Abstract

AbstractThe paper presents examples of meta-morphomes (a kind of morphomic patterns, involving syncretisms) in North Germanic. There has been some debate over the notion of such patterns, and the aim is therefore to present relatively clear cases. Five cases are presented, involving inflection in verbs, nouns and adjectives. The syncretisms are all ‘unnatural’; they do not make much sense for syntax, semantics or phonology. While patterns that are obvious to the linguist are not necessarily obvious to speakers, the paper presents diachronic evidence that these morphomic patterns have been noticed by speakers. At least some criticism against ‘morphomic’ analyses is based on implausible premises: An analysis in terms of features is not automatically preferable only by being possible; the idea of ‘taking morphology seriously’ is untenable; the claim that the morphomic approach is a mere enumeration of facts may involve a self-contradiction.

Highlights

  • The notion of MORPHOMES, alternatively MORPHOMIC PATTERNS, goes back to Aronoff (1994).1 In brief, morphomes are morphological patterns without complete motivation from outside of morphology

  • Morphomes are morphological patterns without complete motivation from outside of morphology. They include, among other things, inflection classes and cases of systematic formal identity not completely motivated by semantics, syntax or phonology

  • This paper has presented five different meta-morphomes in North Germanic, involving verbs, nouns and adjectives, i.e. the major word classes (Section 2)

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Summary

Introduction

The notion of MORPHOMES, alternatively MORPHOMIC PATTERNS, goes back to Aronoff (1994). In brief, morphomes are morphological (inflectional) patterns without complete motivation from outside of morphology. Morphomes are morphological (inflectional) patterns without complete motivation from outside of morphology They include, among other things, inflection classes and cases of systematic formal identity not completely motivated by semantics, syntax or phonology.. Aronoff (1994:46) calls morphomic patterns ‘pure form’ and even ‘useless’ It does seem useless for purposes outside of morphology that the shape of one particular member of the paradigm should signal, as it were, the shape of another member of the paradigm.. Herce (2020a:122) has already suggested a case in the Icelandic verb inflection (see Section 2.1 below) He argues that morphomes are present across the world’s languages (Herce 2020a:359), and that they are relatively infrequent (Herce 2020a:346).

Candidates
Imperative and past tense
Infinitive and past tense in modal verbs
Definite singular of feminines and definite plural of neuters
Definite singular and plural of adjectives
Objections relying on features
No theoretical interest?
Findings
Conclusions

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