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--></style><title>Re: syncretism w/o paradigms</title></head><body>
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<div>On Martha's remakrs re: acquisition, see Noyer's diss/book,
extending ideas of Andrea Calabrase's - learning as the suppression of
feature-cooccurrence restrictions (filters) = positive evidence for
the acquisition of (contrastive) features.</div>
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<div>A clarification:</div>
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<div>Meta-syncretisms (as I used the term) do not mean that a contrast
is systematically absent from the language. I (and I think Williams,
implicitly) use the idea only for cases of syncretism in which the
relevant contrasts are indeendently attested in the language.</div>
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<div>For example, Russian Class I nouns (and adjectives and
pronouns) ["masculine" and "neuter", except those
that decline as Class II -a] never show a distinct accusative form; it
is always syncretic with nominative (inanimate) or genitive (animate).
But the contrast certainly exists in the language: can't understand
the syntax without the acc-nom contrast, and elsewhere in the
morphology (class II singular nouns). The vocab-insertion based
impoverishment appears to be missing a generalization (though the set
of inflections is finite, hence this is a tricky notion). </div>
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<div>Thus, I'm not sure I understand Martha's prediction. If
impoverishment applies before "agreement", the prediction
arises, but if impoverishment arises after "agreement" then
the prediction does not arise. Imagine a language like Russian, but
where the meta-syncretism does not extend to adjectives: ACC=NOM/GEN
for some class of nouns, but the distinction is still marked on the
agreeing adjectives (this arises, in principle, in Russian for nouns
that decline as "masculines" but may take a feminine
adjective when refering to a woman: e.g., %<i> xoros-aja vrac</i>
'good-fem doctor', corresponding ACC should be:<i> xoros-uju
vrac-a</i>: the adjective is non-syncretic accusative - because it's
feminine - but the noun, being masculine animate, is syncretic with
the genitive).</div>
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<div>Is there any reason to think that impoverishment (or one's
favourite corresponding device) necessarily applies before agreement
(or even that it can)?</div>
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<div>-Jonathan</div>
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<div>_______________________<br>
Jonathan David Bobaljik<br>
University of Connecticut<br>
Department of Linguistics, Unit 1145<br>
337 Mansfield Road<br>
Storrs, CT 06269-1145<br>
USA<br>
<br>
tel: (860) 486-0153<br>
fax: (860) 486-0197<br>
<br>
http://bobaljik.uconn.edu/</div>
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