A Natural History of Infixation

by Yu, Alan C. L.

• ISBN13: 9780199279395
• ISBN10: 019927939X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-23
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book presents the first cross-linguistic study of the phenomenon of infixation, typically associated in English with words like im-bloody-possible, and found in all the world's major linguistic families. Infixation is a central puzzle in prosodic morphology: Professor Yu explores its prosodic, phonological, and morphological characteristics, considers its diverse functions, and formulates a general theory to explain the rules and constraints by which it is governed. He examines 154 infixation patterns from over a hundred languages, including examples from Asia, Europe, Africa, New Guinea, and South America. He compares the formal properties of different kinds of infix, explores the range of diachronic pathways that lead to them, and considers the processes by which they are acquired in first language learning. A central argument of the book concerns the idea that the typological tendencies of language may be traced back to its origins and to the mechanisms of language transmission. The book thus combines the history of infixation with an exploration of the role diachronic and functional factors play in synchronic argumentation: it is an exemplary instance of the holistic approach to linguistic explanation. Alan Yu's pioneering study will interest phonologists and morphologists of all theoretical persuasions, as well as typologists and historical linguists.

Author Biography

Alan C. L. Yu is Assistant Professor in Linguistics and the College at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD in 2003 from the University of California, Berkeley and has previously taught at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His main research interests include theoretical and experimental phonology, the phonetics-phonology interface and the phonology-morphology interface. He has published in Language, Phonology, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, the Linguistic Review, and Natural Language Semantics.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
General Preface	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
What is infixation?	p. 9
Defining infixation descriptively	p. 9
Infixes as formal objects	p. 14
Infixation as a phonological process	p. 17
Infixation as morpho-phonological mismatch	p. 21
Phonological Readjustment and Phonological Subcategorization compared	p. 25
On the ethological view of infixation	p. 26
On the issue of empirical coverage: Problems of undergeneration	p. 31
On the predictive power of the theory: Problems with overgeneration	p. 37
Conclusion	p. 45
Subcategorization in context	p. 47
Subcategorization as Generalized Alignment	p. 48
Phonological Subcategorization in Sign-Based Morphology	p. 53
Phonological Subcategorization and constraint overgeneration	p. 58
Understanding the Edge-Bias Effect	p. 62
Pivot Theory and the typology	p. 67
The Pivot Theory	p. 67
Sampling procedures	p. 73
First consonant	p. 76
First vowel	p. 89
Final syllable	p. 108
Final vowel	p. 111
Stress and related metrical units	p. 118
Other potential pivots	p. 124
Final consonant	p. 124
Takelma frequentative reduplication	p. 125
Hunzib	p. 128
Hausa Class 5 Plural formation	p. 130
First syllable	p. 133
Conclusion	p. 135
The secret history of infixes	p. 137
Background	p. 137
Toward a diachronic typology of infixation	p. 138
Metathesis	p. 139
The phonetic origins of metathesis	p. 141
Metathesis without faithfulness	p. 142
Infixation in Pingding Mandarin	p. 144
Summary	p. 147
Entrapment	p. 148
Muskogean infixation	p. 148
Symptoms and predictions of entrapment	p. 151
Hua	p. 154
Summary	p. 156
Reduplication mutation	p. 157
Hausa pluractionals	p. 157
Hopi plural formation	p. 159
Trukese durative	p. 162
Yurok intensive	p. 163
Northern Interior Salish diminutives	p. 165
Summary	p. 171
Morphological excrescence and prosodic stem association	p. 172
The emergence of Homeric infixation	p. 174
Summary	p. 177
Conclusion	p. 177
Beyond infixation	p. 181
Fake vs. true infixation	p. 181
Infixation in language games and disguises	p. 190
Iterative infixal ludling	p. 192
A general theory of iterative infixing ludling	p. 199
Endoclisis	p. 206
Udi	p. 208
Pashto	p. 212
Feature and subcategorization	p. 218
Kashaya Pomo	p. 220
Tiene	p. 222
Conclusion	p. 229
Appendix	p. 231
References	p. 235
Language Index	p. 255
Subject index	p. 259
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