Expecting the Unexpected: Exceptions in Grammar (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs)

Expecting the Unexpected: Exceptions in Grammar

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 216

Editor

Volker Gast Founding Editor

Werner Winter Editorial Board

Walter Bisang Hans Henrich Hock Matthias Schlesewsky Niina Ning Zhang Editor responsible for this volume

Walter Bisang

De Gruyter Mouton

Expecting the Unexpected: Exceptions in Grammar

Edited by

Horst J. Simon Heike Wiese

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-3-11-021908-1 e-ISBN 978-3-11-021909-8 ISSN 1861-4302 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Expecting the unexpected : exceptions in grammar / edited by Horst J. Simon, Heike Wiese. p. cm. ⫺ (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 216) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-021908-1 (alk. paper) 1. Grammar, Comparative and general ⫺ Grammatical categories. 2. Generative grammar. 3. Functionalism (Linguistics) I. Simon, Horst J. II. Wiese, Heike. P283.E97 2011 415⫺dc22 2010039874

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Typesetting: PTP-Berlin Protago TEX-Production GmbH, Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany. www.degruyter.com

Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

Introductory overview What are exceptions? And what can be done about them? . . . . . . . . Horst J. Simon and Heike Wiese

3

Coming to grips with exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edith Moravcsik

31

Classical loci for exceptions: morphology and the lexicon Exceptions to stress and harmony in Turkish: co-phonologies or prespecification? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barı¸s Kabak and Irene Vogel Lexical exceptions as prespecification: some critical remarks . . . . . . T.A. Hall

59 95

Feature spreading, lexical specification and truncation . . . . . . . . . . 103 Barı¸s Kabak and Irene Vogel Higher order exceptionality in inflectional morphology . . . . . . . . . 107 Greville G. Corbett An I-language view of morphological ‘exceptionality’: Comments on Corbett’s paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Stephen R. Anderson Exceptions and what they tell us: reflections on Anderson’s comments . 135 Greville G. Corbett How do exceptions arise? On different paths to morphological irregularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Damaris Nübling On the role of subregularities in the rise of exceptions . . . . . . . . . . 163 Wolfgang U. Dressler

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Statement on the commentary by Wolfgang U. Dressler Damaris Nübling

. . . . . . . . 169

Taking into account interactions of grammatical sub-systems Lexical variation in relativizer frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Thomas Wasow, T. Florian Jaeger, and David M. Orr Corpus evidence and the role of probability estimates in processing decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Ruth Kempson Response to Kempson’s comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Thomas Wasow, T. Florian Jaeger and David Orr Structured exceptions and case selection in Insular Scandinavian . . . . 213 Jóhannes G´ısli Jónsson and Thórhallur Eythórsson Remarks on two kinds of exceptions: arbitrary vs. structured exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Susann Fischer Response to Susann Fischer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Jóhannes G´ısli Jónsson and Thórhallur Eythórsson

Loosening the strictness of grammar Three approaches to exceptionality in syntactic typology . . . . . . . . 255 Frederick J. Newmeyer Remarks on three approaches to exceptionality in syntactic typology . . 283 Artemis Alexiadou A reply to the commentary by Artemis Alexiadou . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Frederick J. Newmeyer Three types of exceptions – and all of them rule-based . . . . . . . . . . 291 Sam Featherston Anomalies and exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Hubert Haider Distinguishing lexical and syntactic exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Sam Featherston

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Disagreement, variation, markedness, and other apparent exceptions . . 339 Ralf Vogel What is an exception to what? – Some comments on Ralf Vogel’s contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Henk van Riemsdijk Response to van Riemsdijk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Ralf Vogel Describing exceptions in a formal grammar framework . . . . . . . . . 377 Frederik Fouvry Explanation and constraint relaxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 Pius ten Hacken

Unexpected loci for exceptions: languages and language families Quantitative explorations of the worldwide distribution of rare characteristics, or: the exceptionality of northwestern European languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 Michael Cysouw Remarks on rarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 Östen Dahl Some more details about the definition of rarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 Michael Cysouw Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 Language index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Preface The present volume contains a variety of contributions: some have evolved from a selection of contributions to a workshop at the 27th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Linguistics (DGfS) in Cologne in 2005; others were invited by the editors. We have decided to introduce a somewhat exceptional – or at least rare – structural feature to this volume: Each main article is complemented by an invited critical commentary and by a response from the original author(s) (with the exception of the two introductory chapters, which thus constitute a small exceptional subset within the broader exceptional pattern of this book). We believe that enhancing the discursivity of the book in this way makes for a livelier and more fruitful discussion, in particular in the case of a topic that is as central to theory and practice in our field, and accordingly as controversial, as that of exceptions. The beginnings of this book reach back to a time when we were both Research Fellows of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, at the University of Vienna and at Yale University respectively, on leave from our shared home affiliation at the Department of German Language and Linguistics at Humboldt University; we gratefully acknowledge the support of these institutions. Horst J. Simon & Heike Wiese London & Potsdam, 2010

Introductory overview

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them? Horst J. Simon and Heike Wiese

la question de l’exception est un point névralgique de la linguistique (Danjou-Flaux and Fichez-Vallez 1985: 99)

1.

Exceptions and rules

When modelling data, we want the world to be nice and simple. We would like the phenomena we encounter to be easily categorised and neatly related to each other, and maybe even into causal or at least implicational relationships. However, the world is more complicated. More often than not, when we propose rules in order to capture the observed facts, we find problems. Certain pieces of data refuse to submit to the generalisations we propose; they stand out as exceptions. Or, to put it the other way round, an ‘exception’ necessarily implies a rule, which it violates. In what follows we illustrate four central aspects of the complex relationship between exceptions and rules: (i) the underdetermination of rules, and hence the impossibility of avoid exceptions, (ii) the formation of ‘exceptional rules’ in subsystems, (iii) the interaction of different grammatical levels influencing rules and exceptions, and (iv) the possibility of having more exceptions than rule-governed instances. 1.1. The underdetermination of rules In a general sense, a rule is a generalisation over empirical observations that allows predictions with regard to data yet to be collected.1 The basic problem with generalisations is, of course, that we never know the future for certain: one can never know that the next bit of data one examines will not be like the 1. Thus, the concept of ‘rule’ in an empirical science like linguistics must be distinguished from the concept of a ‘social rule’, which people are expected to adhere to.

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data considered before. The reason for this is the fact that a rule is underdetermined by its extension, i.e. by the instantiations of its application. An example of what it means to follow a rule has been discussed by Wittgenstein (1953: §143ff., in particular 185f.): Consider a case where you try to teach someone the rule ‘add 2’ for natural numbers by showing her the series ‘0, 2, 4, 6, 8’. The pupil then correctly writes ‘0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, …’, that is, she can apply the rule to new instances. But when reaching 1000, she might go on ‘1004, 1008, 1012, …’. In such a case, the pupil might have extrapolated a rule “Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000, and so on.” (§185). Both the pupil’s rule and our rule were compatible with the initial data, i.e. with the series from 0 to 8, hence, an extrapolation of a rule from these data (its instantiations) is underdetermined. Now, since the available data underlying any generalisation are of necessity finite, this is a fundamental problem for the empirical sciences.2 Now imagine a slightly different case (not Wittgenstein’s example anymore): The pupil sees the same series ‘0, 2, …, 8’ and this time extrapolates from this data the rule ‘add 2’. However, she then discovers that the series goes on ‘10, 12, …, 1000, 1004’. In order to account for this new data, one option she now has is to keep the rule ‘add 2’ and mark ‘1004’ as an exception. Another option is to assume a more complex rule, e.g. the one along the lines of ‘Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000, …’. In this simple case, the two different rules would make two different predictions that could be tested by further data: In the first case, the series should then go on ‘1006, 1008, 1010, …’; in the second case, it should go on ‘1004, 1008, 1012, …, 2000, 2006, 2012, …’. Or it might be the case that something in-between is correct: it might turn out that the series from 1000 to 2000 forms an irregular, exceptional subsystem with a special rule ‘add 4’ that only holds in this domain; then the series would go on ‘1008, 1012, …, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, …’. 1.2. Exceptional rules Such in-between phenomena that illustrate the dialectical nature of the relationship between rules and exceptions, can be found, for instance, in a linguistic counterpart of numbers, the formation of number words in natural languages. In most languages of the world, the following generalisation holds: in complex number words of an additive make-up, the constituent referring to the larger

2. There are, of course, general methodological considerations to guide one’s generalisation process, for instance Occam’s Razor, which basically advises one not to add complications to an analysis unless absolutely necessary.

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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number comes first (cf. Hurford’s 1975 ‘Packing Strategy’). For instance, a decade word (words for the decades 10, 20, 30, …, 90) should come before a word for ones (1, …, 9), as in English forty-two, not *two-forty, so that we have an order “H-L” of constituents, where H is the higher number word, and L is the lower one. However, the English teens represent an exception to this rule: number words from thirteen to nineteen follow the pattern ‘L-H’ where the lower constituent, namely the expression for the ones, precedes the higher constituent, i.e. the decade word (hence, we have thir-teen, four-teen, … nineteen). This is in contrast to, say, French, where the order is H-L (dix-sept, dixhuit, dix-neuf) in keeping with the general rule for the order of additive constituents. The English teens hence form a small, exceptional class of their own: given their unified pattern, we can formulate a sub-rule for them, stating that ‘the order of constituents is L-H for teens’. What we have here is then an ‘exceptional rule’. This rule is restricted to only a few words and deviates from the general pattern of number words in English which follows the usual HL pattern found in the world’s languages. However, there are also languages where the kind of irregular pattern we find in English teens is more generalised and is used in all number word constructions consisting of a decade word and a word for ones. Examples are other Germanic languages like German or Dutch, but also genetically and typologically unrelated languages like Arabic. In these languages, the L-H pattern holds not only for the teens, but extends to 1–20, 2–20, … 9–90. Thus, despite the obvious exceptionality from a typological point of view, we can still find internal regularity in these languages: for a large ‘exceptional’ class, we can formulate a rule ‘LO -HD ’, where ‘O’ is a number word for ones, and ‘D’ is one for decades, as a well-defined deviation from the general H-L rule. This rule then supports a special, exceptional subsystem, a subsystem that covers a larger domain than the one in English, and that is absent in French altogether. In this sense, exceptionality is a gradeable and context-dependent concept: elements can be more or less exceptional, and they can be exceptional with respect to a general rule that governs the system as a whole, but non-exceptional with respect to a rule that governs a subsystem. 1.3. The interaction of different grammatical levels The interplay of rule and exception is of methodological and theoretical significance for any linguistic analysis. It therefore comes as no surprise that the first major methodological debate in modern linguistics, in the 1870s, centred exactly around this problem. In compliance with 19th century linguists’ preoccupation with diachronic issues, this so-called Neogrammarian Controversy

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focused on the hypothesis that Sound Laws are without exceptions.3 Following up on previous achievements of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, and inspired by possible parallels with the Laws of Physics, the Neogrammarians maintained that: Aller Lautwandel, so weit er mechanisch vor sich geht, vollzieht sich nach ausnahmslosen gesetzen, d.h. die richtung der lautbewegung ist bei allen angehörigen einer sprachgenossenschaft, ausser dem fall, dass dialektspaltung eintritt, stets dieselbe, und alle wörter, in denen der der lautbewegung unterworfende laut unter gleichen verhältnissen erscheint, werden ohne ausnahme von der änderung ergriffen. (Osthoff and Brugmann 1878: XIII) [All sound change, insofar as it is mechanical, takes places under exceptionless laws, i.e. the direction of the sound movement is always the same with all members of a speech community – unless dialect split occurs – and all words, in which the sound undergoing the sound movement occurs in the same circumstances, are without exception affected by the change.]

The main initial idea here was that at a certain place in a certain period all words containing the relevant sound (in the relevant phonological environment) would have undergone a particular sound change captured by a certain ‘law’; the motivation for such a general change was primarily seen in physiological factors. Later on, the hypothesis was somewhat relaxed by reducing it to a ‘working hypothesis’ – and one which was motivated by considerations from psychology. The greatest triumph of the rigorous Neogrammarian methodology – and a confirmation of their basic idea – was accomplished by the discovery of Verner’s Law. Initially, there had remained an embarrassing exception to the outcomes of the First (Germanic) Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law: in this sound shift the Indo-European voiceless plosive consonants /p, t, k/ were fricativised to /f, þ, h/ (as exemplified by the correspondence of Ancient Greek phr¯at¯or and Gothic br¯oþar ‘brother’). However, unexpectedly, the equivalent of Greek pat¯er was Gothic faðar ‘father’ with a voiced fricative.4 Working within the ‘exceptionlessness-paradigm’,5 Verner (1877) could reconcile the deviant facts with Grimm’s Law decades after its initial formulation. He showed how 3. Neatly documented in Wilbur (1977) and discussed at length in Jankowsky (1972). 4. Modern German still evinces differing consonants in this case: Bruder and Vater, albeit with different voicedness values due to subsequent developments. 5. His main tenet was: “Bei der annahme eines zufalls darf man jedoch nicht beharren. […] Es muss in solchem falle so zu sagen eine regel für die unregelmässigkeit da sein; es gilt nur diese ausfindig zu machen” (Verner 1877: 101). [However, one must not be content with the assumption of chance. In such a case, there must be, so to speak, a rule for the irregularity; it is just necessary to find it.]

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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these exceptions could be explained by taking into account the position of the word accent in the proto-language: Grimm’s Law proper applies only if the accent was on the immediately preceding syllable in Proto-Indo-European, otherwise the fricatives are voiced in Germanic: /b, d, g/.6 This case nicely illustrates that exceptions on one linguistic level (in this case, the segmental-phonological system) can be accounted for by competing rules from other linguistic – or nonlinguistic – levels (in this case, prosodic phonology). Meanwhile, there were a great many diachronic sound laws advanced, which apply the idea of ‘blind’, exceptionless sound changes.7 – This is not to say, by the way, that all sound change is exceptionless. In fact, sometimes even the exact opposite occurs: so-called ‘sporadic’ change – one that exceptionally occurs in a single example, both unexplained and inexplicable – as for instance the loss of /r/ in Modern English speech from Old English spræc.8 What is more, there are also many examples where non-phonological factors interfere with the regularity of a sound change. The most notable of these are analogy,9 lexical diffusion and general sociolinguistic factors.10 McMahon (1994: 21) captures the dialectic relationship of phonology and paradigmatic morphology in what she calls ‘Sturtevant’s Paradox’: “sound change is regular but creates irregularity, whereas analogy is irregular but creates regularity.” 1.4. Exceptions in the majority One important factor in the interplay of rules and exceptions is that it is not at all trivial to decide which is which given a mass of initially unstructured facts. Often it turns out that what appears to be an exception in one scientific account is an instantiation of the rules in a competing analysis. A case in point is the system of plural formation in German nouns. Nominal plural in German is expressed by a variety of suffixes (-e, -en, -er etc.) as well as by umlaut and zero-suffixation, leading to eight different forms of plural formation. In order to account for the distribution of plural markers over nouns, a number of rules have been proposed in traditional German grammar, making use of features 6. Apparently, this correlation between voicedness and accent is still applicable in Modern German, cf. Hannó[f]er vs. Hanno[v]eráner; Udolph 1989). 7. Many of the sound changes inside Indo-European are discussed in Collinge (1985). 8. In other words, the initial consonant cluster has been retained in Modern English (as can be deduced from examples such as spring, spray, sprawl etc.), so there is no sound law in the history of English pertaining to the loss of r in speech. 9. Already alluded to in the above quote from Osthoff and Brugmann (1878). 10. Those factors have been discussed amply, and non-conclusively, in the literature, e.g. in Labov (1981) and de Olviera (1991).

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from different grammatical levels, like nominal gender, number of syllables, or the ending of the singular form. However, these rules can only account for part of the nominal inventory and do not work very well for predictions. There is one plural ending, though, whose distribution can be accounted for more straightforwardly, namely the suffix -s. This plural suffix is used as a default; it turns up whenever there is no existing form already or none that can be formed by analogy, as in a lot of loan words, in abbreviations, and also in proper names. This had led to accounts that characterise the -s suffix as the regular form, while the seven other classes of nominal plural are considered irregular ones that are driven by analogy (Janda 1991, R. Wiese 1996: 136–143, Pinker 1999: 211– 239). Additional support for the ‘regular’ status of the -s plural comes from overgeneralisations in first language acquisition (Clahsen et al. 1992, Marcus et al. 1995). However, the -s suffix is the least common plural form statistically, hence under this view, only a small part of plural formation is regularly rule-governed, while most of it is exceptional: exceptions are more commonly realised than rules – the statistical relationship of specific rule and Elsewhererule is turned upside down; curiously, such an analysis echoes a remark in Mark Twain’s essay, ‘The Awful German Language’: Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last [the language learner] thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, “Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions.” He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. (Twain [1880]1907: 267)

Thus, maybe unfortunately for the language learner (and the language teacher) and fortunately for the linguist who is interested in complex structures, language is not parsimonious. As has already become clear from the examples discussed so far, there are different ways that linguists typically handle the exceptions they encounter in their analyses. In the following sections, we will discuss these in turn.

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

2.

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Approaches to exceptions

2.1. Ignoring exceptions A common approach to the problems posed by exceptions is to simply ignore them. This can be achieved through more or less sophisticated argumentation. For example, when confronted with an exception to the rule that one has proposed, often the easiest way out is to say that this apparently disturbing fact does not belong to the linguistic system one analyses, using the infamous answering technique: ‘Well, in my dialect …’.11 As Labov (1972: 292) has noted, “‘[m]y dialect’ turns out to be characterized by all sentence types that have been objected to by others.” In the statistical analysis of data, doing away with exceptions is part of a reasonable methodology: in any empirical study, one has to take into account that the collected data can be ‘spoiled’ for a variety of reasons. In order to minimise unwanted statistical effects due to ‘bad’ data (which appear as a kind of exceptions to the general picture), one usually abstracts away from what is called ‘outliers’, i.e. the most deviant pieces of data on any given test item; they are held to likely be mistakes or other ‘irrelevant’ phenomena. 2.2. Re-analysing exceptions Another type of exceptional data – not mentioned so far – can be entire languages. In cross-linguistically informed typological linguistics, where correlations between logically independent facts are investigated, one rarely finds downright ‘universal’ phenomena; the formulations of the ‘statistical universals’ are usually hedged by phrases like ‘with overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency’, thereby allowing for a small number of languages behaving not as expected (cf. Dryer 1998 for discussion). One type of exception one frequently encounters in linguistics is the odd language that does not follow the generalisations made in large-scale crosslinguistic investigations. Thus, in linguistic typology, Greenberg-type universals are extrapolated from large databases: basically they are predictions of occurrences of a certain structure, or rather predictions of the fact that they do not occur or can occur only under specific conditions. However, there almost

11. Obviously, the background assumption in such a strategy is that data from a different micro-variety need not be taken into account since “[l]inguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly …” (Chomsky 1965: 3).

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always appear to be a few, some, or just single examples of languages where the structure in question does in fact exist in a ‘forbidden’ context. While singleton languages not displaying the usual phenomena are interesting laboratories for the typologist, who can then seek to find an explanation as to what functional or other factors have played a role in creating such a peculiar system, such languages can be a great challenge for the formal linguist. Especially in the Chomskyan tradition with its strong emphasis on explanations on the grounds of a genetically endowed Universal Grammar (UG), languages with exceptional grammatical peculiarities pose problems.12 Since grammatical distinctions, be they universal or only the speciality of a single language, should be captured by UG mechanisms in order to be acquirable by the child, the UG component becomes more unwieldy if it has to cater for all those exceptional characteristics. Because of this extra burden that exceptions put on the language faculty, within this framework it is very much desirable to show that any account that assumes exceptions is flawed and can be replaced by one that re-analyses the phenomena in a way that exceptions disappear. To give an example of an allegedly exceptional trait that turned out to be a chimera on closer inspection:13 all recently proposed morphological feature inventories designed to capture the various systems of person-number combinations in the pronouns of the world (cf. Harley and Ritter 2002 and subsequent work) have difficulties when it comes to distinguish the putative clusivity contrast in second person plural pronouns, i.e. the difference between a set of only addressees on the one hand and a group comprising addressee(s) and other(s) (non-speech-act-participants) on the other. While some authors have categorically denied the existence of such a distinction, others have claimed to have found exceptions to the statement ‘no language distinguishes clusivity in the second person’. A closer look at these purported exceptional systems revealed, however, that in each case there had been some kind of mistake in the transmission of the data: in the case of South-East Ambrym, the original author had inadvertently conflated two geographically distinct dialects in his paradigms; with regard to Abkhaz (and a number of other, unrelated languages), an essentially emphatic suffix had been misinterpreted as involving clusivity; in the descriptions of Ojibwe (and a few other languages), the term ‘second person inclusive’ 12. In this context, a reviewer has mentioned Newmeyer’s (2005) discussion of the relationship between typology and UG. In our understanding, however, this is somewhat beside the point, since Newmeyer seems to be concerned with broad-sweeping typological generalisations and how they can be accounted for, not necessarily with the explanation of potential individual counter-examples. 13. This example is more thoroughly discussed and documented in Simon (2005).

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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had been used in a terminologically confused (and confusing) way. In short, a careful study of the details of the particular pronominal systems (aided by philological and dialect-geographic information) could show that the ‘exception’ in question actually vanished when studied more closely.14 In this case, then, exceptions could be ‘analysed away’ by a more careful look at the data; there is no need to complicate the model of morphological features (Simon 2005). Nonetheless, exceptions frequently do refuse to go away. In a typological vein, several phenomena have been recorded among the languages of the world that are ‘rara, rarissima or even none-suchs’.15 2.3. Integrating exceptions In the study of a single language, one also frequently encounters a set of data that cannot be handled straightforwardly by the usual grammatical rules of that language. In that case, at least two principal options arise for the researcher: s/he can restrict the domain of the main rule and allocate the exceptions to a special sub-component of the grammar (a sub-rule, e.g. the one discussed above for decade number words, or, more extremely, the Lexicon); or s/he can design the grammatical apparatus in a softer fashion so that the exceptions can be accomodated in the main component itself. We will demonstrate these options in turn. In the first kind of approach, one reduces the scope of the main grammatical rule when one finds data contradicting it. In this case, one defines a smaller domain for the rule and makes no prediction for the rest, i.e. for the space of the exceptions. Thus one gets a ‘core grammar’ and some kind of periphery where the normal rules simply do not apply. A case in point are interjections, response particles and the like, which allow for phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic structures that are otherwise ruled out in the language. 14. Ironically, new possible evidence for the category just discussed – and thus possibly an exceptional linguistic trait –, which was brought forward by Simon (2005) from Bavarian, has meanwhile also been disputed by Gehling (2006). Here, in fact, the debate revolves around the question where to draw the boundary between grammar and pragmatics – the question of how much of politeness and other pragmatic factors needs to be incorporated into a referentially-oriented grammatical system. 15. They have been collected in the internet archive ‘Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett’ (‘The grammatical rarity cabinet’) at the University of Constance, searchable at: http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/rara/intro/. There one can also find the Universals Archive which lists not only the typological universals proposed, but also pertinent counter-examples that have been noted in the literature. – Cf. also the recent collections of studies on this matter: Wohlgemuth and Cysouw (2010a,b).

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For instance, this is the domain where German allows for non-vowel syllable nuclei of whole words ([pst], [ P  P] / [P mP m])16 . A version of that domain-restricting strategy is the strong reliance on a notion of the Lexicon as a storage space for all the peculiar characteristics of lexical items. In consequence, the syntactic (or phonological, or semantic) component proper is freed from all complications. Any idiosyncrasies are relegated to the individual lexical entries, where they are, by definition, not exceptions but only specific lexicalised properties. Rather than relegating exceptions to the lexicon altogether, one can define a specific rule for them that creates an exceptional subset, and an Elsewhere-rule for the rest. This can account for exceptions that constitute sub-systems of their own, which is quite common, since exceptions tend to cluster. However, as the example of German plural formation illustrated, it may not always be an easy task to decide which sub-system represents the main rule and which one the exceptional rule.17 An altogether different approach to the problem of exceptions is the second kind of approach mentioned above, which is based on the notion of a softer grammar, a grammar without hard contrasts, where exceptions pose much less of a problem. One way of achieving this is to build the model of grammar on prototypes. In doing so, one defines focal elements, which combine a number of key characteristics. Grammatical items will be more or less similar to these prototypes; those that are least similar are what used to be called exceptions; they have now turned their status into ‘non-prototypical members of their category’. The obvious advantage of such an approach is the great flexibility and cross-categorial cohesion it creates. A potential disadvantage is that its lack of clear-cut distinctions makes it hard to formalise, and brings with it the risk that useful distinctions might be blurred (for discussion cf., e.g., Tsohatzidis 1990 and Aarts et al. 2004). Another flexible approach to the problem of exceptions in grammar is to allow different rules to compete with each other. This means that one will not have a single, definite prediction but that several, possibly graded, alternatives arise. 16. The second example is the phonological representation of a colloquial variant of the negative response particle (ie., the counterpart of ‘no’) (cf. H. Wiese 2003 for a detailed discussion of the exceptional status of interjections). 17. A comparable situation holds for diachronic facts: system-internally, it is far from clear whether English has a rule that results in the loss of /r/ in certain syllable positions (cf. bass, equivalent to Modern German Barsch), and the r is occasionally retained as in horse, or whether horse is what one expects and r was lost exceptionally in bass; only facts of extra-linguistic history (and consequently probable language contact scenarios) help to clarify the situation (cf. Hoenigswald 1978: 26).

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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In a subcase of this scenario, rules from different grammatical sub-systems access the same domain so that, for instance, regularities from semantics and from syntax are in competition. Consequently, the phenomenon at hand is an exception in one system, but is predicted in the other system. Take, for instance, case assignment of some psych-verbs in German, like frieren ‘to feel cold’. A sentence with a psych-verb like (1) poses a problem for a syntactic account of German. (1)

Mich friert. 1sg.acc freeze.3sg ‘I am freezing.’ (lit.: “Me freezes.”)

In (1) the only argument slot is occupied by an accusative pronoun. So, do we have an accusative (or ergative) subject here, in contrast to what we find in German sentences as a rule? Against this analysis, we find no person-number agreement between the pronoun and the finite verb. So, have we instead got an entirely subject-less clause? This would constitute an exception in the syntax of German as well.18 But despite this syntactic anomaly, the structure makes perfect sense from a semantic point of view: The Experiencer-role is typically coded by dative or accusative case,19 whereas the nominative subject of a clause is typically an Agent. In this example, there is a mismatch between the syntactic and semantic requirements of a ‘normal’ clause; the two components compete with each other. The syntactic requirements are fulfilled when the sentence is coded as in (2), a construction that is more common in modern German, replacing the subject-less alternative illustrated in (1). In this case, we also get the syntactically expected subject-verb agreement. The morphosyntactic system’s gain is, however, semantics’ loss, because of the unusual correlation of case and semantic role.

18. The variant Es friert mich gives evidence of a rescue strategy available in this case: the use of an expletive subject whose only function seems to be to rectify the exceptionality of (1). 19. As in Ich streichle ihm dat - exp den Bart. (lit.: “I stroke him the beard.”, ‘I am stroking his beard’) and Ich lehre ihn acc - exp singen. (lit.: “I teach him sing.”, ‘I teach him to sing’).

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Horst J. Simon and Heike Wiese

Ich friere. 1sg.nom freeze.1sg ‘I am freezing.’

The observed pattern extends to other examples of relatively recent change as well, showing that we are dealing with a real – if exceptional – sub-system in the case system of German. (3a) vs. (3b) shows a similar phenomenon for the case of denken ‘to think’, where the development towards morpho-syntactic regulation is even more advanced – that is, (3a) sounds already archaic and is rarely used in contemporary German anymore – presumably driven by the more agentive status of the (Experiencer-) role that denken assigns compared to frieren:20 (3)

a. → b.

Mich 1sg.acc Ich 1sg.nom ‘I think.’

dünkt. think.3sg denke. think.1sg

What this development illustrates, then, is the interplay not only of exceptions and rules, but of exceptions, rules, and grammatical (sub)systems: what appears as an exception in one system can be perfectly in accordance with a rule from another system. Such an interlocking network of rules (or rather: constraints) – each of them violable – is focussed on in approaches within Optimality Theory: in this framework, the rules themselves need not be modified, they are just seen to be operating on different levels of grammar, and taking different dominance over each other. 3.

Why are there exceptions? How do they arise, and how do disappear?

3.1. The emergence of exceptions At a first glance, one should think that a language system without exceptions would be best. And indeed, that is what one roughly gets – at least at the beginning – when people invent an artificial language, such as Esperanto.21

20. Moreover, the obsolete form of the verb is replaced by a newer, more regular one. 21. Cf. Hagège (2005) for discussion.

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

15

However, since natural languages are biological systems they are susceptible to evolutionary change (cf. e.g. Ritt 2004); it is only natural that they evolve gradually. In such a view of language change that crucially involves the idea of bricolage – tinkering with what happens to be at hand (cf. Lass 1997: 313– 316) – small-scale incremental changes necessarily produce structures that are exceptions to the system before the change.22 So how exactly do exceptions come into existence? We will discuss two major scenarios: first, the interplay of different levels of grammar can create complexity and irregularity on one level when changes occur on another level; second, changes due to extra-grammatical factors can unbalance the distribution of forms in a grammar. An illustration for the first kind of scenario comes from a part of the grammar of English and German that appears quite confusing and exception-laden today, but started out as a fairly regular component in Proto-Indo-European: the group of co-called ‘irregular verbs’. This group comprises for the most part what historical linguists call ‘strong verbs’, i.e. those verbs which form their past tense and their past participle forms with ablaut of the stem vowel. In Contemporary German, this area seems to be hardly rule-governed at all. The 5th edition of the Duden-grammar of Modern German (Duden 1995), for instance, lists as many as 39 ablaut-classes for the ca. 170 ablauting verbs (p. 125),23 several with only one verb that follows the particular pattern – each of them being an exception to all others so to speak. By contrast, the system of ablaut was entirely regular in an early variety of Indo-European.24 and still fairly predictable 22. Taken seriously, this fact contradicts the research methodology of strict structuralism (purporting to analyse ‘un système où tout se tient’) as it is most succinctly stated by Beedham (2005: 153): “Yet exceptions do exist, so how do they arise? It seems to me that they arise to the extent that we, the grammarians, have got it wrong. We introduce them from outside with rules that are not quite right. If a rule is 100% correct it will have no (unexplained) exceptions whatsoever, if it is almost right it will have a smaller number of exceptions, and if it is badly wrong it will have lots of exceptions.” Reasonable as such a view may seem as a methodological premise, in the light of the inevitability of exceptions in diachrony, it will have to be discarded. 23. To be fair, the most recent edition brings some systematisation into this list (Duden 2005: 458–461). 24. That is at least the picture one gets if one subscribes to the not uncontroversial laryngeal-hypothesis for Pre- or Proto-Indo-European (cf. Lehmann 1993); otherwise, more traditionally, some form of accentual difference will have to be taken as the decisive factor. For a description of the fate of ablaut in the history of German cf. Nübling et al. (2006: 199–209); Mailhammer (2007) provides a new systematisation of Germanic ablauting verbs.

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in Old High German, when the phonological make-up of the stem determined to which of the seven ablaut-classes a verb would belong. The break-up of this old morphologically regular system seems to be due to a phonological change: the loss of laryngals or a prosodic change. Hence in this case, an independent development in phonology creates exceptions on the morphological level. Similarly, the loss of phonological distinctions in final syllables between Old and Middle High German obscured the phonological trigger for umlauting in German morphology. Therefore umlauting became ‘free’ to be a purely lexically based morphological process, for example in the formation of nominal plurals.25 In this way an irregularity effect was created: only some nouns take umlaut in their plural, cf. Faden sg – Fäden pl ‘thread’ vs. Fladen sg – Fladen pl ‘flat bread’.26 An example for the second kind of scenario is provided by the virtual disappearance of the second person singular pronoun thou in Standard Modern English, where pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors were responsible for the spread of one form at the expense of another, thus creating a typological exception in the English pronominal system. In Middle English, and well into Shakespeare’s time, there was a politeness distinction in English pronouns of address comparable to that of Modern French or Russian. There were two second person pronouns: the (informal) singular form thou and ye/you, which was employed in second person plural reference and also when a single person was to be addressed politely. In a kind of inflationary process, the usage of you-forms then became more and more generalised, so that thou was relegated to the fringe, used only in very restricted circumstances, such as certain religious contexts. Therefore, a kind of markedness reversal due to a sociolinguistic overgeneralisation took place: the relationship between marked and unmarked, between exception and rule was turned upside-down, so that what used to be the unmarked form, the informal thou, became an exception, while the more marked form, the formal ye/you, became the rule. A side-effect of this generalisation of you is that Standard Modern English stands out among the languages of the world as having number distinctions in nouns and pronouns in general, but not in second person pronouns.27

25. Cf. Sonderegger (1979: 297–319) for a detailed description of this development. 26. With the additional complication that for some nouns there exists regional variation as to whether they take their plural with or without umlaut, e.g. Wagen ‘car’. 27. According to Cysouw (2003: 118), this situation “is not common at all.”

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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3.2. The disappearance of exceptions Given the situation in Modern English with a double-fold exception in the pronominal system – the lack of a number opposition in the second person plural is unusual both from a cross-linguistic point of view and language internally since English does otherwise encode number quite firmly – it is not surprising that many non-standard varieties of English ‘repair’ their systems: they create new plural forms by morphological reinforcement: y’all, youse etc. (cf. Hickey 2003). Thus, the exceptional gap in the paradigm is filled again). In general, two potential diachronic scenarios for the gradual disappearance of an exceptionality in a language system are conceivable: either the sub-class forming the exceptional trait loses some or all of its members, or the sub-class is strengthened, thereby creating a stronger, less exceptional sub-system of the language. The basic mechanism is here that a set of exceptions exhibits a certain internal regularity, which is significant enough to attract new members gravitating to that group. Again, we illustrate these two possibilities with developments in the verbal system of German. An example for the first case is the abovementioned exceptional class of strong verbs that is overall on the decline in German: Sound change has obscured its phonological basis; new verbs entering the language as loan words are automatically assigned to the weak class; some strong verbs, mostly the less frequent ones, undergo inflection class changes and lose their ablaut-formation over time, so for example in a relatively recent case with backen ‘to bake’ and melken ‘to milk’.28 Thus, the relative frequency of the two sub-classes of verbs (strong vs. weak) has reversed since the creation of the latter in ProtoGermanic.29 A phenomenon illustrating the second case is the integration of the German verb brauchen ‘need’ into the group of modal verbs. Unlike in the case of psych-verbs discussed above, where syntactic regulation overruled semantics, in this case, the morphosyntactic development is driven by semantic pressure. Since this development might be less well-known than some of our other examples and because it is currently happening under our very eyes, we discuss it in somewhat more detail.

28. Here, the old past tense forms buk and molk have practically died out, in favour of regular backte and melkte. 29. On a comparative note it is worth mentioning that the other Germanic languages follow a similar diachronic drift; in the extreme case of Afrikaans the strong-weak (i.e. irregular-regular) distinction has been lost almost completely, viz. outside the auxiliary system.

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Three core grammatical properties of modal verbs in German are important for our understanding here. First, they are exceptional with respect to inflection: given their origin as old preterite presents, modals lack the usual final morpheme -t in the third person singular of the present tense indicative (5a), in contrast to regular verbs (5b): (5)

a. b.

Sie she Sie she

muss / kann / darf … must can may sagt / macht / singt … says makes sings

Second, modals display a syntactic peculiarity in that they subcategorise infinitive phrases without the complementiser zu ‘to’ (6a), unlike many but not all non-modal verbs with infinitival complement (6b): (6)

a. b.

Sie she Sie she

muss must hofft hopes

singen. sing zu singen. to sing

[modal verb] [non-modal verb]

Third, when used in the (periphrastic) perfect tense, modals exhibit the so-called IPP-effect:30 basically this means that instead of an expected past participle, the modal occurs in the infinitive: (7)

Er hat singen müsseninf . mustinf 3sg has sing b. *Er hat singen gemusstp ii . 3sg has sing mustp ii ‘He has had to sing.’

a.

brauchen ‘need’ shares a central meaning aspect ‘modality’ with modal verbs when used with an infinitive: apart from its use with a nominal complement (as in Sie braucht einen Regenschirm. ‘She need an umbrella.’), this verb can also be used with an infinitival complement, in particular under negation (or in the context of a restrictive particle like nur).31 Unlike the core set of modal 30. I.e., ‘infinitivus pro participio’, also known as ‘Ersatzinfinitiv’. 31. Unlike its English counterpart, the negation of müssen usually takes wide scope over the whole sentence, not just over its complement, hence Er muss nicht singen. (‘lit.: He must not sing.’) does not mean ‘He must: not sing.’, but rather ‘Not: he must sing.’. Negation of brauchen takes wide scope as well, while having a weaker meaning, along the lines of English ‘He need not sing.’ The domain of English ‘must not’

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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verbs, however, ‘brauchen’ does not go back to an old preterite present, and accordingly, in compliance with its more distant origins as a normal transitive verb, should behave as a regular verb morpho-syntactically; that is, suffix final -t in the third person singular and select an infinitive with zu. And this regular behaviour is exactly what one finds in most instances of written language usage, as in (8): (8)

Er braucht nicht zu singen. 3sg needs not to sing ‘He need not sing.’

This construction, however, is presently developing into one that agrees with the irregular modal verb pattern, as illustrated in (9): no -t and no zu: (9)

Er brauch nicht singen. 3sg need not sing ‘He need not sing.’

Moreover, in perfect tense constructions, the IPP-effect comes into force: (10)

Er hat nicht singen braucheninf . 3sg has not sing need ‘He hasn’t needed to sing.’

At present, this is found predominantly in Spoken German, but it appears more and more in written varieties as well (cf. Askedal 1997). Note that there is no phonological motivation for the loss of final -t in German, which is shown by the fact that -t never fails to occur with, e.g., rauchen ‘to smoke’ despite the phonological near-identity of the verbs: (11)

Sie raucht / *rauch. 3sg smokes smoke ‘She smokes.’

[regular verb]

Thus, what we are witnessing at the moment with the spread of the type Er brauchØ nicht Ø singen is the integration of a regular verb into a morphosyntactically irregular, exceptional subsystem, based on shared semantic features: From the general point of view of the morpho-syntax of German verbs, brauchen becomes exceptional – it develops from a regular verb into one with with narrow scope is covered by German dürfen ‘may / to be allowed to’, e.g. Er darf nicht singen. (i.e.: ‘He must not sing. / He is not allowed to sing.’

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irregular features – but from the point of view of modal verbs, brauchen becomes regularised, being integrated into their specific, exceptional, subsystem. This development demonstrates the power of the system not only in the case of the overall, more general system – here: verbal morpho-syntax – but also in the case of subsystems constituted by irregular forms that present an exception from the point of view of this general system. In sum, brauchen exemplifies the interaction of different grammatical levels in the development of exceptions, in this case semantically-driven morphosyntactic integration.32 3.3. Morphology as a locus of exceptions Exceptions typically spread unevenly over the grammatical system as a whole, i.e. not all grammatical sub-systems are equally prone to exceptionality. In particular, the status and make-up of morphology as a central organisational device in the interaction of grammar and lexicon makes it open to the development of exceptions. Morphology is often considered as an evolutionarily earlier domain for the construction of complex linguistic elements than, say, syntax (cf. Fanselow 1985; Jackendoff 2002). In comparison to syntax, the interpretation of complex forms in word formation is underdetermined by their constituent structure and less driven by strict rules of syntactic-semantic cocomposition; instead, it makes more use of contextual information. This is evident, for instance, in the case of determining the semantic relation between constituents of a compound. Take again a German example, the nominal compound Fischfrau ‘fish-woman’. This word can mean ‘woman who sells fish’, ‘wife of a fish’, ‘woman whose zodiac sign is pisces’, ‘mermaid’, and a number of other things – Heringer (1984: 2) lists ten possible meanings – all we know from the make-up of the compound is that there has to be some relation between a woman and a fish or fishes, but not which one.33 In comparison to syntax, morphology is also less characterised by clearcut classes with particular defining features and more often based on protopatterns that form the basis for classes that are driven by associations. This can often lead to deviations from general patterns and the formation of exceptional 32. The import of semantics on the development of this particular domain of German morphology is further shown by the following fact: Old High German had a few more verbs which behaved morphologically as preterite presents (e.g. turran ‘to dare’); among those verbs only the ones that belonged to the semantic sub-class of modals have survived into the present form of the language. 33. Similarly, note in English the difference between a pork butcher and a family butcher.

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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subsystems. An example coming from inflectional morphology is the formation of tense forms of irregular verbs in English (cf. Jackendoff 2002: ch. 6) and German (cf. Beedham 2005). Since complex morphological constructions are often semantically underdetermined, the formation of such patterns can be based on aspects of meaning of the elements involved. This holds for semantic as well as pragmatic aspects. The example of brauchen ‘need’ above illustrated a case where the development into an inflectionally irregular verb is driven by the semantic affiliation with elements of a morpho-syntactically exceptional subsystem. An interesting example from morphopragmatics comes from diminutives in English and German (cf. H. Wiese 2006). The diminutive affixes -chen and -i in Contemporary German and similarly -ish in English exhibit some exceptional, erratic behaviour from the morphosyntactic point of view, although they present a unified picture on the morphopragmatic side. On the morpho-syntactic level, no clear classification of diminutive suffixes as heads or modifiers is possible. They act as prototypical heads (not just relativised heads in the sense of Di Sciullo and Williams 1987) with some stems, while with other stems, they behave like prototypical modifiers. In (12), English -ish and German diminutives -chen and -i behave as adjectival or nominal heads, respectively, with adjectives, nouns, quantifiers, and verbs as a basis: (12a)

[yellow]A ish]A , [child]N ish]A , [fifty]Q ish]A

(12b)

[Hünd]N chen]N / [Hund]N i]N ‘dog-dim, i.e. doggy’, [Lieb]A chen]N ‘dear-dim, i.e. dearie’, [Schnäpp]V chen]N ‘grab-dim, i.e. bargain’

However, in (13), German diminutive suffixes behave as prototypical modifiers with particles as a basis, in particular with greeting particles (GP) and answer particles (INT) in informal speech: (13)

[Tschüss]GP chen]GP / [Tschüss]GP i]GP ‘bye-dim’,[OK]GP chen]GP ‘okdim’, [OK]INT chen]INT ‘OK-dim’, [Jau]INT i]INT ‘yes-dim’

And, likewise in informal contexts, English -ish can be used as a modifier, albeit as one that is even more of an outlier from a morphosyntactic point of view: it can be used not only with a morphological stem, but also with a syntactically complex phrase, thus neglecting a crucial syntactic distinction: (14)

a.

Nikki and I woke up at quarter-to-eight-ish. [data from internet forum: http://www.exposedbrain.com/archives/000301.html; 4/5/2005]

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b.

Breakfast: 8am – 2pm ish [menu of Little Deb’s Café, Provincetown, MA, 2000]

This makes these diminutives highly exceptional suffixes from the morphosyntactic point of view. However, their erratic behaviour turns out to be more systematic when viewed from a morphopragmatic perspective: on the pragmatic level, diminutives contribute the notions of ‘informality’ or ‘intimacy’ (cf. Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994), and it is this expressive component that the morphosyntactically exceptional distribution of –chen and –i in (13) and of –ish in (14) draws on. Hence, the possibility of directly involving pragmatic aspects in morphology can lead to the establishment of morpho-syntactically exceptional subsystems: in this case, the hybrid syntactic status of diminutive suffixes inbetween head and modifier. Strangely, there are also cases where morphology itself seems to be the source of exceptional behaviour at the higher syntactic level – a phenomenon which runs counter to the otherwise well-established, though not universally accepted34 principle that syntax cannot ‘see’ the internal word-formational makeup of the lexical items it deals with, known as the ‘Lexical Integrity Hypothesis’ (Di Sciullo and Williams 1987: 48). Perhaps the best example for this is the erratic behaviour of certain complex verbs in German that fail to appear in V2position (that is, in the standard position for verbs in assertative main clauses) (16a, 16b), but are perfectly fine at the end of a clause (the position of verbs in subordinate clauses) (16c): (16)

a. *Das Flugzeug not-landet in Paris. the plane emergency-lands in Paris ‘The plane makes an emergency landing in Paris.’ b. *Das Flugzeug landet in Paris not. the plane lands in Paris emergency ‘The plane makes an emergency landing in Paris.’ c. …, weil das Flugzeug in Paris not-landet. because the plane in Paris emergency-lands ‘because the plane makes an emergency landing in Paris.’

The verbs concerned are word formation products in some way or other (from back formation, conversion, incorporation or double-prefixation). So, what we see here is a syntatic exception that is governed by the morphological make-up of its constituent parts. But this alone cannot be sufficient; other factors such 34. Cf. Spencer and Zwicky (1998: 4–6).

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

23

as potential analogy to particle verbs seem to play a role as well, cf. the much better acceptability of (17):35 (17)

Das Flugzeug landet in Paris zwischen. the plane lands in Paris between The plane makes a stop-over landing in Paris.’

In sum, morphology appears to be a prime locus for exceptions. It is the central part of the grammatical system, determined by and partially determining exceptionality in grammatical structure. 4.

The significance of exceptions – what this book has to offer

As we have seen, the study of exceptions is relevant for linguistic theory on a substantial level. In linguistics, like in all areas of science, the pursuit of scientific knowledge implies the creation of abstractions, which are then formalised in rules, or constraints etc. This will, as a matter of principle, lead to a potential for exceptions at all levels involved, i.e. on all grammatical levels – phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics – as well as in their interaction with each other and with pragmatics and other extragrammatical areas. Even if the researcher takes it as a methodological principle that exceptions must not be postulated unless absolutely necessary, there are many cases when deviant facts cannot be accomodated in a simple and elegant model.36 Such a challenge generates a range of approaches and can lead to new insights into the nature of the linguistic system and its (internal and external) interfaces. The analysis of exceptions can be instructive in at least two respects. Firstly, from a methodological point of view, the treatment of exceptions will highlight different ways of dealing with empirical data, each leading to a different status of the concept of ‘rule’ in the respective theory. Secondly, from the point of view of the linguistic system, exeptions show us what kind of system language is: an arrangement of interlocking structures, each of them more or less flexible, always in flux such that variation and change are possible. In the present book, we have collected studies that tackle the problem of exceptions from a number of different angles. Most papers (and the commen35. Contrary to what some studies suggest, it is still not clear what exactly it is that determines the status of a given lexical item as a non-V2-verb; cf. Freywald and Simon (2007) for a brief overview and some empirical investigations. 36. Maybe this holds even more for linguistics than for other areas of science, given the curious duality of language as both biologically and culturally determined.

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taries we have invited on them) focus on syntactic phenomena, but there are also discussions of morphology and of phonology as well as of languages as macro-structures. The introduction of this book consists of two parts. The present introductory chapter is complemented by a paper by Edith Moravcsik, who surveys possible approaches to the problems exceptions pose, with a focus on syntactic theory; her taxonomy of exceptionality in language and how linguists cope with it can serve as a basis for all further discussion of the subject. The main body of the book is then divided into four parts. The papers in the first part take a closer look at the area where exceptions are traditionally taken to be stored: the lexicon. This is the designated location of word-based exceptionality in a language,37 comprising morphological as well as phonological idiosyncrasies. The papers in the second part discuss the interrelation of grammatical subsystems, in particular syntax and semantics, but also syntax and extra-grammatical aspects such as processing. The third part is dedicated to a common method to accommodate exceptions: relaxing the systemconstituting elements of grammatical structure, be they conceptualised as e.g. rules or as constraints. The fourth and final part provides a statistically informed consideration of wholesale exceptionality (or unusualness) of languages as such. In whole, the papers in this book (and the respective comments and responses) offer a multi-faceted body of work on the significance of exceptions for linguistic theory. They show the potential of different approaches to capture grammatical exceptions; and they demonstrate how the study of exceptions can be productive for the development of new grammatical models and new perspectives on grammatical systems. This is true for a number of controversial claims in current linguistic research: First, there is more to the systematic study of language than just grammar: aspects of linguistic structure interact with external systems, and thus exceptions can be explained. For instance, morphologically exceptional (i.e. irregular) structures emerge because processing pressures – such as the production need to be phonologically brief – act on the demand to produce informationally distinct forms, as discussed by Damaris Nübling in her contribution on Germanic verbal morphology. Similarly, Frederick J. Newmeyer invokes parsing strategies in his explanation of cross-linguistic variation and exceptional patterns therein. Second, within the system, grammatical subcomponents can interact in such a way as to enhance the stability of exceptions, which then resist regularization: 37. And some linguists would maintain that all exceptionality is word-based.

What are exceptions? And what can be done about them?

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e.g. a certain class of oblique subjects in Icelandic and Faroese was reinforced by its semantic coherence and has thus survived into the present systems, as is argued by Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson & Thórhallur Eythórsson in their contribution. A grammar-internal view on exceptionality can also lead to the adoption of softer models of grammar, which can incorporate seemingly exceptional cases as instances of less central structures. As Sam Featherston demonstrates, such a way of thinking is well-qualified to tackle the problem of grammatical gradience – the fact that there are grey zones of more or less severe awkwardness between ‘fully acceptable’ and ‘inacceptable’ structures. Several contributions in this book are apt to challenge our traditional views of the notion of exception as they discover new kinds of exceptions. Thus, Thomas Wasow, T. Florian Jaeger and David M. Orr identify exceptions in language use that one notices when taking into account quantitative data; again, these exceptions can be accounted for in terms of processing and other extragrammatical factors. Ralf Vogel, by contrast, invokes a population-based notion of ‘exception’: he uncovers different tolerance levels on the part of native speakers of German with regard to contradictory case-information in free relative clauses; from such a perspective, exceptions exist in the minds of certain speakers, but not others. Greville G. Corbett discerns a kind of (higher-order) hyper-exception that occurs when different types of exception come together and interact with each other; he thus underlines their great importance – especially those linguistic structures that are extraordinarily rare – for the understanding of what is possible in human language. Frederik Fouvry, in turn, takes a broad view of exceptions: while traditional approaches in computational linguistics tend to treat both production errors and linguistic exceptions as extragrammatical structures that are neither covered nor possible to cover, by the grammar formalism, the alternative apparatus he proposes captures all types of deviance from the expected data: exceptional but acceptable idiosyncrasies of a data set and mere errors are both encompassed within one arrangement of constraints that can be relaxed as needed to accommodate them. A more conservative line of reasoning is followed by Barı¸s Kabak and Irene Vogel. Concentrating on patterns of vowel harmony and stress assignment in Turkish, they maintain that it is not possible to determine an externally motivated sub-class of exceptional words, such as loan words or names; therefore employing a component of lexical prespecification in the grammar is unavoidable, which basically reverts to the traditional idea that every word must be treated on its own terms. Finally, Michael Cysouw has a different focus in his contribution: instead of looking at instances of exceptional grammar in individual languages, he zooms out and takes on a macro-perspective by looking at patterns of co-ocurrence of

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rare, exceptional traits in a multitude of languages: according to his findings, there are some clusters of linguistic exceptionality, or unusualness, in certain areas of the world, among them North-Western Europe, whose languages form the basis of most of the theorising in contemporary linguistics. Taken together, the contributions to this volume explore a range of new avenues to an understanding of exceptions: they probe deeper into the analysis of already established grammatical exceptions, they re-define and develop further the notion of exceptionality, and they invoke a variety of concepts to describe the formation of exceptions and to explain their existence in grammatical systems. While they are understood to be rare and thus in need of special efforts to be grasped, exceptions are expected in the various models utilized – either because of some grammar-internal competition or because of extra-grammatical factors bearing on grammar proper. Needless to say, because of the exceptionally complex phenomenon of exceptions, it can be expected that not every linguist will agree with the analyses and models offered. But in any case, we expect exceptions to keep fascinating linguists who are keen to understand the workings of language. ‘Il serait absurde de dire que l’exception est mieux traitée dans une perspective que dans l’autre.’ (Danjou-Flaux and Fichez-Vallez 1985: 116) Abbreviations a acc dim gp inf

adjective accusative diminutive greeting particle infinitive

int n nom p ii sg

interjection noun nominative 2nd participle singular

References Aarts, Bas, David Denison, Evelien Keizer, and Gergana Popova 2004 Fuzzy Grammar. A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Askedal, John Ole 1997 brauchen mit Infinitiv. Aspekte der Auxiliarisierung. Jahrbuch der ungarischen Germanistik 1997: 53–68. Beedham, Christopher 2005 Language and Meaning. The Structural Creation of Reality. Amsterdam/Philadephia: Benjamins (Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics 55). Chomsky, Noam 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.

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Clahsen, Harald, Monika Rothweiler, Andreas Woest, and Gary F. Marcus 1992 Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals. Cognition 45: 225–255. Collinge, N.E. 1985 The Laws of Indo-European. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Cysouw, Michael 2003 The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Danjou-Flaux, Nelly, and Élisabeth Fichez-Vallez 1985 Linguistique taxonomique et grammaire générative. Le traitement de l’exception. Langue Française 66: 99–116. Di Sciullo, Anna Maria, and Edwin Williams 1987 On the Definition of Word. Cambridge (MA)/London: MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 14). Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi 1994 Morphopragmatics. Diminutives and Intensifiers in Italian, German, and Other Languages. Berlin/New York (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 76). Dryer, Matthew 1998 Why statistical universals are better than absolute universals. Chicago Linguistic Society 33, 123–145. Duden 1995 Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, Günther Drosdowski (ed.). 5th edition. Mannheim: Dudenverlag (Duden 4). Duden 2005 Die Grammatik, Dudenredaktion (ed.). 7th edition. Mannheim: Dudenverlag (Duden 4). Fanselow, Gisbert 1985 Die Stellung der Wortbildung im System kognitiver Module. Linguistische Berichte 96: 91–126. Freywald, Ulrike, and Horst J. Simon 2007 Wenn die Wortbildung die Syntax stört: Über Verben, die nicht in V2 stehen können. Verbale Wortbildung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Wortsemantik, Syntax und Rechtschreibung, Maurice Kauffer and René Métrich (eds.), 181–194. Tübingen: Stauffenburg (Eurogermanistik 26). Gehling, Thomas 2006 Die Suche nach dem anderen ihr. Zur Inklusiv-Exklusiv-Distinktion in der Zweiten Person. Einblicke in Sprache, Festschrift für ClemensPeter Herbermann zum 65. Geburtstag, Thomas Gehling, Viola Voss and Jan Wohlgemuth (eds.), 153–180. Berlin: Logos.

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Hagège, Claude 2005

Le défi de la langue ou la souillure de l’Exception. Faits de langues 25, 53–60 (special issue: L’exception entre les théories linguistiques et l’expérience. Irina Vilkou-Poustovaïa (ed.)). Harley, Heidi, and Elizabeth Ritter 2002 Person and number in pronouns. A feature-geometric analysis. Language 78: 482–526. Heringer, Hans-Jürgen 1984 Wortbildung: Sinn aus dem Chaos. Deutsche Sprache 12: 1–13. Hickey, Raymond 2003 Rectifying a standard deficiency: Second-person pronominal distinction in varieties of English. Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems, Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), 345–374. Amsterdam/Philadephia: Benjamins (Pragmatics and Beyond N.S. 107). Hoenigswald, Henry M. 1978 The Annus Mirabilis 1876 and posterity. Transactions of the Philological Society 76: 17–35. Hurford, James R. 1975 The Linguistic Theory of Numerals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 16). Jackendoff, Ray S. 2002 Foundations of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Janda, Richard D. 1991 Frequency, markedness, and morphological change. On predicting the spread of noun-plural -s in Modern High German and West Germanic. Proceedings of the 7th Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, Yongkyoon No and Mark Libucha (eds.), 136–153. Columbus (OH): Ohio State University. Jankowsky, Kurt R. 1972 The Neogrammarians. A Re-Evaluation of Their Place in the Development of Linguistic Science. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Labov, Wiliam 1972 Language in the Inner City. Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, Wiliam 1981 Resolving the Neogrammarian controversy. Language 57: 267–308. Lass, Roger 1997 Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 81).

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Lehmann, Winfred P. 1993 Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics. London: Routledge. Marcus, Gary F., Ursula Brinkmann, Harald Clahsen, and Richard Wiese 1995 German inflection: The exception that proves the rule. Cognitive Psychology 29: 189–256. Mailhammer, Robert 2007 Islands of resilience. The history of German strong verbs from a systematic point of view. Morphology 17: 77–108. McMahon, April M.S. 1994 Understanding Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2005 Possible and Probable Languages. A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nübling, Damaris, Antje Dammel, Janet Duke, and Renata Szczepaniak 2006 Historische Sprachwissenschaft des Deutschen. Eine Einführung in die Prinzipien des Sprachwandels. Tübingen: Narr. de Oliveira, Marco Antonio 1991 The neogrammarian controversy revisited. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 89: 93–105. Osthoff, Hermann, and Karl Brugmann 1878 Morphologische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen. Erster Theil. Leipzig: Hirzel. Pinker, Steven 1999 Words and Rules. The Ingredients of Language. New York: Basic Books. Ritt, Nikolaus 2004 Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution. A Darwinian Approach to Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simon, Horst J. 2005 Only you? Philological investigations into the alleged inclusiveexclusive distinction in the second person plural. Clusivity. Typology and Case Studies of the Inclusive-Exclusive Distinction, Elena Filimonova (ed.), 113–150. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language 63). Sonderegger, Stefan 1979 Grundzüge deutscher Sprachgeschichte. Diachronie des Sprachsystems. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Spencer, Andrew, and Arnold M. Zwicky 1998 Introduction. The Handbook of Morphology, Andrew Spencer and Arnold M. Zwicky (eds.), 1–10. Oxford/Malden (MA): Blackwell.

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Tsohatzidis, Savas L. (ed.) 1990 Meanings and Prototypes. Studies in Linguistic Categorization. London: Routledge. Twain, Mark 1907 The awful German language. In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain, 267– 284. New York: P.F. Collier & Son [originally: 1880]. Udolph, Jürgen 1989 Verners Gesetz im heutigen Deutsch. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 56: 156–170. Verner, Karl 1877 Eine ausnahme der ersten lautverschiebung. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 23: 97–130. Wiese, Heike 2003 Sprachliche Arbitrarität als Schnittstellenphänomen. Habilitation thesis. Humboldt-University Berlin. Wiese, Heike 2006 Partikeldiminuierung im Deutschen. Sprachwissenschaft 31: 457– 489. Wiese, Richard 1996 The Phonology of German. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilbur, Terence H. (ed.) 1977 The Lautgesetz-Controversy. A Documentation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series 1, 9). Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953 Philosophical Investigations. Transl. by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. Wohlgemuth, Jan, and Michael Cysouw (eds.) 2010a Rethinking Universals. How Rarities Affect Linguistic Theory. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 45). Wohlgemuth, Jan, and Michael Cysouw (eds.) 2010b Rara & Rarissima. Documenting the Fringes of Linguistic Diversity. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 46).

Coming to grips with exceptions Edith Moravcsik

Abstract. Based on a general definition of the concept of exception, the problematic nature of exceptions is made explicit by showing how they weaken the generality of descriptions: they disrupt a superclass without forming a principled subclass. Focusing on examples from syntax, three approaches to dealing with exceptions are identified.

1.

Why are exceptions a problem?

1.1. Defining exceptions Typical exceptions are a small subclass of a class where this subclass is not otherwise definable. What this means is that apart from their deviant characteristic that renders them exceptional, there is no additional property that distinguishes them from the regular cases. Given also that the exceptional subclass has generally much fewer members than the regular one, exceptions can be characterized as a subclass of a class that is weak both quantitatively (fewer members) and qualitatively (only a single distinguishing characteristic). The description of an exception must include five components: – the pertinent domain; – the class within which the items in question are exceptional, which we will call superordinate class (or superclass for short); – the regular subclass and the irregular subclass; – the characteristic in which the two subclasses differ; and – the relative size of the two subclasses. This is shown in (1) on the example of English nominal plurals, where RSC labels the regular subclass and ESC is the label for the exceptional one1 .

1. A large inventory of lexical exceptions in English is cited and their exceptionality relative to transformational rules discussed in Lakoff (1970: 14–21, 30–43 et passim).

32 (1)

Edith Moravcsik

– domain: English – superordinate class: plural nouns – subclasses: RSC: apples, cats, pencils, etc. ESC: oxen, children, brethren – distinguishing property: plural suffix is {s} versus /∂ n/ – relative size of membership: RSC > ESC

Three components of the schema call for comments. Starting with domain: a structure may be exceptional within a language, a dialect of a language, a language family, a language area, or across languages. M. Cysouw’s paper in this volume is a study of crosslinguistic exceptionality and so is part of S. Featherston’s article.2 It is important to indicate the domain within which an exception holds because exceptionality is relative to it. First, what is an exceptional structure in one language may not be exceptional in another. An example is the morphosyntactic alignment of subjects of one-place predicates with patient-like arguments of two-place predicates: this is regular in ergative languages but exceptional in accusative languages. Second, language-internal and crosslinguistic exceptionality do not necessarily coincide. For example, click sounds are very numerous in Zulu but very rare across languages; and passive constructions are infrequent in Kirghiz, but frequent across languages. A second set of comments has to do with the distinguishing property of the exceptional class. Several papers in this volume emphasize the unique nature of exceptions. B. Kabak and I. Vogel are very explicit about this point as they analyze Turkish vowel harmony and stress assignment and argue for the need for lexical pre-specification of the irregular items as both necessary and sufficient for an adequate account. J.G. Jónsson and Th. Eythórsson also emphasize that truly exceptional structures have no correlating properties. They show genitive objects in Icelandic to be clearly exceptional by this criterion, as opposed to accusative subjects, which show subregularities. As two of the papers in the volume show, items may differ from the regular class in more than one characteristic. G. Corbett discusses lexemes that show higher-order exceptionality by multiply violating normal morphological patterns. Utilizing the WALS database, M. Cysouw computes rarity indices for languages and language areas and shows that they may be multiply exceptional to varying degrees. Paradoxically, exceptions that differ from the regular sub-

2. For a rich collection of crosslinguistically rare grammatical constructions, see the Grammatisches Raritätenkabinett at http://lang.uni-konstanz.de/pages/proj/ sprachbau.htm. On the inherent difficulties of establishing a grammatical structure as crosslinguistically rare, see Cysouw (2005).

Coming to grips with exceptions

33

class in more than one way are less exceptional by our definition since each exceptional property finds its correlates in the other deviant characteristics. Lexical items may be exceptional not by structurally deviating from others but by exhibiting skewed, rather than balanced, frequency patterns of their alternative forms. For example, the passive form of the English verb convict occurs with unusual frequency relative to the passive of other verbs. Such “soft exceptions” are in the focus of Th. Wasow, F. Jaeger, and D. Orr’s paper (this volume) as they explore correlates for the omission of the conjunction that in English relative clauses. The third comment pertains to relative size. Note that having fewer members is a necessary but not sufficient characteristic of an exceptional subclass. That it is necessary can be shown by the example in (1): without reserving the label “exception” for the smaller subclass, English nouns whose plural is formed with {s} would qualify for being the exceptions even though intuitively we do not to consider them exceptional. But being a small subclass is not sufficient for exceptionality. For example, of the English verbs whose past tense form ends in {d}, relatively few employ the allomorph /∂ d/. But this subclass of verbs is not exceptional because the members have a phonological property in common that defines them as a principled, rather than random, class. An apparent counterexample to the regular class having more members than the exceptional class(es) is nominal plural marking in German. There are five plural markers: -0, -e, -(e)n, and -s; which – if any – should be considered the regular one? Although most nouns of the German lexicon take -(e)n, Clahsen, Rothweiler, and Woest (1992) argue convincingly that -s is actually the default form: it is the only productive one, used with names (e.g. die Bäckers) and with newly-minted words such as clippings (e.g. Loks for Lokomotiven) or loan words (e.g. Kiosks). Given that relatively few existing nouns are pluralized with -s, declaring this form to be the regular ending would seem to conflict with the general pattern of the regular class having a larger membership than the exceptional ones. However, there is in fact no conflict: the very fact that -s is productive expands indefinitely the class of nouns that take it as their plural suffix. 1.2. Two problems with exceptions Why are exceptions a problem? The short answer is that they fly in the face of generalizations. This is so due to two aspects of their definition. First, by token of the very fact that they form a subclass of a class, they conflict with a generalization that would otherwise hold for the entire superordinate class. This problem so far is not specific to exceptions: it is posed by all instances of subclassification. Subclasses, by definition, compromise the homogeneity of

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a superclass. But as long as the subclasses have at least one characteristic other than the one that the split is based on, the loss of the supergeneralization is compensated for by a sub-generalization that describes the subclasses. For an example of regular subclasses, let us consider those English nouns that form their plural with the suffix {s}. This is not an undivided class in that the particular shape of the suffix is variable: -/s/, -/z/, and -/∂ z/. However, each subclass is definable by phonological context: /∂ z/ after alveolar and palatal fricatives and affricates, /s/ after other voiceless sounds and /z/ after other voiced sounds. Thus, none are exceptions. Exceptional subclasses are different from normal subclasses of this sort because they have no additional characteristics to independently identify them. This is the second reason why exceptions pose a problem: they do not only scuttle a generalization that would otherwise hold for the entire superordinate class but they do not allow for a generalization about their subclass, either. The fact that exceptions have much fewer members than their sister-classes compounds the problem: their sporadicity suggests that correlating properties may not exist at all: they may be random chance phenomena.3 All in all: exceptions disrupt supergeneralizations without supporting subgeneralizations. In the case of English noun plurals, the two generalizations that the exceptions disallow are given in (2). (2)

a. b.

supergeneralization lost: **All English nouns form their plural with {s}. subgeneralization not possible: **All those English nouns that form their plural with /∂ n/ have property P.

The two problems posed by exceptions can be similarly illustrated with a crosslinguistic example: phoneme inventories that lack nasal consonant phonemes. (3)

– – –

domain: a sample of languages superordinate class: consonant phoneme inventories subclasses: RSC: consonant phoneme inventories of English, Irish, Amharic, etc.

3. Regarding crosslinguistic exceptionality, compare Haiman (1974: 341): “If a word exhibits polysemy in one language, one may be inclined, or forced, to dismiss its various meanings as coincidental; if a corresponding word in another language exhibits the same, or closely parallel polysemy, it becomes an extremely interesting coincidence; if it displays the same polysemy in four, five, or seven genetically unrelated languages, by statistical law it ceases to be a coincidence at all.”

Coming to grips with exceptions

– – –

35

subclasses: ESC: consonant phoneme inventories of Quileute, Puget Sound, Duwamish, Snoqualmie, Mura, Rotokas distinguishing property: presence versus absence of nasal consonant phonemes relative membership: RSC > ESC

The two generalizations disabled by the exceptional consonant phoneme inventories are as follows: (4)

a.

b.

supergeneralization lost: **All consonant phoneme inventories of languages include nasal consonant phonemes. subgeneralization not possible: **All those languages that lack nasal consonant phonemes have property P.4

The lesser number of nasal-less languages suggests once again that their occurrence is for no reason: it may be an accident. How are the twin problems posed by exceptions responded to in linguistic analysis? The purpose of this paper is to address this question by surveying the various ways in which exceptions have been dealt with in syntax. The alternatives fall into three basic types. First, many descriptive frameworks represent exceptional structures as both exceptional and non-exceptional. What this means is that the representation of the exceptional structure is split into two parts: one shows it to be exceptional but the other part draws it into the regular class. Second, there are proposals for regularizing exceptions: re-analyzing them so that they turn out to be fully unexceptional. And third, some accounts acknowledge exceptions as such and try to explain why they are exceptional. The three options of accommodating, regularizing, and explaining exceptions will be discussed in the next three sections in turn. 2.

Accommodating exceptions in syntax

Let us consider ways of representing syntactic exceptions as hybrid structures, part exceptional and part regular. The idea is similar to psychiatrists ascribing 4. Note that the class of languages that have no nasal consonant phonemes is not defined either by genetic or by areal relationship: while Quileute (Chimaukan) and the Salish languages: Puget Sound, Duwamish, and Snoqualmie, are geographically close, Mira is spoken in Brazil and Rotokas in New Guinea. For some Niger-Congo languages without nasal consonant phonemes, see Bole-Richard (1985).

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deviant behavioral traits of people to a separate persona coexisting with the normal personality. Four such approaches may be identified in the literature: – – – –

two faces of a single representation two strata in a single representation separate representations in a single component separate representations in separate components

We will take a closer look at each. 2.1. Two faces of a single representation In this type of account, exceptional and non-exceptional characteristics of a construction are represented on opposite sides of the same structural diagram. An example is Katalin É. Kiss’s transformational generative account of longdistance agreement in Hungarian (É. Kiss 1987: 226–243). In Hungarian, the verb agrees with both its subject and its direct object. Person agreement with the object is illustrated in (5). (5)

a.

b.

Én szeretném I would.like-S1SUBJ.3OBJ ‘I would like him.’ Én szeretné-lek I would.like-S1SUBJ.2OBJ ‘I would like youS .’

öt. him téged. youS

However, verb agreement in sentences such as (6) is unexpected. (6)

a.

b.

Én szeretném I would.like-S1SUBJ.3OBJ ‘I would like to see him.’ Én szeretné-lek I would:like-S1SUBJ.2OBJ ‘I would like to see youS .’

látni öt. to:see him lát-ni téged. to:see youS. ACC

The problem is that the verb in the main clause – ‘would like’ – has a suffix selected by the direct object of the subordinate clause ‘you’ rather than by its own object, which would be the entire subordinate clause, as in (7).5

5. The verb-agreement pattern in Hungarian is actually more complex than shown by these examples but the details are not relevant here.

Coming to grips with exceptions

(7)

37

Én szeretném, ha láthatnálak. I would-like-S1SUBJ.3OBJ if I.could.see.you

(6) is an exception since agreement in general is local: controller and target are clause-mates. Because of the type of agreement shown in (6), the supergeneralization according to which all agreement is local is lost and no subgeneralization is apparent holding for cases such as (6) where agreement is not local. One might try to define the subclass of structures that exhibit this kind of long-distance agreement by the schema main verb + infinitive complement. If this definition were successful, the structures would form a regular, rather than exceptional, subclass since they would have a common denominator other than showing long-distance agreement. However, not all verb + infinitive constructions show this kind of agreement: transitive verbs (such as ‘want’ or ‘try’) and some intransitive ones (such as ‘strive’) do but other intransitive ones (e.g. ‘be ready’) do not (cf. É. Kiss 1987: 227–229, 2002: 203–205). Exceptionality would be eliminated if we could analyze the entire sentences in (6) as a single clause because then agreement controller and agreement target would be clause-mates. There is indeed some evidence indicating the monoclausality of the sentence even apart from agreement. For example, if the subordinate object ‘youS ’ is to be focused it may occur in immediately pre-verbal position relative to the main verb. However, there is also evidence that this sentence is bi-clausal: the subordinate object ‘youS ’ may also be focused by being placed in front of the subordinate verb. Thus, sentences like (6) are exceptional when considered as biclausal structures but regular when considered as monoclausal. Since there are arguments for both analyses, É. Kiss concludes as follows (1987: 237, 239; emphasis added): “It appears that the monoclausal and biclausal properties are equally weighty; neither can be ignored or explained away. What is more, they are simultaneously present; consequently, the biclausal structure and monoclausal structure that can be associated with [this construction] cannot represent two subsequent stages of the derivation, but must hold simultaneously …” Here is a simplified version of the representation suggested by É. Kiss (1987: 238).

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Edith Moravcsik

(8) NP Inf

szeretnélek

én látni téged

NP

Inf

The sentence is shown as both exceptional and not exceptional depending on which face of the tree we consider. The top face represents the biclausal, exceptional structure: agreement controller and agreement target are in separate clauses. The bottom face in turn is monoclausal rendering the agreement configuration regular, with controller and target situated in the same clause. Thus, the supergeneralization according to which agreement is local is denied by the top half of the tree but it is saved with respect to the bottom half. 2.2. Two strata in a single representation In É. Kiss’s account, the exceptional and non-exceptional “personalities” of the construction are co-present at a single stage of the grammatical derivation. In other types of accounts, the regular and irregular facets of the construction are separated by derivational distance. For an example, let us first consider the analysis of passives in Relational Grammar. In this framework, passive sentences are viewed as exceptional relative to actives. The example sentence skeletally represented in (9) is The woman was eaten by the crocodile (Blake 1990: 1–2). (P stands for predicate, 1 stands for subject, 2 stands for direct object, Cho (“chomeur”) stands for the demoted subject: the by-phrase.) (9) P P eat

1 Cho crocodile

2 1 woman

Coming to grips with exceptions

39

The structural representation shows the sentence as having the passive structure on the final (lower) stratum but it has the active – i.e., regular – structure on the initial (upper) stratum. The passive structure is derived by a grammaticalrelations-changing rule: advancement of the initial object and demotion of the initial subject. The supergeneralizations that are lost due to the existence of passives are the alignment of the more active participant of a two-place predicate with the grammatical subject and the alignment of the less active participant with the object. There is also no subgeneralization that would render the alternative, passivetype alignment predictable. The label “passive” would not provide an independent characterization of this subclass since it is simply a label for the exceptional structure. The Relational Grammar account restores the supergeneralization in that it holds for the initial stratum of passive sentence representations, although not for the final one. The derivational distance between the irregular and regular facets of the sentence is more pronounced when they are represented as two separate tree structures. This will be illustrated next. 2.3. Separate representations in a single component This approach to exceptions is familiar from various versions of Transformational Generative Grammar: exceptional structures are represented by two or more trees within the syntactic component of the grammar connected by transformational rules. We will look at two examples, one involving a movement rule, the other, raising. The first example has to do with verb-object-particle order in English. Given the generalization that components of a lexical entry must be adjacent, and given that the verb and the particle – e.g. wipe and off – form a single lexical item, the prediction is that the verb will be immediately followed by the particle, as is the case in Megan wiped off the table. However, this prediction is not always valid since Megan wiped the table off is also grammatical. The verb & object & particle order thus contradicts the supergeneralization about components of lexical items being adjacent and, in the absence of some condition under which the exceptional order occurs, there is no subgeneralization possible, either. The descriptor “particle verb” would not define the class independently of the deviant order since this label is based on the separability of the two elements. In some versions of Transformational Grammar, sentences where verb and particle are not adjacent are shown as having the regular order on the underlying level with the particle directly following the verb, while the exceptional order

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Edith Moravcsik

is shown on the surface level (see for example Jacobs and Rosenbaum 1968: 100–106). (10)

– underlying structure: Megan wiped off the table. ⇓ – surface structure: Megan wiped the table off.

Thus, the supergeneralization is restored with respect to the underlying structure, with exceptionality relegated to surface structure. A second example of this approach to exceptions is the analysis of longdistance agreement in languages such as Imbabura Quechua proposed by Maria Polinsky (2003). This case is similar to the one seen in Hungarian: the verb of the main clause shows agreement with the object of the subordinate clause rather than with its own object, which would be the entire subordinate clause. (11) is an example (NMLS stands for ‘nominalizer’) (Polinsky 2003: 292). (11)

Jose yacha-wa-n ñuca-ta maria-ta Jose know-S1OBJ-S3SUBJ me-ACC Maria-ACC juya-j-ta. love-PRES.NMLS-ACC ‘Jose knows that I love Maria.’

Polinsky acknowledges that the controller is in the subordinate clause on an underlying level but argues that it is subsequently raised into the main clause. This means that controller and target end up in the same clause and thus the supergeneralization about the locality of agreement is preserved intact on the surface level although it is violated in underlying structure. The anomaly that the grammatical operation of raising solves here is anomalous agreement. In addition, as is well-known, raising has also been adopted for resolving anomalous case marking. In English sentences like Mary believes him to have won the race, the accusative case of him is problematic. First, it thwarts the supergeneralization according to which verbs assign case to their own arguments because this noun phrase is the semantic subject of to have won and not an argument of any kind of believes. Second, no general conditions are apparent under which this anomaly crops up and thus no subgeneralization is possible. In Government and Binding theory, the exceptionality of such instances is explicitly acknowledged by the label “Exceptional Case Marking”, attributed to the exceptional nature of the main verbs that allow for this case assignment pattern (Chomsky 1984: 64–74, 98–101; Webelhuth 1995: 35–38). An alternative tack is taken in Paul Postal’s classic account of 1974, as well as in Howard Lasnik’s more recent proposal (Lasnik 1999): both opt for the raising analysis,

Coming to grips with exceptions

41

whereby the main verb and the subordinate subject are in separate clauses on the underlying level but in the same clause in surface structure. Since surface structure legitimizes the assignment of the accusative by the main verb to the underlying lower subject that has been raised into the main clause, the supergeneralization regarding case marking is upheld in surface structure.6 The distribution of regular and exceptional over underlying and surface structure is not the same in these accounts. In the analysis of passives in Relational Grammar and in the analysis of particle constructions, the exceptional structures are shown to be regular underlyingly and irregular on the surface, while in the case of long-distance agreement in Imbabura Quechua and of exceptional case marking in English, it is the opposite: the irregular structure is shown underlyingly and the derived structure – the result of raising – is regular. What is nonetheless common to all of these analyses is that there is a derivational split between two facets of the exceptional construction, only one of which is exceptional. 2.4. Separate representations in separate components In the long-distance agreement pattern of Hungarian discussed above, the exceptional and regular patterns are simultaneously present: neither is derivationally prior to the other (see (8) above). In the account of English passives in Relational Grammar ((9) above) and in the accounts of English verb-particle order ((10)), of long-distance agreement in Imbabura Quechua ((11)), and of exceptional case marking in English, out of the two representations – one regular, one exceptional – one derivationally precedes the other within the same component. In yet another type of representation of exceptional structures, the “distance” between the exceptional and regular facets of the construction is widened. This is illustrated by Jerrold Sadock’s Autolexical Grammar analysis of particle order in English (Sadock 1987: 296–297, 2003). Here, the regular and irregular representations of an irregular structure are in different components with the two linked by non-directional lines of association. The verb & object & particle order is shown as exceptional in syntax but regular in semantics. Thus, the supergeneralization that lexical items are contiguous holds true in semantics and violated only in syntax. This is shown in (12).

6. For discussion, see Newmeyer (2003: 157–160).

42 (12)

Edith Moravcsik SYNTAX:

S NP

VP

NP N

V

Megan .

Article

wiped the . . . . . . wiped-off the

SEMANTICS: Megan

N Particle

counter off. . . . . . counter.

Let us summarize the four basic ways of accommodating exceptional structures discussed in section 2. In the diagrams below, R stands for ‘regular’, E stands for ‘exceptional’. (13)

a.

two faces of a single representation R

E

b.

two strata in a single representation

c.

separate representations in a single component R

E

Coming to grips with exceptions

d.

43

separate representations in separate components R

E

The four ways of splitting exceptional structures differ in the amount of independent support available for the two contradictory representations of the construction. If there is independent evidence for the existence of the two faces, strata, levels, or components that the structures are split into, the analysis is more convincing. Thus, Sadock’s account, where discontinuous particle structures are regular in their meanings but irregular in their forms, rests on the firmest ground: the basis of the split is meaning versus syntactic form – a dichotomy that is widely supported and the mismatches between the two multiply evidenced. Different levels in the same component and different strata in a single tree may or may not be justified depending on the amount of independent evidence for the existence of the levels and strata. The most conflicted representation is the bifacial tree – although, given the facts and the framework assumed, it seems indeed fully unavoidable. 3.

Regularizing exceptions

The analyses we have surveyed so far go half-way towards eliminating exceptionality: they represent exceptional structures as exceptional in part of the account but regular in another part. An alternative approach taken in the literature is re-analyzing exceptions as fully regular. As noted in section 1.2, there are two problems with exceptions. First, they split the superclass and thus disable a general rule that would hold for that class. Second, since the regular and exceptional subclasses are not otherwise identifiable, no sub-generalization is possible either. It follows then that exceptions may be regularized in two ways: either by restoring the homogeneity of the superclass by abolishing the subclasses (since in that case, the supergeneralization can be maintained); or, somewhat paradoxically, by strengthening the subclasses through identifying a correlating property which renders subgeneralizations possible. In other words, one tack is to show that the regular and irregular distinction does not exist: there are no subclasses within the class; the other is to acknowledge that there are indeed subclasses and showing that they are all robust. We will now see examples of both kinds of solution.

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3.1. Restoring the superclass There are two ways of eliminating subclasses within a superclass. One is by reanalyzing the subclasses so that there is no difference between them, after all. The general schema is shown in (14). RSC stands for the regular subclass, ESC stands for the exceptional one. (14) RSC

RSC

→

(RSC) (ESC)

The other way of eliminating subclasses amounts to deepening the difference between the regular and exceptional cases so that the exceptional cases fall outside the superclass. This is diagrammed in (15). (15) RSC

RSC

→

(RSC)

(ESC)

Let us see examples of each approach. A. Restoring the superclass by unifying the subclasses English verb-particle constructions once again offer an example. Their transformational analysis was described above; here is an alternative account. Pauline Jacobson proposes that the single rule – the direct object immediately follows the verb – holds both for the regular and the seemingly exceptional cases (Jacobson 1987: 32–39). This is made possible by assuming that the lexicon lists both call and call up as verbs. The seemingly exceptional order call Sue up is therefore not exceptional since it obeys the same rule as the regular order call up Sue: in both cases, the direct object immediately follows the verb. Other examples of resolving exceptions by showing them to be regular come from long-distance agreement. In her paper of 2003 cited above, Maria Polinsky surveys several languages where the same exceptional pattern crops up: the main verb agreeing with an argument of the subordinate clause. Her proposed solutions fall into three types. For Imbabura Quechua – as was discussed above (see (11)) – she proposes a raising analysis which puts the agreement controller from the subordinate clause into the main clause and thus halfway regularizes the construction. For the other two kinds of long-distance agreement (in Algonquian languages and in Tsez, respectively) she proposes two avenues of full regularization. (16) and (17) present examples of the two patterns (Polinsky 2003: 285, 303).

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Blackfoot (glossing is simplified) nit-wikixtatwaa-wa n-oxko-wa m-áxk-a’po’takixsi 1SUBJ-want-3OBJ my-son-3 3SUBJ-might-work ‘I want my son to work.’

(17)

Tsez (A stands for a long /a/; II indicates Class II)

45

užir y-iyx kidbA kaγ at t’At’ruli boy II-knows girl letter.II.ABS read ‘The boy knows that the girl has read the letter.’ For Blackfoot and other Algonquian languages, Polinsky proposes that the controller in the subordinate clause has a “proxy” in the main clause and cites independent evidence. The main verb thus agrees with this proxy – a clause-mate. This analysis merges the exceptional cases into the regular class so that the supergeneralization about the class-mate-hood of controller and target stands unimpaired. For Tsez, she suggests that the very domain of agreement be re-defined: rather than controller and target having to be clause-mates, both have to occur in the domain of head-government. This amounts to formulating a new, broader generalization into which both regular and irregular cases fit with their difference wiped out. Both solutions amount to eliminating the boundary between the regular and exceptional subclasses. B. Restoring the superclass by exempting the exceptions The examples above showed two ways in which the boundary between regular and exceptional subclasses can be eliminated: either by reanalyzing the exceptions, as Jacobson does for verb-particle constructions and Polinsky for the Algonquian-type long-distance agreement, or by reformulating the supergeneralization, as Polinsky does for Tsez. As noted in the beginning of this section, the unity of the superclass can also be restored by more dramatically re-analyzing the exceptions so that they do not even belong to the superclass. An example is Ivan Sag’s analysis of English verb-particle constructions (Sag 1987: 329–333). In Sag’s analysis, when the particle is separated from the verb, it is not a particle but a prepositional phrase. For instance, in the sentence Megan wiped off the table, off is a particle but in Megan wiped the table off, off is a prepositional phrase. Thus, this off is simply not beholden to the generalization according to which lexical items – such as wipe off – have to be continuous since it does not form a single lexeme with wipe.

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Another proposal that resolves exceptionality by removing the apparent exception from the superclass within which it might be seen as exceptional is by Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (Cole and Hermon 1998). The problematic structure is long-distance reflexives in Singapore Malay: as shown in (18), the pronoun diri-nya can take either a local or a long-distance antecedent (Cole and Hermon 1998: 61; Ahmad is male, Salmah is female.) (18)

Ahmad tahuy Salmah akan membeli baju untik diri-nya. Ahmad know Salmah will buy clothes for self-S3 ‘Ahmad knows Salmah will buy clothes for him.’ OR ‘Ahmad knows Salmah will buy clothes for herself.’

The word diri-nya is a crosslinguistic anomaly both in its internal structure and in its distribution: it does not exhibit the usual characteristics of long-distance reflexives in other languages (such as Mandarin). Two of the generalizations that it is an exception to are that long-distance reflexives are monomorphemic and that they require a subject antecedent. Cole and Hermon propose that diri-nya’s properties deviate from long-distance reflexives in other languages not because it is an exceptional long-distance reflexive but because it is not a long-distance reflexive at all: instead, it is a structure indeterminate between a reflexive and a pronoun. They offer various bits of evidence in support of the proposal that will not be reproduced; what is important here is the type of argument employed to deal with the exception. As in Sag’s analysis of discontinuous verb-particle constructions, the offending exception is lifted out of the superclass and thus freed of the obligation to conform. As noted in the beginning of section 3, there are two basic ways of regularizing exceptions. One is by eliminating the regular-exceptional distinction within the superclass and thus restoring the supergeneralization. The other is by strengthening the subclasses and thus making subgeneralizations possible. So far we have seen examples of the first approach; we will now turn to examples of the second. 3.2. Strengthening the subclasses As discussed in section 1.2, exceptions form a subclass that is both small and undefined. Thus, strengthening the subclass of exceptions may be achieved in two ways. First, exceptions may be strengthened quantitatively. If the number of exceptions can be shown to be larger than first thought, it is more likely that the exceptions are principled rather than chance phenomena. Second, the exceptional subclass may be strengthened qualitatively if additional characteristics

Coming to grips with exceptions

47

can be identified other than the one on which the regular-irregular distinction rides: correlating properties that render the exceptions predictable. (19) diagrams the two approaches; r1 and r2 stand for properties of the regular subclass and e1 and e2 are properties of the exceptional subclass. (19)

Strengthening the exceptional subclass … a. … quantitatively RSC

b.

ESC

→

RSC

ESC

… qualitatively r1

e1

→

r1 r2

e1 e2

A recent study that quantitatively strengthens a crosslinguistically exceptional subclass is Rachel Nordlinger and Louisa Sadler’s article of nominal tense (2004). It has been generally assumed that nouns are time-stable entities and therefore tensed nouns are exceptional across languages. Nordlinger and Salder, however, marshal evidence for tensed nouns from ten languages, some of them areally and genetically distant (e.g. Hixkaryana, Potawatami, and Somali). The fact that tensed nouns are more frequent than generally believed makes it likely that their occurrence is not just a freak accident: there may be a structural condition to predict their existence. Let us now turn to proposals that shore up exceptional subclasses qualitatively. For the first example, we will return once more to English verb-particle constructions. In her book on English verb-particle constructions, Nicole Dehé (2002) assumes a transformational account whereby the contiguous verb-particle construction is underlying and the disjoint structure is derived. The additional step that she takes is probing into the conditions under which the discontinuous construction is used. She finds that this exceptional structure does have an information-theoretical correlate (103–207, 279–283). In particular, a noun-headed object follows the particle if the object is part of the focus of the sentence. If, however, the object is known to the speaker and hearer and the focus is on the complex verb, the object intervenes between the verb and the particle. Thus, Andrew handed out the papers to the students is used if the papers is new information and Andrew handed the papers out to the students is used if the papers is topical.

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According to this account, the two order patterns of the English verb-particle construction do not form arbitrary subclasses. Their dichotomy is maintained but since an information-structural correlate has been identified for each class, the order patterns are predictable rather than random.7 Proposing correlations for exceptions and thus showing that they are regular is a focus of several papers in this volume. As already mentioned above, J. Jónsson and Th. Eythórsson propose that the apparently exceptional Icelandic verbs that take accusative subjects form a syntactically and semantically coherent class; Th. Wasow, F. Jaeger, and D. Orr’s study reveals that the exceptional omission of the conjunction that in English relative clauses is correlated with the predictability of the conjunction in those structures; and M. Cysouw and G. Corbett describe clusterings of exceptional properties in and across languages. Finding correlates to structures that are crosslinguistically exceptional is the central goal of language typology. A recent study that exemplifies this endeavor with respect to crosslinguistic exceptions is Masayuki Onishi’s (2001). Onishi’s concern is with non-canonical case marking – i.e., patterns that depart from the normal case marking of intransitive subjects, transitive subjects, and direct objects in a language. He finds that non-canonical case marking is not random across languages: it correlates with certain semantico-syntactic predicate types; for example, stative verbs expressing physiological states and events or psychological experiences such as ‘enjoy’, ‘be happy’, and ‘be pleased’. 4.

Explaining exceptions

In the preceding two sections, we have seen two basic ways in which exceptions can be dealt with: representing them as both exceptional and regular; and reanalyzing them as fully regular. A third alternative of dealing with exceptions is accepting them as fully – or partially – exceptional and finding reasons why they are so; i.e., explaining them. This is an extension of identifying correlating properties since such properties are required for explaining exceptions. They are, however, not quite sufficient: for a maximally convincing explanation, there has to be a causal relation between a correlating property and the exceptional feature. The basic idea is diagrammed in (20), where r1 and e1 are the properties in terms of which the exceptional subclass is exceptional and, as before, r2 and e2 are the correlating properties. The arrow stands for explanatory deduction. 7. For several alternative accounts of verb-particle construction in English and other languages, see Dehé et al. (2002).

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49

Explaining exceptions r1

e1

→

r1 r2

e1 e2

The studies by J. Jónsson and Th. Eythórsson on Icelandic accusative objects and by Th. Wasow, T. Jaeger, and D. Orr on English relative clauses mentioned above are explanatory if we take meaning and processing ease to be explanations of form. An example from outside this volume is Langacker’s account of raising structures that were discussed in section 2.3. Rather than an arbitrary exception within the class of subordinate constructions, he recognizes this type of construction as an instance of a widespread structural pattern in language. The analysis is based on an observation made by Relational Grammarians under the label Relational Succession Law. What it says is that a noun phrase raised into the main clause inherits the grammatical role of the clause that it is raised from (cf. Blake 1990: 94). Thus, noun phrases that come from subject clauses are raised to subject (as Fred in Fred seems to be happy, derived from [[Fred is happy] S seems] S ) and if they come from an object clause, they are raised to object – as the computer in Fred believes the computer to have been delivered, derived from [Fred believes [that the computer has been delivered]S ]S . Langacker goes a step further by showing that raising structures are an instance of “pars-pro-toto” constructions: a part stands for the whole, as in Give me a hand, where hand stands for manual assistance by a person, or So you got new wheels, where wheels stands for a car. Given the generalization that the whole may be represented either by the whole itself or by a part, both raised and unraised constructions are brought under a single generalization and are explained as both regular instances of a very general, independently attested pattern. However, synchronic observations cannot provide direct causes for language structure; they act only indirectly on language processing, language acquisition, and ultimately on historical change. D. Nübling’s paper in this volume proposes to explain the morphological irregularity of four German verbs by tracing their historical origins and relating them to well-known pathways of change. But even diachronic explanations cannot do more than render exceptionality possible or perhaps probable rather than necessary. To see this, let us return to the two examples given in the beginning of this paper. The historical background of English nouns with /∂ n/ plural (see (1)) is that they were weak nouns in Old English and for weak nouns, /∂ n/ was the regular plural. But this fact does not predict that this suffix should have been retained by any noun at all and even less that it should have been retained by the three nouns where it occurs today.

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Similarly, languages that have no nasal consonant phonemes (see (3)) are said to have had them at some point in their history before the nasals turned into voiced oral consonants (Hockett 1955: 119). But the availability of such a process does not predict that it should actually have happened in any language at all and even less that it should have happened in those particular languages where it has.8 5.

Conclusions

In this paper, exceptions were characterized as posing a conflict in categorization. All instances of subclassification disrupt the homogeneity of a class; but if the subclasses are characterized by clusters of properties, they can be described in terms of subgeneralizations. Exceptions, however, form a rogue subclass that is both quantitatively and qualitatively lean and thus not subsumable under a subgeneralization. Various ways of coming to grips with exceptions were surveyed; here is a summary of the approaches discussed above. (A) Representing exceptions as both exceptional and regular by means of (a) two faces of a single representation, or (b) two strata in a single representation, or (c) separate representations in a single component, or (d) separate representation in separate components (B) Regularizing exceptions by (a) restoring the homogeneity of the superclass – by unifying the regular and exceptional subclasses, – through re-analyzing the exceptions as regular, or – through positing a new, more comprehensive superclass within which both the erstwhile regular and erstwhile exceptional cases turn out to be regular; or – by assigning the exceptions to a different superclass; or by

8. Exceptions, also known as irregularities, anomalies, or simply counterexamples to generalizations, loom large in all sciences both social and natural. For relevant discussions in the philosophical literature about ceteris paribus generalizations, see Cartwright (1988a, 1988b); Hempel (1988); Darden (1992); and Carroll (no date). Whether this paper might contribute to a general account of how exceptions are dealt with across sciences remains to be seen.

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(b) strengthening the exceptional subclass – quantitatively, and/or – qualitatively (C) Explaining why the exceptions are exceptional While we have seen that solutions to exceptions vary with the theoretical framework, it is important to recognize that the very status of a grammatical pattern: whether it is or is not exceptional to begin with, is also highly theorydependent (Plank 1981: 4–7). The most fundamental variable across different approaches is whether the empirical domain in question is assumed to be wellregulated so that generalizations are to be expected to hold exceptionless; or whether the domain is seen as a less tidy sort without tight rules. If structural patterns are assumed to be mere probabilistic tendencies, what would otherwise count as exceptions will be “automatically anticipated” (Hempel 1988: 152). If there is no strict regularity, there cannot be irregularity, either. The four last papers in this volume propose to change the theoretical assumptions in the light of which certain phenomena are exceptional. R. Vogel’s paper about alternative case assignment to relative pronouns in German free relatives argues that none of the alternatives is the norm; instead, variation itself is the norm in the grammar of German resulting from the conflicting desiderata that case assignment needs to satisfy. Somewhat in the same vein, F. Fouvry suggests that grammatical rules be relaxed to operate probabilistically so that exceptions are still rule-governed. F. Newmeyer similarly calls into question the very concept of regularity within the superclass that exceptional phenomena are generally assumed to belong to. He suggests that typological correlations in syntax are performancebased rather than stemming from principles of linguistic competence. Given that the domain of performance is less constrained overall, there is no reason to expect typological generalizations to be free of exceptions. The competenceperformance distinction is also central to S. Featherston’s paper. He proposes that if well-formedness is allowed to be gradient, rather than binary, grammars have no exceptions. Exceptions are in turn the result of output selection by the speaker – a function of language processing. These proposals are akin to the way of dealing with exceptions that we saw above: separating them out of the superclass within which they would appear to be exceptions (e.g. Sag’s analyzing particles that are separated from the verb not as irregularly placed particles but as regularly ordered prepositional phrases). The difference is that in these accounts, not individual exceptions but entire classes of exceptions are lifted out of the broader domain of strictly regulated phenomena.

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In sum: just as no grammatical construction is exceptional all by itself but only if considered in comparison with other similar constructions, it is exceptional only if the theoretical framework assumed would expect it to be regular. Acknowledgement For their thoughtful comments, I am grateful to a reviewer, to the editors of this volume, to Professor Márta Fehér, to the participants of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Cologne, February ’05, and to the audience at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, where I presented a version of this paper in November ’05. Many thanks also to Michael Liston for directing me to relevant literature in the philosophy of science. References Blake, Barry J. 1990

Relational Grammar. London/New York: Routledge.

Bole-Richard, Rémy 1985 Hypothèse sur la genèse de la nasalité en Niger-Congo. Journal of West African Languages 15 (2): 3–28. Carroll, John no date

Laws of nature. [Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lawsof-nature]

Cartwright, Nancy 1988a Truth does not explain much. In How the Laws of Physics Lie, Nancy Cartwright, 44–53. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cartwright, Nancy 1988b Do the laws of physics state the facts? In How the Laws of Physics Lie, Nancy Cartwright, 54–73. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cartwright, Nancy 1988c How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chomsky, Noam 1984 Lectures on Government and Binding. The Pisa Lectures. Dordrecht: Foris. Clahsen, Harald, Monika Rothweiler, and Andreas Woest 1992 Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals. Cognition 45: 225–255. Cole, Peter, and Gabriella Hermon 1998 Long distance reflexives in Singapore Malay: An apparent typological anomaly. Linguistic Typology 2: 57–77.

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Cysouw, Michael 2005 What it means to be rare: The variability of person marking. In Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Adam Hodges and David S. Rood (eds.), 235–258. Amsterdam/– Philadelphia: Benjamins. Darden, Lindley 1992 Strategies for anomaly resolution. In Cognitive Models of Science, Ronald N. Griere (ed.), 251–273. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dehé, Nicole 2002

Particle Verbs in English. Syntax, Information Structure and Intonation. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Benjamins.

Dehé, Nicole, Ray Jackendoff, Andrew McIntyre, and Silke Urban (eds.) 2002 Verb-particle Explorations. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. É. Kiss, Katalin 1987

Configurationality in Hungarian. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

É. Kiss, Katalin 2002

The Syntax of Hungarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Francis, Elaine J., and Laura A. Michaelis (ed.) 2003 Mismatch. Form-function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Haiman, John 1974 Hempel, Carl 1988

Concessives, conditionals, and verbs of volition. Foundations of Language 11: 341–359. Provisoes: A problem concerning the inferential function of scientific theories. Erkenntnis 28: 147–164.

Hockett, Charles 1955 Manual of Phonology. Baltimore, MD: Indiana University Publications in Anthropological Linguistics, Memoir 11. Huck, Geoffrey, and Almerindo E. Ojeda (eds.) 1987 Discontinuous Constituency. (Syntax and Semantics 20) Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Jacobs, Roderick A., and Peter S. Rosenbaum 1968 English Transformational Grammar. Waltham, MA: Blaisdell. Jacobson, Pauline 1987 Phrase structure, grammatical relations, and discontinuous constituents. In Discontinuous Constituency, Geoffrey Huck and Almerindo

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Edith Moravcsik E. Ojeda (eds.), 27–69. (Syntax and Semantics 20) Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

Lakoff, George 1970

Irregularity in Syntax. New York/Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1995 Raising and transparency. Language 71 (1): 1–62. Lasnik, Howard. 1999 Minimalist Analysis. Malden, MA, Oxford: Blackwell. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2003 Theoretical implications of grammatical category – grammatical relation mismatches. In Mismatch. Form-function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar, Elaine J. Francis and Laura A. Michaelis (eds.), 149–178. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Nordlinger, Rachel, and Louisa Sadler 2004 Nominal tense in crosslinguistic perspective. Language 80 (4): 776– 806. Onishi, Masayuki 2001 Non-canonically marked subjects and objects: Parameters and properties. In Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon and Masayuki Onishi (eds.), 1–51. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Plank, Frans 1981 Polinsky, Maria 2003 Postal, Paul M. 1974

Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten. Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr. Non-canonical agreement is canonical. Transactions of the Philological Society 101: 279–312. On Raising. One rule of English and its theoretical implications. Cambridge/London: MIT Press.

Sadock, Jerrold M. 1987 Discontinuity in autolexical and autosemantic syntax. In Discontinuous Constituency, Geoffrey Huck and Almerindo E. Ojeda (eds.), 283–301. (Syntax and Semantics 20) Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Sadock, Jerrold M. 2003 Mismatches in autonomous modular versus derivational grammar. In Mismatch. Form-function Incongruity and the Architecture of Gram-

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mar, Elaine J. Francis and Laura A. Michaelis (eds.), 333–353. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Sag, Ivan A. 1987

Grammatical hierarchy and linear precedence. In Discontinuous Constituency, Geoffrey Huck and Almerindo E. Ojeda (eds.), 283–301. (Syntax and Semantics 20) Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

Webelhuth, Gert 1995 Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program. Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell.

Classical loci for exceptions: morphology and the lexicon

Exceptions to stress and harmony in Turkish: co-phonologies or prespecification? Barı¸s Kabak and Irene Vogel

Abstract. We examine the nature of regularities and exceptions in Turkish vowel harmony and stress assignment and show how the use of lexical strata or co-phonologies fails to determine classes of exceptions or sub-regularities in a principled manner. Instead, we propose a single mechanism, lexical pre-specification, to handle exceptions in both processes and advance an analysis based on truncation to mark disharmonic root vowels while maintaining the phonological integrity of the vowels in question. We also show that pre-specification also provides the most viable and unified treatment for all types of irregularly stressed roots in Turkish, rather than singling out specific categories such as place names.

1.

Introduction

Exceptions within phonology have plagued all modern phonological theories. Indeed, they have been the impetus behind such major theoretical developments as Kiparsky’s well-known “Elsewhere Principle” and the entire model of Lexical Phonology. Examination of the phonological phenomena that are considered “exceptional” reveals a variety of properties, ranging from isolated cases to fairly general sub-regularities, from forms that are considered atypical by native speakers to forms that are not found to be noteworthy in any way. In this paper, we first briefly examine the various types of phonological exceptions as well as several of the mechanisms that have been proposed to handle them. We then focus on two well-known phenomena of Turkish, Vowel Harmony and Stress Assignment and show how these quite regular phenomena are subject to specific types of exceptions. It is shown that previous types of analyses of these regular phenomena and their exceptions have serious drawbacks. An alternative proposal is advanced and shown to be simpler and more comprehensive than previous analyses.

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2.

Types of phonological exceptions and treatments

2.1. Overview of types of exceptions It is possible to distinguish two broad groups of phonological exceptions in terms of whether they involve a) phonotactic constraints or b) (morpho-) phonological rules. Within each type, we can find exceptions that are fairly isolated cases and others that represent fairly widespread patterns. With regard to phonotactic constraints, let us first consider several wellknown cases in English. There is a fairly limited set of Yiddish borrowings that include initial clusters such as [Sl-] and [Sm-] (e.g. schlep, schmuck) which violate the phonotactic constraints of English. Those speakers who use the pronunciations in question are aware of their foreign nature and such forms do not appear to have any affect on the nature of English phonology per se. For example, speakers would still judge a nonce word such as *schlick unacceptable, as opposed a word such as blick. Furthermore, many speakers ignore the violation and regularize the clusters to fit the phonotactics of English (i.e. [sl-] and [sm-]). More interesting are cases involving the initial cluster [sf-] (e.g. sphinx, sphere). While such words are historically loan words of Greek origin, the typical native speaker of English is unaware of this. Aside from the somewhat uncommon spelling of [f] as “ph”, such words are not felt to be exceptional. Differently from the Yiddish case, however, we do not find English speakers “regularizing” such words for example with [sp-] in place of [sf-] (i.e. *[spir] for sphere). It might thus seem that, while limited in distribution, the [sf-] onset does not actually constitute a phonotactic exception in English. Nevertheless, native English speakers typically reject nonce words with the same onset (e.g. *sfick as opposed to blick), and may have problems pronouncing the same cluster in a foreign language (e.g. Italian sfortuno ‘misfortune’). To the extent that Vowel Harmony represents a phonotactic constraint on the possible vowel combinations in a word, so-called “disharmonic” words constitute phonotactic exceptions. Interestingly, in Turkish, such exceptions to Vowel Harmony run the range from a) words felt to be foreign and thus marginal to the system (e.g. randevu ‘appointment’, rötar ‘delay’, monitör ‘monitor’,) analogous to Yiddish clusters in English, to b) words that are felt to be perfectly fine words of the language (e.g. radyo ‘radio’, gazete ‘newspaper’, siyah ‘black’), even though similar nonce items might be rejected as potential words, analogous to the case of [sf-] in English (see Yava¸s 1980 for a psycholinguistic investigation). Exceptions with respect to Phonological Rule (P-Rule) application typically involve morphophonological alternations. As in the case of phonotactic ex-

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61

ceptions, these exceptions may constitute isolated cases and be recognized as marginal, or they may represent more general patterns and not be recognized as being atypical. Certain irregular plurals are recognized as exceptions to the general rules that determine the surface form of [-z], [-s] or [-@z] (e.g. tooth – teeth vs. booth – booths). Like the case of the Yiddish clusters, such forms are felt to be external to the system of English. Thus, when making the plural of a nonce item such as looth, speakers will use the regular pattern (i.e. looths) as opposed to an irregular form (i.e. *leeth). Other morphophonological exceptions, however, are not noted as such by native speakers. In a substantial number of words, a final /d/ is pronounced as [Z] when followed by the suffix [-@n] ‘-ion’ (e.g. divi[Z]ion, corro[Z]ion, elu[Z]ion, inva[Z]ion). The phonetically quite similar suffix, [-@v] ‘-ive’, however, causes the appearance of [s] in the same words (e.g. divi[s]ive, corro[s]ive, elu[s]ive, inva[s]ive). Both of these patterns are in a sense exceptional since other suffixes that begin with schwa typically do not cause the /d/ to undergo any changes, for example, [-@r] ‘-er’ (e.g. divi[d]er, corro[d]er, etc.), or [-@b@l] ‘-ible/-able’ (e.g. divi[d]able, corro[d]ible, etc.). There are, however, also several exceptions involving additional changes with [-@b@l] (e.g. divi[z]ible). Despite the various treatments of word final /d/ when followed by different suffixes, speakers do not identify the forms in question as exceptions but rather consider them part of the basic system of English. Likewise, the loan suffix -istan in Turkish, which derives country names, contains vowels that are disharmonic, violating the vowel harmony rules of Turkish (e.g., Türkmen-istan ‘Turkmenistan’, Hind-istan ‘India’, Macar-istan ‘Hungary’). The suffix, however, is felt to be perfectly regular by native speakers, especially evinced by the fact that it can be used productively to create made-up country names (e.g., hayvan-istan ‘the country of animals’; çocuk-istan ‘the country of children’). 2.2. Overview of treatment of exceptions In modern phonological theories, a number of proposals have been advanced to account for the fact that in addition to the general patterns of a language, there tend to be not only sporadic exceptional items but classes of items that exhibit their own sets of patterns that are systematically different from those of the core phonology. It is possible to distinguish two general approaches to treating exceptions: a) those that simply mark individual items in some way as “foreign” (e.g. SPE) and thus exempt them from the regularities of the language and b) those that attempt to enrich the structure of the phonology of the language to recognize and formalize the role of exceptions in the make-up of the language

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as a whole (e.g. Lexical Phonology). The problem of the former is that while some exceptions are felt to be marginal and excluding them from the phonological system of the language seems reasonable (e.g. the Yiddish borrowings), where more widespread patterns exist and where these are not interpreted as “foreign” by native speakers, simply excluding the items in question is not a viable option. In the SPE model of phonology, in addition to exempting individual items from undergoing phonological rules, more general structural mechanisms were available for handling exceptions. By using abstract underlying representations (URs), it was possible to distinguish items based on differences in UR such that a particular rule/s would apply or fail to apply in order to arrive at the appropriate surface form. In addition, to account for the fact that certain P-Rules might apply only in certain morphophonological contexts, different types of boundary symbols were used, most notably ‘+’ and ‘#’. Such mechanisms, however, were criticized as being merely diacritic notations. Attempts were thus made to a) constrain the nature of URs and b) eliminate the arbitrariness of boundary symbols. The latter in particular gave rise to Lexical Phonology in which different P-Rules were associated with different levels of representation; roughly, the ‘+’ and ‘#’ boundary phenomena were located on Levels 1 and 2, respectively. It was still necessary to stipulate at which level a given rule was operative, however, the levels themselves imposed a principled ordering relationship among the sets of rules applying at the different levels. In addition to the claim that irregularities were relegated to Level 1, it was noted that a strong correlation existed between the Latinate and Germanic components of English and Levels 1 and 2, respectively. While the rules of Level 2 (and possibly beyond, depending on the number of levels in the model) were the ones considered synchronically productive, it could also be seen that many of the rules of Level 1 were quite productive, but only among the Latinate structures. Thus, the P-Rules of Level 2 could be interpreted as characterizing the basics of English phonology, while those of Level 1 could be seen as constituting a more exceptional component of the phonology, albeit a substantial one. Analogous situations were also identified in other languages in which the different levels in Lexical Phonology appear to correspond, at least roughly, to phenomena with different linguistic origins (e.g. Sanskrit and Dravidian in Malayalam; cf. Mohanan 1986). While the ordering relationships among phonological forms and phenomena inherent in Lexical Phonology provided a number of important insights, they also introduced their own problems. One problem was that it was not clear how many levels were needed and on what grounds they were established. Furthermore, any attempt at ordering phenomena led to the well-known “ordering

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paradoxes”. Co-phonologies (cf. Inkelas 1998; Anttila 2002; Inkelas and Orgun 2003) were introduced to account for the fact that different phonological phenomena may apply to different items in a language without, however, requiring that the items be relegated to different levels in the lexicon. In fact, while certain words might behave in a similar fashion with respect to one rule, they might not share the same property with respect to another rule. For example, in Turkish, certain place names might exhibit an atypical stress pattern and thus be placed in a given co-phonology for this purpose (cf. Inkelas 1999; Inkelas and Orgun 2003). At the same time, however, these same words might behave regularly with respect to other phenomena such as Vowel Harmony. By associating the appropriate words with a particular co-phonology, no assumptions are made with respect to other phenomena, whereas in Lexical Phonology the levels correspond to clusters of phenomena. The main problem is, however, that it is unclear how many co-phonologies (like lexical levels) a language may have, and on what grounds they are established. Finally, within Optimality Theory, exceptions are typically addressed either in terms of the nature of the representation or the ordering of constraints in regard to the exceptional items. In the former case, a particular property of an item is specified in such a way that it is “protected” by a Faithfulness Constraint, with the result that the more typical form appears to be a less highly valued option. In the latter case, a particular lexical item may be specified for a special ordering of constraints, either in terms of a re-ranking of certain constraints or in terms of observation of a lexically specific constraint. Both of these possibilities treat exceptions as isolated items. While this might be appropriate for such cases as the Yiddish clusters in English, it fails to capture the fact that certain exceptions are found in groups of items, an insight inherent in both the Lexical Phonology and co-phonology approaches. Only to the extent that phonological patterns are associated with specific types of morphological junctures can OT account for at least some general patterns of exceptions, via the use of Alignment Constraints (cf. Mc Carthy and Prince 1993). 2.3. How different are the approaches to exceptions? Despite the apparent differences among the previous approaches to exceptions, they all share several fundamental properties. That is, they all crucially rely on prespecification of a) particular features in the underlying representation of a lexical item or b) a property of the item that causes it to exhibit atypical behavior with regard to the general rules (or constraints) of the language. While the SPE approach used “diacritics”, this is not all that different from the use of item-specific rewrite rules (e.g. tooth + pl → teeth) and the application of the

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Elsewhere Condition in Lexical Phonology. Similarly, in OT the specification of particular features in a UR and the related Faithfulness constraints “protect” a given atypical surface form. In each case, individual lexical items are specified with whatever properties are needed so that they do not participate in what are considered the general patterns/phenomena of the language. Both Lexical Phonology and co-phonologies attempt, furthermore, to address the fact that certain exceptions are not isolated cases but constitute patterns themselves. The use of diacritics is not avoided, however, since they are required to indicate the location of items in their appropriate portion of the phonological system. These diacritics, however, do not refer to the nature of the UR and thus do not provide information about the nature of the exceptionality, they merely serve as a type of tag indicating which set of rules is applicable. Furthermore, it has been pointed out (e.g., Inkelas, Orgun, and Zoll 1996, 1997, 2004) that establishing co-phonologies for capturing static regularities in grammar leads to the proliferation of co-phonologies, and similar objections to the proliferation of levels were raised in regard to Lexical Phonology. In OT, too, the mechanism for capturing exceptions and static patterns is prespecification in the context of the ‘richness of the base’ (McCarthy 1995; Prince and Smolensky 1993; Smolensky 1996). Lexicon Optimization (Prince and Smolensky 1993) ensures that underlying representations are posited such that the fewest highly ranked constraints are violated in the determination of surface forms. That is, it is essentially the surface forms of morphemes that determine their underlying specification. Thus, “for structures which exceptionally fail to show the expected alternations and instead maintain a constant surface form, Lexicon Optimization will naturally chose them to be stored underlyingly in their surface forms-that is, to be prespecified” (Inkelas, Orgun, and Zoll 2004: 549). 3.

Two types of phonological exceptions and treatments

We now consider the treatment of exceptions to two general phonological phenomena in Turkish: Vowel Harmony VH and (final) Stress Assignment (SA). We will show how previous analyses have required multiple mechanisms, including the use of diacritic specifications, and we will evaluate the consequences of using multiple mechanisms for handling phonological exceptions. This evaluation leads to a proposal that a single mechanism of lexical prespecification of the exceptional behavior provides the simplest and the most efficient way to handle exceptions.

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Exceptions to stress and harmony in Turkish: co-phonologies or prespecification?

3.1. Vowel harmony The Turkish vowel system comprises eight vowels with symmetrical high-low, front-back, and round vs. non-round oppositions, as seen in Table 1.1 Table 1. Turkish vowel phonemes. Front

Back

unrounded

rounded

unrounded

rounded

High

i

Low

e

ü

1

u

ö

a

o

These vowels may only combine in certain ways, exhibiting Vowel Harmony (VH), within a specific domain, roughly a non-compound word. Abstracting away from theoretical differences with respect to the nature of the phonological features assumed for the Turkish vowel system, it is generally assumed that there are two patterns of VH: (i) palatal harmony, which requires that all vowels agree in terms of the frontness-backness dimension, and (ii) labial harmony, which requires that high vowels agree with the preceding vowel in terms of roundness (e.g., Karde¸stuncer 1982; Clements and Sezer 1982; van der Hulst and van de Weijer 1991; Polgardi 1999; Kaye, Lowenstamm and Vergnaud 1985). It can be seen that VH applies within roots, as in (1), as well as in morphologically complex words, as in (2). (1)

Vowel Harmony in Roots a. bar1¸s ‘peace’ b. yedi ‘seven’ c. soˇguk ‘cold’ d. kötü ‘bad’

1. In this paper, we mostly use the general conventions of Turkish orthography in Turkish examples. Accordingly, ü and ö represent high and low front rounded vowels, respectively. Instead of the orthographic ı, a barred-i (1) is used for the high back unrounded vowel (IPA: [W]) to avoid possible confusion with the symbol i which represents the high front unrounded vowel. The symbol s¸ represents the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative (IPA: [S]) ; y the palatal glide (IPA: [j]); ç and c indicate voiceless and voiced palatal affricates (IPA: [tS] and [dZ]), respectively. The letter known as soft-g (ˇg ), which corresponds to a voiced velar fricative in Anatolian dialects, is argued not to be produced in standard Istanbul Turkish, but to hold an empty consonantal position in the underlying representation.

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Vowel Harmony in Morphologically Complex Words Nom Sing k1l ‘hair’ il ‘city’ ku¸s ‘bird’ süt ‘milk’ kat ‘floor’ tel ‘wire’ yol ‘road’ çöl ‘desert’

Acc Sing k1l-1 il-i ku¸s-u süt-ü kat-1 tel-i yol-u çöl-ü

Nom Plural k1l-lar il-ler ku¸s-lar süt-ler kat-lar tel-ler yol-lar çöl-ler

Acc Plural k1l-lar-1 il-ler-i ku¸s-lar-1 süt-ler-i kat-lar-1 tel-ler-i yol-lar-1 çöl-ler-i

Despite such regularities, certain exceptions also exist, as detailed below. 3.1.1. Disharmonic roots: a subregular pattern? Clements and Sezer (1982) observe that vowels from the set /i, e, a, o, u/ may combine freely in roots, leading to the violation of palatal and labial harmony, as in (3). (3)

Root disharmony a. b. c. d.

sa:hip polis büro pilot

‘owner’ ‘police’ ‘office’ ‘pilot’

Violations Palatal Harmony Palatal and Labial Harmony Palatal and Labial Harmony Palatal and Labial Harmony

In all of these items, palatal harmony is violated. Labial harmony is additionally violated in (3b), where we would expect the non-initial vowel to be round since it is high, and in (3c, d), where the non-inital vowels are rounded although they are low. By contrast, vowels from the set /ü ö 1/ have been observed not to occur in disharmonic roots (e.g., Clements and Sezer 1982), although several words, all of which are borrowings, contain a combination of /i/ and /ü/ (e.g., virüs ‘virus’, ümit ‘hope’). Goldsmith (1990: 304–309) points out that the first group, /i, e, a, o, u/ coincides with the cross-linguistically favoured five vowel system, where the specification for the frontness/backness dimension (i.e., [back] according to Goldsmith) is fully predictable from rounding. According to Goldsmith, [back] is underspecified at this level, leading these five vowels to combine freely within a root without violating frontness-backness harmony. The specification of [back] is required, however, when the root contains /ü/, /ö/, or /1/, since these vowels involve marked combinations of frontness and rounding.

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As Clements and Sezer (1982) observe, furthermore, these vowels fail to surface with other vowels in disharmonic roots since they tend to be regularized in such cases, as illustrated in (4). (4)

a. b. c. d. e.

mersörize kupür bisküvit püro komünist

∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼

merserize küpür büsküvüt puro kominist

‘mercerized’ ‘clipping’ ‘biscuit’ ‘cigar’ ‘communist’

Although Clements and Sezer (1982) note such regularizations, they nevertheless suggest that Vowel Harmony is not an active process in roots. The opposite conclusion is drawn by others such as Van der Hulst and van de Weijer (1991) who argue that since VH is independently required for suffixes, harmonic roots get a ‘free ride’ with regard to the harmony rules. In addition, they require a set of restrictions on possible vowel combinations permitted in disharmonic roots, which would presumably be part of the (phonological) grammar of Turkish speakers: (5)

Restrictions on Disharmonic Roots: a. /1/ does not occur disharmonically. b. /ü/ and /ö/ do not occur with back vowels. c. Non-initial syllables do not contain round vowels.

A similar set of restrictions on disharmonic roots is incorporated into Polgardi’s (1999) Optimality Theoretic analysis. As will be shown below, however, both of these approaches have shortcomings in that they a) require underlying specification of exceptionality on already exceptional roots, and b) result in a substantial number of incorrect predictions. 3.1.2. Previous accounts of vowel harmony exceptions Van der Hulst and van de Weijer (1991) assume unary vowel components (primitives) that either regularly extend over the word domain, or are linked to specific vowel (V) positions. Accordingly, Turkish vowels are assumed to occupy a V position, and are classified in terms of L(ow), F(ront), and R(ound). V positions with no further information are interpreted as high and back, presumably yielding the unmarked vowel in Turkish. The combinations of R and F with V or the specification of L, provide the remaining 7 vowel phonemes in Turkish. For example, the vowel /ö/ exhibits the maximum number of components (i.e., L, F, and R), a reflection of the marked status of the vowel. Vowel Harmony is

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essentially viewed as the process of associating a vowel primitive to every V or L following it in the relevant domain, as illustrated in (6). Since low rounded vowels are unattested in non-initial position, an additional condition is posited to ban the association of R to a non-initial L. If no F or R element is available to be associated to subsequent positions, the regular patterns surface as illustrated in (7). (6)

(7)

V L /1 a/ g1rtlak ‘throat’

L V /a 1/ alt1 ‘six’

L L /a a/ kara ‘black’

V V /1 1/ k1s1m ‘part’

Disharmonic roots, by contrast, may not contain a bare V position, which would yield /1/ in violation of the generalization in (5a) above, or a V position with two specified elements, which would result in the violation of (5b), as shown in (8). Thus, the disharmonic roots containing the combinations /i-o/, /e-u/, /e-o/, and /i-u/, in either order, contain V positions with only one specified element. (8)

Properties of disharmonic roots (after van der Hulst and van de Weijer 1991) a. Disharmonic roots do not contain bare V Examples: F V */e

R V i/

V */i

L o/

Exceptions to stress and harmony in Turkish: co-phonologies or prespecification?

b.

69

Disharmonic roots do not contain roots with two prosodies Examples: F

F

V

L

V

V

R */¸

a/

R */u

ü/

The same claims are made within an OT framework by Polgardi (1999). The constraint harmony essentially associates every vowel element (A = Low, U = Round, I = Front) to a vowel position. An additional constraint, *lıcense (a, u), ensures that combinations of the elements A (Low) and U (Round) are only licensed in initial position. A third constraint, *multıple (α ), conflicts with harmony, banning the multiple association of elements. Since A (Low) cannot spread in Turkish, *multıple (a) must outrank harmony and a more general *multıple (α ) constraint. Polgardi (1999) blocks VH in roots by assuming the dec (Derived Environment Constraint), which restricts harmony to derived environments. Specifically, by ranking the dec above constraints that require the association of elements (i.e., harmony), VH will only be observed in derived environments. Beyond using the dec to block harmony in roots, Polgardi employs another set of constraints to account for the additional generalizations regarding disharmonic roots given above in (5) to ensure that impossible disharmonic roots do not surface. The constraint *elements prohibits the presence of elements (prosodies such as I, U, A), with the effect of banning /ü/ and /ö/ in disharmonic roots. Similarly, /1/ is prohibited in disharmonic roots by fill which avoids empty positions. Finally, *license (i, u) ensures that the combination of I and U (i.e., /ü/), is only licensed by multiple association of I, which serves to ban the combination of /ü/ and /ö/ with back vowels. The tableau in (9) illustrates how these constraints regularize an ungrammatical disharmonic form containing /ü-1/ to a form with [ü-i]. In the tableau, A, U, and I stand for Low, Round, and Front, respectively, and ‘v’ indicates the absence of a particular element. Each vowel is represented by the elements placed on top of one another (e.g., [v I U] = /ü/; [v v v] = /1/; [A v v] = /a/). Spreading is indicated by ‘»’, and the large dot indicates the target that is affected by the spreading element. Three dots ‘…’ between the vowels show that there can be an intervening segment (e.g., a consonant).

70 (9)

v I U ü a.

b.

Z c.

d.

e.

Barı¸s Kabak and Irene Vogel

Regularization of ungrammatical disharmonic root /ü 1/ (adapted from Polgárdi 1999: 196) … v … v … v … 1 v …v I »* U» * ü …ü v …v I »* U v ü …i v …v I v U» * ü …u v …v I v U v ü …1 v …A I v U v ü …a

* ELEMENTS **

LIC ( I , U )

FILL

DEC

HARMONY

**!

**

**

*!

**

*!

***!

*

*MULT (α ) **

*

*

*

*

*

*

*!

**

*

***

Finally, a recent approach to exceptions in phonology, the introduction of cophonologies that are intended to represent sub-regularities in the lexicon, can also be applied to the case of VH exceptions in Turkish. In particular, to capture Goldsmith’s (1990) observation that /i, e, a, o, u/ may freely combine in disharmonic roots, different sets of roots would need to be relegated to at least the two co-phonologies outlined in (10). In addition, it would still be necessary to resort to lexical specification to account for exceptions to these co-phonologies, as presented in (11). (10)

Co-phonology A: – This co-phonology is subject to the feature values imposed by the 5-vowel system, where vowels are underspecified for frontnessbackness dimension. – The members of this co-phonology are roots that contain any of the vowels from the set /i, e, a, o, u/, which are seemingly har-

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71

monic with respect to palatal harmony, but otherwise disharmonic in the context of the 8-vowel system. – Examples: kitap ‘book’, kalem ‘pencil’, etc. Co-phonology B: – This co-phonology is subject to the feature values imposed by the 8-vowel system, where vowels must be specified for the frontnessbackness dimension, rounding, and height. – The members of this co-phonology are roots that obey palatal and rounding harmony. – Examples: bal1k ‘fish’, ek¸si ‘sour’, konu ‘topic’, etc. (11)

Lexıcal specıfıcatıon: – Vowels in roots that belong to neither of the above co-phonologies must be associated with lexically specified feature values. – Examples: k1rlent ‘pillow’; büro ‘office’, etc.

3.1.3. Drawbacks of previous treatments of vowel harmony exceptions One problem with the above analyses is that they do not crucially distinguish between harmonic roots and those disharmonic roots that fail to obey the properties given above in (8). That is, both types of roots may contain a) V positions with two elements (e.g. /ö-ü/ and /ü-ü/), as in the examples in (6), and b) bare V positions, as in (7). Nothing in the representation of the disharmonic cases indicates the nature of their exceptionality, so some type of additional marking is required to distinguish the two categories of roots. A second type of problem is the existence of disharmonic items with sequences that violate the generalization in (8b), some of which are quite frequent (e.g., virüs ‘virus’, küllah ‘cone’, mahküm ‘convict’, rötar ‘delay’, büro ‘office’ etc.). All such items (i.e. those with combinations of /ü-i/, /i-ü/, /ü-a/, /a-ü/, /ü-o/, /o-ü/, /ö-a/, and /a-ö/) contain Vs with two prosodies. In addition, there are several disharmonic roots with bare V positions, in violation of the generalization given in (8b). These include many commonly used borrowings in which an epenthetic vowel is introduced to break up onset clusters that are otherwise illicit in Turkish (e.g., [k1rem] from cream; [k-ıredi] from credit), as well as those borrowings where certain vowels were replaced with [1] for various reasons during the process of nativization (e.g., [k1rlent] ‘pillow’ from ghirlanda (Italian); [k1dem] ‘rank’ from kidem (Arabic)). Such cases would need some idiosyncratic marking to allow them to surface as words of Turkish. The problem is not resolved by the OT treatment, as Polgardi’s (1999) constraint ranking in (9) runs into the same difficulty. As can be seen in the tableau,

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the sequence /ü -a/ in (9d) incurs multiple violations of the unranked constraint *elements because the sequence contains three prosodies. Likewise, all the other sequences noted above also incur multiple violations of this constraint, incorrectly predicting that such sequences should fail to appear in the surface forms of disharmonic roots in Turkish. Furthermore, the constraint fill always militates against disharmonic roots with bare V positions thus incorrectly disallowing the combination of [1] with vowels other than [a] from surfacing in the Turkish lexicon. In fact, due to recent borrowings, Turkish is replete with such words where the vowel [1] is the result of epenthesis to break up onset consonant clusters, as mentioned above. In spoken Turkish, these vowels are typically produced, although they are not always specified in the spellings in current dictionaries. The cophonology approach entertained above also encounters some substantial problems. As argued by Inkelas, Orgun and Zoll (1996, 1997, 2004), as soon as a grammar divides morphemes into distinct classes based on some detectable pattern, it permits the proliferation of (potentially uninteresting) cophonologies. One might, however, invoke the concept of statistical significance here, particulary to restrict morpheme-specific co-phonologies. A quantitative approach might support Co-phonology A in (10), since there are many items that follow this pattern, while less frequent patterns would simply need to be handled by lexical prespecification of some sort. Inkelas, Orgun and Zoll, point out, furthermore, that even statistically significant patterns might nevertheless not be of phonological importance in a language. Another way to limit co-phonologies suggested by Inkelas et al. is to restrict their nature, for example, by allowing them to involve only the non-native portion of the lexicon of a language (cf. Ito and Mester 1993, 1995). This would not solve the problem in Turkish, however, since there is no obvious way to separate the vocabulary into native vs. non-native categories, except possibly in the case of certain very recent borrowings.2 Furthermore, such groupings would not result in a clear-cut distinction between disharmonic and harmonic roots, and in fact, there exist certain non-native words that are harmonic (e.g., lise ‘lycee’) as well as native Turkish words that are disharmonic (e.g., anne ‘mother’). Despite differences in their approach, all of the previous models have in common that their treatment of VH requires multiple types of idiosyncratic marking: (a) the specification of a particular class of disharmonic words as being 2. See Lightner (1972) for an attempt to distinguish non-native words from native ones in the Turkish lexicon on a number of phonological properties. The results do not, however, provide the distinctions needed here.

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subject to the observed sub-regularity, and (b) a lexical specification of words that violate the sub-regularity. As we will see below, a similar degree of complexity arises in previous treatments of irregular stress patterns in Turkish. 3.2. Stress It is well known that Turkish regularly places primary stress on the final syllable of a word, whether this is a root or a combination of root and suffixes (e.g., Lees 1961; Lewis 1967; Underhill 1967; Inkelas 1996; Kabak and Vogel 2001), as illustrated in (12). (12)

Regular Word-Final Stress a. kedí ‘cat’ b. kedi-lér ‘cats’ c. kedi-ler-ím ‘my cats’ d. kedi-ler-im-íz ‘our cats’ e. kedi-ler-im-iz-ín ‘of our cats’

Despite this regularity, however, exceptions are also observed. While irregular stress exists in both roots and morphologically complex items, the focus here is on irregular stress in roots, illustrated in (13). The reader is referred to Kabak and Vogel (2001, 2005) for a discussion of other types of stress irregularities. (13)

Irregular Stress: exceptional lexical items a. Edírne b. Kastámonu c. Üsk´üdar d. tiyátro ‘theatre’ e. fabríka ‘factory’ f. négatif ‘negative’

It has been widely noted that a number of words exhibit irregular stress, following a quantity-sensitive pattern similar to the Latin Stress Rule, often referred to as the Sezer Stress Rule (cf. Sezer 1981, Kaisse 1985; Barker 1989, Çakır 2000 among others). These words are typically, though not exclusively, native or foreign place names, personal names and other loan words. According to the Sezer Stress Rule (SSR), in these irregularly stressed words stress falls on the antepenultimate syllable if it is heavy and the penultimate syllable is light; otherwise it falls on the penultimate syllable. It is easily seen, however, that such a generalization does not do justice to the facts of irregular root stress in Turkish since a variety of irregularly stressed words fail to follow the SSR: (13b and f) are stressed on the antepenultimate rather than the predicted penultimate syl-

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lable; (13c) and (13e) are stressed on the penultimate syllable rather than the predicted antepenultimate syllable. Recently, the argument has been advanced that the SSR is productive exclusively in place names (Inkelas and Orgun 1998; Inkelas 1999; Inkelas and Orgun 2003). It is argued, furthermore, that derived words which do not themselves follow the SSR exhibit this pattern when used as place names (e.g., ulús ‘nation’ vs. Úlus (place name); sirke-cí ‘vinegar seller’ vs. Sírkeci (place name); kulak-s-íz ‘without ear’ vs. Kuláks1z (place name)). It should be noted, however, that several exceptions to this generalization exist. As noted above, place names such as in (13b) and (13c) fail to conform to this pattern. In addition, Demircan (1976) lists several morphologically complex place names with final stress that thus also fail to exhibit the SSR (e.g. Adalár, Y1ld1rán, Sava¸sı-r, Arabac1lár, Yumurtal-ík, Deˇgirmencí, etc.). There are also other morphologically complex place names with non-final stress where the SSR is violated in other ways (e.g., Ármaˇganl1, Óklaval1, Seméreci, etc.). Furthermore, numerous place names follow the regular compound stress rule, where the stress is retained on the first member of the compound (e.g., Fenérbahçe; Kad-í-köy; K1r-ík-kale).3 Finally, it should also be noted that there is considerable variation with respect to stress placement in certain place names (e.g., Sö´ ylemez ∼ Söyleméz; Emírgan ∼Emirgán ; Bálaban ∼ Balában ∼ Balabán; ɡgridir ∼ Eˇgrídir; see Demircan 1976: 410 for further examples), although it

3. For completeness, it should be added that there are also compounds that are stressed on the final word of the whole compound construction in Turkish (e.g., akar+yak-ít (flow-Aor+fuel) ‘fuel oil’, imam+bay1l-d-í (imam+faint-Past) ‘a pot roast of lamb with eggplant puree’; uyu-r+gez-ér (sleep-Aor+wander-Aor) ‘sleepwalker’; gök+del-én (sky+pierce-Rel) ‘sky-scraper’; bilgi+say-ár (information+count-Aor ‘computer’ ). The same pattern is also manifested in several proper names (Son+g´ül (last+rose); Gül+áy (rose+moon); Bin+náz (thousand+caprice)), as well as a few place names (e.g., Fener+bahçé (lantern+garden) that are formed through compounding. In the dialect of the first author, a native speaker of Istanbul Turkish, however, some of these compounds, except for proper names, follow the regular compound stress pattern (e.g., imám+bay1ld1; uyúr-gezer, Fenér+bahçe). The fact that stress appears on the last syllable of the rightmost word in certain compound formations, especially in the case of proper name, suggests that these constructions have been grammaticalized as simplex nouns, and are no longer analyzed as compounds in the synchronic grammar. The distinction between compounds that are stressed on the leftmost word vs. the rightmost element also seems to be grounded in the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of compounds (e.g., endocentricity vs. exocentricity; see Demircan 1996: 147–148 for details). The discussion of these properties, however, is outside the scope of this paper.

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is not clear whether this is due to dialectal, or even idiolectal, variation. While some of these variants follow the SSR, clearly others do not. 3.2.1. Stress irregularities and co-phonologies In several recent analyses of Turkish stress, it has been proposed that the different irregular stress patterns, in particular those found in place names, be treated as separate co-phonologies, beyond the general co-phonology that accounts for the regular stress pattern (cf. among others Inkelas, Orgun, and Zoll 1997; Inkelas 1999; Inkelas and Orgun 2003). In such proposals, roots as well morphologically complex place names are grouped together with regard to the SSR. Several problems are immediately apparent, however, with such an approach. First, as was noted, irregular stress is not limited to place names, so treating place names as distinct from other items requires additional mechanisms for the latter, and creates the expectation that the different types of words are crucially distinct in some way. Second, the problem of the proliferation of cophonologies arises with regard to place names. As was also noted, while some irregularly stressed place names exhibit the SSR, some show other irregular stress patterns, while a considerable amount of place names actually follow the regular Turkish stress patterns (e.g., final stress and compound stress). This suggests that lexical items that represent place names require a multiplicity of cophonologies, minimally, one for the regular stress pattern, one for SSR and another one for place names that do not fit into either of these two co-phonologies. In fact, examination of the various patterns discussed in Inkelas and Orgun (2003) reveals seven distinct categories of place names with regard to their stress assignment (cf. Kabak and Vogel 2001). If each of these categories is permitted to constitute a separate co-phonology, we would expect that the introduction of a new item that does not fit any of these patterns would then also be allowed to form yet another co-phonology. It is not clear on what grounds one may establish a co-phonology, and if certain restrictions are imposed, what would happen to forms that fall outside the co-phonologies that are established in accordance with the restrictions. The obvious solution would be to permit one co-phonology that is a type of catch-all for any items that are not otherwise accounted for. In this case, it would be necessary to simply specify the location of stress individually for all of the forms in this “overflow co-phonology”. The question such an approach raises is whether it makes sense for a grammar to invoke a variety of different mechanisms including co-phonologies and whatever means are required to a) identify the items that are associated with each co-phonology and b) ensure that the necessary phonological rules operate in the appropriate order in each co-phonology.

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A third, and more general, concern regarding the co-phonology approach is what it implies about the nature of the grammar itself. It has been suggested that the SSR is psychologically real and operates productively in Turkish (cf. Inkelas and Orgun 2003). Thus, we might interpret the presence of a given cophonology as an indication that the relevant portion of the grammar is synchronically “active” in the language. It is also claimed that speakers follow this pattern in stressing new place names, although this claim has not been substantiated with experimental data. Furthermore, based on an examination of the 948 irregularly stress place names listed in the TELL data base (= Turkish Electronic Living Lexicon: http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu:7037/TELLhome.html), Kabak and Vogel (2005) determine that only 19% of the items unquestionably conform to the Sezer Stress pattern. The other irregular stress patterns are represented by even smaller percentages. While numerical data are not necessarily indicative of productivity (or its absence), it is also the case that the informal observations of the first author do not support the suggestion that native speakers of Turkish regularly apply the Sezer stress pattern to new place names. Thus, if the existence of a Sezer co-phonology implies that this stress rule actively determines the pronunciation of place names in Turkish, such a claim is at best questionable without experimental data to support it. Note that speakers might generalize the fact that place names have just non-final stress, which may not necessarily correspond to the SSR, and apply this to novel place names via analogy to the existing ones. In addition, the introduction of a “Sezer co-phonology” into the grammar of Turkish, through which all place names must pass, would obscure several facts of Turkish that a grammar would normally be expected to capture. For example, we would lose the information that a considerable number of place names in Turkish actually exhibit regular stress, or follow other regular patterns of the language. Indeed, not only is Turkish morphology extremely productive, the same mechanisms (i.e., suffixation, compounding) used in regular word formation processes are also employed in the formation of complex place names. If the place names are isolated from the rest of the lexicon in some way, this generalization is missed. Moreover, if it is assumed that the SSR is what accounts for stress placement in place names, the grammar must somehow be even further complicated to handle those that do not follow the SSR. As mentioned above, such items actually constitute the majority of place names, so we must ask at this point to what extent the grammar is really capturing and representing the phonological generalizations of Turkish. In an effort to maintain the concept of co-phonologies, it might be possible to simplify the system by allowing the Sezer co-phonology only to apply to place

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names that in fact exhibit the SSR. Thus we could limit the place names to only three categories: a) those that are predicted via the regular stress patterns of Turkish, b) those that follow the SSR, and c) those that are irregular but follow neither the SSR nor the regular stress patterns of Turkish. The third category would inevitably require some type of stress prespecification, as they do in fact, in Inkelas and Orgun’s co-phonology treatment. The question that arises at this point is whether the introduction of co-phonologies offers any substantive advantages to the grammar of Turkish. As we have seen, in the case of place names, the result is a fairly complex system which requires the segmentation of the Turkish lexicon into a number of components, with the consequence that certain generalizations about stress and word formation processes are missed. Furthermore, the introduction of co-phonologies does not free the grammar of the need for overt prespecification of irregularities in the stress system, as even in a model with a Sezer co-phonology, the majority of place names with irregular stress will need some direct specification of where this stress falls. Given that such a direct method of prespecification is required in any case, the question that arises is whether the additional machinery involved in co-phonologies is necessary. That is, it appears to add “cost” to the system without reducing the need for the mechanism of lexical prespecification of idiosyncratic properties.

4.

Motivating prespecification

It seems uncontroversial that the inclusion of item-specific information in a lexical representation is an indication of some form of irregularity. As we have shown, in Turkish such information is required in both disharmonic roots and atypical stress patterns. Since the introduction of additional constructs such as lexical levels or co-phonologies does not eliminate the necessity of lexical specification, these constructs can be seen as merely adding “cost” to the system. We propose, instead, that lexical specification be used as the sole means of representing phonological exceptions. As indicated above, this is essentially the approach taken within OT, where exceptions are handled via the relatively high ranking of faithfulness constraints that protect underlying structure (e.g., Inkelas 1999). Indeed, given two competing input forms, one fully specified (i.e. prespecified as containing a particular property), and one partially specified (i.e. prespecified as belonging to a special co-phonology), Lexicon Optimization ensures that the fully specified alternative will be preferred. Thus, this use of prespecification in fact makes co-phonologies superfluous within OT.

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In the following sections, we show in detail how a prespecification model accounts for the facts of disharmonic roots and exceptional stress. In fact, we propose that this type of model is potentially extendable in a simple and straightforward way to other types of phonological exceptions as well. 4.1. Prespecification in disharmonic roots In a model that uses prespecification as the sole mechanism for treating disharmonic roots in Turkish, there are at least three options for analyzing the vowel system. In the context of the overall system of Turkish phonology, we will exclude two of these options. We will then present our proposal, Option 3, in which we argue that all that is required is that atypical roots be lexically specified as being excluded from the progressive Vowel Harmony rules via the marking of the precise exceptionality – or disharmony. It is, furthermore, the model advanced as Option 3 that will be used below in accounting for the exceptional stress patterns. 4.1.1. Prespecification in disharmonic roots: two potential problems As indicated above, while we propose to treat phonological exceptions via the mechanism of prespecification, the choices of what to prespecify, and in what way, are not trivial. In this regard, we first consider two options that turn out to be untenable, despite what appear to be reasonable assumptions. The first case, Option 1, accounts for disharmonic roots by underlyingly specifying those features that do not undergo Vowel Harmony, making use of opaque segments and their interaction with the general autosegmental association conventions (e.g., Clements 1981). The standard view of opaque segments entails that such segments not only fail to undergo VH themselves, but block the spreading of a given feature(s) and at the same time initiate the spreading of a different feature(s). According to Clements and Sezer (1982), all root vowels, whether harmonic or not, are opaque (i.e. fully specified). Similarly, in Inkelas (1995) (a restricted version of) Lexicon Optimization determines that predictable feature values are underspecified only when they enter into surface alternations. Since root vowels never alternate, this approach entails that all root vowels, regardless of whether they are harmonic on the surface, must be specified for the relevant features (e.g., backness, rounding). Thus, only suffix vowels may be the targets of VH since these are the only ones that exhibit predictable alternations for backness and rounding in Turkish. As shown in (14), the root vowels are all specified since they themselves do not alternate; only the last feature specifications spread to subsequent morphemes (cf. Clements and Sezer 1982).

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Option 1: Lexical specification of all root vowel features

Although root vowels do not alternate, there is experimental research that indicates that such vowels may nevertheless be underspecified (cf. Harrison and Kaun 2000, 2001). In an initial study involving a language game, Turkish speakers were taught a reduplication rule which involved replacing the initial vowel of a set of real (Turkish) words, both harmonic and disharmonic, with [a] or [u]. Harrison and Kaun (2001) report that while the subjects tended to re-harmonize the harmonic roots according to the pattern of backness harmony (e.g., kibrit ‘match’ → [kabr1t] not *[kabrit]), they failed to show the same pattern with the disharmonic roots (e.g., butik ‘boutique’ → [batik] not [bat1k]). More systematic experimentation is needed, however, the fact that similar results were also obtained from other languages including Finnish and Tuvan, suggests that pervasive surface-true patterns, such as the harmonic vowel sequences in Turkish roots, should in fact be analyzed as underspecified; only idiosyncratic patterns, such as vowel sequences in disharmonic roots, require full specification (cf. Harrison and Kaun 2001). The second drawback of Option 1 is its lack of representational economy. While VH is successfully blocked by the full specification of non-harmonizing root vowels (and suffixes) specifying the features of all root vowels misses a crucial generalization. That is, it fails to show that, in fact, most roots share vowel features. This, in turn, leads to excessive feature specification, where the harmonizing root vowels could otherwise benefit from a ‘free ride’ (cf. van der Hulst and van de Weijer 1991). Since Option 1 is not feasible, let us now consider Option 2, where lexical pre-specification of vowel features is allowed only in disharmonic roots (15a).

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Harmonic roots are underspecified except for the initial vowel which bears the features for frontness-backness and rounding that spread throughout the rest of the item (15b). (15)

Option 2: Lexical specification of vowel features only in disharmonic roots a.

+R

-R +R

kErt Iz E n +B b.

-l I

[kortizon-lu] ‘with cortisone’

-l I

[pirlanta-li]

-B +B

-R pI r lEnt E

‘with brilliants’

+B

While this approach avoids the drawbacks associated with specifying all the root vowel features seen in relation to Option 2, it nevertheless gives rise to several other problems. These center on the feature (i.e. [-Back], or [Coronal] in other frameworks)4 specification of front vowels in disharmonic roots. First, it should be noted that the prespecification of [Coronal] (i.e., [-Back] in Clements and Sezer 1982) in disharmonic roots is inconsistent with a redundancy-free lexicon, where predictable and redundant features are excluded from underlying representations. The Articulator feature [Dorsal] (corresponding to [+Back] in Clements and Sezer 1982) and the Tongue Height features (e.g. [Low]) are sufficient to distinguish all the vowel phonemes of Turkish. Thus, [Coronal] is essentially redundant and should be excluded from the underlying representation. Second, underlying specification of [Coronal] conflicts with the cross-linguistically unmarked status of this feature. That is, if the vowels are fully specified, this would require that the unmarked [Coronal] feature also be specified, 4. We opt to use [Coronal], corresponding to [-Back] in Clements and Sezer (1982), to characterize front vowels. This choice is based on the original feature organization proposed by Jakobson et al (1952), where vowels and consonants share the same place features such as [Labial], [Coronal], and [Dorsal] (See also Lahiri and Evers (1991) for a similar view). The theoretical consequences of the choice between [-Back] and [Coronal] are, however, tangential to the purposes of this paper.

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contrary to an approach in which only marked feature values are specified (for discussion of the status of [Coronal], see among others Lahiri 2000 for a summary of the issues; Paradis and Prunet 1991 for several papers on coronals; and Kabak 2007 for further arguments pertaining specifically to the phonological inertness of [Coronal] in Turkish). Furthermore, the prespecification of front vowels for [Coronal] in disharmonic roots makes the prediction that these front vowels behave differently from the same vowels in harmonic roots. In fact, there is at least one phonological process, Vowel Assimilation (VA), where such a distinction, in fact, makes an incorrect prediction. VA optionally eliminates vowel sequences ([V1 .V2 ]) by the assimilation of V2 to V1 , yielding a long vowel (cf. Sezer 1986, Kabak 2007). Typically, V2 must be high and both V1 and V2 must share backness and rounding features in order for VA to apply (e.g., [yourt] → [yoort] ‘yoghurt’; [a1r] → [aar] ‘heavy’; [göüs] → [göös] ‘breast’). Although the sequence [e.i] satisfies these conditions, VA fails to apply in this case (e.g., [beit] → *[beet] ‘couplet’, [deil] → *[deel ‘not’). This difference is not limited to roots, but is also observed between a root and a suffix (e.g. [aya-1] (foot-Poss.3S) → [ayaa], but [bebe-i] (baby-Poss.3S) → *[bebee]). If we assume that VA applies only when the vowels in question share the same Place feature (cf. Kabak 20075 ), and we assume as in Option 2 (and Option 1) that [Coronal] is underlyingly specified in disharmonic roots, the prediction is made that VA should apply in sequences of [e.i] as in other sequences in disharmonic roots. Consider the representation of the disharmonic root kafein ‘caffeine’ in (16). (16)

The representation of kafein ‘caffeine’ [Low] [High] kV f V V n

[kafein]

‘caffeine’

[Dor.] [Cor.]

5. Kabak (2007) argues that the two vowels in a sequence must share the same specified Place feature in order to undergo VA. The seemingly exceptional nature of the sequence [e.i] is then straightforwardly accounted for in terms of the assumption that vowels are not specified as [Coronal] in Turkish. Since [Coronal] is absent in underlying representations, and neither [e] nor [i] is [Labial], there is indeed no Place feature that is shared by the members of the [e.i] sequence, and hence no motivation for VA.

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Given that the final two vowels share the feature [Coronal], it is predicted that VA will apply, yielding *[kafeen]. In fact, this is not the correct result, since VA does not apply here, or in other disharmonic roots with the sequence [e.i] (e.g., ateist ‘atheist’ → *[ateest]). Thus, while the prespecification of all vowel features in disharmonic roots does provide a mechanism for blocking VH, it results in an incorrect analysis of of another phenomenon, VA. 4.1.2. Prespecification in Disharmonic Roots: maximum underspecification The third alternative, Option 3, not only provides coverage for the full range of facts of Turkish phonology, it also avoids the problems seen in the previous analysis. In this option, disharmonic root vowels are represented with the minimal number of features necessary to capture their lexical status.6 The only lexical marking required for a disharmonic root is whether or not it obeys the general principles of VH. As mentioned above, we are assuming that [Coronal] is not specified underlyingly since it is a default feature, and will be filled in at a subsequent stage. As shown in (17), roots that disobey VH are, however, marked as carrying a [Dorsal] (or [Labial] in the case of disharmonic roots violating labial harmony) specification. This feature, however, is prohibited from spreading rightward, as indicated here by the association line truncated with “x”. (17)

Disharmonic Root (spreading truncated): maximum underspecification

[Dorsal] cannot spread. [Coronal] is inserted later as default on last V. It should be noted that when the [Dorsal] (or [Labial]) feature is associated with the final vowel of a root, spreading is not blocked by a truncated association line. This different behavior of the final root vowel is, in fact, precisely what we would expect since suffixes achieve their full feature specifications by VH, 6. This is not quite the same as Radical Underspecification (cf. Archangeli 1988; Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994), however, the details of this difference are not relevant here.

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which spreads the requisite features rightward from the root, as seen in (18a). In this respect, while a root final [Dorsal] (or [Labial]) feature is free to spread, a [Coronal] feature in the case of a previously truncated feature is inserted as a default feature, as in (18b). In both cases, the spreading applies from relevant starting points as it does in regular harmonic roots, illustrated in (18c) and (18d).7 (18)

[Dorsal] a.

V

y V t -d V [Low]

[e ya-da]

‘furniture-Loc’

[Low]

Root-final specified [Dorsal] is free to spread onto the suffix vowel. [Coronal] is inserted as default on the first V later at the phonetic level. [Dorsal]

VH is blocked within the root. [Coronal] is inserted later as default on the root final V as well as the suffix V at the phonetic level. [Dorsal]

c.

V

r k V [Low]

-d V

[arka-da]

‘behind-Loc’

[Low]

VH applies: [Dorsal] feature spreads to all following Vs

7. It should be noted that suffix vowels unexpectedly surface as coronal, instead of dorsal, in a certain set of words (e.g., alkol-den (alcohol-Abl); saat-im (watch-Poss.1S), etc.). In such cases, too, the feature [Dorsal] in the final syllable of the root is prohibited from spreading onto the suffix vowels via truncation (see Kabak 2007 for details).

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d.

k V s [Low]

V r -d V

[keser-de]

‘adze-Loc’

[Low]

VH applies: [Coronal] is inserted on all underspecified Vs via redundancy rule later. It should be noted that marking disharmonic roots as exceptions to VH does not exclude them from the application of the so-called epenthesis-driven Vowel Harmony. In this type of VH, vowels epenthesized to break up consonant clusters receive their specification from neighboring vowels (and consonants), however, the pattern is different from that observed in the more usual case of (progressive) Vowel Harmony. That is, unlike progressive VH, epenthesis-driven VH operates from right to left, and is sensitive to the types of consonants within the clusters. For example, in /k/-clusters, the epenthesized vowel is always back (e.g. [k1rem] vs. *[kirem] ‘cream’). In addition, it is observed that even though spreading generally proceeds from right to left, low round vowels tend not to trigger rounding on a preceding vowel (e.g., [k1rom] vs. *[kurom] ‘chrome’). As mentioned, we are assuming that [Coronal] is not specified in underlying representations, but rather arises as a default feature. At first glance, it might seem that [Coronal] must be specified to account for a phenomenon of palatalization, whereby the velars and /l/ are fronted when followed by a front vowel within the same syllable (e.g. [sa.k-ız] ‘bubble-gum’, [kat] ‘floor’ vs. [se.kj iz] ‘eight’, [kj ir] ‘dirt’; [par.lak] ‘bright’, [mal] ‘property’ vs. [ka.lj e] ‘castle’, [kelj ] ‘bald’). We assume such fronting is a matter of surface phonetic form and thus does not depend on the presence of [Coronal] in the underlying representation. Even if this approach is not taken, it is not necessary to provide the feature [Coronal] in the underlying representation. That is, palatalization can be analyzed as the delinking of [Dorsal] from velar consonants in the context of a front vowel. This by no means requires an extra mechanism: feature delinking is one of the well-establihed notions within autosegmental phonology. After delinking, the tongue height specification (i.e. [High]) of the velar consonants in question (both the stops and the lateral) suffices to yield the requisite palatalized variants on the surface. It should be noted that certain loan words in Turkish have palatalized segments where this cannot be due to the vocalic context (e.g. [be.kj ar] ‘single’, [se.lj am] ‘greeting’). In these cases, the palatalized sounds are in contrast with velars, as can be observed in several minimal pairs (e.g. [kar] ‘snow’ vs. [kj ar] ‘profit’; [sol] ‘left’ vs. [solj ] ‘the musical note G’). In these special cases, the palatal consonants must be afforded special status (cf.

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Kabak 2007, where the underlyingly velar consonants are specified for [Dorsal] and [High] while those that are underlying palatal are only specified for [High], the Articulator node being underspecified), like the case the Yiddish clusters in English, and as such, do not require a revision of the core phonology of the language. In sum, the prespecification model proposed here has several advantages over the other two presecification options. Specifically, it ensures that underlying representations are redundancy-free, giving vowel features a “free ride” to the largest extent possible via VH. Furthermore, since the same features that are assumed to be underspecified in the general system of Turkish are also not specified in disharmonic roots, generality is achieved in addition to economy. Thus, the proposed model succeeds in respecting and expressing the overall phonological structure of Turkish in a simple and insightful manner. 4.2. Prespecification of exceptional root stress As was seen above, lexical prespecification of irregularly stressed syllables is required in the different approaches considered. That is, both the co-phonology and OT approaches invoke underlying specification of idiosyncratically stressed syllables in addition to the other mechanisms they include. The proposal advanced here requires only the mechanism of prespecification, and thus shares this property with previous proposals. At the same time, it also avoids the complexities associated with the other proposals by not requiring a combination of other mechanisms as well. Furthermore, the approach advanced here provides a unified treatment for irregularly stressed roots in Turkish, instead of singling out specific categories such as place names. As indicated above, in both place names and other types of roots (e.g., words of foreign origin) with irregular stress, non-final stress sometimes falls on the syllable identified by the quantity sensitive Sezer Stress Rule, as in (19), but sometimes it falls on other syllables, as in (20). (19)

Irregularly stressed roots that follow the SSR a. Place names: Ánkara, Kanáda ‘Canada’, Edírne, etc. b. Other roots of foreign origin (proper names, loan words, etc.): Doróti ‘Dorothy’, Katarína, To¸síba ‘Toshiba’, sandálye ‘chair’, kafetérya ‘cafeteria’, fak´ülte ‘faculty’, s¸ampánya ‘champagne’, gazéte ‘newspaper’, etc.

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Irregularly stressed roots that do not follow the SSR a. Place names: Üsk´üdar, Belçíka ‘Belgium’, Afríka ‘Africa’, Avrúpa ‘Europe’, Bermúda, etc. b. Other roots of foreign origin (proper names, loan words, etc.): Gorbáçov ‘Gorbachov’, Mandéla, négatif ‘negative’, pózitif’ ‘positive’, fabríka 8 ‘factory’, etc.

If the place names are treated separately from other categories of words, the generalization that similar patterns are found across the lexicon is missed. Furthermore, the establishment of a representation that focuses on the fact that a number of place names happen to follow a quantity sensitive stress pattern obscures the facts that a) not all irregularly stressed place names follow this pattern, and b) not all words that happen to follow the stress pattern in question are place names. The mechanism we propose for representing irregular root stress of any sort is the prespecification or marking of the relevant syllable as being stressbearing. Possibilities for such a representation include the use of a grid mark, special foot structure, or some type of diacritic stress feature. We opt for the use of grid structure since it permits the unification of the representation of stress within words as well as within larger phonological constituents. Examples are shown in (21), where ‘*’ above a syllable indicates that it bears exceptional stress. (21)

Exceptional Stress ∗

a.

Ankara

b.

Kanada ‘Canada’

c.

Belçika ‘Belgium’

d.

fabrika ‘factory’

e.

negatif ‘negative’

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

8. It should be noted that the [b] in fabrika functions as the coda of the first syllable rather than the onset of the second syllable since complex onsets are impermissible in Turkish.

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While the focus here is on roots, it should be noted that the mechanism of prespecification of the locus of irregular stress in terms of a grid mark automatically also accounts for irregular stress in more complex word structures. For example, a word such as Avrupa-l1-la¸s-arak ‘while/by becoming European’ contains both an irregularly stressed root (Avrúpa ‘Europe’) and an irregularly stressed suffix (-(y)ÉrEk ‘while/by’). This is shown with the relevant grid markings in (22). (22)

∗

∗

Avrupa-l1-la¸s-arak Europe-Der-Der-while/by

‘while/by becoming European’

While this is a well-formed word from in terms of its morpho-syntactic structure, it is not well-formed as a Phonological Word (PW), since PWs may only contain a single primary stress. In Kabak and Vogel (2005), it is argued that such items, in fact, constitute a Clitic Group (CG), the constituent in the phonological hierarchy between the PW and the Phonological Phrase. In Turkish, the stress assignment rule for the CG assigns prominence to the leftmost lexical stress, thus yielding a representation such as (23).9 (23)

∗ ∗

∗

Avrupa-l1-la¸s-arak

‘while/by becoming European’

Since there is currently no systematic work on secondary stress in Turkish, it is not clear whether the rightmost stress is lost in such structures, or whether it remains as a type of secondary stress. In either case, there is independent motivation for the CG stress rule (cf. Kabak and Vogel 2001, 2005). Furthermore, the specification of idiosyncratic stress as part of the underlying representation permits a simple and straightforward account of irregular stress in both roots and morphologically complex items, and avoids the introduction of additional representations or operations. Thus, stress is generally assigned via the regular stress rules (i.e., PW stress rule, CG stress rule), or is realized as specified in the underlying representation in the case of exceptional stress. In both cases, maximum use is made of the general principles of Turkish stress assignment.

9. This fact is handled by a principle of “Leftmost Stress Wins” in Inkelas and Orgun (2003), however, there are fundamental differences between their approach and an analysis involving Clitic Group stress, as discussed in detail in Kabak and Vogel (2005).

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5.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have argued that prespecification is the only descriptively adequate and theoretically viable means of handling various kinds of phonological exceptions. On the basis of evidence from disharmonic and exceptionally stressed roots in Turkish, we have shown that previous approaches do not allow us to determine classes of exceptions or subregularities in a principled manner either in terms of lexical strata or co-phonologies. Furthermore, lexical specification is inevitable in any model of exceptions. The lexical (pre-)specification model proposed here maximizes representational economy, by requiring a minimum of underlying feature specification. With respect to Vowel Harmony, we have shown that maximum underspecification of vowel features can be applied in the same way to both disharmonic and harmonic roots. We have employed feature truncation as a means of lexical specification, preventing the spreading of the lexically specified (exceptional) features (e.g., [Dorsal]) to unspecified segments. This permits any redundant features to remain unspecified in the underlying representation. As such, a single mechanism, lexical specification, is used to capture two separate objectives: (i) to mark the exceptional property in question, that is disharmony, as well as (ii) to ensure that the a given redundant feature has the same property throughout the lexicon. While the truncation convention may seem add an extra mechanism to grammar, it should be viewed as a variant of autosegmental tools that are already in use for lexical specification. This type of lexical marking is crucially needed to separate the marking of the exceptional pattern in question from the representation of phonological features. Within the phonological grammar of Turkish, there is no reason to believe that /e/ in keman ‘violin’ (a disharmonic root) has a different mental status than in kefil ‘guarantor’ (a harmonic loan from Arabic), or in kemik ‘bone’ (a harmonic native root), or even in kel ‘bald’ for that matter. Thus, any model that aims to capture this generalization must inevitably resort to different conventions to mark disharmony while maintaining the phonological integrity of the vowels within the root in question. In our case, we accomplish both objectives by using a single principle, lexical specification, within a single phonological grammar. Likewise, in the case of exceptionally stressed roots, we have shown that the lexical specification of atypical stress is required in addition to other mechanisms proposed in previous models, such as co-phonologies. In the present proposal, the only mechanism required is prespecification in the form of a grid mark associated with the exceptionally stressed syllable. Not only does this approach avoid the complexities associated with previous models that include prespecification alongside other mechanisms, it provides a unified treatment for all

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types of irregularly items in Turkish, rather than singling out specific categories such as place names. In conclusion, we would like to point out that by adopting a model of lexical specification, we are by no means suggesting that exceptions constitute uninteresting phenomena. In fact, such a proposal suggests a fundamental distinction in the grammar between the “core” phonology and any other phenomena or subsystems. It furthermore permits a principled means of assessing the extent to which an item is exceptional in terms of the number of prespecified features it requires. Thus, an item might be exceptional with regard to either VH or stress, or it may be exceptional with regard to both. The isolation of exceptional items in separate parts of the phonology makes it clear that they do not adhere to the general phonological principles of the language, however, it does not provide information as to how and to what extent those items constitute exceptions. The issues raised here ultimately need to be examined on the basis of experimental research aimed at investigating the acquisition of the exceptional properties in question as well as their productivity and extension to novel items. The diachotomy between arbitrary exceptions and those exceptional patterns that display restricted productivity has been noted in other linguistic areas such as morphology and syntax (e.g., Jónsson and Eythórsson, this volume), including those that exhibit extreme instances of exceptionality (e.g., Corbett, this volume). It is generally noted, for example, that semi-productive morphological patterns can be extended to already existing or new words based on linguistic similarity. For example, Jónsson and Eythórsson (this volume) attribute the diachronic stability and partial productivity of verbs with accusative subjects in the history of Icelandic to the fact that such verbs form coherent and homogenous subclasses due to the synactic and semantic similarities that exist between them. It seems that such similarities have been transparent to the learner, leading to the maintanence of this subclass of verbs for generations. How exceptional stress and harmony patterns arise and why they are maintained by learners remains to be explored in Turkish. In the absence of positive psycholinguistic evidence for partitioning the phonology of Turkish into some indeterminate number of components, the use of lexical specification of exceptional features remains the simplest and most direct means of accounting for all types of exceptional phonological behavior. It should be noted that recent psycholinguistically oriented approaches towards patterned exceptions also assert that information about exceptionality must be listed in lexical entries. For example, Zuraw (2000) marks exceptions to nasal substitution in Tagalog in the lexicon, but allows the exceptional pattern in question to perpetuate into new words through stochastically (low)-ranked markedness constraints within a single grammar. This approach is in line with our proposal that lexical specifi-

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cation is at the foundation of the account of phonological exceptionality across languages. Acknowledgements The research was supported in part by SFB 471 “Variation and Evolution in the Lexicon” at the University of Konstanz, funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Abbreviations Acc Accusative Dat Dative Der Derivational morpheme Loc Locative Nom Nominative Pl Plural References Anttila, Arto 2002

Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20: 1–42.

Archangeli, Diana 1988 Aspects of underspecification theory. Phonology 5: 183–207. Archangeli, Diana, and D. Pulleyblank 1994 Grounded Phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Barker, Christopher 1989 Extrametricality, the cycle, and Turkish word stress. In Phonology at Santa Cruz, J. Ito, and J. Runner (eds.), 1: 1–33. University of California, CA: Syntax Research Center. Clements, George N. 1981 Akan vowel harmony: a nonlinear analysis. In Harvard Studies in Phonology. Vol. 2, George N. Clements (ed.), 108–177. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Clements, George N., and Engin Sezer 1982 Vowel and consonant Disharmony in Turkish. In The Structure of Phonological Representations, Part II, Harry van der Hulst, and Norval Smith (eds.), 213–255. Dordrecht: Foris.

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On non-final stress in Turkish simplex words. In Studies on Turkish and Turkic Languages. Aslı Göksel, and Celia Kerslake (eds.), 3–10. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Demircan, Ömer 1976 Türkiye yer adlarında vurgu. Türk Dili 300: 402–411. Demircan, Ömer 1996 Türkçenin Sesdizimi. Istanbul: Der Yayınevi. Goldsmith, John A. 1990 Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell. Harrison, Davin, and Abigail Kaun. 2000 Pattern-responsive lexicon optimization. Proceedings of NELS 30. Harrison, Davin, and Abigail Kaun. 2001 Patterns, pervasive patterns, and feature specification. In Distinctive Feature Theory, Tracy A. Hall (ed.), 211–236. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hulst, Harry van der, and Jeroen van de Weijer 1991 Topics in Turkish phonology. In Turkish Linguistics Today, H. E. Boeschoten, and L. T. Verhoeven (eds.), 11–59. Leiden: Brill. Inkelas, Sharon 1995

Inkelas, Sharon 1996 Inkelas, Sharon 1998 Inkelas, Sharon 1999

The consequences of optimization for underspecification. In Proceedings of the Northeastern Linguistics Society 25, Jill Beckman (ed.), 287–302, Amherst: GLSA. The interaction of phrase and word rules in Turkish: An apparent paradox in the prosodic hierarchy. Linguistic Review 13: 193–217. The theoretical status of morphologically conditioned phonology: A case study from dominance. Yearbook of Morphology 1997, 121–55. Exceptional stress-attracting suffixes in Turkish: representations vs. the grammar. In The Prosody-Morphology Interface, René Kager, Harry van der Hulst, and Wim Zonneveld (eds.), 134–87. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Inkelas, Sharon, and Cemil Orhan Orgun 1999 Level (non)ordering in recursive morphology: evidence from Turkish. In Morphology and its relation to phonology and syntax, Steven Lapointe, Diane Brentari, and Patrick Farrell (eds.), 360–392. Stanford: CSLI.

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Inkelas, Sharon, and Cemil Orhan Orgun 2003 Turkish stress: A review. Phonology 20 (1): 139–161. Inkelas, Sharon, Cemil Orhan Orgun, and Cheryl Zoll 1996 Exceptions and static phonological patterns: cophonologies vs. prespecification. ROA-124-0496. Inkelas, Sharon, Cemil Orhan Orgun, and Cheryl Zoll 1996 Implications of lexical exceptions for the nature of grammar. In Derivations and Constraints in Phonology, Iggy Roca (ed.), 393–418, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Inkelas, Sharon, Cemil Orhan Orgun, and Cheryl Zoll 2004 Implications of lexical exceptions for the nature of grammar. In Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader, John J. McCarthy (ed.), 542– 551. Malden: Blackwell. Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester 1993 Japanese phonology: Constraint domains and structure preservation. University of California, Santa Cruz: Linguistics Research Center Publication (LRC-93-06). Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester 1995 Japanese phonology. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, John Goldsmith (ed.), 817–838. Cambridge: Blackwell. Jakobson, Roman, Gunnar Fant, and Morris Halle 1952 Preliminaries to Speech Analysis: The Distinctive Features and their Correlates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kabak, Barı¸s 2007

Hiatus resolution in Turkish: an underspecification account. Lingua. 117: 1378-1411.

Kabak, Barı¸s, and Irene Vogel 2001 Phonological word and stress assignment in Turkish. Phonology 18: 315–360. Kabak, Barı¸s, and Irene Vogel 2005 Irregular stress in Turkish. Unpublished ms. University of Konstanz / University of Delaware. Kaisse, Ellen 1985

Some theoretical consequences of stress rules in Turkish. In Papers from the General Session of the 21st Regional Meeting, W. Eilfort, P. Kroeber, and K. Peterson (eds.), 199–209. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Karde¸stuncer, Aino 1982 A Three-Boundary System for Turkish. Linguistic Analysis 10 (2): 95–117.

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Kaye, Jonathan, Jean Lowenstamm, and Jean-Roger Vergnaud 1985 The internal structure of phonological elements: A theory of charm and government. Phonology Yearbook 2: 305–328. Lahiri, Aditi 2000

Phonology: Structure, representation, and process. In Aspects of Language Production, Linda Wheeldon (ed.), 165–225. Hove/Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

Lahiri, Aditi, and Vincent Evers 1991 Palatalization and coronality. In The Special Status of Coronals, C. Paradis, and F. Prunet (eds.), 79–100. London: Academic Press. Lees, Robert B. 1961 Lees, Robert B. 1966

The Phonology of Modern Standard Turkish. (Uralic and Altaic Series 6) Bloomington: Indiana University Publications. On the interpretation of a Turkish vowel alternation. Anthropological Linguistics 8: 32–39.

Lewis, Geoffrey L. 1967 Turkish Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lightner, Theodor 1972 Problems in the Theory of Phonology. Vol. 1: Russian Phonology and Turkish Phonology. Edmonton, Champaign: Linguistic Research Inc. McCarthy, John 1995 Extensions of Faithfulness: Rotuman Revisited. ROA-110. McCarthy, John, and Alan S. Prince 1993 Prosodic Morphology I: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction. Unpublished ms. Mohanan, K. P. 1986

The Theory of Lexical Phonology. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Paradis, Carole, and Jean-Francois Prunet (eds.) 1991 The Special Status of Coronals. Vol. 2: Phonetics and Phonology. New York: Academic Press. Polgárdi, Kriztina 1999 Vowel harmony and disharmony in Turkish. The Linguistic Review 16 (2): 187–204. Prince, Alan S., and Paul Smolensky 1993 Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Ms. Rutgers University and the University of Colorado: Boulder. Sezer, Engin 1981

On non-final stress in Turkish. Journal of Turkish Studies 5: 61–69.

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An autosegmental analysis of compensatory lengthening in Turkish. In Studies in Compensatory Lengthening, W. L. Wetzels, and E. Sezer (eds.), 227–250. Dordrecht: Foris.

Smolensky, Paul 1996 The initial state and “Richness of the Base” in Optimality Theory. Technical Report, JHU-Cogsci-96-4. Baltimore: Department of Cognitive Science, John Hopkins University. Underhill, Robert 1976 Turkish Grammar. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Yava¸s, Mehmet S. 1980 Borrowing and its implications for Turkish phonology. Ph. D. diss., University of Kansas. Zuraw, Kie 2000

Patterned exceptions in phonology. Ph. D. diss., University of California Los Angeles.

Lexical exceptions as prespecification: some critical remarks T.A. Hall

1.

Introduction: Lexical exceptions as prespecification

In their article on exceptions to Vowel Harmony and Stress Assignment in Turkish Kabak and Vogel (henceforth K&V) discuss and reject two competing theories of lexical prespecification and then propose an alternative model which they ultimately adopt. Let us review briefly one of the models they reject and compare it with the one they endorse. According to the former, the exceptionality of certain segments to Vowel Harmony (VH) in disharmonic roots is captured by lexically prespecifying these exceptional vowels with the features which propagate in VH. The structures in (1) are my interpretations of representations at the stage before VH; cf. (15) in K&V for the equivalent structures at the point when VH applies. On the approach in (1), VH spreads [+B(ack)] (via palatal harmony) and [−R(ound)] (via labial harmony) in (1a) for the word [p1rlanta-l1] ‘with brilliants’. The spreading of [+Back] and [−Round] affects all of the vowels to the right of the first /I/ in this example because they are not specified for the features that spread. The disharmonic root [kortizon-lu] ‘with cortisone’ is presented in (1b) at the stage before VH. (1)

Lexical Prespecification with a Distinctive Feature (LPDF): –R a.

p I r l E n t E - l I +B

+R b.

–R

+R

kE rt I z E n -l I +B

–B

+B

The exceptionality of the second vowel in (1b) – referred to henceforth as the opaque vowel – is captured by prespecifying it for the two features which spread in VH. In a rule-based approach the structure-building rule of VH cannot spread [+Round] and [+Back] to the opaque vowel because it is underlyingly

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[−Round] and [−Back]. In an OT-style treatment there are high ranking faithfulness constraints (e.g. Max- [−Round], Max-[−Back]) which protect the underlying features and therefore ensure that they surface as such. I refer to the approach in (1b) henceforth as Lexical Prespecification with a Distinctive Feature (LPDF). As an alternative to the LPDF treatment, K&V endorse an analysis in which opaque vowels are represented with the minimal number of features necessary to capture their lexical status. For the examples in (1) I interpret the input to VH in K&V’s approach to be the representations in (2). On this approach VH spreads the privative feature [D(orsal)] to the right in (2a).1 The exceptional example is given in (2b). Here we see that a crucial difference between this structure and the one in (1b) is that the opaque vowel in (2b) is underspecified for all features that spread in VH. (2)

Maximum Underspecification (MU): [R] a.

pIrlEntE - lI [D]

b.

[R]

k E r t I z E n -l I [D]

[D]

The approach to lexical exceptionality in (2b) can be referred to as the Maximum Underspecification (MU) model. Note that the approach to VH and its exceptions in the LPDF model in (1) makes crucial use of binary features, whereas the MU treatment in (2) employs privative features. A consequence of the privative approach is that the exceptionality of opaque vowels cannot in principle be captured by specifying them for the opposite values of the features which spread in VH because these values simply do not exist. What this suggests is that the approach to prespecification in (1b) seems to crucially depend on binary features, whereas the treatment in (2b) cannot make use of this type of prespecification on a priori grounds. My conclusion is that a truly thorough comparison of LPDF and MU clearly exceeds the goals of the present commentary because it would necessarily involve a discussion of the merits and drawbacks of privative vs. binary features. In the remainder of this commentary I focus instead on two more specific questions: First, how does the MU model account for the blockage of VH in (2b) from spreading [Dorsal] and [Round] from /E/ onto the opaque /I/ (section 2)? 1. Since the model in (2a) has privative features, labial harmony cannot involve the spreading of [−Round], as in (1a). This point is not important in the following discussion.

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And second, how do K&V’s arguments against the LPDF model fare when confronted with examples of lexical exceptions from other languages (section 3)? I conclude with some brief comments about a possible rule type which might require some of the mechanics necessary in the MU treatment for exceptionality (section 4). 2.

Truncation

An obvious question with respect to the MU treatment in (2b) is how it can block VH from spreading [Dorsal] and [Round] from the first /E/ onto the opaque /I/. In the examples provided by K&V (see (17) and (18) in their article) the authors write that the VH features do not spread because spreading is ‘truncated’, but as I show below this point needs explication within the context of (2b). According to Kabak (2007: note 28) ‘truncation’ is supposed to indicate that “the feature in question is only linked to the segment that it is associated with in the underlying structure but is banned from being further realized on other segments.” But a moment’s reflection reveals that this proposal can only work if the word-initial vowel in (2b) is equipped with a diacritic feature which says that [Dorsal] and [Round] cannot spread. Although K&V do not use the term ‘diacritic feature’, they seem to be aware of its necessity when they write (section 4.1) that “[t]he only lexical marking required for a disharmonic root is whether or not it obeys the general principles of VH.”2 Truncation as described above is assumed to have precedence in the literature on intonation (Kabak 2007: note 28). However, once we consider how this term is employed in this area of phonology we will see that those authors use the word ‘truncation’ in a very different sense than K&V. According to Ladd (1996: 132–136) ‘truncation’ is one of the strategies employed in the literature on intonational phonology (in addition to ‘compression’) to adapt intonational contours to short utterances, such as monosyllabic words. Thus, if an intonational contour consists of two or more pitch accents and if the utterance consists of only one syllable languages can either associate all of the pitch accents with this syllable (compression) or delete one of them (truncation). Ladd mentions English as an example of a compression language and Hungarian as a truncation language. In the latter language question intonation involves the tonal sequence L*..H..L%, where the first (H) edge tone is preferentially 2. The diacritic feature necessary in (2b) is very different from an SPE-style diacritic which would be associated with the entire morpheme. The reason is that the diacritic feature for (2b) must be attached only to the first root vowel because the features [Dorsal] and [Round] on the final root vowel must be allowed to spread to the suffix.

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associated with the penultimate syllable (Ladd 1996: 132). In monosyllables this tonal sequence is reduced to a simple rise. Hence, in the underlying tonal sequence for the monosyllable sör ‘beer’ in (3) only the first two tones of the three-tone question tune are realized. (3)

L*HL% sör

In the phonetic representation the final tone (L%) in (3) is unrealized, i.e. it is ‘truncated’. Ladd (1996: 135) suggests that truncation could be formalized as a phonological rule which deletes (i.e. truncates) an unassociated tone. See, for example, Grice (1995: 171ff.), who does something similar in her analysis of Palermo Italian intonation contours. This being said, Ladd concedes that in its original usage (Grønnum 1991, which I have not seen) compression and truncation are intended as phonetic and not phonological descriptions. Since K&V are assuming that truncation is phonological and not phonetic, let us consider in greater detail what the phonological analysis of a language like Hungarian would entail. With respect to (3) truncation in intonational phonology refers to the deletion of an unassociated autosegment, but in in (2b) truncation refers to the failure of an autosegment to spread. A proponent of the MU approach might argue that the two operations are related because examples like the one in (3) also need to capture the fact that the final tone fails to associate with the syllable. Pursuing this line of thought reveals that truncation in (3) really involves two steps: (a) the failure of an underlying autosegment to associate to a syllable, and (b) the subsequent deletion of the same autosegment. In any phonological analysis one needs to say what the motivation is for (a) and (b). In the Hungarian example in (3) the lack of spreading, i.e. the (a) clause, makes sense because the association of all three of these autosegments to the same syllable would violate a constraint motivated in many other languages which bans three tones on one syllable. The actual deletion of the unassociated autosegment, i.e. the (b) clause, occurs by rule, which is similar to the kinds of rules one encounters in African tone languages. The comparison between the Turkish example in (2b) and the Hungarian one in (3) is important because it reveals a crucial difference between the two: In Hungarian there is a reason for why clause (a) does not apply but in Turkish there is no reason for why [Dorsal] and [Round] on the first /E/ in (2b) cannot spread by VH. Put differently, for Turkish truncation must be captured with a diacritic feature, but for Hungarian it need not (and should not) be. My conclusion is that the blockage of VH from applying to the opaque vowel in (2b)

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is due to the presense of the diacritic feature and not to some general principle/convention of truncation. One might point out that spreading and deleting tones in intonational phonology is not always as straightforward as in Hungarian; hence, a more apt comparison would be between the Turkish example in (2b) and some language in which the spreading of tones is unpredictable. An apparent example of such a language are the dialects of Catalan described by Prieto (2002). In these dialects there are two deletion strategies when two pitch accents and an edge tone sequence adapt to short utterances: either the first or the second pitch accent deletes. However, Prieto (2002) argues that the choice of which pitch accent to delete is a consequence of a more enriched phonological representation of tone, suggesting that Catalan does not require a diacritic feature saying which tone needs to be deleted.

3.

The LPDF model reconsidered

K&V present three arguments against the LPDF model in (1b). Let us consider the third one, which I consider to be the most convincing. According to this argument the LPDF approach is not a desirable theory because it cannot account for the phonological process of Vowel Assimilation in Turkish. The reason is that the rule requires that front vowels in harmonic roots be underspecified for [Coronal], but the representation in (1b) has this feature present in disharmonic roots. The prediction the LPDF model makes is that front vowels in harmonic and disharmonic roots behave differently with respect to Vowel Assimilation, but K&V show that this is not the case. As a non-specialist for Turkish this language-specific argument against LPDF seems sound, and I see it as being the kind of argument necessary to refute the LPDF approach. However, I see both LPDF and MU as being very general theories for capturing lexical exceptions. This means that both models need to be tested with rules other than the language-specific processes of Vowel Harmony, Stress Assignment and Vowel Assimilation. Seen in this broader context, one needs to take care not to reject a particular model on the basis of a single example from one language. Imagine some language with a structure-building rule like VH which happens to have a handful of idiosyncratic exceptions. The difference between this hypothetical language and Turkish is that there is no equivalent rule of Vowel Assimilation which can be used to argue against the LPDF representation in (1b). Assuming there were such a language the argument against representing the lexical exceptions as in (1b) would vanish.

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Consider the case of German. In that language there is a very regular process referred to in the literature as s-Dissimilation, which converts a word-initial /s/ to [S] before [−High] consonants like /p t m n l ö/, i.e. all consonants except for ([+High]) velars. This is a neutralization rule which suspends the lexical contrast between /s/ and /S/ to [S], e.g. Specht [Speçt] ‘woodpecker’ and schmal [Sma:l] ‘narrow’ with [S] (from /s/) represent the normal case. Significantly, the rule has a small number of lexical exceptions, e.g. the initial sibilant in Smaragd [s m a ö a k t] ‘emerald’ surfaces as [s] and not as [S]. In the LPDF approach one might analyze s-Dissimilation as a rule adding the feature [+High] to a voiceless sibilant unspecified for that feature (see Wiese 1991, Hall 1992, Alber 2001 for various treatments along these lines), while deviant words like Smaragd would require the relevant segment to exceptionally be prespecified for [−High]. On this approach s-Dissimilation applies to the /s/ in (4a) (for schmal) and is blocked in (4b) (for Smaragd): a.

/ s m a: l/

b.

/smaöakd/

----

(4)

[+High]

[−High]

Thus, s-Dissimilation fails to apply to the /s/ in Smaragd because the rule is structure-building and is therefore blocked from applying to a segment that is already marked for the feature that is added. The s-Dissimilation example is important because in German there is no equivalent rule like Vowel Assimilation in Turkish which would cause one to reject the LPDF representation in (4b) for an exceptional item.3

3. It was noted at the beginning of this section that K&V present three arguments against (1b), but I have only shown that the third one does not hold for (4b). An inspection of their article reveals that K&V’s first two arguments against (1b) do not apply to (4b) either: The first argument is that structures like the one in (4b) (or (1b)) are inconsistent with a redundancy-free lexicon, but the representation in (4b) is not more redundant than the MU alternative, which would require instead of [−High] an /s/ underspecified for that feature and a diacritic feature (presumably attached to the /s/) saying that s-Dissimilation does not apply to that segment. K&V’s second argument against (1b) is that it requires a segment to be underlyingly specified for [Coronal], which they see as being a feature which should be underspecified (if possible). However, this is a feature-specific argument, which clearly does not hold against (4b) because [−High] is not [Coronal].

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Clearly the analysis of non-Turkish examples goes beyond the goals of K&V’s analysis, but in future work one might want to investigate a wider spectrum of rules with exceptions in order to evaluate LPDF and MU. 4.

A problem for LPDF?

The LPDF approach to exceptionality works well in the case of structure-building operations like Turkish VH or German s-Dissimilation; however, a potential problem for that model involves lexical exceptions to structure-changing rules. For example, if a rule deletes a segment [A] and if there are some words in which [A] is exceptionally not deleted, one cannot capture the deviant forms in the LPDF model by prespecifying these words because [A] has no opposite. An example of a structure-changing rule with exceptions is (intervocalic) Velar Deletion in Turkish. Inkelas and Orgun (1995: 767–768) and Inkelas, Orgun and Zoll (1997: 405) cite examples like [bebek] ‘baby’ vs. [bebe-i] ‘babyaccusative’, where the latter word illustrates the rule, but there are lexical exceptions, e.g. [tahakkuk-u] ‘verification-accusative’, Kabak 2007: note 4). Velar Deletion poses an apparent problem for the LPDF approach because there does not appear to be anything with which one could prespecify the exceptional sounds. Inkelas, Orgun and Zoll (1997: 409, note 15) recognize the problem and suggest that the exceptional velars are prespecified for syllable structure and that Velar Deletion only affects velars which are not syllabified in the input. What this implies is that a true problem for LPDF would involve a deletion rule which is not sensitive to syllable structure, e.g. a rule which deletes a segment [A] only in word-initial or word-final position. If there were such a rule and if it had exceptions then it is not clear how the LPDF model could prespecify the exceptional forms, but in the MU treatment one would simply posit a diacritic feature attached to the exceptional [A]’s, ensuring that they are not deleted. Whether or not examples like the one just described exist is a question I leave open, but they would provide crucial evidence for capturing exceptions with a diacritic feature. References Alber, Birgit 2001

Regional variation and edges: glottal stop epenthesis and dissimilation in standard and Southern varieties of German. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 20: 3–41.

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Grice, Martine 1995 Grønnum, Nina 1991

Hall, T.A. 1992

The Intonation of Interrogation in Palermo Italian: Implications for Intonation Theory. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Prosodic parameters in a variety of regional Danish standard languages with a view towards Swedish and German. Phonetica 47: 188– 214. Syllable Structure and Syllable Related Processes in German. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Inkelas, Sharon, and Orhan Orgun 1995 Level ordering and economy in the lexical phonology of Turkish. Language 71: 763–793. Inkelas, Sharon, Orhan Orgun, and Cheryl Zoll 1997 The implications of lexical exceptions for the nature of grammar. In Derivations and Constraints in Phonology, Iggy Roca (ed.), 393–418. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kabak, Barı¸s 2007

Hiatus resolution in Turkish: an underspecification account. Lingua 117: 1378–1411.

Ladd, D. Robert 1996 Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prieto I Vives, Pilar 2002 Tune-text association patterns in Catalan: An argument for a hierarchical structure of tunes. Probus 14: 173–204. Wiese, Richard 1991

Was ist extrasilbisch im Deutschen und warum? Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 10: 112–133.

Feature spreading, lexical specification and truncation Barı¸s Kabak and Irene Vogel

1.

Introduction

Tracy Hall in his commentary presents a clear and succint summary of two of the ways of handling Vowel Harmony exceptions discussed in Kabak & Vogel (this volume). We will use Hall’s terms to refer to these two approaches, namely (i) Lexical Prespecification with a Distinctive Feature (LPDF) and (ii) Lexical Specification with Maximum Underspecification (MU). Hall also introduces independent considerations from German, in particular the rule of s-Dissimilation, in order to examine the broader applicability of these approaches. He also briefly mentions another phonological phenomenon of Turkish in this regard: Velar Deletion. In addition, Hall addresses the truncation mechanism introduced in Kabak & Vogel as a means for blocking Vowel Harmony. While not all of these considerations lead to conclusive findings, they do provide the grounds for both broader and deeper considerations of the issues under consideration.

2.

Two approaches to exceptional features

LPDF and MU primarily differ with respect to the conditions under which they lexically mark a given distinctive feature. The LPDF model ensures the surface realization of an exceptional feature by lexically marking the feature in question regardless of its status. The MU model, by contrast, cannot resort to lexical marking in similar situations if the feature in question is inactive in the phonological system. In this regard, MU respects the phonological status of a given feature throughout the entire lexicon. To enrich the discussion of these two models, Hall introduces some observations regarding German s-Dissimilation, which neutralizes the distinction between initial /s/ and /S/ to [S], a [+High] segment, before [−High] consonants (e.g., [S]muck ‘jewelry’; [S]lange ‘snake’). This is considered a structure build-

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ing rule, and Hall shows that the LPDF model provides sufficient theoretical coverage to account for noted exceptions (e.g., [s]mart ‘a car brand’; [s]lip ‘briefs/panties’). In particular, pre-specifying /s/ as [−High] blocks the application of the rule that adds [+High] to an initial /s/. Thus, Hall suggests we should not exclude the LPDF model – and retain the MU model – since there is no emprical evidence against the LPDF in the German data. We agree with Hall that s-Dissimilation does not demonstrate a need for the MU model, however, we would not like to suggest that it favors the LPDF model. Instead, it seems merely to be an instance of a phenomeonon that can be handled by either model, and thus does not provide a test ground to chose between the two. Returning to Turkish, Hall considers an additional phenomenon involving a structure-changing rule, Velar Deletion (VD), whereby intervocalic velars are productively deleted (e.g., /inek-I/ → [ine-i] ‘cow-Acc’; /gök-I/ → [gö-ü] ‘skyAcc’), although there are several exceptions (e.g., /kök-I/ → [kök-ü] (*[kö-ü]) ‘root-Acc’). Hall indicates that this case poses a serious challenge for the LPDF model. The problem arises because this model involves lexical marking of features, but there is no way to pre-specify the exceptional velars by using distinctive features. The MU approach, however, does not encounter this problem since it crucially adopts mechanisms other than feature marking in order to account for analogous types of exceptions in other instances. Hall claims that the MU model would need to use a diacritic feature to ensure that the velar is not deleted in such cases. While it is beyond the scope of this response to discuss the mechanisms needed to handle the additional phenomenon of VD, we would like to suggest that use of diacritic features is not in itself unacceptable, as long as it can be reasonably restricted cross-linguistically, and validated on independent grounds.1 3.

Truncation in Turkish Vowel Harmony

An additional point raised by Hall involves Kabak & Vogel’s use of a truncation rule to block VH in the exceptional cases in which its spread is restricted. According to Hall, this truncation convention is a form of diacritic specification, which merely reflects the necessity to identify the exceptional behavior at hand. We agree that the sole purpose of marking exceptions is to show exceptional 1. One such mechanism is proposed in models where lexical representations comprise two dimensions: one to determine the anchoring of phonological elements (tones, accents, features) in underlying structure; another to dictate how and where such elements are pronounced (e.g., Revithiadou 2007). Thus, VD could be blocked if the two dimensions are pre-specified to match.]

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behavior, however, we would like to emphasize again that this is not necessarily problematic, as long as the means for determining the diachritic features rests on general principles. In fact, the truncation analysis is consistent with our treatment of exceptions to regular stress assingment, involving lexical marking of accent, a mechanism of metrical phonology incorporated in most of the approaches we examined. With regard to VH, we simply extended the fundamental concept, expressing exceptionality by means of a trucation mechanism, as opposed to the specification of accent position. We find this an advantageous means for capturing VH exceptionality since truncation has been introduced in other autsegmental analyses involving spreading and its interruption, in particular in intonation phenomena. As Hall points out, the application of truncation in inonational phonology may be different from our use in relation to VH. In the case of intonation, truncation often corresponds to deletion of an unassociated autosegment (tone), while in the case of VH, it corresponds to the failure of an autosegmental feature (e.g., a distinctive feature) to spread. Rather than being a problem, we believe this difference is, in fact, quite interesting. Specifically, we find a crucial difference in the fact that the features of VH, as opposed to intonation, involve a dual function. First, they characterize the way vowels are realized on the surface in terms of their specific articulatory properties. Second, they determine which features can spread to other vowels within the same domain. The two functions, however, need not co-occur. For example, in the case of disharmony, pre-specified features are only realized on the segments with which they are associated; they do not exhibit spreading behavior. The tones in intonation patterns, however, may at times not be realized at all; a feature is thus lost, not just prevented from spreading. Furthermore, there is an interesting difference regarding the representation of truncation in VH and in intonation phenomena. We assume for VH that truncation is manifested in the underlying representation of segments that do not participate in spreading. By contrast, in intonation phenomena, there is nothing in the representation of tones that causes their deletion. Instead, truncation simply operates to eliminate a tone that fails to unassociate within a particular domain. Beyond the differences, however, we observe that in both cases truncation essentially results in the same generalization: an underlying autosegmental feature fails to spread. Since this convention has been independently motivated as a component of autosegmental phonology, we find it interesting that it lends itself easily to resolving challenges in different realms of autosegmental spreading.

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Conclusions

In sum, we find that Tracy Hall has clearly summarized two possible models for handling Vowel Harmony exceptions discussed in Kabak & Vogel (this volume): (i) Lexical Prespecification with a Distinctive Feature and (ii) Lexical Specification with Maximum Underspecification. Two additional phenomena were also considered in this regard: German s-Dissimilation and Turkish Velar Deletion. While the former appears to be inconclusive with regard to the two models, the latter seems to lend support to the second one. Hall also addresses the truncation mechanism proposed for treating exceptions to Vowel Harmony, and its somewhat different use in intonation phenomena. We suggest that this difference, rather than being problematic reveals interesting differences between spreading in the two domains – harmony and intonation. Reference Revithiadou, Anthi 2007 Colored turbid accents and containment: a case study from lexical stress. In Freedom of Analysis? Sylvia Blaho, Patrik Bye and Martin Krämer (eds.). 149–174. Berlin/New York Mouton de Gruyter.

Higher order exceptionality in inflectional morphology Greville G. Corbett

Abstract. We start from the notion of ‘canonical’ inflection, and we adopt an inferentialrealizational approach. We assume that we have already established the features and their values for a given system (while acknowledging that this may be a substantial analytic task). In a canonical system, feature values “should” multiply out so that all possible cells exist. Paradigms “should” be consistent, both internally (within the lexeme) and externally (across lexemes). Such a scheme would make perfect sense in functional terms: it provides maximal differentiation for minimal phonological material. However, real systems show great divergences from this idealization. A typology of divergences from the canonical scheme situates the types of morphological exceptionality, including: periphrasis, anti-periphrasis, defectiveness, overdifferentiation, suppletion, syncretism, heteroclisis and deponency. These types of exceptionality provide the basis for an investigation of higher order exceptionality, which results from interactions of these phenomena, where the exceptional phenomena target the same cells of the paradigm. While some examples are vanishingly rare, they are of great importance for establishing what is a possible word in human language, since they push the limits considerably beyond normal exceptionality.*

1.

Introduction

We propose a part of a typology of inflectional morphology, and within it we concentrate on extreme instances of exceptionality.

* A version of this paper was presented at the Arbeitsgruppe “Auf alles gefasst sein: Ausnahmen in der Grammatik” at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Cologne, 23–25 February 2005. I wish to thank those present and the two anonymous referees for their suggestions. The support of the ESRC under grants RES-000-23-0375 and RES-051-27-0122 and of the ERC (grant ERC-2008-AdG-230268 MORPHOLOGY) is gratefully acknowledged.

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1.1. Canonicity in typology If we are to tackle some of the most difficult areas of language from a typological perspective, we shall need new methods. The one suggested here is the ‘canonical’ approach (Corbett 2005). The basic idea is that we define carefully a theoretical space, and only then situate the real language phenomena within it. The canonical point, specified by converging definitions, is where we find the best, clearest, most indisputable examples (for applications of the approach see Seifart 2005: 156–74; Suthar 2006: 178–98; Corbett 2006, 2007a). However, canonical examples may be rare or even non-existent, hence it is vital to maintain a distinction between what is canonical, and what is usual or frequent. What is canonical gives us the measure against which real examples can be situated, and from which different degrees of irregularity can be calibrated. It also gives us a way of analyzing and celebrating the diversity of inflectional morphology by confronting it with an elegant order. 1.2. Canonical inflection Linguists are interested in what is a possible human language. A part of that account is coming to understand what is a possible word. In this paper we narrow that question down to looking at possible word from the point of view of inflection. We set up a framework of canonical inflection, within which we can situate different morphological phenomena. The system of terms for inflectional morphology is still inconsistent in places, despite interesting work by Mel’ˇcuk (1993) and others. Greater consistency in terminology gives us a surer way to identify exceptions. All the predicted individual deviations from canonicity are found, and we shall illustrate only some of these types of possible word (for illustration of some other types see Corbett 2007b). This is because we are concerned in this paper with even less canonical items. 1.3. Higher order exceptionality Our specific focus is on ‘higher order’ exceptionality. By this we mean the interaction of exceptional phenomena. These examples are of interest because they show us extreme cases of possible word. Here too we must look at a subset of the possible interactions. Examples are very scarce, partly because they are genuinely rare, but also because they have been little discussed, and so linguists have not been on the lookout for them. It is hoped that this discussion will lead specialists working on various languages to be aware of them, so that the general inventory of these examples is increased.

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Assumptions

We start from the point where the features and their values are established for the language in question; in other words, analysis of the ‘syntactic’ part of morphosyntax is well advanced. This is not to minimize the problems; this task can involve complex analytical decisions (see Zaliznjak 1973 [2002]; Comrie 1986; Corbett 1991: 145–188 for examples). Our general stance will be that of inferential-realizational morphology, as defined and discussed in Stump (2001: 1–30). The specific variant in mind is Network Morphology (for which see Corbett and Fraser 1993; Evans, Brown and Corbett 2002, and references there). It is important for the reader to be aware of this orientation, but the main points of this general typology could be restated in other frameworks. We assume further that geometry is not relevant to inflectional morphology, but that nevertheless presenting paradigms in tabular form is a helpful method of representation. The final assumption is that when discussing particular phenomena we always imply “all other things being equal”. For instance, when discussing whether inflections are the same or different in particular cells of the paradigm we assume, unless specifically mentioned, that the stem remains the same. 3.

Canonical inflection

We will now outline the notion of canonical inflection, which will serve as the basic for approaching various interesting deviations from canonicity in §5. As noted earlier, we assume that we have the features and their values established. Given that, in a canonical system these should ‘multiply out’, so that all possible cells in a paradigm exist. For example, if a given language has four cases and three numbers in its nominal system, the paradigm of a noun should have twelve cells. (This is equivalent to Spencer’s notion of ‘exhaustivity’ 2003: 252.) Furthermore, to be fully canonical, a paradigm should be ‘consistent’, according to the following criteria:

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(1)

Canonical inflection

1. composition/structure 2. lexical material (≈ shape of stem) 3. inflectional material (≈ shape of inflection) outcome (≈ shape of inflected word)

comparison across cells of a lexeme (level one comparison) same same cf. §4.1.1 different cf. §4.1.2 different

comparison across lexemes (level two comparison) same cf. §4.2.1 different same cf. §4.2.2 different

This schema implies two levels of comparison: level one: we start from the abstract paradigm gained by multiplying out the features and their values. We then examine any one lexeme fitted within this paradigm. The centre column of (1) compares cell with cell, within a single paradigm. We take in turn the criteria in the left column: 1. we look at the composition and structure of the cells; suppose the first consists of a stem and a prefix: for this lexeme to have a canonical paradigm, every other cell must be the ‘same’ in this regard. Finding a suffix, or a clitic, or any different means of exponence would reveal non-canonicity. 2. in terms of the lexical material in the cell, we require absolute identity (the stem should remain the same). 3. on the other hand, the inflectional material ‘should’ be different in every cell. The outcome for such a lexeme (last row) is that every cell in its paradigm will realize the morphosyntactic specification in a way distinct from that of every other cell. level two: this involves comparing lexemes with lexemes within the given language (right column). We use the same criteria as before: 1. a canonical system requires that the composition and structure of each cell remains the same, comparing across lexemes. 2. we require that the lexical information be different (we are, after all, comparing different lexemes).

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3. in the canonical situation, the inflectional material is identical. That is, if our first lexeme marks dative plural in -du, so does every other. The outcome is that every cell of every lexeme is distinct. We illustrate this with a hypothetical example: (2)

Illustration (hypothetical) DOG-a

DOG-i

CAT-a

CAT-i

DOG-e

DOG-o

CAT-e

CAT-o

This system of canonical inflection would make perfect sense in functional terms. There is perfect differentiation within the morphology, while using the minimal material. 4.

Deviations from canonical inflection

Real systems, however, show great divergences from this idealization. Its value is that we can use the notion of canonicity as a way of calibrating the phenomena we find. We look at the deviations from canonicity first internally, comparing the cells of a single lexeme, then externally, comparing across lexemes. It is the typology of these divergences which allows us to move towards a consistent set of terms. A general pattern is that where we actually find ‘same’ in place of canonical ‘different’ this will give a non-functional outcome. If we find ‘different’ in place of canonical ‘same’ this will lead to increased complexity and/or redundancy. Working through the different deviations gives us an overall classification of the phenomena of inflectional morphology. That is a long undertaking, and space does not allow us to complete it here. Instead we will take some illustrative instances, selecting as examples those that we shall need for the discussion of higher order exceptionality. 4.1.

Internal non-canonicity

We start with phenomena that can be defined within the lexeme, and we take two key types. 4.1.1. Lexical material In the canonical situation, lexical meaning (and only that) is conveyed by lexical material, the stem; grammatical meaning, and only that, is conveyed by the inflection. Thus the stem is inert, and all the differentiation in the paradigm is

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due to the inflectional material. Contrary to this canonical situation, we find all sorts of alternations of stem, from the predictable, through the less regular, right up to full suppletion as, for example, in Russian rebenok ‘child’ deti ‘children’. Suppletion has rightly attracted a good deal of interest, as in Carstairs-McCarthy (1994), Mel’ˇcuk (1994), Corbett (2007a); see Chumakina (2004) for an annotated bibliography, and Brown, Chumakina, Corbett and Hippisley (2004) for an on-line typological database. In terms of possible words, suppletion is of particular interest because it means that there are lexemes which have forms with no phonological shape in common. 4.1.2. Inflectional material Since inflectional material conveys grammatical meaning, in the canonical situation we find a different inflection in each cell. Contrast this with the following paradigm from Slovene: (3)

Paradigm of Slovene kot ‘corner’ (Priestly 1993: 400–402) nominative accusative genitive dative instrumental locative

singular kot kot kota kotu kotom kotu

dual kota kota kotov kotoma kotoma kotih

plural koti kote kotov kotom koti kotih

A morphosyntactic analysis of Slovene produces good evidence for six cases and three numbers. We therefore expect a paradigm with eighteen cells. This particular lexeme has only nine phonologically distinct forms filling these cells. It shows numerous examples of syncretism, that is, instances where we have a single form which realizes more than one morphosyntactic specification. We use syncretism as a cover term; different examples may be analysed in different ways (see Baerman, Brown and Corbett 2005 for extensive discussion). 4.2.

External non-canonicity

We now move on to deviations which are to be defined in terms of comparisons across lexemes.

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4.2.1. Composition/structure In the canonical situation, the composition and structure of a lexeme’s paradigm will be constant when we compare across the class. For instance, if we find that nouns in a given language distinguish singular and plural, in the canonical situation this will hold generally true. One of the deviations from this canonical situation is overdifferentiation (Bloomfield 1933: 223–224; Nübling, this volume). Lexemes which are overdifferentiated stand out from the rest of the group in that they have an additional cell in their paradigm. For example, in Maltese most nouns distinguish singular from plural. Now consider uqija ‘ounce’: (4)

Example of the Maltese dual singular uqija

dual uqitejn

plural uqijiet

Around 30 nouns distinguish singular from dual from plural; this is a ‘minor number’ (Corbett 2000: 96). With only eight of them, according to Fenech (1996), is the use of the dual obligatory. Uqija ‘ounce’ is overdifferentiated in having a dual, but its use is not obligatory; for ‘two ounces’ one can use either the dual uqitejn or the form with the numeral: z˙ew˙g uqijiet. 4.2.2. Inflectional material In the canonical situation, inflectional material is the same across lexemes. We can specify that the first singular present tense active has a particular form just once in the grammar. Of course there are many deviations from this. One of the most interesting, and least studied, is deponency, for which see Embick (1998, 2000), Corbett (1999), Sadler and Spencer (2001), Stump (2002), Kiparsky (2005), Baerman, Corbett, Brown and Hippisley (2007), and for on-line typological material see Baerman (2005). Deponency goes against the notion of ‘regularity of inflection’: in particular the expectation that certain forms have certain functions. Consider the partial paradigm of two Latin verbs (Kennedy 1955: 72, 82):

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(5)

Partial paradigm of a regular Latin verb am¯are ‘to love’ 1 sg 2 sg 3 sg 1 pl 2 pl 3 pl

active am¯o am¯as amat am¯amus am¯atis amant

passive amor am¯aris am¯atur am¯amur am¯amin¯ı amantur

Here we see a regular differentiation of active and passive. There are many verbs like this one. In principle, given a particular inflection, one can tell immediately whether it the form is active or passive. Now contrast this with deponent verb: (6)

Partial paradigm of a deponent Latin verb v¯en¯ar¯ı ‘to hunt’ 1 sg 2 sg 3 sg 1 pl 2 pl 3 pl

active v¯enor v¯en¯aris v¯en¯atur v¯en¯amur v¯en¯amin¯ı v¯enantur

With this verb we have the forms which ‘ought’ to be passive taking the role of active inflections. We can say this only by comparison across lexemes: there are many verbs with the pattern of am¯are ‘to love’ and relatively few like v¯en¯ar¯ı ‘to hunt’. Deponency is generally discussed with reference to Latin. Indeed it is sometimes even defined as being a phenomenon found in Latin: “Class of verbs in Latin, intransitive or active in syntax but with inflections that usually mark passives.” Matthews (1997: 93). However, the basic phenomenon, which we shall call ‘extended deponency’, need not be restricted to Latin, to voice, nor even to verbs. The phenomenon consists of inflections which have an established function in the morphological system being used in a minority of instances for the opposite function. This covers the Latin deponent verbs, and extends to a range of interesting phenomena which, because they have had no name, have been little studied. For a range of examples see Baerman (2005); an example of deponency in this wider sense will also be analysed in § 6.4.

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Interactions

Some of the examples examined so far are well-known and present fairly minor instances of exceptionality. However, they provide the basis for an investigation of higher order exceptionality, which results from interactions of these phenomena. By interactions, we mean not simply that a given lexical item shows more than one type of exceptionality, but that the exceptional phenomena target the same cells of the paradigm. That is, we are dealing not just with a small subclass (Moravcsik, this volume) but with the intersection of small subclasses. 5.1.

Suppletion and syncretism

One interaction that has been discussed is from the South Slavonic language Slovene, found in the noun cˇ lovek ‘man, person’; see Priestly (1993: 401), Plank (1994), Corbett and Fraser (1997), Evans, Brown and Corbett (2001: 215), Baerman, Brown and Corbett (2005: §5.1.1). This is a particularly interesting case, which deserves further mention here. It shows an interaction of suppletion and syncretism. The suppletion involves a plural stem as opposed to that for singular and dual. This interacts with a more general syncretism: Slovene nouns always have the genitive dual syncretic with the genitive plural (similarly the locative dual is syncretic with the locative plural). This is one of the syncretisms in (3) above. Clearly, then, the genitive and locative dual will involve an interaction of these suppletion and syncretism. The effect can be seen in (7): (7)

Slovene cˇ lóvek ‘man, person’ (Priestly 1993: 401) nominative accusative genitive dative instrumental locative

singular cˇ lovek cˇ loveka cˇ loveka cˇ loveku cˇ lovekom cˇ loveku

dual cˇ loveka cˇ loveka ljudi cˇ lovekoma cˇ lovekoma ljudeh

plural ljudje ljudi ljudi ljudem ljudmi ljudeh

In this interesting paradigm certain cells are targeted both by suppletion and by syncretism. The interaction creates an unusual pattern of stems; the general rule of syncretism seems to ‘win out’ over the suppletion.

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5.2.

Suppletion and overdifferentiation

Our second example also concerns suppletion, this time interacting with overdifferentiation. Consider these East Norwegian dialect forms for the adjective ‘small’: Norwegian (East Norwegian dialect, Hans-Olav Enger, personal communication) (8)

en lit-en gutt.1 art.m.sg.indf small-m.sg.indf boy(m)[sg.indf] ‘a small boy’

(9)

den vesle art.m/f.sg.def small.sg.def ‘the small boy’

gutt-en boy(m)-sg.def

(10)

ei art.f.sg.indf ‘a small girl’

jent-e girl(f)-sg.indf

(11)

den vesle art.m/f.sg.def small.sg.def ‘the small girl’

(12)

et lit-e barn art.n.sg.indf small-n.sg.indf child(n)[indf] ‘a small child’

(13)

det vesle art.n.sg.def small.sg.def ‘the small child’

lit-a small-f.sg.indf

jent-a girl(f)-sg.def

barn-et child(n)-sg.def

This adjective has three suppletive stems, lit- in the singular indefinite, vesle in the singular definite,2 and in the plural there is små. This latter also deserves illustration: (14)

små small.pl ‘small boys’

gutt-er boy(m)-pl.indf

1. The Leipzig Glossing Rules are adopted (for details see http://www.eva.mpg.de/ lingua/index.html). 2. In the dialect cited these forms are obligatory. Various other Norwegian speakers I have asked accept these forms, but for them vesle is optional.

Higher order exceptionality in inflectional morphology

(15)

små small.pl ‘small girls’

(16)

små barn small.pl child(n)[indf] ‘small children’

(17)

de små art.pl.def small.pl ‘the small boys’

gutt-ene boy(m)-pl.def

(18)

de små art.pl.def small.pl ‘the small girls’

jent-ene girl(f)-pl.def

(19)

de små art.pl.def small.pl ‘the small children’

barn-a child(n)-pl.def

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jent-er girl(f)-pl.indf

We can see the evidence for suppletion just looking within this one lexeme. To demonstrate that this adjective is also overdifferentiated, we need to compare it with an ordinary adjective: (20)

Regular tjukk ‘thick, fat’ and liten ‘small’ in East Norwegian (HansOlav Enger, personal communication)

m f n

singular indf def tjukk

plural

tjukke tjukt

m f n

singular indf def liten lita vesle lite

plural

små

This dialect has three genders, as shown by the articles. Yet a normal adjective like tjukk ‘thick, fat’ does not distinguish all three; rather, it makes only one distinction, masculine and feminine together versus neuter (Enger and Kristoffersen 2000: 104). The instance of overdifferentiation involving liten ‘small’ is within one of the suppletive stems. Besides this, tjukk ‘thick, fat’ and other normal adjectives do not distinguish definite plural from definite singular; tjukk-e functions for both. However, vesle is the definite singular, but in the plural små is used. This distinction, not made by normal adjectives, is between the suppletive stems which bring about the overdifferentiation. Putting all this together we see that in the positive, a normal adjective has three forms, while liten has five forms, resulting from the interaction of suppletion and overdifferentiation.

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5.3.

Overdifferentiation and syncretism

Given the number of relevant morphological phenomena, the number of potential interactions, in addition to those we have seen, is potentially rather large. It is therefore an attractive idea to ask whether there are logical restrictions on which two-way interactions are possible. To date, none has been established. Quite on the contrary, one of the most likely restrictions is disproved by data already available. At first sight it would seem impossible to have an interaction of overdifferentiation and syncretism. After all, one creates ‘too many’ forms, and the other ‘too few’. They would therefore, apparently, cancel each other out. The data are more complex than that. They involve the Russian ‘second genitive’. Russian has unarguably six primary cases. But there are additional forms which are harder to analyse (see Zaliznjak 1973; Worth 1984; Comrie 1986 for discussion). Contrast these forms of the nouns kisel’ ‘kissel’ (a Russian fruit drink, a bit like thin blancmange) and cˇ aj ‘tea’. First both have a regular genitive: (21)

vkus kiselj-a taste kissel-sg.gen ‘the taste of kissel’

(22)

vkus cˇ aj-a taste tea-sg.gen ‘the taste of tea’

However, in certain partitive expressions we find a contrast: (23)

stakan kiselj-a glass kissel-sg.gen ‘a glass of kissel’

(24)

stakan cˇ aj-u glass tea-sg.gen2 ‘a glass of tea’

Here kisel’ ‘kissel’ is now an example of a normal regular noun, while cˇ aj ‘tea’ is one of a subclass which has a separate form, the so-called second genitive. The number of nouns with this second genitive is restricted, but they number dozens rather than a handful.3 Within those nouns which have a second genitive, 3. Ilola and Mustajoki (1989: 41–41) identify 396. However, some of these are rather rare nouns. Moreover, Ilola and Mustajoki’s source is Zaliznjak (1977), and the form has been in decline since then. Thus kisel’ ‘kissel’ is given as having the second genitive; however, my consultants do not accept this form, and Google gives over

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for some of them the second genitive is normally used in partitive expressions, for the others the second genitive is a possibility in competition with the ordinary genitive; for data on this see Panov (1968: 180), Graudina, Ickoviˇc and Katlinskaja (1976: 121–125) and Comrie, Stone and Polinsky (1996: 124–125). What concerns us particularly is the form of the second genitive, cˇ aju. Consider the following partial paradigms: (25)

Russian partial singular paradigms nominative genitive genitive 2 dative

kisel’ kiselja as genitive kiselju

cˇ aj cˇ aja cˇ aju cˇ aju

Here we see that the ‘extra’ form of cˇ aj ‘tea’, the second genitive, is syncretic with the dative. Note that we cannot push the problem into syntax and claim that the form used is the dative, since any agreements are indeed genitive. This is not obvious, since in the modern language the inclusion of an agreeing modifier strongly disfavours the use of the second genitive; instead the ordinary genitive is more likely: (26)

stakan zelen-ogo cˇ aj-a glass green-m.sg.gen tea(m)-sg.gen ‘a glass of green tea’

Here the presence of the modifier zelenogo ‘green-m.sg.gen’ makes much more likely the use of the ordinary genitive cˇ aja. However, in those instances where the noun stands in the less likely second genitive in an expression similar to (26) genitive agreement is still required. Thus zelenogo cˇ aju ‘green tea’ is possible – if rare – as a second genitive. We should therefore test what happens if we put the attributive modifier in the dative: (27)

zelen-omu cˇ aj-u green-m.sg.dat tea(m)-sg.dat ‘green tea’

(27) can be used only in syntactic positions where a dative is required. It is not a second genitive, and could not be used in (26). The problem is therefore a morphological one and not a syntactic issue: second genitives are not syntactic datives. We can conclude that the nouns with a second genitive are overdifferen200 examples of stakan kiselja ‘glass of kissel’ and none of stakan kiselju. Thus the 396 figure is rather high.

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tiated, and that the additional form is expressed by syncretism (with the dative). We do indeed have an interaction of overdifferentiation and syncretism. This in turn means that the most promising suggestion for a logical restriction on twoway interactions (that we could not find an interaction of overdifferentiation and syncretism) does not in fact hold. 5.4.

(Extended) deponency, suppletion and overdifferentiation

A second natural way in which we might hope to constrain the possibilities for interactions is simply in terms of quantity. The examples we have seen have been of two-way interaction. Can we state that as the limit? Clearly, if three-way interactions are found, then the space of possibilities expands dramatically. The laws of chance are likely to make three-way interactions rare, but an example has been found: (28)

Serbian dete ‘child’ and žena ‘woman, wife’ nominative vocative accusative genitive dative instrumental locative

dete dete dete deteta detetu detetom detetu singular

deca deco decu dece deci decom deci

žena ženo ženu žene ženi ženom ženi singular

Consider the forms in the unlabelled column (deca and so on). These function as the plural of dete ‘child’. Viewed against the rest of the inflectional system they look odd. First there is a problem with the stem (dec- instead of det-). This is not a possible alternation in modern Serbian, and so we must recognize the stems as being suppletive. Not fully suppletive of course, but partially suppletive (or as showing a completely irregular alternation, if preferred). Second, and rather worse, are the inflections. They are apparently completely out of place as plural; the plural inflections look rather different from these.4 A 4. Agreements are complex and interesting. In brief, there are some instances in which an unambiguously feminine singular form is used. There are others where a clear plural is used, and still others where a gender/number form is used and where it can be argued that this is best analysed as neuter plural. Personal pronouns with a noun phrase headed by deca ‘children’ as antecedent can stand in the neuter plural or the masculine plural, dependent on the type of reading, which means that overall it can control three different types of agreement (feminine singular, neuter plural and

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comparison with the singular forms of žena ‘woman, wife’, a regular noun of a different inflectional class, shows what is going on. We have a set of inflections which have an established function in the morphological system being used in a minority of instances for the opposite function. That is, an instance of extended deponency. And third, a noun in the plural in Serbian normally distinguishes three case forms (nominative-vocative-accusative versus genitive versus dative-instrumental-locative) though one large group has four forms (this group has also a unique form for the accusative). Deca ‘children’ has six forms and so is overdifferentiated. Thus it is possible to find an instance of a three-way interaction. This means that the space of possible items which we characterize as showing higher order exceptionality is potentially very large. 6.

Conclusion

The paper represents part of a new attempt to bring the phenomena of inflection into a coherent scheme. This is done within a canonical approach to typology. Such an approach has the advantage of conceptual clarity. 5 It allows us to systematize the various minor irregularities of inflectional morphology. However, our focus was rather on those lexemes that are more than merely exceptional. We concentrated on those which show interactions of non-canonical phenonema and so represent a higher order of exceptionality. Such examples are of great importance for establishing what is a possible word in human language, since they push the limits considerably beyond normal exceptionality. In terms of the theoretical possibilities, we were not able to eliminate any of the possible two-way interactions of non-canonicity, which shows that there are a good many potential types. Furthermore, we identified a three-way interaction, which demonstrates that the potential space is large. The initial picture that emerges is that individual lexemes can indeed be exceptionally exceptional: they can show higher order exceptionality in various ways. The range of possible words is remasculine plural), if personal pronouns are counted as agreement targets. See Corbett (1983: 76–86), Wechsler and Zlati´c (2000: 816–821) and Corbett (2006) for details. In part the patterns fall under the typological regularities governing the distribution of syntactic and semantic agreement. However, there are remaining issues, notably the interaction of these choices with case, which make deca ‘children’ problematic for agreement. While particular items may be highly irregular in morphological terms, this does not normally lead to any impact on syntax. Deca ‘children’ is particularly challenging in that its aberrant behaviour appears not to be restricted to morphology. 5. It also has the practical advantage of proving a good basis for typological databases, see: http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/ for examples.

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markable broad. As yet only some of the potential types have been found, but it seems likely that several others exist. From the perspective of a language’s lexicon as a whole, however, lexemes showing higher order exceptionality are – not surprisingly – rare. Abbreviations art dat def f gen indf m n pl sg

article dative definite feminine genitive indefinite masculine neuter plural singular

References Baerman, Matthew 2005 A survey of deponency in a sample of 100 languages. [Available online at: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/LIS/MB/WALS/WALS.htm] Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown, and Greville G. Corbett 2005 The Syntax-Morphology Interface: A Study of Syncretism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baerman, Matthew, Greville G. Corbett, Dunstan Brown, and Andrew Hippisley (eds.) 2007 Deponency and Morphological Mismatches. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Proceedings of the British Academy 145). Bloomfield, Leonard 1933 Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Brown, Dunstan, Marina Chumakina, Greville G. Corbett, and Andrew Hippisley 2004 The Surrey Suppletion Database. [Available online at: http://www. smg.surrey.ac.uk/] Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew 1994 Suppletion. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 8, R. E. Asher (ed.), 4410–4411. Oxford: Pergamon.

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Chumakina, Marina 2004 An annotated bibliography of suppletion. [Available online at: http:// www.surrey.ac.uk/LIS/SMG/Suppletion_BIB/WebBibliography.htm] Comrie, Bernard 1986 On delimiting cases. In Case in Slavic, Richard D. Brecht, and James Levine (eds.), 86–106. Columbus, OH: Slavica. Comrie, Bernard, Gerald Stone, and Maria Polinsky 1996 The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Corbett, Greville G. 1983 Hierarchies, Targets and Controllers: Agreement patterns in Slavic. London: Croom Helm. Corbett, Greville G. 1991 Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, Greville G. 1999 Defectiveness, syncretism, suppletion, ‘deponency’: four dimensions for a typology of inflectional systems. Guest lecture at The Second Mediterranean Meeting on Morphology, 10–12 September 1999, University Residence, Lija, Malta. Corbett, Greville G. 2000 Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, Greville G. 2003 Agreement: Canonical instances and the extent of the phenomenon. In Topics in Morphology: Selected papers from the Third Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (Barcelona, September20-22, 2001), Geert Booij, Janet DeCesaris, Angela Ralli, and Sergio Scalise (eds.), 109– 128. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Corbett, Greville G. 2005 The canonical approach in typology. In Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Adam Hodges, and David S. Rood (eds.), 25–49. (Studies in Language Companion Series 72) Amsterdam: Benjamins. Corbett, Greville G. 2006 Agreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, Greville G. 2007a Canonical typology, suppletion and possible words. Language 83, 8–42. Corbett, Greville G. 2007b Deponency, syncretism, and what lies between. In Baerman et al. (eds.), 21–43.

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Corbett, Greville G., and Norman M. Fraser 1993 Network Morphology: A DATR account of Russian inflectional morphology. Journal of Linguistics 29: 113–42. [Reprinted 2003 in Morphology: Critical Concepts in Linguistics, VI: Morphology: Its Place in the Wider Context, Francis X. Katamba (ed.), 364–396. London, Routledge.] Corbett, Greville G., and Norman M. Fraser 1997 Vyˇcislitel’naja lingvistika i tipologija . Vestnik MGU: Serija 9: Filologija 2: 122–140. Embick, David 1998

Embick, David 2000

Voice systems and the Syntax/Morphology Interface. In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32: Papers from the Penn/MIT Roundtable on Argument Structure and Aspect, Heidi Harley (ed.), 41–72. Cambridge, MA.: MIT. Features, syntax and categories in the Latin perfect. Linguistic Inquiry 31: 185–230.

Enger, Hans-Olav, and Kristian E. Kristoffersen 2000 Innføring i norsk grammatikk: Morfologi og syntaks [Introduction to Norwegian Grammar: Morphology and syntax]. Oslo: Landlaget for Norskundervisning / Cappelen Akademisk Forlag. Evans, Nicholas, Dunstan Brown, and Greville G. Corbett 2001 Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis. In Yearbook of Morphology 2000, Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 187–231. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Evans, Nicholas, Dunstan Brown, and Greville G. Corbett 2002 The semantics of gender in Mayali: Partially parallel systems and formal implementation. Language 78: 111–155. Fenech, Edward 1996 Functions of the dual suffix in Maltese. Rivista di Linguistica 8: 89– 99. Graudina, L. K., V. A. Ickoviˇc, and L. P. Katlinskaja 1976 Grammatiˇceskaja pravil’nost’ russkoj reˇci: opyt cˇ astotno-stilistiˇceskogo slovarja variantov [Norms in Russian: a frequency dictionary of stylistic variants].Moscow: Nauka. Ilola, Eeva, and Arto Mustajoki 1989 Report on Russian Morphology as it appears in Zaliznyak’s Grammatical Dictionary. (Slavica Helsingiensia 7) Helsinki: Department of Slavonic Languages, University of Helsinki.

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Kennedy, Benjamin H. 1955 The Revised Latin Primer. [Edited and further revised by James Mountford.] London: Longmans, Green and Co. Kiparsky, Paul 2005

Blocking and periphrasis in inflectional paradigms. In Yearbook of Morphology 2004, Geert Booij, and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 113–135. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Matthews, P. H. 1997 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mel’ˇcuk, Igor 1993

Mel’ˇcuk, Igor 1994

Cours de morphologie générale (théorique et descriptive). I: Introduction et Première partie: Le mot [A Course in General Morphology (theoretical and descriptive). Vol. I: Introduction and first part: The word]. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Suppletion: toward a logical analysis of the concept. Studies in Language 18: 339–410.

Panov, M. V. (ed.) 1968 Morfologija i sintaksis sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka (Russkij jazyk i sovetskoe obšcestvo: Sociologo-lingvistiˇceskoe issledovanie: III) [The morphology and syntax of the modern Russian standard language (Russian language and Soviet society: A sociolinguistic investigation: III)]. Moscow: Nauka. Plank, Frans 1994

Homonymy vs. suppletion: A riddle (and how it happens to be solved in …). Agreement Gender Number Genitive &, 81–86. (EUROTYP Working Papers VII/23) Konstanz: University of Konstanz.

Priestly, T. M. S. 1993 Slovene. In The Slavonic Languages, Bernard Comrie, and Greville G. Corbett (eds.), 388–451. London: Routledge. Sadler, Louisa, and Andrew Spencer 2001 Syntax as an exponent of morphological features. In Yearbook of Morphology 2000, Geert Booij, and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 71–96. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Seifart, Frank 2005

The structure and use of shape-based noun classes in Miraña (North West Amazon). Ph. D. diss., Radboud University, Nijmegen.

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Spencer, Andrew 2003 Periphrastic paradigms in Bulgarian. In Syntactic Structures and Morphological Information, Uwe Junghanns, and Luka Szucsich (eds.), 249–282. (Interface Explorations 7) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Stump, Gregory T. 2001 Inflectional Morphology: A theory of paradigm structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stump, Gregory T. 2002 Morphological and syntactic paradigms: arguments for a theory of paradigm linkage. In Yearbook of Morphology 2001, Geert Booij, and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 147–180. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Suthar, Babubhai Kohyabhai 2006 Agreement in Gujarati. Ph. D. diss., University of Pennsylvania. Wechsler, Stephen, and Larisa Zlati´c 2000 A theory of agreement and its application to Serbo-Croatian. Language 76: 799–832. Worth, Dean S. 1984

Russian gen2 , loc2 revisited. In Signs of Friendship: To Honour A.G.F. van Holk, Slavist, Linguist, Semiotician, J.J. van Baak (ed.), 295–306. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Zaliznjak, Andrej A. 1973[2002] O ponimanii termina ‘padež’ v lingvistiˇceskix opisanijax [Understanding the term ‘case’ in linguistic descriptions]. In Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie, Andrej A. Zaliznjak (ed.), 613–47. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. [originally in Problemy grammatiˇceskogo modelirovanija, Andrej A. Zaliznjak (ed.), 53–87. Moscow: Nauka.] Zaliznjak, Andrej A. 1977 Grammatiˇceskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka: slovoizmenenie [A Grammatical Dictionary of Russian: Inflection]. Moscow: Russkij jazyk.

An I-language view of morphological ‘exceptionality’: comments on Corbett’s paper Stephen R. Anderson

1.

Introduction

Corbett starts from what he calls “the notion of ‘canonical’ inflection,” corresponding closely to an ideal “one form – one meaning” pattern with respect to the roots and formal markers found in inflected words. He discusses some of the myriad ways in which actual inflectional paradigms are found to deviate from this simple schema, and provides a number of important and thought-provoking examples. Many linguists have felt that something like this ‘canonical’ inflection must in some way characterize morphological structure in general. Some might see this as an ideal form underlying the apparent complexity of surface shapes, as in Lounsbury’s (1953) notion of an idealized “agglutinating analog,” while others (such as the practitioners of “Natural Morphology”) regard it as a fundamental constraint on linguistic structure. Examples such as Corbett’s make it clear that any claim to the effect that inflectional paradigms are “basically” regular must at a minimum be carefully hedged to allow for all sorts of deviation from regularity in practice. I address here two consequences that follow from observations such as those in Corbett’s paper. I first note, in section 2, that exceptionality in inflectional morphology finds its importance not directly in terms of comparisons between surface forms, but rather in the grammar that underlies them: in I-language rather than E-language, to put the matter in Chomsky’s terms (cf. Anderson & Lightfoot 2002). In section 3 I then suggest that the range of exceptionality referred to in Corbett’s discussion argues that morphological theory, per se, has no place for the notion of such an ideal structural type. To the extent much (indeed, most) actual inflectional structure matches it, the explanation is to be found outside of the theory of word structure itself, in areas such as the patterns of diachronic change that lead to observed synchronic systems.

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The locus of exceptionality

Corbett discusses ways in which observed inflectional paradigms can deviate from the pattern of canonical inflection, including the traditional notions of suppletion, syncretism, overdifferentiation, and deponency. He discusses these notions, as is quite standard in traditional grammar, in terms of surface word forms: thus, syncretism is described as “instances in which we have a single form which realizes more than one morphosyntactic specification.” This approach, however, leads to a certain amount of indeterminacy. For instance, how do we know in a given case, whether we are dealing with “overdifferentiation” in one subset of the lexicon of a language as opposed to “syncretism” in a complementary subset? Is it the case that some Maltese nouns are overdifferentiated for number, or rather that the others (the great majority) show syncretism of the dual and plural? How could we differentiate these accounts, and does it actually matter that we do so? Simply observing that nouns with a distinct dual constitute a small minority makes the difference a matter of mere numbers and seems to trivialize the issue, but it is hard to see how we can improve on that so long as our attention is confined to patterns in surface forms. If the difference between syncretism and overdifferentiation is genuinely significant, this must be because they correspond to distinct mechanisms in the grammar of a language. In every case, the observation of a surface pattern deviating from the canonical one only raises the question of what lies behind it, rather than serving as a (self-confirming) diagnosis of the nature of the exceptionality. 2.1. Identifying true suppletion For example, “suppletion” cannot be identified in any significant sense as mere non-identity of the lexical bases of two (or more) morphosyntactically distinct forms within a paradigm. In some instances, quite considerable differences in the shape of the base among paradigmatically related forms may follow directly from the phonological regularities of the language. For instance, yhden, the genitive form of the Finnish numeral ‘one’, differs substantially from the nominative yksi. These differences follow from the phonology of Finnish, however, given a basic stem such as /ükte/. In the nominative, /e/ is raised to [i] in final position, which results in spirantization of the /t/ to [s]. In the genitive, the addition of the regular ending /n/ prevents the stem-final vowel from raising. It also closes the second syllable, resulting in consonant gradation of the stem /t/ to /d/, and concomitant dissimilation of continuance which causes the /k/ of the stem to be realized as [h]. Surely we should not speak of suppletion here,

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despite the disparity of stem shape: true suppletion corresponds to the case in which an alternation in form is lexically idiosyncratic, and thus must be represented by distinct memorized forms, rather than mere difference in the surface form of the base. We often proceed as if we could identify genuine cases of suppletion in terms of the distance between variants of the base, and the phonological naturalness of their connection. Sometimes, though, quite minor alternations in shape can have the lexical character that leads us to call them suppletive. An example of this is furnished by the Surmiran form of Rumantsch. Here, as in many other Romance languages, verbal endings differ as to whether or not they bear stress, and the vowels of the stem may change in limited ways depending on whether a form takes stress on the stem or on the ending. For instance, in the paradigm of cantar ‘to sing’ we find cantas [’kant@s] ‘sing (2sg)’ alternating with cantagn [k@n’tañ] ‘sing (1pl)’. Given that Surmiran only has the vowels [i,@,u] in unstressed syllables, as opposed to a full set of seven vowels (short and long) plus several diphthongs in stressed syllables, it seems that this alteration must be a purely phonological matter of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. In some instances, such as the verb eir ‘to go’, we certainly find suppletion: the alternation of vast [vast] ‘go (2sg)’ with giagn [dZañ] ‘go (1pl)’ is unconnected with any general phonological rule(s). Surely the alternation in forms of cantar is phonological, though. Closer examination shows that this cannot be not correct. As a consequence of wholesale re-structuring of vocalic patterns in individual verbs, there is no longer a predictable correspondence between stressed and unstressed vowels. For any one of the three unstressed vowels, there are seven or eight possible corresponding stressed vowels (or diphthongs). This would hardly be unusual, if the correspondence were unique in the other direction, but that is not the case. In fact, there is no stressed vowel whose unstressed correspondent is unique; and some of the stressed vowels (e.g., [a] and [o]) can correspond to any one of the unstressed vowels, depending on the lexical identity of the verb in question. Some of these patterns are commoner than others, but not at all to the extent that the simple and phonologically natural alternations can be derived by rule. Although there is no doubt that these alternations originated historically in a straightforward phonological rule reducing vowels in unstressed syllables, the pattern in the language today is arguably such that every verb must have its two alternants (stem-stressed vs. desinential-stressed) indicated in its lexical entry: suppletion by definition, if we think of morphology in terms of grammars (see Anderson 2008 for further discussion of these facts).

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2.2. Sources of syncretism in grammar If we see syncretism pre-systematically as the coincidence in a single surface form of multiple morphosyntactic possibilities, as Corbett’s definition (quoted above) suggests, then we must realize that this can have several different sources in the grammar of a language. In some instances, the overlap of multiple morphosyntactically distinct specifications in a single surface form is surely a matter of simple homophony, not to be confused with syncretism. In Icelandic, for example, the genitive singular of strong nouns is marked either with -s or with -ar. The nominative (and in some cases, accusative) plural of strong masculine and feminine nouns is marked with -ar, -ir, -ur or -r (of which this last may disappear phonetically after stem-final r or assimilate to a preceding sonorant). There are some principles governing the distribution of each of these sets of alternants, but they are quite independent of one another. In particular, while some nouns do show -ar both in the genitive singular and the nominative plural (e.g., kerling ‘old woman’), there is no reason to treat this as a systematic syncretism, because many others show -ar only on one for the other (e.g., hlutur ‘thing’, gsg. hlutar, npl. hlutir; hestur ‘horse’, gsg. hests, npl. hestar). The grammar, that is, establishes no systematic connection between nouns with a genitive in -ar and those with an identical nominative(/accusative) plural. The two categories simply have markers that may accidentally coincide, leading to word forms that are homophonous and not syncretic. In other cases, surface identity of morphosyntactically distinct forms is a result of the phonology. For example, a substantial subset of the “irregular” verbs of English (i.e., those that do not form their past and past participle by adding /d/) involve the addition of a very similar ending, /t/, at an earlier level of the lexical phonology (see Anderson 1973 for some discussion), as in the (now somewhat archaic) burn/burnt, learn/learnt. As opposed to the ‘regular’ ending /d/, this /t/ has the effect of devoicing a preceding voiced fricative and shortening the vowel of the stem, as in leave/left, lose/lost, and other verbs. The vowelshortening effect, regular before syllable-final clusters at this level, can occur by itself (creep/crept, mean/meant, deal/dealt). When the stem ends in /t/, the cluster is simplified, but not before triggering vowel shortening: bite/bit, meet/met. For stems ending in /d/, the same cluster reduction occurs (without regressive assimilation of [Voice]), again with vowel shortening: lead/led, slide/slid. This cluster of phonological effects is quite regular and characteristic of the appropriate level of the phonology. What is interesting is the consequence of adding this /t/ to stems ending in a dental stop and containing a basic short vowel. In such forms (e.g. set/set, fit/fit; rid/rid, wed/wed) the vowel shortening

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has no visible effect (since the vowel is already short), and the reduction of the final stop cluster results in the complete loss of any surface reflex of the ending. The consequence is a phonologically derived homophony of the present and past forms, but surely not a morphologically governed syncretism. Somewhat similar consequences can follow from the operation of morphological regularities that are sensitive to phonological form. It is of course well known that the regular plural and possessive forms of English nouns are generally identical phonologically: both boys and boy’s are pronounced [bojz]. This is probably a matter of simple homophony, though the fact that essentially all productive inflection in English involves the two phonological forms /z/ and /d/, each adjoined (not simply concatenated) at the right edge of the word, suggests that some more general principle may be at work. What is somewhat more interesting is the fact that the possessive form of a word ending in the regular plural is also homophonous with the simple plural and possessive: boys’ is also phonetically [bojz], not the expected *[bojzz]. This cannot be an instance of syncretism, because exactly where the plural of a noun is formed in some way other than with /z/, the possessive plural is distinct: children’s, women’s. Furthermore, the same homophony is found (for at least some speakers, and perhaps more manuals of English usage) with a class of proper names ending in /z/: Jones’ theory. Consider also that for some speakers, the presence of the 3rd person singular /z/ also blocks the overt expression of the possessive: The girl Harry adores’ long hair [is actually a wig] (cf. (Zwicky 1987)). The regularity is thus not the morphologically conditioned one “singular and plural possessive are identical” that the syncretism analysis predicts. There are various ways to describe these facts (see Anderson 2005: 89–94 for some discussion). We might say, for instance, that the plural, possessive and 3sg present /z/’s are adjoined to the word with which they appear, and the phonology then reduces a pair of identical adjoined elements to a single instance. Or perhaps the possessive rule adjoins /z/ unless its host already ends in an adjoined /z/. Or perhaps, within an Optimality-theoretic framework, the possessive rule simply says: the last word of a DP with the property [Poss] must end in adjoined /z/ (a condition satisfied without change if the host word already contains a /z/). On any of these analyses, we also have to say that for (style books and) speakers who prefer Jones’ theory to Jones’s theory, the proper names in question contain a semantically vacuous and purely formal adjoined /z/. The differences among these accounts, while undoubtedly significant, do not matter to the present point. On any one of them, the homophony of the regular plural and its possessive form follows not from a rule of syncretism, but rather from the morphophonology of the rule of phrasal inflection that marks the possessive form.

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It is the existence of these various circumstances that can give rise to surface identity among morphosyntactically distinct forms that heightens the significance of examples of genuine syncretisms, such as the paradigm of cˇ lovek ‘man, person’ in Slovene discussed by Corbett. Here the fact that the genitive and locative dual forms are built in the same way as the corresponding plurals, while the remaining forms of the dual are built on the singular stem, shows that the morphological rule of syncretism cited by Corbett (“Slovene nouns always have the genitive [and locative] dual syncretic with the genitive [and locative] plural”) accurately captures the generalization at work. Accidental homophony or phonologically derived neutralization are not serious candidates in such a case, which shows that morphological structure must countenance such “rules of referral” (as some have called them). I do not by any means intend to suggest that Corbett is unaware of the differences I have pointed to here. Indeed, one finds much in work of his and his colleagues referred to in the paper under discussion that is of great importance for making exactly these distinctions. I mean only to emphasize that in any discussion of “non-canonical” patterns in inflectional morphology, it is essential to keep one’s focus on just where in the grammar a given (apparently) exceptional pattern has its source, and not only on the surface forms that realize it. Exceptionality in morphology does not wear its diagnosis on its sleeve.

3.

The significance of exceptionality for morphological theory

Returning to the conceptual framework of Corbett’s paper, we can ask what status should be accorded to the notion of “canonical inflection” in terms of which exceptionality is defined. In line with the remarks of the previous section, I suggest that if this notion has systematic status, it should be in terms of the architecture of a grammar, and not directly in terms of patterns among surface forms. In linguistic theory it has been common to posit an innate structural preference for paradigmatic relations of the sort Corbett designates as “canonical,” under a variety of names: Uniform Exponence, Paradigm Coherence or Uniformity, Output-Output Correspondence, Natural Morphology, etc. For such a principle to have the status of a constraint on grammars represented in Universal Grammar, it ought to have the properties of what Kiparsky (2008) calls “true universals,” and not simply those of “typological generalizations.” Corbett, however, demonstrates here for us that there is actually no limit in principle to the range of exceptions that languages may display to such a pattern; and thus, that it cannot constitute the kind of characterization of the human lan-

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guage capacity that is the business of Universal Grammar. Along similar lines, Garrett (2008) demonstrates that an independent synchronic constraint on nonuniform paradigms does not serve as a mechanism in historical change (driving instances of paradigmatic leveling); rather, the effect is in the opposite direction, with observed instances of “leveling” following from independent mechanisms of change (paradigm extension). These observations are in line with evidence accumulating in a variety of areas that many observed typological regularities are to be attributed not to the structure of Universal Grammar, but to logically quite separate external sources such as linguistic change or processing preferences. Such arguments have been made for phonology, for example, by Blevins (2004); in syntax, by Newmeyer (2006), and for morphology in Anderson (2004). Corbett’s discussion reinforces this conclusion by demonstrating the extent to which any such regularities of word structure are subject to pervasive exceptions of fundamental sorts. Whatever the architecture of morphological theory, it is quite unlikely that a notion such as Corbett’s canonical inflection has systematic status within it. The study of surface patterns manifested in E-languages, of course, provides vital evidence about the nature of language, but they are not themselves the explananda of grammatical theory. It is, rather, the structure of I-language objects (grammars) that we seek to account for. Of course, we are left here (as in other areas of grammar) with the problem of how to identify genuine constraints on the human cognitive capacity for language, constraints that are true universals and thus appropriate for incorporation into the theory of synchronic grammars. There is little doubt that such constraints exist, but the primary source of evidence for proposals in this area has been the identification of widespread patterns – typological generalizations, in Kiparsky’s formulation. Once we recognize that these are actually due, at least in a great many cases, to factors other than the structure of UG, our search for an appropriate theory of grammar becomes much harder – but no less fundamental. References Anderson, Stephen R. 1973 Remarks on the phonology of English inflection. Language & Literature I (4): 33–52. Anderson, Stephen R. 2004 Morphological universals and diachrony. Yearbook of Morphology 2004: 1–17.

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Anderson, Stephen R. 2005 Aspects of the Theory of Clitics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Stephen R. 2008 Phonologically conditioned allomorphy in Surmiran (Rumantsch). Word Structure 1: 109–134. Anderson, Stephen R. and David W. Lightfoot 2002 The Language Organ. Linguistics as cognitive physiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blevins, Juliette 2004 Evolutionary Phonology. The emergence of sound patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garrett, Andrew 2008 Paradigmatic uniformity and markedness. In Language Universals and Language Change, Jeff Good (ed.), 125–143. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kiparsky, Paul 2008

Universals constrain change; change results in typological generalizations. In Language Universals and Language Change, Jeff Good (ed.), 23–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lounsbury, Floyd Glen 1953 Oneida Verb Morphology (Yale University Publications in Anthropology 48). New Haven: Yale University Press. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2006 Possible and Probable Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zwicky, Arnold M. 1987 Suppressing the Zs. Journal of Linguistics 23: 133–148.

Exceptions and what they tell us: reflections on Anderson’s comments1 Greville G. Corbett

1.

Introduction

When you have a paper that you have researched, drafted, redrafted, polished, received helpful comments on, rewritten … and now wish to send off, there are (at least) three questions you may ask. Where (to send it)? Why (have I got these results)? So what? When the paper is for an edited collection, the first question is already answered. The second question, one may hope at least, has an answer along the lines that the paper represents a small step beyond what was there before, and in turn poses new issues. It fits in the circle of problems and partial solutions, through which we spiral upwards. It is the last question – ‘So what?’ – which can be daunting. It is therefore a wonderful luxury to have someone else ask the question and attempt to answer it, with the interest and persistence shown in this case by Anderson. It is tempting to say ‘Thanks, Steve, you’ve done the job, and let everyone read your suggestions.’ But that would be missing the opportunity for debate which the editors have offered. Anderson asks ‘so what?’, and offers two answers to the question: first that “exceptionality in inflectional morphology finds its importance not directly in terms of comparison between surface forms, but rather in the grammar that underlies them” (section 2), and second that “morphological theory, per se, has no place for the notion of such an ideal structural type”, where the ideal is the fully canonical system, set up as a standard of comparison (section 3). At the risk of ruining the suspense, let me say that I agree with these two points, and will develop them, following Anderson’s sections.

1. I thank Stephen Anderson for his comments, and Matthew Baerman for some notes on my response.

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The locus of exceptionality

Anderson points out that: “the observation of a surface pattern deviating from the canonical one only raises the question of what lies behind it, rather than serving as a (self-confirming) diagnosis of the nature of the exceptionality.” That is, we find numerous deviations from the canonical, but so what? Anderson concentrates on two phenomena, suppletion and syncretism. For suppletion he points out that (a) there are forms which are so far apart in phonological terms as to lead us to believe they are suppletive, and yet may follow from phonological regularities; (b) conversely, apparently close forms may not be subject to any phonological rule and may be – surprisingly – suppletive (see Corbett 2007 for fuller discussion of suppletion). Equally, concerning syncretism, he notes that when a single surface form realizes distinct morphosyntactic specifications this may be a matter of simple homophony or it may be an instance of systematic syncretism (see Baerman, Brown and Corbett 2005 for examples and discussion). His general conclusion is that: “Exceptionality in morphology does not wear its diagnosis on its sleeve.” This is right, and how boring morphology would be if it were otherwise. As a consequence, we need to be able to talk in a scientific way about ‘symptoms’. Usage in this area is confused and confusing; introducing canonicity is intended to make our system of concepts sharper and more consistent, and so to contribute to our understanding. However, the issue goes deeper. It is not just linguists who are confronted by ‘symptoms’. Hearers are too. When a hearer is confronted by a form which has more than one morphosyntactic description, there is theoretically a possibility of miscommunication. The strategies hearers use in this circumstance are a concern of linguistics, and it is an interesting research question if and when hearers pay attention to the source of the coincidence of form (whether it is an individual homophony or a systematic syncretism). Thus even when the surface coincidence is a result of totally regular rules, it is still of interest, in that we have to ask what such instances tell us about comprehension. The speaker is a problem too, since speakers (at least most speakers) don’t do theoretical linguistics. Let us go back to the example of forms that have the symptoms of suppletion (they are distant from each other in phonological terms) and yet can be related by regular phonological rules. Though we can write the rules, we may not be able to demonstrate that speakers use them. It may be that for (some) speakers the forms are stored, just as indisputably suppletive forms are. This is an area where eventually we may hope for help from neurolinguists.

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The significance of exceptionality

Anderson argues that: “Whatever the architecture of morphological theory, it is quite unlikely that a notion such as Corbett’s canonical inflection has systematic status within it.” Indeed, the examples of exceptions I provided, showing that there is no principled limit to the range of exceptionality, help confirm Anderson’s view that the regularities we do observe are to be attributed to external sources rather than to Universal Grammar. Anderson’s conclusion that canonicity does not have a systematic status within morphological theory is also reasonable, in my view. To change the analogy, in many fields of investigation we may observe that the units of measurement and the means to facilitate measurement have no systematic status within the theory. Theories do not incorporate millimetres or microscopes. Yet having generally agreed standardized units of measurement and tools which aid in measurement is of immense value in moving research forward. The canonical standard offers a point of reference, from which we can calibrate the real language examples we discover, and in particular those which are most relevant for morphological theory. Deviations from canonicity all demand an explanation, and instances of higher order exceptionality may well prove particularly significant. We investigate them in order both to map out the extent of the exceptionality we find, and to enable our thinking about what this tells us about human linguistic ability. References Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown, and Greville G. Corbett 2005 The Syntax-Morphology Interface: A Study of Syncretism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, Greville G. 2007 Canonical typology, suppletion and possible words. Language 83: 8–42.

How do exceptions arise? On different paths to morphological irregularity Damaris Nübling

Abstract. In order to understand the function of a certain phenomenon, it is instructive to analyze how this phenomenon emerged. Inflectional irregularities are often understood as residuals of phonological change which were not subject to analogical leveling. This article describes four different paths through which irregularity may arise and reveals several connections with other linguistic phenomena. The results are based on a study of the diachronic development of six highly frequently used verbs in ten Germanic languages. In addition, the precise position of the irregularity in the word form as well as in the paradigm is examined. Furthermore, the impact of the inflectional category on the degree of irregularity is discussed. Finally it is shown that irregularity often leads to overdifferentiated paradigms. Therefore, it is argued that irregularity is more adequately described as differentiation leading to a higher degree of morphological distinctiveness.

1.

Introduction

Many, if not all, inflecting languages have a certain amount of irregularity in their grammatical forms. For some time it has been recognized that the most central part of the language, i.e. the most frequently used units, constitute most of the exceptions of a grammatical system, or, in the terms of Corbett (this volume), of the “canonical inflection”. This article focuses on verbs in Germanic languages. Almost all articles about irregularity give the impression that irregular forms are very old, if not present from the first written records of a language. Many historical grammars end with the so-called “anomalia”, a group of exceptions in the sense of extremely irregular, sometimes even suppletive, verbs which do not share many common characteristics within their paradigms. In most of the Germanic languages, the so-called athematic verbs form this group, but sometimes other verbs such as contracted or otherwise “deformed” ones are included in this wastepaper basket. Most important is the fact that they occur very frequently; thus their grammatically marginal status does not correspond at all to their importance on the performance level.

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Yet the question as to how and why these verbs became irregular never arises. In the case of the aforementioned athematic verbs (be, do, go, stand), the answer can only be given by Indo-European linguistics. But in many other cases, irregularization developed only after the first written records of the respective language and can thus be documented step-by-step. For example, every Germanic language has the verbs have or say, two originally weak (ie. regular) verbs which developed highly irregular patterns in every of the Germanic languages, especially have, which is involved in the grammaticalization of the present perfect; for the irregularization process especially of these two verbs, I refer – in order to avoid repetitions – to Nübling (2001a). Looking for the chronology and the most important steps of this development involves diving into the footnotes of historical grammars, if they mention these processes at all. No historical grammar is really interested in deviations from the rules. This makes it very difficult to document irregularizations. However, studying the different instances of irregularization reveals a sort of “regularity of irregularity”, meaning that on the one hand it is often the same type of verbs which becomes exceptional and, on the other hand, a number of special paths to irregularization which lead to the same goal can be observed. In the following, the most important paths will be described shortly (Section 2). Then, the precise place of irregularization in the word as well as in the paradigm will be defined (Section 3). Section 4 looks at the categories which are affected by irregularity. It will be shown that tense, for instance, tends to more exceptions than person. Finally, the substitution of the negatively-connotated term of irregularity by the more appropriate term of differentiation or distinctiveness (Section 5) is proposed. None of the studied cases developed syncretisms – quite the contrary: paradigms which are affected by irregularities are more differentiated than completely regular paradigms. Section 6 summarizes the most important results. All the following data are based on the systematic investigation of the diachronic development of the six irregular verbs have, become, give, take, come, and say, in ten Germanic languages, which was conducted by Nübling (2000). These verbs underwent a visible process of irregularization. Roughly 1000 years ago they belonged to regular strong or even weak verbs. Four traditionally irregular verbs were added there in an appendix (be, do, go, stand) because they sometimes influenced these six verbs in departing from their original inflection. In the following, only some instructive examples can be presented. Since significant cross-linguistic investigations of the emergence of exceptional morphology have yet to be conducted, the main focus of this article is empirical rather than theoretical. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that the development of irregularity violates what Naturalness Theory (Mayerthaler 1981)

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terms as universally valid “naturalness principles”. This theory postulates clear one-to-one relations in morphology, comparable to what Corbett describes as “canonical inflection”: uniform stems (lexemes) in combination with uniform and transparent affixes. Corbett, however, calls it an ‘idealization’ (this volume) from which real inflectional systems usually diverge. For Naturalness Theory, this scheme constitutes the goal of language change. The response of this theory to irregularity is the elimination of deviant forms through analogical leveling. Even the system-dependent morphological naturalness which introduced so-called system-defining structural properties cannot solve the problem of real inflectional exceptions without any integration into an inflectional class (Wurzel 1984/2001, 1994a). Later, as a reaction to an intensive debate with representatives of the Economy Theory (Werner 1987a, 1987b, 1989; Ronneberger-Sibold 1980) a further Natural Principle, Distinctiveness in the “Me-First”-domain, was introduced (Wurzel 1990, 1994b) allowing exceptions in the basic vocabulary. However, this domain never was thouroughly defined, and there was no interest in asking where these irregularities come from. Therefore more appropriate theories will be considered such as the Dual Processing Model, the Associative Network Model and the Economy Theory. Incidentally, most of these linguists1 are not interested in the emergence of irregular forms. Even Bybee is mainly concerned with the mental representation of irregular morphology and almost always speaks of “maintainence of irregularity and suppletion” (Bybee 1988: 132). Therefore, this article concentrates on the diachronic emergence of irregularity. 2.

Different ways of becoming an exception

There are at least four different paths through which exceptions arise. The most traditional one consists in the preservation of the effects of sound changes which tend to automatically lead to morphological diversity and heterogenity (2.1). A second path is what we call accelerated sound change, i.e. there are deviant phonological changes which occur only in conjunction with high token frequency (2.2). Here, the effect of irregularity is reached faster than in the first case. Still more striking are morphological changes which lead to disorder. Usually, it is assumed that morphological change, mostly in the form of analogy, leads to paradigmatic order and homogenity, but here, the reverse case can also be observed (2.3). The most drastic method is the mixing of different lexemes 1. The rise of irregularity through sound change is documented in Werner (1977). Ronneberger-Sibold (1987, 1990) deals with the diachronic emergence of suppletion.

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to form one paradigm (strong suppletion). Here, the effect of maximal irregularity is achieved the fastest. Only extremely token-frequent items are affected by this extraordinary strategy (2.4). It is obvious that the strategies from 2.1 to 2.4 require progressively less time to create short and differentiated forms, which is the more positively-connotated term for irregularity. 2.1. Accumulated sound shift (without analogical leveling) This path to irregularization is the most frequently described path and can be subsumed under the “passive” type, meaning that the effects of sound change is accepted or accumulated by morphology. Every word undergoes phonological change, which, in most cases, is reductive. Therefore, it should be expected that all the forms of a paradigm change in the same way, leading to shorter, but not more differentiated forms. Since many sound changes consist of assimilations in the sense that they are conditioned by the phonological surroundings, the outputs consist not only of shorter but also more heterogeneous forms. Of the many possible examples, we will discuss only a few. One of the most prominent of these is NHG sein ‘be’ with the two finite forms ist (3rd sg.pres.) ‘is’ and sind (3rd pl.pres.) ‘are’, which synchronically show the maximum possible irregularity, i.e. total suppletion, although they diachronically developed in a completely regular fashion (the IE forms still are regular): Table 1. Suppletion through regular sound change. Nr.

Prs.

IE

>

GMC

>

OHG

>

NHG

Sg.

3

*és-ti

>

*ist(i)

>

ist

>

is(t)

Pl.

3

*s-énti

>

*sinti

>

sint

>

sind

In IE the accent position could change depending on the ablaut stage of the respective verb (here: full grade *és- in the singular and zero grade *s- in the plural). The following developments consist of completely regular sound changes. The decisive point is that analogy never took place to level the highly-diverged forms. Suppressed analogy would therefore be the more appropriate term for this path. This also holds for Engl. was vs. were going back to Verner’s Law which was effective more than two thousand years ago and which was never levelled. Another example of accumulated sound change is hebben ‘have’ in Dutch (Table 2). The irregular finite form heeft (3rd sg.pres.) ‘has’ containing the fricative -fis the regular result of the preservation of Middle Dutch h¯evet < *habid. Middle Dutch h¯evet [he:v@t] was later syncopated to heeft whereby the [v] before [t] be-

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Table 2. The paradigm of hebben in Dutch. tense

number

person

hebb-en

[hEb@(n)]

pres.

Sg.

Pl.

1 2 3 1–3

heb hebt heeft hebben

[hEp] [hEpt] [he:ft] [hEb@(n)]

Sg. Pl.

1–3 1–3

had hadden

[hat] [had@(n)]

gehad

[X@"hat]

past

past part.

came voiceless. The other forms were affected by the West Germanic consonant gemination and therefore show [b] today. Today, heeft is preserved whereas all the other paradigms (except for zijn ‘be’) show syncretisms in the 2nd and 3rd sg. (therefore *hebt should be the expected 3rd sg.): the analogous change did not take place for the other forms. This is what we call the “passive way” to irregularity: The effects of sound changes are preserved while analogy is blocked. The same holds for the past which shows vowel change from e to a. Hebben is the one and only remainder of the so-called rückumlaut verbs. This special group of weak verbs underwent i-umlaut in the present and no umlaut in the past. German still has brennen – brannte ‘burn – burned’ and five further examples. In Dutch, all but one of these rückumlaut verbs were leveled through analogy. The only exception is hebben, which synchronically resembles the strong verbs: not only because of its tense-related vowel change, but also because of its monosyllabic past pl. form had instead of the obligatory bisyllabic weak forms (such as werkte ‘worked’). Due to the difference between had and the corresponding present form heeft, apocope could take place as a further regular sound change: Middle Dutch hadde > Dutch had [hat]. The only irregular reduction is the elimination of the root-final consonant in the past and in the past participle, which was already absent in Middle Dutch; this is an example of accelerated sound change, the subject of Section 2.2. The selective effect of analogy depending on frequency rather than on markedness principles is described by Bybee: It is important to note that analogical leveling does not take place in all forms with the relevant alternation at once. Rather, it tends to affect the less frequent lexical items first: thus weep/weeped is susceptible to change, but keep/kept is not likely to change to keep/keeped immediately. This is because the model for the past tense of keep is highly available, while the model for the past of weep does not

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occur as often. […] While some have argued that it is the system-internal markedness structure that determines the allomorph that survives in leveling, there is evidence that the relative frequency of the forms in which the allomorphs occur is the determining factor. (Bybee 1994: 2560)

With regard to Dutch hebben, it can be shown how a rather regular and well integrated verb became an exception because it resisted analogical change. 2.2. Accelerated sound change (without analogical leveling) In the above-mentioned sample of ten verbs in ten Germanic languages, accelerated sound change plays a very important role on the road to irregularity. One rather frequently occurring example is the loss of the stem-final consonant -b(b)- in the past of Dutch {hebb}{en} which is {ha_}{d} in the singular and {ha_}{dden} in the plural; here, it lacks the -b-, indicated by “_”. The fact that a part of the lexeme is affected by reduction leads to “non-canonicity” in the sense of Corbett (in this volume): “2. in terms of lexical material in the cell, we require absolute identity (the stem should remain the same)”. Most of these sound changes occur only in selected forms of the paradigm. This leads to paradigmatic “disorder”. In many Germanic languages, Have provides evidence for this, cf. Engl. has instead of the regular form *haves (cf. behaves), and had, NHG hast, hat (2nd /3rd sg.pers.pres.), hatte (past). In present-day spoken German, a further widespread irregular development is at work, namely the contraction of haben > ham. This contraction does not occurr with verbs of the same pattern such as graben which never becomes *gram ‘dig’ (except in some dialects). The same holds for Swedish ha (inf.), har (pres.) and hade ["had:e]. In the supine haft, however, the old -f- is preserved. In Danish and Faroese, this loss is hidden by orthography but nonetheless exists: Dan. have [hæ] ‘have’ and havde [hæ(:)ð@] ‘had’ (vs. haft [hafd] in the supine), Far. hevði [hEij@] (past sg.) and høvdu [hœd:U] (past pl.) where is no longer pronounced. In Faroese even a vocalic number distinction emerged, which usually only occurs with strong verbs. Other languages such as Luxembourgish and Norwegian jettisoned the root-final consonant in every position so that this loss does not help in differentiating the paradigm, only in shortening the forms. In these languages, however, further irregularities brought about irregularity. For similar developments with say, cf. Nübling (2001a). A very instructive example is come in such different languages or dialects as Swiss German, Luxembourgish, North Frisian, and Icelandic, where the stemfinal consonant [m] was assimilated to [n] before the dental of the inflectional ending -s and -t, respectively: Lux. *këmm-s > kënn-s (2nd sg.) and *këmm-t

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> kënn-t (3rd sg.). This, however, only happened in the present singular, not in the 2nd plural (komm-t) nor in the past (koum-s: 2nd sg. past). Obviously, these assimilations are driven by high token frequency. There are no frequency lists for Swiss German, Luxembourgish, and North Frisian but in spoken German, kommen constitutes the third most frequently used verb (Ruoff 2 1991), and West Frisian komme is the fifth most frequent one (Van der Veen 1984). Table 3 demonstrates this cross-linguistic parallel:

Table 3. Selective assimilations (bold print) in the present of come in Swiss German, Luxembourgish, and North Frisian (Wiedinghard). number

person

Swiss German ch¯o

Luxembourgish kommen

North Frisian käme

sg.

1 2 3

chum-e chun-sch chun-t

komm-en kënn-s kënn-t

käm kän-st kän-t

pl.

1 2 3

chöm-e chöm-et chöm-e

komm-en komm-t komm-en

käm-e käm-e käm-e

In Icelandic, it is the 2nd sg. imperative, which contains this exceptionality although hidden by writing: komdu [’kh OndY]. In Swiss German, the very frequent verb nää ‘take’ shows the same exception (nin-sch, nin-t), but no other verb with stem final [m]: In all these cases, the partial assimilation worked regressively. Some Low German dialects, however, show the reverse direction, in this case again restricted to kuemmen ‘come’ and niëmen ‘take’ where it is the inflectional ending -t (3rd sg.) which is bilabialized to -p after -m: kümp < kümt ‘comes’, and nimmp < nimmt ‘takes’ (Lindow et al. 1998: 122). As these examples prove, it is not only the lexical but also the categorial token frequency which promotes assimilations and brevity; the present is always more strongly affected than the past tense. The same holds for the singular vs. the plural and the indicative vs. the subjunctive. This refutes the often-mentioned causes in historical grammars, such as “unstressed position” and the like (Paul 1989: §§23, 109, 287). It is already hard to believe that verbs like come und take should be stressed less than other verbs, but it is still harder to believe that only some parts of a paradigm should be affected by this.

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In the case of come, a further reduction can be observed: This verb goes back to the Germanic stem *kwem- (cf. OHG queman ‘come’).2 In most Germanic languages the stem was first assimilated to *kwom- (progressive rounding of e > o after w) and then reduced to kom-. Other verbs with the same onset, such as OHG quedan ‘speak’ (which later died out) and quelan ‘well, pour’, did not undergo this process (cf. NHG quellen and not *kollen). In most of the languages, this onset simplification spread to the whole paradigm, except in Dutch komen were the past still preserves the old cluster: kwam – kwamen (past sg. – pl.). It does not appear to be a coincidence that the semantically marked and, above all, less token-frequent past preserved the longer (more complex) form. A third example is presented by what are termed short or contracted verbs, which lost their stem-final consonant and later contracted to a monosyllabic word, such as MHG hân < OHG hab¯en ‘have’, and lân < OHG l¯azzan ‘let’. Neither [b] nor (geminated) [s:] were affected by loss. Here, usually two explanations are offered by historical grammars: an extraordinary loss of consonant or an analogical process directed by the traditionally short athematic verbs, such as g¯an ‘go’ and st¯an ‘stand’ in OHG (Paul 1989: §§283–288; Michels 1979: §284; Mettke 2000: §145). Some further similarities to the athematic verbs, such as (temporary) strong past forms with ablaut in hie ‘had’ (after gie ‘went’), point in the second direction and should therefore be treated in 2.3 due to the fact that they are morphologically conditioned. The same holds for the Swedish short verbs, such as ha < hava ‘have’, ge < giva ‘give’, bli < bliva ‘become’, ta < taga ‘take’, dra < draga ‘draw’, etc. Here, the new short forms clearly occur more frequently than the still coexisting long forms (Allén 1972; Östman 1992; Teleman et al. 1999, vol. 2). Other forms of the paradigms, especially semantically marked forms (past, supine), preserved the old forms with root final consonant: haft, gav – givit, blev – blivit, tog – tagit, drog – dragit. As already illustrated, the stem final consonant plays an important role in the irregularization process. 2.3. Morphological change As already mentioned, there are contracted verbs such as MHG hân ‘have’ and lân ‘let’ which borrowed irregularities from other verbal paradigms. This sort of irregularization can be called the ‘active’ type because the following pro-

2. There still is one remnant of OHG queman, the NHG adjectival derivation bequem ‘comfortable’ which preserved the old complex onset.

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cesses are located on the morphological level. However, this term should not be misunderstood in the sense that verbs are acting subjects. Frisian provides a striking example for a morphologically conditioned irregularization: In the past tense, all four athematic verbs cluster together by forming a schema of a monosyllabic past tense ending in -ie (without any stem-final consonant) in the singular and with an epenthetic -n- (whose origin remains rather unclear) in the plural. The origin of the diphthong ie has yet to be located definitively, but it is certain that it arose due to various analogical processes. This is confirmed by the weak verb ha ‘have’ which also shows a short, strong past tense: hie ‘had’ (Table 4). Table 4. Analogous processes in the past tense of Frisian verbs. nr.

infinitive

pret. sg.

pret. pl.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

gean ‘go’ stean ‘stand’ dwaan ‘do’ wêze ‘be’ ha ‘have’

gie stie die wie hie

giene(n) stiene(n) diene(n) wiene(n) hiene(n)

In the Frisian case, irregularity is concentrated within a small group of similar verbs the only common trait of which is high token frequency. Even originally weak verbs entered this small class and achieved brevity and distinctiveness through the most direct path. Many such irregularizations via analogy to more irregular patterns can be found, especially in Frisian, e.g. the past of jaan ‘give’, which is joech [ju(:)X] and which is the result of a partial analogy to sloech [slu(:)X], the past of slaan ‘hit’. The same is true for droech [dru(:)X], the past of drage ‘carry’. There are no more verbs which form their past like this. The same holds for the infinitive jaan in relation to the infinitive slaan ‘hit’ and/or dwaan ‘do’: The Old Frisian form for ‘give’ was jeva (inf.) which developed to jewa, later contracted to jâ, and eventually adopted the n from the short verbs slân ‘hit’or dwân ‘do’. The Old Frisian stem forms of the strong verb ‘give’ were jeva (inf./pres.) – jef (pret.sg.) – jeven (pret.pl.) – (e)jeven (past part.), i.e. the ablaut distinction had been completely eliminated as the vocalic contrast was leveled by regular sound change. Today this verb, containing the stem forms jaan – joech – jûn, is once again highly differentiated thanks to this astonishing, interparadigmatically-motivated, irregularization strategy. This is termed “differentiation analogy” (c.f. the dashed bold arrows in Figure 1). Most decisive is the fact that not only ‘structure’ was transferred (as, e.g., in bring – brang after sing – sang) but real substance (jef → joech from droech, sloech; underlined in Figure 1).

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Figure 1. Irregularization strategies of Frisian jaan ‘give’.

Another example is the present of the Frisian dwaan ‘do’, doch- in the singular and dogge in the plural. This is the result of analogy to the respective present forms of Frisian sjen ‘see’ and tsjen ‘draw’, sjoch-/sjogge and tsjoch-/tsjogge. It is characteristic that only the beginning of the word forms, the most salient part, remains unchanged (cf. Section 3). These examples of interparadigmatic analogy could be regarded as evidence for the usage-based Associative Network Model in the sense proposed by Bybee (1985, 1988, 1991, 1995, 1996). Due to their high token frequency, the lexical strength of Old Frisian sjen ‘see’ and tsjen ‘draw’ presumably was so high that they constituted a type of schema for dwaan ‘do’ (there is no frequency list for Old Frisian; for Modern West Frisian c.f. the “frekwinsjelist” in Van der Veen 1984). In addition, these verbs shared a similar phonological pattern (monosyllabics ending in -n), which generally strengthens network connections. Still more remarkable is the case of West Fris. jaan ‘give’ which was associated to slaan ‘hit’ and drage ‘carry’. In this exceptional case it must be taken into consideration that jâ(n) had a lack of intraparadigmatic differentiation. The Network Model does not make a strict distinction between regular and irregular morphology in contrast to other models such as the Dual-Processing Model, which postulates that regularity and irregularity are processed in different modules of grammar. Transitions from regular to irregular and even suppletive verbs can be more easily integrated in the first model although the latter one clearly predicts that high-frequent items behave differently from low-frequent ones. Yet none of these models was concerned with the emergence of irregularities.

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Another way to irregularity by morphological processes is represented by the mixed paradigm of German haben ‘have’ (the short forms are underlined): – present: habe vs. hast, hat vs. haben, habt, haben – past: hatte etc., subjunctive: hätte etc. – past participle: gehabt Only language history tells us the story of this mixed paradigm, which emerged by the combination of two originally complete paradigms, one with the old long forms (MHG haben) and the other one with the contracted forms (MHG hân). Thus, OHG hab¯en was split into two MHG paradigms, the first one serving as a lexical verb, the second one as an auxiliary. In ENHG these paradigms were reunified to one with the above-sketched distribution. Another morphologically based process in this paradigm is umlaut in the subjunctive form hätte, which developed in analogy to the strong verbs, e.g. gäbe ‘would give’. Weak verbs never developed umlauted subjunctives. In a similar way, Swedish ge ‘give’ mixed short and long variants: There were two variants, geva and giva, and their respective short forms, ge and gi, from which the first (short) one is used to form the infinitive and present and the other (long) one the past and the supine, i.e. ge and giva were combined. The result is a highly differentiated paradigm: Swedish ge [je:]/ger [je:r] – gav [gA:v] – givit [ˇji:vIt] (instead of *gevit). Thus, the paradigm received three different vowels (e – a – i) instead of the original two (e – a – e), and there is in addition an alternation between short and long forms. Here, brevity correlates with the more frequently-used categories (present). 2.4. Lexical fusion As shown for the cases of morphological change, some verbs become interparadigmatically “active” based on the example of other verbs. This is the case with lexical mixing, i.e. the combination of two different verbs into one paradigm (inflectional split). Here, English offers a famous example with go – went – gone by having combined go and ME wend, the latter providing the past went and replacing the former OE form e¯ ode. The already irregular form e¯ ode was replaced by a shorter form. Janzing (1999) describes two cases of mixing of East Frisian paradigms, loope ‘go’ and sjoo ‘see’: – loope (inf.)/loopt (3rd sg.pres.) versus ron (3rd sg. pret.) – ronen (past part.)

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The ron-forms derived from a verb meaning ‘run’ (cf. NHG rennen). In the case of sjoo, the border separates the past participle from the rest: – sjoo (inf.)/sjucht (3rd pres.sg.) – saach (3rd sg.pret.) versus bloouked (past part.). For the second verb there is a corresponding verb in German, blicken ‘look’. The most frequent verb, be, is even based on three different IE verbal roots: IE *es- ‘be’, *bhû- ‘grow’, and *wes- ‘stay’. *Bhû- is only preserved in the West Germanic languages, e.g. in the onset of Fris./NHG bin, bist, Dutch ben, bent, Lux. bas, and in Engl. be, been. Thus, forms such as bin, bist even consist of the syntagmatic combination of two verbs, *bhû- and *es. This is another (and only rarely described) path to irregularization: Different verb do not only fuse on the paradigmatic but even on the syntagmatic level. The most extreme case of interparadigmatic fusion is the mixing of loaned and inherited verbs, such as Swed. bli < bliva, a loan from Middle Low German blîven which, in spoken Swedish (and Norwegian), is combined with its native predecessor varda to bli/blir – vart – blivit (for the emergence and for some reasons of suppletion, cf. Werner 1977; Ronneberger-Sibold 1987, 1990; Nübling 1999; Mel’ˇcuk 2000).

3.

Position of irregularity in the word and in the paradigm

The position of irregularity can be understood both syntagmatically and paradigmatically, i.e. in the word form as well as in the paradigm. The comparison of six irregular verbs in ten Germanic languages led to the clear result that the place of the deviation in most cases is the stem final consonant which is either modified (as in cases of Verners Law: Engl. was vs. were) or deleted (underlined): Engl. I have vs. she ha_s, ha_d; NHG habe vs. ha_st/ha_t, ha_tte, gehabt. Due to ablaut, the stem vowel often is modified, too, but this only counts as irregularity if there is a unique, isolated alternance, such as NHG kommen – kam – gekommen and werden – wurde – geworden; there is no further [O]-[a:]-[O]- and [e:]-[u:]-[o:]-alternation in German. Another example is worden – werd – geworden in Dutch. Some languages use quantitative instead of qualitative vocalic alternations, e.g. Engl. say [sei] vs. says, said [sez]: Here, we can oberserve an alternation between [ei] and [e]. In NHG h[a:]be vs. h[a]st, h[a]t, there can be found an opposition between long versus short vowels. Sometimes both positions are used. Thus the onset remains the only stable part of the whole paradigm. This leads to what is called weak or partial suppletion. In the extreme case of strong suppletion, even the onset

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is modified. It is characteristic that the effects of phonological change in the beginning of the word often are extended to the whole paradigm as could be seen in the case of Engl. come, NHG kommen < GMC *kwem-, whereas the results of changes in the stem-final position often are maintained if the word form occurs frequently. Even in the above mentioned cases of differentiation analogy (Figure 1), it is always the first segment which remains stable. This fact corresponds to word recognition tests which indicate that the word-initial position is most salient (Cutler et al. 1985; Hawkins and Cutler 1988; Fenk-Oczlon 1989). There also were clear results with regard to the paradigm: The irregular forms nearly always reflect high token-frequency, i.e. in the singular significantly more exceptions could be expected than in the plural (there are many uniform plurals, but uniform singulars are not as frequent). The same holds for the present vs. the past and for the indicative vs. the subjunctive distinction, and even for the 3rd and 1st person vs. the 2nd person. This is supported by the fact that the less frequent forms often show the longer forms, as already seen in Dutch with kom-t – kwam (‘come’: 3rd sg.pres. vs. 3rd sg.past) or NHG steht [Ste:t] – stand [Stant] (‘stand’: 3rd sg.pres. vs. 3rd sg.past) and geh-t [ge:t] – ging [gIN] (‘go’: 3rd sg.pres. vs. 3rd sg.past). In NHG haben, the short forms of the present only are found in the singular, not in the plural. The same holds for Dutch, where komen [ko:m@n] (as the one and only verb with quantitative distinctions in the present) shows short [O] in the singular, but long [o:] in the plural: ik kom, jij/zij/hij komt [O] vs. wij/jullie/zij komen [o:]. Thus, a type of diagrammatic iconism, which corresponds primarily not to markedness but rather to token frequency is observed, whereby both often cannot be separated neatly. However, there is evidence to support a higher ranking of the frequency factor (Fenk-Oczlon 1991). Table 5 presents the token frequency of grammatical categories in spoken German. As can be seen the 3rd sg.pres.ind. constitutes the most frequently-used verb form. Indeed, it is precisely this form which carries most of the irregularities, which are usually combined with brevity of expression, cf. Engl. say vs. says [sez], do [du:] vs. does [d2z], am, are vs. is. German even preserved the socalled wechselflexion, a systematic vowel change still found in the present singular of roughly 55 strong verbs, which separates the first from the third (and the second) person: werfe – wirfst/wirft ‘throw’ (Nübling 2001b). This wechselflexion pattern, although unproductive for quite some time, is reflected in irregularizations: habe vs. ha_st, ha_t, Swiss German h¯a vs. hesch/het, gib vs. gi_sch /gi_t ‘give’, sag vs. saisch /sait ‘say’, Lux. soën vs. sees /seet ‘say’, huelen vs. hëls /hëlt ‘take, fetch’ (an originally weak verb which became completely strong). Dutch did not develop wechselflexion, but the present singular

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Table 5. Token frequencies of the grammatical categories of the verb in spoken German (based on Tomczyk-Popiñska 1987). person/number

person

number

tense

cat.

cat. %

cat. %

cat.

3rd

sg. pl.

pres. 76,9 past 10,3 pres.perf 9,35 pluperf. 1,25 future 1,13

3rd

%

sg. 47,8 1st sg. 23,4 3rd pl.3 18,5 5,3 1st pl. nd 2 sg. 4,8 0,2 2nd pl.

66,3 1st 28,7 2nd 5,0

76 24

mood %

cat.

%

ind. 90 subj.II 7,3 imp. 2,7 subj.I 0,06

of the second most frequently used verb hebben ‘have’ contains the special form heeft (c.f. Section 2.1 and Table 1). In many cases these processes lead to over-differentiated paradigms, i.e. syncretisms can be broken (cf. Section 5). This even holds for English and Swiss German which usually don’t have wechselflexion distinctions. With regard to lexical token frequency, there is also a strong, well-known relationship with irregularity. Lexical frequency can change because certain verbs are substituted by new expressions (this happened, e.g., with OHG quedan ‘speak’) or they simply become more seldom because the corresponding activity isn’t executed as often as in earlier times (many manual activities such as ‘bake’, ‘milk’, ‘clip’, etc.). Such verbs with decreasing frequency often develop from strong or even irregular verbs to uniform weak verbs. On the other hand, grammaticalizing verbs increase quickly in frequency. These verbs take the opposite path by becoming strong or even irregular. This is clearly confirmed by have, say and make in many languages. 4.

The categorial split caused by irregularization

Not every exception is accepted by the speakers. A strong correlation between grammatical category and irregular expression can be observed. In most of the cases, tense (and/or aspect) are the categories which often are expressed by exclusive means. All the above-mentioned instances of suppletion involve this category (Engl. go – went, Swed. bli – vart). In the case of the most frequently used verb, Engl. am – are – is, NHG bin – ist – sind, it is, however, person and number – in addition to tense (Engl. is – was, NHG ist – war). In those cases, 3. The polite form Sie is included.

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Figure 2. Relevance degree of some inflectional categories in Germanic languages (based on Bybee 1985). token frequency] very high high

medium

ow TENSE + relevant fused

MOOD

NUMBER

PERSON – relevant concatenative

Figure 3. Inflectional categories and their (suppletive, irregular, regular) expression depending on token frequency and relevance.

it could be found out that a suppletive expression of less relevant categories (in Bybee’s sense) always implies suppletion in more relevant categories (cf. Figure 2 and 3). The same also holds for lower degrees of irregularity: Irregular expression of a less relevant category usually implies irregular expression of more relevant categories; usually the degree of irregularity (and thus fusion) increases from right to left on the scale in Figure 2 and 3. In the case of mood, languages with synthetic mood expression (such as German) should be looked at. Here, the most frequent verb sein ‘be’ provides evidence for the implicative scale above (here for the 3rd person sing.): ist – sei – wäre (ind. – subj.I – subj.II). Suppletion is nearly omnipresent in this paradigm. The Faroese past of hava, hevði [hEijI] (past sg.) and høvdu [hœd:U]

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(past pl.) serves as an example for the strengthening of the number distinction. Other languages also have a tendency to separate the singular from the plural. Looking at both the relevance and the frequency aspect, it can be concluded that the degree of irregularity depends first and foremost on the relevance degree of the respective category (Figure 3). Within this category, there are at least two (if not more) subsets, e.g. singular vs. plural within number and different time stages within tense. The borders between these different options are sharpened if the verb increases in its usage frequency. Here, the more frequently used subset of the category is expressed by more irregular and shorter means (3rd person vs. the others, singular vs. plural, present vs. other tenses). Figure 3 shows the dependency of irregularity and suppletion on token frequency and relevance.

5.

Irregularization as (over)differentiation

When the forms of a paradigm become shorter, syncretism should be expected. However, in the whole sample of the six verbs investigated here, there was not a single instance of the emergence of homonymy. On the contrary, these frequently-used verbs are – although often strongly reduced – sometimes more differentiated than their regular counterparts or predecessors. This can be easily illustrated by some of the examples mentioned already, such as Engl. be which is more distinctive than all other verbs not only in the present singular (sg.: am, are, is; pl.: are) but also in the past (sg.: was, were, was; pl.: were). In Dutch, the 2nd and 3rd sg. pres. always share the same ending -t while the 1st sg. has no ending (ik werk-Ø – jij werk-t/hij werk-t). Only in the case of hebben ‘have’ and zijn ‘be’ this syncretism is broken: ik heb – jij hebt – hij heeft (stem alternation) and ik ben – jij bent – hij is (different stems, no ending). In the latter case this is due to lexical suppletion, in the former to the preservation of an earlier assimilation. In Frisian the infinitive is always identical with the uniform present plural (meitsje – meitsje ‘make’), except for wêze ‘be’ vs. binne (pl.), jaan ‘give’ vs. jouwe (pl.), dwaan ‘do’ vs. dogge (pl.), and some more examples. In German, the short form hat (3rd sg.) breaks the regular syncretism with the 2nd pl. habt. The same is true for Lux. huelen – hëls, hëlt ‘take’ (1.-3.sg.pres.), an originally weak verb (cf. NHG holen, Dutch halen) which adopted wechselflexion; here, hël-t (instead of regular *huelt) breaks the homophony with the 2nd pl. huel-t. The past houl- shows the typical (analogical) uniform ablaut vowel -ou(which can be traced back to an overgeneralization of the second ablaut class – cf. Werner 1990); the past participle geholl contains another vowel. Here, an additional form of over-differentiation can be described: In Luxembourgish, a strong tendency to jettison the past and to replace it by the present perfect

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(“preterite loss”) can be observed. Today only few of these verbs (between 10 and 20) show the old synthetic forms, above all auxiliaries, including the modal verbs and some highly-frequent strong verbs such as goën ‘go’ and huelen. Thus, huelen has a quantitatively more differentiated paradigm than the average verb. This is the type of overdifferentiation described by Corbett: “Lexemes which are overdifferentiated stand out from the rest of the group in that they have an additional form” (this volume). English offers a further means of over-differentiation by the morphologization of a category which is typically expressed syntactically: negation on (or even in) auxiliaries. In cases such as don’t < do not, shan’t < shall not, won’t < will not, ain’t < am not, the expression of negation even affects the lexical part of the verb. In other cases, the negation particle only cliticizes to the verb (hasn’t, isn’t, wasn’t). Here we can observe a categorial overdifferentiation: highly-frequent verbs express more grammatical information than average verbs. Another aspect of over-differentiation concerns the extent to which irregularity affects the word. As already shown, the degree is often much higher than the usual differences between the categories with the extreme of suppletion. Therefore, the term irregularity, which only reflects the perspective of the language describer, should be replaced by a term which denotes the real function of this phenomenon. Irregularity means distinctiveness and allows for two contradicting but highly-functional advantages from the speaker’s perspective: brevity without loss of information. This is the main topic of Economy Theory as proposed by Ronneberger-Sibold (1980, 1987, 1990), Werner (1987a, 1987b, 1989, 1991), Harnisch (1988), and Fenk-Oczlon (1990, 1991). Irregular forms deserve our special interest and should not be seen as an accident of language history which has been forgotten by analogy. Irregularity does not happen by chance. It creates specific intraparadigmatic distinctions which follow strict principles such as the relevance of the respective category (e.g. tense before number) and their token frequency (present before past, singular before plural). Above all, lexical token frequency determines whether irregularity or rather distinctiveness occurs at all. Finally, another interesting case of over-differentiation which cannot be explained by the above-mentioned advantages should be presented: In our sample, several instances of interparadigmatic irregularization could be found, i.e. some verbs leave their original class and continue as disintegrated and isolated “loners” – without the advantages of increased brevity and distinctiveness. For example, NHG werden – wurde – geworden (as well as Dutch worden – werd – geworden and Frisian wurde – waard – wurden) left its ablaut class (3b) without any apparent reason; all the other members, such as werfen – warf –

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geworfen (‘throw’), continue to use the vowel -a- of the old past singular stem (the second ablaut stage), whereas werden chose the third ablaut stage with u-. This confirms the results of Bybee (1995), who shows that members of a class with high token frequency are not associated with this class because they are stored separately in the mental lexicon of the speaker. The so-called Network Model does not separate morphology into regular and irregular modules, but rather regards inflected forms as lexical units. Depending on their type and token frequency, they have different lexical connections to other forms (high token frequency leads to lexical strength, high type frequency to schemas). The Dual-Processing Model, proposed by Pinker (1991), Prasada and Pinker (1993), Pinker and Prince (1988) considers regular morphology as rule-governed, irregular morphology as memory driven and thus lexically represented. Between both domains, there is a large scale. The left pole is connected with high productivity and high type frequency, the right pole with restricted productivity and high token frequency. German werden was polygrammaticalized in ENHG (as auxiliary for the passive, for the future, as copula etc.) and thus became very frequent. Although originally formally well integrated in the 3rd ablaut class, it left this class when it became autonomous. When the reduction from four to three ablaut stages took place in ENHG, this fact became obvious: Initially werden did not take part of this far-reaching development, i.e. it resisted analogical leveling4. 4 . Eventually, it chose a different model, the third instead of the second ablaut stage. The fact that even completely regular but highly-frequent verb forms can be stored unanalyzed is important. This must have happened to the originally weak verb have in all Germanic languages, resulting in extremely different paradigms. Every language used its special irregularization strategies but not even one “waited” for accumulated sound change. 6.

Summary

The most important results from the comparative study of the irregularization strategies of six verbs in ten Germanic languages can be summarized as follows: – Exceptions are to be expected under high token frequency; these exceptions are highly functional. – Exceptions emerge not only through accumulated sound changes which were “forgotten” by analogical leveling. They are also sometimes created by ex4. Even today speakers know the old four ablaut stages of werden: werden – ward – wurden – geworden at least passively. This is not the case with any other verb.

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traordinary (accelerated) sound change, by morphological change, and even by lexical fusion (suppletion). – The position of irregularity is highly predictable and depends on two factors: semantic relevance and token frequency. It could be demonstrated that exceptionality follows the relevance degree of the respective category. Within the same category the more frequently used subset is expressed exceptionally. – The term irregularity should be replaced by brevity and distinctiveness. Suppletion as the most extreme form of irregularity allows for brevity of expression without the risk of information loss (syncretism). Thus, irregularity must be understood as a protection against syncretism. In contrast to Corbett (this volume), there was no interaction of suppletion and syncretism, but many examples for interaction of suppletion and overdifferentiation. – In many cases, irregularity even creates more distinctions than are usually made in a paradigm, i.e. many instances of over-differentiation were observed, even including the morphological expression of categories which are usually realized syntactically (negation on English auxiliaries). The formal distinctions often are deeper and sharper than in common paradigms. The expression of the category at the word level tends to modify the lexical stem, starting with the stem-final consonant and the vowel and ending with the word onset (suppletion). On the whole, allomorphy and the dissolution of morphological structures (amorphous morphology) emerge. Abbreviations Dan. ENHG Far. Fris. GMC IE Lux. MHG ModFris. NHG OFris. OHG Swed.

Danish Early New High German Faroese (West) Frisian Germanic Indo-European Luxembourgish Middle High German Modern (West) Frisian New High German Old Frisian Old High German Swedish

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On the role of subregularities in the rise of exceptions Wolfgang U. Dressler

It is Damaris Nübling’s great merit to have focused in a series of articles, in her book (Nübling 2000) and now in this paper on certain diachronic developments and their synchronic results which have been marginalised or even neglected in much of morphological literature. It is even a greater merit of hers to have elaborated well-thought and well-documented solutions. Several of these solutions find parallels in other languages. For example, her case of the “irregularizing” expansion of German “Wechselflexion”, which sets the second and third person singular present apart from the rest of the present paradigm, as in German helfen ‘to help’, 1.sg. helf-e, 2.sg. hilf-st, 3.sg. hilf-t finds many parallels in Romance languages (cf. Maiden 2004, first thematized by Matthews 1981). Thus in the paradigm of Italian sap-ere ‘to know’ only the singular and the third plural present indicative have short forms: so, sai, sa, sanno as a result of pattern extension. Or her instances (§5) of formal over-differentiation in irregular short verbs have parallels in many languages, most spectacularly in the present indicative of the French verb ‘to be’: je suis, tu es = il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont, where two forms are differentiated in the singular, which happens only in two other short verbs, in contrast to the syncretism of the whole singular paradigm in other verbs, plus the third plural as the default. Moreover all nonhomophonous forms (with the exception of the second plural) are in relations of strong or weak suppletion. Lexical fusion of different roots in the verb ‘to be’, i.e. of the Proto-IndoEuropean roots *es-, *bhu-, *wes- (§2.4) in the West Germanic languages finds a parallel fusion of the first two roots in Latin as well as in the Italic, Celtic, Slavic and Baltic languages. Thus I can largely agree with many of her solutions. In comparison with these agreements my disagreements with her paper (in line with Gaeta 2006: 18–20) are less numerous but still worth putting forward: First of all, in regard to most of her examples and even types of examples, her term irregularity is a misnomer. It should rather be called subregularity,

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because she mostly describes patterns (and their diachronic origins) which hold for several items, at least for a small group of them. Examples which Nübling (1995, 2000) has studied in a pioneering way are short verbs in several Germanic languages, such as OHG h¯an ‘have’ and l¯an ‘let’, a notion that we have applied to Italian verbs: Inf. ess-ere, 3.sg.pres. è, avere – ha ‘have’, fare – fa ‘make’, and-are – va ‘go’, pot-ere – può ‘can’, sap-ere – sa ‘know’, vol-ere – 2.sg. vuoi ‘want’ (Pöchtrager et al. 1998). Nübling’s (§§1 and 5) proposal to replace the notion of irregularity and irregularization with those of differentiation and distinctiveness adds relevant properties or functions but does not change the non-distinction between irregularity as the impossibility of accounting for a pattern by rules only and subregularity as accountability by minor rules. Second, when she deals with the traditionally best studied problem of irregularity, her “passive type” of irregularity (Nübling §2.1), i.e. the maintenance of irregularity due to high token frequency of the irregular forms, then I cannot see why this should involve a “path to irregularizations/exceptionality”. This is an instance of preservation but not of origin of irregularity. What is more interesting is her subtype of a gradual loss of members of a small subregular group, until only one member remains, which is then truly irregular. This is exemplified (§2.1.) with Dutch hebben ‘to have’, but what is missing is a demonstration that such a longest persisting member of a small subregular group of items is always, or at least usually, the member with the highest token frequency of all the items of this group. Next, it is unclear whether what counts should be the high token frequency of the lexeme, i.e. of its whole inflectional paradigm, or whether the high token frequency of the subregular/irregular parts of the paradigm is decisive, or whether the ratio between the irregular/subregular and the more regular/general parts of the paradigm. Third, there is the recently more and more discussed problem whether the explanatory factor is high token frequency or the degree of markedness. Nübling (§§2.1, 2.2, 3) seems to favour frequency, but does not go as far as Haspelmath (2006) in his attack on markedness. What the advocates of “frequency first” tend to overlook is, first, that ease of access in processing is more influenced by the markedness effect of early age of acquisition than by token frequency (cf. Bonin et al. 2004). Second, nearly always they have to rely on frequency measures that are not at all representative of the token frequencies of the items in the real input of native listeners of the respective language. And third, the impact of token frequencies on our mental lexicon is not only derived from what we hear or read, but also on what we produce and think about. And this depends on the pragmatic importance of concepts, which is the base of markedness (cf. Mayerthaler 1981).

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Fourth, her reliance on Bybee’s (1985) explanatory principle of relevance for explaining the distribution of irregularity between regularity and suppletion cannot be transferred to all similar instances in other languages. For example, as in the case of overdifferentiation cited for the French verb ‘to be’, the most striking cases of Italian suppletion and irregularity occur in the categories of person and number and not in aspect and tense, as predicted by Bybee and Nübling. This holds particularly for the opposition between root- and stem-based inflection, regular in, e.g., Italian 2.sg.pres. am-i, pl. am-a-te ‘you love’, but suppletive in 2.sg.pres. esc-i ‘you go out’, pl. usc-i-te (cf. Dressler and Thornton 1991, Maiden 2004). Fifth, Nübling (§1) criticizes adherents of Natural Morphology for not having tried to account for irregularity. This is, however, neither true for the second point above, the preservation of irregularity, nor for many subtypes of subregularity (the first point above), which covers the greatest part of Nübling’s areas of irregularity. Particularly in the subtheory of static morphology (Dressler 2003, Kilani-Schoch and Dressler 2002, 2005, Aguirre and Dressler 2006), i.e. of lexically stored, prototypically unproductive morphology, we have focused on parameters of phonological similarities (cf. Nübling §2.3), for example on rime words such as the two Latin verb pairs f/caveo, f/cavi, f/cautum and m/voveo, m/vovi, m/votum. Or Nübling’s (§3) remarks on the word-initial consonantal onset as preferred position of lexical identification of a lexeme has been antedated by the same authors (cf. also Dressler 1987: 116f.). Or Nübling’s (§5) notion of “isolated loners” among verbs is paralleled by the notion of isolated paradigms proposed by Dressler (since 1997). Also categorical subgroups of verbs are a feature of static morphology. Thus the secondary umlaut in the German second conjunctive hätte (preterite indicative hatte ‘had’) should be due to analogy of the fellow auxiliary wäre ‘were’ rather than of strong verbs, such as gäbe ‘gave’, as Nübling (§2.3) proposes. An important difference in our view regards storage: whereas Nübling (§5) appears to equate stored with unanalyzed, the model of static morphology allows partial analysis of fully stored forms, e.g. by establishing relations based on rimes or other similarities. When Nübling (§2.2) argues for accelerated sound shift as one way of irregularization, then this finds a parallel in the notion of lexicalisation out of fast/sloppy speech of very frequent words, especially of function words, such as auxiliaries (cf. Nübling’s table 4), as discussed in Dressler (1973) and Dressler and Moosmüller (1992). These remarks may show that Nübling’s object of study has not been neglected within Natural Morphology and Phonology, but clearly not focused upon in such a systematic way as in her own investigations.

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References Aguirre, Carmen, and Wolfgang U. Dressler 2006 On Spanish verb inflection. Folia Linguistica 40: 75–96. Bonin, Patrick, Christopher Barry, Alain Méot and Marylène Chalard 2004 The influence of age of acquisition in word reading and other tasks: A never ending story? Journal of Memory and Language 50: 456– 476. Bybee, Joan 1985

Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Dressler, Wolfgang U. 1973 Pour une stylistique phonologique du latin. Bulletin de la société de linguistique de Paris 68 : 129–145. Dressler, Wolfgang U. 1987 Word formation (WF) as part of natural morphology. In Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl and Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel (eds.), 99–126. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dressler, Wolfgang U. 2003 Latin static morphology and paradigm families. In Language in Time and Space, Brigitte L.M. Bauer and Georges-Jean Pinault (eds.), 87– 99. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Sylvia Moosmüller 1992 Sociolinguistic parameters of spoken Austrian German. In Studies in Spoken Languages: English, German, Finno-Ugric, Miklós Kontra and Tamás Váradi (eds.), 61–81. Budapest: TA Nyelvtudományi Intézet. Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Anna M. Thornton 1991 Doppie basi e binarismo nella morfologia italiana. Rivista di Linguistica 3: 3–22. Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Anna M. Thornton 1997 On productivity and potentiality in inflectional morphology. CLASNET Working Paper 7. Montréal. Gaeta, Livio 2006

How to live naturally and not be bothered by economy. Folia Linguistica 40: 7–28.

Haspelmath, Martin 2006 Against markedness (and what to replace it with). Journal of Linguistics 42: 25–70.

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Kilani-Schoch, Marianne, and Wolfgang U. Dressler 2002 Affinités phonologiques dans l’organisation de la morphologie statique: l’exemple de la flexion verbale française. Folia Linguistica 36, 297–312. Kilani-Schoch, Marianne, and Wolfgang U. Dressler 2005 Morphologie naturelle et flexion du verbe français. Tübingen: Narr Maiden, Martin 2004

When lexemes become allomorphs. On the genesis of suppletion. In: Folia Linguistica 38: 227–256.

Matthews, Peter 1981 Present stem alternations in Italian. In Logos Semantikos. Vol. IV, Horst Geckeler, Brigitte Schlieben-Lange, Jürgen Trabant and Harald Weydt (eds.), 57–65. Berlin and Madrid: de Gruyter and Gredos. Mayerthaler, Willi 1981 Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden. Nübling, Damaris 1995 Die Kurzverben im Schweizerdeutschen. In Alemannische Dialektforschung, Heinrich Löffler (ed.), 165–179. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Nübling, Damaris 2000 Prinzipien der Irregularisierung. Eine kontrastive Untersuchung von zehn Verben in zehn germanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Pöchtrager, Markus A., Csanád Bodó, Wolfgang U. Dressler and Teresa Schweiger 1998 On some inflectional properties of the agglutinating type illustrated from Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish inflection. Wiener linguistische Gazette 62–63: 57–92.

Statement on the commentary by Wolfgang U. Dressler Damaris Nübling

I thank Wolfgang U. Dressler for his useful commentary on my paper and fully agree with him in claiming that many more languages still have to be investigated regarding irregularities and irregularization strategies. The articles of Martin Maiden concerning the Romance languages are highly instructive in showing the different paradigmatic patterns and their emergence. Dressler’s comment that the Romance languages show special classes of highly irregular short verbs also confirms my impression that the described irregularization paths are not only restricted to the family of the Germanic languages. Nevertheless, one should be careful to draw further, possibly universal, conclusions. Therefore, a comparison of these ten verbs in as many (genetically and typologically) different languages as possible is a desideratum. In the following, I relate to his disagreements with my paper: 1. “The term ‘irregularity’ as a misnomer”: There are many concepts of irregularity ranging from unproductive paradigms which still are integrated in big classes to strong suppletion, i.e. completely isolated paradigms with idiosyncratic behaviour. Dressler favours the last notion: Only isolated paradigms with unique inflectional behaviour are labelled “irregular”. I think that the notion of irregularity should be kept flexible. If it were synonymous to suppletion we would not need the term irregularity. In my opinion, irregularity includes different stages within so-called static (non-productive) morphology, and especially the term irregularization should relate to different stages of this process. This can be compared to the notion of grammaticalization which also refers to a high amount of rather disparate phenomena (which, at first sight, sometimes even seem not to be related) which does not only describe the final stages of grammaticalization. Irregularization comprises phenomena, such as: first of all, the absence of morphological rules, furthermore morphological unproductivity, decreasing type frequency; decreasing intraparadigmatic as well as interparadigmatic similarities, increasing allomorphy including stem variants, increasing affection of the whole word form by the fusion of grammatical and lexical material, the morphological segmentability is reduced – in sum: the

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item behaves more and more like a lexical unit and is processed as such. The development of – in Dressler’s terms – subregularity is the first, obligatory step to irregularity. Thus, subregularity only constitutes an early stage on the long irregularization scale. 2. “The maintenence of irregularity due to high token frequency is not a path to exceptionality”: Analogy is the most powerful means to produce regularity in the sense of intra- and/or interparadigmatic similarity. Sometimes, analogy becomes so frequent that it nearly looks like a rule, c.f. the levelling of the number ablaut grades in Early New High German. Another example is superstable markers spreading to nearly all paradigms except for some few items – basically the most frequently occurring ones – which resist this levelling process. In Middle High German, there still were four so-called athematic verbs with the suffix -n (< OHG -m) in the 1.sg. of the present (g¯a-n, st¯a-n, tuo-n, bi-n ‘I go, stand, do, am’). Afterwards, three of these four verbs changed to the “common” strong verb suffix leading to the result, that NHG bin ‘I am’ is the only remnant of the old “regular” form. It is not by chance that bin, which belongs to the most frequent verb sein ‘to be’, was “forgotten” by analogy. There are many irregular and even suppletive verb forms which developed completely regularly but never underwent analogy. This “passive” way to irregularity should be taken seriously because it often leads to complete isolation of the respective items. Dutch hebben is another example; hebben is the second most frequently used verb (after zijn ‘to be’). High token frequency is the best protection against analogy. The question of what counts as high token frequency, whether the whole paradigm or only some parts of it, can be clearly answered. It is both: the so-called lexical and the categorial or grammatical token frequency. Thus, the 3.sg.present form of a frequently used verb is most prone to be an irregular one and, at the same time, to exhibit short expression. This connection is explained in Chapter 2.2 and demonstrated by extraordinary assimilations in the 3.sg.present of Come and Take in Swiss German, Luxembourgish, North Frisian, Icelandic, and Low German (cf. Table 3 and the part below). 3. Concerning the explanatory factor of high token frequency, I must admit that I fully agree with Haspelmath’s and, by the way, Fenk-Oczlon’s (1991) concept of “frequency first” instead of different markedness degrees and conceptions (compare, e.g., the discussion of whether the 1st or the 3rd or the 2nd person is the least marked one). Fenk-Oczlon provides many examples of the frequency first principle making cases of so-called “local markedness” (Tiersma 1982) and “markedness reversals” (Mayerthaler 1981, Wurzel 1984/2001) unnecessary. I am convinced that token frequency counts are indeed highly reliable and much more exact and measurable than pragmatic considerations and markedness determinations which rarely are defined precisely (and hence vary

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depending on the linguist’s aim). Moreover, token frequency even allows for predictions. In order to explain, e.g., accelerated sound change such as the above mentioned extraordinary assimilations in the most frequently used paradigmatic slots of frequent verbs such as Come and Take, the respective forms have to be really applied, i.e. materialized (pronounced) to undergo these actual (articulatory) changes, which often consist of ease of articulation. Token frequencies of heard and read items may be important for the mental storing but they do not directly lead to what is described in my paper. Surely, it may be interesting to know the many sources of high token frequency which partly may be found in pragmatics. However, this does not restrict the fact that frequency of usage is one of the most important driving forces for language change. 4. “Bybee’s principle of relevance cannot be transferred into other languages”: My claim that irregularity in less relevant categories includes irregularity in more relevant categories was only deduced from the Germanic languages. The existence of some exceptions in other languages does not disprove this principle. It would be very worthwhile to test these correlations systematically on the basis of the Romance (and other inflecting) languages. In addition to these functional “regularities”, there often are paradigmatic patterns which vary from language to language. In most cases, their emergence can only be explained by language history. Maiden describes such patterns for the Romance languages, e.g. the special behaviour of the 1st and 2nd pl. in French and Spanish verbs due to different accent positions in Latin. In German and Luxembourgish, it is the so-called wechselflexion pattern which often exposes and differentiates the 3rd and 2nd sg.present by umlauted vowels from the remaining paradigm (the original reason for this are OHG endings containing -i-). This is the reason for the fact that the 2nd sg. always follows the 3rd sg. in its inflectional behaviour although it is only the 3rd sg. which is extremely frequent (for further details, see Nübling 2000, 2001). 5. “It is not true that Natural Morphology is not interested in irregularity”: There are different camps in Natural Morphology. I referred mostly to Wurzel’s (1984/2001) concept because it is most concerned with German and other Germanic languages. Firstly, Wurzel claimed that irregularity including suppletion is unnatural, i.e. highly marked. In a later phase, he established a so-called suppletion domain which was excluded from natural principles. This domain never was defined exactly, and gradual transitions to less irregular conditions were not considered. These clearcut distinctions instead of flexible scales and schemes can be found again in the inflectional macro- and microclass systems of KilaniSchoch & Dressler (2005). I think it would be very promising to compare the average token frequency rates of the members of the different classes ranging from huge productive classes (such as French verbs on -er) until so-called

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“ssssscl[asses] (“s” = ‘sub’) (such as French courir, venir, tenir). My interest is to show how and possibly why so many small subsub- and so forth classes develop, how they are interrelating, how they cluster with other miniclasses and which categories are most affected by irregular expression. Thus, the “dynamics of static morphology” is the main topic of my paper. References (in addition to the references in my paper) Kilani-Schoch, Marianne and Wolfgang U. Dressler 2005 Morphologie naturelle et flexion du verbe français. Tübingen: Narr. Tiersma, Pieter Meijes 1982 Local and general markedness. Language 58: 832–849.

Taking into account interactions of grammatical sub-systems

Lexical variation in relativizer frequency Thomas Wasow, T. Florian Jaeger, and David M. Orr

Abstract. An exception to a non-categorical generalization consists of a lexical item that exhibits the general pattern at a rate radically different – either far higher or far lower – from the norm. Lexical differences in noun phrases containing non-subject relative clauses (NSRCs) correlate with large differences in the likelihood that the NSRC will begin with that. In particular, the choices of determiner, head noun, and prenominal adjective in an NP containing an NSRC may dramatically raise or lower rates of that in the NSRC. These lexical variations can be partially explained in terms of predictability: more predictable NSRCs are less likely to begin with that. This generalization can be plausibly explained in terms of processing, assuming that facilitates processing and/or signals difficulty. The correlations between lexical choices in the NP and the predictability of an NSRC can, in turn, be explained in terms of the semantics of the lexical items and the pragmatics of reference.*

1.

Introduction

The notion of exception presupposes that of rule; as Webster (http://www. m-w.com/dictionary) puts it, an exception is “a case to which a rule does not * This paper is dedicated to Professor Günter Rohdenburg of Paderborn University, whose sixty-fifth birthday coincided with the completion of the first draft of the paper. Professor Rohdenburg’s seminal studies on English usage and structure have been an inspiration to many data-oriented students of language, ourselves included. We received help and advice on this work from many people. Paul Fontes did essential work on the maximum entropy predictability model described at the end of section 3. Sandy Thompson was generous in sharing an early version of Fox and Thompson (2007) with us, and in giving us very useful feedback on earlier versions of this work. Additional help and advice was provided by at least the following people: David Beaver, Joan Bresnan, Brady Clark, Liz Coppock, Vic Ferreira, Edward Flemming, Ted Gibson, Jack Hawkins, Irene Heim, Dan Jurafsky, Rafe Kinsey, Roger Levy, Chris Manning, Tanya Nikitina, Doug Rohde, Doug Roland, Neal Snider, Laura Staum, Michael Wagner, and Annie Zaenen. Special thanks also to Heike Wiese and Horst Simon, first for organizing the workshop at which this material was originally presented, and for comments on the written version.

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apply”. Linguistic rules (and, more recently, constraints, principles, parameters, etc.) are usually taken to be categorical, at least in the generative tradition. Quantitative data like frequency of usage are widely considered irrelevant to grammar, and gradient theoretical notions like degrees of exceptionality have remained outside of the theoretical mainstream. This antipathy towards things quantitative probably has its origins in Chomsky’s early writings, which dismissed the significance of frequency data and statistical models (see, e.g., Chomsky 1955/75: 145–146; 1957: 16–17; 1962: 128; 1966, 35–36). But recently, the availability of large on-line corpora and computational tools for working with them has led some linguists to question the exclusion of frequency data and non-categorical formal mechanisms from theoretical discussions (for example, Wasow 2002 and Bresnan et al. 2007). Moreover, corpus work has revealed that natural-sounding counterexamples to many purportedly categorical generalizations can be found in usage data (Bresnan and Nikitina 2003). If categorical rules are replaced by gradient models, what becomes of the notion of exceptionality? The paradigmatic instance of an exception is a lexical item that satisfies the applicability conditions of a (categorical) rule, but cannot undergo it. (When rules are categorical, so are exceptions). The obvious analogue for a non-categorical generalization would be a lexical item whose frequency of occurrence in a given environment is dramatically different from that of other lexical items that are similar in relevant respects. For example, whereas about 8 % (11,405/146,531) of the occurrences of transitive verbs in the Penn Treebank III corpora (Marcus et al. 1999) are in the passive voice, certain verbs occur in the passive far more frequently, and others far less frequently. Among the former is convict, which occurs in the passive in 33 % (25/76) of its occurrences as a verb; the latter is represented by read, fewer than 1 % (6/788) of whose occurrences as a transitive verb are passive.1 Such skewed distributions, which we will call “soft exceptions”, are by no means uncommon. For grammarians who make use of non-categorical data and mechanisms, soft exceptions constitute a challenge. Simply recording statistical biases in individual lexical entries may be feasible and useful in applications to language technologies. But it is theoretically unsatisfying: we would like

1. These numbers are based on searches of the parsed portions of the Wall Street Journal, Brown, and Switchboard corpora, looking at the ratio of passive verb phrases to the total number of VPs directly dominating the verb in question and an NP (possibly a trace).

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to explain why words show radically different proclivities towards particular constructions. The remainder of this paper examines one set of soft exceptions and offers an explanation for them in terms of a combination of semantic/pragmatic and psycholinguistic considerations. 2.

Background

The particular phenomenon we examine is the optionality of relativizers (that or wh-words) in the initial position of certain relative clauses (RCs). This is illustrated in the following examples: (1)

a. b. c.

That is certainly one reason (why/that) crime has increased. I think that the last movie (which/that) I saw was Misery. They have all the water (that) they want.

We have been exploring what factors correlate with relativizer occurrence in RCs, using syntactically annotated corpora from the Penn Treebank III. The results presented below have been carried out using the Switchboard corpus, which consists of about 650 transcribed telephone conversations between pairs of strangers (on a list of selected topics), totalling approximately 800,000 words. Certain factors make relativizers obligatory, or so strongly preferred as to mask the effects of other factors. As is well-known (see Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 1055), if the RC’s gap is the subject of the RC, then the relativizer cannot be omitted:2 (2)

I saw a movie *(that) offended me. 3

We have excluded these from our investigations, concentrating instead on what we will call non-subject extracted relative clauses, or NSRCs. We have also excluded examples involving what Ross (1967) dubbed “pied piping”, as in (3): (3)

a. b.

a movie to *(which) we went a movie *(whose) title I forget

2. There are dialects that permit relativizer omission in some RCs with subject gaps, as in the children’s song, There was a farmer had a dog … 3. An asterisk outside parentheses is used to indicate that the material inside the parentheses is obligatory.

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Non-restrictive relative clauses are conventionally claimed (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 1056) to require a wh-relativizer, and this seems to be correct in clear cases: (4)

a. Goodbye Lenin, which I enjoyed, is set in Berlin b. *Goodbye Lenin, (that) I enjoyed, is set in Berlin

The converse – that wh-relativizers may not appear in restrictive RCs – is a well-known prescription (e.g., Fowler 1944: 635), though it does not appear to be descriptively accurate. Evaluating these claims is complicated by the fact that the boundary between restrictive and non-restrictive modifiers seems to be quite fuzzy. Instead of trying to identify all and only non-restrictive RCs, we excluded all examples with wh-relativizers. This decision was also motivated in part by our observation that disproportionately many of the examples with wh-relativizers were questionable for other reasons (e.g. some embedded questions were misanalyzed as RCs). Thus, our results are based on the comparison between NSRCs with that relativizers and those with no overt relativizer.4 In addition, we excluded reduced subject-extracted and infinitival RCs, since they never allow relativizers (except for infinitival RCs with pied-piping – where the relativizer is obligatory): (5)

a. b. c.

a movie (*that) seen by millions a movie (*that) to see a movie in *(which) to fall asleep

After these exclusions, our corpus contained 3,701 NSRCs, of which 1,601 (43 %) begin with that and the remaining 2,100 (57 %) have no relativizer. A variety of factors seem to influence the choice between that and no relativizer in these cases. These include the length of the NSRC, properties of the NSRC subject (such as pronominality, person, and number), and the presence of disfluencies nearby. We discuss these elsewhere (Jaeger and Wasow 2006; Jaeger, Orr, and Wasow 2005; Jaeger 2005), exploring interactions among the factors and seeking to explain the patterns on the basis of processing considerations. The focus of the present paper is on how lexical choices in an NP containing an NSRC can influence whether a relativizer is used. We show that particular choices of determiner, noun, or prenominal adjective may correlate with exceptionally high or exceptionally low rates of relativizers. We then propose that this 4. The studies were replicated including the NSRCs with wh-relativizers. The results are qualitatively the same, though the numbers are of course different.

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correlation can be explained in terms of the predictability of the NSRC, which in turn has a semantic/pragmatic explanation. 3.

Lexical choices and relativizer frequency

Early in our investigations of relativizer distribution in NSRCs we noticed that relativizers are far more frequent in NPs introduced by a or an than in those introduced by the. Specifically, that occurs in 74.8 % (226/302) of the NSRCs in a(n)-initial NPs and in only 34.2 % (620/1813) of those in the-initial NPs. Puzzled, we checked the relativizer frequency for NSRCs in NPs introduced by other determiners. The results are summarized in Table 1, where the numbers in parentheses indicate the total number of examples. Table 1. NSRC that Rate by NP Determiner. DETERMINER (FREQUENCY) a or an (302) Possessive pronoun (37) some (67) No determiner (428) this, that, these, those (106) Numeral (177) any (55) no (34) the (1813) all (206) every (68)

NSRC WITH THAT 74.8 % 64.9 % 64.2 % 63.1 % 61.3 % 53.1 % 49.1 % 38.2 % 34.2 % 24.3 % 14.7 %

The variation in these numbers is striking, but it is by no means obvious why they are distributed as they are. Curious whether other lexical choices within NPs containing NSRCs might be correlated with relativizer frequency, we compared rates of relativizer occurrence for the nouns most commonly modified by NSRCs. Again, we found a great deal of variation, with no obvious pattern. If individual determiners and head nouns are correlated with such highly variable rates of relativizer presence, we reasoned that the words that come between determiners and head nouns – namely, prenominal adjectives – might show similar variation. And indeed they do: Figure 3 shows the relativizer frequencies for the prenominal adjectives that occur most frequently in NPs with NSRCs.

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Table 2. NSRC that Rate by NP Head Noun. HEAD NOUN (FREQUENCY) stuff (46) people (64) one (106) problem (44) something (171) thing (523) kind (49) anything (48) place (99) everything (60) reason (91) time (247) way (325)

NSRC WITH THAT 62.8 % 57.1 % 51.5 % 50.0 % 44.7 % 43.7 % 43.2 % 38.0 % 34.4 % 24.6 % 24.0 % 14.0 % 13.0 %

The differences in relativizer frequency based on properties of the modified NP are immense. For example, NSRCs modifying NPs with the adjective little are on average over eight times more likely to have a relativizer than NSRCs modifying NPs with the adjective last. These differences are not due to chance; chi-square tests on all three of these distributions are highly significant. Why should lexical choices in the portion of an NP preceding an NSRC make such a dramatic difference in whether the NSRC begins with that or has Table 3. NSRC that Rate by Prenominal Adjective. ADJECTIVE (FREQUENCY) little (41) certain (19) few (20) different (19) big (15) other (87) same (47) best (24) only (158) first (99) last (79)

NSRC WITH THAT 73.2 % 68.4 % 65.0 % 63.2 % 60.0 % 49.4 % 46.8 % 25.0 % 24.7 % 18.2 % 8.9 %

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no relativizer? How can we explain soft exceptions to the optionality of that in NSRCs . That is, why do the presence of words like a(n), every, stuff, way, little, and last correlate with exceptionally high or low rates of that in NSRCs that follow them within an NP? 4.

Predictability

An example from Fox and Thompson (2007) provided a crucial clue. They observed that the following sentence sounds quite awkward with a relativizer.5 (6)

That was the ugliest set of shoes (that) I ever saw in my life.

Moreover, the sentence seems incomplete without the relative clause: (7)

That was the ugliest set of shoes.

(7) would be appropriate only in a context in which some comparison collection of sets of shoes is clear to the addressee. These observations led us to conjecture that the strong preferences in (6) for a relative clause in the NP and for no relativizer in the relative clause might be connected. Looking at the vs. a(n) in our corpus (the contrast that first got us started on this line of inquiry), we found that, of the 30,587 NPs beginning with the, 1813 (5.93 %) contain NSRCs, whereas only 302 (1.18 %) of the 45,698 NPs beginning with a(n) contain NSRCs. This difference (χ 2 = 812, p < 0.001) lent plausibility to our conjecture. Hence, we propose the following hypothesis: (8)

The Predictability Hypothesis: In environments where an NSRC is more predictable, relativizers are less frequent.

This formulation is somewhat vague, since neither the notion of “environment” nor of “predictability” is made precise. Our initial tests of the hypothesis use simple operationalizations of these notions: the environments are the NPs containing the determiners, nouns, and adjectives described in the previous section, and an NSRC’s predictability in the environment of one of these words is measured by the percentage of the NPs containing that word that also are modified by an NSRC.

5. Fox and Thompson’s account of the preference for no relativizer in (6) is based on the claim that (6) falls at the monoclausal end of a “continuum of monoclausality to bi-clausality”. We discuss this idea in section 5 below.

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Figures 1–3 plot cooccurrence with NSRCs against frequency of relativizer absence in NSRCs. The points in Figure 1 represent the eleven determiner types given in Table 1; the points in Figure 2 represent the thirteen head nouns given in Table 2; and the points in Figure 3 represent the eleven adjectives given in Table 3.6 . The lines represent linear regressions – that is, the lines represent the best (linear) generalization over the data points in that the total squared distance between the points and the lines is minimized (other tests showed that the trend is indeed linear and not of a higher order). The correlation between NSRC cooccurrence and relativizer absence is significant for all three categories. Correlating the predictability of NSRCs for all 35 words (the determiners, adjectives, and head nouns in our sample) against frequency of relativizer absence is also significant (adjusted r2 = .36, F(1, 33) = 19.9, p < .001).7

Figure 1. Relativizer Frequency and NSRC Cooccurence by Determiner; adjusted r2 = .918 ; F(1, 9) = 105.1, p < .001. 6. The mean plots in the three figures represent rather different sample sizes. Determiners are a closed class, so Figure 1 includes almost all NSRCs, whereas Figures 2 and 3 are based on just the head nouns and adjectives that cooccur most frequently with NSRCs. And since almost all NPs include a head noun but most do not have prenominal adjectives, the sample size in Figure 3 is far lower than in Figure 2. 7. After removing two extreme outliers, the adjusted r2 = .56, F(1, 31) = 36.1, p < 0.001. 8. Adjusted r2 s provide a more reliable measure of the goodness of fit of the model compared to normal, unadjusted r2 s, which usually are too optimistic. Generally, r2

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Figure 2. Relativizer Frequency and NSRC Cooccurrence by Head Noun; adjusted r2 = .35; F(1, 11) = 7.4, p = .02.

Figure 3. Relativizer Frequency and NSRC Cooccurrence by Adjectives; adjusted r 2 = .32; F(1, 9) = 5.8, p = .04.

These results support the Predictability Hypothesis: on average, if a determiner, prenominal adjective, or head noun within an NP increases the likelihood that the NP will contain an NSRC, then it also increases the likelihood that an NSRC in the NP will lack a relativizer. estimates the amount of variation in the data accounted for by the model, e.g. an r2 of .91 means that the model accounts for 91 % of the variation.

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The evidence presented above supports the Predictability Hypothesis, but the predictability measures employed are rather simple. We used one word at a time in the modified NP to estimate the predictability of an NSRC, and, we only used the most frequent types of determiners, adjectives, and head nouns.9 There are several ways to develop more sophisticated models of an NSRC’s predictability that (i) take into account more than one word in the NP at a time, and (ii) are not limited to the most frequent types. We present one such approach, using a machine learning technique. This approach would also enable us to include information relevant to NSRC predictability that is not due to lexical properties of NPs (such as their grammatical function), but the study we report on here is limited to lexical factors.10 We created a maximum entropy classifier (see Ratnaparkhi 1997), which used features of an NP to predict how likely a relative clause was in that NP.11 Features included the type of head noun, any prenominal adjectives, and the determiner, as well as some additional properties, such as whether the head noun was a proper name, and whether the modified NP contained a possessive pronoun. Based on these features, the classifier assigned to each NP in the corpus a probability of having an RC, which we will refer to as its “predictability index”. We then grouped NPs according to these predictability indices, and examined how the relativizer likelihood in an NSRC varied across the groups.12 9. Furthermore, we used means to predict means (i.e. we used the mean predictablity of an NSRC given a certain word in the modified NP and correlated that against the mean relativizer likelihood for NSRCs modifying those NPs). This method arguably inflates our r2 s (i.e. the measure of how much of the variation in relativizer omission is captured by predictability). Elsewhere (Jaeger, Levy, Wasow, and Orr 2005), we address this issue by using binary logistic regressions that predict the presence of a relativizer based on the predictability of the NSRC on a case-by-case basis. 10. Studies involving non-lexical factors are in progress. 11. This study differs from the earlier ones in that it considered the predictability of any relative clause, not just of non-subject relative clauses. This broader criterion provided the classifier with more data on which to base its classifications; the narrower criterion would have required a larger corpus in order to get reliable classifications. So this study is testing for a slightly different correlation than the one stated in the Predictability Hypothesis. However, since the probability that an NP will contain an NSRC and the probability that an NP will contain an RC are highly correlated, a correlation between RC predictability and relativizer absence still supports our claims (cf. also footnote 14). Future research may determine which of the two measures is the better predictor of relativizer frequency. 12. Here we present the result of a classifier trained on the Switchboard corpus, similar results were found for the parsed Wall Street Journal (Penn Treebank III release).

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Before checking on relativizer presence, however, we needed to test the accuracy of the predictability indices our classifier assigned. We did this by comparing the predictability index range of each of the groups with the actual rates of RCs in the NPs in the groups. That is, we compared the fraction of the NPs in each group that contained an RC with the range of predictability indices the group represented. As can be seen in Figure 4, the occurrences of RCs in the NPs in each group were consistently within or close to the range assigned by the classifier. This indicates that the predictability indices that the classifier was assigning to the NPs were generally reasonable estimates.

Figure 4. Accuracy of Classifier.

For the NPs containing NSRCs, we then used the classifier’s predictability indices to test whether relativizers are less frequent where RCs are more predictable. We did this by examining the rates of relativizer absence for each of our groupings of NPs. As Figure 5 shows, the results are similar to what we found looking at the most frequent determiners, adjectives, and nouns separately: NSRCs in NPs whose features make them more likely to contain RCs are less likely to have relativizers. This result provides more support for the Predictability Hypothesis. Furthermore, the fact that a simple maximum entropy classifier provides reasonable measurements of the predictability of relative clauses suggests that predictability in this sense can be computed by means of a standard machine-learning method. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that speakers have access to estimates of how likely an RC is in a given context.

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Figure 5. Predictability Index and Relativizer Absence; adjusted r2 =.86; F(1, 5)=36.9, p = .002.

5.

Explaining the Correlation

The Predictability Hypothesis seems to be correct: NSRCs evidently begin with that less frequently in environments where an NSRC (or any RC) is more likely to occur. But we have still not answered our original question: Why do different lexical choices correlate with such large differences in relativizer rates? Our answer involves two steps. First, we suggest a processing explanation for the correlation between NSRC predictability and relativizer absence. Second, we argue that there are semantic/pragmatic reasons why certain determiners, head nouns, and adjectives tend to cooccur with NSRCs relatively frequently. Put together, these will constitute an account of why those lexical choices lead to low relativizer rates. Explaining the presence vs. absence of relativizers in NSRCs in terms of processing can involve considerations of comprehension, production, or a combination of the two. Relativizers could facilitate comprehension by marking the beginning of a relative clause and thereby helping the parser recognize dependencies between the head NP and elements in the NSRC (see Hawkins 2004, for an account along these lines). Relativizers could facilitate production, e.g. by providing the speaker with extra time to plan the upcoming NSRC (see Race and MacDonald 2003, for an account along these lines). Both types of explanation predict that relativizers should occur more frequently in more complex NSRCs (though the factors contributing to comprehension complexity and pro-

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duction complexity might not be identical). Teasing apart the predictions of these different kinds of processing explanations is by no means straightforward (see Jaeger 2005, for much more detailed discussion of this issue). Whatever kind of processing explanation one adopts, it can be employed to explain why predictability of the NSRC influences relativizer frequency. In a context in which an NSRC has a relatively high probability, the listener gets less useful information from having the beginning of the NSRC explicitly marked. Hence, relativizers do less to facilitate comprehension where NSRCs are predictable. And in environments where NSRCs are likely, speakers would begin planning the NSRC earlier (on average) than in environments where they are less likely. Consequently, they would be less likely to need to buy time by producing a relativizer at the beginning of the NSRC. In short, the correlation between predictability and relativizer absence follows from the hypothesis that relativizers aid processing. But why do certain lexical choices early in an NP have such a strong effect on the likelihood of there being an NSRC later in the NP? To answer this, it is useful to consider the semantic function of restrictive relative clauses. As the term “restrictive” implies, such clauses characteristically serve to limit the possible referents of the NPs in which they occur. For example, in (8), the NSRC that I listen to restricts the denotation of the NP to a proper subset of music, namely, the music the speaker listens to; without the NSRC, the NP could refer to any or all music. (8)

music that I listen to

Certain determiners, nouns, and adjectives have semantic properties that make this sort of further restriction very natural or even preferred. Consider, for example, the determiners all and every, which express universal quantification. Universal assertions are generally true of only restricted sets.13 Thus, (9a) is true for many more VPs than (9b). (9)

a. b.

Every linguist we know VP Every linguist VP

13. Students in elementary logic classes are taught that sentences beginning with a universal quantifier almost always have a conditional as their main connective. The antecedent of this conditional is needed to restrict the set of entities of which the consequent is claimed to hold. That is, for a sentence of the form ∀xP(x) to be true, P should include some contingencies. In natural language, NSRCs are one way of expressing such contingencies.

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More generally, universal assertions are more likely to be true if the quantification is restricted, and NSRCs are one natural way to impose a restriction.14 Hence, in order to avoid making excessively general claims, people frequently use NSRCs with universal quantifiers. Notice that the opposite is true for existentials: (10a) is true for many more VPs than (10b), since (10a) is true if VP holds of any linguist, whereas (10b) is true only if it holds of a linguist we know. (10)

a. b.

A linguist VP A linguist we know VP

So while restricting a universally quantified assertion increases its chances of being true, restricting an existentially quantified assertion reduces its chances of being true. Correspondingly, every and all cooccur with NSRCs relatively frequently (10.40 % and 6.92 %, respectively), whereas a(n) and some rarely cooccur with NSRCs (1.18 % and 2.10 %, respectively). The definite determiner generally signals that the referent of the NP it is introducing is contextually unique – that is, the listener has sufficient information from the linguistic and non-linguistic context to pick out the intended referent uniquely. But picking out a unique referent often requires specifying more information about it than is expressed by a common noun. NSRCs can remedy this: for example, there are many situations in which (11a) but not (11b) can be used to successfully refer to a particular individual. (11)

a. b.

the linguist I told you about the linguist

Even when the is used with plural nouns (e.g. the linguists) a contextually unique set of individuals is the intended referent. Hence the denotation of the head noun often needs to be restricted, and NSRCs are consequently relatively common. The pragmatic uniqueness associated with the definite article is very often a result of the fact that the referent of the NP introduced by the has recently been mentioned or is otherwise contextually very salient. In these cases, no restriction of the noun phrase is needed, so NSRCs would not be expected. And while the cooccurs with NSRCs at about three times the baseline rate for all 14. Other kinds of restrictive modifiers such as subject-extracted relative clauses, prenominal restrictive adjectives, and postnominal PPs are also options. Whenever there is a need to restrict the reference of an NP, each of these options becomes more likely. For the current purpose, it only matters that NSRCs constitute one of these options.

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(nonpronominal) NPs, the vast majority – about 94 % – of NPs beginning with the have no NSRC. Certain adjectives, however, involve a uniqueness claim for the referent of NPs in which they appear, and these cooccur with NSRCs at far higher rates.15 The most frequent of these is only; others are superlatives like first, last, and ugliest. Our arguments for the relatively high rate of cooccurrence of the with NSRCs applies equally to these adjectives. And since superlatives make sense only with respect to some scale of comparison, the reference set that the scale orders often needs to be explicitly mentioned. Consequently, it is not surprising that these words cooccur with NSRCs at a very high rate. Indeed, we noted in connection with example (6) (following Fox and Thompson 2007) that NPs containing these adjectives sometimes sound incomplete without a modifying relative clause. The dark bars in Figure 6 show that NPs with the “uniqueness adjectives” only and superlatives have far higher rates of cooccurrence with NSRCs than NPs with other adjectives. And, as the Predictability Hypothesis leads us to expect, the same applies to relativizer absence in those NSRCs (see the lighter bars in Figure 9).

Figure 6. Cooccurrence with NSRC and Relativizer Frequency by Adjective Type.

15. This was pointed out by Fox and Thompson (2007). As noted above, it was their discussion of this observation that led us to the Predictability Hypothesis.

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Turning now to the head nouns, one striking fact about the ones that cooccur with NSRCs most frequently is their semantic lightness – that is, nouns like thing, way, time, etc. intuitively seem exceptionally non-specific in their reference.16 Again, there is a semantic/pragmatic explanation for why semantically light nouns would cooccur with NSRCs more than nouns with more specific reference. In order to use these nouns successfully to refer to particular entities, some additional semantic content often needs to be added, and an NSRC is one way of doing this. For example, saying (12a) is less likely to result in successful communication than saying (12b): (12)

a. b.

The thing is broken. The thing you hung by the door is broken.

Testing this intuition requires some basis for designating a noun as semantically light. As a rough first stab, we singled out the non-wh counterparts of the question words, who, what, where, when, how, and why. That is, we looked at how often NSRCs occur in NPs headed by person/people, thing, place, time, way, and reason, and compared the results to the occurrence of NSRCs in NPs headed by anything else. And, of course, we also compared the frequency of relativizers in those NSRCs. The results, shown in Figure 7, are as we expected,

Figure 7. Cooccurrence with NSRC and Relativizer Frequency by Head Noun Type.

16. This was noticed independently (and first) by Fox and Thompson (2007).

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with a far higher percentage of NSRCs in the NPs headed by the light nouns and a far lower percentage of NSRCs introduced by that.

6.

Concluding Remarks

Summing up, the variation in relativizer frequency associated with particular lexical choices of determiners, prenominal adjectives, and head nouns in NPs with NSRCs can be explained in terms of two observations. First, whether a word is likely to cooccur with an NSRC depends in part on the semantics of the word and on what people tend to need to refer to. Second, the more predictable an NSRC is, the less useful a relativizer is in utterance processing. Thus, determiners, adjectives, and nouns that increase the likelihood of a following NSRC decrease the likelihood that the NSRCs following them will begin with relativizers. Our focus has been on how lexical choices influence relativizer frequency. But many non-lexical factors are also known to be relevant. Ideally, a theory of this phenomenon would bring all of these together and explain variation in relativizer use in terms of a single generalization. One attempt at a unified account of several diverse factors influencing relativizer frequency is Fox and Thompson (2007). They conducted a detailed analysis of a corpus of 195 NSRCs from informal speech, identifying a variety of factors that correlate with relativizer presence or absence. Adapting a suggestion from Jespersen (1933), they argue that their examples fall at different points along “a continuum of monoclausality”, with more monoclausal utterances being less likely to have relativizers. Among the factors contributing to monoclausality, in their sense, are semantic emptiness of the clause containing the NP that the NSRC modifies (which subsumes semantic lightness of the head noun), simplicity of the head NP, and shortness of the NSRC. The idea of a one-dimensional scale combining various factors relevant to relativizer omission has obvious appeal, particularly if it can be characterized precisely. However, we have two reservations about Fox and Thompson’s notion of “monoclausality”. First, their characterization is rather vague, and they give no independent way of assessing degree of “monoclausality”. Second, the terminology is confusing, since even the most “monoclausal” of their examples contain (at least) two clauses, in the sense that they have two verbs and two subjects. Nevertheless, we share the intuition that the contents of the two clauses in the more “monoclausal” examples are more closely connected. We believe that the notion of predictability might provide a precisely definable scale that can do the work of Fox and Thompson’s “monoclausality”.

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Predictability has the further advantages that its influence on relativizer absence can be explained in processing terms and that it is often possible to explain why some NSRCs are more predictable than others, as we did above. Some of the utterances Fox and Thompson consider the most monoclausal are stock phrases or frequently used patterns (e.g. the way it is), which they suggest may be stored as units. Stock phrases are by definition highly predictable, so they fit well with our account. Some higher-level grammatical patterns17 might not be covered by a simple, lexically-based characterization of predictability like the ones we employed. If so, it would suggest that more sophisticated metrics of predictability should be explored. In short, the Predictability Hypothesis of relativizer variation provides testable questions for future research. Next we briefly mention some of them. First, we believe it is important to investigate what information speakers use to determine the predictability of an NSRC. For examples, does the grammatical function of the modified NP matter? Or do speakers only use ‘local’ information to predict NSRCs (i.e. lexical properties of the NP).18 More specifically it will be relevant for our understanding of predictability to see whether the factors investigated in this paper interact. In other words, do speakers use simple heuristic like the association of a particular lexical item with the likelihood of an NSRC, or do speakers compute the overall predictability of an NSRC given the combination of lexical items in the modified NP? A further question that deserves attention is whether speakers use some sources of information more than others to compute the predictability of a construction (here: NSRCs). As we have seen in Section 3 predictability information related to determiners seems to correlate much more strongly with the relativizer absence than information related to adjectives and the head noun of the modified NP. This may simply be due to the larger sample size available for the estimation of the mean for each of the words. But it is also possible that probability distributions for closed class items (like determiners) are easier to acquire or are more efficient to use, since there are fewer items in those classes. We hope future research will discover generalizations that go beyond the particular phenomenon discussed here. Ongoing research that addresses some of the above issues and investigates a related 17. We know of no clear cases of such patterns that don’t have any identifying lexical items associated with them. One possible one is the X-er S1 , the Y-er S2 , as in The bigger they are, the harder they fall. But it is not clear that the two Ss (they are and they fall) should be analyzed as relative clauses here. 18. In this context, it is interesting that research on the effect of predictability on phonetic reduction (e.g., Bell et al. 2003) finds that the best measures of predictability are also the most local (i.e. bigrams).

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phenomenon, complementizer omission, is presented in Jaeger et al. (2005) and Jaeger (2006). Finally, let us return to the theme of this volume: exceptions. We have shown that the notion of exception can be generalized from hard (categorical) to soft (probabilistic) rules. We explored some soft exceptions to the optionality of relativizers in NSRC, ultimately concluding that they could be explained in terms of the interaction of the semantics of the “exceptional” words, the pragmatics of referring, and processing considerations. Those who question the use of gradient models in syntax might suggest that this illustrates an important difference between hard and soft generalizations, namely, that the latter reflect facts about linguistic performance, not competence, and will hence always be explainable in terms of extra-grammatical factors, like efficiency of communication. In contrast, they might argue, many categorical generalizations are reflections of linguistic competence, and hard exceptions to them may be as well. We would respond that it is always preferable to find external explanations that tie properties of language structure to the functions of language and to characteristics of language users. There is no basis for bifurcating linguistic phenomena a priori into those that are and those that are not amenable to external explanation. In particular, such explanations should be sought for both hard and soft exceptions. We know of no reason to believe that they will always be possible for the soft cases, but not the hard cases. References Alan Bell, Daniel Jurafsky, Eric Fosler-Lussier, Cynthia Girand, Michelle Gregory, and Daniel Gildea 2003 Effects of disfluencies, predictability, and utterance position on word form variation in English conversation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 113 (2): 1001–1024. Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina, and Harald Baayen 2007 Predicting the dative alternation. In Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation, G. Boume, I. Kraemer and J. Zwarts (eds.), 69–97. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science Workshop on Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation. Bresnan, Joan, and Tatiana Nikitina 2003 On the Gradience of the Dative Alternation. Ms. Chomsky, Noam 1955/75 The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Chomsky, Noam 1957 Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Chomsky, Noam 1962 A Transformational Approach to Syntax. Third Texas Conference on Problems of Linguistic Analysis in English, A. Hill (ed.), 124–169. Austin: The University of Texas. Chomsky, Noam 1966 Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar. The Hague: Mouton. Fowler, H. W. 1944

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fox, Barbara A., and Sandra A. Thompson 2007 Relative clauses in English conversation: Relativizers, frequency and the notion of construction. Studies in Language 31, 293–326. Hawkins, John A. 2004 Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey K. Pullum 2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jaeger, T. Florian 2005 Optional that indicates production difficulty: Evidence from disfluencies. Paper presented at Workshop on ‘Disfluencies in Spontaneous Speech’. Aix-en-Provence. Jaeger, T. Florian 2006 Probabilistic syntactic production: Expectedness and syntactic reduction in spontaneous speech. Ph. D. diss., Stanford University. Jaeger, T. Florian, Roger Levy, Thomas Wasow, and David Orr 2005 The absence of ‘that’ is predictable if a relative clause is predictable. Paper presented at conference ‘Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing’. Ghent. Jaeger, T. Florian, David Orr, and Thomas Wasow 2005 Comparing and combining frequency-based and locality-based accounts of complexity. Poster presented at the 18th CUNY Sentence Processing Conference. Tucson, Arizona. Jaeger, T. Florian, and Thomas Wasow 2006 Processing as a source of accessibility effects on variation. Proceedings of the 31st meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, R.T. Cover and Y. Kim (eds), 169–180. Ann Arbor: Sheridan.

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Essentials of English Grammar. London: Allen & Unwin.

Marcus, Mitchell P., Beatrice Santorini, Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz, and Ann Taylor 1999 Treebank III. Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania. Race, David, and Maryellen MacDonald 2003 The use of ‘that’ in the production and comprehension of object relative clauses. Paper presented at 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Ratnaparkhi, Adwait 1997 A simple introduction to Maximum Entropy Models for Natural Language Processing. Technical Report 97-08, Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania. Ross, John R. 1967

Constraints on variables in syntax. Ph. D. diss., MIT.

Wasow, Thomas 2002 Postverbal Behavior. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Corpus evidence and the role of probability estimates in processing decisions Ruth Kempson

Wasow, Jaeger and Orr (WJO) address the phenomenon of exceptions from a background of increasing interest in models of language where generalizations about natural languages are made on the basis of probabilistic generalizations, rather than on categorical distinctions.∗ What they provide is a case for a concept of gradient exceptionality, expressed in terms of what is unlikely to occur – the other side of the coin from what does occur with high predictability. The example is the correlation between the predictability of a given determiner, or adjective, or noun occurring with a relative clause and the likelihood of that relative occurring without a relativizer: an expression which is likely to occur with a relative is unlikely to occur with a relativizer. In this demonstration and the consequences they draw from it, the window of focus is deliberately narrow, with subject relatives, relatives with a wh-relativizer, non-finite relatives, and pied-piping constructions all left on one side from the corpus cull they make, as displaying different idiosyncracies which detract from the primary issue of what makes the relativizer preferred or dispreferred when it is essentially optional. It is a little disappointing that the variety of relative-clause types considered is so narrow, since the distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive relatives, one of the primary features supposedly distinguishing that- and whmarked relatives in English is, as they note, not clear-cut. Relatives with that exceptionally allow non-restrictive construals, particularly if they occur second in a sequence of relatives: (1)

There was that man at the party that you had introduced me to, that annoyed me enormously by his pompous posturing.

(2)

Last week I bought this game pie for the party, that went bad on me before the end of the week.

* I am grateful to Jieun Kiaer, Nancy Kula and Lutz Marten for comments on this note, and the issues which the WJO paper raises.

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(3)

I am thinking of buying a piece of land, that I hope you like.

So, of the finite relative clauses, it is only relatizer-less relatives which require restrictive construal. Despite the restrictions on their corpus cull, WJO provide what are nonetheless fascinating tables displaying how individual determiners vary in their likelihood of co-occurrence with a that relativizer, and adjectives, and also nouns, with in the determiner class the indefinite a being the determiner to occur most frequently with an accompanying that relativizer, in the noun class it is the indefinite stuff which is the most common, way that is least common; and in the adjective class it is the adjective little that strikingly comes highest in the list, being an average of over eight times more likely to have a relativiser than nonsubject relatives modifying NPs with the adjective last. Some of these distributions seem more puzzling than others; however in all cases, as WJO demonstrate, there is a regular correlation between predictability in the corpus of the particular word being associated with a relative, overall phrasal predictability of relative clause modification, and predictability of the relativiser. On these gradience lists, the quantifiers present perhaps the least obvious distribution, with a at the top of the list with the highest proportion of relative clauses with that, with some coming lower in the list, but nevertheless twenty-five percent more than the numerals to occur with the relativiser. On the other hand, every and all come out bottom, with any displaying three times the proportion of that-specific relative clauses than every, and double that of all. This makes any simpleminded account of quantification based exclusively on quantificational properties seem unlikely. Based on these differential probabilities of occurrence with relative clause, WJO provide a measure of the cumulative predictability of relative clause construal of the determiner-adjective-noun sequences so collected; and from this basis, they pose the claim central to their paper, the so-called Predictability Hypothesis: the more predictable a non-subject relative, the less frequent is its co-occurrence with the relativiser that. Whatever the surprises there may be in the probability estimates associated with individual words, this is an intuitive result; and it is extremely good to see this properly quantitatively confirmed, buttressing what is otherwise no more than an intuition. The question, then, is why there should be such a strong correlation between predictability and lack of relativiser? And this is where the interest of probability-based results arises: should such correlations be explicable solely in terms of the interaction of other pragmatic, semantic, or processing-oriented considerations – with probability assessements themselves playing no part in the explanation; or does the predictability itself have a role to play? The starting point for the analysis which WJO provide is their conjecture that because the

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‘maximal entropy classification’ which they used to provide the accumulated measurements of the predictability of relative clauses can be computed by standard machine-learning methods, it is plausible to assume that “speakers have access to estimates of how likely a relative clause is in a given context.” They go on from there to explore the composite effect of parsing and or production considerations in conjunction with the intrinsic content of the various determiners/adjectives/ nouns, and from there consider how these might in part explain the probability distributions. One such factor is that both determiners and nouns which allow anaphoric, context-dependent interpretations will not need a relative clause modifier whenever they can be so identified. The other is that those nouns which are semantically “light” but do not allow anaphoric forms of construal almost must occur with a relative clause modifier. The processing explanation they offer is that in such cases, the presence of the relativizer has relatively low functional load. In this connection, one factor which might influence processing considerations over and above occasion-specific functionalload considerations is the effect of routinization. That is, where there is common co-occurrence of determiner/adjunctive/noun and the presence or absence of the relativizer, e.g. in the predictability of way and lack of relativizer and predictability of the indefinite article a and presence of the relativizer, such cooccurrence might become stored as a routinized strategy associated with that particular item, thereby accentuating the frequency distribution results for cases at either end of the continuum (see Cann and Kempson 2008 for arguments that routinization is a force in syntactic change). WJO note with approval the Fox and Thompson observation of ‘monoclausality’ of relativizer-less relatives, but without exploring any semantic analogue to this, they suggest that their account in terms of predictability might take the place of this “rather vague” mono-clausal notion; and they proceed to set out explanations that might confirm such a stance. However, this move is too swift. Rather than simply seeking to replace this observation altogether, the authors might have considered the semantic analogue to the Fox and Thompson observation. This is that relatives can be used either to build up a complex restrictor for a quantifying expression within a single clause, i.e. a restrictive relative clause construal, or, conversely, they can be used to provide an adjunct, independent structure, a nonrestrictive relative clause construal. Indeed, whatever the difficulties of formally characterising nonrestrictive relative clause construal (see Potts 2004 for a re-analysis in terms of ‘supplements’ for which he gives a conventional-implicature analysis), it is not in question that, unlike in restrictive relative clause construals, the two clauses give rise to two independent propositions, and in some analyses, the distinctiveness of the two is made explicit (Potts 2004, Kempson, Meyer-Viol and Gabbay 2001, Cann,

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Kempson and Marten 2005).1 This distinction is often reported to be only disambiguated by intonation. In writing, where relativizers may play the role of defining a clausal edge but cannot disambiguate between restrictive and nonrestrictive construals, it is only the lack of any such indicator that can unambiguously indicate a restrictive construal. The “monoclausal” observation of Fox and Thompson thus has a natural counterpart in a semantic characterisation of relative clause construal: relativizer-less relatives uniquely identify a single overall assertion, a distinctive attribute of restrictive relative-clause construal which has independent syntactic and semantic motivation. If, then, a speaker is planning a relative clause sequence indicating a restrictive construal, they may not even consider the possibility of using a form which would allow the alternative form of construal: certainly the most secure way of ensuring the appropriate construal is to select a form which precludes it, and of the finite forms, only the relativizer-less form definitively does so. Hence the more likely the form is to be associated with a restrictive form of construal, the less likely it is to be introduced with a form which allows for any other form of construal. By comparison, the move from the demonstration of the statistical correlation between probability of a relative-clause and inverse probability of the relativizer, to the assumption that calculations of probability might drive production decisions, is a leap which needs substantial independent argumentation. At the very least, there is a well-motivated alternative to be aired. There is in any case linguistic evidence from other languages which tends to favour the explanation of relativizer-less relatives in terms of definitively indicating the singleton status of the over-all propositional structure. In some languages boundary marking of structure can be made by tone. One such is Bemba. Bemba is a tone language which marks relative clauses in one of two ways, by tone or by pronominal marking. Relative clauses marked by tone alone are exclusively associated with restrictive construal and have to coincide with what is called the conjoint form of the verb, the low tone of the conjoint verb-form determining that the noun head and verb initiating the relative clause will be processed as a single prosodic unit. In consequence the construal of the relative as an integral part of the containing structure is unambiguously indicated. Relative clauses involving pronominal marking, being morphologically marked, can be construed restrictively or nonrestrictively, these construals being distin-

1. Some authors have argued that nonrestrictive relatives are presuppositional, but there are many examples to the contrary: (i) John ignored Mary, who burst into tears.

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guished by use of the conjoint form (low tone) and the disjoint verb (high tone).2 The striking aspect of the two strategies, tonal vs pronominal, is that they do not distribute in a complementary fashion. Rather, just one of those strategies provides unambiguous indication that the producer is continuing immediately with construction of a complex restrictor, i.e. a restrictive relative clause. Thus it is the use of the conjoint verb form with its low tone that forces restrictive construal in Bemba, analogous to the relativizer-less relatives of English. Such parallels from analysis of one language to another have to be treated with some caution, of course. In principle, the correlation between Bemba tone and morphologically explicit relative-clause marking might well be characterisable in terms of probability of co-occurrence. Nevertheless, the explanation of such conjoint low tone in terms of phonological indication of the mode of compositionality seems much more consistent with orthodox assumptions about how to explain encoded properties of natural language (see Cheng and Kula 2006 for independent arguments of the feeding relation between phonological marking and Bemba relative-clause structure). And this, by analogy, favours the explanation of the distribution of relativerless relatives in English in terms of their unambiguous correspondence with restrictive relative clause construal. WJO are careful to keep the Predictability Hypothesis as a claim restricted only to relative clauses of a particular type, and applied only to English. However, they end by asking questions of a much more general nature that presume the relevance of predictability weightings in the making of speakers’ decisions. They ask how do English speakers determine the predictability of a non-subject relative clause; and do the speakers compute over-all predictabilities or do they rather manipulate locally available heuristics of particular items? Further questions might be whether there are speed-up or conversely lengthening phenomena associated with presence or absence of complementizer choice. Are there also any correlations between how many average words follow after each determiner and whether this affects the occurrence of the relativizer? There are also more general questions. Predictability correlations are stringbased observations and not category-specific, and one might expect that if they can be manipulated constructively by speakers, they should provide a basis for 2. There are differences between object and subject marking, with morphological marking of object relatives taking several forms but with restrictions on the availability of the tonal strategy. However, all that is relevant here is that the low-tone strategy, which is the conjoint form of the verb, is invariably associated with a restrictive construal (see Cheng and Kula 2006 for details). These observations are due to Nancy Kula; and I am grateful to both her and Lutz Marten for discussing these data with me and reminding me of their relevance to this issue.

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explaining distributions in other cases where two options are apparently equally available. This raises fascinating new research questions. Is it the case, by analogy with these cases, that in cases where two alternative forms are possible, but one much more probable than the other, that the morphologically more marked form is less likely to be chosen, being unnecessary? One such case is structural vs prosodic indication of question-hood. Questions, incidentally like nonrestrictive relatives, are invariably marked by intonation, a para-linguistic marking characteristically recognisable early on in a parse sequence. By analogy, if such prosodic form is so reliably associated with question construal, one might expect that speakers of a language might deem it inessential to provide morphologically explicit forms of interrogative; and indeed in many languages they commonly do indeed use declarative rather than interrogative forms, relying solely on the prosody. However, as the authors are well aware, the relevance of probability results has to be treated with caution: probability of occurrence cannot in general be a guide as to whether or not a simpler form will be used. Take the case of approaching an information desk in an airport. The speaker has two ways of asking a yes-no question, either the declarative form (without auxiliary) or an inverted form with an auxiliary. Does the very fact that you are highly likely to be construed by the person at the desk as asking a question influence your decision to present it in one form rather than another, with a tendency to choose the simpler declarative form? One might seek empirical test of this prediction, but intuition would surely suggest the answer is “No”. The moral to be drawn from this fascinating setting out of data and probability assignments thus seems to be two-fold. It is clear on the one hand that probability distributions over corpus evidence, if reliably replicable, provide fascinating new data which anyone facing up to the challenge of articulating grammar interfaces will be interested in mulling over. On the other hand, the conclusion that speakers manipulate probability estimates as input to the decisions as to how to say what they do would seem to be as yet premature. While there are clear probabilistic distributions to be culled from language data to great effect, providing new impetus for theoretical explanations of a subtlety most frameworks do not make provision for, it remains far from obvious that probabilistic distributions constitute part of the explanation. The test of such putative explanations will be their generalisability to explain optional distributions on a broad cross-linguistic basis.

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References Cann, Ronnie, and Ruth Kempson 2008 Production pressures, syntactic change and the emergence of clitic pronouns. In Language in Flux, Robin Cooper and Ruth Kempson (eds.), 179–220. London: College Publications. Cann, Ronnie, Ruth Kempson, and Lutz Marten 2005 The Dynamics of Language. Oxford: Elsevier. Cheng, Lisa, and Nancy C. Kula 2006 Syntactic and phonological phrasing in Bemba relatives. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 43: 31-54. Fox, Barbara A., and Sandra A. Thompson 2007 Relative clauses in English conversation: Relativizers, frequency, and the notion of construction. Studies in Language 31: 293-326. Kempson, Ruth, Wilfried Meyer-Viol, and Dov Gabbay 2001 Dynamic Syntax. The Flow of Language Understanding. Oxford: Blackwell. Potts, Christopher 2002 The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Response to Kempson’s comments Thomas Wasow, T. Florian Jaeger and David Orr Kempson’s interesting commentary raises two important points.∗ First, while extolling the value of probabilistic corpus data, she is not ready to accept “that speakers manipulate probability estimates as input to the decisions as to how to say what they do”. Second, she suggests an alternative to our attempt to explain the correlation between predictability of non-subject relative clauses and the absence of that in such clauses. We discuss these points in reverse order and raise some additional questions for future research. Our proposed explanation of the correlation, which is admittedly somewhat programmatic, is that more predictable NSRCs are easier to produce and/or comprehend than less predictable ones, and hence do not need the extra function word. Kempson’s alternative explanation is based on the fact that relative clauses without a relativizer must be interpreted as restrictive, whereas nonrestrictive construals are often possible when a relativizer is present. She suggests that relativizer omission is used as a way of disambiguating the intended construal of the relative clause. She points out that another method of disambiguation can be intonation. Since intonation is not marked in writing, her reasoning predicts that relativizer omission should be more common in writing than in speech. As we first noted in Jaeger and Wasow (2005), this does indeed seem to be the case. NSRCs in the parsed portions of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Brown corpus (BC) are significantly less likely to have a that relativizer (24% and 11%, respectively) than NSRCs in the parsed Switchboard corpus (SWBD: 43%; χ 2 = 453.0, p < 0.0001). This difference decreases but prevails even when all relativizer types are counted (WSJ: 47%, BC: 36%, SWBD: 52%; χ 2 = 79.8, p < 0.0001) and after other factors influencing that are controlled for (see also Fox and Thompson 2007, who report 60% relativizer rate for NSRCs in informal conversations). Note in particular that NSRCs in the two written corpora are on average 21–36% longer than NSRCs in the Switchboard. A priori, this * This reply benefited immensely from the feedback by Harry Tily, whose challenging comments led us to entertain additional alternatives to our hypothesis that NSRC predictability drives that-omission.

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would suggest the opposite of the observed pattern since longer NSRCs are more likely to contain a relativizer (Race and MacDonald 2003; Jaeger 2006). The observed distributional differences between speech and written texts hence are in line with Kempson’s hypothesis (see Jaeger and Wasow 2005, for an alternative explanation based on the hypothesis that relativizer mentioning is driven by production pressures). As intriguing as it is, Kempson’s ambiguity avoidance hypothesis leads to a prediction that is inconsistent with the data discussed in our paper. The problem with the ambiguity account is related to the link between predictability and restrictiveness. Kempson does not discuss this link. The discussion in section 4 of our paper, on the other hand, provides a natural link between restrictiveness and predictability: when the content of an NP minus its relative clause is insufficient to pick out the intended referent, some kind of additional modifier is likely to be included; an NSRC is one of the options, so the probability of an NSRC is relatively high. To be more precise, it is the probability of a restrictive NSRC that is relatively high in such contexts. After all it is restrictive NSRCs rather than non-restrictive NSRCs that serve to provide additional information necessary to identify a referent. In other words, the need for sufficient identifiability influences the distribution of restrictive NSRCs and hence is a cause for increased predictability of restrictive NSRCs in such contexts. Note that there may be other reasons why RCs are more predictable in some context than in others. Here and in our paper, we focus on increases in NSRC predictability due to the pragmatically motivated need for certain referents to be identifiable. Crucially, it is not restrictiveness that causes greater NSRC predictability. If the need for identifiability is one of the major factors determining NSRC predictability, this means that more predictable NSRCs are likely to be restrictive. The predictable NSRCs discussed here occur in contexts where they will naturally be interpreted as restrictive, irrespective of whether a relativizer is present. If disambiguation between restrictive and non-restrictive construals is one of the functions of relativizer omission, then we should expect omission to occur most when the possibility of a non-restrictive interpretation is greatest. By much the same reasoning that led to the prediction of more relativizer omission in writing than in speech, Kempson’s disambiguation account would predict that less predictable restrictive NSRCs would have higher rates of relativizer omission. Since restrictive NSRCs in contexts that don’t require further identifying information are more likely to be misconstrued as non-restrictive, speakers should be more likely to omit the relativizer to guarantee the intended (restrictive) reading. And this is of course the exact opposite of our central empirical finding.

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The point here is that the correlation between predictability of an NSRC and absence of a relativizer seems natural from a processing perspective, but not if relativizer omission is thought of as a disambiguation strategy along the lines Kempson suggests. There is at least preliminary evidence that relativizers facilitate processing. There is some debate as to whether relativizers help production or comprehension (or both). On the one hand, relativizer presence has been shown to facilitate comprehension (e.g. Race and MacDonald 2003). On the other hand, there is evidence that relativizer omission is correlated with production complexity (Jaeger and Wasow 2005; see also Ferreira and Dell 2000 for complementizers), but also that relativizers do not seem to alleviate production difficulty (Jaeger 2005). While future studies are necessary to test whether speakers insert relativizer to facilitate production or comprehension, there is an established link between relativizer presence and processing (for further discussion, see Jaeger,2006; Levy and Jaeger 2007). Similarly, high-predictability of a parse can alleviate or avoid comprehension difficulties (see Jurafsky 2003 for references). Thus providing relativizers for less predictable NSRCs seems like a reasonable hypothesis, although, admittedly, future work is necessary to test it. The discussion of Kempson’s proposal brings up another interesting point. Our work so far does not show that there is a direct causal link between NSRC predictability and relativizer omission. Could it be that it is the need for identifiability that directly causes relativizer omission? While we are not aware of any theory that would predict that this, it is a testable question that should be addressed in future research. As Harry Tily also points out to us, it would be worth investigating to what extent variance in the predictability of NSRCs is explained by the need for identifiability, and to what extent other factors determine NSRC predictability. If other factors influence NSRC predictability and if increases in NSRC predictability due to these other factors correlate with relativizer omission, this would provide strong evidence for a direct causal link between NSRC predictability and relativizer omission. Turning to the question of whether “speakers manipulate probability estimates”, we are puzzled why Kempson seems so reluctant to think that they do. In many other areas of cognitive science, including motor control (Trommerhäuser et al. 2005), visual inference (Kersten 1999), concept learning (Tenenbaum 1999), and reasoning (Anderson 1990), there is little controversy over the fact that human information processing involves access to probabilistic distributions. Why should language be so different? Indeed, research over the past few years has revealed many cases of probabilistically-conditioned language production. For example, predictable syllables (Aylett and Turk 2004) and more predictable words (Bell et al. 2003) are pronounced shorter and with less ar-

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ticulatory detail. Similarly, vowels that are more predictable given the preceding segments in a word are produced shorter and with less distinct formants (van Son and Pols 2003). And cases of probabilistically-condition reduction are not limited to the phonetic level. Jaeger (2006) provides evidence that complementizer omission is correlated with predictability of a complement clause. Even phrasal omission has been linked to probabilistic distributions (see Resnik 1996 on the distribution of implicit objects as in John ate (dinner) before Mary arrived.). For a more detailed discussion of these phenomena as well as an information-theoretic account that links probabilistically-conditioned reduction to efficiency and successful information transfer, see Jaeger (2006: Chapter 6). As far as we can tell, the widespread assumption that knowledge of language must consist of categorical mechanisms is a legacy of half a century dominated by grammatical theories built with tools borrowed from logic. That assumption was generally accepted for many years in part because the computations needed to develop serious quantitative models of language were infeasible with the technologies of the time. Over the past twenty years or so that has changed, and there is now a wealth of interesting results on language built with the tools of statistics and probability. This has led to a vigorous debate within linguistics over the role of probabilistic findings in the theory of language; see, for example, Newmeyer (2003, 2006), Gahl and Garnsey (2004, 2006), and Jaeger (2007), among others. Kempson does not actually commit herself to one side or the other in this debate, but she makes it clear which side she thinks bears the burden of proof. There are, however, other passages in her comments in which her prose suggests just the opposite. One example is her suggestion that a correlation between a lexical item and either presence or absence of relativizers “might become stored as a routinized strategy associated with that particular item”. The examples she gives (way is associated with relativizer absence and a with relativizer presence) are not categorical constraints, as our corpus studies demonstrate; so the stored strategies she posits would have to be probabilistic.1 Similarly, in arguing for the role of restrictiveness in the correlation between predictability and relativizer omission, she writes the following: “… the more likely the form is to be associated with a restrictive form of construal, the less likely it is to be introduced with a form which allows for any other form of construal.”

1. Incidentally, the discussion in Jaeger (2006: Chapter 6.2.3) contains control studies suggesting that the effect of predictability on relativizer omission holds beyond a few conventionalized tokens.

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This is a manifestly probabilistic claim.2 Since relativizer absence categorically entails restrictiveness, she needs a probabilistic formulation in order to avoid the false prediction that all restrictive NSRCs lack relativizers. But if speakers do not “manipulate probability estimates”, Kempson needs to explain where the non-categorical nature of this correlation comes from. We hasten to add that we are in broad agreement with much of what Kempson says. She is quite right that the focus of our paper is narrow, and that much is to be learned from broader investigations looking at the effects of predictability in a wider range of constructions and languages (for examples of such work, see Jaeger 2006 on English complementizer omission; Jaeger 2007 on reduced subject relatives – so-called whiz-deletion; and ongoing work on relativizer omission in Danish). We also agree that restrictiveness may be an important factor in relative clause structure. In both connections, her discussion of Bemba is fascinating and illuminating.

References Anderson, John Robert 1990 The Adaptive Character of Thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Aylett, Matthew, and Alice Turk 2004 The Smooth Signal Redundancy Hypothesis: A functional explanation for relationships between redundancy, prosodic prominence, and duration in spontaneous speech”. Language and Speech 47: 31–56.

2. A clarification may be in order. We use the term probabilistic to refer to events that are conditioned by a probability of another event. This use ‘probabilistic’ is different from its use in, for example, the Stochastic OT literature, where an event is called probabilistic when it occurs with a certain probability. In the latter sense, the claim that relativizer omission is probabilistic is almost trivially true. Even if all variation in relativizer omission were determined by absolutely categorical contrasts – which is extremely unlikely given that the same speaker will sometimes say the same sentence with and sometimes without a relativizer – the resulting distribution would still be binomial (with p being either 0 or 1, depending on the context). Our question here is different. Our specific hypothesis is that it is the probability of an RC that influences relativizer omission. But we can ask more generally whether probabilities are part of the predictors of relativizer omission (cf. Jaeger 2006, 2007).

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Bell, Alan, Daniel Jurafsky, Eric Fosler-Lussier, Cynthia Girand, Michelle Gregory and Daniel Gildea 2003 Effects of disfluencies, predictability, and utterance position on word form variation in English conversation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 113: 1001–1024. Ferreira, Victor S., and Gary S. Dell 2000 The effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production. Cognitive Psychology 40, 296—340. Fox, Barbara A., and Sandra A. Thompson 2007 Relative clauses in English conversation. Relativizers, frequency, and the notion of construction. Studies in Language 31: 293–326. Gahl, Susanne, and Susan Garnsey 2004 Knowledge of grammar, knowledge of usage: Syntactic probabilities affect pronunciation variation”. Language 80: 748–775. Gahl, Susanne, and Susan Garnsey 2006 Knowledge of grammar includes knowledge of syntactic probabilities. Language 82: 405–410. Jaeger, T. Florian 2006 Redundancy and Syntactic Reduction in Spontaneous Speech. Stanford University dissertation. Jaeger, T. Florian 2007 Usage or grammar? Comprehension and production share access to same probabilities”. – Paper presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Anaheim. Jaeger, T. Florian, Roger Levy, Thomas Wasow, and David Orr 2005 The absence of ‘that’ is predictable if a relative clause is predictable. – Paper presented at Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing conference. Ghent. Jaeger, T. Florian, and Thomas Wasow 2005 Production-complexity driven variation: Relativizer omission in nonsubject-extracted relative clauses”. – Paper presented at the 18th CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson, AZ. Kersten, Daniel 1999

High-level vision as statistical inference. In The New Cognitive Neurosciences, 2nd ed., Michael S. Gazzaniga (ed.), 353–364. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Levy, Roger, and T. Florian Jaeger 2007 Speakers optimize information density through syntactic reduction. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 19, B. Schlökopf, J. Platt, & T. Hoffman, 849–856. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2003 Grammar is grammar and usage is usage. Language 79: 682–707. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2006 On Gahl and Garnsey on usage and grammar. Language 82: 399–404. Race, David, and Maryellen MacDonald 2003 The use of ‘that’ in the production and comprehension of object relative clauses. – Paper presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Resnik, Philip 1996

Selectional constraints: An information-theoretic model and its computational realization. Cognition 61, 127–159.

Tenenbaum, Joshua B. 1999 Bayesian modeling of human concept learning. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 11, M.S. Kearns, S.A. Solla and D.A. Cohn (eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Trommershäuser, Julia, Sergei Gepshtein, Laurence T. Maloney, Michael S. Landy,and Martin S. Banks 2005 Optimal compensation for changes in task-relevant movement Variability. The Journal of Neuroscience 25(31): 7169–7178. van Son, Rob J.J.H., and Louis C.W. Pols 2003 How efficient is speech? Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences 25, 171–184.

Structured exceptions and case selection in Insular Scandinavian Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson and Thórhallur Eythórsson

Abstract. The diachronic development of case selection in Insular Scandinavian (Icelandic and Faroese) provides strong support for a dichotomy of structured exceptions, which display partial productivity, and arbitrary exceptions, which are totally unproductive. Focusing on two kinds of exceptional case, we argue that verbs taking accusative experiencer subjects form a similarity cluster on the basis of shared lexical semantic properties, thus enabling new lexical items to be attracted to the cluster. By contrast, verbs taking genitive objects have no common semantic properties that could be the source of partial productivity.∗

1.

Introduction

The syntax of natural languages is characterized by general mechanisms that operate independently of particular lexical items and enable th