Doctoral Dissertation

Non-Standard Allomorphy in Russian Prefixes: Corpus, Experimental, and Statistical Exploration

Anna Endresen

In this dissertation I focus on one of the most fundamental notions of modern linguistic theory, the notion of allomorphy. Allomorphy is a relationship between variants of the same morpheme in a language. This dissertation challenges the traditional idealized model which narrows allomorphy down to a mere variation of form where the meaning remains constant. I propose that this phenomenon is broader and has gradient nature. I explore the origins of this concept, reveal its drawbacks, and elaborate an alternative usage-based model of allomorphy in terms of Cognitive Linguistics. This model can handle non-trivial cases where morpheme variants develop differences in meaning and are distributed by interacting and conflicting factors. I examine fifteen Russian aspectual prefixes on the basis of large datasets collected from an electronic corpus and two experiments. This study aims to optimize the criteria for allomorphy and advocates the use of statistics in analyzing linguistic variation.

Defended in January 2015

University of Tromsø: The Arctic University of Norway

Available at http://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/7098 and at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna_Endresen

Supervisors: 

Laura A. Janda, Tore Nesset

Opponents: 

Stephen M. Dickey (University of Kansas), 

Dagmar Divjak (University of Sheffield), 

Hanne M. Eckhoff (University of Tromsø: The Arctic University of Norway)

Abstract

In this dissertation I focus on one of the most fundamental notions of modern linguistic theory, the notion of allomorphy. Allomorphy is a relationship between variants of the same morpheme in a language.

This dissertation challenges the traditional idealized model of allomorphy by confronting it with comprehensive data on 15 Russian aspectual prefixes (RAZ-, RAS-, RAZO-, S-, SO-, PERE-, PRE-, VZ-, VOZ-, O-, OB-, OBO-, U-, VY-, IZ-) collected from corpus and linguistic experiments.

The traditional definition narrows allomorphy down to a mere variation of form where the meaning remains constant and variants are distributed complementarily. My findings show that submorphemic semantic differences and distributional overlap are not uncommon properties of morpheme variants. 

I suggest that allomorphy is a broader phenomenon that goes beyond the axioms of complementary distribution and identical meaning. I examine non-trivial cases of prefix polysemy and multifactorial conditioning of prefix distribution that make it difficult to assess the traditional criteria for allomorphy.

Moreover, I present studies of semantic dissimilation of allomorphs and overlap in distribution that violate the absolute criteria for allomorphic relationship.

I take the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics and propose an alternative usage-based model of allomorphy that is flexible enough to capture both standard exemplars and non-standard deviations. This model offers detailed applications of several advanced statistical models that optimize the criteria of both semantic “sameness” and distributional complementarity. According to this model, allomorphy is a scalar relationship between morpheme variants – a relationship that can vary in terms of closeness and regularity.

Statistical modeling turns the concept of allomorphy into a measurable and verifiable correspondence of form-meaning variation. This makes it possible to measure semantic similarity and divergence and distinguish robust patterns of distribution from random effects.

See an overview of this work in my poster presented at the 13th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC13) at  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280298032_Allomorphy_Old_Concept_Big_Data_New_Model._New_methods_for_analysis_of_polysemous_rival_affixes

Data

My doctoral dissertation discusses the data, which I made available at TROLLing (Tromsø Repository of Language and Linguistics), an international archive of data housed at the library of the University of Tromsø.

The direct link to my page is here (all files are located at Data & Analysis).

This set of 26 files includes coded databases, experimental results, and detailed R scripts for statistical analyses presented in the dissertation.

If you want to use these data, please include the following citation in your scholarly references:

Endresen, Anna, 2014, "Non-Standard Allomorphy in Russian Prefixes: Corpus, Experimental, and Statistical Exploration", http://hdl.handle.net/10037.1/10078 UiT Open Research Data [Distributor] V1 [Version]