morphological parsing, indicating that compound categories can be – and often are – determined by properties pertaining to their complete form, rather than by conditions affecting their (original) construction.
Silbenkurzwort
(2022)
Prosodische Morphologie
(2022)
Prosodische Morphologie
(2020)
Optimality theory (henceforth OT) models natural language competence in terms of interactions of universal constraints, notably markedness and faithfulness constraints. This article illustrates some of the major advances in the understanding of word-formation phenomena originating from this theory, including the prosodic organization of morphologically complex words, neutralization patterns in derivational affixes, allomorphy, and infixation.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in derivational morphology is to reconcile morphological idiosyncrasy with semantic regularity. How can it be explained that words with dead affixes and irregulär allomorphy can nonetheless exhibit straightforward and stable semantic relations to their etymological bases (cf. strength ‘property of being strong’, obedience ‘act of obeying’, ‘property of being obedient’)? Theories based on the idea of capturing regularity in terms of synthetic rules for building up complex words out of morphemes along with rules for interpreting such structures in a compositional fashion have not made - and arguably cannot make - sense of this phenomenon. Taking the perspective of the learner in acquisition, I propose an alternative approach to meaning assignment based, not on syntagmatic relations among their constituent morphemes, but on paradigmatic relations between whole words. This approach not only explains the conditions under which meaning relations between words are expected to be stable but also accounts for another notorious mystery in derivational morphology, the frequent occurrence of total synonymy among affixes, as opposed to words.