Thoughts on morphomes, on a Scandinavian background
Since Aronoff (1994), the notion of morphomic patterns, i.e. inflectional patterns without complete motivation from outside of morphology, has gained popularity, especially in works on Romance (e.g. Maiden 2016a). However, the approach has also been criticized. Bowern (2015) suggests that there is very little evidence for autonomously morphological patterns arising. This paper presents a number of Scandinavian counter-examples to her claim. Bermúdez-Otero & Luís (2016) present a number of meta-theoretical objections against the notion of morphomic patterns. Arguments are presented to the effect that a number of these objections are less significant than they appear; some are even misguided.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Explicating the morphome
- 2.1Outlining the morphome
- 2.2Not useless after all: Intra-morphological meaning
- 2.3Why emphasize morphomes?
- 3.On some recent objections against morphomic patterns
- 3.1The sociological argument
- 3.2The Savognin argument and a preliminary conclusion
- 3.3Stability and change: And clarification of a hypothesis
- 4.Some examples from Scandinavian
- 4.1A new inflection class in Norwegian, Swedish and Faroese
- 4.2Trying to copy your new neighbor
- 4.3Meat from shoulders in Meldal
- 4.4Strengthening of inflection class in Swedish and in Østfold
- 4.4.1Swedish
- 4.4.2Østfold Norwegian: Trøgstad, Askim, Spydeberg
- 4.4.3Theoretical implications of the TAS strengthening and the Meldal change
- 4.5Neuters in transition
- 4.5.1A new inflection class for neuters in East Norwegian
- 4.5.2A new class of neuters in Swedish
- 4.5.3Inflectional parsimony
- 4.6Body part nouns
- 4.6.1Ears and eyes
- 4.6.2Teeth and hands
- 4.7Summing up Section 4
- 5.Some meta-objections and how to deal with them
- 5.1On white and black swans
- 5.2Learnability
- 5.3“Taking morphology seriously”
- 5.3.1Reducing the heat by pouring oil on the fire?
- 5.3.2Is the alternative really so promising?
- 5.3.3Morphomic patterns need not be the end-point of analysis
- 5.4Form-form relations
- 5.5What is autonomy?
- 6.Concluding remarks
- 6.1Independently morphological innovations
- 6.2Some other lessons to take away
- 6.3Envoi
-
Acknowledgments
-
Notes
-
References
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2023.
Meta-morphomic patterns in North Germanic.
Nordic Journal of Linguistics 46:1
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