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The Interaction between Lexical Semantics and Morphology: A Cross-Linguistics Perspective
Semester II 2003
(Paul Barratt Lecture Theatre, 22 September 2003, 12 noon)
Powerpoint-Presentation -
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Abstract
Studies in lexical semantics in general but also many approaches in
cognitive semantics have mainly focussed on the investigation and
representation of morphologically simple lexical items. Accordingly, many
textbooks on lexical semantics (e.g. Cruse 1986) are confined to the
treatment of simple lexical elements. While "multi words" are normally
considered as a rather exceptional phenomenon which should be
investigated as a subject of phraseology, the study of morphologically
complex words (derivations, compounds, etc.) is usually left to
morphology. So it comes as no surprise that one of the central issues of
lexicology in the last forty years, namely the question of the feasibility of
semantic decomposition, is an issue which only makes sense with
respect to simple lexical items or to such complex ones which may be
analysed as semantically opaque. The privileged status of simple words is
also reflected in several basic concepts of early cognitive linguistics.
Cross-linguistic research on basic semantic concepts (e.g. colour terms),
for instance, has often proceeded from the underlying assumption that
the existence of a particular concept in a particular language has to be
reflected by the existence of a synchronically unanalysable word which
expresses it. For the notion of "basic-level categories", which was
introduced in prototype theory by Rosch in the 70ies, the lack of
morphological complexity plays an even more important role. Categories
located on a basic level of conceptual hierarchies (e.g. "(the concept of)
dog" as opposed to hyperonym "animal" and hyponym "dachshund")
are explicitly predicted to be expressed by words which have a simple
morphological form.
The present paper draws attention to those languages in which complex
morphological structures do not represent "exceptional idioms" but are
characteristic of the entire lexicon (or a subpart of it). The theoretical
difficulties involved in the lexical-semantic and morphological
investigation of such languages will be illustrated with data from
Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Cayuga. It will be argued that linguistic
expressions which correspond to basic-level categories in many European
languages are likely to be complex in such languages, and that the very
notion of basic-level categories is based on a particular type of interaction
between lexicon and grammar.
An important question is how to deal with the cross-linguistic
observation that semantic components which are usually conflated in
simple lexical elements in well-known languages regularly surface as
overt elements in some other languages (e.g. in some classifier
languages such as Vietnamese and in many Australian languages such
as Jaminjung, which prefer complex predicates over simple ones). A
particularly interesting case in this context are sign languages: according
to the controversial status of single parameters in complex signs (e.g.
hand shapes), we encounter here both "polymorphemic" and
"polycomponential" approaches to the analysis of the same predicates.
Finally, the present paper will try to open a general discussion about the
theoretical consequences, for cognitive semantics, of the fact that the
preferred type of morphological complexity varies cross-linguistically.
