Abstract
By using the system of Ancient Greek verb endings as a case study, this paper deals with the cross-linguistically recurrent appearance of inflectional paradigms that, though generally characterized by cumulative exponence, contain segmentable “semi-separate” endings in correspondence with low-frequency cells. Such an exponence system has information-theoretic properties which may be relevant from the point of view of morphological theory. In particular, both the phenomena of semi-separate exponence and the instances of syncretism that conform to the Brøndalian Principle of Compensation may be viewed as different manifestations of a same cross-linguistic tendency not to let a paradigm’s exponent set be too distant from the situation of equiprobability.- Anthology ID:
- 2014.lilt-11.5
- Volume:
- Linguistic Issues in Language Technology, Volume 11, 2014 - Theoretical and Computational Morphology: New Trends and Synergies
- Month:
- Dec
- Year:
- 2014
- Address:
- Venue:
- LILT
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- CSLI Publications
- Note:
- Pages:
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2014.lilt-11.5
- DOI:
- Cite (ACL):
- Paolo Milizia. 2014. Semi-separate exponence in cumulative paradigms. Information-theoretic properties exemplified by Ancient Greek verb endings. Linguistic Issues in Language Technology, 11.
- Cite (Informal):
- Semi-separate exponence in cumulative paradigms. Information-theoretic properties exemplified by Ancient Greek verb endings (Milizia, LILT 2014)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/emnlp-22-attachments/2014.lilt-11.5.pdf