Word Formation and Morphological Processes in Lakkja

Abstract

This article concerns both the internal structures of words and the mechanisms of word formation in Lakkja, a Tai-Kadai language in South China. Emphasis will be laid on the major word-formation devices such affixation, reduplication, compounding and segmental morphologic alternation. Lakkja is one of the most representative examples of isolating and analytic types: it is tonal, lacking in morphological forms such as grammatical agreement and inflection. There is no distinction for number or gender. A number of lexical items are being increasingly used as prefixable morphemes, to indicate number and gender. A small number of prefixes syntactically functions as nominalizers, displaying SVO typology, and some as verbalisers or adjectivers, exhibiting valence-decreasing features. Contact-induced word order change can be observed in Lakkja, where in some cases the constituent order has the tendency of shifting to left-branching with modifiers preceding the modified in contrast to the native order where modifiers follow the modified. This latter tendency that is less common in other Kam-Tai languages.