The rise of complexity in inflectional morphology
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Wolfgang U. Dressler
Abstract
This contribution is meant to deal, among the papers devoted to complexity in naturalness theory, with the rise of inflectional complexity in first language acquisition and in diachronic change. These two sections are preceded by an introduction devoted to the conceptualisation of inflectional complexity within the theory of Natural Morphology and to explicating factors of morphological complexity. The focus will be on unproductive patterns in acquisition after the child’s detection of morphological (de)composition. Additional topics will be the role of the naturalness parameters of transparency, iconicity, (bi)uniqueness, and of figure and ground. Main topics of the third section on diachrony will be distributed exponence and the control of three classical claims on diachronic change by Natural Morphology in studying changes from Latin to Romance languages.
© School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, 2011
Articles in the same Issue
- Part one. Complexity in Natural Linguistics. Guest edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler
- The rise of complexity in inflectional morphology
- Morphological complexity without abstractness: Italo-Romance metaphony
- A "natural" approach to text complexity
- Towards naturalness scales of pragmatic complexity
- Part two. Regular articles
- A current trend or a historic remnant? The case of a Lovari verb-forming suffix
- Two communicative levels and twofold illocutionary force in televised political debates
- Common Semantic Denominators of the Internal Vowel Alternation System in English
- Indexical pronouns: Generic uses as clues to their structure
- A comparative study of morphosyntactic and discourse errors of intermediate and advanced EFL learners’ writing
- On the phonetic instability of the Polish rhotic /r/
- Lexical and functional decomposition in syntax: A view from phonology
Articles in the same Issue
- Part one. Complexity in Natural Linguistics. Guest edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler
- The rise of complexity in inflectional morphology
- Morphological complexity without abstractness: Italo-Romance metaphony
- A "natural" approach to text complexity
- Towards naturalness scales of pragmatic complexity
- Part two. Regular articles
- A current trend or a historic remnant? The case of a Lovari verb-forming suffix
- Two communicative levels and twofold illocutionary force in televised political debates
- Common Semantic Denominators of the Internal Vowel Alternation System in English
- Indexical pronouns: Generic uses as clues to their structure
- A comparative study of morphosyntactic and discourse errors of intermediate and advanced EFL learners’ writing
- On the phonetic instability of the Polish rhotic /r/
- Lexical and functional decomposition in syntax: A view from phonology
