Morphology | Benjamin Molineaux (Edinburgh)

The morpho-phonology of affect; Mapudungun kinship terms then and now

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Mapudungun phonology and morphology

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 11:00:00 +0000

In my doctoral research I investigated the synchronic perception and diachronic development of stress in Mapudungun ([ma.pu.θu.ˈŋun] – formerly ‘Araucanian’), a presumed language isolate spoken by the Mapuche ethnic people of south-central Chile and Argentina. The language’s stress-system is under-explored and, as an agglutinating, weight-sensitive language, provides an interesting view into the prosody-morphology relationship. I also believe that scholarly attention can lead to greater social acceptance of this marginalised language, promoting it as a valid means of education and participation in Chilean and Argentinian society.

I was also granted a to work on a corpus-based historical phonology and morphology of the language. The first version of the was the result of this project.

Below: Principal Mapudungun-speaking areas today (based on Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 503):

The diachronic interaction of prosodic structure and morphology

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 11:00:00 +0000

To communicate, human languages must resolve the issue of grouping units of meaning by using elements that are predominantly formal, and which themselves are grouped into larger formal units. My interest, overall, is in the interaction of these two types of units, those of meaning (morphology) and those that constitute larger formal domains (prosody). Since parsing of prosodic and morphological structure is not always isomorphic, the two systems need to find common ground, one level of structure acquiescing to the other’s requirements.

As a result, some languages will display features that are morphology-strong, while others will be prosody-strong. A key fact determining these options will be the language’s morphological type, with some requiring more transparency in the morphology (agglutination, polysynthesis) and others less (fusion, isolation).