publications

Society for Computation in Linguistics paper

Grace LeFevre, Micha Elsner and Andrea Sims had their paper “Formalizing Inflectional Paradigm Shape with Information Theory” published in the Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, vol. 4. The paper is based on Grace’s B.A. thesis work. She did really impressive work and we are happy to see it make it out into the world!

Abstract: “Paradigm shape,” our term for the morphological structure formed by implicative relations between inflected forms, has not beenformally quantified in a gradient manner. We develop a method to formalize paradigm shape by modeling the joint effect of stem alternations and affixes. Applied to Spanish verbs,our model successfully captures aspects of both allomorphic and distributional classes.These results are replicable and extendable to other languages.

Paper on Balkan verbal complex published

Andrea Sims and Brian Joseph’s paper ‘Morphology versus syntax in the Balkan verbal complex‘ has just been published in the volume Balkan syntax and (universal) principles of grammar, edited by Iliana Krapova and Brian Joseph.

Paper Abstract: Various Balkan languages have a string of material called here the “verbal complex”, in which a verb occurs with various markers for tense, modality, negation, and argument structure. We examine here this verbal complex with regard to its status as a syntactic element or a morphological element. First, we carefully outline the theoretical basis for determining the status of a given entity and we then argue that the verbal complexes display different degrees of morphologization in the different languages. Albanian and Greek show the highest degree of morphologization of the verbal complex, with Macedonian close to them in this regard. Bulgarian shows a lesser degree of morphologization than Macedonian, making for an interesting split within East South Slavic, and Serbian shows an even lesser degree. We argue further that certain aspects of the verbal complex, especially in the languages with the greatest morphologization, represent contact-related convergence, and draw from this a general claim about the role of surface structure in language contact.

Slavic morphology: New approaches to classic problems

Andrea has published an article in the Journal of Slavic Linguistics (volume 25, issue 2). This issue, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the journal, includes state of the field articles for different subfields of linguistics. Check out Andrea’s contribution to the anniversary issue: Slavic morphology: New approaches to classic problems, illustrated with Russian.

Abstract: This state-of-the-field article traces some recent trajectories of morphological theory, illustrated via four classic problems of Slavic morphology: vowel-zero alternation, stem consonant mutations, paradigmatic gaps, and animacy-determined accusative syncretism. Using Russian as the primary illustrating data, one theme that emerges is that theories that leverage the distributional properties of the lexicon have made progress against previously intractable aspects of these phenomena, including idiosyncratic lexical distributions, unexpected (non)productivity, and distributions shared by distinct exponents. In turn, the analyses raise new questions.

How inflection class systems work

inflection_class_complexityAndrea Sims and Jeff Parker have a paper, “How inflection class systems work: On the informativity of implicative structure”, in the most recent issue of Word Structure, a special issue on information-theoretic approaches to word and pattern morphology.

Abstract: The complexity of an inflection class system can be defined as the average extent to which elements in the system inhibit motivated inferences about the realization of lexemes’ paradigm cells. Research shows that systems tend to exhibit relatively low complexity in this sense. However, relatively little work has explored how structural and distributional aspects of the inflectional system produce this outcome. In this paper we use the tools of information theory to do so. We explore a set of nine languages that have robust inflection class systems: Palantla Chinantec, French, Modern Greek, Icelandic, Kadiwéu, Nuer, Russian, Seri, and Võro. The data show that the extent to which implicative paradigmatic structure does work to minimize the complexity of the system differs significantly. In fact, the nine languages fall into three graph types based on their implicative structure. Moreover, low type frequency classes disproportionately contribute to the complexity of inflectional systems, but we hypothesize that their freedom to detract in this way may depend on the extent to which implicative structure is systemically important. We thus propose that the amount of ‘work’ done by implicative relations in structuring inflection classes should be considered a typological parameter.

Inflectional Defectiveness

Inflectional DefectivenessAndrea Sims‘s new book, Inflectional Defectiveness, has just been published by Cambridge University Press. Such a pretty blue cover… And if you are interested in what is between the covers, here is a description of the content:

Paradigmatic gaps (‘missing’ inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language’s history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology-syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. A novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.

O čem je morfologie

O čem je morfologieO čem je morfologie, a Czech translation of Martin Haspelmath and Andrea Sims’s book Understanding Morphology 2ed (Routledge, 2010), has been published by Karolinum Press.