33.2532, Review: Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Syntax: Jackendoff, Audring (2021)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2532. Wed Aug 17 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 33.2532, Review: Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Syntax: Jackendoff, Audring (2021)
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Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2022 15:46:10
From: David Karaj [davidmkaraj at gmail.com]
Subject: The Texture of the Lexicon
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36813737
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-821.html
AUTHOR: Ray Jackendoff
AUTHOR: Jenny Audring
TITLE: The Texture of the Lexicon
SUBTITLE: Relational Morphology and the Parallel Architecture
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2021
REVIEWER: David M. Karaj
SUMMARY
‘The Texture of the Lexicon. Relational Morphology and the Parallel
Architecture’, by Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audring, is a presentation of
‘Relational Morphology’ – a new approach towards morphology and the lexicon
stemming from the theoretical framework proposed by Ray Jackendoff for the
study of syntax – the Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff 1997; 2002). The text
is divided into three parts, and each part has three chapters (for a total of
nine chapters).
Part I, ‘The Theory’, introduces the framework to the reader. Chapter 1,
‘Situating morphology’, outlines the principles of the Parallel Architecture
(Jackendoff 1997; 2002) and explains where the place of morphology is in this
framework, making a distinction that phrasal syntax belongs “in the grammar,
while morphosyntax is ‘in the lexicon’”. The authors propose replacing
procedural, generative rules with schemas that contain variables and which,
like words, constitute parts of semantic, syntactic, and/or phonological
structure. Chapter 2, ‘The functions of schemas’, discusses the generative
function of schemas, contrasts them with rules, and confronts productive and
non-productive schemas. Chapter 3, ‘Motivation in the lexicon’, discusses
lexical relations and explores the notion contained in its title,
demonstrating that the lexicon is not merely an unstructured bag of words but
rather a complex network with links that do not only exist between words but
also between words and schemas.
Part II, ‘Using and refining the tools’, presents the proposed formalisms at
work. Chapter 4, ‘Formalizing morphological phenomena’, focusses on the
correspondence between some morphosyntactic constituents and phonological
elements, including phonology that does not have corresponding semantics. It
introduces some types of relational links (which connect constituents on the
same level) and discusses interface links (which connect semantic, syntactic,
and phonological constituents of the same lexical item). The chapter further
explores sister schemas and phenomena such as truncations, infixation,
reduplication, etc. The authors start Chapter 5, ‘Formalizing inflection’,
with their take on the distinction between derivation and inflection. They
dedicate two subsections to English and German verb paradigms. Moreover, the
authors discuss how verbs are stored and how novel inflectional forms are
constructed. The last chapter in this part – Chapter 6 ‘Morphologically
conditioned phonological alternations’ – discusses how phonology fits into the
Parallel Architecture, the status of phonetics and phonotactics, the
phonology-phonetics interface, etc. Analyzed phenomena include final devoicing
and vowel shift. It concludes that many phonological alternations are
inextricably linked to morphological constructions and are not to be
considered as “pure phonology”.
Part III,‘Beyond Morphological Theory’, demonstrates further applications of
the proposed framework. In Chapter 7, ‘Language processing and language
acquisition through the lens of Relational Morphology’, the authors share
their assumptions about the theory of language processing and the role of
long-term and working memory. They further discuss how lexical items are
accessed, what the role of the schemas is in processing, and how words are
acquired. Chapter 8, ‘Applying the tools to other domains’, is an attempt at
extending the proposed theoretical approach to other areas, not only within
the realm of language (speech register, bilingualism, dialects, orthography)
but also to such aspects as metrics, music, understanding of physical objects,
and the knowledge of geography and spatial layout. The last chapter – Chapter
9 ‘Coda: What have we done?’ – wraps everything up, attempts to answer the
question “What can’t the theory describe?”, and outlines the general scope of
the proposed approach. The book ends with a list of References, an Index of
affixes, words, constructions and schemas, and an Index of subjects and
authors.
EVALUATION
“The Texture of the Lexicon” proposes an approach towards modelling morphology
guided by the principles of the Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff 1997; 2002)
that have been previously applied to the study of syntax within the framework
of “Simpler Syntax” (Culicover and Jackendoff 2005). The principles of
Relational Morphology and its relationship with the Parallel Architecture have
been presented before in Jackendoff and Audring (2019). Besides aiming at an
approach integrating morphology into the previously elaborated framework, the
authors (just as in their other work), strive towards an explicitly
mentalistic perspective on the described phenomena, sharing their assumptions
about how language is stored and processed in the brain. Although the book can
be seen as a direct continuation of Jackendoff 2002 and Culicover and
Jackendoff 2005 and, perhaps, would be best considered as the next step in the
theory of the Parallel Architecture, I believe that readers who are not very
familiar with the previous works of these authors would not have any problem
in following the exposition of the framework or the argumentation. The ideas
are introduced in a clear and comprehensive way and the tone of the text is,
in many places, rather conversational, which makes most parts of the book an
easy read. Moreover, I found the formalisms proposed by the authors very
intuitive. Therefore, I believe that most readers will not face any
significant problems in understanding the schemas used to illustrate the
described phenomena.
Regarding the proposed formalisms, the framework of Relational Morphology
describes grammar in terms of declarative schemas, largely drawing on other
theoretical approaches, such as Lexical-Functional Grammar, Head Driven Phrase
Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, and Construction Morphology. However,
I find the Relational Morphology schemas more flexible and more intuitive, as
compared to those of the other aforementioned approaches. The schemas are
central to the proposed framework as they are considered to be a part of the
lexicon. That is to say, the authors believe that there is no strict
distinction between lexicon and grammar, as grammar rules constitute a part of
the former. The crucial feature of the schemas is that only part of them have
a purely generative function, allowing the creation of novel forms; the other,
equally important, part of the schemas is not productive, they motivate the
lexical items. This, in the authors’ view, implies that generativity is not
central to linguistic theory and that lexical relations require at least as
much attention.
In my view, “The Texture of the Lexicon” constitutes an interesting
continuation of some of the other volumes (Jackendoff 2002; Culicover and
Jackendoff 2005), as it fits with the considerations undertaken in the
previous works. However, I believe that readers unfamiliar with the authors’
previous studies will find some interesting notions in “The Texture of the
Lexicon” even without referring to the other works. Although overall a good
read, I would like to point out some aspects of the work that I consider to be
weaknesses. First of all, I wish the authors had included more language
examples that come from diverse languages – most come from English, German,
and Dutch, with very few representatives of other language families (e.g.,
Tagalog when discussing infixation, Warlpiri in the section regarding
reduplication, etc.). In defence of the authors I need to underline here that
nowhere in their work did they mention that they had been aiming at a
universalist, cross-linguistic theory. I simply wished for more diversity;
even if the authors wished to focus on Indo-European languages, more examples
from non-Germanic languages would have been much appreciated, as it would
demonstrate a wider adaptability of the proposed framework. On a similar note,
I would have preferred more “diversity” in the presented examples. At times it
felt as if the authors focussed on and based their considerations only on a
few words – examples such as ‘widen’, ‘goose vs. geese’ ‘piggish’,
‘scrumptious’ recur across various chapters quite often; it would have been
more interesting for the reader to see examples of different words and/or
different suffixes. Assuming that it was not the authors’ intention, the
reader might have an overall feeling that the whole book is centered on a few
specific affixes and certain notions are repeated over and over. Finally,
throughout the book, there are numerous questions that the authors leave open
for further investigations or “leave aside”. While it is perfectly normal that
any study has to leave certain aspects for further research for a variety of
reasons, I find that the number of issues “left aside” in “The Texture of the
Lexicon” is quite large and the motivation behind not delving deeper into this
or that question is not always clear to the reader, who does not know whether
the proposed framework would be able to tackle a given issue or not. Among the
strengths of “The Texture of the Lexicon” I would like to mention a rich list
of references, particularly in the sections concerned with language
processing, which allows the reader to confront the authors’ assumptions with
recent findings in the field.
In sum, “The Texture of the Lexicon” is a reader-friendly introduction to the
framework of Relational Morphology that complements the Parallel Architecture
approach. I believe that readers interested in morphology at large will find
something interesting in this read. Since the book has a very strong focus on
English and other Germanic languages, and there are many issues left open for
further investigation, it is hoped that in the near future we will see more
research in the Parallel Architecture and Relational Morphology frameworks to
put to the test the approach sketched by Jackendoff and Audring. Hopefully, we
will also see how applicable this framework is to other languages,
particularly non Indo-European ones.
REFERENCES
Culicover, Peter W., and Ray Jackendoff (2005). Simpler Syntax. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Jackendoff, Ray (1997). The Architecture of the Language Faculty. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Jackendoff, Ray (2002). Foundations of Language. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Jackendoff, Ray, and Audring, Jenny (2019). “Relational Morphology in the
Parallel Architecture”. In: Audring, Jenny, and Francesca Masini, eds. The
Oxford handbook of morphological theory. Oxford University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
David M. Karaj is a PhD candidate at the University of Pavia, Italy. His main
research interests regard language typology, syntax and valency-changing
phenomena.
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