LINGUISTICS-MORPHOLOGY-QN
QUESTION
3,
following Katamba, F. (1993) Morphology,
there are four types of languages classified according to morphology. Using the
data in sets A and B below how would you classify Swahili?
Set
A
Piga
hit
Pigana hit one
another
Walipigana
they hit one
another
Tumewapiga
we hit them
Tumepigwa we have been hit
Hajapigwa s/he is not hit
Hawatapiganishwa they will not be caused to hit
one another
Set
B
Soma
read
Somesha teach; cause to
read
Someshea teach for/at; cause
to read for/at
Amewasomesha s/he taught them; s/he made
them read
Hajasomeshwa s/he is not taught; s/he
is not made to read
According to Katamba,(1993). Defines morphology as the study of the
internal structure of words.
Salmon,
(2000) as referred by Bauer, (2003), morphology refers to the study of the form
of words.
Bauer, (2003). Morphology is the
study of the internal structure of words, and of the systematic form-meaning
correspondences between words.
Generally, morphology,
Apart from the concepts of
language and morphology above, morphological typology refers to the study of
range of patterns within which language may vary. The differences between the
structural patterns found in different languages appear to occur within a fairly
restricted range. Morphological typology dates back to 19th century.
Structural patterns are not randomly distributed. There are a number of
strongly preferred which recur in language after language while other patterns
are rare, or non-existing (Greenberg, 1963; Comrie, (1981) and Chomsky, (1986).
The study of the range of patterns within which language may vary is the domain
of language typology. The main concern in the book of KATAMBA is to explain
both the similarities and differences between languages in the ways in which
they form words. It distinguishes four
language types that is analytical language, agglutinating languages,
incorporating ( polysynthetic languages) and fusion languages. Katamba, (1993,
p. 56)
Therefore, on the basis of typical
patterns of word formation there are four types of languages according to
Katamba as follows;
·
Analytic (also called isolating)
languages,
·
Agglutinating (also called
agglutinative) languages,
·
Inflecting (also called synthetic or fusion)
languages and
·
Incorporating (also called polysynthetic)
languages.
(a)
Isolating (analytic) languages
This is the type of
morphological language where by the corresponding between words and a morpheme
is one-to-one. or it is a morphological language where each morpheme tend to
occur as word isolation. There are no inflectional affixes. For example, in
Chinese language the sentence;
a/ Ta ba
shu mai le.
He om book
buy Asp
He bought the book
b/
Ta chao le
yige cai hen
xiang.
He cook Asp a
dish very delicious
He cooked a dish that was very delicious.
c/
Yoruba
Nwon o
maa gba ponun
mewa losoose
They fut PROG
get pound ten weekly
‘they will be getting 10 a week.
NOTE: Asp is a short term for perfective aspect
which indicates that an action is completed
OM means ‘object marker’ that is the morpheme
indicating the object of verb. (Data
from Li and Thompson 1978, p. 56).
(b) Agglutinating languages,
In this kind
of language there tend to be a more or less one-to-one matching of morphemes
with morphs. That is the boundaries separating one morpheme from another. In a
word there is a clear-cut, and morphemes are easily segmented. In inflectional
affixes are added to invariable word stems.
For
example in Turkish language the words such as,
a/ -
el ‘ the hand’ ------elimde “in my hand”
elim
‘my hand’ -------ellerim “my nhands”
eller ‘the hand’ -------ellerimde
“ in my hands”
b/
kopekler-------kopek (dog) , kopekler (dogs), kopekleri ( ler, i are
inflectional morphs) i.e.
ler-----plural
suffix
i-----accusative suffix.
(c)
Inflecting
( synthesis/ fusional languages)
The kind of languages whereby there are no clear-cut
boundaries between morphemes in a word. A monomorphemic word may consist of two
or more meaning units. Example s of these languages are Latin and Germanic languages.
For instance, the monomorphemic word ‘took’
in English denotes two things
that is the meaning ‘to take’ and denotes ‘past tense’. In Latin the word “Mensa” (table)
Singular plural
Nominative: Mensa
mensae
Genitive: mens mensarum
Ablative:
mensa mensis
Note:
Nominative is used if the noun is the subject; genitive would mean ‘of the
table’ and ablative ‘from the table’ Katamba, (1993:58)
Nominative means ‘noun’
Genitive means ‘possession’
Ablative is used as an agent or instrument or source
expressed by words ‘by’ or ‘with’ and ‘from’
(d)
Polysynthetic/
incorporating languages
This is the
morphological type of languages where by a word may consist of a large number
of lexical and bound morphemes. A word consisting of several morphemes may form
an entire sentence. Thus, the difference between a word and a sentence is
sometimes obscure in polysynthetic languages. The Inuit (Eskimo) language is
often regarded as a typical polysynthetic language. For instance, the word illuminiippuq and tuttusivuq, from Greenlandic Eskimo words.
(a)
Illu- mi—
niip-puq
House
his be-in 3rd person singular indicative
(means,
He is in his ,(own) house).
(b)
Tuttu- si-
vuq
Caribou come-across 3rd person singular indicative (he).
(He saw a caribou)
Therefore,
according to Katamba, (1993) morphological typology Kiswahili can be classified
using agglutinative type from the given data as follows,
From
set A;
Piga
pig-a (hit)
Pig- a root of a word
-a a semantic
marker
Walipigana wa-li-pig-an-a (they hit one another)
Wa-marks
3rd person plural
-li-
time marker, i.e. past time
-pig-
a root of a word
-an- reciprocal
marker
-a,
a semantic marker
Tumewapiga tu-me-wa-pig-a (we hit them)
Tu- marks 2nd
person plural, the operators
-me- time marker
-wa- marks 3rd person plural,
showing the effected people
-pig- a root
-a, the semantic marker
Tumepigwa tu-me-pig-w-a (we have been hit)
Tu- marks 2nd person plural, the effected
-me- time marker
-pig- a root
-w- passive marker showing the effected people
-a, the semantic marker
Hajapigwa ha-ja-pig-w-a (s/he is not hit)
Ha- marks negation
-ja- time marker
-pig- the root of word
-w- passive marker showing the effected person
-a, the semantic marker
Hawatapiganishwa ha-wa-ta-pig-an-ish-w-a (they will not be
caused to hit one another)
Ha- negation marker
-wa- shows plurality of 3rd person
-ta- time marker, the future time
-pig- root of word
-an- shows reciprocity
-ish- causative marker
-w-
passive marker showing the effected people
-a, semantic marker
Set
B;
Soma
som-a
(read; study)
Somesha som-esh-a (teach; cause to read)
Someshea som-esh-e-a (teach for/at; cause to
read for at)
Amewasomesha a-me-wa-som-esh-a
(s/he taught them; s/he made them read
Hawajasomeshwa ha-ja-som-esh-w-a (s/he is not taught; s/he is not made to
read.)
Functions of each morpheme used above,
Som-
is a root, -esh- causative marker, -wa- marks 3rd person plural,
ha- negation marker, -w- shows the effected people and -me-
perfective marker.
Therefore in classifying Swahili
words, agglutinative type of language is the best way as it shows a more or
less one-to-one matching of morphemes with morphs. Katamba ,(1993). Most worlds’
languages are mixed types. For instance, in English grammatical relations are
shown mainly by means of prepositions. This resembles the pattern of isolating
languages. The derivational and inflectional morphologies of English are in
part agglutinative and in part fusional. For instance, the word (fortunate) is
fusional but the form (fortunately) is agglutinative.
REFFERENCES
Bauer,L. (2003). Introducing
linguistic morphology 2nd Ed.
Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University press.
Katamba, F. (1993). Morphology, 1st Ed. London: Macmillan Press
LTD.
Martin, H. (2002). Understanding Morphology. New York: Oxford
University
Press.
