28.430, Review: Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Syntax: Sims (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-430. Fri Jan 20 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.430, Review: Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Syntax: Sims (2015)

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Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2017 11:51:22
From: Daniel Walter [dwalter at andrew.cmu.edu]
Subject: Inflectional Defectiveness

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-957.html

AUTHOR: Andrea D. Sims
TITLE: Inflectional Defectiveness
SERIES TITLE: Cambridge Studies in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Daniel Walter, Emory University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Inflectional Defectiveness” by Andrea D. Sims explores the linguistic
phenomenon of paradigmatic gaps and investigates what perpetuates their
existence in and across languages. Sims rejects the notion that defective
patterns in morphemic paradigms are marginal, epiphenomenal failures of the
underlying generative language system. In place of such a theory, she focuses
on how inflectional defectiveness is actually a result of the same historical,
social, and cognitive factors that drive other morphological patterns. The
book is divided into eight chapters and includes analyses of multiple
languages to provide evidence for the author’s claims, with the bulk of the
evidence and analysis focusing on Modern Greek and Russian. 

The first chapter is presented as an introduction to inflectional
defectiveness. The author begins by outlining the seemingly automatic,
productive nature of morphological paradigms in English. She opens with the
example of the word “Google” and how people have applied English morphemes to
allow for its use in different contexts (e.g. googles, googled, googling,
etc.). If language users apply these patterns so readily, the question then
arises, why do paradigmatic gaps exist? The chapter then lays out three ways
of viewing these gaps: “random anomalies, epiphenomena, or (almost) normal
morphological objects,” (Sims, 2015, pp. 7). First, the random anomaly stance
posits that these gaps exist outside of the core functions of grammar and thus
are not part of normal grammatical processes. Second, the epiphenomenon
position views paradigmatic gaps as the result of conflicting morphological
feature specifications. Third and finally, the normal morphological object
view holds paradigmatic gaps as accountable to the same processes that govern
other morphological objects, which is the viewpoint taken in this book. The
author concludes by outlining her position on the structure of the lexicon,
which she does through a comparison of formal, inferential-realizational and
psycholinguistic models. Her starting point for her inquiry is a “dynamic,
paradigmatic structure of the lexicon”, which operates from a position “at the
nexus between formal morphology, linguistic typology, and psycholinguistics,”
(Sims, 2015).

The second chapter is devoted to defining the scope of inflectional
defectiveness and teasing it apart from other linguistic phenomena, including
periphrasis. The author provides a working definition in logic-based terms:

“a. IF there exists a set of morphosyntactic and/or morphosemantic feature
values F that is well-defined and morphologically encoded for at least one
lexeme belonging to part of speech C;
b. AND IF there exists a well-formed syntactic structures S that requires F in
combination with some lexeme L belonging to C;
c. BUT any form of L(subC) that is inserted into S procures an ungrammatical
construction;
d. THEN the paradigm cell defined by {L(SubC),[F]} is defective.”

In prose, this equates to the idea that if a word, as part of a particular
part of speech, has some strongly expected morphological paradigm, which it
should follow, but does not, then that intersection of morphological paradigm
and word is seen as defective. In order to justify this distinction, the
author posits different syntactic and morphological levels, in which the
morphological level does not have to directly map onto the syntactic. In other
words, although the syntactic level may require a complete paradigm, the
morphological level does not and thus a mismatch can occur. This leads to what
the author describes as a “fuzzy boundary” and a resulting “gradient” view of
defectiveness. Ultimately, cross-linguistic differences between languages in
how well-defined a certain set of morphological features is, the
distributional patterns of those features, and other linguistic external and
internal factors affect the stability of the morphological paradigm as posited
in part “a” above. In sum, the definition advanced in this chapter is reliant
on the particulars of the morphological paradigms evidenced in a specific
language and its usage.

Chapter Three is primarily focused on the causes of paradigmatic gaps, to wit
the author offers four: a lack of semantic or pragmatic need,
morphology-phonology interface issues, the application of multiple
morphological forms, and problems at the level of the morphosyntactic
structure. Gaps related to a lack of semantic and pragmatic need are said to
arise from missing contexts in which forms would actually be utilized. The
morphology-phonology interface issue deals with gaps that result from
morphological patterns being mapped onto difficult surface phonemes. The issue
regarding morphological forms is related to the problem when multiple
morphological rules compete for application. Lastly, morphosyntactic issues
are argued to result from changes in the underlying features of a language,
such as the loss of particular cases. In addition to these four causes, the
author provides evidence from the Witsuwit’en language that shows there is
sometimes no discernible cause for these patterns of defectiveness. The author
concludes her argument by positing that these causes are necessary but not
sufficient to explain patterns of defectiveness. 
Chapter Four focuses on the competing outcomes of syncretism and defectiveness
when the morphological system does not completely overlap with syntactic
specifications. The author points out that this competition at the
morphological level of language can result in three possible outcomes:
syncretism overrides defectiveness, defectiveness overrides syncretism, and
defectiveness follows the pattern of syncretism. The author’s main point is
that the interrelation between defectiveness and syncretism show lexically
specific defectiveness that appears as part of the inflection system because,
as she argues, the syntactic and morphological paradigm levels can have
“distinct shapes”. Of necessary mention is the author’s note that real-world,
empirical data pose “a significant challenge to a theoretical account of
defectiveness,” which leads her turn to other functionalist, connectionist,
and emergentist approaches.

Chapter Five turns from descriptive characteristics of paradigmatic gaps and
takes a closer look at how they can arise from the same principles that
organize the entire inflectional system. For this, the author uses examples
from nominal inflectional patterns in Greek, which exhibits defectiveness in
the genitive plural forms, as well as some genitive singular forms. The
results from the Greek data indicate that a lack of paradigmatic cohesion is
one of the primary reasons for the gaps in these paradigms. The author
concludes the chapter by drawing into question whether paradigms themselves
should be the focus of our attention or paradigmatic relations.

Chapter Six builds on the idea presented in Chapter Five, that defectiveness
and paradigmatic gaps are themselves morphological objects. One idea the
author attempts to counter is that lack of form does not provide evidence for
language learners. The author argues that while a lack of morphology would be
a problem if viewed in isolation, the fact is that these gaps develop within
systems that have morphological forms and that these gaps can be viewed as
signals of morphology because of the evidence and expectations provided by
other paradigms in the language. Using statistical analyses of Greek corpora,
the author points to multiple causes for these gaps, which include a lack of
cohesion in the paradigm and speakers’ ability to avoid certain forms through
the use of prepositional phrases. In addition, she includes data from
elicitation and ratings studies showing that speakers have reanalyzed some of
these patterns as lexeme-specific.

Chapter Seven brings the previous chapters to a head by investigating the
problem of learnability and the dynamic organization of the lexicon. Using
data from Russian first person singular gaps, the author shows that no single
explanation seems to be able to capture the defectiveness exhibited in the
language. The author argues that for these gaps to exist they must be
learnable by the same principles as other aspects of grammar. Using Bayesian
modelling, the author shows how absences can be inferenced and seen as
morphological objects by learners. Morphological, phonological, and semantic
patterns that emerge dynamically from usage form lexical gangs that reinforce
particular patterns. The author argues that these lexical gangs and learning
processes overcome the problems of negative evidence, sparse data, and
minority patterns.

Chapter Eight summarizes the previous seven chapters and focuses on
reinforcing the author’s claim that defectiveness and the resulting gaps are
simply allomorphs. The chapter concludes with a critique of linguistic
theories which treat inflectional paradigms as either regular or irregular,
based on the information that irregular patterns, and regular for that matter,
vary in conformity from one word and one language to the next, and that these
patterns result from common learning and historical processes.

EVALUATION

In “Inflection Defectivenss”, Andrea Sims shines a light on a specific,
controversial, problematic, and therefore often ignored aspect of many of the
world’s languages. In doing so, the author describes a number of paradigmatic
gaps in multiple languages.

The initial impression given by the first few chapters is that the book is
written from a formalist perspective. A number of the items are laid out in a
manner reminiscent of Chomskian, logic-based approaches to the study of
language. For readers not familiar with somewhat esoteric linguistic
terminology, accessing the first few chapters may be a challenge. In addition,
some of the explanations of particular linguistic problems focus on forms,
rather than cognitive explanations for the appearance of those forms.

What is interesting is that, as the book goes on, the author slowly changes
the feel and focus of her argument. As she tries to bridge the gap between
formalist linguistic and cognitive approaches, more and more material,
methods, and perspectives from methods unfamiliar to formal linguists appear.
For readers expecting a purely formal linguistic text, there will be certain
areas in which additional reading in connectionism and cognitive linguistics
may be necessary. Some particularly helpful articles to read in conjunction
with this text would be Rumelhart and McClelland (1987) for Parallel
Distributed Processing (PDP), MacWhinney, Leinbach, and Taraban (1989) for
Competition Model and Cue-based learning, and Chater, Tenenbaum, and Yuille
(2006) for Probabilistic and Bayesian Modeling approaches.

Because the author tries to reconcile two often opposing views on the nature
of language, readers from both camps will likely find points of contention
with this book. On the one hand, cognitivists may find some of the
explanations, particularly in the beginning chapters, overly rule-based. On
the other hand, formalists may take issue with the way the author begins to
conflate language form and use to explain problems of learnability, and moves
away from formal linguistic explanations. In sum, the author takes on the
heavy task of bringing two theoretically opposed camps together in order to
explain the data, and she accomplishes it to a certain extent. 
This book is intended for advanced linguistic researchers (graduate students
and above) who are interested in morphology. A significant amount of prior
knowledge across the linguistic spectrum is necessary for comprehension, and
even then additional readings in particular areas may be necessary. 

REFERENCES

Chater, N., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Yuille, A. (2006). Probabilistic models of
cognition: Conceptual foundations. Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(7),
287-291.

MacWhinney, B., Leinbach, J., Taraban, R., & McDonald, J. (1989). Language
learning: Cues or rules? Journal of Memory and language, 28(3), 255-277.

Rumelhart, D. E., & McClelland, J. L. (1987). Learning the past tenses of
English verbs: Implicit rules or parallel distributed processing. Mechanisms
of language acquisition, 195-248.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dan Walter is a Visiting Assistant Professor of German and Writing at Emory
University Oxford Campus. His research interests include Second Language
Acquisition, Morphosyntax and Sociocognitive approaches to language learning.
He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in Second Language
Acquisition in 2015.





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