Morphology: From Data to Theories

Tackling theoretical approaches including Construction Grammar and the Minimalist Program, this volume focuses on processes and phenomena. Each chapter covers the main concepts through example data, before discussing the pros and cons of the approach. Topics covered include: units, inflection, derivation, compounding, the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis and the interfaces of morphology with phonology and semantics. Taking your understanding of the form and meaning of words to the next level, this book is ideal for linguistics students interested in learning more about morphology. Key Features * Discusses variety of theories * Exercises and further reading in each chapter

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations; Foreword; 1. Morphology: definitions and basic concepts; 1.1. What is morphology?; 1.1.1. Its object of study; 1.1.2. Morphology's place in grammar; 1.1.3. Differences between the lexicon and morphology; 1.2. Classes of morphemes; 1.2.1. Classes of affixes; 1.3. Subdivisions of morphology; 1.3.1. Inflection; 1.3.2. Word formation: derivation and compounding; 1.4. The spell out of morphemes; 1.4.1. Allomorphy; 1.5. Productivity; 2. Morphological units; 2.1. Morphemes; 2.2. Words; 2.3. The debate on the existence of morphemes; 2.3.1. Replacive and substractive morphology; 2.3.2. Mismatches between grammatical features and their exponents; 2.3.3. Cranberry morphemes; 2.3.4. Priscianic word formation; 2.3.5. Paradigmatic motivation of meaning; 2.4. Other units; 2.4.1. Roots and stems; 2.4.2. Constructions 2.4.3. Templates; 2.5. Correlations between morphemes and morphs and morphological typology; 3. Morphological structures; 3.1. The motivation for morphological structures; 3.1.1. Evidence in favour of word internal structure; 3.2. The properties of morphological structures; 3.2.1. The concept of head; 3.2.2. The position of the head; 3.2.3. Binary branching; 3.3. Arguments against morphological structures; 3.3.1. A-morphous morphology; 3.3.2. Exocentricity; 3.3.3. Bracketing paradoxes; 3.3.4. Double base; 3.3.5. Parasynthesis; 4. Inflectional processes; 4.1. Properties of inflection; 4.2. Inflection and grammatical categories; 4.2.1. A comparison of five languages; 4.2.2. Non-inflected categories: prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs; 4.3. Desinences and theme vowels in grammar; 4.3.1. The status of gender and the notion of desinence; 4.3.2. Theme vowels; 4.4. Paradigms; 4.4.1. Syncretism; 4.4.2. Defectivity; 4.4.3. Suppletion; 4.4.4. Patterns of irregularity; 5. Derivational processes; 5.1. Properties of derivation; 5.2. Category changes; 5.2.1. Nominalisations; 5.2.2.Verbalisations; 5.2.3. Adjectivalisations; 5.3. Semantic changes; 5.4. Category change without formal marking: conversion; 5.5. Argument structure changes; 5.5.1. Lexical alternations; 5.6. Questions raised by the analysis of derivational processes in a single language; 5.7. The limits between inflection and derivation; 5.7.1. Appreciative morphology; 5.7.2. Hybrid categories; 6. Compounding: Other word formation processes; 6.1. Properties of compounds; 6.2. Basic classes of compounds; 6.2.1. Classes according to the relation established between the two elements; 6.2.2. Synthetic compounds; 6.2.3. Parasynthetic compounds; 6.2.4. Co-compounds; 6.3. Compounding between syntax and morphology; 6.3.1. Some differences between phrases and compounds; 6.3.2. Intermediate cases; 6.4. Compounds and grammatical categories: Japanese and English; 6.5. Other word-formation processes; 6.5.1. Clipping; 6.5.2. Reduplication; 6.5.3. Acronymy; 6.5.4. Blending; 7. Relations between morphology and syntax; 7.1. The place of morphology in grammar: Lexicalism and Constructionism; 7.1.1. Lexicalist theories; 7.1.2. Constructionism; 7.2. The Generalised Lexicalist Hypothesis: data; 7.2.1. Syntactic material inside words: the No Phrase Constraint; 7.2.2. Non-morphological processes and the internal structure of words; 7.2.3. Absence of movement and the theory of syntactic domains; 7.2.4. Absence of coreference to word-internal constituents; 7.3. The relation between syntax and morphology in diachrony: morphologisation; 8. Morphology's relation with phonology and semantics; 8.1. Restrictions imposed by phonology to morphology; 8.2. The phonological materialisation of morphemes; 8.2.1. Morphology and phonology feed each other: Lexical Strata; 8.2.2. Morphology is independent from phonology: the Separation Hypothesis; 8.2.3. Morphology precedes phonology: the Late Insertion Hypothesis; 8.2.4. Post-syntactic morphological operations in Distributed Morphology; 8.3. Accounting for allomorphs: localism and globalism; 8.4. The linearization of morphological structure: the order of morphemes; 8.4.1. Syntactic accounts; 8.4.2. Semantic accounts; 8.4.3. Purely morphological accounts; 8.4.4. Phonological accounts; 8.4.5. Parsing-based accounts; 8.5. The meaning of words and affixes; 8.5.1. The meaning of units is decomposable; 8.5.2. Semantic atomicity; 8.5.3. Do affixes have a meaning of their own?; 8.6. Compositionality and demotivation of meaning; 8.6.1. The demotivation of meaning; 8.6.2. Dividing structures and concepts: two types of meaning; 8.6.3. How to represent demotivation; Answers to the exercises; References; Subject index.