Comments on Morpheme order pattern for Northern Mansi

Position Slot Morphology:

While paradigms (in the way we are used to them) provide a paradigmatic view, morphem order patterns give a syntagmatic representation of the morphological and syntactic structure of a language.

Position Slot Morphology is based on affix order determination. This means that a numerical position (-2, -1, 0, +1…) will be assigned to a morpheme (usually an affix). For this purpose, the position of the morpheme of interest is counted to the left or right of a determined reference point (in our languages this will be the stem of a word). Such an (abstract) ordering grid looks as follows:



A "position slot template" is a pattern of ordering of position slots on the right and the left of the stem which can be filled by inflectional morphemes. The morphemes that can take a certain position slot belong to the same group referred to as "slot class".

As for Northern Mansi, we have elaborated the following:

1) The analysis of position slots is extended beyond word boundaries. (The case study of Northern Mansi particle verbs show the necessity and sketch out the possibilities how to incorporate the immediate surrounding of a word.)

2) Consequently, the applicability of position slot templates is extended to particles and clitics. If we look at an inflected Mansi verb form like minasət 'they went', we get the following slot template:



The word boundary is clear: min- 'go' is the stem and takes position 0 not preceded by any other element, -ət (3PL) is the final morpheme of the word, allowing no more element to succeed. Now we introduce a verbal particle: juw=minasət 'they entered'.



The question arising is: Where is the word boundary? Is juw= 'home; into' a part of the verb inflection or does it solely stand in a loose relation to the verb?

Next, we introduce a clitic:



But, as for Northern Mansi, more than one clitic can be inserted between the verbal particle and the verb stem. In such a case there a two possible ways to represent this structure:

(a)


(b)

'the two of them did not start boiling'


You see the difference: In (a) the verbal particle takes position -3, in (b) it is -2.

In our article we have argued for possibility (b), based on the notion that in Northern Mansi probably only clitics can be inserted between the verbal particle and the verb stem and that the maximum number of interfering elements is two (NEG + ACTZ/HORT).

Thus, a generalized positional slot template for Northern Mansi verbs would look the following:


(Brackets indicate facultativity of the morpheme.)

A challenge of the position slot templates presented so far are imperative sentences. In some rare examples, postverbal position of the verbal particle is attested (though pragmatically marked), e.g. minen juw! 'go inside!':


'go inside!'


However, the position of the (postverbal) verbal particle is not restricted to +2, it rather depends on the morphological complexity of the inflected verb.

If we assume position +2 for the verbal particle, this would mean to assign it to the same position like inflection morphemes, consider:



To avoid this we employ empty slots („zero-marked“) for the potential range of inflectional suffixes. In Northern Mansi, the maximal number of inflectional suffixes is 3, i.e. the verbal particle takes position +4:


(= Generalized position slot template for verbs, admitting verbal particles in a postverbal position)

As for Northern Mansi, two restrictions are to be kept in mind. So far, relying both on our corpus and on previous research, it remains unclear whether verbal particles can occur in postverbal positions if there is more than one inflectional suffix, i.e., whether they can occur in nonimperative constructions as well (imperative forms always have only one suffix). This means, it could turn out that in the case of a postverbal particle in +4 the facultative positions +2 or the facultative positions +2 and +3 may never be filled, i.e. are always zero-categories.

The second restriction is that verbal particles in a postverbal position may turn out to be a peripheral phenomenon.


Source:
Bauer, Veronika / Fónyad, Gábor (forthcoming): „A Plea for a Grammar Analysis of Northern Mansi Free of Valuation: Inflection Tables, Position Slot Morphology, and Tree Hierarchies.“