Morphological Integrity in Ilocano: A Corpus-Based Study of the Production of Polymorphemic Words in a Polysynthetic Language

The status of morphology and procedures of morphological production vary in remarkably diverse ways among languages of different typologies. The analysis presented in this study documents pervasive phenomena manifested in the discourse of Ilocano, as a result of the unique highly-prefixing typology of the language, which may contribute to our understanding of the concepts of lexeme, morphological integrity, and affixal boundness. From a thirty-hour corpus of natural interactions among native speakers of Ilocano, certain patterns of language production are introduced that typify the need to understand the synchronic role of morphology in a polysynthetic language and the status that inflectional and/or derivational affixes have in the lexicons of the speakers (Rubino 1994a). This paper will illustrate the intricate workings of the Ilocano language with regard to inter-morphemic pausing, production of affixes without lexical roots, the post-production restructuring of affixation, and the many uses of the versatile empty root kua which is employed by speakers who have uttered the syntactic frame of the word with appropriate affixes, before accessing the lexical root, suggesting that planning and production often take place at the morphemic level. It will then become apparent how the use of discourse data can be utilized to better our understanding of morphology and morphological processes.