Linguist Forum
Specializations => Morphosyntax => Topic started by: zaba on May 10, 2014, 06:08:34 AM
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Does the suffix -have- in the sentence look more inflectional or derivational to you?
chiitar dom-mbmam-byc-ja
four house-have-to.be-1sg
'I have four houses.'
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How can we tell from just one example?
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Let's say that all examples with the -have suffix are more or less like that (limited distribution)
ROOT-have-to.be-person = 'person has ROOT' (lit. person is a ROOT-haver)
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What are the implications of inflection and derivation being different in this language?
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Actually, I don't think there's a hell of a lot of difference between the two -- but this suffix in particular seems to exist on the physical "border" in the maximal word between the most derivational like suffixes and the most inflectional-like suffixes, so it's hard for me to foresee where to put it in this preliminary grammatical sketch.
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If derivation and inflection aren't consequentially different in this language, why make the distinction in your grammar in the first place?
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Indeed. Seems like all you have to say is "have works like this [example]". //shrug
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Well, let's say for the sake of it that I'd like to make the distinction. After all, there is a difference between e.g. case, on the one end of the spectrum and diminutives on the other. Sure, there are less prototypical exemplars, like this one, but eventually it is necessary to make a decision one way or the other.
Can you help me classify?
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I'm not sure that it is actually necessary to distinguish between inflection and derivation just for the sake of it, but if you are pressed to do so for some reason I suppose you could apply the usual shibboleths.
If this affixation is a lexical operation (building new words in the lexicon), it's derivational; if it's a morphosyntactic operation (constructing sentences from the lexicon), it's inflectional. If that distinction feels like unempirical theory-mongering, you're appreciating why djr33 and I are reluctant to give a simple answer. If the distinction between derivation and inflection isn't consequential in some way, you may as well be counting angels on pinheads.
In my work, I (like many others) make a distinction between inflection and derivation in terms of productive regularity and semantic predictability. This is important because I am interested in language as a socially shared system of knowledge. In those terms (and off the top of my head), the language you're describing looks relatively polysynthetic. I have a hard time imagining in useful terms that speakers of polysynthetic languages are inventing novel lexical forms every time they utter a sentence-word, so I would tend to call that kind of thing inflectional.
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I completely agree with MalFet's post.
Another question to ask is what "inflectional" and "derivational" mean. Just as labels, they're useless. If you have some greater reason for applying them, then that reason should suggest criteria-- regularity, for example, is relevant information.
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I'm not sure that it is actually necessary to distinguish between inflection and derivation just for the sake of it, but if you are pressed to do so for some reason I suppose you could apply the usual shibboleths.
Suffix order is a big motivator. Suffixes closer to the root tend to be more derivational and those farther are more inflectional. This tends to work for those close to the extremes, but this one is in the middle.
I'm trying to organise a grammar around some easy to manage principles, and for the reason I described above, derivation/inflection seems easy enough.
If this affixation is a lexical operation (building new words in the lexicon), it's derivational; if it's a morphosyntactic operation (constructing sentences from the lexicon), it's inflectional.
That's just it, at first blush it looks inflectional.
four house-pl-have to.be-1sg
'I have four houses.'
But I'm not confident. What sort of data could I provide to convince you that this is an inflectional suffix (if that is what it is).
Thanks!
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What sort of data could I provide to convince you that this is an inflectional suffix (if that is what it is).
A description of the criterion that you are using to distinguish between inflection and derivation would be the very necessary first step
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The data you use to make the distinction is more important than the distinction itself.