Ling 280/680
Morphology
Instructor
Lectures
Office Hours
Office Location
Course Webpage
Prerequisites
Dennis Ryan Storoshenko
dennis.storoshenko@yale.edu
Tuesday & Thursday 11:35-12:50, 370 Temple room 321
TBA
370 Temple, room 305
see Classes*v2
Ling 132 and 153 or instructor permission
Course Goals
1. This course will cover the major types of word formation and core concepts of word structure. This
will be done through a cross-theoretical lens, exploring how different theories of word formation
speak to the issue of Morphology’s place in the grammar as a whole. The relation of morphology to
language change, and the psycholinguistic exploration of morphology will also be explored.
Readings
There will be two core textbooks for this course:
• Fábregas, Antonio and Sergio Scalise. 2012. Morphology: From data to theories. Edinburgh University Press ISBN 978-0-7486-4314-1 (F&S)
• Booij, Geert. 2012. The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology Third Edition. Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics ISBN 978-0-1996-9183-8 (Booij)
These books are available through the usual online booksellers.
In addition, there will be supplementary readings included selected research papers, and chapters from
the Handbook of Morphology. These readings will be made available through Classes*v2.
Course Components, Requirements, and Assessment
• “Lectures”
This is where key course material will be communicated; attendance is essential if you plan to keep
up. Lecture handouts will be provided in class, but please don’t let the label “lecture” lull you into
silence. Do come with questions, concerns, confusions, etc...
• Problem Sets/Writing Assignments
There will be six (roughly) bi-weekly homework assignments. These will take the shape of problem
sets and/or small writing assignments designed to explore the issues discussed in class.
• Research Presentation
The last two weeks of class are devoted to the interactions between morphology, language acquisition,
and processing. Each student will be responsible for selecting one paper to present to the class.
Presentations will need to not only cover the details and results of a given study, but elaborate on how
the given result speaks to the different approaches to morphology discussed in class.
• Final Paper
Students will be required to research a language they do not natively speak, and provide a sketch
of some aspect of the morphology of that language. Part of the sketch should include a theoretical
component, weighing the pros and cons of applying different analyses to the data.
• Grading Breakdown
Final Paper: 40%
Assignments: 30%
Presentation: 15%
Class Participation: 15%
Course/Classroom Policies
• All cellphones or similar devices must be silenced in class and section. Taking calls or texting inside
the classroom will not be tolerated.
• Your laptop/tablet should only be open for the purposes of note-taking, or viewing readings or lecture
notes. Repeat violators may lose laptop/tablet privileges.
• Your problem set responses should be typed.
• Class attendance will be considered mandatory, as it is key to your success in this course. In the event
of an unavoidable absence, inform the instructor by email as soon as possible (especially if there is a
problem set due!)
• Questions or comments related to course material should be communicated through C*v2. If they can
be dealt with through a 1-2 sentence response, the response will appear there, and will be shared if
appropriate. Longer questions should be addressed in section or at office hours.
• If you need to email the instructor for any other reason, use the email address on the front page of the
syllabus, and be sure to include the course number in the subject line, making sure that your email is
identifiable (i.e. your yale account, or just remember to sign your name).
• In your problem set and final paper submissions, it is essential that you acknowledge your sources.
Citing places your work in a larger context, and establishes credibility for your ideas. This also allows
the reader to differentiate your original contribution from the sources that you draw inspiration from,
and allows the reader to check on your use of sources, permitting a further pursuit of the topic through
the source material cited. For more on citation, consult this site from the Yale College Writing Center
http://writing.yalecollege.yale.edu/using-sources
Timeline of Topics to be Covered (subject to adjustments)
01.15 Introduction and Historical Overview
Beard, Robert. 1996. Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology Chapter 1.
01.17 Core Concepts in Morphology
F&S Ch. 1, Booij Ch. 1
01.22 What’s in a Lexicon?
Handbook Ch. 11
01.24 What’s a word?
F&S p22-29, Booij Ch. 12
01.29,31 Morphological Units and Typology
Booij Ch. 2, F&S Ch. 3, Bresnan & Mchombo 1995
02.5,7 Derivation
Booij Ch. 3, F&S Ch. 5
02.12,14 Inflection
Booij Ch. 5/6, F&S Ch. 4
02.19,21 Morphology-Phonology Interface
Booij Ch. 7, F&S 8.1 to 8.2.2, Handbook Ch. 6
02.26,28 Compounding and Incorporation
Booij Ch. 7, F&S Ch. 6, Handbook Ch. 4
03.5 Distributed Morphology
Halle and Marantz 1993, F&S 8.2.3, 8.2.4
03.7 Lexical Semantics and Morphology
F&S 7.1, 7.2, Booij 8.2, 8.3, 9.2, Handbook Ch. 12
03.26,28 Clitics
Handbook Ch. 5, Anderson, Stephen. 2005. Aspects of the Theory of Clitics Ch. 2, 4
04.02 Internal Structure of Pronouns
Déchaine and Wiltschko 2002a, 2002b
04.04 Morphopragmatics
Handbook Ch. 13, Booij Ch. 9.3, Appah and Amfo 2011
04.09,11 Morphology and Language Change
Booij Ch. 11, F&S 7.3, Newmeyer 2001
04.16,18 Acquisition of Morphological Knowledge
Booij 10.1-10.5, Lindsay et al 2012, Krazewski et al 2011, Arche and Domı́nguez 2011
04.23,25 Morphological Processing
Booij 10.6, Havas et al 2012, Varlokosta 2011
References
Anderson, Stephen. 2005. Aspects of the theory of clitics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Appah, Clement K.I., and Nana Aba Appiah Amfo. 2011. The morphopragmatics of the diminutive morpheme -bal-wa in Akan. Lexis 6:85–103.
Arche, Maria J., and Domı́nguez Laura. 2011. Morphology and syntax dissociation in SLA: A study on
clitic acquisition in Spanish. In Morphology and its interfaces, ed. Alexandra Galani, Glyn Hicks, and
George Tsoulas, 291–320. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Beard, Robert. 1995. Lexeme-morpheme base morphology. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Bresnan, Joan, and Sam Mchombo. 1995. The lexical integrity principle: Evidence from Bantu. Natural
Language and Linguistic Theory 13:181–254.
Déchaine, Rose-Marie, and Martina Wiltschko. 2002a. Decomposing pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 33:409–
442.
Déchaine, Rose-Marie, and Martina Wiltschko. 2002b. Deriving reflexives. In Proceedings of the 21st West
Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 71–84.
Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The view
from Building 20, ed. Kenneth Hale and Samuel J. Keyser, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Havas, Viktória, Rodrı́guez-Fornells, and Harald Clashen. 2012. Brain potentials for derivatrional morphology: An ERP study of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish. Brain & Language 120:332–344.
Krajewski, Grzegorz, Anna L. Theakston, Elena V.M. Lieven, and Michael Tomasello. 2011. How Polish
children switch from one case to another when using novel nouns: Challenges for models of inflectional
morphology. Language and Cognitive Processes 26:830–861.
Lindsay, Shane, Leanne Sedin, and M. Gareth Gaskell. 2012. Acquiring novel words and thier past tenses:
Eveidence from lexical effects on phonetic categorisation. Journal of Memory and Language 66:210–255.
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2001. Deconstructing grammaticalization. Language Sciences 23:187–229.
Spencer, Andrew, and Arnold M. Zwicky, ed. 1998. The handbook of morphology. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishers.
Varlokosta, Spyridoula. 2011. The role of morphology in grammatical gender assignment: A psycholinguistic study in Greek. In Morphology and its interfaces, ed. Alexandra Galani, Glyn Hicks, and George
Tsoulas, 321–349. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.