Iconicity as the motivation for morphophonological metathesis and truncation in Nigerian Pidgin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We present evidence for iconicity as the motivation for two patterns of morphophonological alternation in Nigerian Pidgin, also known as Naijá. To express an ‘unconventional positive’ in all varieties of Naijá, some nouns with the tone melodies H-L and L-H surface with the tone melodies L-H and H-L, respectively. In addition to unconventional positive, the Wafi variety of Naijá also expresses ‘unconventional negative.’ In this case, the first syllable of bisyllabic nouns (analogously, the first foot of four-syllable nouns) is transposed with the second syllable. However, in onsetful monosyllabic nouns, the initial consonant is deleted to express an unconventional negative. We account for the metatheses and truncation using transderivational faithfulness constraints and other independent constraints. Expressing the notion of unconventionality by changing the prosaic linear order of phonological elements in a word is a kind of form-meaning resemblance. Similarly, the association of (unconventional) negative with a reduction in a string of segments is another pattern of iconicity. This suggests that crossmodal depiction of sensory imagery, in addition to articulatory and auditory factors, can motivate morphophonological patterns. The morphophonological metatheses and truncation in Naijá contribute to the typology of morphophonological alternations with iconicity as their motivation. Most importantly, these patterns run counter to the claim that pidgins and creoles have simplified morphophonology.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".