A declarative approach to language change: regularization as realignment

In this paper I consider how best to model lexical regularization as a type of language change, and more specifically how to capture regularization when it is a question of realigning the syntactic function with the expected morphological expression. While it seems natural to approach language change in procedural terms, I will argue that a declarative/static approach is more natural for at least certain types of lexical change, specifically change that involves a reorganization of the paradigm. This account is modeled in the defaults-based framework of Network Morphology (Corbett & Fraser 1993; Brown & Hippisley forthcoming)

Declarative Derivation: a Network Morphology account of Russian word formation with reference to nouns denoting \u27person\u27.

Studies on derivational morphology often assume a procedural view, emphasizing the journey from morphologically simple to morphologically complex word. We present a declarative approach with the focus on the relationship between two morphologically connected words. This more static approach enables us to better locate the generalizations present in a derivational system. We test this approach on a specific body of data, namely the formation of nouns denoting ‘person’ in Russian. After introducing Network Morphology, the declarative framework within which we base our account, and the Russian data we will be investigating, we provide as theoretical background to our proposed analysis a sketch of the role of morphology in the Structuralist tradition, and in the more important models of the early Generativists (SectionI). Section II is entirely devoted to Network Morphology, and acts as a short survey of the recent work carried out in this framework. The focus is on the key concepts of Network Morphology, inheritance hierarchies and the idea of defaults, and on the nature of the relations that occur within a network. Since we emphasise the relationship between words, our commitment is to a lexeme-based approach to morphology. Section III explores the implications of this, examining Aronoff’s model, and its key elements, Word Formation Rules. We construct a set of Aronovian-style WFRs that account for Russian person derivation. Section IV constitutes the declarative account. The proposed WFRs for Russian are given a declarative interpretation. The WFRs are viewed as generalizers of derivational information, and exceptionality is characterized as the overriding of certain of the generalizations. Our account is expressed in DATR (the appendices contain the full version) which is computable, and we have therefore been in a position to demonstrate that the theory makes the correct predictions about the data it claims to account for

Indexed Stems and Russian Word Formation: A Network Morphology Account of Russian Personal Nouns

Recent lexeme-based models have proposed that a lexeme carries an inventory of stems on which morphological rules operate. The various stems in the inventory are associated with different morphological rules, of both inflection and derivation. Furthermore, one stem may be selected by more than one rule. For this reason stems in the inventory are labeled with indexes, rather than being directly associated with a particular morphological function. It is claimed that an indexed-stem approach captures generalizations in the morphological system that would otherwise be missed. We argue that such an approach provides for greater generalization in the Russian morphological system. One area of Russian derivation that particularly lends itself to an indexed-stem approach is the highly productive system of personal-noun formation. We present a declarative account of Russian personal nouns that assumes indexed stems and show how such an account on the one hand obviates the need to posit either compound suffixes or concatenators and on the other dispenses with truncating/deleting rules. The account is couched within network morphology, a declarative lexeme-based framework that rests on the concept of default inheritance and is expressed in the computable lexical knowledge representation language D AT R

Paradigmatic Realignment and Morphological Change: Diachronic Deponency in Network Morphology

A natural way of formally modeling language change is to adopt a procedural, dynamic approach that gets at the notion of emergence and decay. We argue that in the realm of morphological change, and notably the reorganization of a lexeme’s paradigm, a model that at a given synchronic stage holds together both the actual facts about the paradigm as well as the range of potential or virtual facts that are licensed by the morphological machinery more elegantly captures the nature of the changing paradigm. We consider the special case of morphological mismatch where syntactic function is misaligned with morphological expression, Latin deponent verbs representing the classical example. Change in this area is essentially realignment of morphology with syntax. Our analysis of the history of deponent verbs as paradigmatic realignment assumes a separation between syntactic function and its morphological realization and is couched within the computable declarative framework of Network Morphology

Conflict in Russian Genitive Plural Assignment: a Solution Represented in DATR

Inflectional endings are assigned in languages by general principles, but these can come into conflict. We address the question of how such conflict is resolved. A particularly complex example is the Russian genitive plural, where we find that with soft-stem nouns there is a conflict between exponent assignment according to declension class and a default exponent assignment for soft-stem nouns. What is specially interesting is that the conflict here can be resolved by reference to subsystems over and above the paradigm, such as stress. We present an explicit account of the conflict and its mediation by basing our study on default inheritance. For this purpose we make use of the lexical knowledge representation language DATR. This allows us to demonstrate in the output provided that the correct forms are indeed predicted by our theory

Inheritance hierarchies and historical reconstruction: towards a history of Slavonic colour terms

The last decade has witnessed an interest in inheritance hierarchies for the representation of linguistic knowledge. An obvious application is to historical reconstruction of a language family, but this is largely unexplored territory. We demonstrate the merits of such an approach with a default inheritance treatment of the colour terms of Slavonic: Slavonic because it is uncontroversially a genetic unit, and colour terms both because of their universality and because of the tight constraints on a language\u27s colour term inventory (Berlin & Kay 1969, and subsequent work). In section I we discuss the colour terms of Slavonic and introduce Berlin and Kay\u27s typology and the notion of basic colour term. Section 2 describes our methodology and in section 3 we show how it is applied to Slavonic. The main results are discussed in section 4