Li8 Structure of English

1. Li8 Structure of English Hierarchical morphological structure

2. Today’s topics • Basic point: morphological structure of words is hierarchically organized, as with words in syntax • How do we know this? • Derivation • Superordinate categories • Order of attachment • Phrasal embedding • Selectional restrictions • Stress in compounds • Interesting aspects of hierarchical structure: • Bracketing paradoxes • Headedness • Exocentric vs endocentric • Saturation and irregular compounds

3. Derivation • Derivational morphology usually consists of adding a prefix or suffix to a base (= stem). • The base has a lexical category (N, V, Adj…), and the suffix typically assigns a different category to the whole word. • Two possible analyses of this process: • It yields an output with no internal structure • E.g. [sad]Adj [sadness]N • The derivational history is preserved in the structure: Noun -ness: Adj  N suffix Adj sad ness

4. Multiple derivation Adj Adj V un interest ing

5. Recursive derivation Feb 10, 1959

6. Recursive derivation N | Note that the correct term for 'a missile to be deployed against "anti-missile missiles"' is not "anti anti-missile missile." It's "anti anti-missile-missile missile." You're always supposed to have one more "missile" than "anti," because otherwise nothing will blow up. Granted, this information comes from civilian linguists, rather than from military sources. Military sources would almost certainly be using acronyms instead… N | N | N | missile anti- anti- anti- missile missile missile

7. Phrasal embedding • Buttinsky • We can tell “butt in” is a Phrase here because the t undergoes flapping before a stressed vowel (in flapping dialects) • Nogoodnik • de-pant-s-ing • “depantsing is when one or more persons aggressively pulls down another persons pants and underpants, often wrestling them to the ground and then stripping them completely naked” http://www.misterpoll.com/3470596525.html • What about “the queen of England’s crown”? • This ’s is a clitic rather than an affix

8. How do we know what the hierarchical structure is?

9. Semantics often help • A black board eraser is obviously a type of eraser, and a black board is obviously a type of board • We can reflect this nicely in a right-headed hierarchical structure: N N Adj N N black board eraser

10. Compound stress • How are the following compounds stressed? • government tax inspector • engine fault detection mechanism • How do the stress patterns change according to the meaning/grouping? • Does the stress pattern relate to the meaning and constituent structure?

11. Compound stress • Chomsky, Halle, and Lukoff 1956: • Compound stress contours can be generated from hierarchical structure via a simple set of cyclic (recursive) rules • Work outward from inside (most nested) • Mark stress of first constituent as primary • Demote remainder by one degree black board eraser • Conclusion: compounds have hierarchical structure • If they didn’t, we’d have no explanation for the predictability of their stress patterns word stress 1 1 1 cpd stress cycle 1 1 2 cpd stress cycle 2 1 3 2

12. What about in less clear situations? e.g. “illegality”

13. Selectional restrictions • Semantic • un- cannot attach to adjectives that already have a negative connotation: • unhappy vs. *unsad (actually used in Chaucer) • unhealthy vs. *unsick • unclean vs. *undirty • Syntactic • -ness attaches only to adjectives (happiness vs *dogness) • Morphological • -ion attaches only to Latinate bases (decision vs *choosion) • Phonological • -er cannot attach to words of more than two syllables • happy, happier • competent, *competenter

14. Selectional restrictions • Application to difficult cases • Basic principle: if an affix with a selectional restriction forms a legitimate word, it must be attaching to a constituent that satisfies its selectional restrictions • Example: [[illegal]ity] or [il[legality]]? • /in-/ ‘not X’ attaches to Latinate adjectives • illogical vs *illogic • legal is an Adj, legality is a N; therefore…

15. Interesting aspects of hierarchical morphological structure Irregulars in compounds Headedness and saturation Residual issues

16. Irregular plurals in compounds • 2 popular generalizations about English compounds: • Inflection only appears on final member of constituent • Heads: fox(*es) hunting, stir(*red) fried • Non-heads: burrito supremes, whopper juniors • The one exception is when the non-head takes irregular inflection • mice catchers 140 : mouse catchers 480 • rat catchers c. 40,000 : rats catchers 8 • Possible counterexamples: • systems analyst, parks supervisor, salesman • Why might this be? • Kiparsky’s theory: • irregulars stored in lexicon • Inflection dealt with after derivation (more on this in M-P interactions lecture)

17. Irregular plurals in compounds I • A systematic exception to Kiparsky’s generalization: • Most humans allow irregular plurals only in plural compounds • teeth mark 786 : tooth marks 13,400 : teeth marks 39,700 • women writers vs *women writer • This appears to be an instance of saturative affixation…

18. Saturative affixation From Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon • eye poker outer, quicker picker upper… • Always involves verb + particle constructions • blew dried, didn’t used to (294K google hits) • Your guys’(s), George’s and my book • Preferred with exocentric constituents? "Well the annual list of Most Dangerous Holiday Toys is out, Number one this year: Mattel's new toy 'Eye Poker Outer'." Barbie of Swan Lake: Plush Lila the Unicorn with Magical Glowing Horn

19. An interesting case study • What is the plural of freshman adviser?

20. Irregular plurals in compounds II • Toronto Maple Leafs c. 4.4 million : Leaves 240 • Flew out to third 6 : Flied out to third 57 • Again exocentricity appears to be involved • Morphological features can percolate down to head, but (typically) not to non-head

21. Typology of feature percolation • When there’s a constituent head: • percolation to head (snowmen) • When there’s no head: • No percolation (Maple Leafs, flied out) • Saturation (blew dried, women writers)

22. Conclusions • There is ample evidence in English for hierarchical organization of morphological structure, parallel to what we find in syntax and phonology. • Morphological headedness, a central component of this hierarchical structure, appears to play an important role in explaining a number of oddities of English morphology.

23. Residual questions • Do selectional restrictions hold only over the head of a compound? • ?unrulier • Bracketing paradoxes • Transformational grammarian • Can’t be analogy: cf *substandard grammarian • We will hopefully deal with these in the M-P lecture

24. References Berent, I., Pinker, S., Ghavami, G., Murphy, S. (under review) The Dislike of Regular Plurals in Compounds: Phonological Familiarity or Morphological Constraint? Chomsky, Noam, Morris Halle, and F. Lukoff. 1956. On accent and juncture in English. In For Roman Jakobson. The Hague: Mouton.

25. Blew dried • 223 hits on Google • So we went inside, had a party in the bathroom, some girls blew dried their hair, then just went into my room and blasted ....March of Flames and then the boys took over the bathroom and blew dried their hair, taking much longer than we did, haha madness! www.livejournal.com/users/ablurredreality/44161.html

26. 2pl possessive • From my dialect survey(www3.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/survey): • Google as of 12/10/06: • You guys(‘) place 11,500 • Your guys(’) place 583 • Your guys’s place 43 • You guys’s place 3 Used e.g. in Napoleon Dynamite