Natural Morphology

Even as Saussure’s dogma of the “tyranny of writing” recedes farther into the past, writing systems remain a subject at the margins of linguistics.  Although much has been accomplished in the interdisciplinary area of writing systems research, or grapholinguistics, most major contributions to the field are of exclusively descriptive nature.  As a result, Watt’s (1998:118) observations are still true today: there exists no theory of writing that can explain “why each […] writing system is the way it is, instead of some other way, and why all such systems have in common what they have in common”.  The reasons for this are that valuable grapholinguistic findings from the various disciplines interested in writing – aside from linguistics, these are history, psychology, pedagogy, and many others – often fail to reference one another and are not embedded in a larger context.  An overarching theoretical framework remains a desideratum, as do shared concepts and terminology that would allow the comparison of typologically diverse writing systems.  For precisely these reasons, endeavors such as a comparison of the Chinese and German writing systems remain unfeasible.  Provocative claims such as “some writing systems are better than others” (Rogers, 1995:31) are, against this background, ultimately untestable.
Based on Meletis (2018), this talk introduces the core tenets of Natural Graphematics as an explanatory theoretical framework that makes possible the comparison of writing systems.  It is positioned in the framework of Naturalness Theory and modeled after its subbranch of Natural Morphology.  In Natural Morphology (Dressler et al., 1987), the semiotic structure of signs is assumed to have a bearing on how they are cognitively processed by humans, with structures that are cognitively processed with less effort being termed natural, giving the approach its name.  As writing systems are semiotic systems linking the visual units of scripts (= signifiers) with linguistic units (= signifieds), the semiotic parameters of Natural Morphology can be fruitfully transferred to graphematics.  Accordingly, parameters such as transparency (a grapheme is transparent if it only corresponds with one linguistic unit, e.g. German <f> only corresponds to /f/) prove to be useful categories for the description and comparison of the graphematic module of writing systems.  In this talk, the parameters of iconicity, diagrammaticity, indexicality, transparency, compositional transparency, positional transparency, and figure—ground will be presented and illustrated with examples from a variety of diverse writing systems.
While the investigation of how these parameters are reflected in different writing systems descriptively evaluates their linguistic fit, i.e. how well they fit their respective languages, in a next step, the processing fit of these parameters can be assessed with the help of external evidence such as data from literacy acquisition and the history of writing.  Here, the central question reads: How do the structural features of writing systems affect their processing by humans?  The processing fit also gives Natural Graphematics its explanatory force, as it does not stop at describing structures, but strives to explain how human pressure has shaped them and how they affect humans.  In sum, taken together, the naturalness parameters and their linguistic and processing fits introduced in this talk offer instruments for the evaluation of writing systems.  This presents a remarkable step in the development of a theory of writing.

DRESSLER, WOLFGANG U., WILLI MAYERTHALER, OSWALD PANAGL, and WOLFGANG U. WURZEL.  1987.  Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology.  Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
MELETIS, DIMITRIOS.  2018.  What is natural in writing? Prolegomena to a Natural Grapholinguistics.  Written Language and Literacy 21:52-88.
ROGERS, HENRY.  1995.  Optimal orthographies. In Scripts and literacy: reading and learning to read alphabets, syllabaries and characters, edited by INSUP TAYLOR, and DAVID R. OLSON, 31-43. Dordrecht: Springer.
WATT, W. C.  1998.  The old-fashioned way. Semiotica 122:99-138.

intRoducción El sufijo diminutivo al que nos referiremos en este trabajo (ito, ita) es el más común en el español actual, particularmente en México. Su uso está tan difundido que prácticamente puede adjuntarse sin restricciones a cualquier palabra, como se muestra a continuación: Sustantivo: casa ‡ casita Adjetivo: malo ‡ malito Adverbio: cerca ‡ cerquita Gerundio: llegando ‡ llegandito Participio: salado ‡ saladito Nombre propio: Carlos ‡ Carlitos

Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be extended to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.

Morphological techniques, operations, and rules are selected by natural languages according to a range of parameters of morphological naturalness/markedness. Since the range of options within a single parameter goes from a maximum to a minimum of naturalness, the resulting gradient is a scale with a most natural threshold and a least natural pole. Each parameter then can be viewed as one scalarised factor 1 of the morphological component.

Nei lavori precedenti, rifiutando l'interpretazione della conversione come suffissazione zero, abbiamo proposto un'analogia tra metafora semantica e conversione, identificando la conversione come una sorta di metafora morfologica (v. infra § 3.). Ma, d'altra parte, abbiamo continuato a considerare la conversione come un'operazione di derivazione, seppur atipica. Ora, pur non rinunciando alla definizione di conversione nei termini di metafora morfologica, riteniamo di poter inquadrare questo fenomeno come un'operazione di FP distinta tanto dalla derivazione quanto dalla composizione.

In spite of the central position that the concept word has among the basic units of language structure, there is no consensus as to the definition of this concept (or network of related concepts). Many perspectives are needed in order to gain even a schematic idea of what words are, how words may be composed, and what relationships there might be between words. Many linguists have put forward frameworks for describing the domain of morphology, each framework proceeding from its author's assumptions, prioritizing distinct formal and functional dimensions, and therefore entering into de facto competition. This book addresses the needs of the language scholar/student who finds her/himself engaged in morphological analysis and theorizing. It offers a guide to existing approaches, revealing how they can either complement or compete with each other and ranks them on multiple continua.

The present article deals with the question of the so-called συνθετικό φωνήεν, namely the vowel that links the two members of a compound in Modern Greek. The author proposes to assign to the vowel a morphological status of interradical interfix. Such a theoretical proposal is upheld by four kinds of arguments: (1) learned compounds, (2) -υς adjectives occurring as left-hand elements, (3) right-hand compound elements beginning with a vowel, and (4) strong internal boundary compounds. The framework of the analysis of the Modern Greek interradical interfix is that of the theory of Natural Morphology. Thus, the role and function of the interfix in Modern Greek compounding is evaluated in accordance with the premises of the theory and also by reference to previous studies on interfixes of other languages.

The semiotic principle of metaphoricity derives from that type of icon that the philosopher Charles S. Peirce calls metaphor. Metaphors, as well as images and diagrams, are particular instantiations of the superordinate category of 'icon'. As puts it, an icon is a sign exhibiting a resemblance with the object it denotes. Thus icons are the most natural signs. When dealing with the degree of resemblance between an iconic sign and its object, Peirce distinguishes three subtypes of icons, i.e. image, diagram and metaphor.

Dolgozatomban arra az évtizedek óta meg-megújuló vitákat kirobbantó kérdésre próbálok meg adekvát s a korábbiakhoz képest alternatív választ találni, mely a magyar -é morfémastátusát firtatja. A kérdés megválaszolásához azonban kicsit messzebbről célszerű elindulni. Így tehát először arra a kérdésre kell -legalábbis megközelítő pontossággal -válaszolni, hogy:

Ma chi dice che una certa condizione che postuliamo come universale per render conto di certe osservazioni sia quella vera, o che almeno corrisponda in qualche forma alla realtà sottostante? Naturalmente nessuno. Questa è semplicemente la natura di ogni scienza empirica, di ogni scienza che si misura con dei «fenomeni naturali». Possiamo solo, nel migliore dei casi, additarla come un'ipotesi corroborata e come un'ipotesi interessante se inoltre essa permette di dedurre delle predizioni su altri fatti non presi originariamente in considerazione. Cinque (1979Cinque ( /1991

Актуальная контактная ситуация, сложившаяся вокруг лемковского языка, является социально асимметричной, что вполне типично для таких языковых образований, как микроязыки, функционирующих, как правило, наряду с национальными литературными языками и обслуживающих сравнительно малые этнические группы. Доминирующий в социолингвистическом плане польский литературный стандарт выполняет по отношению к лемковскому функцию «языка-крыши» и является, таким образом, источником многочисленных интерференций. Но и расположение лемковского в западнославянском этноязыковом ареале в соседстве с (мало)польским и (восточно)словацким языками во многом предопределило его дальнейшее развитие. Таким образом, как и в случае с другими (славянскими) микроязыками, следует исходить из того, что лемковский в высокой степени подвержен языковым изменениям, обусловленным экзогенными факторами (в данном случае – языковыми контактами), причём даже на морфологическом уровне, отличающемся исключительной устойчивостью к внешним влияниям.
Основой для данного исследования, посвящённого именно лемковской морфологии, а точнее, актуальным тенденциям в развитии лемковского словоизменения, послужил корпус лемковской устной речи. Путём анализа диахронического поведения флективных элементов лемковского языка, выявляемого с помощью сопоставления речи разных поколений носителей из двух разных временных срезов, будет показано, что лемковская словоизменительная система на самом деле претерпела (и претерпевает) определённые языковые изменения. На отдельных примерах из корпуса будет продемонстрировано, что природа наблюдаемых в лемковской речи языковых изменений при этом гетерогенна, поскольку обусловлены они не только упомянутыми выше экзогенными, но и эндогенными (внутри- и внеморфологическими) факторами.