Motivating a Morphome: Albanian case syncretism as a case study (original) (raw)

Morphological Homonymy in the Verbal Structure of the Albanian Language

Migration Letters, 2023

Verbal structures, in general, in the Albanian language have followed the system, but there have also been interventions outside the system. Due to phonetic and analog interferences, this system has undergone constant changes. The changes have involved not only the system of endings, but often also the structure of their phonological representation. The phonological structure of many verbs in the course of time has been disorganized, in the view that during changes the representative forms have avoided the initial unified forms. The changes have affected, in the first place, verbs ending in consonants, such as: speak, shout, go out, bake, take etc. These have often brought consequences of opposite directions. Transitions from one state to another, or reversals to the previous state, have been evident. These transitions are observed not only in the representative form of verbs, but also in their typical changes means. Excluding the phenomenon of complementarity, thematic diversity within the same verb is a linguistic state obtained as a result of many phonetic or analogical developments. A change conditioned by the phonetic rule has over time taken on a morphological grammatical function. Morphological value in many cases have received phonological additions, unnecessarily supporting the system of typical changes. Changes in the subject structure of these verbs, when the grammatical means of expression are clear and obvious, are neutral to the grammatical meanings.

Indeed, Nothing Lost in the Balkans: Assessing Morphosyntactic Convergence in an Areal Context 1

Balkanistica, 2020

Convergence by loss is a concept that is often adduced to characterize the Balkans as a linguistic area and to substantiate the areality of particular linguistic features, developments and varieties. Time and again, it has been pointed out that however useful this concept may be for certain purposes, e.g., when descriptively stating differences between historical stages of one specific variety, it is problematic for others, in particular for comparing languages and assessing areality. In addition to implying the undisputed existence of categorial distinctions, applying this concept indiscriminately obscures the fact that its manifestations may differ substantially across features and languages. Furthermore, focusing on “loss” impedes insight into both more general and more specific processes. On the examples of case and infinitive in the standard norms of Albanian and Macedonian this article acts on these intuitions and elaborates a finer-grained approach that avoids the assumption of generally applicable categorial distinctions and the ignoring of differences below seemingly identical surface phenomena. By the decomposition of linguistic units into their constitutive morphosyntactic features it becomes possible to sketch the interaction of morphosyntactic exponents in expressing characteristic functions, such as the selection of grammatical relations or the licensing of constituency. This provides a solid empirical basis for comparing morphosyntactic patterns across languages in synchronic and diachronic respects and may be operationalized for assessing the areality of particular developments.

Reducing ‘case’ to denotational primitives: Nominal inflections in Albanian

Linguistic Variation, 2011

The nominal inflection system of Albanian includes specifications of case, definiteness, number and nominal class (gender). Our analysis recognizes three types of properties as theoretically relevant, namely N(ominal class), Q(quantification), D(efiniteness). Q inflections are responsible for the so-called oblique case - effectively a dyadic operator yielding a ‘zonal inclusion’ (possession) relation between the element to which it attaches and the internal argument of the verb (dative) or the head of a noun phrase (genitive). Q inflections are further responsible for plurality, while N inflections satisfy argument-of contexts (accusative)and D characterizes EPP contexts(nominative). Syncretisms (e.g. of dative and genitive, nominative and accusative) are not the result of morphological rules requiring Late Insertion of exponents (Distributed Morphology). Rather they are instances of ambiguity, resolved in the syntax (different embeddings) or at the interpretive interface. As such t...

The Basic Elements of Inflection: Morphophonology of Bosnian Nouns

2011

This paper deals with the morphophonology of Bosnian nominal declensions. It proposes a new insight into the behavior of the vocalic alternations occurring throughout the system. It is shown that the final vowel of each Bosnian noun results from the combination of three distinct phonological items, and that these items are the exponents of one and only one morphosyntactic property. These exponents are the basic elements of a Bosnian noun and are combined in one complex marker in the phonology. The analyses presented in this paper are consistent with the syntactic approach to word formation of Distributed Morphology (hereafter DM; Embick & Halle 2005, Halle & Marantz 1993). In DM, morphemes are feature-bundles associated to syntactic terminal nodes. In what follows, I propose an interpretation of the mechanism of spell-out, which is the device responsible for the association of phonological form to these feature-bundles. In representing underlying phonological forms, I make use of th...

Morphosyntactic Reorganization Phenomena in Arbëresh Dialects: The Neuter

2018

Italo-Albanian communities show different degrees of mixing between Arberesh, the local Albanian dialect, and the Romance variety in contact. In some Arberesh dialects the mixing is extensive, affecting lexicon, morpho-syntax and phonology. Contact and bilingualism favour changes in the internal organization of the grammar, as generally in the creolization processes (Savoia 2010; Manzini and Savoia 2015; Baldi and Savoia 2016). This contribution addresses the so-called neuter inflection that Arberesh dialects spoken in Southern Italian communities preserve, an inflection no longer surviving in standard and other varieties of Albanian, where masculine morphology has replaced it. The coincidence between the specialized -t neuter inflection in nominative and accusative and the plural inflection -t characterizing North-Calabrian Arberesh led Manzini and Savoia (2017a, 2017b, forthcoming) to connect this morphology with the interpretive properties associated to mass denotation. We hold o...

Topic: A Linguistic Study of the English Allomorphs il, ir, im, in and their Albanian equivalence

South Florida Journal of Development

Although the Albanian and English languages both belong to the Indo-European family of languages, they are obviously different in terms of their morphological structure, word-formation system, especially in the type of prefixation, which is the focus of our study. Allomorphs, which can be found in both languages, are widely known as specific types of morphemes which are either morphologically or phonologically conditioned. Thus, the English prefix in- has allomorphs such as im-, ir-, il depending on the first sound of the base to which the prefix is added. If the first sound is p, b, m, the realization is im as in words like improper, imperfect, imbalance etc., but ir- with the sound /r/ as in irregular, and il- with the sound /l/ as in illegible. This paper aims at comparing the paradigmatic group of formations with prefixes il, ir, im, in in both English and Albanian. The study analyses the linguistic, morphological and semantic features they share and those that make them differe...

Morphological Adaptation of Anglicisms in the Albanian Press

European Journal of Language and Literature

The flux of Anglicisms in Albanian language is a phenomenon of the last two decades. Similarly to many other European languages Albanian has been under the influence of English language for some time now and in a wide range of areas of life, study, etc. This paper, which is only a part of the author’s research study of Anglicisms’ ‘behavior’ in Albanian, aims at analyzing the morphological adaptation of English loan words in Albanian; their grammatical categories, how they adapt to Albanian grammatical system and the changes they go through in order to ‘survive’ permanently, stay and be used temporarily by Albanian speakers or leave the Albanian lexis, due to their equivalents already existing in Albanian or to the high level resistance Albanian language poses to them. This analysis is performed referring to the counterpart categories of these loans in Albanian, thus adaptation of nouns and how does their declension, gender and number fit within the noun category in Albanian, adapta...

Tracing syntactic change in a Kleinkorpussprache: Two case studies from Old Albanian

Journal of Contemporary Philology, 2023

The paper presents a methodological discussion on the possibilities of a (micro)parametric approach to syntactic reconstruction of Old and pre-literary Albanian, illustrated by a formal analysis of the position of clitics and the verb and the (morpho)syntax of definiteness in the 16th and 17th-century Old Albanian texts. It is argued that, in contrast to Modern Albanian, Old Albanian lacked (that is, was in the process of gradually acquiring) overt V-movement with imperatives in the sentential domain and overt N-movement in the DP domain.