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A Prosodic Theory of Nonconcatenative Morphology

McCarthy, J. J. (1981). Linguistic Inquiry, 12(3), 373–418

Source Bibliography

This file formalizes McCarthy's analysis of the Classical Arabic verb. A verb stem is a prosodic template of C- and V-slots with a consonantal root, a vowel melody and affixal material on separate autosegmental tiers, and the melodies are associated with the slots by the universal conventions of Morphology.TemplateMatch.associate. The language-particular apparatus is the template schema (14), the affixes and their placement, the Eighth Binyan Flop (19) and Erasure (24), together with the vowel melodies (39)–(43) and Vowel Association (41). With it the derivation produces every form of the paper's table of the triliteral root ktb in fifteen binyanim and the quadriliteral root dḥrj in four, in the perfective, imperfective and participle, active and passive (forms_derived), except the participles of the first binyan, which the paper leaves to McCarthy (1979).

Gemination is one root element linked to several slots: the medial radical of the second binyan, after Erasure and respreading, and the final radical of a biliteral root, which the conventions spread rightward only, so that sasam is underivable (consonantism_biliteral). The quadriliterals are the second, fifth, fourteenth and eleventh binyanim with a fourth radical, Erasure being undone by the conventions (consonantism_quadriliteral), and the twelfth and thirteenth binyanim differ only in which tier respreads after Erasure. The derivation never looks at the melodic elements themselves (stem_map).

Main definitions

Implementation notes

  • The forms are compared in the paper's transcription; stem_map carries a derivation over to the segments of the Arabic fragment, and seg reads the transcription as those segments.
  • The consonantism of a stem is derived first and the prefix [CV] of imperfectives and participles added after it, so the root never reaches the prefixal C, which the participle fills with m and which the table's imperfectives, stems without agreement, leave empty.
  • The first convention associates any number of unassociated elements one to one, as the paper's placement of a single affix on the leftmost C-slot (16)–(18) requires. It is then the first convention, not the second as on p. 395, that restores the fourth radical of a quadriliteral after Erasure; the second never changes a derivation here.
  • The [+seg] slot of the eleventh binyan is V with a triliteral root and C with a quadriliteral one (31d); the first binyan's vowels are the a of rule (44) and the root's ablaut vowel (45), associated by the conventions.

References

Prosodic templates

The consonantism of the binyanim

L124–140
L146–151
L153–166
L227–236

The vocalism

L268–280
L310–318

The derivation never looks at the melody

Gemination, quadriliterals and stranding

The consonantism of any root is that of a root of numerals relabeled (consonantism_map), so each claim about arbitrary radicals is decided on numerals.

L435–443

The quadriliteral binyanim QI–QIV (32), the effect of Erasure in QI and QII undone by the second convention.

theorem consonantism_quadriliteralL445–455
{α : Type u_1} (ax : Affixes α) (w x y z : α) :
(consonantism ax Autosegmental.Slot.C Binyan.II { segments := [w, x, y, z] }).spellout = [w, x, y, z] ∧ (consonantism ax Autosegmental.Slot.C Binyan.V { segments := [w, x, y, z] }).spellout = [ax.t, w, x, y, z] ∧ (consonantism ax Autosegmental.Slot.C Binyan.XIV { segments := [w, x, y, z] }).spellout = [w, x, ax.n, y, z] ∧ (consonantism ax Autosegmental.Slot.C Binyan.XI { segments := [w, x, y, z] }).spellout = [w, x, y, z, z]

Built from ,

The paper's forms

L479–484
L498–505
L545–552
L554–562
L564–566

The OCP and Metathesis

L582–590

Ablaut