The Boundaries Of Pure Morphology

In a series of pioneering explorations of the diachrony of morphomes, this book throws new light on the nature of the morphome and the boundary - seen from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives - between what is and is not genuinely autonomous in morphology. Its findings will be of central interest to morphologists of all theoretical stripes.

This book brings together leading international scholars to consider whether in some languages there are phenomena which are unique to morphology, determined neither by phonology or syntax. Central to these phenomena is the notion of the 'morphome', conceived by Mark Aronoff in 1994 as a function, itself lacking form and meaning but which serves systematically to relate them. The classic examples of morphomes are determined neither phonologically or morphosyntactically, and appear to be an autonomous property of the synchronic organization of morphological paradigms. The nature of the morphome is a problematic and much debated issue at the centre of current research in morphology, partly because it is defined negatively as what remains after all attempts to assign putatively morphomic phenomena to phonological or morphosyntactic conditioning have been exhausted. However, morphomic phenomena generally originate in some kind of morphosyntactic or phonological conditioning which has been lost while their effects have endured. Quite often, vestiges of the original conditioning environment persist, and the boundary between the morphomic and extramorphological conditioning may become problematic. In a series of pioneering explorations of the diachrony of morphomes The Boundaries of Pure Morphology throws important new light on the nature of the morphome and the boundary - seen from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives - between what is and is not genuinely autonomous in morphology. Its findings will be of central interest to morphologists of all theoretical stripes as well as to all those concerned to understand the precise nature of linguistic diachrony.

Morphological variation is a rather young, yet fascinating topic to study in its own right because it offers challenging evidence both for the autonomy of morphology (morphomic processes) as well as for its tight interconnection with other grammatical domains, notably phonology and syntax. Covering a wide range of phenomena (e.g. negation structures, form function-mismatches in the verbal and nominal domain, loss of morphosyntactic feature values, etc.), the contributions to this volume combine in-depth empirical studies with the explanatory potential of modern theories of grammar as well as approaches for capturing and modelling microtypological diversity.

This volume explores the multiple aspects of morphological complexity, investigating primarily whether certain aspects of morphology can be considered more complex than others, and how that complexity can be measured. The book opens with a detailed introduction from the editors that critically assesses the foundational assumptions that inform contemporary approaches to morphological complexity. In the chapters that follow, the volume's expert contributors approach the topic from typological, acquisitional, sociolinguistic, and diachronic perspectives; the concluding chapter offers an overview of these various approaches, with a focus on the minimum description length principle. The analyses are based on rich empirical data from both well-known languages such as Russian and lesser-studied languages from Africa, Australia, and the Americas, as well as experimental data from artificial language learning.

The field of morphology is particularly heterogeneous. Investigators differ on key points at every level of theory. These divisions are not minor issues about technical implementation, but rather are foundational issues that mold the underlying anatomy of any theory. The field has developed very rapidly both theoretically and methodologically, giving rise to many competing theories and varied hypotheses. Many drastically different and often contradictory models and foundational hypotheses have been proposed. Theories diverge with respect to everything from foundational architectural assumptions to the specific combinatorial mechanisms used to derive complex words. Today these distinct models of word-formation largely exist in parallel, mostly without proponents confronting or discussing these differences in any major forum. After forty years of fast-paced growth in the field, morphologists are in need of a moment to take a breath and survey the drastically different points of view within the field. This volume provides such a moment.

Morphology, the science of words, is a complex theoretical landscape, where a multitude of frameworks, each with their own tenets and formalism, compete for the explanation of linguistic facts. The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory is a comprehensive guide through this jungle of morphological theories. It provides a rich and up-to-date overview of theoretical frameworks, from Structuralism to Optimality Theory and from Minimalism to Construction Morphology...

Chapters in this volume describe morphology using four different frameworks that have an architectural property in common: they all use defaults as a way of discovering and presenting systematicity in the least systematic component of grammar. These frameworks - Construction Morphology, Network Morphology, Paradigm-function Morphology, and Word Grammar - display key differences in how they constrain the use and scope of defaults, and in the morphological phenomena that they address. An introductory chapter presents an overview of defaults in linguistics and specifically in morphology. In subsequent chapters, key proponents of the four frameworks seek to answer questions about the role of defaults in the lexicon, including: Does a defaults-based account of language have implications for the architecture of the grammar, particularly the proposal that morphology is an autonomous component? How does a default differ from the canonical or prototypical in morphology? Do defaults have a psychological basis? And how do defaults help us understand language as a sign-based system that is flawed, where the one to one association of form and meaning breaks down in the morphology?

Morphological Perspectives takes words as the starting point for any questions about linguistic structure: their form, their internal structure, their paradigmatic extensions, and their role in expressing and manipulating syntactic configurations.