Paradigmatic gaps (“missing” inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random... more Paradigmatic gaps (“missing” inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language’s history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology–syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.
Understanding Morphology offers students an introduction to the study of word structure that star... more Understanding Morphology offers students an introduction to the study of word structure that starts at the very beginning. Assuming no knowledge of the field of morphology, the book present a broad range of morphological phenomena from a variety of languages.
The goal is to shed light on major issues of analysis, so chapters are structured around essential questions: What are the basic units of the lexicon -- words or morphemes? Is there a categorical difference between inflection and derivation? Do the same principles apply to both word formation and sentence formation? What makes on morphological rule more productive than another? Are inflectional paradigms part of the morphological architecture?
To answer these questions, the authors draw on the best research available, discussing a variety of theoretical approaches. This second edition also expands the discussion of several topics, including frequency effects, the structure of the lexicon, and productivity.
Each chapter includes a summary, suggestions for further reading, and comprehension exercises (with answers). New to this second edition are exploratory exercises which allow students to put what they have read into practice and extend their knowledge.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 4, Article 11, 2021
"Paradigm shape," our term for the morphological structure formed by implicative relations betwee... more "Paradigm shape," our term for the morphological structure formed by implicative relations between inflected forms, has not been formally quantified in a gradient manner. We develop a method to formalize paradigm shape by modeling the joint effect of stem alternations and affixes. Applied to Spanish verbs, our model successfully captures aspects of both allomorphic and distributional classes. These results are replicable and extendable to other languages.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 3, Article 40, 2020
Historical linguists observe that many fusional (unsegmentable) morphological structures develope... more Historical linguists observe that many fusional (unsegmentable) morphological structures developed from agglutinative (segmentable) predecessors. Such changes may result when learners fail to acquire a phonological alternation , and instead, "chunk" the altered versions of morphemes and memorize them as underlying representations. We present a Bayesian model of this process, which learns which morphosyntactic properties are chunked together , what their underlying representations are, and what phonological processes apply to them. In simulations using artificial data, we provide quantitative support to two claims about agglutinative and fusional structures: that variably-realized morphological markers discourage fusion from developing, but that stress-based vowel reduction encourages it.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 3, Article 39, 2020
Morphological inflection, as an engineering task in NLP, has seen a rise in the use of neural seq... more Morphological inflection, as an engineering task in NLP, has seen a rise in the use of neural sequence-to-sequence models (Kann and Schütze, 2016; Cotterell et al., 2018; Aharoni and Goldberg, 2017). While these out-perform traditional systems based on edit rule induction, it is hard to interpret what they are learning in linguistic terms. We propose a new method of analyzing morphological sequence-to-sequence models which groups errors into linguistically meaningful classes, making what the model learns more transparent. As a case study, we analyze a seq2seq model on Russian, finding that semantic and lexically conditioned allomorphy (e.g. inanimate nouns like ZAVOD 'factory' and animates like OTEC 'father' have different, animacy-conditioned accusative forms) are responsible for its relatively low accuracy. Augmenting the model with word embeddings as a proxy for lexical semantics leads to significant improvements in predicted wordform accuracy.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 3, Article 10, 2020
The interpredictability of the inflected forms of lexemes is increasingly important to questions ... more The interpredictability of the inflected forms of lexemes is increasingly important to questions of morphological complexity and typology, but tools to quantify and visualize this aspect of inflectional organization are lacking, inhibiting effective cross-linguistic comparison. In this paper I use metrics from graph theory to describe and compare the organizational structure of inflectional systems. Graph theory offers a well-established toolbox for describing the properties of networks, making it ideal for this purpose. Comparison of nine languages reveals previously unobserved generalizations about the typological space of morphological systems. This is the first paper to apply graph-theoretic tools to the goal of inflectional typology.
We survey research using neural sequence-to-sequence models as computational models of morphologi... more We survey research using neural sequence-to-sequence models as computational models of morphological learning and learnability. We discuss their use in determining the predictability of inflectional exponents , in making predictions about language acquisition and in mod-eling language change. Finally, we make some proposals for future work in these areas.
Whether predicates describe events as inherently bounded (telic) or unbounded (atelic) is usually... more Whether predicates describe events as inherently bounded (telic) or unbounded (atelic) is usually understood to be an emergent property that depends on several factors; few, if any, spoken languages have dedicated morphology to mark the distinction. It is thus surprising that sign languages have been proposed to have dedicated morphology for telicity, and moreover that it takes a form which iconically reflects the underlying event structure-this is known as the "Event Visibility Hypothesis" (EVH) (Wilbur 2008). The EVH has been extended with claims about its universality in sign languages (Wilbur 2008; Malaia & Wilbur 2012), its gradient nature (Kuhn 2017), and its iconic transparency (Strickland et al. 2015). However, in this paper we argue that the status of this relationship between form and meaning remains an open question due to (a) lack of independent tests for telicity, (b) lack of lexical coverage, (c) lack of demonstration that formal expressions of telicity are morphological in nature, rather than a lexical property, and (d) inability to sufficiently dissociate telicity and perfectivity. We present new data coming from verbs that alternate in both form and meaning in ASL that is in line with the EVH, and conclude that while there is evidence supporting a morphological marker, the proposed form and telicity are not isomorphic in their distribution, significantly limiting the "visibility" of the event structure. We further propose that much of the related iconicity is the result of several independent factors also found in spoken languages, so that sign languages may be more similar to spoken languages than typically implied in this domain.
The complexities of morphology, edited by Peter Arkadiev and Francesco Gardani
The complexity of an inflection class system is the average extent to which elements in the syste... more The complexity of an inflection class system is the average extent to which elements in the system inhibit motivated inferences about the realization of lexemes' paradigm cells. Research shows that systems tend to exhibit relatively low complexity in this sense. However, representations of inflectional systems tend to include only affixal and regular patterns, leaving questions about how irregular patterns and non-affixal 'layers' of inflectional exponence affect the complexity of a system. We address these questions by exploring four layers of inflectional exponence of Russian nouns, including irregular patterns within each layer. Our data show that the Russian noun system exhibits relatively low complexity even when irregular and non-affixal exponence are included in it. The implicative structure of the system and the uneven distribution of lexemes across classes mitigate the uncertainty associated with irregular and non-affixal exponence. We also find that irregularity in some layers of exponence increases the complexity of the system, but in others it does not. This finding is consistent with the conclusion that the complexity of the whole system is not merely the sum of the complexity of its parts. Low systemic complexity in inflectional systems is, thus, an emergent property that may extend to inflectional patterns regardless of whether they are affixal and/or regular.
And thus you are everywhere honored: Studies dedicated to Brian D. Joseph, 2019
Greek nouns offer an interesting case of competition between the lexical accent of the stem and a... more Greek nouns offer an interesting case of competition between the lexical accent of the stem and accent assigned by some inflectional suffixes (e.g. genitive plural -ōn). I show that previous accounts make incorrect predictions for some nouns (e.g. ANTÍLALOS ‘echo’, DAMÁSKĪNO ‘plum’). These reflect stress levelling that turns out to be challenging to account for in theoretical terms. I sketch a formal analysis based on the principles of Network Morphology (Brown & Hippisley 2012). Key properties of the analysis are that it treats inflectional suffixes and inflectional accent as separate dimensions of exponence and distinguishes between the fact that some suffixes are associated with accentual properties and the form that the accent takes. Finally, I discuss the implications of the data and analysis for the concept of headedness below the level of the word.
Balkan syntax and (universal) principles of grammar, 2018
Various Balkan languages have a string of material called here the "verbal complex", in which a v... more Various Balkan languages have a string of material called here the "verbal complex", in which a verb occurs with various markers for tense, modality , negation, and argument structure. We examine here this verbal complex with regard to its status as a syntactic element or a morphological element. First, we carefully outline the theoretical basis for determining the status of a given entity and we then argue that the verbal complexes display different degrees of morphologization in the different languages. Albanian and Greek show the highest degree of morphologization of the verbal complex, with Macedonian close to them in this regard. Bulgarian shows a lesser degree of morphologization than Macedonian, making for an interesting split within East South Slavic, and Serbian shows an even lesser degree. We argue further that certain aspects of the verbal complex, especially in the languages with the greatest morphologization, represent contact-related convergence, and draw from this a general claim about the role of surface structure in language contact.
In this Festschrift paper I offer some thoughts on the space between "agreement errors" and "conv... more In this Festschrift paper I offer some thoughts on the space between "agreement errors" and "conventionalized grammar", based on Croatian morphosyntactic agreement patterns found on Wikipedia. Croatian shows a robust range of agreement patterns that do not involve full subject agreement, including nearest conjunct agreement, agreement resolution, default masculine agreement, agreement with predicative nominatives, semantic (notional) agreement, and subject and object NP structural attraction. (Most of these patterns had previously been attested, but this paper adds structural attraction to the list.) Previous work has tended to distinguish between conventionalized agreement (grammar proper) and errors resulting from on-line processing. However, the variety of Croatian patterns found in naturally-occurring language use, and similarities among them, suggest that conventionalized agreement and agreement errors are endpoints on a continuum, rather than firmly distinct types. I speculate that they are connected by the ways in which conventionalized agreement systems are shaped, mediated and reinforced by language in practice.
This state-of-the-field article traces some recent trajectories of morphological theory, illustra... more This state-of-the-field article traces some recent trajectories of morphological theory, illustrated via four classic problems of Slavic morphology: vowel-zero alternation , stem consonant mutations, paradigmatic gaps, and animacy-determined accusative syncretism. Using Russian as the primary illustrating data, one theme that emerges is that theories that leverage the distributional properties of the lexicon have made progress against previously intractable aspects of these phenomena, including idiosyncratic lexical distributions, unexpected (non)productivity, and distributions shared by distinct exponents. In turn, the analyses raise new questions.
The complexity of an inflection class system can be defined as the average extent to which elemen... more The complexity of an inflection class system can be defined as the average extent to which elements in the system inhibit motivated inferences about the realization of lexemes' paradigm cells. Research shows that systems tend to exhibit relatively low complexity in this sense. However, relatively little work has explored how structural and distributional aspects of the inflectional system produce this outcome. In this paper we use the tools of information theory to do so. We explore a set of nine languages that have robust inflection class systems: Palantla Chinantec, French, Modern Greek, Icelandic, Kadiwéu, Nuer, Russian, Seri, and Võro. The data show that the extent to which implicative paradigmatic structure does work to minimize the complexity of the system differs significantly. In fact, the nine languages fall into three graph types based on their implicative structure. Moreover, low type frequency classes disproportionately contribute to the complexity of inflectional systems, but we hypothesize that their freedom to detract in this way may depend on the extent to which implicative structure is systemically important. We thus propose that the amount of 'work' done by implicative relations in structuring inflection classes should be considered a typological parameter.
Rich cross-linguistic variability in the strictness of affix ordering raises questions about how ... more Rich cross-linguistic variability in the strictness of affix ordering raises questions about how universal and language-specific factors interact to determine affix combinability patterns. While focus has been primarily on the interaction of semantic scope and language-specific formal factors, in this paper we take a first step towards a cross-linguistic, typological perspective on a different potential influencing factor: lexical processing. Based on a corpus study, we show that derivational suffix ordering is less constrained in Russian than in English. And significantly, statistical-distributional evidence also suggests that Russian words are overall more likely to be decomposed during lexical access. This hints that the balance between whole-word storage and decomposition in a given language may partly determine freeness of derivational affix ordering, with more decomposition leading to more freedom of combination. This is consistent with an interpretation of the complexity-based ordering hypothesis.
A number of Russian verbs lack 1SG non-past forms. These paradigmatic gaps are puzzling because t... more A number of Russian verbs lack 1SG non-past forms. These paradigmatic gaps are puzzling because they seemingly contradict the highly productive nature of inflectional systems. We model the persistence and spread of Russian gaps via a multi-agent model with Bayesian learning. We ran three simulations: no grammar learning, learning with arbitrary analogical pressure, and morphophonologically conditioned learning. We compare the results to the attested historical development of the gaps. Contradicting previous accounts, we propose that the persistence of gaps can be explained in the absence of synchronic competition between forms.
Paradigmatic gaps (“missing” inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random... more Paradigmatic gaps (“missing” inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language’s history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology–syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.
Understanding Morphology offers students an introduction to the study of word structure that star... more Understanding Morphology offers students an introduction to the study of word structure that starts at the very beginning. Assuming no knowledge of the field of morphology, the book present a broad range of morphological phenomena from a variety of languages.
The goal is to shed light on major issues of analysis, so chapters are structured around essential questions: What are the basic units of the lexicon -- words or morphemes? Is there a categorical difference between inflection and derivation? Do the same principles apply to both word formation and sentence formation? What makes on morphological rule more productive than another? Are inflectional paradigms part of the morphological architecture?
To answer these questions, the authors draw on the best research available, discussing a variety of theoretical approaches. This second edition also expands the discussion of several topics, including frequency effects, the structure of the lexicon, and productivity.
Each chapter includes a summary, suggestions for further reading, and comprehension exercises (with answers). New to this second edition are exploratory exercises which allow students to put what they have read into practice and extend their knowledge.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 4, Article 11, 2021
"Paradigm shape," our term for the morphological structure formed by implicative relations betwee... more "Paradigm shape," our term for the morphological structure formed by implicative relations between inflected forms, has not been formally quantified in a gradient manner. We develop a method to formalize paradigm shape by modeling the joint effect of stem alternations and affixes. Applied to Spanish verbs, our model successfully captures aspects of both allomorphic and distributional classes. These results are replicable and extendable to other languages.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 3, Article 40, 2020
Historical linguists observe that many fusional (unsegmentable) morphological structures develope... more Historical linguists observe that many fusional (unsegmentable) morphological structures developed from agglutinative (segmentable) predecessors. Such changes may result when learners fail to acquire a phonological alternation , and instead, "chunk" the altered versions of morphemes and memorize them as underlying representations. We present a Bayesian model of this process, which learns which morphosyntactic properties are chunked together , what their underlying representations are, and what phonological processes apply to them. In simulations using artificial data, we provide quantitative support to two claims about agglutinative and fusional structures: that variably-realized morphological markers discourage fusion from developing, but that stress-based vowel reduction encourages it.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 3, Article 39, 2020
Morphological inflection, as an engineering task in NLP, has seen a rise in the use of neural seq... more Morphological inflection, as an engineering task in NLP, has seen a rise in the use of neural sequence-to-sequence models (Kann and Schütze, 2016; Cotterell et al., 2018; Aharoni and Goldberg, 2017). While these out-perform traditional systems based on edit rule induction, it is hard to interpret what they are learning in linguistic terms. We propose a new method of analyzing morphological sequence-to-sequence models which groups errors into linguistically meaningful classes, making what the model learns more transparent. As a case study, we analyze a seq2seq model on Russian, finding that semantic and lexically conditioned allomorphy (e.g. inanimate nouns like ZAVOD 'factory' and animates like OTEC 'father' have different, animacy-conditioned accusative forms) are responsible for its relatively low accuracy. Augmenting the model with word embeddings as a proxy for lexical semantics leads to significant improvements in predicted wordform accuracy.
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 3, Article 10, 2020
The interpredictability of the inflected forms of lexemes is increasingly important to questions ... more The interpredictability of the inflected forms of lexemes is increasingly important to questions of morphological complexity and typology, but tools to quantify and visualize this aspect of inflectional organization are lacking, inhibiting effective cross-linguistic comparison. In this paper I use metrics from graph theory to describe and compare the organizational structure of inflectional systems. Graph theory offers a well-established toolbox for describing the properties of networks, making it ideal for this purpose. Comparison of nine languages reveals previously unobserved generalizations about the typological space of morphological systems. This is the first paper to apply graph-theoretic tools to the goal of inflectional typology.
We survey research using neural sequence-to-sequence models as computational models of morphologi... more We survey research using neural sequence-to-sequence models as computational models of morphological learning and learnability. We discuss their use in determining the predictability of inflectional exponents , in making predictions about language acquisition and in mod-eling language change. Finally, we make some proposals for future work in these areas.
Whether predicates describe events as inherently bounded (telic) or unbounded (atelic) is usually... more Whether predicates describe events as inherently bounded (telic) or unbounded (atelic) is usually understood to be an emergent property that depends on several factors; few, if any, spoken languages have dedicated morphology to mark the distinction. It is thus surprising that sign languages have been proposed to have dedicated morphology for telicity, and moreover that it takes a form which iconically reflects the underlying event structure-this is known as the "Event Visibility Hypothesis" (EVH) (Wilbur 2008). The EVH has been extended with claims about its universality in sign languages (Wilbur 2008; Malaia & Wilbur 2012), its gradient nature (Kuhn 2017), and its iconic transparency (Strickland et al. 2015). However, in this paper we argue that the status of this relationship between form and meaning remains an open question due to (a) lack of independent tests for telicity, (b) lack of lexical coverage, (c) lack of demonstration that formal expressions of telicity are morphological in nature, rather than a lexical property, and (d) inability to sufficiently dissociate telicity and perfectivity. We present new data coming from verbs that alternate in both form and meaning in ASL that is in line with the EVH, and conclude that while there is evidence supporting a morphological marker, the proposed form and telicity are not isomorphic in their distribution, significantly limiting the "visibility" of the event structure. We further propose that much of the related iconicity is the result of several independent factors also found in spoken languages, so that sign languages may be more similar to spoken languages than typically implied in this domain.
The complexities of morphology, edited by Peter Arkadiev and Francesco Gardani
The complexity of an inflection class system is the average extent to which elements in the syste... more The complexity of an inflection class system is the average extent to which elements in the system inhibit motivated inferences about the realization of lexemes' paradigm cells. Research shows that systems tend to exhibit relatively low complexity in this sense. However, representations of inflectional systems tend to include only affixal and regular patterns, leaving questions about how irregular patterns and non-affixal 'layers' of inflectional exponence affect the complexity of a system. We address these questions by exploring four layers of inflectional exponence of Russian nouns, including irregular patterns within each layer. Our data show that the Russian noun system exhibits relatively low complexity even when irregular and non-affixal exponence are included in it. The implicative structure of the system and the uneven distribution of lexemes across classes mitigate the uncertainty associated with irregular and non-affixal exponence. We also find that irregularity in some layers of exponence increases the complexity of the system, but in others it does not. This finding is consistent with the conclusion that the complexity of the whole system is not merely the sum of the complexity of its parts. Low systemic complexity in inflectional systems is, thus, an emergent property that may extend to inflectional patterns regardless of whether they are affixal and/or regular.
And thus you are everywhere honored: Studies dedicated to Brian D. Joseph, 2019
Greek nouns offer an interesting case of competition between the lexical accent of the stem and a... more Greek nouns offer an interesting case of competition between the lexical accent of the stem and accent assigned by some inflectional suffixes (e.g. genitive plural -ōn). I show that previous accounts make incorrect predictions for some nouns (e.g. ANTÍLALOS ‘echo’, DAMÁSKĪNO ‘plum’). These reflect stress levelling that turns out to be challenging to account for in theoretical terms. I sketch a formal analysis based on the principles of Network Morphology (Brown & Hippisley 2012). Key properties of the analysis are that it treats inflectional suffixes and inflectional accent as separate dimensions of exponence and distinguishes between the fact that some suffixes are associated with accentual properties and the form that the accent takes. Finally, I discuss the implications of the data and analysis for the concept of headedness below the level of the word.
Balkan syntax and (universal) principles of grammar, 2018
Various Balkan languages have a string of material called here the "verbal complex", in which a v... more Various Balkan languages have a string of material called here the "verbal complex", in which a verb occurs with various markers for tense, modality , negation, and argument structure. We examine here this verbal complex with regard to its status as a syntactic element or a morphological element. First, we carefully outline the theoretical basis for determining the status of a given entity and we then argue that the verbal complexes display different degrees of morphologization in the different languages. Albanian and Greek show the highest degree of morphologization of the verbal complex, with Macedonian close to them in this regard. Bulgarian shows a lesser degree of morphologization than Macedonian, making for an interesting split within East South Slavic, and Serbian shows an even lesser degree. We argue further that certain aspects of the verbal complex, especially in the languages with the greatest morphologization, represent contact-related convergence, and draw from this a general claim about the role of surface structure in language contact.
In this Festschrift paper I offer some thoughts on the space between "agreement errors" and "conv... more In this Festschrift paper I offer some thoughts on the space between "agreement errors" and "conventionalized grammar", based on Croatian morphosyntactic agreement patterns found on Wikipedia. Croatian shows a robust range of agreement patterns that do not involve full subject agreement, including nearest conjunct agreement, agreement resolution, default masculine agreement, agreement with predicative nominatives, semantic (notional) agreement, and subject and object NP structural attraction. (Most of these patterns had previously been attested, but this paper adds structural attraction to the list.) Previous work has tended to distinguish between conventionalized agreement (grammar proper) and errors resulting from on-line processing. However, the variety of Croatian patterns found in naturally-occurring language use, and similarities among them, suggest that conventionalized agreement and agreement errors are endpoints on a continuum, rather than firmly distinct types. I speculate that they are connected by the ways in which conventionalized agreement systems are shaped, mediated and reinforced by language in practice.
This state-of-the-field article traces some recent trajectories of morphological theory, illustra... more This state-of-the-field article traces some recent trajectories of morphological theory, illustrated via four classic problems of Slavic morphology: vowel-zero alternation , stem consonant mutations, paradigmatic gaps, and animacy-determined accusative syncretism. Using Russian as the primary illustrating data, one theme that emerges is that theories that leverage the distributional properties of the lexicon have made progress against previously intractable aspects of these phenomena, including idiosyncratic lexical distributions, unexpected (non)productivity, and distributions shared by distinct exponents. In turn, the analyses raise new questions.
The complexity of an inflection class system can be defined as the average extent to which elemen... more The complexity of an inflection class system can be defined as the average extent to which elements in the system inhibit motivated inferences about the realization of lexemes' paradigm cells. Research shows that systems tend to exhibit relatively low complexity in this sense. However, relatively little work has explored how structural and distributional aspects of the inflectional system produce this outcome. In this paper we use the tools of information theory to do so. We explore a set of nine languages that have robust inflection class systems: Palantla Chinantec, French, Modern Greek, Icelandic, Kadiwéu, Nuer, Russian, Seri, and Võro. The data show that the extent to which implicative paradigmatic structure does work to minimize the complexity of the system differs significantly. In fact, the nine languages fall into three graph types based on their implicative structure. Moreover, low type frequency classes disproportionately contribute to the complexity of inflectional systems, but we hypothesize that their freedom to detract in this way may depend on the extent to which implicative structure is systemically important. We thus propose that the amount of 'work' done by implicative relations in structuring inflection classes should be considered a typological parameter.
Rich cross-linguistic variability in the strictness of affix ordering raises questions about how ... more Rich cross-linguistic variability in the strictness of affix ordering raises questions about how universal and language-specific factors interact to determine affix combinability patterns. While focus has been primarily on the interaction of semantic scope and language-specific formal factors, in this paper we take a first step towards a cross-linguistic, typological perspective on a different potential influencing factor: lexical processing. Based on a corpus study, we show that derivational suffix ordering is less constrained in Russian than in English. And significantly, statistical-distributional evidence also suggests that Russian words are overall more likely to be decomposed during lexical access. This hints that the balance between whole-word storage and decomposition in a given language may partly determine freeness of derivational affix ordering, with more decomposition leading to more freedom of combination. This is consistent with an interpretation of the complexity-based ordering hypothesis.
A number of Russian verbs lack 1SG non-past forms. These paradigmatic gaps are puzzling because t... more A number of Russian verbs lack 1SG non-past forms. These paradigmatic gaps are puzzling because they seemingly contradict the highly productive nature of inflectional systems. We model the persistence and spread of Russian gaps via a multi-agent model with Bayesian learning. We ran three simulations: no grammar learning, learning with arbitrary analogical pressure, and morphophonologically conditioned learning. We compare the results to the attested historical development of the gaps. Contradicting previous accounts, we propose that the persistence of gaps can be explained in the absence of synchronic competition between forms.
Abralin ao Vivo -- Linguists Online lecture series, 2020
When speakers need to predict an inflected form of some word, the prediction they make is known t... more When speakers need to predict an inflected form of some word, the prediction they make is known to be sensitive to the behavior of lexical neighbors (‘nearby’ words in the lexicon). In this sense, inflectional generalization is analogical and local in nature. At the same time, the relationship between these local-level generalizations and the system-level organization of inflectional systems is not straightforward. While functionalist pressures and learning biases have become popular modes of explanation for the emergence of system-level organization, in this lecture I argue that a full understanding requires more attention to the local environments in which generalization occurs. In turn, this requires precise quantitative tools for describing inflectional organization and I introduce an approach based on the idea of inflectional systems as networks. This is a lecture in the Abralin ao Vivo -- Linguists Online series. It will be broadcast live on Saturday October 17th, 2020 at 10am BRT (9am EDT, 13.00 GMT) and available afterwards for streaming. Link for live transmission and streaming: https://aovivo.abralin.org/lives/andrea-d-sims/
Complex systems Two widespread proper/es of complex systems Adapta/on to changes in the envir... more Complex systems Two widespread proper/es of complex systems Adapta/on to changes in the environment Self--organiza/on and emergence Explana/on lies in how elements in the system interact with each other in the context of some environment, more than in the inherent traits of individual elements 7 COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND EXPLANATION (2016). How inflec/on class systems work:
The Ohio State University is hosting the 5th American International Morphology Meeting (AIMM5), A... more The Ohio State University is hosting the 5th American International Morphology Meeting (AIMM5), August 26-29, 2021. The conference will be held virtually. This is the Call for Papers. Abstract submission deadline extended to May 1, 2021.
This workshop is designed to explore the hypothesis that morphological structures interact dynami... more This workshop is designed to explore the hypothesis that morphological structures interact dynamically with lexical processing and storage, with the parameters of morphological typology being partly dependent on the cognitive pathways for processing, storage, and generalization of word structure, and vice versa. This is the call for papers. More information is available at the workshop website: https://u.osu.edu/mtlc2017/
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Books by Andrea Sims
The goal is to shed light on major issues of analysis, so chapters are structured around essential questions: What are the basic units of the lexicon -- words or morphemes? Is there a categorical difference between inflection and derivation? Do the same principles apply to both word formation and sentence formation? What makes on morphological rule more productive than another? Are inflectional paradigms part of the morphological architecture?
To answer these questions, the authors draw on the best research available, discussing a variety of theoretical approaches. This second edition also expands the discussion of several topics, including frequency effects, the structure of the lexicon, and productivity.
Each chapter includes a summary, suggestions for further reading, and comprehension exercises (with answers). New to this second edition are exploratory exercises which allow students to put what they have read into practice and extend their knowledge.
Papers by Andrea Sims
The goal is to shed light on major issues of analysis, so chapters are structured around essential questions: What are the basic units of the lexicon -- words or morphemes? Is there a categorical difference between inflection and derivation? Do the same principles apply to both word formation and sentence formation? What makes on morphological rule more productive than another? Are inflectional paradigms part of the morphological architecture?
To answer these questions, the authors draw on the best research available, discussing a variety of theoretical approaches. This second edition also expands the discussion of several topics, including frequency effects, the structure of the lexicon, and productivity.
Each chapter includes a summary, suggestions for further reading, and comprehension exercises (with answers). New to this second edition are exploratory exercises which allow students to put what they have read into practice and extend their knowledge.