4. Linguistic data in morphosyntax

Chapter 4 practice exercises

Data analysis

Exercise 1. Imagine that you are conducting elicitations in Nigeria and you have just collected the following Yoruba data in (1).[1] You have collected the pronoun paradigm and several sentences. You’ve also looked up all the words in the dictionary, which are listed in the table below. Gloss the following three sentences according to linguistic convention to prepare them for inclusion in a paper.

Note 1: BoluWale, and Shade are proper names.

Note 2: Yoruba is a tonal language, but the tones are omitted in these examples.

(1) a. Yoruba
a ti jo
‘We danced’
(1) b. a ti jo
‘We danced’
(1) c. a ti jo
‘We danced’
Table 1. Mini Yoruba dictionary
Yoruba data English translation
adiyẹ ‘chicken’
ati ‘and’
gbọ ‘hear’
je ‘eat’
jinan ‘ready’ (for food)
jo ‘dance’
ko ‘not’
n action in progress
ti past tense marker
Table 2. Yoruba pronoun paradigm
Subject pronouns Object pronouns
1sg mo mi
2sg iwọ e
3sg o
1pl a wa
2pl eyin yin
3pl wọn wọn

Communication and study skills

Exercise 2. In Chapter 2, Exercise 2, you developed some data to demonstrate the behaviour of our and ours. Use the introduce, present, discuss format described in Section 4.6 to describe your data.

Research and application

Exercise 3. Look up an academic article, a book chapter in an academic book, a dissertation, and/or a single-authored academic book in morphology or syntax. Look at how the examples are formatted and answer the following questions.

a. Find the abbreviations list. Where is it?

b. What abbreviations are common/uncommon?

c. Does the source use three or four line glossing?

d. What similarities or differences do you notice compared to the Leipzig conventions?

e. Do they restart the example numbering in every chapter/section?

f. Can you tell which examples they collected themselves vs. got from other sources? How can you tell?

g. How do they cite examples from other sources?

h. If there are examples from multiple languages, how do they indicate which examples are in which language? Is it effective or confusing?

i. Are syntax trees numbered like examples or treated like figures?

Language Journal

Exercise 4. What is the modality of your language?

Exercise 5. What are the different dialects of your language? Is your language mutually intelligible with another language?

Exercise 6. Find three sentences from your language and create properly formatted glosses for them.


  1. The data in this exercise was provided by Tolani Akinlade.

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