In April, the Department was pleased to welcome听 (University of New Mexico and University of Rochester). He gave a LingCircle talk about his work on word formation in Navajo.听He noted that of four mountains traditionally taken as markers of the听boundaries of Din茅 territory, two are located in Southern Colorado: Dib茅 Nitsaa (Mount Hesperus) to the west and Sis Naajin铆 (Mount Blanca) to the east. 听
Breaking with Tradition,听(Re)assessing Navajo Word-Formation: A Case Study
Wednesday, April 18
4:00-5:30
Clare Small 209
Abstract:
One of the most fundamental issues in Navajo linguistics, and more generally within听Athabaskan literature, concerns the modeling of formation principles that govern verbal听derivation and inflection. This is necessitated by the fact that the Athabaskan verb exhibits a听number of structurally 鈥榓berrant鈥� properties. Some of the most commonly asserted features听are listed in (1) (cf. Rice 2000).
(1)听a. Discontinuous dependencies are common.
听听 听 听b. Inflection is interleaved with non-category changing derivation.
听 听 听 c. Classes of prefixes (e.g. adverbials) appear to have linearly fixed 鈥榩ositions鈥� in听relation to the verbal stem.
In order to explicate verb-formation, most analyses reject the traditional templatic听representation that reference grammars or dictionaries implicitly presuppose: OBL.OBJ + DERIV +听ASP + DIST/PL # OBJ + {DEICTIC.SBJ} + DERIV + ASP + SUBJ + VAL + [V.STEM] (Hoijer 1971: 125). Instead,听several alternative approaches have been established. For instance, Speas (1990; cf. Rice 2000)听argues that word-formation follows from general (morpho)syntactic principles promoted in听generative grammar; whereas, Hargus (e.g. 2007) employs OT alignment constraints to听affixation whereby morphophonological factors interact directly with morpheme order. Even听more defiantly, Kari (e.g. 1992) utilizes 鈥榮tacking templatic word formation鈥� in which strings of听prefixes are interdigitated in cyclic derivations.
In the present analysis, I argue for yet another model that breaks with tradition(s), in听particular those associated with the Navajo verb. The Construction Grammar (CxG) perspective听I assume is a departure from generative approaches to word-formation. I reassess Navajo verbs听as a class of constructional objects that are subject to typing and taxonomic organization (cf.听Michaelis 2015). The taxonomies of constructions are established on a basic verb category听distinction, identified by divergences in morphological productivity: ACTIVE-TYPES and NEUTER-TYPES.听These superordinate categories are further听organized into constructional classes that听are defined by their intrinsic argument structure (ARG-ST) features: INTRANSITIVE-CX, TRANSITIVE-CX,听APPLICATIVE-CX, STATIVE-CX, PASSIVE-CX and so on. Under a lexicalist framework, I show that听Navajo verbs can be analyzed on a surface level, without deferring to underlying听representations or unrealistic procedural movement of morphemic constituents (cf. Fortescue听2007).
As CxG states that there is no rigid division between the lexicon (storage) and syntax听(computation), these ostensibly disparate components are conceptualized as networks of constructions that are organized according to constructional complexity and schematicity听(Croft and Cruse 2004: 255). Thus, lexical and grammatical units are treated identically,听motivating a uniform conception of constraints on form-meaning pairings (Sag et al. 2012: 5).听These factors allow for handling the Navajo verb as a constructional object, rather than an听abstract syntactic or morphophonological procedure.