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Fall 2015

Journal Article Assignment: Option One:

Data Article Assignment (adapted from Kathryn Flack (2010)

• Browse through the International Journal of American Linguistics. (IJAL) or any of the other journals listed on “Alternative One”

• Find a language with a productive morphological category not present in English.

• Write up a description of this phenomenon.

Reference source: The International Journal of American Linguistics publishes primarily short, descriptive papers about the structure of languages of the Americas. Its emphasis is on data and grammatical description, generally without too much theorizing. Descriptions in older volumes of this journal are often the most accessible, e.g. before 1990 or so; they’re more descriptive. While papers in the earliest volumes (between 1917 and 1950) might be less immediately relevant, they should provide some good history—

There are other descriptions of morphological phenomena as well.

You might look for one of the languages used in Haspelmath and Sims, in the Payne text, or in Carstairs-McCarthy, and the reference(s) cited in those texts.

But, IJAL is available through the Oviatt fully online. Earlier volumes are on JStor.

And you may find a grammar book or two—or other articles—about the language in which the morpheme resides.

Morphological phenomena:

Your task here is to find a language that has some morphological category not present in English. Key points:

• This morpheme (or morphological process) should be productive: it should occur relatively broadly in the language, rather than being limited to a handful of exceptional words.

• It’s fine – and, in fact, expected – that English will have some way of expressing the same meaning as your morpheme. Crucially, though, English shouldn’t use morphology to do this.

EXAMPLE (sound familiar?):

Many languages have a distinction between first person plural inclusive (‘we, including you’) and exclusive (‘we, not including you’). This morphological category is generally productive: for a language marking person on verbs, any verb can be marked for either of these categories. And while English can certainly convey this distinction, it uses word combinations,

rather than morphology, to do so.

Writing up your paper:

Questions/Template for Option One

1. Identify the language and the morphological category

2.         Article Title,  Author(s), journal and page numbers          

3. Does this descriptive article have an abstract? If so, follow instructions for (4a) and (4b) in Option Two. If not, write your own summary of the article (not the phenomenon).

4. Write up a short description of your phenomenon.

Make sure to identify the language you’re working with, the form(s) this morpheme takes, and the meaning it expresses. (

How complex is this system: are there multiple allomorphs? Can all roots take this morpheme? Can a clear, consistent, precise meaning be defined?

Compare both this morpheme’s form and its meaning to English: Do we have morphemes that cause the same general kind of change to roots? Are we able to express the same meaning, via some non-morphological mechanism?

5. What references does (or do) the author (or authors) of the article(s) you’re using for your selected morpheme description cite, if any. What role do the citations play in the discussion (Might they be supportive, or might the author be arguing for an alternative description/account of the phenomenon?)?

6. If this description and the account of it in the article are being used to make an argument for a claim

a. What is the claim?

b. How does the phenomenon/morpheme make the argument?

7. Judicious use of examples (see below)

8. Glossary (see instructions on Option Two.

For length and format, see the instructions for Option Two.

Examples: Present sufficient examples to support your descriptive claims; a single example is less compelling than 3-4.

Useful kinds of examples include:

• Pairs of words with and without your morpheme.

• Examples showing different allomorphs, if present.

• Sentences including a word with your morpheme, to illustrate its usage.

Make sure your examples are properly formatted (This involves acknowledging and following glossing conventions. In part, this includes an exercise in formatting. You can use the Haspelmath and Sims stylesheet in the appendix to Chapter 2.