Flexemes in theory and in practice

Abstract

This paper provides an in-depth investigation of the possibility of systematically using flexemes – i.e., lexical units characterized in terms of form, as opposed to lexemes, characterized in terms of meaning – to model overabundance – i.e., the availability of more than one form in the same paradigm cell. The starting point is a preliminary evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of using flexemes to account for different overabundance phenomena, showing that flexemes are a good way to capture the systematicity of overabundance, either across lexemes or across cells. Consequently, it is suggested that flexemes can be an interesting technical solution for the creation of a lexicon of Latin verbs that not only documents all the competing wordforms available as principal parts, but also captures the systematic relationship that sometimes holds between variants filling different cells. A principled method to identify such systematicity is then described in detail. It is argued that a constructive approach based on the identity of stems and/or inflection class is not fully adequate for the data at hand. Therefore, the proposed procedure adopts an abstractive, word-based perspective that only relies on alternation patterns between unsegmented wordforms. Practical and theoretical implications of the work are finally discussed, particularly regarding the usefulness of a formal approach to the identification of lexical units and paradigm cells.