1. Czech speakers learn and apply morphological dependencies : lecture at the University of Nova Gorica, Jezik & Linguistics Colloquia, Nova Gorica, 23. 11. 2023Guy Tabachnick, 2023, other performed works Abstract: Theories of morphology must account for lexicalized variation: lexical items that differ unpredictably in their inflection must be memorized individually and differ in their stored representation. When tested on such cases, adult speakers usually follow the “law of frequency matching” (Hayes et al. 2009), extending gradient phonological patterns from the lexicon. In this talk, I present results from two wug tests showing that Czech speakers likewise extend gradient morphological patterns from the lexicon: that is, they productively apply correlations between inflected forms of the same word. I handle lexicalized variation using diacritic features marking lexical entries and propose that Czech speakers have learned a gradient cooccurrence relation between diacritic features, extending the sublexicon model of Gouskova et al. (2015). This approach accounts for phonological and morphological patterns with a unified mechanism. This approach provides an account of morphological dependencies in generative grammar compatible with a piece-based, syntactic theory like Distributed Morphology, responding to Ackerman and Malouf (2013) and others who criticize such theories for being unable to account for these morphological correlations.
Keywords: morphology, psycholinguistics, inflection classes, nonce word study, frequency matching, morphological dependencies, Czech
Published in RUNG: 05.03.2024; Views: 299; Downloads: 1
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2. Speakers apply morphological dependencies in the inflection of novel forms : lecture at the University of Connecticut, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Linguistics, Ling Lunch, 18. 4. 2023Guy Tabachnick, 2023, invited lecture at foreign university Abstract: Theories of morphology must account for lexicalized variation: lexical items that differ unpredictably in their inflection must be memorized individually and differ in their stored representation. When tested on such cases, adult speakers usually follow the “law of frequency matching” (Hayes et al. 2009), extending gradient phonological patterns from the lexicon. In this talk, I present results from two wug tests showing that Hungarian and Czech speakers likewise extend gradient morphological patterns from the lexicon: that is, they productively imply correlations between inflected forms of the same word. I handle lexicalized variation using diacritic features marking lexical entries and propose that Hungarian and Czech speakers have learned a gradient cooccurrence relation between diacritic features, extending the sublexicon model of Gouskova et al. (2015). This approach also allows for a flexible analysis of traditional inflection classes (in languages like Russian) as emergent clusters of frequently cooccurring features.
Keywords: morphology, psycholinguistics, inflection classes, nonce word study, frequency matching, morphological dependencies, Hungarian, Czech
Published in RUNG: 05.03.2024; Views: 276; Downloads: 1
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3. Speakers apply morphological dependencies in the inflection of novel forms : lecture at the Linguistic Society of America 97th Annual Meeting, January 6, 2023Guy Tabachnick, 2023, unpublished conference contribution Abstract: Since Berko (1958), nonce word studies have shown that speakers exhibit morphological productivity: they can create morphologically complex forms of unfamiliar lexical items. Speakers are known to use a word’s phonology in morphological productivity (e.g. Bybee, 2001; Albright and Hayes, 2003; Hayes and Londe, 2006). Using a novel nonce word paradigm in Hungarian, I show that speakers can also be sensitive to a word’s morphological behavior: specifically, Hungarian speakers take a novel word’s plural allomorph into account in selecting its possessive, reflecting the distribution of plural and possessive allomorphs in the lexicon. This experimental paradigm thus sheds light on how speakers use morphological dependencies: correlations between members of an inflectional paradigm (see Ackerman and Malouf, 2013).
Keywords: Morphology, Psycholinguistics, nonce word study, productivity, morphological dependencies, Hungarian
Published in RUNG: 04.03.2024; Views: 292; Downloads: 2
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4. Morphological dependencies : a dissertationGuy Tabachnick, 2023, doctoral dissertation Abstract: This dissertation investigates morphological dependencies: correlations between two lexically specific patterns, such as selection of inflectional affixes. Previous work has established that such correlations exist in the lexicon of morphologically rich languages (Ackerman et al., 2009; Wurzel, 1989), but has not systematically tested whether speakers productively extend these patterns to novel words. I present a series of corpus and nonce word studies—in Hungarian, Czech, and Russian—testing whether speakers vary their selection of suffixed forms of novel words based on the forms of that word that are presented to them. In all three cases, speakers vary their responses in accordance with the provided stimuli, demonstrating that they have learned and productively apply morphological dependencies from the lexicon.
I present a theoretical account of morphological dependencies that can account for my experimental results, based on the sublexicon model of phonological learning (Allen & Becker, 2015; Becker & Gouskova, 2016; Gouskova et al., 2015). In this model, speakers index lexically specific behavior with diacritic features attached to underlying forms in lexical entries, and learn generalizations over sublexicons defined as words that share a feature. These generalizations are stored as constraints in phonotactic grammars for each sublexicon, enabling speakers to learn phonological and morphological dependencies predicting words that pattern together. This model provides a unified treatment of morphological dependencies and generalizations that are phonological in nature. My studies show a wide range of learned effects, not limited to those that follow an organizational principle like paradigm uniformity. The sublexicon model assumes that speakers can learn arbitrary generalizations without restrictions, giving it needed flexibility over more restrictive models which rely on notions of morphophonological naturalness.
Keywords: inflectional affixes, nonce word study, lexical productivity, morphological dependencies, diacritic features, dissertations
Published in RUNG: 04.03.2024; Views: 299; Downloads: 6
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