Abstract One of the major goals of linguistics is to delineate the possible range of variation across languages. Recent work has identified a surprising number of typological gaps in a variety of domains. In morphology, this includes stem suppletion, person pronoun syncretism, case …
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Tiers and Relativized Locality Across Language Modules
Abstract Heinz and Idsardi (2013) draw attention to a profound computational difference between syntax and phonology: phonology only requires regular computations over strings (Johnson 1972 …
Graph Transductions and Typological Gaps in Morphological Paradigms
Abstract Several typological gaps have attracted a lot of interest in the linguistic literature recently. These concern the Person Case Constraint and the absence of ABA patterns in adjectival gradation, pronoun suppletion, case syncretism, and singular noun allomorphy, among others. This paper is …
Graph Transductions and Typological Gaps in Morphological Paradigms
Abstract Several typological gaps have attracted a lot of interest in the linguistic literature recently. These concern the Person Case Constraint and the absence of ABA patterns in adjectival gradation, pronoun suppletion, case syncretism, and singular noun allomorphy, among others. This paper is …
Do We Need Features for Morphosyntax?
Abstract Bobaljik & Sauerland’s *ABA and the Combinatorics of Morphological Features attempts to explain the absence of ABA patterns across languages in terms of feature combinatorics. Their approach marks a step in the right direction by focusing on the algebra underlying the feature …
It’s a (Sub-)Regular Conspiracy: Locality and Computation in Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics
Abstract It is commonly believed that phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics are distinct modules of language, governed by very different principles with little common ground. Nonetheless several approaches (e.g. Government Phonology, Distributed Morphology) subscribe to the idea that at least some of …
Fragments of First-Order Logic for Linguistic Structures
Abstract Logic has always played a central role in the study of natural language meaning. But logic can also be used to describe the structure of words and sentences. Recent research has revealed that these structures are so simple that they can be …
Computational Parallels Across Language Modules
Abstract Linguists study a variety of aspects of language, including phonology, morphology, and syntax. It is commonly believed that those are distinct modules of language, governed by very different principles and consequently studied with very different tools. While there have been attempts at …
Morphotactics as Tier-Based Strictly Local Dependencies
Abstract It is commonly accepted that morphological dependencies are finite-state in nature. We argue that the upper bound on morphological expressivity is much lower. Drawing on technical results from computational phonology, we show that a variety of morphotactic …
Morphotactics as Tier-Based Strictly Local Dependencies
Abstract It is commonly accepted that morphological dependencies are finite-state in nature. We argue that the upper bound on morphological expressivity is much lower. Drawing on technical results from computational phonology, we show that a variety of morphotactic …