LING 330 Morphology: Assignment 1

DUE: September 29, 2023

Here is the paradigm for 3rd person pronouns in Old English, in two cases (NOM, ACC):

THIRD PERSON
[Link] [Link] [Link] PLURAL
NOMINATIVE he: hit he:o hi:e
ACCUSATIVE hine hit hi:e hi:e

• Some preliminary notes:

INSTRUCTIONS
• Write a short report with an analysis of the above pronouns in Old English.
• Successful analyses are likely to give a version of the table above with all morpheme
boundaries indicated (i.e. with hyphens), and a list of realizaFon rules that account for
all surface forms.
• If any of the phonological rules above are relevant for your analysis, you should say so,
and explain their relevance in deriving the correct surface form.
• SKILLS: It is up to you to indicate where you demonstrate specific skills. This must be
done either in the margin or at the beginning of a sentence/paragraph. If you simply list
many skills at the beginning of a secFon, I will return the assignment and ask you to be
more specific about exactly where each skill is demonstrated.
o Full answers on this assignment are likely to demonstrate the following skills: 1.1
MorphBoundary; 1.2 Meaning; 3.1 IdSyncreFsm; 3.2 DescribeSyncreFsm; 3.3
ClassifySyncreFsm; 4.1 RealizaFonRules; 4.3 RRforSyncreFsm; 4.4RREconomy; 8.1
ProposeAnalysis; 8.2 ExplainElsewhere; 8.6 ClearPresentaFon
• As a reminder, you must list the names of everyone you worked with on this assignment,
on the first page of your submission. If you refer to outside sources (though I do not
recommend this), you must cite them—talk to me if you’re not sure how.

HINTS/ADVICE
• You may wish to take into consideraFon the following consideraFons:
o Avoid accidental homophony.
o Null/zero forms oeen have the elsewhere distribuFon.
o Unmarked features most oeen are included in (covered by) the elsewhere case.
The relevant markedness hierarchies for this data are:
§ ACC is more marked than NOM
§ NEUT is more marked than FEM, FEM is more marked than MASC
§ PL is more marked than SG

FORMATTING + LENGTH
• All submissions must be uploaded to onQ as PDFs
• There are no requirements in terms of specific font / formaing, but if you are typing
your assignment please use a fairly standard font in a readable size
• If you handwrite and scan/photograph your assignment, ensure that the resulFng PDF is
high-contrast (= easy to read), and crop out anything other than the page itself
• LENGTH: There is no strict length requirement, but if you find yourself wriFng more than
3 pages (double spaced) you might consider whether your explanaFons will be clearer if
you make them shorter. It is also a good idea to make sure you have one main idea per
paragraph / bullet point—this makes your wriFng much easier to follow!
OPTIONAL ADDITIONAL DATA

Below is a table showing all personal pronouns in Old English. Discuss whether your analysis of
the nominaFve and accusaFve 3rd person pronouns need to be changed to account for the
broader paradigm.
• This is an opportunity to demonstrate skill 8.4 AdaptNewData, and possibly other skills
in secFon 8 that it might be difficult to demonstrate for the smaller data set above.
• ADVICE: instead of considering ALL the pronouns, you might find it more helpful to just
consider the larger set of 3rd person pronouns. I do not recommend that you try to give
a full analysis of all pronouns in all persons and numbers—just discuss the data needed
to illustrate any issues / points of interest.

FIRST PERSON
SINGULAR DUAL PLURAL
NOMINATIVE ic wit we:
ACCUSATIVE me: unc u:s
GENITIVE mi:n uncer u:re
DATIVE me: unc u:s

SECOND PERSON
SINGULAR DUAL PLURAL
NOMINATIVE ðu: git ge:
ACCUSATIVE ðe: inc e:ow
GENITIVE ði:n incer e:ower
DATIVE ðe: inc e:ow

THIRD PERSON
[Link] [Link] [Link] PLURAL
NOMINATIVE he: hit he:o hi:e
ACCUSATIVE hine hit hi:e hi:e
GENITIVE his his hire hira
DATIVE him him hire him

Reminder: [ð] = a voiced interdental fricaFve (= first sound in “these”)