Constraints on allomorphy in inflexion
This thesis is concerned with the search for constraints on the relationship between morphosyntactic properties and their inflexional exponents - more precisely, constraints on deviation from the maximally simple 'agglutinative' pattern of one exponent to one property and vice versa. Three principal constraints are proposed the Peripherality Constraint, the Paradigm Economy Hypothesis and the Systematic Homonymy Claim. The Peripherality Constraint specifies that the realisation of a morphosyntactic property may be 'sensitive to' a property realised more centrally in the word (i.e. closer to the stem) but not to one realised more peripherally, unless it is sensitive in the same way to all the more peripheral properties in the same category. The Paradigm Economy Hypothesis concerns the upper limit on the number of distinct inflexional paradigms (declension-types or conjugation-types) into which the inflexional resources (affixes, ablaut etc.) of any part of speech in any language may be organized. Given an appropriate definition of 'paradigm', this upper limit is engaged to be extremely strict no more paradigms may occur than are required to put all the inflexions to work. This hypothesis has to be relaxed to
Carstairs, Andrew Damerell
Constraints on allomorphy in inflexion. This thesis is concerned with the search for constraints on the relationship between morphosyntactic properties and their inflexional exponents - more precisely, constraints on deviation from the maximally simple 'agglutinative' pattern of one exponent to one property and vice versa. Three principal constraints are proposed the Peripherality Constraint, the Paradigm Economy Hypothesis and the Systematic Homonymy Claim. The Peripherality Constraint specifies that the realisation of a morphosyntactic property may be 'sensitive to' a property realised more centrally in the word (i.e. closer to the stem) but not to one realised more peripherally, unless it is sensitive in the same way to all the more peripheral properties in the same category. The Paradigm Economy Hypothesis concerns the upper limit on the number of distinct inflexional paradigms (declension-types or conjugation-types) into which the inflexional resources (affixes, ablaut etc.) of any part of speech in any language may be organized. Given an appropriate definition of 'paradigm', this upper limit is engaged to be extremely strict no more paradigms may occur than are required to put all the inflexions to work. This hypothesis has to be relaxed to
constraints concern search constraint relationship morphosyntactic property exponent precisely constraint deviation simple pattern exponent property vice_versa three_principal constraint propose constraint paradigm economy hypothesis systematic homonymy claim constraint specifies realisation morphosyntactic property may sensitive property realise centrally word closer stem realise unless sensitive way peripheral property category paradigm economy hypothesis_concern upper limit number_distinct paradigm types types resource affix etc part speech language may organize given appropriate definition paradigm upper limit engage extremely strict paradigm may_occur require put work hypothesis relax