Table Of ContentVariation and Change in Morphology
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
general editor
e.F.K. Koerner
Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, typologie
und Universalienforschung, Berlin
[email protected]
Series iV – CUrrent iSSUeS in lingUiStiC theory
Advisory Editorial Board
lyle Campbell (Salt lake City)
Sheila embleton (toronto)
elly van gelderen (tempe, ariz.)
Brian d. Joseph (Columbus, ohio)
John e. Joseph (edinburgh)
Manfred Krifka (Berlin)
Martin Maiden (oxford)
e. Wyn roberts (Vancouver, B.C.)
Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.)
Volume 310
Franz rainer, Wolfgang U. dressler, dieter Kastovsky
and hans Christian luschützky (eds.)
Variation and Change in Morphology. Selected papers from
the 13th International Morphology Meeting, Vienna, February 2008
Variation and Change
in Morphology
SeleCted paperS FroM the
13th international Morphology Meeting,
Vienna, FeBrUary 2008
edited by
FranZ rainer
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien
WolFgang U. dreSSler
dieter KaStoVSKy
hanS ChriStian lUSChütZKy
Universität Wien
With the aSSiStanCe oF eliSaBeth peterS
John BenJaMinS pUBliShing CoMpany
aMSterdaM/philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
american national Standard for information Sciences – permanence of
paper for printed library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
international Morphology Meeting (13th : 2008 : Vienna, austria)
Variation and change in morphology : selected papers from the 13th international Mor-
phology Meeting, Vienna, February 2008 / edited by Franz rainer ... [et al.].
p. cm. (amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series iV,
Current issues in linguistic Theory, issn 0304-0763 ; v. 310)
includes bibliographical references and index.
1. grammar, Comparative and general--Morphology--Congresses. i. rainer, Franz. ii.
title.
p241.i58 2008
415--dc22 2009048326
isbn 978 90 272 4826 8 (hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8852 3 (eb)
© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Foreword & acknowledgements vii
Editors’ introduction 1
Affixation vs. conversion: The resolution of conflicting patterns 15
Laurie Bauer, Salvador Valera & Ana Díaz-Negrillo
The -alis/-aris allomorphy revisited 33
András Cser
French property nouns based on toponyms or ethnic adjectives:
A case of base variation 53
Georgette Dal & Fiammetta Namer
Morphological variation in the construction of French
names for inhabitants 75
Elmar Eggert
The invisible hand of grammaticalization: West-Germanic substitutive
infinitive and the prefix ge- 89
Livio Gaeta
Paradigmatic realignment and morphological change:
Diachronic deponency in Network Morphology 107
Andrew Hippisley
Areal-typological aspects of word-formation:
The case of aktionsart-formation in German,
Hungarian, Slavic, Baltic, Romani and Yiddish 129
Ferenc Kiefer
Variation and change in morphology and syntax:
Romance object agreement 149
Michele Loporcaro
Optional multiple plural marking in Maay 177
Mary Paster
Lettered words: Using Roman letters to create words in Chinese 193
Helena Riha & Kirk Baker
vi Variation and Change in Morphology
Word creation: Definition – Function – Typology 201
Elke Ronneberger-Sibold
Pleonastic morphology dies hard: Change and variation
of definiteness inflection in Lithuanian 217
Thomas Stolz
Index of languages & terms 245
Index of subject & terms 247
Foreword & acknowledgements
This volume contains selected papers from the 13th International Morphology
Meeting held in Vienna on February 3rd–6th, 2008. Workshops included, well
over 100 papers and posters were presented at the conference, covering a wide
range of topics. The papers in this volume all address the main topic of the meet-
ing, viz. variation and change in morphology.
We would like to express our gratitude for financial support to the Faculty of
Philological and Cultural Studies, the Department of English and the Department
of Linguistics of the University of Vienna, to the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the
Institute for Romance Languages of WU Vienna, the Wiener Sprachgesellschaft
and the Vienna Convention Bureau, for patronage to the Rectorate and the Centre
for Translation Studies of the University of Vienna, for help in the selection of
papers especially to Harald Baayen, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Bernhard Hurch, Ferenc
Kiefer, Marianne Kilani-Schoch, Michele Loporcaro, Melanie Malzahn, Jerome
L. Packard, Keren Rice, Chris Schaner-Wolles and Thomas Stolz.
Editors’ introduction
1. What the volume is not about
Ever since the publication of Weinreich, Labov & Herzog (1968), variation and
change have become an undissociable binomial in linguistics, reflecting the gen-
eral perception that any change from A to B must invariably pass through a stage
where there is variation between A and B. One of the tenets of these authors in fact
was that an ongoing change often manifests itself from a synchronic perspective as
variation along socially definable dimensions (for a recent synthesis on this topic,
see Chambers 2002). But it is not this conception of variation that will be at the
centre of the present volume. Apart from sociolinguistic variation of the kind alluded
to and the closely related phenomenon of geographic variation, the term variation
in morphology in fact also refers to a rich set of phenomena of a purely language-
internal nature, as will be shown in detail in Section 3 of this introduction. In most
contributions to the present volume, it is language-internal variation which is at the
centre stage, though dialectal data also plays a pivotal role in the argumentation of
some of them (especially those by Michele Loporcaro and Thomas Stolz). But before
we proceed to the discussion of the various manifestations of variation in morphology,
we will briefly sketch, in alphabetical order, the content of the individual contributions.
This will be helpful for the reader, since they will constantly be referred to in the
remainder of this introduction.
2. Overview
Laurie Bauer, Salvador Valera & Ana Díaz Negrillo investigate the rivalry between
conversion and -en suffixation in the formation of deadjectival verbs from Old
English up to Modern English. Phonological, semantic and historical variables
that may have influenced the choice between the two processes are examined in
detail. The picture that emerges shows how intricate such cases of rivalry between
word-formation processes can be, and that the pressure towards uniform encoding
of categories seems to be much less cogent in word formation than in inflection.
András Cser revisits a well-known case of allomorphic variation, viz. the one
between the suffixes -alis and -aris in Latin. He shows that the descriptions of this
phenomenon hitherto proposed are not entirely correct. According to his analysis,
