Paradigmatic generalization of morphemes

Abstract

Syncretism in inflectional paradigms corresponds often only partially to natural classes. In this paper, I propose Morpheme Generalization Grammars, a novel paradigm-based approach to this phenomenon where the morphosyntactic content of every affix corresponds to the maximal area of the paradigm where it regularly occurs, whereas additional Morpheme Generalization Rules selectively extend its paradigmatic coverage by deleting part of the featural content of affixes for specific paradigm cells. The resulting formalism maximizes the use of paradigmatic extension rules familiar from the Rules of Referral in Paradigm Function Morphology, but has also close parallels to Impoverishment rules in Distributed Morphology. By imposing inherent restrictions on the content of inflectional affixes, it substantially reduces the amount of analytic ambiguity in the modeling of inflectional morphology.