Predicting article agglutination in Mauritian (original) (raw)
Related papers
Change in Noun Denotation Triggers a New Determiner Determiner System: The Case of Mauritian Creole
als.asn.au
Early in the genesis of Mauritian Creole (MC), the French definite articles le/la incorporated into a large number of the nouns that they modified, resulting in the occurrence of bare nouns in argument positions, yielding (in)definite, singular, plural and generic interpretations. These changes triggered a parametric shift in noun denotation, from predicative in French to argumental in MC, and account for the fact that MC has a very different determiner system from that of French. I argue that MC nouns are Kind denoting terms, which share some of the distributional properties of English bare plurals, namely, their ability to function as arguments without a determiner. The new MC indefinite singular article enn and the plural marker bann are analyzed as operators that assign existential quantification over Kind denoting nouns. I provide evidence that MC has a null definite determiner equivalent to the French definite articles le/la and English the. The Specificity marker la in MC serves to license the null definite determiner in some syntactic environments. Some of these exceptions include coordinated nouns, e.g. Père et fils se ressemblent 'Father and son look alike'. We also find bare nominal arguments in fused expressions, such as proverbs, e.g.
‘Morphemes’ and ‘Vocabulary Items’ Distinction in Distributed Morphology: Evidence from Hausa
Macrolinguistics, 2018
Traditionally, 'morphemes' are consisting complex morphophonological properties and syntactic-semantic properties. However, in realizational theories such as Distributed Morphology, which is a syntactic approach to word formation, morphemes are abstract bundle of features without phonological properties, e.g. pl, fem, masc, categorizers (Embick, 2015) etc. Nevertheless, when language assigns phonological properties to those features (namely late insertion), they serve as vocabulary items instead of morphemes. This was confirmed by Marantz (2000:15), who proposed that '…we see, overtly, the vocabulary items, not the morphemes.' Moreover, morphemes are generative and there is no any bound morpheme, all are free (Hankamer & Mikkelsen, 2018). Vocabulary items are not generative but expandable and visibly they can either be free or bound. So this paper intends to elaborate these issues together with evidence from Hausa. The entire paper is divided into following subsections: Introduction, Distributed Morphology, morphemes and vocabulary items in Hausa and their differences, followed by Conclusion remarks.
Aspects of Francophone Cameroon English Derivational Morphology: The Case of Noun-formation
This study focuses on a morphological analysis of noun-forming affixes that Francophone learners of English in Cameroon use in their written English. This entails identifying and analysing the use of these affixes when added to verbs, adjectives and other nouns, while taking into consideration the frequency of their use, the various difficulties involved in their use, and the strategies employed by learners to overcome these difficulties. The study is carried out on some four schools in Yaounde: the Government Bilingual Primary School Mballa II, Lycée d"Anguissa, College Adventist and The University of Yaounde I. Data for this analysis is collected from some forty scripts equitably selected from these schools using random sampling. The data are analysed based on the Principles and Parameters theory in Second Language Acquisition. The major findings reveal some general trends in the use of these affixes by Francophone learners of English. There is evidence of French interference in the morphological parameter settings of these learners" written English due to the negative transfer and use of French morphological settings in situations that require different parameter settings in English. Furthermore, learners of all levels simply omit the use of the affixes where they are not familiar with. Besides, they tend to over-generalize the use of the affixes to exceptional situations. In rare contexts, learners, especially those of Terminale and Level III, succeed in setting and using some morphological parameter settings that are peculiar to English.
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.
Noun morphology of the Momi [=Vere] language
2021
The paper presents an overview of the nominal morphology of the Momi [=Vere] language spoken in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria. Momi has an extremely elaborate system of nominal affix pairings, marked by (V)C suffixes, which correspond to –CV suffixes in other Adamawa (and Gur) languages. Detecting exact segmental correspondences is difficult, probably because the Momi system has undergone extensive erosion and renewal, as is evident in the unproductive infixed segments found the slot after the noun stem. The semantics of noun affix pairings is extremely weak, with only one suffix showing a significant correspondence with a persons class. It is plausible that the suffix system underwent a significant reduction and then developed anew. One consequence of this is the suffix alternations in number marking are highly inconsistent, with many unique pairings. This hypothesis is supported by the demonstrative system, which shows a reduced set of forms compared with the suffixes with which they show agreement. This suggests that they have not augmented the system of alliterative agreement in line with the innovative array of suffixes. Strikingly, a single demonstrative, am, shows a strong correlation with mass nouns and abstracts, an association which lies deep in the NC phylum. This has apparently been retained, while the other demonstratives seem to be determined by phonological correspondences.
2010
.. Early in the genesis of Mauritian Creole (MC), the French definite articles le/la incorporated into a large number of the nouns that they modified, resulting in the occurrence of bare nouns in argument positions, yielding (in)definite, singular, plural and generic interpretations. These changes triggered a parametric shift in noun denotation, from predicative in French to argumental in MC, and account for the fact that MC has a very different determiner system from that of French. I argue that MC nouns are Kind denoting terms, which share some of the distributional properties of English bare plurals, namely, their ability to function as arguments without a determiner. The new MC indefinite singular article enn and the plural marker bann are analyzed as operators that assign existential quantification over Kind denoting nouns. I provide evidence that MC has a null definite determiner equivalent to the French definite articles le/la and English the. The Specificity marker la in MC serves to license the null definite determiner in some syntactic environments.