Analogical Levelling and Optimisation: The Treatment of Pointless Lexical Allomorphy in Greek

Abstract

AncientGreek verbal morphology involved extensive allomorphy of lexical morphemes, most of which was phonologically and semantically arbitrary, lexically idiosyncratic, and functionally redundant. In the subsequent history of the language this allomorphy was reduced, partly through analogical levelling, where an allomorphic alternation is eliminated in favour of a single phonological expression of underlying meaning. This kind of reduction of arbitrary complexity is often observed in the development of morphological systems, which has inspired a common view of morphological change as being guided by universal preferences, which nudge morphological systems along paths which will lead them to a more optimal status. This paper uses some systematic empirical data from the history of Greek to put to the test two questions about analogical levelling and the role of 'optimisation'. Firstly, is levelling motivated by a universal preference for a one-to-one alignment of meaning and form in language? Secondly, is the direction of levelling determined by universal preferences for particular ways of marking morphosyntactic distinctions? I will argue that the answer to both questions is no: the changes in the Greek data I have examined are remarkably well predicted by language-specific, formal properties of paradigms, without the need to invoke universal preferences. These facts are best accommodated if speaker competence includes detailed probabilistic information about the predictive structure of paradigms, which has important implications for morphological theory, as well as historical linguistics.

Token frequency as a determinant of morphological change

“…This predicts that analogical bases will be informative (in terms of maintaining phonological contrasts), but also that they will tend to have high token frequency, since frequency in the data that the learning model is exposed to also increases its calculation of confidence, and can even outweigh informativeness (Albright 2009: 4.1.2–4.2). The model is successful in explaining certain patterns of levelling (although see Sims-Williams 2016: 332–333), but the strong correlation found in this paper between the token frequency of an analogical proportion’s base and its probability of producing an attested form (see Section 3.2) suggests that the single surface base hypothesis is too strong for the Greek changes considered here. Also, in this data the third person singular is both the most frequent cell and the most likely to serve as analogical base, but it is the least informative, since it neutralises distinctions between inflection classes (2.1.1).…”

“…Sims-Williams (2016) shows that type frequency also influences the diachronic productivity of morphological patterns. This could be incorporated into the model presented here in two ways.…”

“…The Attic dialect of Classical Greek (spoken in the region of Attica, which included the city of Athens, in the 5th century BC) had four distinctions of inflection class in the past perfective (aorist) active, each of which selected distinct but overlapping sets of suffixes to express the person and number of the verb’s subject 8 . Suffix allomorphy neither determines or is determined by stem allomorphy (Sims-Williams 2016: 316–318): for instance, verbs which use the weak aorist person-number suffixes typically form their aorist stem by adding a suffix - s to the imperfective stem, but there are many exceptions. These four patterns of suffix allomorphy are exemplified in Table 3 in order of type frequency.…”

“…Measures of similarity have been successfully used in other models of analogy and morphological change such as those discussed in 1.1.5, and could also be incorporated into the model proposed here. Sims-Williams (2016) shows that type frequency also influences the diachronic productivity of morphological patterns. This could be incorporated into the model presented here in two ways.…”

“…Type frequency also influences morphological change, in that productive patterns of inflection (or derivation), which apply to a large number of lexemes, tend to be extended diachronically to new lexemes, at the expense of irregular or unproductive patterns (e.g. Bybee 1995, Sims-Williams 2016. In the example given above, the lexeme SISTER makes a plausible analogical model for BROTHER because it belongs to the highest type frequency class of nouns which form plurals with the suffix -s. This study focusses not on the type frequency of analogical models, but the token frequency of analogical targets and bases: respectively, the forms affected by analogical replacement (e.g.…”