Inflectional Defectiveness

Andrea D Sims author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:12th Nov '15

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Inflectional Defectiveness cover

An accessible exploration of how defectiveness emerges from the implicative organization of paradigms and the structure of the lexicon.

An innovative investigation of 'missing' grammatical forms and their significance for linguistic theory. This accessible introduction to inflectional defectiveness draws on both formal and psycholinguistic perspectives to explore the structure of inflectional paradigms: the text's novel approach makes it essential reading for graduate students and researchers in linguistics.Paradigmatic gaps ('missing' inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language's history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology-syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.

'Sims' study is an important contribution to our understanding of inflectional systems. It is a very wide-ranging survey of defectiveness and makes a compelling case for treating it as an important and often very systematic property of inflectional systems. At the same time the book provides a clear and readable survey of the key features of the information-theoretic word-and-paradigm model, and shows how defectiveness can provide a strong motivation for that model.' Andrew Spencer, University of Essex
'In Inflection Defectiveness, Andrea D. Sims shines a light on a specific, controversial, problematic, and therefore often ignored aspect of many of the world's languages. In doing so, the author describes a number of paradigmatic gaps in multiple languages.' Daniel Walter, The Linguist List

ISBN: 9781107045842

Dimensions: 237mm x 160mm x 24mm

Weight: 640g

332 pages