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Part of
Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change: Studies in honor of Henning Andersen
Edited by Lars Heltoft, Iván Igartua, Brian D. Joseph, Kirsten Jeppesen Kragh and Lene Schøsler
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 345] 2019
► pp. 125–150

Diachronic morphology, indexical function and a critique of the morphome analysis

The content and expression of Danish forstå

With a critical assessment of morphomic morphology (Aronoff 1994, Maiden 2008) as point of departure, this paper presents an analysis of the structure of the Danish verb forstå ‘understand’ and its development from Early Middle Danish to Modern Danish. Based on a semiotic-functional framework (Andersen 1980, 2010; Harder 1996), the analysis examines the strong past tense form forstod ‘understood’ and its relation to the inflection of the simplex verb stå ‘stand’. The original isomorphism between expression plane and content plane has been lost, but indexical relations on the two planes ensure that structural meaningfulness is maintained. The structure and development of forstå is compared to that of the verb overvære ‘attend, witness’, and the paper offers an alternative strategy to Aronoff’s (1976, 1994) morphome analysis of English understand.

Keywords: diachronic morphology, Danish, indexicality, morphomes, verbal inflection, paradigms, isomorphism, compositionality, metaphor
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Autonomous morphology and the stand morphome
  • 3.Content and expression of morphology
    • 3.1The problem with autonomous syntax and morphology
    • 3.2Sign relations in grammar
  • 4.The history of forstå and overvære
    • 4.1 Forstå
    • 4.2 Overvære
  • 5.Explaining forstå and overvære
    • 5.1Compositionality and metaphoricity
    • 5.2Indexicality
    • 5.3Isomorphism and non-isomorphism
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.345.05nie
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