Analogy in morphology

Modeling the choice of linking morphemes in Dutch

Bibliographic Data

ID3989259
AuthorsAndrea Krott (0000-0002-1667-3424), R Harald Baayen (0000-0003-3178-3944), Robert Schreuder
Year2001
Volume39
Issue1
Publication date2001-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling.2001.008
OpenAlexW2011016086
LanguageEN
Citations received36
References cited24

This study argues that a productive but not fully regular morphological phenomenon, the choice of linking morphemes in Dutch nominal compounds, is based on analogy. In Dutch, a linking -s- or -en- can appear between the constituents of a nominal compound. We present production experiments that reveal strong evidence that the choice of linking morphemes in novel compounds is analogically determined by the distribution of linking morphemes in what we call the ‘‘constituent families.’’ A ‘‘constituent family’’ is the set of existing compounds that share the first (or second) constituent with the novel compound. A further experiment shows that in the case of derived pseudo-words as first constituents, it is the family of the suffix that influences the choice of the following linking morpheme. In addition to these experiments, we present computational simulation studies in which the choices made by participants in our experiments are predicted with a high degree of accuracy using a machine-learning algorithm for analogy. These studies support the status of the constituent family as the primary basis for analogical prediction. Finally, we outline a psycholinguistic model for analogy in the mental lexicon that does not give up symbolic representations and, at the same time, captures nondeterministic variation

Analogy · Biology · Linguistics · Morpheme · Morphology (biology) · Theoretical linguistics · Zoology · History · Language and cultural evolution · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation