Abstract
Morphology, particularly inflectional morphology, has sometimes been considered among the last features of language to be transferred under conditions of language contact. It has become clear, however, that numerous factors can affect the susceptibility of bound morphology to transfer. One of these involves typological similarities among the languages involved, similarities which might increase over long periods of contact and in turn set the stage for elaboration of particular domains. Here such effects are examined in what is commonly viewed as a prototypical kind of inflection: plural marking on nouns. The languages involved are indigenous to a well-known linguistic area in Northern California, but they represent three unrelated families: Pomoan, Yukian, and Wintun. While shared plural markers often ride into languages in contact on the backs of borrowed nouns, speakers of these languages have a history of avoiding much lexical borrowing. The shared markers apparently entered the languages via a more circuitous route. Throughout the area, inflectional number marking on nouns is rare, but related distinctions on verbs can be elaborate. It appears that what was transferred were verbal distributive and collective suffixes, which then evolved within the individual languages, to varying degrees, into number marking on nouns.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bakker, D., & Hekking, E. (2012). Constraints on morphological borrowing: Evidence from Latin America. In L. Johanson & M. Robbeets (Eds.), Copies versus cognates in bound morphology (pp. 187–220). Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Bright, E. (1952). Elizabeth Bright papers on the Patwin language, Survey of California and other Indian languages. Berkeley: University of California. https://doi.org/10.7297/X2000010.
Eliasson, S. (2012). On the degree of copiability of derivational and inflectional morphology: Evidence from Basque. In L. Johanson & M. Robbeets (Eds.), Copies versus cognates in bound morphology (pp. 260–296). Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Gardani, F. (2008). Borrowing of inflectional morphemes in language contact. European university studies (Vol. 320). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Gardani, F. (2012). Plural across inflection and derivation, fusion and agglutination. In L. Johanson & M. Robbeets (Eds.), Copies versus cognates in bound morphology (pp. 71–97). Leiden &Boston: Brill.
Gardani, F. (2018). On morphological borrowing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 12(10), 1–17.
Gardani, F., Arkadiev, P., & Amridze, N. (Eds.) (2015). Borrowed morphology. Language contact and bilingualism (Vol. 8). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Gifford, E. (1926). Californian anthropometry. University of California publications in American archaeology and ethnology (Vol. 22.2, pp. 217–390). Berkeley.
Golla, V. (2011). California Indian languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Golovko, E. V. (1996). A case of non-genetic development in the Arctic area: The contribution of Aleut and Russian to the formation of Copper Island Aleut. In E. H. Jahr & I. Broch (Eds.), Language contact in the Arctic. Northern pidgins and contact languages (pp. 63–77). Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Golovko, E. V. (2003). Language contact and group identity: The role of “folk” linguistic engineering. In Y. Matras & P. Bakker (Eds.), Contact languages (pp. 177–207). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Haspelmath, M. (2008). Loanword typology: Steps toward a systematic cross-linguistic study of lexical borrowability. In T. Stolz, D. Bakker, & R. Salas Palomo (Eds.), Aspects of language contact: New theoretical, methodological and empirical findings with special focus on Romancisation processes (pp. 43–62). Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Haugen, E. (1950). The analysis of linguistic borrowing. Language, 26, 210–231.
Haynie, H. (2012). Studies in the history and geography of California languages. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Heath, J. (1978). Linguistic diffusion in Arnhem Land. Australian aboriginal studies research and regional studies (Vol. 13). Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Heizer, R. F. (Ed.) (1978). Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 8: California. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
Johanson, L., & Robbeets, M. (2012). Bound morphology in common: Copy or cognate? In L. Johanson & M. Robbeets (Eds.), Copies versus cognates in bound morphology (pp. 3–22). Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Lawyer, L. (2015). A description of the Patwin language. Ph.D. dissertation, in Linguistics, University of California, Davis.
Lee, D. D. (1944). Categories of the generic and particular in Wintu. American Anthropologist, 45, 435–440.
Matras, Y. (2000). Mixed languages: A functional-communicative approach. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3(2), 79–99.
Matras, Y. (2009). Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McLendon, S. (1975). A grammar of Eastern Pomo. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 74).
McLendon, S. (1978). Coyote and the ground squirrels (Eastern Pomo). In W. Bright (Ed.), Coyote stories. International Journal of American Linguistics–Native American Text Series (Vol. 1, pp. 87–111).
Meakins, F. (2011). Borrowing contextual inflection: Evidence from Northern Australia. Morphology, 21(1), 57–87.
Mithun, M. (1988). Lexical categories and the evolution of number marking. In M. Hammond & M. Noonan (Eds.) Theoretical morphology (pp. 211–234). New York: Academic Press.
Mithun, M. (2007). Grammar, contact, and time. Journal of Language Contact, 1, 133–155. www.jlc-journal.org.
Mithun, M. (2010). Contact and North American languages. In R. Hickey (Ed.), Handbook of language contact (pp. 673–694). Oxford: Blackwell.
Mithun, M. (2012). Morphologies in contact: Form, meaning, and use in the grammar of reference. In T. Stolz, M. Vanhove, H. Otsuka, & A. Urdzu (Eds.), Morphologies in contact. Studia typologica (Vol. 10, pp. 15–36). Berlin: Akademia Verlag.
Mithun, M. (2016). What cycles when and why? In E. van Gelderen (Ed.) Cyclical change continued (pp. 19–45). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Mithun, M. (2017). Native North American languages. In R. Hickey (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics (pp. 878–933). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mithun, M. (2018). Shaping typology through grammaticalization: North America. In H. Narrog & B. Heine (Eds.) Grammaticalization from a typological perspective (pp. 309–336). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mithun, M. (in press a). Inside contact-stimulated grammatical development. Journal of Historical Linguistics.
Mithun, M. (in press b). Topicality, affectedness, and body-part grammar. In Zariquiey, R. (Ed.), The grammar of body parts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moratto, M. J. (1984). California archaeology. Orlando: Academic Press, Inc.
Moravcsik, E. (1978). Language contact. In J. Greenberg (Ed.), Universals of human language, Vol. 1: method and theory (pp. 93–120). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Moshinsky, J. (1974). A grammar of Southeastern Pomo. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 72). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2002). Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters and grammatical outcomes. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Connor, M. C. (1992). Topics in Northern Pomo grammar. New York: Garland.
Oswalt, R. (1964). The internal relationships of the Pomo family of languages. In Actas y memorias de XXXV congreso internacional de Americanists (Vol. 2, pp. 413–427).
Oswalt, R. (1976). Comparative verb morphology of Pomo. In M. Langdon & S. Silver (Eds.), Hokan studies (pp. 13–28). The Hague: Mouton.
Oswalt, R. (undated ms.). Kashaya dictionary draft. Survey of California and other Indian languages. Berkeley: University of California.
Pakendorf, B. (2009). Intensive contact and the copying of paradigms: An Ėven dialect in contact with Sakha (Yakut). Journal of Language Contact: Varia, 2, 87–110. www.jlc-journal.org.
Pakendorf, B. (2015). A comparison of copied morphemes in Sakha (Yakut) and Ėven. In F. Gardani, P. Arkadiev, & N. Amridze (Eds.), Borrowed morphology. Language contact and bilingualism (Vol. 8, pp. 157–188). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Pitkin, H. (1984). Wintu grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 94). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Radin, P. (1924). Wappo texts. University of California publications in American archaeology and ethnology (Vol. 19). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Radin, P. (1929). A grammar of the Wappo language. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology (Vol. 27, pp. 1–194).
Sakel, J. (2007). Types of loans: Matter and pattern. In Y. Matras & J. Sakel (Eds.), Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 15–29). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sawyer, J. (1965). English–Wappo vocabulary. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 43). Berkeley: University of California.
Sawyer, J. (1991). Wappo notes. In A. Schlichter Shepherd (Ed.), Wappo studies. Survey of California and other Indian languages (Vol. 7). Berkeley: University of California.
Seifart, F. (2015a). Does structural-typological similarity affect borrowability? A quantitative study on affix borrowing. Language Dynamics and Change, 5, 92–113.
Seifart, F. (2015b). Direct and indirect affix borrowing. Language, 91(3), 511–532.
Seifart, F. (2016). AfBo: a worldwide survey of affix borrowing. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://afbo.info.
Shepherd, A. (2006). Proto-Wintun. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 137). Berkeley: University of California.
Thomason, S. G. (1997). Mednyj Aleut. In S. G. Thomason (Ed.), Contact languages: A wider perspective (pp. 449–468). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Thomason, S. (2015). When is the diffusion of inflectional morphology not dispreferred? In F. Gardani, P. Arkadiev, & N. Amiridze (Eds.), Borrowed morphology (pp. 27–46). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
Thomason, S. G., & Kaufman, T. (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Los Angeles, Oxford: Berkeley. University of California Press.
Thompson, S., Sung-Yul, J., & Li, C. (2006). A reference grammar of Wappo. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 138). Berkeley: University of California.
Wilkins, D. P. (1996). Morphology. In H. Goebl, P. H. Nelde, Z. Starý, & W. Wölck (Eds.), Contact linguistics: An international handbook of contemporary research (pp. 109–117). Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mithun, M. Replicated inflection? Plot twists behind apparent borrowed plurals. Morphology 30, 395–421 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-020-09351-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-020-09351-9