Chapter 1
All things morphology
An introduction
It is of course too big a promise that this volume would
deliver summaries of important work in all subfields of the vast and ancient
discipline of morphology, like a medieval street fair of arcane
morphological ideas. This is not an encyclopedia, despite the title. Rather,
we have attempted here to provide a view of where the field has been and
where it is today within a particular theoretical framework, gathering up
new and representative work in morphology by both eminent and emerging
scholars, and touching on a very wide range of topics, approaches, and
theoretical points of view. The place where the authors of these seemingly
disparate articles have a common touchstone is in their focus on a
word-based, paradigmatic approach to morphology, which was brought to
attention in the modern era by the likes of Matthews (1965), Aronoff (1976, 1994), and Anderson
(1992). The chapters of this book show that this perspective
accounts for both the independence of morphology and for its interactions
with syntax and phonology. One prominent name missing from the list of
contributors is Mark Aronoff. This is hardly an accident: this volume was
conceived as a way to shine light on the importance of his work by
contributors who in virtually all cases have collaborated with or been
mentored by Prof. Aronoff. We hope that he will be honored with the research
we have produced and see his influence in it.
Article outline
- 1.Reaching back: Reinterpreting traditional views
- 2.Morphemes and the autonomy of morphology
- 3.Autonomous and word-based morphology: Aronovian perspective
- 4.Outline of the book
- 4.1Paradigms
- 4.2Words, stems, and affixes
- 4.3Competition, inheritance, and defaults
- 4.4Morphomes
- 4.5Interfaces
- 5.Conclusion
-
References