syncretism w/o paradigms

[Martha McGinnis]

Hi Dan,

>in the phrasal
>paradigm cells there is usually semantic drift, in the direction of
>changing the meaning of the phrasal cells so that their meaning is (i)
>not merely compositional and (ii) matching the expected meaning of that
>cell of the paradigm, as though the paradigm itself were imposing
>meaning. How does DM handle paradigm-influenced meaning, without
>paradigms?

The phrasal/nonphrasal competitions I've come across in the DM
literature don't make reference to semantic drift.  Some examples
include 'more' vs. '-er' comparatives and 'make+V' vs. affix-derived
causative Vs.  A new case of Vocab competition could in principle
arise as a result of semantic drift.  I don't think there's anything
in DM that predicts any kind of causal relation there, but I don't
think anyone's tried to come up with such a theory -- perhaps you can.

But there are also blocking effects that don't involve Vocab
competition.  Rolf Noyer has talked about different kinds of blocking
effects within the DM framework.  I'm not sure if this is written up
-- I have it on a handout from a talk he gave some years ago at MIT.
Worth pursuing if you want to explore this idea in a DM framework.

-Martha
--
mcginnis at ucalgary.ca