Upper limits to morpheme length

[john]

There are of course upper limits in individual languages. In
non-borrowings at least 

in Mandarin Chinese it's 3, in Dinka it's 4,
in Hebrew it's 5 (off-hand that's the most 

I can think of). I think in
European languages it can be longer. 

John 

On 21.12.2013 20:56,
Everett, Daniel wrote: 

> Marianne,
> 
> Thanks. I certainly agree with
what you say.
> 
> So, let us just say, any morpheme, though I bound
morphemes are what I had in mind originally.
> 
> To reiterate, what I
am asking is not if people have an opinion on the matter (which is not
what you said at all, Marianne, but what some have said off-line) but
whether anyone knows of a theory that proposes to derive an upper bound
on morpheme length.
> 
> "Tend to be small" I certainly agree with. And
I think that cognitive - whether learnability or processing - reasons
are implicated. But that is not my theory. Just my hunch. I was
interested in identifying a theory, should one exist, that derives the
length limits and says what "small" is and why.
> 
> I suspect that none
exists. And I doubt that one should. But, again, that's just me thinking
overtly in electrons at my computer.
> 
> Dan
> 
> Dec 21, 2013, at 1:37
PM, Marianne Mithun wrote:
> 
>> Dan, you haven't said what kind of
morphemes. For a start, there's probably going to be a difference
between roots and affixes. And affixes tend to be small because of all
of the processes involved in their development. Marianne --On Saturday,
December 21, 2013 4:10 PM +0000 "Everett, Daniel" <DEVERETT at bentley.edu
[1]> wrote: 
>> 
>>> Please excuse the double-posting. I haven't worked
on this stuff for a while, so I will undoubtedly show my ignorance of
some large body of research, but I was wondering (due to a question from
a colleague) whether there is any work that tries to derive a maximum
morpheme length (I wouldn't think this would be the way to address the
issue, frankly, but I could be quite wrong). As the question was put to
me: "It seems to me that almost all morphemes are quite short?probably
not easy to find one with e.g. 12 phoneme segments. The question is is
there anything in known phonological theories which predict this?or is
it just assumed that morphemes can be of any length and that the reason
there are none of length e.g. 624, 578 is simply that they would be
unlearnable? The latter would be my ideal view, just as the reason that
no one uses a sentence of length 624,578 words has to do with practical
performance limitations." I know that there is work on "resizing theory"
(Pycha 2008) and various other approaches linking morphology and
metrical structure. But those approaches so far as I know offer no
principled upper bound to morpheme length. Any help would be
appreciated. Happy holidays to all, Dan Everett

 

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