LINGUIST List 6.147

Fri 03 Feb 1995

Qs: Applied texts, Realizational, Arabic, Unpublished papers

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1. , applied linguists texts
2. , obligatory affixes in realizational morphology
3. sharon shelly, "Degenerate" forms of Arabic??
4. Jan K Lindstrom, Unpublished papers

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I am in need of undergraduate texts and other related books for the course,
Introduction to Applied Linguistics. Thanks.

Send replies to: CMLEWISsescva.esc.edu (internet)
 or
 CMLEWISsnyescva (bitnet)

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In a theory of realizational morphology like Anderson's (as described in
his book "A-morphous morphology"), inflectional affixation rules are
applied just if their structural description is met. Simplifying, the SD
refers to the morphosyntactic features of a stem (as well as to its
phonetic form); if the stem's features include those required by the
affixal rule, the rule is applied.

Now in traditional (structuralist) morphology, affixes could be obligatory
or optional-- or more accurately, a set of affixes (person markers, say)
competing for some position could be such that one of those affixes (first,
second, or third, say) had to be attached. My question is, how is the
notion of obligatory affixes recast in realizational morphology? If it is
the morphosyntactic features that trigger application of the rules, what
ensures that any given word has all the features required by the affixes in
question? Anderson suggests that the features are assigned (or perhaps
required in other ways) by the syntax. One can see how agreement might
ensure that a verb has person features, but it seems to me that there are
other features that don't get assigned in that way-- tense, for instance,
or gender on nouns or pronouns.

Leaving aside the case of "zero affixes" (where it can presumably be argued
that the affix in question is really NOT obligatory), I can think of
several possibilities for ensuring that obligatory affixes get attached:

(1) There might be rules to assign default features, e.g. "If neither
[masc gender] nor [fem gender] is specified in a noun, [neuter gender] is
assigned." Or there might be a default that [neuter gender] is assigned,
but the default can be overidden by values assigned in specific lexical
entries (as in default inheritance, as often used in computational
implementations of lexicons).

(2) There might be some sort of obligatory feature conditions, e.g. "If
[+N -V], then [case] must be instantiated." (GBers will recognize this
particular condition, but perhaps other features could be treated in the
same way.)

(3) Obligatory rules might be specified to apply just in case certain
features are NOT present, by virtue of dijunctive ordering. For instance,
if the masculine and feminine gender rules have not applied (because the
[masc gender] and [fem gender] features are not present), then the neuter
gender affixation rule applies as the "elsewhere" case (assuming the three
gender affixation rules to be disjunctively ordered).

Are there published arguments for these or other conditions within the
theory of realizational morphology?

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Last Sunday's (Jan. 29) _New York Times_ contained an article by Chris Hedges
entitled "A Language Divided Against Itself". The author argues that a "special
brand" of Arabic is being used by Islamic militants to encourage intolerance
and extremism.

If I understand correctly, Hedges is lamenting the deteriorating quality of
political discourse, the tendency for reasoned discussion to be drowned out
by slogans and cliches.... an "obvious and familiar" problem, as the author
readily admits (anybody remember any reasoned discussion during the latest
U.S. election campaign?).

But the article seems to go beyond this universal complaint. Although the
term "dialect" is not used, the author refers to this "form"/ "brand"/ "idiom"
of Arabic as if it were the only form of the language available to the
"enraged underclass" of poor and/or uneducated Arabs. The reader (this one,
at least) gets the impression that Islamic extremists and their followers
speak a kind of crippled pidgin form of Arabic which is fundamentally
(structurally?) incapable of logical argumentation.

Am I just misreading this text? Or is there really a kind of dangerous
confusion here between notions of _discourse_ and _dialect_?

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Hi there,

I am wondering if anyone could point to me how to get hold of two
papers that are referred to as "unpublished" in the sources I have
come across with:

Browne, Wayles. 1964. "On Adjectival Comparisons and Reduplication in
 English". Unpublished, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lakoff, R. 1970. "If's, and's, and but's about conjunction". Unpublished,
 The University of Michigan.

I will appreciate any information on these. - Jan.