Download Understanding+complex+inflectional+systems+through+default+

Understanding+complex+inflectional+systems+through+default+inheritance+
modelling+
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Dunstan'Brown,'University'of'York'
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The! role! of! inflectional! morphology! differs! widely! across! languages,! being! non8
existent!in!some!to!highly!complex!in!others.!The!simple!cases!are!easy!for!any!
framework!to!account!for,!of!course,!but!morphology!can!often!be!challenging,!as!
it! is! subject! to! differing! degrees! of! regularity.! Default! inheritance! treatments,!
such! as! those! employed! in! Network! Morphology,! are! good! ways! of! modelling!
such! systems.! In! Network! Morphology,! different! parts! of! the! morphological!
expression!(prosodic,!affixal!etc.)!can!be!represented!as!separate!hierarchies!that!
are!layered!and!combined!together.!Partial!overlap!between!inflectional!classes!
falls! out! naturally! from! the! default! inheritance! approach.! Generalizations! can!
easily!be!made!at!different!levels!of!granularity,!from!the!realization!associated!
with! a! particular! paradigm! cell! in! a! morphological! layer! through! to! the!
relationship! between! inflectional! classes.! We! illustrate! by! considering! the! tone!
patterns! associated! with! person! and! TAM! marking! in! Tlatepuzco! Chinantec!
verbs.! Chinantecan! is! a! Meso8American! language! family! belonging! to! the! larger!
Oto8Manguean! grouping,! which! is! well8known! for! the! complexity! of! its!
morphological! systems! involving! a! variety! of! tone,! stem! and! affixal! patterns! to!
realize! morphosyntactic! distinctions.! In! line! with! Network! Morphology’s!
philosophy!of!computational!implementation,!we!present!a!model!for!a!dataset!
of!770!Tlatepuzco!Chinantec!verb!lexemes.!The!model!provides!a!good!coverage!
of! the! lexicon! and! locates! important! generalizations! at! different! points! in! the!
hierarchy.!We!then!consider!how!the!system!of!defaults!and!overrides!relates!to!
analyses!based!on!implicational!relations.!!