Word-and-Paradigm Morphology

Matthews and S. Anderson argue for a separation of inflectional affixation from the “morphological representations” (grammatical feature inventory) of lexical items. These advocates of Word-and-Paradigm (WP) morphology argue for unordered morphosyntactic features in the morphological representation and the application of unordered realization rules which attach affixes or otherwise modify a lexical stem (reduplication, metathesis, and so forth). Affixation is therefore the result of operations on stems, rather than listed items. Although Matthews and Anderson offer theories of mapping of morphological to phonological representations, they say little about the nature of the categories featured in those representations.

Matthews developed the classical WP approach to morphology by re­fining and elaborating the rules of Prician’s Institutiones Grammaticœ. From this Classical point of departure, he developed a formal model particularly adept at handling the problems encumbering sign-based morphology pointed out by Karcevskij and Bazell: morphological asymmetry, and null and empty morphology. In place of an ordered arrangement of morphological functions for a Latin form like ferri, such as, [FER- + Infinitive + Passive], Matthews proposes a simple statement of unordered morpho-lexical features like “the Passive Infinitive of fero ”. Independent phonological operations interpret these features. One such realization rule might be: “the terminal ending (or Termination) -i is selected if the word is characterized by the elements 1st, Singular, Perfective and Present Indicative”.

An interesting claim of WP morphology is that the ordering of inflectional desinences is a matter of language specific morphotactics. Moreover, contra the mirror principle of Baker, morphological features are not mapped one-one onto affixes in fusional languages as they sometimes seem to be in agglutinative languages. Rather, inflectional derivations are built up from stems by algorithmic operations, which may map one feature onto two or more affixes or more than one feature onto one affix. Matthews, however, is careful to explain that his WP framework may be valid only for fusional languages; an Item-Arrangement or Item-Process model may be better suited for agglutinative languages. Affix order can be crucial in agglutinative languages like Turkish: Tü rk-ler-dir means “they are the Turks” while Tü rk-tü r-ler means “they are Turkish”. Here the order of affixes seems to isomorphically follow that of the morphosyntactic features. Hence the cost for Matthews’ compelling solution to the problems of fusional morphology may be the universality of his model.

Anderson’s A-morphous Morphology is an extension of what was previously called the Extended WP Model. Anderson returns to the Aspects model of syntax in postulating terminal syntactic nodes with complex symbols containing just those category features necessary for inflection: Number, Gender, and Case features for nouns, Person, Number, and Tense features for verbs. This provides a source for the morphosyntactic feature representation that Matthews assumed. Anderson maintains Matthews’ claim that the features of a morphosyntactic representation are unordered, but adds that they are layered; that is, they accumulate in ordered layers. This accounts for languages like Turkish, where some affixes are ordered vis-à -vis each other, but others are not. Features within layers trigger those affixes whose order is irrelevant; features ordered with respect to each other trigger ordered affixes. Anderson in particular notes that layering accounts for the ordering of Subject and Object agreement in languages which maintain both. The order of the pronominal affixes more often than not determines whether they are coindexed with the Subject or Object position.

Derivational morphology and compounding are processes altogether different from inflectional processes in the WP model. Because they see differences in productivity and rates of idiomaticity radically different among lexical and inflectional derivates, Matthews and Anderson assign lexical derivation exclusively to the lexicon. This was a major issue in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Europe; Fleischer, Dokulil, Kubriakova, Vinogradov, Zemskaia, and many others have written extensively on it, generally concluding that the two morphologies are distinct but without establishing clear and reliable criteria for distinguishing them. Perlmutter dubbed this hypothesis the Split Morphology Hypothesis. Since the origin of morphosyntactic features is syntax and word formation processes operate from the lexicon, the WP model with Split Morphology accounts for the distinction of inflection and word formation. It also accounts for the Lexicalist Hypothesis (=Lexical Integrity Principle), that the operations of syntax have no access to the internal structure of lexical items.

WP morphologies raise at least three fundamental issues. First, is there a universal order of (derivational and) inflectional morphemes and, if so, what determines that order? Matthews denies a universal order of fusional morphemes but leaves the door open for a model of agglutinative morphology that might specify order. Anderson provides layered morphological representations, which can accommodate both strictly ordered and unordered markers. Second, what is the relation between morphological expression and the category it expresses? If the relation is not everywhere homomorphic, there must be more than one derivational level and a set of principles for mapping one level onto the other, principles which account for ordering and scope differences between levels. Matthews was the first to explore the indirect articulation of grammatical categories in inflection and to postulate mechanisms for mapping between the categorial and phonological levels. Finally, is inflection radically distinct from lexical derivation and compounding? Although much has been written on this subject, it remains an unsettled issue.