Inflectional Morphology: A Theory of Paradigm Structure (review)

Language, 2003

It is well known that there is a diachronic evolution concerning the interplay between analytic and synthetic morphology. Analytic expressions merge to synthetic forms, which are then replaced by new periphrastic constructions. The transition from analytic to synthetic morphology is the result of a gradual loss of autonomy of the components of the analytic construction. Recurrent combinations of morphemes can give rise to idiosyncratic and unsegmentable inflectional forms. Analogy between more and less frequent forms then creates pressure to harmonize the paradigm. This harmonization pressure first works to condense all the forms of the old paradigm, but leads to the exclusion of the less frequent of the so created ready-made forms. For these, a new paradigm is emerging, and for a while, the two paradigms co-exist. For the frequent forms, speakers prefer the old synthetic paradigm, for the less frequent combinatorial forms the new analytic paradigm is preferred. The second wave of harmonization integrates the last resisting synthetic forms to the new paradigm. In summary, adaptation to discourse requirements leads to different treatment of frequent and less frequent forms, whereas the cognitive bias towards harmonization and analogy favours equal treatment. These two antagonistic forces are thus responsible for the constant change in inflectional paradigms. I will illustrate this evolution with data from Romance and Germanic languages, Turkish, Basque, and the Papuan language Iatmul.

2015

Sometimes dismissed as linguistically epiphenomenal, infl ectional paradigms are, in reality, the interface of a language's morphology with its syntax and semantics. Drawing on abundant evidence from a wide range of languages (French, Hua, Hungarian, Kashmiri, Latin, Nepali, Noon, Old Norse, Sanskrit, Turkish, Twi, and others), Stump examines a variety of mismatches between words' content and form, including morphomic patterns, defectiveness, overabundance, syncretism, suppletion, deponency, and polyfunctionality. He demonstrates that such mismatches motivate a new grammatical architecture in which two kinds of paradigms are distinguished: content paradigms , which determine word forms' syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation, and form paradigms , which determine their infl ectional realization. In this framework, the often nontrivial linkage between a lexeme's content paradigm and its stems' form paradigm is the nexus at which incongruities of content and form are resolved. Stump presents clear and precise analyses of a range of morphological phenomena in support of this theoretical innovation. gregory stump is a Professor of linguistics at the University of Kentucky. His principal research area is the theory and typology of complex systems of infl ectional morphology.

California Linguistic Notes, 2004

Yearbook of morphology, 1995

A nativist perspective has dominated research into syntax of natural languages for half a century, and though it has undergone many changes since Noam Chomsky’s first writing on the subject in the 1950s, it has remained relatively unchallenged into the twenty-first century. More recently, however, constructivism has emerged as a second perspective, generally considered to oppose generativist or nativist theories. Each perspective has its fair points and certain aspects of syntax acquisition and representation are better accounted for by one or the other. Among the points I feel that the constructivist account explains more clearly and effectively is acquisition of inflectional morphology, particularly cross-linguistically. This paper will summarize four studies presented on the development of inflectional morphology across three different languages and incorporate them into a basic argument for a constructivist approach to the development of inflectional morphology.

Word Knowledge and Word Usage

What is inflection? Is it part of language morphology, syntax or both? What are the basic units of inflection and how do speakers acquire and process them? How do they vary across languages? Are some inflection systems somewhat more complex than others, and does inflectional complexity affect the way speakers process words? This chapter addresses these and other related issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Our main goal is to map out the place of inflection in our current understanding of the grammar architecture. In doing that, we will embark on an interdisciplinary tour, which will touch upon theoretical, psychological, typological, historical and computational issues in morphology, with a view to looking for points of methodological and substantial convergence from a rather heterogeneous array of scientific approaches and theoretical perspectives. The main upshot is that we can learn more from this than just an additive medley of domain-specific results. In the end, a cross-domain survey can help us look at traditional issues in a surprisingly novel light.

Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 1995

In this paper we advocate a minimal characterization of inflectional morphology as a combinatorial system of underspecified stems and affixes which is controlled by a hierarchy of categories, by general principles of affixation, and by principles that regulate paradigm structures. We first contrast our views on inflection with other proposals found in the literature, and then describe our machinery, illustrating it with facts from the inflectional morphology of the German verb. While subregularities are represented by structured lexical entries which take the form of non-mono tonic inheritance trees, regular affixation is assumed to be a monotonie operation. Finally the structure of paradigms is illustrated in some detail with an analysis of the subject agreement morphology of the verb in Classical Arabic. 1. The structure of the inflectional component The proper place of inflectional morphology within the main components of grammar is still a matter of debate. Inflectional categories such as morphological case or person-number agreement on verbs constitute relations between syntactic constituents and therefore must be present in the syntax. At the same time, however, they are mostly realized through affixes which are interleaved with phonological rules and therefore must be visible in the phonology. So the question arises of whether inflection belongs to syntax proper or to phonology, or whether it constitutes a component of its own. The answers which have been given in the recent literature on the subject diverge to a great extent. Anderson (1992) denies the existence of word structure since, in his view, inflectional categories belong to syntax and are spelled out by phonological rules. Moreover, Anderson claims that affixes do not have morpheme status but are merely the * This paper grew out of our research on agreement morphology in the lexicon project SFB 282 'Theorie des Lexikons', which is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Preliminary results have been presented in Wunderlich (1992) and Fabri (1993) as well as in talks in Berlin,

Journal of Language Contact

Paradigmatic morphology is a central and crucial concept for several branches of comparative linguistics. The observation of shared paradigms in languages which were not suspected of having a common ancestry stands at the cradle of modern genealogical linguistics and dominates the discussion(s) about not firmly established or merely putative language families or phyla to this day, the very different morphological techniques different languages use for the formation of paradigms mark the beginning of language typology, now a major pillar of the language sciences, and the question, to which degree languages—closely, distantly, or not at all related with each other—may borrow morphological paradigms (part or whole) from each other or might have done so in the past (which, if true and not properly detected, might lead to superficially persuasive, but factually erroneous, claims and hypotheses of genealogical relatedness) continues to be an important theoretical and practical issue in co...

… : hommage à la mémoire de Danielle Corbin, 2008