A Suffix Based Morphological Analysis of Assamese Word Formation (original) (raw)

Measuring Morphological Productivity: A Corpus-Based Experiment on Assamese Suffixation

GUINEIS, 2020

The productive expressions and creations of a language reflect the dynamic aspects of language. The phenomenon of morphological productivity has been explored in many global languages. These languages have been digitally advanced with fully developed materials. This paper is an attempt to understand thirteen suffixes of the Assamese language by applying five statistical methods in a manually developed small sample. While doing so, this paper addresses the issue of lack of resources and the method of collecting the data in the absence of full-fledged large digital corpora. The paper also tries to find out the productive suffixes, review the methods, and examine the suitability of these methods on Assamese data. It finds that some suffixes display relatively consistent productivity throughout the methods. These are indeed the highest or least productive suffixes of the language. However, some other suffixes turned out productive only in a few methods. In this scenario, a blending of approaches can be adopted for a comprehensive picture.

Morphophonemic variation in the nominal morphology of Assamese

Himalayan linguistics, 2022

This paper seeks to analyse and describe the nature of morphophonemic variation in the nominal morphology of Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Assam. Previous discussions of morphophonemic variation in the language have focused on the phonological aspects of such variation (Goswami and Tamuli, 2003: 410-13). However, the present study seeks to examine the nature and range of phonological variations within morphemes triggered by nominal morphological processes such as (a) deictic inflections for relational nouns, (b) case inflections for nouns and pronouns and (c) nominal wordformation via derivation and compounding. Identifying the phonological and morphological factors behind the morphophonemic variation in nominal morphology will serve to uncover the patterned nature of the underlying regularities of a major area of Assamese grammar. Moreover, in seeking to align the morphophonemic variations with specific nominal morphological processes rather than treating them in intrinsic phonological terms, this study proposes to highlight the interdependent functioning of the levels of analysis. Such functioning is evident in instances of phonological variations within morphemes that serve to mark different grammatical functions in the language. In addition to such descriptive considerations, the range of variations and their associated morphological processes can also shed light on specific aspects of diachronic change when they are cross-linguistically compared with cognate languages. The study is based mainly on corpus data using the empirical methodology of corpus linguistics. The CIIL-Lancaster Assamese corpus has turned out to be a very important aspect of the information for observing different areas discussed here. Besides the empirical data, supplementary introspective data will also be used where necessary. As the Assamese language has different varieties and the morphophonemic and allomorphic variants differ in their shapes and functions in these varieties, so the data are taken from the Standard Colloquial Assamese (SCA) which is historically referred to the Sibsagar (ħibɔħaɡɔɹija) variety of the language.

Morphological Description of Noun Formation Process: Case of Suffixation and Prefixation in Iguta Language

ASIAN TEFL: Journal of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 2017

This paper dwells on a concise morphological description of Noun formation process involved in Iguta language (a minority endangered language in the north central, Nigeria). To this end, the paper explores the suffixation and prefixation processes involved in the formation of nouns of Iguta language. Ado's (2017) 455 Iguta wordlists was employed as secondary data and was qualitatively used as instrument for the analyses in this paper. Ado's 455 Iguta wordlists is primarily based on the standard dialect (i.e., Andirgiza) spoken by its native speakers in five selected towns in Jos North local government of the Plateau state, Nigeria. Hand analysis strategy and a thematic analytical process were used in developing insights on the language data during the analysis. The findings revealed '-char,-di and-e' morphs as suffixes to inflect while 't-, ti-, ha-, a-, an-, m-, i-, ma-, si-, ndu-, s-, tu-, tun-, tumu-morphs as prefixes to either inflect or derive nouns. It is also observed that most singular nouns in Iguta are inflected to produce the plural forms using tior tu-prefixes especially when the pattern of the singular words begin with a vowel morpheme or phoneme. In accordance with the findings, it is suggested that prefixes and suffixes are part of the affixation process used in noun formation of Iguta language. In conclusion, the study has contributed in descriptive linguistics in terms inflectional or derivational suffixation and prefixation process used to build nouns in Iguta language. This paper may assist professional teachers and linguists in understanding the suffixations and prefixations existing in Iguta language.

Word formation in Bengali : a whole word morphological description and its theoretical implications

2007

The present thesis has two agendas: I) it presents a morphologicai description of Bengali, an Indo-European language spoken in South Asia and eventually ii) examines whether the W(hole) W(ord) M(orphological) theory developed by Aian Ford & Rajendra Singh of the University of Montreal (cf. Ford, Singh & Martohardjono 1997) s an adequate model for such descriptions. WWM daims that words do not have any internai hierarchical structure. Implicitly, units smailer than word (such as stem or affix) cannot exist and there is no need for multiple morphology like compounding, derivation, infiection or reduplication. A typical WWM view would be that a good number of words of some lexicon are formaiiy and/or categorically different and semanticaily related to each other. Whenever there exist at ieast two pairs of words based on the same formai difference, categorical affiHation and semantic relatedness (cf. Singh 1992) a particular strategy becomes part of the morphological module of the speak...

VEA Model in Word Formation Process of Maithili MT

Morphological analysis is the most remarkable stage for the development of Maithili-English-Hindi MT system under NLP. This paper is motivated to design a morph analyzer for Maithili language and as add-on of Maithili MT system for appropriate analysis at the morphological level. The research is contributing through derivational process of analyzing word attached with affixes. This paper has reviewed most of the methods of MA at different level. Among all the development of MA, suffix striping and FSA are commonly practiced. Some of them are using lemma based approach for analyzing morph (Nikhil et.al. 2012). There are several linguists and computer scientists have discussed the statistical approach and Hybrid approach with FSA, probability based model (Rinju et. al. 2013) and several other approaches of machine learning to develop Maithili Morphological Analyzer (MMA). But rule based approach is friendly enough to use with all the machine learning models. VEA is one of the emerging modal in word formation process which is somehow adequate with Maithili language. Overall linguistics approach is core of MA in Maithili for developing MT system. This research is introducing linguistically a friendly and bit new with machine learning and proficient model for analyzing words and generating multiple words on the basis. The discussion also covered the concatenation with root word to suffix and prefix. Maithili MA is demonstrating a small concept with rule based model and we are designing it with hybrid modal including corpus based approach. This design is incorporating the lexicon tables, suffix list, prefix list and the Vowel Ending Approach (VEA) to justify that how does concatenation take place. In the above table POS category of Noun, Adjective and Verb are shifting to another category of POS after concatenation of suffixes. And it's also focused that how the words end with their vowels and how does suffix connects on the basis of its vowel ending mechanism.

BUNDLE FEATURES OF NOUNS IN ASSAMESE: SOME OBSERVATIONS Jawaharlal Nehru University

This paper investigates the bundle features in Assamese. The terminology used is from the generative syntax. The features of a word play an important role as the basic building block of syntax. In simple words, a feature is a property of word, which will allow us to explain the morphological, syntactic and semantic behaviour of words in sentences. In the " minimalist " approach of theoretical syntax, words are constructed as "bundles" of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning. A noun infuses within it various features such as " number, " " gender, " " case " etc. In Assamese, however, " number " and " gender " are not grammatical; only " person " is grammatical which is marked with the verb. But, there are other ways, lexically for instance, of marking the noun for " gender " and " number. "

Selected Derivational Morphological Processes in English, Hausa, Igala and Some other Languages of the World

2017

This article investigates selected derivational morphological processes in English, Hausa, Igala and some other languages of the world. Morphological processes are a means of changing a word base or root to adjust its meaning and to fit into different syntactic and communicational contexts. To achieve this in a language, linguists usually utilise certain tools called morphemes or affixes or word-elements, which are added or attached to the base or root of a word. In this article, the researchers have arduously and ardently examined these languages to bring out their rich and interesting morphological processes. We have found out that derivational morphology, which is concerned with forming new lexemes, i.e. words that differ either in syntactic category or in meaning from their bases, is extremely productive in languages. Introduction This paper treats derivational morphological processes, as selected and studied in English, Hausa, Igala and some other languages of the world. As a matter of fact, morphological processes are unique and interesting phenomena in the study of languages of the world, and they usually catch the attention of linguists. For this reason, before discussing the morphological processes selected in the languages under study, we have decided to proffer the definitions of morphology, derivational morphology and morphological processes as a brief literature review for easy comprehension. Furthermore, this study, to the best of its ability, has handled prefix, suffix, infix, interfix, circumfix, transfix and suprafix or superfix, among other morphological processes in the aforementioned languages and some other languages of the world.

Morphology: Indian Languages and European Languages

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a very popular and research area of computer science. NLP is a part of Artificial Intelligent but NLP has combination of many fields such as Hindi, English, and Computer Science etc. This paper contains how verb work in Hindi and English languages and morphology of both languages. Morphological Analyzer and generator is a tool for analyzing the given word and generator for generating word given the stem and its features. There are many Indian languages and many European languages but generally Hindi language consider as an Indian language and English as a European language. Both languages have grammatical rules. In English language, we do not use verbs as gender identification but in Hindi we use verbs for gender identification.

Derivational Morphology in Urdu: A Lexical Morphology Approach

2021

From the theoretical perspective of lexical morphology (LM), this paper analyzes neutral and non-neutral affixes and their general organizational position in the morphology of derived words in Urdu. It explores the properties and behavior that Urdu affixes exercise during their attachment or insertion into roots/bases to produce new words, to question the assumptions of LM. Nine hundred and eighty sample words were randomly selected from our observations, articles in Urdu newspapers, and Urdu news television channels in Pakistan. While LM helps a lot regarding the analysis of neutral and non-neutral affixes, its assumptions concerning the hierarchical organization of affixes in derived word-formations do not correspond with the morphology of words in Urdu. This paper contributes as an initial step toward formulating a theory of the morphology of derived words in Urdu – a language rarely theoretically analyzed regarding the morphology of its derived words.

COMPARATIVE DISCUSSION OF WORDS IN DEORI AND ASSAMESE LANGUAGES

IAEME PUBLICATION, 2020

Words are the smallest group of meanings in a language. Words are a resource of language. Therefore, the study of words is important in language discussion. Deories are one of the most linguistic communities in Assam. Among the benefits of the Deori community, only the dibangiya group uses the Deori language. Apart from language, Assamese language is used for many purposes from daily work to government work. Due to various reasons, the exchange of Assamese language with Deori language has led to the transfer of linguistic elements. However, the Deori language has retained its uniqueness. This article provides a comparative study of the words used in Assamese and Deori languages. The words used in Assamese and Deori language in daily work and the analysis of the interrelationships of these words are also studied.