Introduction

Abstract

This chapter overviews some of the foundational assumptions informing contemporary views on morphological complexity and raises some of the central questions to be addressed in the volume's chapters from different perspectives. We propose a new composite approach in terms of a set of complexities in morphology instead of a view of morphological complexity as a unified phenomenon. This, we argue, allows us to individuate different aspects (e.g., syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic; inflectional vs. derivational, etc.) as logically independent variables of crosslinguistic variation requiring their own measures and analyses. A synopsis of the volume and of the individual contributions is also provided.