Abstract
How do speakers produce novel words? This programmatic paper synthesizes research in linguistics and neuroscience to argue for a parallel distributed architecture of the language system, in which distributed semantic representations activate competing form chunks in parallel. This process accounts for both the synchronic phenomenon of paradigm uniformity and the diachronic process of paradigm leveling; i.e., the shaping or reshaping of relatively infrequent forms by semantically-related forms of higher frequency. However, it also raises the question of how leveling is avoided. A negative feedback cycle is argued to be responsible. The negative feedback cycle suppresses activated form chunks with unintended semantics or connotations and allows the speaker to decide when to begin speaking. The negative feedback cycle explains away much of the evidence for paradigmatic mappings, allowing more of the grammar to be described with only direct form-meaning mappings/constructions. However, there remains an important residue of cases for which paradigmatic mappings are necessary. I show that these cases can be accounted for by spreading activation down paradigmatic associations as the source of the activation is being inhibited by negative feedback. The negative feedback cycle provides a mechanistic explanation for several phenomena in language change that have so far eluded usage-based accounts. In particular, it provides a mechanism for degrammaticalization and affix liberation (e.g., the detachment of -holic from the context(s) in which it occurs), explaining how chunks can gain productivity despite occurring in a single fixed context. It also provides a novel perspective on paradigm gaps. Directions for future work are outlined.
Highlights
Parallel processing with distributed semantic representations provides an account of paradigm uniformity, the pressure for paradigmatically related words like discipline and disciplinable to be similar in form
The present paper shows how this process too can be explained by the proposed Negative Feedback Cycle
The present paper has argued for a parallel, distributed, interactive architecture of language production in which distributed representations of messages are mapped onto chunks of form whose semantics overlap with those of the intended message
Summary
When asked to produce an adjective with the meaning “eligible to be disciplined,” most English speakers would produce DIsciplinable, with the initial stress of the base DIscipline(d) (Steriade, 2000), even while judging the resulting adjective a rather imperfect English word because the stress falls too far from the end (cf., comMEND∼comMENDable). To underscore the implications of this section for the architecture of grammar, arbitrary alternations can be produced without transformations, exclusively through the use of schematic (form-meaning) associations, as long as we assume 1) that meaning-form associations can be inhibitory (an assumption needed for truncation and backformation; Kapatsinski, 2021), 2) that activation flow is interactive, and 3) that there is negative feedback from form to message, which allows the speaker to detect a mismatch between the intended message and how the form they are about to produce is likely to be understood. Most alternations can in principle be produced by a fully product-oriented system such as one posited by usagebased Construction Grammar (Goldberg, 2002) or Network Theory (Bybee, 1985, 2001), and their mere existence does not threaten the Constructionist Hypothesis or require speakers to learn paradigmatic associations (cf., Pierrehumbert, 2006; Booij, 2010; Becker and Gouskova, 2016; Kapatsinski, 2018a) Another source of evidence for paradigmatic mappings is that alternations can be produced upon request (e.g., Cappelle, 2006).
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