MOBILE AFFIX

1. (Morphology) Affix whose place in the string is not fixed but rather determined from without. | Rolf Noyer, 1994
2. (Morphology) Cross-linguistically, affixes are usually stable and always on the same edge of the word: a prefix (suffix) is always a prefix (suffix). The rare exceptions are mobile affixes which switch between a prefix and suffix based on their base's phonological or lexical properties, e.g. Huave (Noyer 1994, Kim 2010, 2015) and Afar (Fulmer 1991, 1997), but these are controversial (Paster 2006, 2009). | Nikita Bezrukov and Hossep Dolatian, 2020
3. (Morphology) If an affix is unspecified as to whether it is underlyingly a prefix or a suffix, phonological considerations could determine which side of the stem the affix attaches to. This type of phonologically governed mobile affixation has been claimed to exist in Huave (isolate; Mexico) (Kim to appear [2010], Noyer 1994), where some affixes can occur either as prefixes or suffixes depending on a phonological property of the stem of affixation.
    A few cases of phonologically conditioned mobile affixation are discussed in the literature. Mobile affixation is a phenomenon in which one affix can occur as either a prefix or a suffix; in the phonologically conditioned type, the edge of attachment depends on some phonological property of the stem. Probably the most well-known case is found in Huave (Noyer 1994, Kim to appear [2010]), where certain affixes can occur as either prefixes or suffixes, apparently in order to create CV sequences. As shown in (1)-(4), the first person marker š/s can be a prefix (1) or a suffix (3 and 4), the first person subject marker n can be a prefix (1) or a suffix (2), and the completive marker t can be a prefix (3) or a suffix (4) (examples are from Kim [2010]; italicized vowels are analyzed as epenthetic).
   1.  š-i-n-a-ndjak
       1-FUT-1SUB-TV-speak
       'I will speak'
   2.  čut-un
       sit-1SUB
       '(that) I sit'
   3.  t-a-ndjak-as
       CPL-TV-speak-1
       'I spoke'
   4.  čut-ut-u-s
       sit-CPL-ITR-1
       'I sat down'
    According to Kim ([2010]), these mobile affixes occur as prefixes when the base is vowel-initial but as suffixes when the base is consonant-initial, in which case a vowel may be epenthesized since non-final syllables cannot have codas. | Mary Paster, 2009

MODAL COMPLEMENT ELLIPSIS

1. (Syntax) Verb-phrase ellipsis that occurs in context of modal verbs, as in (1a). Following Aelbrecht (2008), I will refer to this phenomenon as modal complement ellipsis (MCE) in order to distinguish it from a well-known phenomenon of VP ellipsis in (1b) (Ross 1969, Sag 1976, Merchant 2001, a.o.).
    When it comes to other languages than English, it seems relevant to set apart ellipsis after auxiliary verbs and ellipsis after modal verbs, because the former is not always available in languages that display the latter, as e.g. Romance languages (Busquets and Denis 2001, Depiante 2001, Dagnac 2008, 2010, a.o.), except for Portuguese (Cyrino and Matos 2002), and Germanic languages like German or Dutch (Lobeck 1995, Aelbrecht 2008), see (2) and (3) respectively. The contrast between English on the one hand and Romance and other Germanic languages on the other has been argued to follow from the properties of modal verbs.

   1. English
      a. John helped them, but Mary could not e.
      b. John helped them, but I did not e.
   2. French
      
      a.
       

      Jean
      J.

      les
      them

      a
      has

      aidés,
      helped.PL

      mais
      but

      Marie
      M.

      n'a
      NEG.has

      pas
      NEG

      pu.
      could

        'Jean helped them, but Marie could not.'
      b.
       

      * Jean
       J.

      les
      them

      a
      has

      aidés,
      helped.PL

      mais
      but

      je
      I

      n'ai
      NEG.have

      pas.
      NEG

        Intended: 'Jean helped them, but I did not.'
   3. Dutch
      
      a.
       

      Jan
      J.

      heeft
      has

      ze
      them

      geholpen,
      helped

      maar
      but

      Maria
      M.

      mocht
      could

      niet.
      not

        'Jan helped them, but Maria could not.'
      b.
       

      * Jan
       J.

      heeft
      has

      ze
      them

      geholpen,
      helped

      maar
      but

      Ik
      I

      heb
      have

      niet.
      not

        Intended: 'Jan helped them, but I did not.'

    | Hana Gruet-Skrabalova, 2017
2. (Syntax) Dutch displays a limited kind of VP ellipsis in the complement of deontic modal verbs (modal complement ellipsis, or MCE), as in (1).

   1. A:
       

      Wie
      who

      wast
      washes

      er
      there

      vanavond
      tonight

      af?
      off

        'Who is doing the dishes tonight?'
      B:
       

      Ik
      I

      kan
      can

      niet
      not

       afwassen vanavond .
       off.wash tonight 

        'I can't.'

    | Lobke Aelbrecht, 2008

MODAL CONCORD

1. (Semantics) The phenomenon by which certain modal adverbs seem to become semantically vacuous in the presence of modal auxiliaries if the adverb and the auxiliary match in quantificational force (e.g., universal vs. existential) and modal flavor (e.g., epistemic vs. deontic).
    While definitely seems to provide a modal force on its own, as in (1a), in conjunction with a modal, it seems to lose this force, as in (1b):
   1. a. John is definitely home.
      b. John (definitely) must be home.
    This phenomenon of certain adverbs (often speaker-oriented) losing their force in the presence of modal auxiliaries has been dubbed modal concord by Geurts and Huitink (2006), who identify two identity conditions that must hold between the auxiliary and the adverb. They must match in quantificational force (as must and legitimately do not) as well as flavor (as might and legitimately do not):
   2. a. We can legitimately deny your request.
      b. # We must / have to legitimately deny your request.
    | Pranav Anand and Adrian Brasoveanu, 2019
2. (Semantics) Expressions consisting of multiple modal expressions normally yield a cumulative reading. The two modal sentences in (1) and (2) contain two modal elements each (maybe / has and should / allowed, respectively). Semantically, both (1) and (2) contain two modal operators.
   1. Maybe Mary has to leave
   2. John should be allowed to read this file
    However, if two modal elements are of the same modal type (epistemic / deontic / ...) and have similar quantificational force (universal / existential), the most salient reading is mostly not a cumulative one but a concord reading, where the semantics seems to contain only one modal operator. This phenomenon has first been observed by (Halliday 1970) and (Lyons 1977 [or 1977]) and has been first analyzed by Geurts and Huitink (2006) who have dubbed it Modal Concord. | Hedde Zejilstra, 2007
3. (Semantics) When the combination of a modal adverb with a modal auxiliary seems to be interpreted as if just a single modal operator was expressed. It is shown that concord interpretations can only arise if both modals are of the same type (i.e. the same accessibility relation is involved in both cases) and have more or less the same quantificational force.
    The most widely studied concord phenomenon is undoubtedly negative concord. But concord interpretations are not restricted to the domain of negation. In this paper we aim to show that concord readings also occur with certain combinations of modal adverbs and auxiliaries. Examples are:
   1. a. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject.
      b. Power carts must mandatorily be used on cart paths where provided.
    The preferred interpretation of (1a) is the concord reading which says that the speaker considers it possible that you have read his monograph, not the cumulative one, according to which he thinks it is possible that it is possible that you have done so. Similarly, (1b) expresses that there is an obligation to use power carts, not that it is obligatory that there is an obligation to use power carts. Thus, even though (1a) and (1b) contain two modal expressions each, the sentences are interpreted as if they contained just a single modal operator. We propose to call this phenomenon modal concord. | Bart Geurts and Janneke Huitink, 2006

MODAL LOGIC
(Logic; Semantics) Narrowly construed, modal logic studies reasoning that involves the use of the expressions necessarily and possibly. However, the term modal logic is used more broadly to cover a family of logics with similar rules and a variety of different symbols.
 A list describing the best known of these logics follows.

Logic	Symbols	Expressions Symbolized
Modal Logic	□	It is necessary that ...
	◊	It is possible that ...
Deontic Logic	O	It is obligatory that ...
	P	It is permitted that ...
	F	It is forbidden that ...
Temporal Logic	G	It will always be the case that ...
	F	It will be the case that ...
	H	It has always been the case that ...
	P	It was the case that ...
Doxastic Logic	Bx	x believes that ...

MODAL MODIFIER

1. (Grammar) A standard treatment of the Auxiliary rule is seen here:

   Aux → Tns (M) (have en) (be ing)

    There are alternative formulations, but all assume that the modal cannot be modified. However, Bolinger (1972) notes that modals can be modified by well; Palmer (1979) makes the same observation. We here support and elaborate on this point. The modals involved are those that more readily express degree: may, might, can, could. (Examples came from our collections, the Brown Corpus, the Virgianian-Pilot and Ledger-Star [Norfolk, Virginia].)
   1. This Super Bowl may well have been Bradshaw's finest. (Jeff Hanna)
   2. But nature may well be more symmetrical than we perceive. (Charles Kay Smith)
   3. [I]t might well be advantageous for the German people in this nuclear age. (Brown Corpus)
   4. [W]hat he feared was not the death he might well be dealt here. (Thomas Berger)
   5. Management can well be restless about [this]. (Brown Corpus)
    | Charles Ruhl and Carole P. Hines, 1982
2. (Semantics) Specified as follows:

   The unique feature, however, that modal modifiers have is that they oscillate between being subsective and being privative. So if the premise is that a is an alleged terrorist, say, then it is logically possible that a be a terrorist and it is logically possible that a not be a terrorist. (Jespersen and Carrara 2013)

    Jespersen (2015) utilizes Transparent Intensional Logic when formally specifying the entailments that involve modal modification. | Miloš Kosterec, 2019

MODAL NEED

1. (Semantics) It is well known in the literature on English syntax that there are two distinct needs with typical "raising verb" properties, one of which selects a bare VP and is an auxiliary—as attested by the canonical NICE properties—and the other of which selects an infinitive and is not. The shared raising properties are exhibited in (1) and (2):
   1. a. There need not / n't be any bad blood over this, gentlemen.
      b. I can put up with the bad food and awful drivers, but need it rain so bloody much day after day?
      c. Robin doesn't think she has to put up with the nonsense she's been faced with, and the truth is that she in fact needn't.
   2. a. There needs to be a resolution to this impasse.
      b. It would need to rain for at least a week before the kind of flood hazard you're worrying about become a real danger.
      c. Robin needs to realize that she's not the only one with a stake in the outcome.
    The data in (1) exhibit not only the raising signature but also the so-called NICE properties (negation, inversion, contraction and ellipsis) defining the class of auxiliary verbs in English. | Robert Levine, 2013
2. (Semantics) That need and dare are indeed close relatives of the modal auxiliaries is obvious from their syntax and morphology. The traits which are most indicative of the relation are as follows:
   1. Direct negation with not
      a. She needn't worry.
      b. I was so blame tired I couldn't think, I dare not think. (Strathy. FATHER. FIC. 2606)
   2. Inversion without do auxiliary in the interrogative
      a. Need you make that dreadful noise?
      b. Dare she ring him at the office? He had asked her never to do that. (Visser 1969)
   3. Use in tag questions
      a. She needn't leave, need she?
      b. I daren't get involved, then, dare I?
   4. Use of the bare and not the to infinitive (as in all of the examples above).
   5. Absence of the -s ending in the third person singular present indicative (as in 1a and 2b).
    What distinguishes need and dare from the core modals is that they are also used as non-auxiliaries, with the full-verb characteristics of:
   • Negation with do.
   • Interrogative with do.
   • Use with the to rather than the bare infinitive.
   • Presence of -s ending in the third person singular present indicative.
    | Patrick J. Duffley, 1994

MODAL PARTICLE

1. (Pragmatics) Both discourse markers and modal particles are multifunctional linguistic expressions "functioning in cognitive, expressive, social, and textual domains" (Schiffrin 2001). But modal particles have often been described in a more restricted sense, i.e. as specifying "the relationship between speaker and hearer" (Hansen 1998) or "to signal one's understanding of what the situation is all about with respect to the argumentative relations built up in the current situation" (Fischer 2007), or as "referring back to a communicatively given propositional or illocutionary entity" (Diewald 2006). | Bert Cornillie, Liesbeth Degand, and Paola Pietrandrea, 2013
2. (Examples)
   • (Pragmatics) Based on corpus data from the British component of the International Corpus of English, an analysis shows that two different uses of final then need to be distinguished: a discourse marker then, which is used to link the utterance it accompanies to a preceding utterance that is retrospectively converted into a conditional protasis, and a modal particle then, which links an utterance to a pragmatic, i.e. non-verbalized, pretext and thus to a proposition outside the discourse. | Alexander Haselow, 2011
   • (Pragmatics) What kindled my interest in I think was that the phrase seemed to function in the same way as modal particles in languages like German or Swedish (cf. Fillmore 1984, Doherty 1978).
      Spoken language is rich in recurrent phrases such as I think which are sensitive to speakers' communicative needs. I argue that I think has "gone one step further" and developed into a discourse marker or modal particle which is syntactically a speech-act adverbial. In order to explain such an incomplete discourse marker it will be shown that we need a scale of pragmaticalization where one of the end-points is a pragmatic element or modal particle. | Karin Aijmer, 1997

MODAL PHONATION
(Phonetics) Phonation in which a mostly full glottal closure occurs during the closed phase of a phonatory cycle (Titze 1995). The glottal flow derivative contains a discontinuity at the moment of glottal closure and its spectrum is rich in harmonics. On the other hand, non-modal phonation is a very broad term for any phonation style that deviates from modal, e.g., breathy, strained, rough. | Michal Borsky, Daryush D. Mehta, Jarrad H. Van Stan, and Jon Gudnason, 2017

MODALITY

1. (Semantics) Categories of modality:

   1. Clausal Modality  Objective modality	Internal to the event a. Agent-oriented modality  – ability, desire, obligation
   2. Subjective Modality  Relation between speaker and utterance	External to the event a. Epistemic modality  – Truth commitment: realis vs. irrealis  – Degrees of probability: certainty / doubt b. Evidential modality  – Source of the information c. Appreciative modality  – Evaluation based on speaker's feelings  – Moral judgment of the event
   3. Speech Modality  Relation between speaker and hearer	a. Sentence Modality  – Assertion: supply of information  – Interrogation: asking for information  – Injunction: asking for action; wish, permit, order b. Illocutionary Acts

    | Alice Vittrant, 2005
2. (Semantics) Many modals can express many different flavors of modality, depending on contextual factors. A spectacularly chameleonic modal is the English modal have to, as the following examples show (we use traditional labels to indicate the particular flavors of modality involved):
   1. a. Given all those wet umbrellas, it has to be raining. [epistemic]
      b. According to the hospital regulations, visitors have to leave by six pm. [deontic]
      c. According to my wishes as your father, you have to go to bed in ten minutes. [bouletic]
      d. Excuse me. Given the current state of my nose, I have to sneeze. [circumstantial]
      e. Given the choices of modes of transportation and their speeds, to get home in time, you have to take a taxi. [teleological]
    | Kai von Fintel and Anthony S. Gillies, 2007

MONOLECTIC

1. (Grammar) In Greek, verbs are monolectic. In other words, the form of the verb not only contains information about the aspect, mood, and voice of the process, but it also contains information about the actor of the process. This means an actor does not have to be named explicitly in the clause to be understood; it may be inferred from previous co-text or extra-textual context. | James Dvorak, 2008
2. (Grammar) A first examination of periphrastic and monolectic verbs, as illustrated by (1-6) below, indicates that both verb forms can be used in the same contexts to describe identical situations and convey the same meaning.
   1. Periphrastic
      exo
      have-I

      megali
      big

      dipsa
      thirst

      'I am very thirsty'
   2. Monolectic
      dipsao
      thirst-I

      para
      very

      poli
      much

      'I am very thirsty'
   3. Periphrastic
      mia
      one

      dipsa
      thirst

      pu
      that

      exo!
      have-I

      'How thirsty I am!'
   4. Monolectic
      poso
      how

      poli
      much

      dipsao!
      thirst-I

      'How thirsty I am!'
   5. Periphrastic
      exo
      have-I

      mia
      one

      dipsa
      thirst

      pu
      that

      den
      not

      perigrafete
      describe-it-MID

      'I can't tell how thirsty I am.'
   6. Monolectic
      dipsao
      thirst-I

      toso
      so

      pu
      that

      den
      not

      perigrafete
      describe-it-MID

      'I can't tell how thirsty I am.'
    | Theodoros Skenderis, 1992

MONOMORPHEMIC

1. (Morphology) A word consisting of a single (free) morpheme is a monomorphemic word; its opposite is polymorphemic. | David Crystal, 2000
2. (Examples)
   • Before discussing stress in monomorphemic words in Pahari (Indo-Aryan; Kashmir), it is important to mention the minimal and maximal monomorphemic words and syllable weight in Pahari. Pahari allows light syllables, heavy syllables and superheavy syllables. Light syllables cannot form a monosyllabic word independently. Their use is limited to disyllabic or polysyllabic words. This shows that a word must contain at least two moras that can be either (VV), as in [baː] 'put', or (VC), as in [sət] 'throw'. Maximally, a syllable can have three moras (VVC, VCC), as in [moːr] 'peacock' and [kənd] 'back', respectively. The number of syllables in monomorphemic words in Pahari ranges from one to four, as shown in Table 1.

     Table 1: Number of syllables in monomorphemic words in Pahari

     monosyllabic	disyllabic	tri-syllabic	tetra-syllabic
     mã 'mother'	kɪs.mʊt̪t 'fate'	tʃɪn.pʰoː.t̪ʰʊl 'pine hair'	fæː.raː.ʃiː.ʃi: 'pear'
     loː 'light'	lək.ɽiː 'wood'	sɪl.siː.laː 'series'	bəg.guː.goː.ʃaː 'pear'
     hətʰ 'hand'	tʃaːp.luːs 'flatterer'	op.laː t̪aː 'superficial'	tʃɪɽ.ɽiːkəg.goː 'a wild vegetable'

     
      | Abdul Qadir Khan and Nadeem Haider Bukhari, 2018

   • The scope of the present article is to observe semantic change in fl- monomorphemes listed in the OED, i.e. words beginning with the fl- consonant cluster and which are composed of no more than one morpheme. Let me briefly note here that fl- is a submorpheme chosen from a list of validated phonesthemes in statistical validation studies such as Hutchins 1998, Drellishak 2006, and Otis and Sagi 2008. | Chris A. Smith, 2016
     See Also PHONESTHEME.
   • The purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility that the native speakers are right in some sense, and that Chinese orthography does indeed exert an influence on the processing of spoken words. This possibility is explored by taking advantage of the existence of monomorphemic compounds, oxymoronic entities arising from the peculiarities of Chinese orthography. | Yu-da Laia and James Myers, 2012
   • The study by New et al. (2006) considered a much larger data set including large numbers of polysyllabic and morphologically complex words. For a subset of 4000 monomorphemic nouns, they report a curvilinear effect of length as well. It is possible that with the increase in power due to the larger number of words considered, an effect of length emerges in their data. | Baayen, Feldman, and Schreuder, 2006
   • The words virus and donate are rarely taken to be polymorphemic words because their endings are not considered to make a productive contribution to the word (despite the fact that -us usually indicates a noun, and that -ate when pronounced /eɪt/ usually indicates a verb). Yet these putatively monomorphemic words are clearly related in meaning to other words that share the same beginning, namely, viral and donor, respectively. | Marcus Taft and Paul Kougious, 2004
   • "On the Internal Structure of Polysyllablic Monomorphemic Words: The Case for Superrimes"
     This article questions the commonplace assumption that syllables within polysyllabic morphemes are linearly organized. It is proposed instead that syllables are tightly integrated within the hierarchical suprasegmental representation without, however, forming a level of their own. | Thomas Berg, 1989

MONOTONICITY

1. (Semantics) Determiners (and quantifiers) can be classified according to their monotonicity properties. A determiner D in a sentence of the form

           S
         ╱╲
        ╱   ╲
       NP     VP
      ╱╲
     ╱    ╲
    D     CN

   establishes a relation between the interpretations of CN [common noun] and VP taken as sets of individuals. The monotonicity-properties of D can be found by extending or restricting the interpretations of CN and VP, and checking whether the resulting sentence is still true.
    Left upward/downward monotonicity deals with the extension/restriction of CN. Right upward/downward monotonicity deals with the extension/restriction of VP. Left upward monotonicity is often called Persistence and left downward monotonicity Antipersistence; right monotonicity is then simply called monotonicity. (Barwise and Cooper 1981, Gamut 1991) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
2. (Semantics) In each example of a type of monotonicity, (a) entails (b):
   1.  Right Upward Monotonic
      1.  Every linguist is British.
      2.  Every linguist is European.
   2.  Right Downward Monotonic
      1.  No semanticist is a musician.
      2.  No semanticist is a violinist.
   3.  Left Upward Monotonic
      1.  Some phonologist is happy.
      2.  Some linguist is happy.
   4.  Left Downward Monotonic
      1.  No animal is in the room.
      2.  No cat is in the room.
    Here is a summary of the monotonicity properties of three quantificational determiners, every, some, no, and exactly two.

   	Left Upward	Left Downward	Right Upward	Right Downward
   Every	No	Yes	Yes	No
   Some	Yes	No	Yes	No
   No	No	Yes	No	Yes
   Exactly two	No	No	No	No

    | Yasutada Sodo, 2018

Page Last Modified September 14, 2024

 

B a c k   T o   I n d e x