Nonconcatenative morphology, also
discontinuous morphology and
introflection, is a form of word-formation in which the
rootThe root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to...
is modified and which does not involve stringing
morphemeIn morpheme-based morphology, a ' is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes .The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes...
s together. In
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
, for example,
pluralPlural, commonly abbreviated pl., is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers.-English:...
s are usually formed by adding the suffix /z/:
However, certain words use nonconcatenative processes for their plural forms:
This specific form of nonconcatenative morphology is known as
base modification or
ablaut, a form in which part of the root undergoes a phonological change without necessarily adding new
phonologicalPhonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system...
material.
Nonconcatenative morphology, also
discontinuous morphology and
introflection, is a form of word-formation in which the
rootThe root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to...
is modified and which does not involve stringing
morphemeIn morpheme-based morphology, a ' is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes .The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes...
s together. In
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
, for example,
pluralPlural, commonly abbreviated pl., is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers.-English:...
s are usually formed by adding the suffix /z/:
However, certain words use nonconcatenative processes for their plural forms:
This specific form of nonconcatenative morphology is known as
base modification or
ablaut, a form in which part of the root undergoes a phonological change without necessarily adding new
phonologicalPhonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system...
material. Other forms of base modification include lengthening of a vowel, as in
HindiStandard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
:
"die" ↔ "kill"
or change in
toneTone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but...
or stress:
- Chalcatongo Mixtec
The Mixtecan languages constitute a branch of the Otomanguean language family of Mexico. The Mixtecan branch includes the Trique languages, spoken by about 24,500 people; Cuicatec, spoken by about 15,000 people; and the large group of Mixtec languages proper, spoken by about 511,000 people...
"filth" ↔ "dirty"
- English record (noun) ↔ "to make a record"
Another form of nonconcatenative morphology is known as
transfixIn linguistic morphology, a transfix is a discontinuous affix, which occurs at more than one position in a word. The prototypical example comes from the Semitic languages, where nearly all word derivation and inflection involves the interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix...
ation, in which vowel and consonant morphemes are interdigitized. For example, depending on the vowels, the
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
consonantal rootThe roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals"...
k-t-b can have different but semantically-related meanings. Thus, 'he wrote' and 'book' both come from the root k-t-b. In the analysis provided by
McCarthyJohn McCarthy is a linguist and professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a speciality in phonology and morphology...
's account of nonconcatenative morphology, the consonantal root is assigned to one
tierTIER may refer to:* Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, one of two major economic research institutes in TaiwanTier may refer to:* Tier , by German band Rammstein* A layer in a multitiered software architecture...
, and the vowel pattern to another.
Yet another common type of nonconcatenative morphology is
reduplicationReduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process by which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated.Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical derivation to create new words...
, a process in which all or part of the root is reduplicated. In
SakhaSakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language with around 460,000 speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Sakha or Yakuts.-Classification:...
, this process is used to form intensified
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent...
s:
"red" ↔ "flaming red".
A final common type of nonconcatenative morphology is variously referred to as
truncation,
deletion, or
subtraction; the morpheme is sometimes called a
disfixA disfix is a subtractive morpheme, that is, a morpheme which manifests itself through elision . Thus it can be seen as a kind of "anti-affix"...
. This process removes phonological material from the root, as in
MurleThe Murle are an ethnic group residing in Southern Sudan and Ethiopia. They have also been referred to in the literature as Beir.- Culture :...
:
"rib" ↔ "ribs".
Nonconcatenative morphology is extremely well-developed in the
Semitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
, where it forms the basis of virtually all higher-level
word formationIn linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning...
(as with the example given in the diagram). This is especially pronounced in
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
, where it is also used to form approximately 90% of all plurals; see
broken pluralIn linguistics, broken plurals are a grammatical phenomenon typical in many Semitic languages of the Middle East and East Africa in which a singular noun is "broken" to form a plural by having its root consonants embedded in a different "frame", rather than by merely adding a prefix or suffix to...
.
See also
- Autosegmental phonology
Autosegmental phonology is the name of a framework of phonological analysis proposed by John Goldsmith in his PhD thesis in 1976 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
- Apophony
In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information .-Description:Apophony is exemplified in English...
- Transfix
In linguistic morphology, a transfix is a discontinuous affix, which occurs at more than one position in a word. The prototypical example comes from the Semitic languages, where nearly all word derivation and inflection involves the interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix...
- Disfix
A disfix is a subtractive morpheme, that is, a morpheme which manifests itself through elision . Thus it can be seen as a kind of "anti-affix"...