Type frequency is not the only factor that determines productivity, so the Tolerance Principle is not enough
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21294328 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hans-Olav Enger (University of Oslo Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies Postboks 1102, Blindern, 0317 Oslo Norway), Hans‐olav Enger (University of Oslo, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 144 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 161-187 |
| Publication date | 2022-06-27 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (PBB) (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0005-8076 • E-ISSN: 1865-9373 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/bgsl-2022-0013 |
| OpenAlex | W4280527515 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 45 |
Inflection classes that have many members often gain members from classes that have fewer. While this tendency is often pointed out in diachronic linguistics, the American psycholinguist Charles Yang (2016) goes further. He claims this to be always the case, so that minority classes cannot be productive at the expense of majority classes, and that productivity actually can be predicted. By this view, productivity is a direct function of type frequency; there are no other factors determining whether a pattern is productive. The claim of this paper is that type frequency is not the only factor determining productivity, and that while Yang’s approach, the ›Tolerance Principle‹, is interesting, it cannot be upheld in its present form. The paper presents an example of suppletion spreading in Germanic, and it presents examples of minority patterns spreading in North Germanic. Parallels outside of Germanic are pointed out. Also, it is argued that Yang’s (2016) analysis of English verb inflection and German noun inflection is insufficient, so these important case-studies, presented in favour of the Tolerance Principle, do not support it. In general, the paper emphasises the importance of ›local generalisations‹ and of seeing language as a ›system‹ of low-level regularities, not all-encompassing rules. While type frequency certainly seems important for productivity, inflectional morphology is a complex matter; productivity is also influenced by various factors of a more structural nature
Economics · Function (biology) · German · Germanic languages · Inflection · Linguistics · Operations management · Parallels · Productivity · Verb · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
Constructions at Work
The Price of Linguistic Productivity
Cognitive Linguistics
Prinzipien der Irregularisierung
Zum Heutigen Stand Der Sprachwissenschaft
Mechanistic formal approaches to language acquisition
On the intolerance of the Tolerance Principle
Formalist modeling and psychological reality
What kind of evidence could refute the UG hypothesis
On the relation between gender and declension
Usage-based vs. rule-based learning
The Latin ‘third stem’ and its Romance descendants
Abstractions made of exemplars or ‘You’re all right, and I’ve changed my mind’
Against stored abstractions
Gender
German Inflection
Minimalism is functionalism
Stem Alternants As Morphological Signata
System-congruity and violable constraints in German weak declension
A class of English irregular verbs∗
Linguistic variation and micro-cues in first language acquisition
Source- and product-oriented strategies in L2 acquisition of plural marking in German
Construction Morphology
Morphological Organization
Abductive and Deductive Change
Morphological Classes as Natural Categories
Inflection Classes, Gender, and the Principle of Contrast
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |