Modeling affix order

Manova, Stela; Aronoff, Mark

doi:10.1007/s11525-010-9153-6

Cited by 53 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…All theories agree that there is at least a partially systematic 'grammar of words', but at the same time, compared to phrase structure, word structure exhibits more arbitrary and idiosyncratic combinatorics. Rules of affix placement make this tension between systematicity and idiosyncracy particularly prominent (Manova & Aronoff 2010) and have therefore played a key role in morphological theory (Bickel & Nichols 2007;Hyman 2003;Rice 2000;Stump 1997).…”

Section: Paradigmatic Alignmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Category clustering: A probabilistic bias in the morphology of verbal agreement marking

Mansfield¹,

Stoll²,

Bickel³

2019

Preprint

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Recent research has revealed several languages (e.g. Chintang, Raráramuri, Tagalog, Murrinhpatha) that challenge the general expectation of strict sequential ordering in morphological structure. However, it has remained unclear whether these languages exhibit random placement of affixes or whether there are some underlying probabilistic principles that predict their placement. Here we address this question for verbal agreement markers and hypothesize a probabilistic universal of CATEGORY CLUSTERING, with two effects: (i) markers in paradigmatic opposition tend to be placed in the same morphological position (‘paradigmatic alignment’; Crysmann & Bonami 2016); (ii) morphological positions tend to be categorically uniform (‘featural coherence’; Stump 2001). We first show in a corpus study that category clustering drives the distribution of agreement prefixes in speakers’ production of Chintang, a language where prefix placement is not constrained by any categorical rules of sequential ordering. We then show in a typological study that the same principle also shapes the evolution of morphological structure: although exceptions are attested, paradigms are much more likely to obey rather than to violate the principle. Category clustering is therefore a good candidate for a universal force shaping the structure and use of language, potentially due to benefits in processing and learning.

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Section: Paradigmatic Alignmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Category clustering: A probabilistic bias in the morphology of verbal agreement marking

Mansfield¹,

Stoll²,

Bickel³

2019

Preprint

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“…In recent years, studies have focused on affix combination (cf. Hay and Plag 2004;Plag and Baayen 2009;Talamo 2015;Manova 2010b;2011;Manova and Aronoff 2010a;Manova and Aronoff 2010b). Traditionally, combination of affixes has been explained by stratum-oriented models (Siegel 1974;Allen 1978;Kiparsky 1982;Giegerich 1999), by selectional restrictions of each particular affix (Fabb 1988;Plag 1999;Talamo 2010;Rodrigues 2015), by the interaction of selectional restrictions and processing constraints, by what is called the Complexity-Based Ordering hypothesis (formulated by Hay [2002] and applied, with different results, by Hay [2003] Saarinen and Hay [2014]), and by the interaction between scope, phonological subcategorization and morphotactic constraints (Caballero 2010), under the view of Optimality Theory (cf.…”

Section: Affix Combinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits on the extension of affixal combination: structural restrictions and processing conditions

Rodrigues¹

2017

suvlin

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Limits on the extension of affixal combination: structural restrictions and processing conditions The study of the mental lexicon has been fostered by the analysis of the way complex words are mentally represented and processed. This paper concerns the syntagmatic extension of multiple affixation; specifically, the processing of complex words that contain four suffixes that operate in word-formation patterns of Portuguese. Although the individual addition of suffixes obeys structural constraints, the multiple combination results in complex words with low frequency and low expectedness by the speaker, which contribute to the lack of semantic transparency and of affixal salience of the combination. Our study demonstrates a relation between these factors and the experience of the speaker with the affixal combination, which determines the pattern character of the combination. We suggest that a suffix exerts the prediction of other suffixes as long as the combination is expected. Non-frequent heterocategorial complex words with a combination of four suffixes are contrasted with non-frequent words containing pleonastic affixation. In the latter type of words, the redundancy of semantic structures increases the semantic transparency of the word, which suggests a prediction effect operating on the semantic level of the affixal combination. Processing of complex words is dependent on the level of expectedness of the speaker towards the affix combination, which constrains the level of word acceptance by speakers.

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“…Closing suffixes have not been reported in agglutinating and incorporating languages, though they should be compatible with these morphological types too. An accessible explanation of template and layered morphology with a comparison of these two types of morphological organization can be found in Manova and Aronoff (2010). There are two ways to produce morphological structure − template morphology and layered morphology.…”

Section: Closing Suffixes and Morphological Language Typesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter is a central issue in linguistics and many theories have been suggested to account for the way affixes combine (see the overviews in Aronoff 2010 andRice 2011). The latter is a central issue in linguistics and many theories have been suggested to account for the way affixes combine (see the overviews in Aronoff 2010 andRice 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%