Morphological interference

Translations

interferenza morfologica | interférence morphologique | morphologische Interferenz

Article

Phenomenon induced by language contact, in which the morphological features of the model language are transferred to the target language. Morphological features may include:

1. acquisition features of the inflectional series of nominal or verbal elements;
2. loss of features of the inflectional management of nominal or verbal elements
3. use, retention or loss of a specific morpheme or morph in given morphological or syntactic constructions;
4. change of the value of a morpheme as a sort of semantic calque basing of a similar one in the model language;
5. morpheme induction.
   

Morphological interference may act in different ways and directions (Thomason 2015).

1. From native language to a second language by L2 speakers;
2. From superstrate or prestige language to native language by L1 speakers.
   

This distinction is hard to apply for the study of contact in the ancient world, as we generally do not know for sure the linguistic identity of the scribe or author of ancient mixed-lingual or multilingual texts (inferring it may occasionally be one of the goals of the research, but usually not a starting point). It is, however, reflected by the issue of the systematicity of the change in the language, which carries to the distinction between true change in the target language and non-systematic document-level phenomena.

Example

Examples of morphological interference in the ancient Syro-Anatolian and Ancient Near Eastern area(s) are generally connected to local multilingual regions rather than to large linguistic areas. They include the creation of agglutinative-like genitival adjectives in Kizzuwatna Luwian, with double marking of the possessor and possessed, on the model of the Hurrian Suffixaufnahme (Yakubovich 2010, but cf. criticism in Simon 2016).

Type	Phenomenon	cause	example
acquisition of m. features	marking of number for possessor in the Luwian genitival adjectivation	influence of Hurrian Suffixaufnahme (in the Cilician area)	massan-anz-assa-ti god-PL-of-ABL “of the gods”

An Iron Age example was proposed by Giusfredi and Pisaniello (in press), and consists in the retention or use of inflectional morphemes in Sam’alian by influence of the Luwian language.

Type	Phenomenon	cause	example
use, retention or loss of morphemes	retention of inflection of the noun in Sam’al Aramaic resisting loss in all surrounding varieties	influence of Luwian, also testified by other interference phenomena as well as by historical data	’lh-w god-NOM.PL ’lh-y god-OBL.pl vs. Old Aram. (both cases): ’lh-n

References

Giusfredi, F. and Pisaniello, V. in press. The population, the language and the history of Yadiya/Sam’al. Proceedings of the conference Beyond All Boundaries. Anatolia in the 1st Millennium B.C., Ascona, 17-22 May 2018. Simon, Zs. 2016. Ist die Possessivkonstruktion im Kizzuwatna-Luwischen kontaktbedingt zustande gekommen? Aula Orientalis 34, 325-333. Thomason, S. 2015. When is the diffusion of inflectional morphology not dispreferred? F. Gardani et al., eds., Borrowed Morphology, Berlin/Boston/Munich, De Gruyter, 27-45. Yakubovich, I. 2010. Sociolignuistics of the Luvian Language, Leiden, Brill.