Morphology is the study of morphemes, the smallest units of language that carry meaning. The word morphology itself contains 2 morphemes: morph ('form') + ology ('science of'). Processes of word formation, word derivation, and inflection all fall under the scope of morphology. What is most striking about morphology from a comparative linguistic perspective is that human languages use dramatically different formal devices to solve some of the same conceptual needs. For example, some languages use prefixes to form plurals while others use suffixes. For even more convolutions of morphology, go to the morphosyntax pages.

Russian has a rich system of cases and verbal conjugation, allowing for very free word order. There are six cases in Russian: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, prepositional, and instrumental. Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number, and case. Verbs are divided into two aspects: perfective and imperfective. There are two basic tenses in Russian: past and non-past. Non-past conjugation of perfective verbs results in future tense, while the same conjugation of imperfective verbs results in present tense. Non-past conjugations indicate person and number. Past-tense conjugations show gender and number. In addition, imperfective verbs can form a future tense using the infinitive and a conjugated form of the perfective verb bit' (to be).

Morphemes of six types make up word forms in Russian: roots, prefixes, suffixes, inflections, postfixes, and interfixes (connective affixes of complex words). Words are a linear sequence of morphemes (in words with one root there may be from 1 to 8 of them, but three- and four-morpheme sequences are most prevalent). For mutable words articulation on the base and inflection is characteristic, nominal inflections being joined only to bases ending in a consonant. This explains why nouns and adjectives which are recent additions to Russian and end in a vowel cannot be declined.

With respect to its morphological layer, Russian is primarily inflectional and synthetic. Most of the grammatical meanings of words are expressed within the word itself by inflections or (more rarely) suffixes. One inflection usually expresses several morphological meanings. Thus, as a rule, nominal inflections combine number, case, and gender: for example, the inflection -uju in word forms of the type zelenuju (green) shows singular number, accusative case, and feminine gender. The inflection -u in word forms of the type nesu (carry) has the meaning of first person, singular, present, indicative mood, etc. Cases in which these meanings are expressed separately, by separate affixes, are rare. Thus, in forms of imperative mood the meaning of plural is expressed (with the postfix -te) separately from the meaning of person: compare nes-i (carry! sg) and nes-i-te (carry! pl); in past-tense and subjunctive forms the meaning of tense or mood is expressed separately (with the suffix -l) from gender and number (with inflections). On the other hand, the same morphological meaning (or complex of meanings) is expressed with different inflections in different words. Thus, dative case, singular is shown on nouns with the inflections -u (stolu = "table"), -e (zhene = "wife"), and -i (kosti = "bone). Homonymy of inflections is widespread in Russian: thus, the inflection -a in word forms of the type sestra (sister), umna (wise), and prishla (came) expresses feminine gender, singular; in okna (windows) and doma (houses), nominative case, plural; in okna (window) and doma (house), genitive case, singular; the inflection -i in 3rd declension nouns indicates genitive, dative, and prepositional cases in the singular. All of these phenomena - the capacity of inflections to simultaneously indicate (synthetically) several morphological meanings, synonymy, and homonymy of inflections, i.e., asymmetry of the schemes of indication and content of morphological forms - characterize Russian as an inflection language.

Translated and adapted by Josh Walker from V. V. Lopatin and I. S. Ulukhanov, "Russkii Yazik" IN Entsiklopediya Russkii Yazik, ed. Yu. N. Karaulov, Moscow: izdatel'skii dom "Drofa," 1998.

Basic Morphology

Bemba, like most Bantu languages, has a very elaborate noun class system which involves pluralization patterns, agreement marking, and patterns of pronominal reference. There are 20 different classes in Bemba: 15 basic classes, 2 subclasses, and 3 locative classes. Each noun class is indicated by a class prefix (typically VCV-, VC-, or V-) and the co-occurring agreement markers on adjectives, numerals and verbs.

The noun consists of a class prefix and a stem: umú-ntú 'person' (Class 1), abá-ntú 'people' (Class 2). Noun classes have some semantic content, and there are regular patterns of singular/plural pairing and non-count classes. Class 1/2 nouns denote human beings; Class 3/4 nouns tend to be animate, agentive, or plant-like (úmu-tí 'tree', ími-tí 'trees'); and Class 9/10 nouns represent wild animals (ín-kalamo 'lion', ín-kalamo 'lions'). Things that occur in pairs or multiples are denoted by Class 5/6 nouns (i-lúbá 'flower', amá-lúbá 'flowers'); nouns for long objects are in Class 11/10 (úlu-séngó 'horn', ?n-sengo 'horns'); and diminutives are in Class 12/13 (aká-ntú 'small thing', utú-ntú 'small things'). Class 7/8 is the general class for inanimate nouns (icí-ntú 'thing', ifí-ntú 'things') and also augmentatives; abstract nouns occur in Class 14 (ubú-ntú 'humanity'); and verbal infinitives occur in Class 15 (úku-lyá 'eating, to eat').

Some class prefixes have a derivational semantic function; they either replace the basic class prefix or occur as a secondary prefix on the noun form. The locative class prefixes function in an analogous manner.

The Bemba verb has the following basic structure:

Subject Marker + Tense/Aspect/Mood Marker + Object Marker + Verb Root + Extension + Final Vowel + Suffixes

The only obligatory morphemes are the subject marker (except in imperatives), the root, and the final vowel. The final vowel (indicated as FV) marks tense and/or mood, and sometimes co-varies with the preceding tense marker. Some past tense forms are represented by -ile or a modified root instead of a single FV. Bemba distinguishes numerous different tenses on the verb form, including: Today Past, Recent Past, Remote Past, Present, Today Future, Later Future.

Samoan can be categorized as primarily an isolating language. It has few derivational or inflectional affixes; words are typically formed of single free morphemes. Syntactical categories such as tense and aspect are expressed by additional morphemes in the sentence. Tense and aspect are shown in Samoan through the use of tense/aspect markers which consist of free morphemes that typically occur as the first word in most sentences. These tense/aspect markers include:

e	present; habitual; implied future
'ua	present immediate; completive
'olo'o	present progressive
sa:	past perfect
na	simple past
'ole'a:	future
'ia	prescriptive (X should occur)
se'i	desiderative (expressed desire for X to occur)
ne'i	proscriptive (X should not occur)

[Following Samoan orthographic conventions, the glottal stop is represented with the apostrophe ' ]

An important exception to Samoan's status as an isolating language is partial reduplication of the verb root to indicate plural number. Although there are a variety of processes by which plural verbs are formed from singular forms, the most common is through reduplication of the accented syllable of the verb root. Examples include

Singular	Plural
ma'i	ma'ma'i	(to be) sick
ma:losi	ma:lolosi	(to be) strong
savali	savavali	dance
ma:naia	ma:nanaia	beautiful
ta:'ele	ta:'e'ele	to bathe

Samoan basic sentence structure is: VERB SUBJECT OBJECT (VSO).

Examples:

Sa: matamata tamaiti i le lakapi:				The children watched the rugby"
Sa:	matamata	tamaiti	i le lakapi:
past perfect	watch (plural)	children	the rugby
VERB		SUBJECT	OBJECT

Sa: teu e lo'u tina:le falesa:				My mother decorated the church
Sa:	teu	e lo'u tina:	le falesa:
past perfect	decorate	Erg my mother	the church
VERB		SUBJECT	OBJECT

An exception or complicating factor to categorizing Samoan as a VSO language is the use of pronouns. When pronouns are used in spoken Samoan there is a preference to use a set of pronouns that might be called "preverbal pronouns." These pronouns are placed between the tense marker and the verb root leading us to categorize this particular sentence structure as V1 S V2 O. (V1 = tense marker, V2 = verb root). Compare these two examples:

Sa: fa:gogota	Pe:telo ma a'u	anapo:	Petelo and I fished last night.
past perfect fish	Petelo and I	last night

Sa: ma: fa:gogota anapo:				We two fished last night.
Sa:	ma:	fa:gogota	anapo:
past perfect	we-two	fish	last night

Ergative and Absolutive case markings in Samoan

A diversity of languages such as Tagalog, Basque, Motu, Georgian, Inuktitut and Samoan possess ergative and absolutive case markings. These patterns of case markings are encountered less frequently among the world's languages than the nominative-accusative pattern common to English, the Romance languages, Japanese, Chinese as well as many others. This key distinction between ergative / absolutive and nominative / accusative languages revolves around the different grammatical treatments of subjects and objects.

English, for example, is a nominative/accusative language that positions the subject and object in a predicable manner to demonstrate which of the nouns or pronouns is the subject or the object. Nouns or pronouns functioning as the subject occur before the verb, while nouns or pronouns functioning as subjects occur after the verb. Thus, it is English's SVO structure that informs us what is the subject and what is the object of the sentence.

	Subject	Verb	Object
	(Nominative)		(Accusative)
Intransitive sentences (no object)	The dog	sleeps.	(none)
Transitive sentences (object present)	The dog	bites	the man.

German is another nominative/accusative language, but it differs from English in that it actually uses inflectional morphemes to mark the nominative and accusative cases rather than simply sentence position. In the example below, "der" is the definite article in the nominative case for masculine nouns such as "Hund" (dog) and "Mann" (man). In the transitive sentence we see this definite article "der" is transformed into "den" (accusative case) marking "den Mann" as the direct object of the sentence.

	Subject	Verb	Object
	(Nominative)		(Accusative)
Intransitive sentences (no object)	Der Hund	schlaft.	(none)
The dog sleeps.
Transitive sentences (object present)	Der Hund	beisst	den Mann.
The dog bites the man

Samoan's system is quite different from this pattern. The subject of transitive sentences - and transitive sentences alone - are marked with the free morpheme ?e? indicating that the noun marked is in the ergative case. This "e" morpheme occurs directly before the noun or the article of the noun, which is to be the subject of the transitive sentences. The subject in intransitive sentences and the object in transitive sentences are grouped together in the absolutive case. Samoan complicates the situation somewhat by leaving the absolutive case unmarked (represented here by the symbol ?). Consider the following two examples: Tense Marker

	Verb	Subject	Object
		(Absolutive or Ergative)	(Absolutive)
Intransitive sentences	'Ua	moe	? le maile	(none)
The dog sleeps"
Transitive sentences	'Ua	'ati	e le maile	? le tama:loa.
"The dog bites the mouse."

Note that it is not the position in the sentence which is indicating the role of the noun, as in English. So the transitive sentence example "?Ua 'ati e le maile le tama:loa" could just as readily be said "'Ua ?ati le tama:loa e le maile" which switches the order of the object and the subject without distorting the meaning as it would do in English.

To summarize, Samoan (and other languages like it) marks subject and objects in a manner that is at variance with the way that most of the world's languages do. Examples drawn from the nominative-accusative languages of German and English show how the nominative case is utilized to signal the noun or pronoun's identity as subject in both transitive and intransitive sentences, while the accusative case is utilized to mark the object in transitive sentences. Samoan, however, groups together the subject of intransitive sentences and the object of transitive sentences in the absolutive case, while the subject of transitive sentences is placed in the ergative case. Represented in 2x2 matrices, the differences can be clearly seen between these two systems:

	Nominative/Accusative Languages		Ergative/Absolutive Languages:
	Subject	Object	Subject	Object
Intransitive	Nominative Marker	(no obj)	Absolutive Marker	(no obj)
Transitive	Nominative Marker	Accusative Marker	Ergative Marker	Absolutive Marker

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