Prosody preservation and borrowing verbs as nouns in three systems with lexical prosody

Abstract

The claim by Moravcsik (1975) that “if verbs are borrowed, they seem to be borrowed as if they were nouns” generated a long-standing discussion within language contact research (see e.g. Wohlgemuth 2009 for a recent summary). More precisely, the claim was that “the borrowing language employs its own means of denominal verbalization to turn the borrowed forms into verbs”. This can be interpreted either as a statement about the integration pattern (which may not be mentally represented in monolinguals) or as a claim about the syntactic representation of borrowed verbs in general, whereby borrowed verbs contain an nP embedded under the vP. Both interpretations constitute important hypotheses, which can serve as useful windows into the relation between morphology and phonology. The rst interpretation is compatible with the claim by Simonović (2015) that the integration pattern essentially gets selected by Lexical Conservatism (Steriade 1997): the pattern with most preservation of the properties of the base and least stem allomorphy integrates loanwords. The second interpretation makes important predictions whose implementation is highly dependent on the theory of morphology employed. In this presentation I use a recent elaboration of Distributed Morphology in which the separation between roots and categorial heads is extended to derivational suxes (Lowenstamm 2015) and put it to use in accounting for verb borrowing and denominal verbalisation in three Western South Slavic varieties: Slovenian, Western Serbo-Croatian (henceforth Croatian) and Eastern Serbo-Croatian (henceforth Serbian). All three varieties have lexical prosody. Slovenian has lexically determined stress. In Serbo-Croatian each word has a lexically determined H, and stress assignment follows from its distribution: if the syllable with a H is initial, italso gets stress; if the syllable with a H is non-initial, the stress goes to the preceding syllable, forming a disyllabic rising accent (Zsiga & Zec 2013). Simonović (2018) discusses exceptional preservation of base prosody in Western South Slavic verbs, showing that WSS verbsallow only two prosodic shapes: stress/H stem-nally (1a)and stress/H on the theme vowel (1b), analysed as the contrast between accented and accentless roots. The only verbs which ever display more contrast are borrowed and denominal verbs (2). Since nouns generally allow more prosodic contrast than verbs (Smith 2011), Simonović (2018)argues that verb prosody should be viewed as the regular WSS prosody, whereas all the cases of additional contrast should beanalysed asa consequence of special Faithfulness, and, at least for the classes discussed by Simonović (2018),asingle type of special Faithfulness seems to be sucient: NF Smith 2001). Against the sketched background, variation within WSS is analysed. All three varieties have two patterns for denominal verbs which both allow for exceptional preservation of the base prosody: -a-ti and -ov-a-ti (illustrated in 2a; a isatheme vowel in both cases, ti is the innitive ending). Tellingly, each variety now hasastabilised borrowing pattern in which one of the two suxes is used for English verbs (illustrated in 2b). The necessity ofa denominal verbalisation analysis is relatively limited for Slovenian and Croatian, where a large majority of verbs (but not all) become reanalysable as verbalised accented roots (all the verbs in 3 have a stem-nal stress/H). For Serbian, however, virtually all borrowed verbs from the modern contact with English display the intermediate root -ov-, which makes the denominal verbalisation analysis very attractive. Completing the picture for all three varieties, we turn to older borrowed verbs, especially those from the contact preceding the one with English, in which alarge class of international verbs were integrated and in which no prosodic contrast is instantiated (4). In sum, the deverbal nominalisation analysis seems to beastrong cross-linguistic tendency rather than an absolute rule and its availability depends both on the phonological makeup of the available denominal verbalisation patterns and on the amount of prosodic contrast in the source language. (1) Slovenian Croatian Serbian a. Accented √ gléd-a-ti ‘to look’ gléHd-a-ti ‘to look’ gléHd-a-ti ‘to look’ b. Unaccented √ kop-á-ti ‘to dig’ kóp-aH -ti ‘to dig’ kóp-aH -ti ‘to dig’ (2) Slovenian Croatian Serbian a. Denominal verbs málic-a-ti ‘to snack’ úH žin-a-ti úH žin-a-ti (cf. málica ‘snack’) (cf. úH žin-a ‘snack’) (cf. úH žin-a ‘snack’) vér-ov-a-ti ‘to believe’ vjéH r-ov-a-ti ‘to believe’ v(j)éH r-ov-a-ti ‘to believe’ (cf. vér-a ‘faith’) (cf. vjéH r-a ‘faith’) (cf. v(j)éH r-a ‘faith’) b. Borrowed verbs édit-a-ti ‘to edit’ rikvéH st-a-ti ‘to request’ rikvéH st-ov-a-ti ‘to request’ tríger-a-ti ‘to trigger’ inváH jt-a-ti ‘to invite’ inváH jt-ov-a-ti ‘to invite’ (3) Borrowed verbs which can be reanalysed as verbalised accented root Slovenian Croatian sénd-a-ti ‘to send’ séHnd-a-ti ‘to send’ submít-a-ti ‘to submit’ éHdiH t-a-ti ‘to edit’ (4) International verbs Slovenian Croatian Serbian Innitive asist-ír-a-ti asist-í:r-aH -ti asist-í:r-aH -ti Present.1Pl asist-ír-a-mo asíst-i:H r-a:-mo asíst-i:H r-a:-mo Innitive fotograf-ír-a-ti fotograf-í:r-aH -ti fotográf-iH s-a-ti Present.1Pl fotograf-ír-a-mo fotográf-i:H r-a:-mo fotográf-iH š-e:mo-mo Innitive protest-ír-a-ti protest-í:r-aH -ti próteH st-ov-a-ti Present.1Pl protest-ír-a-mo protést-i:H r-a:-mo próteH st-uj-e:-mo References Lowenstamm, Jean. 2015. Derivational axes as roots: Phasal spell-out meets English stress shift. in Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer,and Florian Schafer (eds.) The syntax of rootsand the roots of syntax, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 230–259. Moravcsik, Edith. 1975. Borrowed verbs. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 8. Simonović, Marko. 2015. Lexicon immigration service - Prolegomena to a theory of loanword integration. (280 p.). LOT Dissertation Series 393. Simonović, Marko. 2018. There is Faith and Faith: Prosodic contrast in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian verb derivation. Poster presented at the 26th Manchester Phonology Meeting. Smith, Jennifer. 2001. Lexical Category and Phonological Contrast. In R. Kirchner, J. Pater, and W. Wikely (eds.) PETL 6: Proceedings of the Workshop on the Lexicon in Phonetics and Phonology. Edmonton: University of Alberta, 61-72. Smith, Jennifer. 2011. Category-specic eects. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin Ewen, Beth Hume, and Keren Rice (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, 2439-2463. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Steriade, Donca. 1997. Lexical Conservatism. In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, Selected Papers from SICOL 1997, 157-179. Hanshin Publishing House Wohlgemuth, Jan. 2009. A typology of verbal borrowings. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Zsiga, Elizabeth C. and Draga Zec. 2013. Contextual evidence for the representation of pitch accents in Standard Serbian. Language and Speech 56;1: 69 – 104.

Keywords

borrowing;denominal verbs;Slavic;Slovenian;Serbo-Croatian;Serbian;Croatian;

Data

Language:	English
Year of publishing:	2018
Typology:	1.12 - Published Scientific Conference Contribution Abstract
Organization:	UNG - University of Nova Gorica
UDC:	81'34
COBISS:	5272059
Views:	2768
Downloads:	0
Average score:	0 (0 votes)
Metadata:

Other data

URN:	URN:SI:UNG
Type (COBISS):	Not categorized
Pages:	Str. [1-2]
ID:	10989127