The evolution of morphology

The No Blur Principle Effects as an Emergent Property of Language Systems

“…The No Blur Principle (Carstairs-McCarthy 1994, 2010, 2014 states that in languages with multiple inflection classes, the realization of each cell of the paradigm for each class must either uniquely identify the inflection class or be the default realization for that cell. For example, in the (hypothetical) paradigm in (1), every form uniquely identifies the inflection class:…”

“…As a consequence, when a learner hears an unfamiliar term employed to convey a semantic distinction with an already established conventional word, the Principle of Contrast leads the learner to assume that the new form has a different meaning, however subtle, from the known one. Carstairs-McCarthy (2010) generalizes the link between the Principle of Contrast and the nbp by introducing the notion of vocabular clarity. Carstairs-McCarthy observes that children acquiring language in a bilingual environment seem to have no significant problem keeping the vocabularies of the two languages distinct.…”

Biblical Hebrew Wayyiqtol: A Dynamic Definition

“…and 1940. This type of reasoning sometimes receives alternative labels, such as for instance 'inference to the best explanation' (Lipton 1991, Josephson & Josephson 1994and Carstairs-McCarthy 2010. The abductive argumentation and thinking may be exemplified as follows.…”

Linguistic politeness from an ethological perspective: Theoretical questions and empirical issues

“…As a results there now exists a considerable body of literature dealing with origin scenarios for many of the central aspects of the language faculty, such as phonology (MacNeilage 2008), morphology (Carstairs-MacCarthy 2010), and syntax (e.g. phrase structure out of computational brain patterns involved in motion, Calvin and Bickerton 2000; or reappropriation of the conceptual "who did what to whom" structure for the processing of semantic role, Bickerton 1997).…”