Analogy in Grammar: Form and Acquisition

by James P. Blevins, Juliette Blevins

Overview

In this book, leading researchers in morphology, syntax, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics address central questions about the form and acquisition of analogy in grammar. What kinds of patterns do speakers select as the basis for analogical extension? What types of items are particularly susceptible or resistant to analogical pressures? At what levels do analogical processes operate and how do processes interact? What formal mechanisms are appropriate for modelling analogy? The novel synthesis of typological, theoretical, computational, and developmental paradigms in this volume brings us closer to answering these questions than ever before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199547548
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	07/15/2009
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

James P. Blevins is Assistant Director of Research at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics in the University of Cambridge. He received his Ph.D in Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1990, and has taught at The University of Western Australia, The University of Texas, The University of Alberta, and The University of California, Berkeley. His research deals mainly with the description and analysis of morphological systems and syntactic constructions, with a particular emphasis on paradigm structure and discontinuous dependencies. Areal interests include Germanic, Balto-Finnic, Balto-Slavic and Kartvelian.
Juliette Blevins is a Senior Scientist in the Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. She received her doctorate in Linguistics from MIT in 1985, and then joined the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests range from historical, descriptive, and typological studies, to theoretical analysis with a synthesis in her recent book Evolutionary Phonology (Cambridge University Press). Other interests include Oceanic languages, Australian Aboriginal languages, and Native American languages.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Analogy in Grammar, James P. Blevins and Juliette Blevins
Part I Typology and Complexity
2. Principal Parts and Degrees of Paradigmatic Transparency, Rafael Finkel and Greg Stump
3. Parts and Wholes: Implicative Patterns in Complex Morphological Systems, Farrell Ackerman, James P. Blevins, and Robert Malouf
4. Resolving Pattern Conflict: Variation and Selection in Phonology and Morphology, Andrew Wedel
Part II Learning
5. The Relation Between Linguistic Analogies and Lexical Categories, LouAnn Gerken, Rachel Wilson, Rebecca Gómez, and Erika Nurmsoo
6. The Role of Analogy for Compound Words, Andrea Krott
7. Morphological Analogy: Only a Beginning, John Goldsmith
Part III Modelling Analogy
8. Expanding Analogical Modelling into a General Theory of Language Prediction, Royal Skousen
9. Modelling Analogy as Probabilistic Grammar, Adam Albright
10. Words and Paradigms Bit by Bit: An Information-Theoretic Approach to the Processing of Inflection and Derivation, Petar Milin, Victor Kuperman, Aleksander Kostic, and R. Harald Baayen