Paradigms

- used in inflectional morphology, but also nowadays found in derivational

- paradigm = used in relation

Ferdinand De Saussure
- 3 notions of paradigms:
1. common (root/stem): teach, teacher, teaching, teachable
2. common affix: education, organization, realization
3. common idea/concept: teaching, education, learning tuition

Paradigmatic relations
- organization of lexical units in the mental lexicon synonymy, homonymy, polysemy, hyponymy, hyperonymy
- the word is used in the same slot in a sentence: position of subject, predicate, attribute, etc. =
SUBSTITUTABILITY

The most typical associative groupings in Saussure s view are the inflectional paradigm organized around a common
base

Inflectional paradigm:
- general pattern = it covers or represents a system of slots representing morphosyntactic categories each which is
realized by specific formal marker
- specific realization
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
general pattern
zly, bad, evil – in paradigm N – zl-y, G zl-ego, D zl-emu, A  POLISH
 In some specific formal marker, general pattern is to each and every unit in this class of words
 Common stem -zl-
 all new words in Polish – acquire the same inflection morpheme
 inflectional paradigm - never change the class
English is not good for examples because of lack of
 General pattern in ENG. In superlative – est, comparative- er

Specific realization
 individual lexical units
 Zlo
- no derivational suffix
- no word formation - simply change paradigm form adjectival paradigm to nominal paradigm ZLO
- Paradigms never change word class, if they do but not very common with conversion
- zlo – zlý from noun to adj.

Fyzik – fyzika = different paradigms – derivational paradigms – derivation results in new words
Some german linguist name is not important - Same inflectional morphemes are used for all words to one word class
mess in paradigms in derivational morphology

DIFFERENCES btw. inflectional paradigms and derivational paradigms

 derivational paradigms rarely change word class
 automatic assignment of inflectional morphemes (if a noun, adj. fulfils a general characteristics of a pattern, it
is automatically realized, it requires a fixed system of derivational morphemes = there is no competition in
inflection, but there is a considerable competition in derivation
- er, -ist, -ian, -ee, (teachery, typist, librarian, refugee), there is competition between which suffix to
choose = Creativity of the individual patterns
 inflectional paradigms are systematic, and derivational can cause gaps

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SIMILARITIES of inflectional paradigms and derivational paradigms:
1. Both paradigms are based on cognitively-founded categories
- Inflection: case, number, gender, tense, person
- Derivation: Agent, Instrument, Location, Result, Time

2. one cognitive category can be represented by different paradigms

- Inflection: plural morphemes in Slovak: chlapi (-i), duby (-y), hrdinovia (-ovia), stroje (-e), (mestá) -á,
(srdcia) -ia, (dievčatá) -tá – different paradigms represent cognitive category – plural of nouns - by different
inflectional morphemes
- Derivation: Agentive suffixes in English: -er, -ist, -ian, -ee, (teachery, typist, librarian, refugee) – different
suffixes for the same category (nouns)

3. Suppletion: Individual members of these paradigms are not held together formally but semantically
Same paradigms make use of different roots
Different roots – I AM, IS, ARE
- Inflection: to be – am – are – is
- Derivation: sound – sonic, Ear – auditive, sun – solar (paradigms is based on suppletion - different roots used
for representation)
- they are held together semantically

4. Agglutination = Paradigmatic function relations: existence of several inflectional rule (morphemes)

- Mainly in agglutinative and polysynthetic languages – Hungarian, Turkish - each morpheme has just 1
meaning
- In Slovak plural of chlap, muž Nominativ plural – combination of 3 categories

Inflection: kez -ek-ben „in hands“ pl. + Locative = HUNGARIAN

Derivation: insitute – ion – al – ize – ation = each time you attach one derivational morpheme and get a long word
INSTITUTIONALIZATION

5. Productivity
- Inflection: e.g. plural of nouns in English – almost universal - LISTEDNESS
- Derivation: verbal nouns in -ing – rather exception than general feature

Exceptions:
- Inflection:
- pluralia tantum, singularia tantum
- collective nouns, mass nouns
- irregular plural of nouns
- irregular past tense and past participle
- 3rd p. of modal verbs
- suppletion
- High productivity of inflectional paradigms
- they all deviate from what is expected

- Derivation:
- restricted in productivity – majority of derivational rules
- competition on derivation

6. Common base
Organized around the basic form , i.e. they share a common bases

7. Potentiality vs. actualization

 most important difference between them level of the potentiality of derivational paradigms – strong tendency
for inflectional paradigms to be complete
 Same analogical – from another words – general pattern – list – lístek – lístkový – lístkovitý – general pattern
then applied to other words in this word class
 System of words constitue a paradigm
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 We have to know to give: 2 examples derivational paradigms, 2 examples inflectional paradigms
Natural Morphology (NM)
 cognitively simple
 easily accessible to children as they lean language
 universally preferred
 aims to identify most natural processes of acquiring lang.
 not related to a single language = universal
 typologically oriented (what is preferred by individual language types)
 sources for this morphology are broad:
 Morphology of a specific language
 Morphology from the point of view of typology /universal features
 Language as a whole
 Universal features of languages
 Extra-linguistic reality
 theoretical sources:
 Markedness Theory
 R. Jakobson
 aimed to identify standard features as opposed to deviations from standard features to
different levels (marked features)
 boy = unmarked = natural, boys = marked (-s plural ) = unnatural
 Typology as a science
 what is natural in gender may be viewed, from the view of a particular language in respect to
particular morph. feature
 Semiotics
 Peirce’s theory of signs
 Icon (has a physical resemblance to the thing being represented – photograph)
 index (shows evidence of what’s being represented. A good example is using an
image of smoke to indicate fire)
 symbol (has no resemblance between the signifier and the signified. The connection
between them must be culturally learned. Numbers and alphabets are good examples.
There’s nothing inherent in the number 9 to indicate what it represents. It must be
culturally learned.)
 sub-theories involved in discussion on NM:
 theory of preferences
 what is preferred
 grammatical morphology
 ultra-grammatical morphology
 represents derivation (word plays – do not correspond with general trends in forming new
words

 THEORY OF PREFERENCES
 preference for unmarked categories
 easily acquired
 children regularize irregularities
 boy – unmarked, boys – marked

 preference for iconicity

 there are three HYPO-ICONS  images, diagrams, metaphor
 images = most iconic hypo-icons, have a high level of iconicity, represent direct connection
between signans (form) and signatum (meaning), direct representation of meaning by form
 preference for constructional iconicity
 teach  teach-er = new form by suffix represents new meaning (Natural)
 to cut  a cut = new meaning but no new form (unnatural)
 most natural processes
 new meaning represented by adding a new form, images, diagrams, metaphors

 preference for indexicality

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  fixed order of morphemes
 cannot add affixes arbitrarily
 present in every new English word
 highly regural and natural
 based on the inherent relation between the sign and the object it stands for

 preference for morphosemantic transparency

 word is semantically transparent  ideal situation because it is hardly ever met with complex
words with WF
 we can identify the semantics from constituent morphemes
 boy + s = boys  we can identify the meaning of its components together 
principle of compositionality
 meaning of the whole is the meaning of the components together

 preference for morphotactic transparency

 it is natural to have complex word in which the form of the motivating constituent is not
changed
 example: teach – teacher – no change in teach or -er

 preference for morphosyntactic transparency and opacity

 both modifier and head are morphosyn. transparent (doorbell – both preserve original
meaning = natural)
 none of them is MST (ladybird = kind of insect  unnatural)

 preference for bi-uniqueness

 one form should represent one meaning
 when meaning is expressed by several forms it causes ambiguity
 -able = only quality (talkable – able to talk)
 -er = Agent/Instrument/Location  1 form, more meanings unnatural

EVALUATIVE MORPHOLOGY
 it was believed in the past that there were 2 types of morphology = derivational + inflectional, but there is a
third type
 Sergio Scalize came up with evaluative morphology
 in 1984 he developed ideas in reference to italian
 identified several characteristic features
 EACH EVALUATIVE AFFIX (FORMATION) CHANGES THE MEANING OF THE
BASE
 green, greenish – dog, doggie – drop, droplet
 THE POSITION OF EVALUATIVE AFFIXES ARE BETWEEN DERIVATIONAL AND
INFLECTIONAL
 they follow derivational affixes and precede inflectional affixes
 ONE OF THE SAME RULES CAN BE USED SEVERAL TIMES
 malililinky
 DIMINUTIVE AFFIXES NEVER CHANGE CATEGORIES
 it is a field of linguistic studies that deals with the formation of diminutives, augmentatives, pejoratives
(words that express something negative), amelioratives (daddy…)
 evaluation = mental process that evaluates things, actions, extra-linguistic reality in a quantitative or
qualitative way
 expressive morphology = covers various playful words (useful stylistic purposes for literature)
 extra-grammatical morphology = covers all phenomena which are not grammatical, which deviate from the
rules of a language
 different from extra-grammatical because IT IS BASED ON REGULAR GRAMMATICAL PROCESSES
 deals with productive WF rules
 DAN JURAFSKY came up with a semantic model of evaluative morphology, focused primarily on
diminutives and came to the conclusion that the core of EM is represented by the meaning
 the core concept of augumentatives (bigness, largeness) especially in south east Asia is MOTHER, not father

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 PROCESSES
 conventionalisation of inference – conventionalisation of our positive attitude towards children, if
we have an idea of smallness, we usually combine it with a real object
 SEMANTIC BLEACHING – meaning of a word is not quite clear
 third ??

 onomasiological approach
 mutational categories (correspond with typical WF rules – teach, teacher)
 transpositional categories – do not change categories
 modificational categories

 Nicola Grandi
 developed a comprehensive theory and distinguishes between two levels:
 QUANTITAIVE, QUALITIATIVE (attenuation, intensification, content…)

 Lívia Kortvellesy
 contributed to the discussion
 works with default values, but introduces the term SUPERCATEGORY of QUANTITY which
subsumes everything
 includes in evaluative morphology words like plurality
 she also includes plural actionality (African languages) which means the phenomenon like action is
described in terms of individual steps – all of quantitative nature.

 phonetic iconicity – certain vowels and consonants indicate the quantity in this particular case. it was
suggested that front high vowels (e) universally refer to smallness and that high and low vowels (a or u)
indicate largeness. its also claimed that sounds like ch, sh indicate smallness. it was however proved that this
is NOT A UNIVERSAL feature of languages in the world, rather it is a real feature