Matthew Baerman
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 805327 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Matthew Baerman |
| PRENOMES | Matthew |
| SOBRENOME | Baerman |
| ASSINATURA | BAERMAN M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Surrey |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3060-0643 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 34 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 104 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 8 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1998 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
System size and system complexity
Inflectional systems vary along multiple dimensions (number of members, size of paradigms, word class, integrative complexity, accidents of history, etc.). This makes it difficult to find significant correlations and causality relations between different properties, as attested systems usually differ in multiple ways at the same time, thus obscuring possible relations between individual variables. Here we analyze the relation between a system’s s…
Analogical change in Dinka vowel alternations
Verbs in Dinka (West Nilotic, Nilo-Saharan) are largely monosyllabic, but nonetheless the language displays a rich inventory of inflectional and derivational forms realized through alternations of the stem vowel with a morphomic distribution. The inflectional paradigm is driven by two complementary alternations which Andersen (1993, 2017) characterizes in phonological terms: fronting, which changes a stem vowel /a/ to /ɛ/, and lowering, which low…
Agreement in Kadu
Krongo, a member of the Kadu family (Nuba Mountains, Sudan), has four agreement classes: feminine, masculine, neuter and plural ( Reh 1985 ). Nominal number-marking prefixes play a key role in class assignment: productive plural prefixes trigger plural agreement, and productive singular prefixes trigger neuter agreement. In most other Kadu languages, there is no distinction between plural and neuter classes. Comparative and typological evidence s…
Analogy in Inflection
Analogy has returned to prominence in the field of inflectional morphology as a basis for new explanations of inflectional productivity. Here we review the rising profile of analogy, identifying key theoretical and methodological developments, areas of success, and priorities for future work. In morphological theory, work within so-called abstractive approaches places analogy at the center of productive processes, though significant conceptual an…
Paradigmatic saturation in Nuer
Nouns in Nuer (Western Nilotic) have been presented as an extreme example of inflectional complexity, where a ‘chaotic’ distribution of suffixes combines with dozens of different stem modifications to yield dozens of inflection classes (Frank 1999, Baerman 2012). We show that all of the apparent surface variety can be reduced to a handful of operations. The proliferation of inflection classes is due to a property we call paradigmatic saturation: …
Gender flip and person marking in Benchnon (North Omotic)
Subject agreement in the North Omotic language Benchnon (Rapold 2006) lacks dedicated person marking, but indirectly indicates person distinctions through asymmetries in the distribution of gender markers. In one verbal paradigm, first and second person subjects are expressed by feminine morphology, and in the other paradigm they are expressed by masculine morphology. This is hard to reconcile with any known notion of how gender assignment works.…
Inflectional Class Complexity In The Oto-Manguean Languages
In this paper we introduce the object of study of this special issue of Amerindia, the inflectional classes of the Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico, together with their most relevant typological characteristics. These languages are rich both in the variety of their inflectional systems, and in the way these are split into inflection classes. In effect, the full typological range of possible inflection class systems can be found just in this one s…
Morphological Perspectives
Places morphology at the centre of its own research agenda Full ranging examination of morphology’s role in its canonical and non-canonical aspects Chapters by some of the key experts in morphological typology including Bernard Comrie, Andrew Spencer, Mark Aronoff, Maria Polinsky, Oliver Bonami, Johanna Nichols and Nicholas Evans New thinking on traditional approaches, including the paradigm, deponency and morphological features In a field domina…
Nominal inflection classes in verbal paradigms
It is not uncommon for inflected nominal forms to be incorporated into verbal paradigms, as in Imonda progressive construction tōbtō soh-ia ale-f 'he is looking for fish (lit. fish search-loc stay-prs)', where the verbal noun 'search' is in the locative case. Equally, nominal inflection classes are not uncommon. But the two rarely cooccur. We present two case studies (the only examples we are aware of) as a contribution to the typology of inflect…
Seri verb classes
Seri verb classes
The verbal suffixes of Seri (a language isolate of Sonora, Mexico) divide the lexicon into classes of unparalleled complexity. The paradigm has only four forms, which mark subject number and aspect (or event number), yet there are over 250 distinct types in a corpus of just under 1000 verbs. This relation of forms to types means that by information-theoretic measures this is among the most complex inflection class system yet studied. In part this…
Understanding and Measuring Morphological Complexity
This book aims to assess the nature of morphological complexity, and the properties that distinguish it from the complexity manifested in other components of language.
The Oxford Handbook of Inflection
Inflection is the expression of grammatical information through changes in word forms. This confrontation between general principles of syntactic organization and the often idiosyncratic properties of words has brought about systems whose properties—among them an often high degree of complexity—are an important object of investigation in their own right. Because it is something that many languages happily do without, inflection has a curious and …
Understanding and Measuring Morphological Complexity
This work aims to assess the nature of morphological complexity, and the properties that distinguish it from the complexity manifested in other components of language. Chapters highlight novel perspectives on conceptualizing morphological complexity, and offer concrete means for measuring, quantifying and analysing it.
Oxford Handbook of Inflection
Chamorro Inflection
This chapter provides the first comprehensive account of the inflectional morphology of the Austronesian language Chamorro. It aims at clarifying a number of controversial issues such as the morphological status of the person markers (prefixes vs. proclitics) in the perfective aspect. The pros and cons of previous alternative analyses are taken into account. The rules which determine the use of allomorphs are spelt out and discussed in some detai…
The Morpheme
This chapter considers the nature and history of the notion of the morpheme in linguistic analysis, and the suitability of that concept to linguistic analysis. The historical origins of the term are traced, especially as it was used in American Structuralist work, and a range of problems with the literal application of the traditional concept to actual languages sketched. The role played by a notion of morpheme in a range of recent theories is th…
Covert systematicity in a distributionally complex system
Current thinking on inflection classes views them as organized networks rather than random assemblages of allomorphs (a view that reaches back to the 1980s, with such notions as Wurzel's paradigm structure conditions and Carstairs's paradigm economy). But we still find systems which appear to lack any visible implicative structure. A particularly striking example comes from Võro (a variety of South Estonian). Its system of verbal inflectional suf…
Paradigmatic Chaos in Nuer
The case-number suffixes of the Western Nilotic language Nuer (Frank 1999) display a remarkable combination of formal simplicity and distributional complexity, which is manifested in: (i) a seemingly erratic form-function mapping that precludes attributing a consistent meaning to the suffixes, and (ii) a wealth of inflection classes only barely differentiated from each other. The suffixes looks as if they were rule-generated, but behave as if the…
Changing semantic factors in case selection
Defective Paradigms
An important design feature of language is the use of productive patterns in inflection. In English, we have pairs such as ‘enjoy’ — ‘enjoyed’, ‘agree’ — ‘agreed’, and many others. On the basis of this productive pattern, if we meet a new verb ‘transduce’ we know that there will be the form ‘transduced’. Even if the pattern is not fully regular, there will be a form available, as in ‘understand’ — ‘understood’. Surprisingly, this principle is som…
Defective Paradigms
"Deponency and Morphological Mismatches edited by Matthew Baerman, Greville G. Corbett, Dunstan Brown & Andrew Hippisley" "Deponency is a mismatch between form and function in language that was first described for Latin, where there is a group of verbs (the deponents) which are morphologically passive but syntactically active. This is evidence of a larger problem involving the interface between syntax and morphology: inflectional morphology is su…
Defectiveness and homophony avoidance
The idea that certain morphological and phonological irregularities are due to speakers' desire to avoid homophony is widely invoked, yet has also come under strong criticism as an explanation which is neither necessary nor sufficient. In most cases there is no way to resolve the question, since the assumption that something is being avoided is itself a theoretical construct. In this article I attempt to address this last difficulty by looking at…
Historical observations on defectiveness
Predicate nouns in Russian
The Syntax-Morphology Interface
Syncretism - where a single form serves two or more morphosyntactic functions - is a persistent problem at the syntax-morphology interface. It results from a 'mismatch' whereby the syntax of a language makes a particular distinction but the morphology does not. This pioneering book provides a full-length study of inflectional syncretism, presenting a typology of its occurrence across a wide range of languages. The implications of syncretism for t…
Macedonian and Bulgarian li Questions
Directionality and (Un)natural Classes in Syncretism
Syncretism,where a single form corresponds to multiple morphosyntactic functions, is pervasive in languages with inflectionalmorphology. Its interpretation highlights the contrast between different views of the status of morphology. For some, morphology lacks independent structure, and syncretism reflects the internal structure of morphosyntactic features. For others, morphological structure is autonomous, and syncretism provides direct evidence …
Morphological reversals
The term morphological reversal describes the situation where the members of a morphological opposition switch their functions in some context (as with Hebrew gender marking, where -Ø~- a marks masculine~feminine with adjectives but feminine~masculine with numerals). There is a long tradition of polemic against the notion that morphology can encode systematic reversals, and an equally long tradition of reintroducing them under different names (e.…
Defectiveness and homophony avoidance
The idea that certain morphological and phonological irregularities are due to speakers' desire to avoid homophony is widely invoked, yet has also come under strong criticism as an explanation which is neither necessary nor sufficient. In most cases there is no way to resolve the question, since the assumption that something is being avoided is itself a theoretical construct. In this article I attempt to address this last difficulty by looking at…
Prolegomena to a typology of morphological features
Seri verb classes
The verbal suffixes of Seri (a language isolate of Sonora, Mexico) divide the lexicon into classes of unparalleled complexity. The paradigm has only four forms, which mark subject number and aspect (or event number), yet there are over 250 distinct types in a corpus of just under 1000 verbs. This relation of forms to types means that by information-theoretic measures this is among the most complex inflection class system yet studied. In part this…
The Morpheme
This chapter considers the nature and history of the notion of the morpheme in linguistic analysis, and the suitability of that concept to linguistic analysis. The historical origins of the term are traced, especially as it was used in American Structuralist work, and a range of problems with the literal application of the traditional concept to actual languages sketched. The role played by a notion of morpheme in a range of recent theories is th…
Paradigmatic Chaos in Nuer
The case-number suffixes of the Western Nilotic language Nuer (Frank 1999) display a remarkable combination of formal simplicity and distributional complexity, which is manifested in: (i) a seemingly erratic form-function mapping that precludes attributing a consistent meaning to the suffixes, and (ii) a wealth of inflection classes only barely differentiated from each other. The suffixes looks as if they were rule-generated, but behave as if the…
The evolution of prosodic constraints in Macedonian
Nominal inflection classes in verbal paradigms
It is not uncommon for inflected nominal forms to be incorporated into verbal paradigms, as in Imonda progressive construction tōbtō soh-ia ale-f 'he is looking for fish (lit. fish search-loc stay-prs)', where the verbal noun 'search' is in the locative case. Equally, nominal inflection classes are not uncommon. But the two rarely cooccur. We present two case studies (the only examples we are aware of) as a contribution to the typology of inflect…
Covert systematicity in a distributionally complex system
Current thinking on inflection classes views them as organized networks rather than random assemblages of allomorphs (a view that reaches back to the 1980s, with such notions as Wurzel's paradigm structure conditions and Carstairs's paradigm economy). But we still find systems which appear to lack any visible implicative structure. A particularly striking example comes from Võro (a variety of South Estonian). Its system of verbal inflectional suf…
Predicate nouns in Russian
Paradigmatic saturation in Nuer
Nouns in Nuer (Western Nilotic) have been presented as an extreme example of inflectional complexity, where a ‘chaotic’ distribution of suffixes combines with dozens of different stem modifications to yield dozens of inflection classes (Frank 1999, Baerman 2012). We show that all of the apparent surface variety can be reduced to a handful of operations. The proliferation of inflection classes is due to a property we call paradigmatic saturation: …
Chamorro Inflection
This chapter provides the first comprehensive account of the inflectional morphology of the Austronesian language Chamorro. It aims at clarifying a number of controversial issues such as the morphological status of the person markers (prefixes vs. proclitics) in the perfective aspect. The pros and cons of previous alternative analyses are taken into account. The rules which determine the use of allomorphs are spelt out and discussed in some detai…
Ein Ausblick auf die slawischsprachige Volkerwelt im Sudosten
The evolution of prosodic constraints in Macedonian
Macedonian and Bulgarian li Questions
Unnatural Classes in Morphological Change
Dutch Contributions to the Twelfth International Congress of Slavists, Cracow, August 26-September 3, 1998, Linguistics
Adrian BARENTSEN: Ob izjasnitel'nyx pridatoenyx predlo_enijax pri glagolax o_idanija (S nekotorymi rezul'tatami issledovanija komp'juternyx korpusov russkix tekstov 19-go i 20-go vv.). Andries BREUNIS: L'aspect du verbe et la genese de la nomenclature grammaticale russe. Helene BRIJNEN: Die phonologische Entwicklung des Schleifer Dialekts im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Claire GELDERMANS: The Language of the Russkaja Pravda in the Novgorod Kormeaja o…
Directionality and (Un)natural Classes in Syncretism
Syncretism,where a single form corresponds to multiple morphosyntactic functions, is pervasive in languages with inflectionalmorphology. Its interpretation highlights the contrast between different views of the status of morphology. For some, morphology lacks independent structure, and syncretism reflects the internal structure of morphosyntactic features. For others, morphological structure is autonomous, and syncretism provides direct evidence …
The Syntax-Morphology Interface
Syncretism - where a single form serves two or more morphosyntactic functions - is a persistent problem at the syntax-morphology interface. It results from a 'mismatch' whereby the syntax of a language makes a particular distinction but the morphology does not. This pioneering book provides a full-length study of inflectional syncretism, presenting a typology of its occurrence across a wide range of languages. The implications of syncretism for t…
Deponency and Morphological Mismatches
Deponency is a mismatch between form and function in language that was first described for Latin, where there is a group of verbs (the deponents) that are morphologically passive but syntactically active. This is evidence of a larger problem involving the interface between syntax and morphology: inflectional morphology is supposed to specify syntactic function, but sometimes it sends out the wrong signal. Although the problem is as old as the Wes…
Syncretism
Syncretism occurs where two or more distinct morphosyntactic values are collapsed in a single inflected word form. In the current literature, instances of syncretism are being increasingly cited to support particular models of morphology and feature structure. This article takes a critical look at the sorts of analyses that the data actually warrant, in particular showing the limitations of an approach that treats syncretism as dependent on morph…
Morphological reversals
The term morphological reversal describes the situation where the members of a morphological opposition switch their functions in some context (as with Hebrew gender marking, where -Ø~- a marks masculine~feminine with adjectives but feminine~masculine with numerals). There is a long tradition of polemic against the notion that morphology can encode systematic reversals, and an equally long tradition of reintroducing them under different names (e.…
Prolegomena to a typology of morphological features
Historical observations on defectiveness
Predicate nouns in Russian
Defective Paradigms
An important design feature of language is the use of productive patterns in inflection. In English, we have pairs such as ‘enjoy’ — ‘enjoyed’, ‘agree’ — ‘agreed’, and many others. On the basis of this productive pattern, if we meet a new verb ‘transduce’ we know that there will be the form ‘transduced’. Even if the pattern is not fully regular, there will be a form available, as in ‘understand’ — ‘understood’. Surprisingly, this principle is som…
Defective Paradigms
"Deponency and Morphological Mismatches edited by Matthew Baerman, Greville G. Corbett, Dunstan Brown & Andrew Hippisley" "Deponency is a mismatch between form and function in language that was first described for Latin, where there is a group of verbs (the deponents) which are morphologically passive but syntactically active. This is evidence of a larger problem involving the interface between syntax and morphology: inflectional morphology is su…
Defectiveness and homophony avoidance
The idea that certain morphological and phonological irregularities are due to speakers' desire to avoid homophony is widely invoked, yet has also come under strong criticism as an explanation which is neither necessary nor sufficient. In most cases there is no way to resolve the question, since the assumption that something is being avoided is itself a theoretical construct. In this article I attempt to address this last difficulty by looking at…
Changing semantic factors in case selection
Paradigmatic Chaos in Nuer
The case-number suffixes of the Western Nilotic language Nuer (Frank 1999) display a remarkable combination of formal simplicity and distributional complexity, which is manifested in: (i) a seemingly erratic form-function mapping that precludes attributing a consistent meaning to the suffixes, and (ii) a wealth of inflection classes only barely differentiated from each other. The suffixes looks as if they were rule-generated, but behave as if the…
Covert systematicity in a distributionally complex system
Current thinking on inflection classes views them as organized networks rather than random assemblages of allomorphs (a view that reaches back to the 1980s, with such notions as Wurzel's paradigm structure conditions and Carstairs's paradigm economy). But we still find systems which appear to lack any visible implicative structure. A particularly striking example comes from Võro (a variety of South Estonian). Its system of verbal inflectional suf…
Understanding and Measuring Morphological Complexity
This book aims to assess the nature of morphological complexity, and the properties that distinguish it from the complexity manifested in other components of language.
The Oxford Handbook of Inflection
Inflection is the expression of grammatical information through changes in word forms. This confrontation between general principles of syntactic organization and the often idiosyncratic properties of words has brought about systems whose properties—among them an often high degree of complexity—are an important object of investigation in their own right. Because it is something that many languages happily do without, inflection has a curious and …
Understanding and Measuring Morphological Complexity
This work aims to assess the nature of morphological complexity, and the properties that distinguish it from the complexity manifested in other components of language. Chapters highlight novel perspectives on conceptualizing morphological complexity, and offer concrete means for measuring, quantifying and analysing it.
Oxford Handbook of Inflection
Chamorro Inflection
This chapter provides the first comprehensive account of the inflectional morphology of the Austronesian language Chamorro. It aims at clarifying a number of controversial issues such as the morphological status of the person markers (prefixes vs. proclitics) in the perfective aspect. The pros and cons of previous alternative analyses are taken into account. The rules which determine the use of allomorphs are spelt out and discussed in some detai…
The Morpheme
This chapter considers the nature and history of the notion of the morpheme in linguistic analysis, and the suitability of that concept to linguistic analysis. The historical origins of the term are traced, especially as it was used in American Structuralist work, and a range of problems with the literal application of the traditional concept to actual languages sketched. The role played by a notion of morpheme in a range of recent theories is th…
Linguistics (28 obras) · Philosophy (26 obras) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (25 obras) · Computer Science (23 obras) · Mathematics (12 obras) · Philosophy (12 obras) · History (11 obras) · Inflection (9 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (9 obras) · Linguistics and language evolution (9 obras)