Graph Transductions and Typological Gaps in Morphological Paradigms

Graf, Thomas

doi:10.18653/v1/w17-3411

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…The PCC was first observed in Perlmutter (1971), but it is only in recent years that it has attracted significant attention (see e.g. Bonet 1994;Anagnostopoulou 2005;Adger and Harbour 2007;Nevins 2007Nevins , 2011Rezac 2007;Walkow 2012;Graf 2014Graf , 2017. The current literature distinguishes four different types of PCC.…”

Section: The Pcc Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Monotonicity as an effective theory of morphosyntactic variation

Graf

2019

JLM

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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 syncretism, and noun stem allomorphy. In morphosyntax, only a small number of all conceivable Person Case Constraints and Gender Case Constraints are found. While various proposals have been put forward for each individual domain, few attempts have been made to give a unified explanation of the limited typology across all domains. This paper presents a novel account that deliberately abstracts away from the usual details of grammatical description in order to provide a domain-agnostic explanation of the limits of typological variation. This is achieved by combining prominence hierarchies, e.g. for person and case, with mappings from those hierarchies to the relevant output forms. As the mappings are required to be monotonic, only a fraction of all conceivable patterns can be instantiated.

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Section: The Pcc Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The approach advocated here is strongly inspired by the mathematical formalism of Graf (2014Graf ( , 2017 but improves on it in important respects. A broader range of data is considered, including a wide selection of case syncretisms and a new kind of PCC reported by Tyler (2017) for Choctaw.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monotonicity as an effective theory of morphosyntactic variation

Graf

2019

JLM

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“…Another approach for which we postpone fuller engagement is that in Graf (2017), which does not use features as such, and instead operates on cells directly, positing an abstract order of cells, i.e. cell-x < cell-y < cell-z.…”

Section: Two-cell Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

ABA and the combinatorics of morphological features

Bobaljik

Sauerland

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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In several three cell paradigms, it has been observed that one logically conceivable pattern -ABA under some arrangement of cells -is unattested. Existing approaches assume that such *ABA generalizations provide evidence for feature inventories which are restricted to features that stand in containment relations, and are thus subject to Pāṇinian rule order. We present a novel approach to *ABA generalizations that derives from general properties of feature-based morphology. To this end, we develop a formal account of the widespread view that morphological paradigms derive from rules that relate abstract features from an inventory to morphological exponents. We demonstrate that the feature-based view restricts the space of typological patterns even without any further assumptions. We show furthermore that the feature-based theory derives *ABA as a special case of a broader class of generalizations if the number of features in the inventory must be minimal, and that these generalizations arise under a variety of general assumptions about feature-algebras (extrinsically ordered or Pāṇinian and with or without feature intersection). We discuss which explanation might be correct for actual cases of *ABA constraints, and we explore the consequences of the feature-based general approach for a range of paradigm sizes including those with more than three cells.

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“…(2 The fourth and final account we will consider is that of Graf (2017), which differs from the above proposals in not referring to features at all. Graf's proposal relies on transductions between graphs, and attempts to provide a unified account for ABA restrictions and the Person-Case Constraint (PCC ;Perlmutter 1971;Kayne 1975;Bonet 1991;1994;Haspelmath 2004; Anagnostopoulou 2017, among many others).…”

Section: Why *Aba?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An anonymous reviewer also points out that it is not clear that there are Basque speakers who accept only the ABA pattern, rejecting non-ABA alternatives. 3 The absence of AAB patterns will not concern us here, and the interested reader is referred to Caha (2017) and Graf (2017) for discussion. (Caha 2009), case and number in pronouns (Smith et al 2015;2018), pronoun clusivity (Moskal 2017;in press), spatial deixis (Lander & Haegeman 2016), and Germanic verbs (Wiese 2004;2008;Starke 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(*)ABA in Germanic verbs

Andersson¹

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper discusses cases where non-adjacent cells in morphological paradigms are syncretic, commonly called ABA patterns (Bobaljik 2012 et seqq.). Data from verbs in Germanic languages are examined, as earlier work suggests that a *ABA constraint may be active in this domain. It will be shown that there are verbs in several Germanic languages which exhibit genuine ABA patterns, precluding an analysis based on a constraint *ABA. It is suggested that the rarity of ABA patterns should instead be given a diachronic explanation in terms of Proto-Germanic conjugation classes. This approach is independently motivated by frequency asymmetries in modern Germanic languages, and correctly predicts where ABA patterns are more likely to appear. The research reported here adds to a rapidly-growing body of work on extralinguistic explanations for linguistic patterns (Anderson 2016), suggesting a severely reduced explanatory role for formal linguistic constraints.

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Graph Transductions and Typological Gaps in Morphological Paradigms

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

Monotonicity as an effective theory of morphosyntactic variation

Monotonicity as an effective theory of morphosyntactic variation

ABA and the combinatorics of morphological features

(*)ABA in Germanic verbs

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