Lecture | Descriptive Linguistics Seminars
Interaction of co-morphologies in Berber
- Date
- Friday 12 April 2024
- Time
- Series
- Descriptive Linguistics Seminars
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.02
Abstract
In a recent article, Francesco Gardani has proposed to distinguish two basic types of morphological spread through language contact: one where functioning morphology is taken over together with lexicon, and one where morphological elements also spread to native lexicon. The first situation is called "co-morphologies" by him, and is more or less the same as what I have called "parallel systems" (Kossmann 2010). Gardani restricts the term "morphological borrowing" to the second situation.
The idea behind co-morphologies is that there is at least one lexical class consisting exclusively of borrowed lexicon, that has different morphology from another lexical class. The other class consists of non-borrowed items, but also may include borrowed lexicon. This suggests a strict separation between the various co-morphologies.
In this talk, I will tackle the question of the separation of co-morphologies by looking at nominal morphology in Berber languages, especially from eastern Morocco. I will provide examples how, in spite of the presence of two co-morphologies, there is still interaction between the two systems and that, under some circumstances, the same borrowed lexical item can occur with one or the other co-morphology.