The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory Jenny Audring Editor PDF Download
Uploaded by
shomsrimondThe Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory Jenny Audring Editor PDF Download
Uploaded by
shomsrimondThe Oxford Handbook Of Morphological Theory
Jenny Audring Editor download
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-
morphological-theory-jenny-audring-editor-50849484
Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.
The Oxford Handbook Of Eeg Frequency Philip Gable Matthew Miller
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-eeg-frequency-
philip-gable-matthew-miller-44871064
The Oxford Handbook Of The Hollywood Musical Dominic Broomfieldmchugh
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-hollywood-
musical-dominic-broomfieldmchugh-44875334
The Oxford Handbook Of Music And Queerness Fred Everett Maus
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-music-and-
queerness-fred-everett-maus-44980070
The Oxford Handbook Of The Bible In Orthodox Christianity Eugen J
Pentiuc
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-bible-in-
orthodox-christianity-eugen-j-pentiuc-44991396
The Oxford Handbook Of Religious Space Jeanne Halgren Kilde
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-religious-space-
jeanne-halgren-kilde-45034468
The Oxford Handbook Of The Archaeology Of Roman Germany Simon James
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-archaeology-
of-roman-germany-simon-james-45369512
The Oxford Handbook Of Religion And Europe Grace Davie Lucian N
Leustean
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-religion-and-
europe-grace-davie-lucian-n-leustean-46072810
The Oxford Handbook Of Accurate Personality Judgment Oxford Library Of
Psychology 1st Edition Tera D Letzring
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-accurate-
personality-judgment-oxford-library-of-psychology-1st-edition-tera-d-
letzring-46072934
The Oxford Handbook Of Stress And Mental Health Oxford Library Of
Psychology Kate L Harkness Editor
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-stress-and-
mental-health-oxford-library-of-psychology-kate-l-harkness-
editor-46083692
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
MORPHOLOGICAL
THEORY
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
OXFORD HANDBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS
Recently published
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE
Edited by Sonja Lanehart
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF INFLECTION
Edited by Matthew Baerman
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF HISTORICAL PHONOLOGY
Edited by Patrick Honeybone and Joseph Salmons
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF LEXICOGRAPHY
Edited by Philip Durkin
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF NAMES AND NAMING
Edited by Carole Hough
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF DEVELOPMENTAL LINGUISTICS
Edited by Jeffrey Lidz, William Snyder, and Joe Pater
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF INFORMATION STRUCTURE
Edited by Caroline Féry and Shinichiro Ishihara
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MODALITY AND MOOD
Edited by Jan Nuyts and Johan van der Auwera
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PRAGMATICS
Edited by Yan Huang
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Edited by Ian Roberts
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF ERGATIVITY
Edited by Jessica Coon, Diane Massam, and Lisa deMena Travis
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF POLYSYNTHESIS
Edited by Michael Fortescue, Marianne Mithun, and Nicholas Evans
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF EVIDENTIALITY
Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PERSIAN LINGUISTICS
Edited by Anousha Sedighi and Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF ELLIPSIS
Edited by Jeroen van Craenenbroeck and Tanja Temmerman
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF LYING
Edited by Jörg Meibauer
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF TABOO WORDS AND LANGUAGE
Edited by Keith Allan
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MORPHOLOGICAL THEORY
Edited by Jenny Audring and Francesca Masini
For a complete list of Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics please see pp –
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
.........................................................................................................................................
MORPHOLOGICAL
THEORY
.........................................................................................................................................
Edited by
JENNY AUDRING
and
FRANCESCA MASINI
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© editorial matter and organization Jenny Audring and Francesca Masini
© the chapters their several authors
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in
Impression:
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number:
ISBN ––––
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon,
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
To Geert Booij
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
C
................................
Acknowledgements x
List of Abbreviations xi
The Contributors xvii
. Introduction: Theory and theories in morphology
J A F M
PART I ISSUES IN MORPHOLOGY
. A short history of morphological theory
S R. A
. Theoretical issues in word formation
R L
. Theoretical issues in inflection
G S
PART II MORPHOLOGICAL THEORIES
. Structuralism
T S
. Early Generative Grammar
P H
. Later Generative Grammar and beyond: Lexicalism
F M
. Distributed Morphology
D S
. Minimalism in morphological theories
A F́
. Optimality Theory and Prosodic Morphology
L J. D
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
viii
. Morphology in Lexical-Functional Grammar and
Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar
R N L S
. Natural Morphology
L G
. Word and Paradigm Morphology
J P. B, F A,
R M
. Paradigm Function Morphology
G S
. Network Morphology
D B
. Word Grammar Morphology
N G
. Morphology in Cognitive Grammar
R W. L
. Construction Morphology
F M J A
. Relational Morphology in the Parallel Architecture
R J J A
. Canonical Typology
O B
PART III MORPHOLOGICAL THEORY
AND OTHER FIELDS
. Morphological theory and typology
P A M K
. Morphological theory and creole languages
A R. L ı́
. Morphological theory and diachronic change
M Ḧ
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
ix
. Morphological theory and synchronic variation
A R
. Morphological theory and first language acquisition
E B
. Morphological theory and second language acquisition
J A G L
. Morphological theory and psycholinguistics
C L. Ǵ T L. S
. Morphological theory and neurolinguistics
N O. S R G. V
. Morphological theory and computational linguistics
V P
. Morphological theory and sign languages
D J N
References
Language Index
Index of Names
General Index
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
A
..................................................................
T book has been long in coming. Conceived and begun at a period when both of us had
abundant research time, it accompanied us through a steadily increasing amount of
academic duties and responsibilities. We are grateful to all our authors who have remained
faithful to the endeavour.
We thank the fabulous Oxford University Press staff—especially Julia Steer, Vicki Sunter,
and Karen Morgan—for their help in preparing the volume. They were incredibly support-
ive from day one to the end. A special thank-you goes to the late John Davey, who graciously
welcomed us at Oxford University Press. He was the first to believe in this project, and we are
very sad that we never got to meet in person.
We owe gratitude to the numerous colleagues who kindly agreed to serve as reviewers;
their time and expertise was essential in ensuring the quality of the volume. We also thank
Geert Booij, Ray Jackendoff, and Tom Stewart for advice on individual chapters.
Heartfelt thanks to our personal angels Maurice and Yuri, for listening, encouraging, and
cooking for us while we worked on the volume.
Finally, we would like to thank each other, for still being good friends after completing
this journey.
We wish to dedicate this book to the eminent morphologist Geert Booij. Recently retired,
Geert has been a beacon in the morphological community for over thirty years. To us, he
has meant even more. He has inspired us through all stages of our career. He has been—
and still is—a role model, a mentor, a guide, and a friend.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
L A
........................................................................
Different frameworks have different notational conventions, resulting in variation throughout
the book. For example, ACC (accusative) can appear as Acc, acc, or . Such variation is not
reflected in this list, unless it matters for the interpretation of the abbreviation. The list
includes special meanings of abbreviations used in specific chapters (e.g. A used as subject
of transitive verb in Chapter ).
Abbreviation Meaning
first person
H dominant hand in a sign
second person
H nondominant hand in a sign
third person
A adjective
A subject of transitive verb (Chapter )
a adjectivizer (Chapter )/adjective categorizer (Chapter )
AAT Aachener Aphasie Test
ABL ablative
ABS absolutive
ACC accusative
ADIT additive
ADJ adjective
ADV adverb
Af(f) affix
AGR agreement
AMR allomorphic-morphological rule
ANDAT andative
ANT anterior
APPL applicative
ASL American Sign Language
AUX auxiliary
AVM attribute value matrix
BA Brodmann area
BD Berbice Dutch
BEN benefactive
BRCT Base Reduplicant Correspondence Theory
C consonant (Chapters and )
C syllable coda (Chapter )
CAT syntactic category
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xii
CAUS causative
CG Cognitive Grammar
Ch Chabacano
CI Conceptual-Intentional
CL noun class
CLG “Course in General Linguistics” (de Saussure)
COCA Corpus of Contemporary American English
COM comitative
CON consonant
COND conditional
CONT connective
CP complementizer phrase
CS computational system
CxG Construction Grammar
CxM Construction Morphology
D determiner (Chapters and )
DAT dative
DC class marker
DEF definite
DES designative
DET determiner
DI default inheritance
DIR directional
DISC discourse structure
DM Distributed Morphology
DP determiner phrase
DS D-Structure
DTR daughter
DU dual
DYN dynamic
EEG electroencephalography
ELAN Early Left Anterior Negativity
EPP Extended Projection Principle
ERG ergative
ERN Error-Related Negativity
ERP event-related potential
EXCL exclusive
EXHORT exhortative
EZ ezafe
F feminine
F-G final grapheme
F-S final stress
Fg Fongbe
FIN finite
fMRI functional magnetic resonance imaging
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xiii
FOC focus
FRUSTR frustrative
FSA Finite State Automaton
FST Finite State Transducer
FUT future
FV final vowel
G/B Government and Binding Theory
GEN genitive
GPSG Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar
GTT Generalized Template Theory
h hapax legomenon
H Haitian (Chapter )
Ha Hawaiʿi Creole
HAB habitual
HBL habilitive
HPSG Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
IA Item-and-Arrangement
IC inflection(al) class
II instantiation inheritance link
IM metaphorical extension link
IND indicative
INDEF indefinite
INF infinitive
INFRN inferential
INS instrumental
IO indirect object
IP Item-and-Process (Chapters , , and )
IP inflection(al) phrase (Chapters , , , )
IP polysemy link
IPFV imperfective
IRR irrealis
IS subpart link
Jm Jamaican
K Kriyol
KP Korlai Indo-Portuguese
Kv Kabuverdianu
L first language
L second language
LAN Left Anterior Negativity
LatPP Latin past participle
LF Logical Form
LFG Lexical-Functional Grammar
LH Lexicalist Hypothesis
LHS left-hand side
LIFG left inferior frontal gyrus
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xiv
LMBM Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology
LNK linking element
LOC locative
LP Lexical Phonology
LRM Lexical Relatedness Morphology
M masculine
MCAT morphological category
MDL Minimum Description Length
MDT Morphological Doubling Theory
MEG magneto-encephalography
MF Morphological Structure
MHG Middle High German
MNI Montreal Neurological Institute
MOP Morph Ordering Principle
MOR(PH) morphological structure
MPR Morphological-Phonological Rule
MS Morphological Structure
MTG middle temporal gyrus
MUD morphology under discussion
MWE multi-word expression
N noun
n nominalizer (Chapter )/noun categorizer (Chapter )
N neuter (Chapters , , and )
N syllable nucleus (Chapter )
NARR narrative
ND Neglect Dyslexia
NEG negation
NIRS Near-InfraRed Spectroscopy
NM Natural Morphology
NOM nominative
NP noun phrase
NPST nonpast
NUM number
O syllable onset (Chapter )
O object (contrasting with A, Chapter )
OBJ object
OBL oblique
OED Oxford English Dictionary
OHG Old High German
OT Optimality Theory
P Portuguese (Chapter )
P-S penultimate stress
P&P Principles & Parameters Theory
PA Parallel Architecture
PASS passive/passive semantics (Chapter )
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xv
PC position class
PER(S) person
PERF perfective
PET positron emission tomography
PF Phonological Form (Chapters and )
PF Paradigm Function (Chapters , , and )
PFM Paradigm Function Morphology
PH Phonological Form (Chapter )
PHON phonology/phonological structure
PIE Proto-Indoeuropean
PL plural
PNC Productive Non-inflectional Concatenation
POSS possessive
PP past participle
Pp Papiamentu
PP prepositional phrase
PR Phonological Rule
PRAG pragmatic structure
PRED predicate
PRES present
PRESPART present participle
PROG progressive
PRS present
PRV preverb
PrWord prosodic word
PSC Paradigm-Structure Condition
PST past
PTCL particle
PTCP participle
PTH Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis
PWd prosodic word
PX possessive suffix
RDP Recoverably Deletable Predicates
RED reduplicant (Chapter )/reduplicative semantics (Chapter )
RFL reflexive
RHR Righthand Head Rule
RHS right-hand side
RM Relational Morphology
RR realization rules
s strong syllable
SBCG Sign-Based Construction Grammar
SBJV subjunctive
SDSP System-Defining Structural Property
Sel selection
SEM semantics
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xvi
SG singular
SLI Specific Language Impairment
SM sensorimotor
SMG Standard Modern Greek
SML similative
Sr Early Sranan
SS S-Structure
SSR stem selection rules
SUBJ subject
Suppl suppletion
SYN syntax
TAM tense/aspect/mood
tDCS transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
TERM terminative
TETU the emergence of the unmarked
TMA tense/mood/aspect
TMS transcranial magnetic stimulation
TNS tense
TRANS translative
TSOM Temporal Self-Organizing Map
UBH Unitary Base Hypothesis
UG Universal Grammar
UOH Unitary Output Hypothesis
V verb
v verbalizer (Chapter )/verb categorizer (Chapter )
V vowel (Chapter )
Vce voice
VD vowel deletion
Vel-In velar insertion
VI Vocabulary Item
VOC vocative
VP verb phrase
VT verbal theme
w weak syllable
WFGG “Word Formation in Generative Grammar” (Aronoff)
WFR word formation rule
WG Word Grammar
WP Word and Paradigm
WS Williams syndrome
XCOMP complement clause
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
T C
............................................................
Farrell Ackerman is a Professor of Linguistics at UC San Diego. He has focused on
periphrastic morphosyntax, A Theory of Predicates (with Gert Webelhuth) CSLI/Chicago
, and linking theories, Proto-Properties and Grammatical Encoding (with John Moore)
CSLI/Chicago . He is exploring Pattern-Theoretic models of grammatical organization
from a Developmental Systems perspective, as in Descriptive Typology and Linguistic
Theory (with Irina Nikolaeva) CSLI/Chicago , and quantitative approaches to word-
based morphology.
Stephen R. Anderson is the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor emeritus of Linguistics at Yale
University. His interests include most areas of general linguistics, perhaps especially
morphology (where he is associated with the “A-Morphous” approach to word structure),
as well as the history of linguistics, the place of human language in the biological world
(including its relation to the communication systems of other animals), and the grammars
of a number of languages (including Rumantsch, Georgian, Kwakw’ala, and others).
John Archibald is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Victoria where he
specializes in the study of generative approaches to second language acquisition, particu-
larly second language phonology. His recent research has focused on the interfaces of L
phonology with morphology and syntax. Before moving to Victoria, he spent nineteen
years at the University of Calgary in the Department of Linguistics, and the Language
Research Centre.
Peter Arkadiev holds a PhD in theoretical, typological and comparative linguistics from
the Russian State University for the Humanities. Currently he is Senior Researcher at the
Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Assistant Professor at
the Russian State University for the Humanities. His fields of interest include language
typology and areal linguistics, morphology, case and alignment systems, tense–aspect, and
Baltic and Northwest Caucasian languages.
Jenny Audring is Assistant Professor at the University of Leiden. She specializes in
morphology and has written on grammatical gender, linguistic complexity, Canonical
Typology, and Construction Morphology (frequently in collaboration with Geert Booij).
Together with Ray Jackendoff she is developing an integrated theory of linguistic repre-
sentations and lexical relations. A monograph (Jackendoff and Audring The Texture of the
Lexicon) is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
James P. Blevins is Reader in Morphology and Syntax at Cambridge University and Fellow
in Linguistics at Homerton College. His primary research interests concern the structure,
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xviii
learning, and processing of complex inflectional and grammatical systems. He has pub-
lished on a range of syntactic and morphological topics, including a recent monograph on
Word and Paradigm Morphology (Oxford University Press, ).
Elma Blom is Professor at the Department of Special Education at Utrecht University,
where she teaches about language development. Her research and publications are about
language impairment, multilingual development, and the relationship between language
and cognition in both impaired and multilingual children, with a special focus on gram-
matical development. Besides theoretical issues, she works on the improvement of diag-
nostic instruments for multilingual children.
Oliver Bond is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the Surrey Morphology Group, University
of Surrey. His research interests include theoretical morphology and syntax (especially
agreement and case), multivariate approaches to typology, and language documentation
and description, particularly in the languages of Africa and the Himalayas. He is a co-editor
of Archi: Complexities of Agreement in Cross Theoretical Perspective (with Greville
G. Corbett, Marina Chumakina, and Dunstan Brown; Oxford University Press, ).
Dunstan Brown is Professor of Linguistics and Head of the Department of Language and
Linguistic Science at the University of York. His research interests include autonomous
morphology, morphology–syntax interaction, and typology. Much of his work focuses on
understanding morphological complexity through computational modelling. His recent
publications include Understanding and Measuring Morphological Complexity (edited with
Matthew Baerman and Greville Corbett; Oxford University Press, ), and Morphological
Complexity (with Matthew Baerman and Greville Corbett; Cambridge University Press, ).
Laura J. Downing is Professor for African Languages at the University of Gothenburg,
Sweden. Her research specialty is the prosody of (mainly) Bantu languages, including topics
such as tone, prosodic morphology, the syntax–phonology interface, and information
structure. She is the author of numerous articles on these topics, as well as the monographs
Canonical Forms in Prosodic Morphology and (with Al Mtenje) The Phonology of Chichewa.
Antonio Fábregas (PhD in Linguistics, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, ) is
currently Full Professor of Hispanic linguistics at the University of Tromsø. His work
deals with what he takes to be the internal syntactic structure of words, including its
implications for semantics and phonology. He is the author of three monographs and more
than one hundred papers and currently is Associate Editor of the Oxford Research
Encyclopedia of Morphology.
Livio Gaeta (PhD , University of Rome ) is Full Professor for German Language and
Linguistics at the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Turin. He held
earlier tenured positions in Turin (–), Rome (–) and Naples “Federico II”
(–). He is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Humboldt
University of Berlin (). His main interests include morphology, language change and
grammaticalization, cognitive linguistics, language contact, and minority languages.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xix
Christina L. Gagné (PhD , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is currently a
Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. The aim of her research is to understand
how conceptual knowledge affects the way people use and process language. In particular,
her work focuses on the underlying conceptual structures that are involved in the interpre-
tation of novel phrases and compounds. Her past work has shown that knowledge
about the relations that are used to combine concepts plays an important role in the
creation and comprehension of novel noun phrases as well as in the comprehension of
compound words.
Nikolas Gisborne is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. His main
interests are in the lexicon and the lexicon–syntax interface and language change. He is the
author of The Event Structure of Perception Verbs (Oxford University Press, ) and, with
Andrew Hippisley, the editor of Defaults in Morphological Theory (Oxford University
Press, ).
Pius ten Hacken is a Professor at the Institut für Translationswissenschaft of the Leopold-
Franzens-Universität Innsbruck. His research interests include morphology, terminology,
lexicography, and the philosophy and history of linguistics. He is the author of Defining
Morphology (Olms, ) and of Chomskyan Linguistics and its Competitors (Equinox,
), the editor of The Semantics of Compounding (Cambridge University Press, ),
and co-editor of The Semantics of Word Formation and Lexicalization (Edinburgh Univer-
sity Press, ) and Word Formation and Transparency in Medical English (Cambridge
Scholars Press, ).
Matthias Hüning has been a full Professor of Dutch Linguistics at Freie Universität Berlin
since . He received his PhD from Leiden University in . His research focuses on
comparative/contrastive linguistics and on the structure and the status of Dutch in relation
to other (Germanic) languages. The main emphasis of his work is on word-formation from
a diachronic perspective.
Ray Jackendoff is Seth Merrin Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Tufts University. He
has worked on semantics, syntax, morphology, the evolution of language, music cognition,
social cognition, and consciousness. Among his books are Semantics and Cognition, Founda-
tions of Language, Simpler Syntax (with Peter Culicover), and A User’s Guide to Thought and
Meaning; in press is The Texture of the Lexicon (with Jenny Audring). He has been President
of both the Linguistic Society of America and the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and
was recipient of the Jean Nicod Prize and the David Rumelhart Prize.
Marian Klamer is Professor of Austronesian and Papuan Linguistics at Leiden University.
Her main research interest lies in describing and analyzing underdocumented Austrone-
sian and Papuan languages in Eastern Indonesia. Klamer has published (sketch) grammars
of two Austronesian languages (Kambera, ; Alorese, ) and two Papuan languages
(Teiwa, ; Kaera, ), several thematic volumes and over fifty articles on a wide range
of topics, including morphology, typology, language contact, and historical reconstruction
of languages in Indonesia.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xx
Ronald W. Langacker is retired from the position of Professor of Linguistics at the
University of California, San Diego. For over four decades, his research has aimed at a unified
account of language structure. The resulting descriptive framework, known as Cognitive
Grammar, claims that grammar is inherently meaningful. Based on an independently justified
conceptualist semantics, it is argued that lexicon, morphology, and syntax form a continuum
consisting solely in assemblies of symbolic structures (form–meaning pairings).
Gary Libben is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Brock University. His research focuses
on lexical representation and processing across languages and the development of psycho-
linguistic methodologies for studying language processing across age groups, language
groups, and situational contexts. He co-edits the journal The Mental Lexicon and he is
Director of the Words in the World SSHRC Partnership Project. He was Founding Director
of the Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics at the University of Alberta.
Rochelle Lieber is Professor of Linguistics at the University of New Hampshire. Her
interests include morphological theory, especially derivation and compounding, lexical
semantics, and the morphology–syntax interface. She is the author of many articles and
several books on morphological theory, including most recently English Nouns: The Ecology
of Nominalization (Cambridge University Press, ). She is the Editor-in-Chief of the
Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology.
Ana R. Luís is Assistant Professor of the English Department at the University of Coimbra
and Senior Researcher at the Linguistics Research Center CELGA-ILTEC. Her research
interests include cliticization, inflection, autonomous morphology, language contact, and
creole morphology. She is co-Editor-in-Chief (with I. Plag and O. Bonami) of the journal
Morphology (Springer), co-author of Clitics (with Andrew Spencer, Cambridge University
Press), co-editor of The Morphome Debate (with R. Bermúdez-Otero, Oxford University
Press), and editor of Rethinking Creole Morphology (special issue of the journal Word
Structure, Edinburgh University Press).
Robert Malouf is a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Asian/
Middle Eastern Languages at San Diego State University. His research focus is on compu-
tational approaches to morphosyntax, and in particular word-based models of inflection.
Prior to joining SDSU in , he was a member of the humanities computing department
at the University of Groningen. He has a PhD in linguistics from Stanford University.
Francesca Masini is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Bologna. Her
research and publications revolve around semantics, morphology, and the lexicon, with a
focus on multiword expressions, word classes, lexical typology, and the lexicon–syntax
interface. She works primarily within Construction Grammar and Construction Morphol-
ogy. She is currently Associate Editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology.
Fabio Montermini is a Senior Researcher (directeur de recherche) at the CLLE-ERSS
research unit of the CNRS. He also teaches morphology at the Université de Toulouse
Jean Jaurès (France). He is the author of several publications on morphology, both
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xxi
inflectional and derivational. His research interests include morphophonological and
semantic aspects of various languages, including Italian, French, other Romance languages,
and Russian.
Donna Jo Napoli is Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College. She investigates all
components of sign language grammars, particularly ASL, and of spoken language gram-
mars, particularly Italian. She is a member of a team that advocates for the language rights
of deaf children. She is part of the project RISE (Reading Involves Shared Experience),
which produces bimodal-bilingual ebooks for parents to share with their deaf children.
Rachel Nordlinger is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and a Chief
Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Her research
centres around the description and documentation of Australia’s Indigenous languages,
especially Bilinarra, Wambaya, and Murrinhpatha. She has also published widely on
syntactic and morphological theory (especially LFG), and in particular the challenges
posed by the complex grammatical structures of Australian languages.
Vito Pirrelli (PhD ) is Research Director at the CNR Institute for Computational
Linguistics “Antonio Zampolli” in Pisa, and head of the “Physiology of Communication”
laboratory. Co-editor in chief of the journal Lingue e Linguaggio, and former Chair of
NetWordS (the European Science Foundation Research Networking Programme on Word
Structure), his main research interests include computer models of the mental lexicon,
psycho-computational models of morphology acquisition and processing, memory and
serial cognition, theoretical morphology, language disorders, and language teaching.
Angela Ralli is Professor of General Linguistics, Director of the Laboratory of Modern
Greek Dialects of the University of Patras and member of the Academia Europaea. Her
expertise area is theoretical morphology, contact morphology, and dialectal variation. She
has published five books and peer-reviewed articles, has edited seventeen collective
volumes and has presented her work in many international conferences and universities.
She has been awarded the Canadian Faculty Enrichment Award (), the Stanley Seeger
Research Fellowship (Princeton, ), and the VLAC Research Fellowship (Flemish Royal
Academy, –, ).
Louisa Sadler is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex, UK. Her current
research interests centre on constraint-based syntactic theory (especially LFG), particularly
in relation to the interfaces to morphology and semantics, and the grammatical description
of the Arabic vernaculars, including Maltese.
Niels O. Schiller is Professor of Psycho- and Neurolinguistics at Leiden University. His
research interests include experimental linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, including
multilingualism. His main interest is lexical access and form encoding (morphological,
phonological, and phonetic encoding) in speech production. He employs behavioral,
electrophysiological, and neuroimaging methods to answer his research questions. He
has published more than peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on a broad variety
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi
xxii
of topics in experimental linguistics. Together with Greig de Zubicaray he is the editor of
the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Neurolinguistics.
Daniel Siddiqi is Associate Professor of Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and English at
Carleton University in Ottawa. His research has primarily focused on metatheoretical
concerns in Distributed Morphology since he graduated from the University of Arizona in
. His other research interests include English morphology, stem allomorphy, productivi-
ty, and word processing. He is an editor of the Routledge Handbook of Syntax, Benjamins’
Morphological Metatheory, and the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of North American
Languages.
Professor Thomas L. Spalding (PhD , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) has
taught at the University of Iowa and the University of Western Ontario and is currently a
Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta. He has also been
Chief Research Scientist for Acumen Research Group. His research interests relate to the
issue of how people combine information in the course of learning, comprehension, and
inference. This overarching interest has led to research on concepts, conceptual combina-
tion, and compound word processing, as well as peripheral interests in spatial cognition,
conceptual development, and consumer loyalty.
Thomas Stewart is Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Comparative
Humanities at the University of Louisville. His research into non-concatenative morpho-
logical phenomena, especially the treatment of initial consonant mutations in Scottish
Gaelic, has fed projects in Celtic linguistics, morphological theory, and contact linguistics
(transfer and attrition). His book Contemporary Morphological Theories: A User’s Guide
was published by Edinburgh University Press.
Gregory Stump is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Kentucky. His
research includes work on the structure of complex inflectional systems, the nature of
inflectional complexity, and the algebra of morphotactics. His research monographs
include Inflectional Morphology: A Theory of Paradigm Structure (), Morphological
Typology: From Word to Paradigm (, co-authored with Raphael A. Finkel), and
Inflectional Paradigms: Content and Form at the Syntax–Morphology Interface (). He
is a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America and is a co-editor of the journal Word
Structure.
Rinus G. Verdonschot (PhD ) is Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of
Biomedical and Health Sciences at Hiroshima University. His research includes published
work on a wide range of psycho- and neurolinguistic topics (e.g. speech production,
orthographic script processing, multilingualism) as well as on action-perception coupling
in professional musicians. He is also a co-author of the widely used E-Primer: An Introduc-
tion to Creating Psychological Experiments in E-Prime textbook.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
......................................................................................................................
Theory and theories in morphology
......................................................................................................................
. W
..................................................................................................................................
M, the grammar of words, has proved a rich and fertile ground for theoretical
research. As a result, we are faced with a bewilderingly complex landscape of morphological
terms, concepts, hypotheses, models, and frameworks. Within this plurality, linguists of
different persuasions have often remained ignorant of each other’s work. Formalist and
functionalist theories have run on mutually isolated tracks; theoretical approaches have
not connected to insights from typology, psycholinguistics, and other fields—and vice
versa. The research community is divided about basic matters, such as the central units
of morphological description or the nature of morphological features and processes.
Moreover, the proliferation of theories goes hand in hand with an increasing internal
diversification, sometimes to the point where foundational principles slip out of sight.
This volume hopes to contribute to a greater unity in the field by providing a compre-
hensive and systematic exposition of morphological theory and theories. We have aimed to
make it a helpful resource for those working within a specific framework and looking for a
critical and up-to-date account of other models, as well as a comprehensive guide for those
wishing to acquaint themselves with theoretical work in morphology, perhaps coming from
other domains in linguistics or from related fields such as computer science or psychology.
The book is intended to be informative and inspiring, and a lasting contribution to the field.
We also hope that—in times of increasing scepticism towards theory, in morphology as in
other areas of linguistics—it will serve to showcase the richness and value of theoretical
thinking and modelling, and will encourage new advances in theoretical work.
.. About the volume
This volume stands in the long tradition of Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics and comple-
ments other recent volumes, in particular The Oxford Handbook of Inflection (Baerman ),
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology (Lieber and Štekauer ), The Oxford
Handbook of Compounding (Lieber and Štekauer b), and The Oxford Handbook of the
Word (Taylor ). It is kin to The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (Heine and
Narrog, second edition ) by focusing on linguistic approaches more than on linguistic
facts, although a wide variety of data is addressed.
The closest relative to the present volume is Stewart () on contemporary morpho-
logical theories. However, our book is an edited volume rather than a monograph, and the
scholars working in the various frameworks are speaking in their own voice. In addition to
the eminent contributors expected in a volume of this kind, many of our authors are up-
and-coming linguists with a fresh look on classic and novel issues.
While the field is too diverse for a reference work to be exhaustive, we have attempted to
cover a representative range of theories and have made a point of including very recent
models, such as Canonical Typology, Construction Morphology, and Relational Morphology.
Moreover, Part III of the volume connects morphological theory with various linguistic
subfields, identifying the broader challenges and opening the dialogue where it is often lacking.
. M
..................................................................................................................................
Despite the evident, and often drastic, differences between theoretical approaches, the
theories in this volume are united in the questions they seek to answer. This section briefly
reviews a selection of time-honoured issues that have shaped the theoretical landscape over
the years and that reappear in different guises in basically every theory.
.. What is the goal of morphology theory?
Morphology is the grammar of words. This includes the form and structure of words, their
meaning, the relations between words, and the ways new (complex) words are formed.
Depending on one’s views of what a theory of grammar should accomplish, the goal of
morphological theory is either to account for all existing words or for all potential words of
a language. As Aronoff famously stated in (–): ‘the simplest task of a morphology,
the least we demand of it, is the enumeration of the class of possible words of a language’.
Whether this goal has been attained by any of the theories on the market, or can be attained
at all, is a matter of debate, since the working area of morphological theory is not easily
delimited. For one thing, the word is notoriously hard to define (Haspelmath , see also
Arkadiev and Klamer, Chapter this volume). Moreover, the field of morphology runs
into other linguistic subfields, with fluid boundaries and shared responsibilities.
.. Where is morphology?
Morphology is famously called ‘the Poland of linguistics’ (Spencer and Zwicky : ),
surrounded by neighbouring fields eager to claim the territory for themselves. Many
theories, some of them represented in this volume, model the structure and behaviour of
words in syntax and/or in phonology (e.g. Distributed Morphology, see Siddiqi, Chapter
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
:
Phrasal phonology Phrasal syntax Phrasal semantics
Morphophonology Morphosyntax Morphosemantics
.. Types of linguistic structure and the place of morphology
this volume, or Optimality Theory, see Downing, Chapter this volume). The counter-
movement is gathered under the term of lexicalism (Montermini, Chapter this volume)
and the motto ‘morphology by itself ’ (Aronoff ), arguing that morphology needs to be
recognized as a module, layer, or level of description of its own because it has unique,
irreducible properties. Lexicalist approaches ask questions such as the following:
• What properties are unique to morphology?
• How does morphology interface with other types of linguistic structure?
The issue of interfaces, of course, only arises if morphology is granted its own identity,
distinct from other areas of grammar. However, views on interfacing differ greatly depend-
ing on whether morphology is understood in a broad sense or a narrow sense.
In a broad sense, morphology spans the entire bottom row of Figure . (adapted from
Jackendoff and Audring, Chapter this volume). This row is the domain of the word.
Morphology then contrasts and interfaces with the upper row, syntax, the phrasal domain
(cf. §..). The horizontal arrows within the bottom row—connecting morphosyntax,
morphophonology, and morphosemantics—represent morphology-internal links, since a
word contains all these types of information.
However, morphology can also be understood in a narrower sense. Words carry sound
and meaning. In addition, they may have a third level of structure, which Figure . calls
‘morphosyntax’, marked in bold. This level of structure houses all properties that cannot be
subsumed under phonology or lexical semantics.1 This includes grammatical features, such
as case, gender, or tense, as well as properties such as inflectional class, the heartland of
‘morphology by itself ’. In some theoretical models, this layer also encodes the building
blocks of words: roots, stems, and affixes. Morphology, as understood in this narrower
sense, contrasts and interfaces with word phonology and word meaning.
Many controversies in morphological theory follow from explicit or implicit disagree-
ments about the nature and place of morphology in the grammar. While most theories
accept morphology in the broader sense, as the part of language that handles words, some
deny the existence of a dedicated layer of morphological structure in the narrower sense
(e.g. Cognitive Grammar, see Langacker, Chapter this volume).
Additional complications arise from the various conceptions of morphological processes.
Theories differ in whether they assume different rules for the grammar of words and the
1
Note that the term ‘morphosyntax’ is used differently here than it is used in the typological
literature, where it denotes morphological structure relevant to syntax (e.g. in agreement).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
grammar of phrases. Also, a division between morphological rules on the one hand and the
input/output of such rules on the other can lead theories to posit a morphology–lexicon
interface. This contrasts with theories that place morphology in the (equivalent of the)
lexicon, for example Word Grammar (Gisborne, Chapter this volume), Construction
Morphology (Masini and Audring, Chapter this volume), and Relational Morphology
(Jackendoff and Audring, Chapter this volume).
.. Basic units and processes
What are the units that morphological theory handles? Again, we see widespread and fierce
disagreement. Two prominent camps have arisen around the word-based and the
morpheme-based views, arguing for the word and the morpheme, respectively, as the
basic unit of morphological structure. The debate is often framed in principled terms
(see e.g. Anderson, Chapter this volume, or Stump, Chapter this volume), but some-
times invokes more specific concerns, such as which entity comes closest to a stable and
transparent : relation between form and meaning (see e.g. Langacker and Gaeta, Chapters
and this volume, respectively). A complicating factor is the notorious difficulty to
define either the word or the morpheme in a consistent and cross-linguistically applicable
way. However, in view of the controversy surrounding the morpheme in particular, it is
worth noting that the term is used widely and freely in descriptive linguistics as well as in
psycho- and neurolinguistics, where it is found to be of value (see e.g. Schiller and
Verdonschot, Chapter this volume).
The chapters in the present volume show surprisingly little debate about the lexeme,
which is a central unit in a variety of influential theories (e.g. Stump, Chapter this
volume). This notion is related to the difference between inflection and derivation, which
itself is not easy to draw. While most theories make a point of distinguishing inflection and
derivation/word-formation—some clearly specializing in one or the other—the nature of
the difference is disputed, especially as to whether it is gradual or categorial (sometimes
intermediate distinctions are made, such as between inherent and contextual inflection,
Booij ). The issues scale up to the difference between morphology and syntax, and
more generally between the grammar and the lexicon, since inflection is generally believed
to be more relevant to syntax and on the whole ‘more grammatical’ than derivation. Within
word-formation, certain types of compounds and lexicalized multi-word units further blur
the boundaries between morphological and syntactic structures (see Arkadiev and Klamer,
Chapter this volume).
A further basic difference between frameworks is how they conceive of the relation
between the units of morphological analysis and the processes that handle them. While
units and processes are tightly wedded in many theories, with rules for specific affixes or
individual feature structures, in others they are clearly separated. An example for the latter
type is Minimalism (Fábregas, Chapter this volume), some variants of which rely on a
single general operation, Merge.
Other differences between theories are found in the way classes, features, and other
properties are encoded. Some theories also seek to encode relations, from syntagmatic
relations such as valency or agreement to paradigmatic relations such as those found in
inflectional morphology.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
:
.. Morphology and syntax
Theories of morphology can be differentiated by the way they model the relation between
morphology and syntax. Does the grammar of words involve its own module, with rules
and representations distinct from the rules and representations of phrasal grammar? All
extremes can be found: from assuming no difference at all (e.g. in Distributed Morphology,
see Siddiqi, Chapter this volume) to a strictly modular view in which morphology is
encapsulated from syntax (e.g. in LFG/HPSG, see Nordlinger and Sadler, Chapter this
volume). For theories such as Construction Morphology (Masini and Audring, Chapter
this volume) or Relational Morphology (Jackendoff and Audring, Chapter this volume),
the difference lies not in the processes—morphological versus syntactic rules—but in the
categories: morphology has stems and affixes, while syntax does not, and syntax has phrasal
categories such as NPs and VPs, while morphology does not.
For those theories that do assume a split between morphology and syntax, the question
arises how the two components interface. An often-cited assumption is that X0, the
syntactic word, serves as the interface. This view runs into difficulties with complex
words containing phrases, as in do-it-yourselfer (the No Phrase Constraint is discussed in
Montermini and Fábregas, Chapters and this volume, respectively).
Other related points of debate, recurring in many theories throughout the book (see
Lieber, Chapter this volume, for an overview), are lexical integrity—the (in)ability of
syntax to look into or manipulate word structure—and the issue of headedness, disputing
the equivalence of syntactic and morphological heads.
.. Morphology and semantics
Another important issue in morphological theory is the relation between meaning and
form. The canonical mapping is captured in the terms isomorphy, biuniqueness, transpar-
ency, compositionality, diagrammaticity (Gaeta, Chapter this volume), or ‘the concate-
native ideal’ (Downing, Chapter this volume): each piece of meaning should correspond
uniquely to a piece of form, and added meaning should go hand in hand with added form.
A lot of what makes morphological theory interesting and hard has to do with divergences
from this ideal.
The issue is pertinent to the divide between word-basedness and morpheme-basedness.
Are there privileged units in which the relation between form and function is clearest or
maximally stable? And if so, is the word or the morpheme a better candidate?
Violations of biuniqueness come in many guises. Well-studied phenomena are polyse-
my, homophony, and syncretism (cases of one form with several meanings), allomorphy,
periphrasis, multiple or extended exponence (cases of one meaning expressed by several
alternative or combined forms), plus a range of specifically paradigmatic mismatches, such
as suppletion, overabundance, heteroclisis, and deponency (Stump, Chapters and ;
see also Arkadiev and Klamer, Chapter , and Ralli, Chapter , all in this volume).
In addition, complex words can display semantic non-compositionality, with unpredictable
meanings showing up in individual words or as subregularities in clusters of words. While
many theories set such quirks aside as lexicalizations, others make a point of including them,
for example Construction Morphology (Masini and Audring, Chapter this volume).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
.. Morphology and phonology
The interplay of morphology and phonology is another much-debated issue. Many theories
in the generative tradition (e.g. Minimalism and Distributed Morphology, see Siddiqi,
Chapter , and Fábregas, Chapter ) model phonology as a spell-out component at the
end of a syntactic derivational chain. This means that phonological information cannot
play a role in the morphological operations themselves. Other theories (e.g. LFG and
HPSG, see Nordlinger and Sadler, Chapter this volume) argue that all information,
including phonology, has to be available at the same time.
The most-researched interface phenomenon between morphology and phonology, how-
ever, is allomorphy, and almost every theory has something to say about it. The most
pressing question with regard to allomorphy is whether variants of stems or affixes are
computed from some underlying form or are listed and selected from memory. This brings
us to the final major issue: the relation between morphology and the lexicon.
.. Morphology and the lexicon
Morphology is a part of grammar, and many theories make a principled distinction
between the grammar and the lexicon. However, morphology is the grammar of words,
and words live in the lexicon. This means that we have to ask whether morphology happens
in the lexicon or whether the lexicon and the morphology are different domains, connected
via an interface. Terminology is muddled here, and we often find different understandings
of the same term, or different terms for the same notion. For example, Distributed
Morphology has a vocabulary, which corresponds to the lexicon in other theories. Earlier
generative theories distinguish a lexicon of morphemes and a dictionary of words (see ten
Hacken, Chapter this volume).
The distinction between lexicon and grammar is intimately related to the division of
labour between storage and computation. This issue is especially pertinent to the chapters
in Part III of this volume that discuss morphology in first and second language acquisition
(Blom, Chapter , and Archibald and Libben, Chapter ), in psycho- and neurolinguistics
(Gagné and Spalding, Chapter , and Schiller and Verdonschot, Chapter ), and in
computational modelling (Pirrelli, Chapter ). However, it is also relevant to morphological
theory itself, which has to decide on the format of lexical representations and on the kinds of
items assumed to be in the mental lexicon. Again, this is an area where word-based and
morpheme-based theories clash. While the former expect the smallest entries in the lexicon
to be word-sized (Blevins, Ackerman, and Malouf, Chapter this volume, and Gisborne,
Chapter this volume), the latter posit entries for morphemes or even smaller structures
(Siddiqi, Chapter this volume). The crux is the modelling of regularly inflected word forms.
Such forms are predictable enough to be handled by grammar, yet some degree of listed
knowledge is necessary to choose the right form among alternatives, for example if the
language has inflectional classes (Blevins, Ackerman, and Malouf, Chapter this volume).
Generally, models differ in the degree to which they embrace or reject redundancy in areas
that can be handled both by lexical storage and by grammatical computation.
Last but not least, a major and problematic issue is productivity, the capacity to generate
new complex forms with a particular structure. In contrast to syntax, where full productivity
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
:
is commonly seen as the norm, morphology—especially derivational morphology—is ram-
pant with semi-productive or unproductive patterns (see Hüning, Chapter this volume).
An important challenge for morphological theories lies in the modelling of such limited
productivity. Theories that emphasize the generative capacity of the system commonly evoke
constraints or filters that block non-existing forms (see e.g. Chapters and by Downing
and by Siddiqi, respectively); others argue for built-in limitations in the system itself (Jack-
endoff and Audring, Chapter this volume). A considerable degree of agreement is found in
the modelling of blocking, where a well-formed but non-existing complex word (say, stealer)
is impeded by an existing form with the same meaning (thief). Almost all theories that have
something to say about blocking invoke a principle by which the specific properties of the
listed form block the application of a more general rule.
.. Taxonomies of theories
In the linguistic literature we find various attempts to classify morphological theories. Two
of them are repeatedly cited in the present volume. The earliest is Hockett’s () ‘Two
Models of Grammatical Description’, which distinguishes Item-and-Process from Item-
and-Arrangement types of theories. Blevins, Ackerman, and Malouf (Chapter this
volume) explain the difference between the two morphemic models, contrasting them
with their own Word-and-Paradigm approach.
The second classification is Stump’s () well-known distinction of lexical versus
inferential and incremental versus realizational theories, giving us a four-way taxonomy,
which is laid out in Stump’s chapter ‘Theoretical issues in inflection’ (Chapter this
volume). Various theories presented in Part II of the volume explicitly position themselves
on this grid.
A very recent classification is proposed in Stewart’s () book, which sorts morphologi-
cal theories along each of five axes, explicitly incorporating one of Stump’s classifications:
• morpheme-based vs. word-/lexeme-based
• formalist vs. functionalist
• in-grammar vs. in-lexicon
• phonological formalism vs. syntactic formalism
• incremental vs. realizational.
As some of the theories discussed by Stewart converge with those in the present volume, the
reader is encouraged to consult the monograph for details.
Finally, Blevins’ () distinction of constructive versus abstractive models is helpful
due to its more nuanced take on the theoretical treatment of sub-word structures. The
abstractive view, in particular, permits for a combination of word-basedness and word-
internal structure, which might be an opportunity for consensus.
Generally, it should be kept in mind that theoretical frameworks can have different goals
and rest on different foundational assumptions. While one theory emphasizes descriptive
coverage or psychological plausibility, others stress computational implementability and/or
architectural parsimony, that is, shorter descriptions and minimal machinery. Among the
theories that seek parsimony, we find those that strive to minimize storage (these are clearly
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
in the majority) and those that attempt to minimize computation. Such basic decisions
have deep repercussions on the architecture of the model and on the items and processes
assumed.
Finally, it should be noted that not all models presented in this book are bona fide
theories of morphology. Some are in fact theories of syntax (e.g. Minimalism), and one
(OT, see Downing, Chapter this volume) is mainly a theory of phonology. However,
each chapter illustrates the perspectives on morphology taken by these theories.
. T
..................................................................................................................................
.. Part I: Issues in morphology
Part I of the volume sets the scene. It starts with a brief foray into the history of morphology
with a focus on North America (Anderson, Chapter ). However, the journey begins in
Switzerland, with the brothers de Saussure, Ferdinand and René, and their disagreement on
the internal structure of words. While René saw complex words as concatenations of simple
signs, later called morphemes, Ferdinand regarded the full word as the basic sign. To him,
morphological structure emerged from inter-word relations. The morpheme-based view
was perpetuated by Bloomfield (), who differentiated between a lexicon of primitives,
on the one hand, and the rules of grammar, on the other. Full words came back into view
with Matthews’ (), Aronoff ’s (), and Anderson’s () work, which reinstated the
paradigmatic, relational perspective and found its most radical expression in Anderson’s ‘a-
morphousness’ hypothesis, propagating morphology without morphemes. In addition to
sketching the swing of the historical pendulum between word-based and morpheme-based
models, the chapter shows the influence of Boas, Sapir, Harris, Chomsky, and Halle on the
emergence of morphology as an independent domain in theoretical linguistics, and intro-
duces some of the fundamental debates that have shaped the theoretical landscape in the
following decades.
The next two chapters identify the central theoretical issues within the two morphologi-
cal domains: word-formation and inflection. Lieber’s contribution (Chapter ) on deriva-
tion and compounding also starts with a major historical divide, namely Item-and-
Arrangement versus Item-and-Process types of theories (Hockett ). While the former
makes morphology similar to syntax in assuming a hierarchical structure of minimal
meaningful units, the latter emphasizes the importance of rules in deriving, or realizing,
complex words. Here, morphology offers a variety of challenges. Do the rules of mor-
phology have the same format as the rules of syntax? Can realizational rules, popular in
modern theories of inflection, be fruitfully applied to derivation? The chapter continues
with a discussion of interface issues between morphology and syntax, morphology and
phonology, and morphology and semantics. It concludes with a number of hot topics
such as headedness, productivity, blocking, affix ordering, bracketing paradoxes, and
derivational paradigms.
In Chapter , Stump discusses theoretical issues in inflection. He singles out a number of
fundamental points of disagreement between theories of morphology. These are: (a) what
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
:
counts as the basic unit of morphological analysis; (b) what are the structures that belong to
inflection; (c) the relation between concatenative and non-concatenative morphology;
(d) the relation between function and form; and (e) the difference between inflection and
other types of morphology. After outlining the issues, the chapter takes a position on each
of them. As the general perspective of the chapter is inferential-realizational, Stump argues
for paradigms and against morphemes, for rules of exponence and implicative rules, and
for a unified treatment of concatenative and non-concatenative morphology. Morphology
is argued to have its own domain in the grammar, distinct from but interfacing with syntax.
.. Part II: Morphological theories
Part II consists of concise but thorough accounts of the main theoretical approaches to
morphology, both formalist and functionalist/cognitive, developed during the twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries. Some chapters discuss clusters or families of models, but
most are dedicated to one specific approach.
The first three chapters provide an overview of three clusters of theories: those com-
monly subsumed under the label Structuralism (Chapter ), the transformational theories
of early Generative Grammar (Chapter ), and the lexicalist models of later Generative
Grammar (Chapter ).
Stewart (Chapter ) identifies Structuralism as a formative period in the history of
linguistics. It brought a re-evaluation of the theoretical and descriptive machinery inherited
from antiquity and established linguistics as an autonomous scientific discipline. The
central characteristic of the movement was the understanding that each language consti-
tutes a system in itself which should be investigated empirically based on the distributional
patterns of forms. This involved overcoming the focus on Indo-European, on culturally
privileged languages, and on diachrony. The result was a flourishing of scholarly work on
both sides of the Atlantic, with—among many others—de Saussure, Hjelmslev, Jakobson,
Trubetzkoy, and Vachek in Europe and Boas, Whorf, Sapir, Bloomfield, Harris, Hockett, and
Nida in North America. Important issues for morphology were the place of morphology in
the architecture of the grammar, the identification and representation of morphological units
and processes, and the interaction of morphology with other linguistic domains.
The s to s saw the rise of Generative Grammar. Ten Hacken (Chapter )
discusses three seminal publications from this period, Chomsky (), Lees (), and
Chomsky (), and—more briefly—two later publications, Halle () and Jackendoff
(), which are the focus of Chapter . The central innovations in early Generative
Grammar were rewrite rules, including transformational rules, that promised to make
complex grammatical structures computable. While mainly devised for syntax, the model
was also applied to morphological structure. A lexicon was added to account for idiosyncratic
properties of words, marking the beginning of the debate between storage and computation,
still very much alive today (see Chapters –). Other major issues of the time were the
incorporation of constraints into the generative model and the place and role of semantics.
The history of Generative Grammar is continued by Montermini with Chapter on
the development of Lexicalism. The hallmark of lexicalist theories is the assumption that
word-internal phenomena are situated in a distinct module, independent of syntax and
phonology. For many theories, this included the belief that the grammar of words is not
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
only separated, but also substantially different from the grammar of phrases. Montermini
discusses two foundational publications, Halle () and Jackendoff (), which can be
seen as the first lexicalist models, although diverging fundamentally in their assumptions
about the interplay of grammar and lexicon and the nature of the lexicon itself. The
lexicalist spirit continued through Aronoff ’s work on derivation and Anderson’s work
on inflection, the latter stressing not only the division between morphology and syntax, but
also the need to distinguish between inflection and derivation. The surge of lexicalist work
from the s onwards established morphology as a phenomenon ‘by itself ’ and a self-
respecting field of linguistic inquiry.
Chapters – describe models of a ‘formalist’ orientation. The direct inheritors of
Chomskyan Generative Grammar are Distributed Morphology and Minimalism, while
Optimality Theory and LFG/HPSG constitute radically different models.
Distributed Morphology (Siddiqi, Chapter ) represents a countermovement to the
Lexicalism described in Chapter : it is a theory of syntax that extends into the word by
manipulating morphemes. The chapter motivates the general outlook as well as the more
specific choice for a lexical-realizational, morpheme-based, Item-and-Arrangement type of
model and outlines its various incarnations, depending on the syntactic theory of the time.
Some variants distinguish a separate level of Morphological Structure, later abandoned.
Complex words and phrases are built in two steps: the grammar constructs a complete
derivation, which is then instantiated by Vocabulary Items and spelled out phonologically.
This architecture makes a number of classic morphological issues—among others produc-
tivity, blocking, and allomorphy—appear in a different light, as is elaborated in the chapter.
Another theory that is actually a family of syntactic models is Minimalism. Fábregas
explains the Minimalist views on morphology in Chapter . The name of the framework
advertises its emphasis on a minimal grammatical component, as most constraints on
language are seen as located either in Universal Grammar or in language-external systems,
especially the Conceptual-Intentional (CI) and the sensorimotor (SM) system, or in the
variable experience of individual speakers and learners. In its most minimal form, compu-
tations are done by a single operation, Merge. The chapter explains how the theory models
lexical restrictions, grammatical categories, Aktionsart, and argument structure and dis-
cusses the rules of spell-out and the role of features.
Chapter by Downing illustrates how Optimality Theory addresses the issues of
prosodic morphology, specifically the non-concatenative phenomena known as reduplica-
tion, truncation, root-and-pattern morphology, and infixation. The model employs three
types of constraints—faithfulness, markedness, and alignment—to determine the optimal
form of a word or phrase. Constraint evaluation is demonstrated on a wide variety of
languages, among others SiSwati, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Samoan, Diyari, and Nupe.
Important theoretical issues are (a) whether constraints can be stated generally or are
specific to a certain morphological operation, construction, or morpheme, and (b) whether
restrictions (e.g. on the size of the optimal nickname or the location of the optimal infix)
follow from other properties, such as the stress type or syllable structure of the language.
Chapter presents two distinct but related theories, Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG)
and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Nordlinger and Sadler briefly
explain the architecture and the formalism of the two models, highlighting their strong
lexicalist commitment, which states that word-internal structure is invisible to syntax. This
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
:
perspective implies that both theories are compatible with a variety of morphological
models, as long as the lexicalist stance is maintained. In LFG, the emphasis is on the way
different formal structures across languages can map onto the same functional structure.
Some variants of HPSG are similar to construction-based theories (cf. Masini and Audring,
Chapter this volume) by modelling derivational rules as lexical items, while inflection is
often understood as being realizational. The chapter discusses a variety of phenomena, from
case stacking to paradigms, stem space, and floating affixes, in a number of typologically
diverse languages. Both theories are fully formalized and implementable in computational
models.
In Chapter , Gaeta sketches Natural Morphology, a framework that strives to explain
why morphological systems are the way they are and develop in the way they do. At the
heart of the theory lies the notion of ‘naturalness’, understood as “cognitively simple, easily
accessible (esp. to children), elementary and therefore universally preferred” (Dressler
: ). Naturalness manifests itself in preferences rather than laws. Such preferences
can be in conflict with each other and with other preferences—both typological and
system-specific—resulting in cross-linguistic diversity. The chapter introduces the natural-
ness parameters (i) diagrammaticity (transparency); (ii) biuniqueness (uniform coding);
(iii) indexicality (proximity); (iv) binarity; and (v) optimal word shape and exemplifies how
they bear on productivity, paradigm structure, and language change.
Chapters – form a loose cluster of allied models of the Word-and-Paradigm type.
The general outlook is described succinctly in the contribution by Blevins, Ackerman, and
Malouf, Chapter . A major cornerstone is the focus on paradigmatic relations among
words, which other models tend to neglect in favour of word-internal syntagmatics.
Paradigmatic relations can take the form of inflectional paradigms or classes, but they
are implicated whenever a word, or a cluster of words, is predictive of another. The Word-
and-Paradigm (perhaps better called Item-and-Pattern) approach involves a broadly in-
clusive view on the size and granularity of morphosyntactic items, as it is “defined less by
the units it recognizes than by the relations it establishes between units” (§.). That said,
the word might be a privileged unit, both in its stability of form and function and the
mapping between them, and in the degree to which it predicts other words. Formalizations
of Word-and-Paradigm models use the mathematics of information theory to calculate the
entropy of a given paradigm cell and the reduction of uncertainty effected by another cell or
cluster of cells. The chapter closes with the unique perspective on learnability and cross-
linguistic variation invited by the information-theoretic perspective.
In Chapter , Stump presents his influential Paradigm Function Morphology, an
inferential-realizational theory, which means that it rejects the listing of morphemes and
the accumulation of properties by stringing morphemes together. Instead, the model
assumes a Paradigm Function that operates on stems and cells of inflectional paradigms
to induce the realization of each cell, that is, the phonological form of the fully inflected
word. The model employs an explicit and rigorous formalism based on property sets and
functions. The chapter lays out an earlier and a later variant of the theory and illustrates the
basic functions. As the theory emphasizes its inclusive coverage, the second half of the
chapter is devoted to non-canonical inflectional morphology, as manifested in defective-
ness, syncretism, inflection classes, and deponency. The chapter closes with a brief look at
derivation and the various interfaces between morphology and other domains.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
Network Morphology, outlined by Brown in Chapter , has much in common with
PFM—centrally the inferential-realizational orientation—but differs in its architecture. As
its name suggests, the model assumes an inheritance network containing lexemes and
generalizations over their properties. Its aim is to model inflectional systems by developing
the most parsimonious network that contains all information necessary for inferring the
correct form for each inflected word. This means determining the right level for every
generalization (e.g. about patterns of syncretism or stem allomorphy) and ordering proper-
ties such as number or case in such a way that queries about a particular inflected form are
guided to the place in the network where the answer is encoded. The model is formalized and
computationally implemented with the help of the DATR notation (Evans and Gazdar ).
The chapter explains central notions such as default inheritance, underspecification, and
generalized referral and shows the application of the model in a number of case studies,
including a diachronic case.
Word Grammar, discussed by Gisborne in Chapter , shares many traits of realiza-
tional models like PFM and is network-based like Network Morphology, but differs
radically in the entities it models. In line with the cognitive orientation of the theory,
nodes in a Word Grammar network encode linguistic knowledge directly and declaratively,
requiring no procedures or algorithms. The network encodes three types of information:
linguistic structure of various kinds (the nodes), the relations between nodes, and certain
attributes that specify the relations (e.g. realization, base, variant, or part). Inflected
and derived forms are represented in full. Morphemic structure is encoded indirectly
via relations between forms that share parts. Generalizations, including those normally
expressed as features, are captured by means of default inheritance. The chapter also
discusses the difference between inflection and derivation, the interfaces between morphol-
ogy and the lexicon and morphology and syntax, and comments on phenomena like
productivity and syncretism.
Word Grammar forms a bridge to the more cognitively oriented models in Chapters –.
The first and most venerable is Cognitive Grammar by Langacker (Chapter ). Including
this theory in the volume might seem surprising, as it only recognizes two types of
structure—semantic and phonological—and excludes morphological structure. Yet, the
model allows for the expression of morphological units and patterns, both in individual
words and as generalized constructional schemas. The perspective is explicitly usage-based:
any unit of structure is abstracted from production or perception events and entrenched
through recurrent use. Larger structures appear as composites if their parts correspond to
(parts of) other structures. Stems can be distinguished from affixes in that affixes are
dependent items that need other structures to be manifested. However, analysability of
complex items is a matter of degree and can change over time. The theory provides a unified
account of language structure, within which morphology is not highly differentiated, but
seamlessly integrated.
Construction Morphology (Masini and Audring, Chapter ) is the morphological
theory within the framework of Construction Grammar. It shares a number of properties
with Cognitive Grammar, especially its usage-basedness and the notion of constructional
schemas. However, it assumes morphological structure as an independent layer of infor-
mation. The central unit of analysis is the construction, intended as a sign, a form–meaning
pairing. Constructions can be fully specified, in which case they correspond to words, or
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
:
they can be partly or fully schematic. Schematic or semi-schematic constructions are
the counterpart of rules in more procedural models, since they serve as templates for the
creation of new words. All constructions are situated in a network which combines
the lexicon and the grammar into a continuous and highly structured environment. As
the same basic architecture is assumed for morphological and syntactic constructions, the
model has a specific affinity with in-between phenomena such as multi-word units.
The newest theory in the volume is Relational Morphology (Jackendoff and Audring,
Chapter ), an account of morphology set in the framework of the Parallel Architecture
(Jackendoff ). The model is a sister theory of Construction Morphology, but differs by
virtue of its radical focus on lexical relations, its inclusion of non-symbolic structures, and
its formalism. Special theoretical attention is paid to unproductive patterns, which are
regarded as more basic: productive patterns are patterns ‘gone viral’. Like all construction-
based theories, but more explicitly so, the model is a theory both of morphology and of the
rich internal structure of the lexicon. Moreover, it aspires to a graceful integration of
morphology within a general and cognitively plausible model of language, and of language
within other areas of cognition.
The survey of theories concludes with Canonical Typology (Bond, Chapter ), which is
special in not being a theory in the usual sense, but providing a methodological framework
for a typologically informed understanding of linguistic phenomena and a better compa-
rability of theoretical terms and concepts. Most of the work in Canonical Typology is on
morphology and morphosyntax, especially inflection, with the closest ties to inferential-
realizational models like PFM (Chapter ). The method consists in the identification of a
canonical core for a phenomenon and the possibility space of less canonical variants
around it. Both the core and the possibility space are defined logically; establishing the
actual population of the space by real-life examples is an independent, later step. The
chapter outlines the method in detail and provides a wealth of references on the canonical
approach as applied to a wide variety of phenomena.
.. Part III: Morphological theory and other fields
Part III of the volume is devoted to the interdisciplinary dimension. It presents observa-
tions and insights from other linguistic fields relevant for morphological theory, namely
language typology (including creole languages), dialectal and sociolectal variation, dia-
chrony, first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, compu-
tational linguistics, and sign languages. The chapters in this part do not discuss what the
different theories of morphology have to say about the various fields (this should emerge—
where relevant—from Part II), but illustrate how each field informs and challenges
morphological theory.
Chapter by Arkadiev and Klamer on morphological theory and language typology
discusses the challenges that languages around the world pose for common theoretical
concepts and terminology. This is especially true for morphology, since it is the domain where
languages differ most, which stands in the way of cross-linguistic generalizations. Richly
illustrated with examples and supported by a wealth of references, the chapter shows the
difficulties associated with the notion of the word, the distinction between inflection and
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
derivation, the deviations from biuniqueness in form–meaning mapping, the ordering of
affixes, and various paradigmatic phenomena such as inflectional classes and morphomic
allomorphy in stems and affixes. The authors conclude by arguing for greater collaborative
efforts among typologists, theoreticians, and descriptive linguists in order to arrive at theoret-
ically informed descriptions, dictionaries, and corpora, on the one hand, and typologically
informed theories, on the other.
In Chapter , Luís carries on the typological theme with a survey of the morphology in
creole languages. Creoles are often neglected in theoretical morphology, as their morpho-
logical systems are said to be poorly developed. The chapter refutes this assumption,
showing the interesting diversity of morphological, especially derivational, patterns
found in creole languages. These include affixes from both the superstrate and the substrate
language, as well as novel morphological formatives, which gives interesting insights into
the genesis of affixal morphology. While inflectional systems in creoles are indeed often
simpler, languages do show complexities such as portmanteau morphemes, extended
exponence, syncretism, allomorphy (including morphomic stem allomorphy), and inflec-
tional classes. The chapter demonstrates that creole morphology is as interesting to analyse
formally and discuss theoretically as is the morphology of non-creole languages.
The issue of diachronic change, pertinent to the creole languages discussed in
Chapter , is addressed more broadly in Chapter by Hüning. The chapter focuses on
word-formation and discusses three major types of change: (a) the rise of new word-
formation patterns by way of reanalysis, for example ‘affix telescoping’ or resegmentation;
(b) the development of new affixes from lexical words through grammaticalization; and
(c) the increase or decrease of productivity. Productivity proves especially problematic,
being hard to establish synchronically, but even harder to assess diachronically. A general
problem is the gradience that the ever-changing nature of language imposes on all entities,
properties, and behaviour, making them difficult to capture in fixed theoretical categories
and terms. The chapter closes with a plea for interdisciplinary, data-driven research, and a
usage-based approach that is better suited to the emergent nature of language.
Variation from a synchronic perspective—with some additional discussion of pathways
of change to complement Chapter —is addressed by Ralli in Chapter . The chapter
identifies certain recurrent types of morphological variation in inflection, derivation, and
compounding, with illustrative analyses of modern Greek dialect data. For inflection,
patterns of special interest are overabundance, heteroclisis, and allomorphic variation in
paradigms. In derivation, we find affix synonymy and affix competition. In the realm of
compounding, the Greek data show puzzling doublets of left-headed (and exocentric) and
right-headed (and endocentric) compounds with the same meaning. For all three domains
of morphology the chapter stresses the importance of language contact as a trigger of
variation and change, and as an explanatory factor in view of the often surprising varia-
tional patterns.
The volume continues with four loosely connected chapters on morphological theory
and first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics. All four
chapters share a common fundamental theme: the division of labour between storage and
computation in complex words.
In Chapter , Blom outlines how data from first language acquisition can inform
morphological theory. A central topic is the ‘past tense debate’ inquiring whether irregularly
and regularly inflected English verbs are treated differently in processing, with full-form
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
:
lookup for the former and computation from their parts for the latter.2 While the evidence is
not conclusive, analyses of child language indicate a gradual acquisition curve with frequency
effects both in acquisition order and in overgeneralization patterns, which suggests that
lexical storage also matters for regularly inflected words. Results from language development
in children with Specific Language Impairment or Williams syndrome, by contrast, do
support a difference between the regular and irregular words. To date, the past tense debate
remains unresolved. Deeper understanding can only be expected if individual and cross-
linguistic variation is considered, as well as the interplay of morphology, phonology, and
syntax and wider cognitive factors.
Archibald and Libben in Chapter move the spotlight of attention to morphological
theory and second language acquisition. The issues in this field are partly the same as in
first language acquisition. What do error patterns tell us about linguistic knowledge?
Which deficits are betrayed by a particular error? What makes certain structures difficult
to acquire? Additional questions in second language acquisition concern the influence of
the L, the typical cognitive strategies of adult learners, and the representation of the
bilingual lexicon and grammar in the brain. An important insight, also mentioned in
Chapter , is that morphological errors need not represent morphological deficits. Instead,
they may be caused by incorrect mappings of morphological knowledge to other aspects of
linguistic competence, for example phonology. The chapter also problematizes the question
of what constitutes morphological ability and presses the point that morphological know-
ledge cannot be investigated in isolation from other kinds of knowledge. In addition,
scientific results are highly task- and methodology-dependent and may differ markedly
for production and comprehension.
Chapter by Gagné and Spalding broadens the view from language acquisition to
psycholinguistics in general, focusing on the key question for morphology: the representa-
tion and processing of complex words in the mental lexicon. The central debate is whether
complex words are stored in full or computed from their parts, or indeed both—in
succession or in parallel. The chapter reviews a wide variety of psycholinguistic research
from different experimental paradigms and concludes that there is strong overall evidence
for the involvement of sub-word units in the processing of multi-morphemic words.
However, the effects differ depending on frequency, on semantic transparency, and on
whether the complex word is inflected, derived, or a compound. Sub-word units may have a
facilitatory or inhibitory effect depending, again, on frequency and on the time window in
the processing event. The chapter closes with an agenda for future work, emphasizing the
need for a closer integration of experimental and theoretical morphology.
The fourth chapter in the cluster, Chapter , is Schiller and Verdonschot’s contribution
on morphological theory and neurolinguistics. Neurolinguistics differs from psycholinguistics
primarily in its methods: most of the evidence cited in the chapter comes from brain imaging
2
The terms ‘single route’ and ‘dual route’ are used in this connection; these terms also appear in
Chapters and . However, the reader should be aware that they are not always used in the same
sense. Dual route is often associated with different processing mechanisms for different types of word
(e.g. in Blom, Chapter , and Schiller and Verdonschot, Chapter ). However, the term can also mean
different processing strategies for the same type of word (e.g. in Gagné and Spalding, Chapter ).
Evidence in favour of parallel lookup and computation for various types of complex word would
support a dual route theory in the latter sense, but not in the former.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
studies using ERP or fMRI. Again, the main issue is the role of sub-word structure in the
processing of complex words. The chapter provides a broad and detailed overview of recent
research on language comprehension, that is, parsing, and language production, the less-
studied perspective. Evidence from healthy speakers is discussed as well as studies on
individuals with aphasia or other language disorders. The chapter presents a variety of
experimental paradigms, from priming and grammatical violation experiments to lexical
decision tasks and picture naming. Drawing especially on compound processing, the chapter
argues for an important role of morphemic constituents, indicating morphological decompo-
sition in both comprehension and production.
The volume continues with Pirrelli (Chapter ) on morphological theory, computa-
tional linguistics, and word processing. The chapter reviews computational models of
language processing such as finite state automata and finite state transducers, hierarchical
lexica, artificial neural networks, and dynamic memories. Illustrations are given with the
help of Italian verbal paradigms. A substantial part of the chapter is devoted to machine
learning, both supervised and unsupervised. Each section concludes with a critical assessment
of theoretical issues, pointing out ties to individual theoretical frameworks or to problem
areas such as the interplay of storage and computation, the nature of representations, the
encoding of general versus specific information, and notions such as entropy and economy.
The chapter argues for an inclusive modelling of lexical and grammatical knowledge and
highlights the mutual interdependence of word structure and word processing.
The final Chapter by Napoli broadens the view from spoken language to sign
language. The particular affordances and restrictions of sign languages pose considerable
challenges to morphological theory. For example, signs can be uttered in parallel, adding a
vertical structural dimension not found in speech. Moreover, sign phonology, in particular
non-manual parameters, can be meaningful, which obscures the boundary between pho-
nology and morphology. Other special properties can be attributed to the relative youth of
sign languages, which limits the amount of grammaticalized morphology. Established
theoretical notions are often hard to apply to sign, for example in identifying roots and
affixes or distinguishing lexical categories. Compounding and affixation are notoriously
hard to tell apart. On the other hand, there are morphological entities unique to sign, such
as ion morphs: partially complete morphemes that need to be accompanied by a particular
phonological parameter to yield a full lexical meaning. The chapter offers a broad overview of
the issues and a wealth of references.
. C
..................................................................................................................................
In conclusion, we hope that this handbook will serve as a guide through the jungle of
theories in today’s linguistic morphology, and the phenomena they seek to account for. At
the same time, we intend the volume to be helpful in fostering the dialogue among
sub-disciplines that is much needed for a graceful integration of linguistic thinking. We
hope that the book will be inspiring and useful to graduate students in linguistics as well as
to scholars of various disciplines, from morphologists wishing to acquaint themselves with
neighbouring or competing models to specialists from other subfields of linguistics.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
........................................................................................................................
ISSUES IN
MORPHOLOGY
........................................................................................................................
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
......................................................................................................................
......................................................................................................................
.
I in the nature of language has included attention to the nature and structure of
words—what we call Morphology—at least since the studies of the ancient Indian, Greek,
and Arab grammarians, and so any history of the subject that attempted to cover its entire
scope could hardly be a short one. Nonetheless, any history has to start somewhere, and in
tracing the views most relevant to the state of morphological theory today, we can usefully
start with the views of de Saussure.
No, not that de Saussure, not the generally acknowledged progenitor of modern linguistics,
Ferdinand de Saussure. Instead, his brother René, a mathematician, who was a major figure
in the early twentieth-century Esperanto movement (Joseph ). Most of his written work
was on topics in mathematics and physics, and on Esperanto, but de Saussure () is a short
(-page) book devoted to word structure,1 in which he lays out a view of morphology that
anticipates one side of a major theoretical opposition that we will follow in this chapter.
René de Saussure begins by distinguishing simple words, on the one hand, and com-
pounds (e.g. French porte-plume ‘pen-holder’) and derived words (e.g. French violoniste
‘violinist’), on the other. For the purposes of analysis, there are only two sorts of words: root
words (e.g. French homme ‘man’) and affixes (e.g. French ‑iste in violoniste). But “[a]u point
de vue logique, il n’y a pas de difference entre un radical et un affixe . . . [o]n peut donc
considérer les affixes comme des mots simple, et les mots dérivés au moyen d’affixes,
comme de véritables mots composés. Il n’y a plus alors que de deux sortes de mots: les
mots simples (radicaux, préfixes, suffixes) et les mots composés par combinaison de mots
1
I am indebted to Prof. Louis de Saussure of the University of Neuchâtel for access to a copy of this
work, found in the library of his father, the late Antoine de Saussure (son of Ferdinand’s brother Louis-
Octave de Saussure). This item appears to have gone unnoticed by linguists of the time or of ours,
although it contains many ideas that would later come to prominence: for instance, the notion of
hierarchical inheritance as the basis of semantic networks, and a clear statement of the Right-hand Head
Rule that would later be formulated by Williams (). An edition of this work and a subsequent
continuation (de Saussure ) has recently appeared (Anderson and de Saussure ).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
.
simples”2 (de Saussure : f.). The simple words are then treated as ‘atoms’, each with an
invariant sense and potentially variable content, and the remainder of the work is devoted
to the principles by which these atoms are combined into ‘molecules’, each a hierarchically
organized concatenation of the basic atoms.
While the notion of the linguistic sign as an arbitrary and indissoluble unit combining
form and meaning would be associated as an innovation with his brother Ferdinand, René
here lays out a picture of word structure as a matter of structured combination of basic
signs, units corresponding to what would later be called morphemes. His principal interest
is in providing an analysis of the content of these basic elements from which it is possible to
derive the meanings resulting from their combination, but this is grounded in a picture of
complex words as essentially syntactic combinations of units that cannot be further
decomposed. The word violoniste is thus composed of two equally basic units, both
nouns: violon ‘violin’ and ‑iste ‘person, whose profession or habitual occupation is char-
acterized by the root to which this element is attached’.
This may seem rather straightforward, and indeed much subsequent thinking about
morphology would take such a position as virtually self-evident, but it can be contrasted
with the view of complex words taken by René’s brother Ferdinand. Rather than treating all
formational elements found in words as equally basic units, and complex or derived words as
combinations of these, de Saussure ( []) distinguishes basic or minimal signs from
relatively or partially motivated signs. Thus, arbre ‘tree’ and poirier ‘pear tree’ are both signs.
The former is not further analyzable, and thus basic, but in the case of the latter, the form
and content link it to other pairs such as cerise ‘cherry’, cerisier ‘cherry tree’; pomme
‘apple’, pommier ‘apple tree’, etc. It is the parallel relation between the members of these pairs,
conceived by Ferdinand in terms of analogical proportions, that supports (or partially moti-
vates) the meaning of poirier in relation to that of poire—and not the presence of a structural
unit ‑ier ‘tree, whose product is characterized by the root to which this element is attached’.
Ferdinand de Saussure was clearly familiar with the equivalent in various languages of
the German word morfem ‘morpheme’ which appeared in the earlier work of Jan Baudouin
de Courtenay (Anderson b) in much the same sense as René de Saussure’s ‘simple
words’ or ‘atoms’. He does not use it, however, and does not present the analysis of complex
derived words as a matter of decomposing them into basic units or minimal signs. Rather,
he treats morphological structure as grounded in the relations between classes of words:
similarities of form reflecting similarities of content and vice versa directly.
The two brothers were no doubt familiar to some extent with one another’s views, and
Ferdinand (de Saussure []: ff.), without reference to René’s work, notes the
existence of a difference between two approaches to word structure, one based on inter-
word relations and the other on the identification of internal components of words. He
suggests some possible arguments for the latter, but by and large adopts the former,
relational picture. René (de Saussure : ) later summarizes and oversimplifies
Ferdinand’s discussion, concluding (incorrectly, it would seem) that this supports his
2
From the point of view of logic, there is no difference between a root and an affix. Affixes can thus
be considered as simple words, and affixally derived words as really compound words. There are
therefore only two sorts of word: simple words (roots, prefixes, and suffixes) and compound words
made by combining simple words.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
view, although there is no evidence that Ferdinand was persuaded to adopt René’s mode of
analysis as opposed to merely seeing that there were issues to be resolved here.
Much subsequent writing would identify the notion of the morpheme as it later emerged
with the minimal sign of de Saussure ( []), and thus assume that “Saussure’s”
treatment of morphologically complex words involved breaking them down into compo-
nents of this sort, but such an analysis is really most appropriate for the work of René de
Saussure, and not for Ferdinand. In the work of the two, we can already discern a difference
between something in René’s work corresponding to what Stump () would later call a
lexical theory and something in Ferdinand’s that could be called an inferential one.
Such a basic dichotomy of morphological theory is not the only anticipation of later
distinctions that we can find in work of the early twentieth century. In both the practice of
the grammars that appear in the Handbook of American Indian Languages and its intro-
duction (Boas , see also Anderson : ch. ), Franz Boas maintains a theory of
morphology with some distinctly modern features. In particular, the treatments of mor-
phological structure in these descriptions are divided into two parts: on the one hand, an
inventory of the grammatical processes employed in the language (e.g. prefixation, suffixa-
tion, internal modification such as Ablaut, etc.) and, on the other, an inventory of the ideas
expressed by grammatical processes, such as number, tense or aspect, causativity, etc. In
practice, this division was deployed in much the same way as under the Separation
Hypothesis of Beard (), according to which a language’s morphology consists of a
collection of possible formal modifications any of which can be used to express any of the
categories of content signaled by the form of a word.
. A G
M
..................................................................................................................................
However interesting it may be to find such precursors of contemporary issues in views
more than a century old, there was not in fact very much continuity between those
discussions and the American Structuralist3 linguistics of the late s and beyond that
served as the direct ancestor of the picture of word structure that emerged in generative
theories. After a brief look at the history of the period, we turn to those views.
.. Edward Sapir
A major figure in our field whose work has connections to that of Boas is Edward Sapir.
Most of Sapir’s writing was focused on descriptive problems, primarily in the native
3
The linguists who saw their approach to language as originating in the work of Leonard Bloomfield
referred to it as “Descriptivist” linguistics; “American Structuralism” was a term introduced by their
detractors. Nonetheless, it has become the standard label, and we follow that usage here. The limitation of
the discussion below to American work is grounded not in the lack of anything of interest in other parts
of the world, but rather in the fact that ideas about morphology in later generative work can be derived
almost exclusively from American antecedents.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
.
languages of North America. Apart from this, Sapir is best known for his focus on language
as a component of the mind, including some important papers on phonology and the
psychological nature of phonological structure (Anderson : ch. ), issues that do not
directly concern us here. Apart from what one might conclude from his descriptive
practice, however, Sapir did provide a view of morphology in the context of a typology
of morphological structure across languages that appears in his little general audience book
Language (Sapir ; cf. also Anderson ).
Sapir’s intention is to improve on the kind of typology inherited from nineteenth-
century philology that differentiated languages as ‘analytic’ or ‘isolating’ vs. ‘synthetic’, and
among synthetic languages as ‘agglutinative’, ‘polysynthetic’, and ‘inflecting’ or ‘fusional’—
categories that are rather imprecise and difficult to apply in a consistent way across a
language. Sapir substitutes a descriptive framework based on three dimensions. One of
these refers to the degree of internal complexity of words, corresponding to the traditional
scale running from ‘analytic’ through ‘polysynthetic’; he has little to say about this, and it will
be ignored here. Rather more interesting are his other two dimensions.
These derive fairly directly from Boas’ early form of the Separation Hypothesis noted above:
The question of form in language presents itself under two aspects. We may either consider
the formal methods employed by a language, its “grammatical processes,” or we may
ascertain the distribution of concepts with reference to formal expression. What are the
formal patterns of the language? And what types of concepts make up the content of these
formal patterns? The two points of view are quite distinct.
(Sapir : )
As possible grammatical processes that might serve as the signal for concepts, Sapir offers
a list:
• word order;
• composition (compounding of stems);
• affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, etc.);
• internal modification (vocalic or consonantal Ablaut, Umlaut, consonant mutation, etc.);
• reduplication;
• variations in accent (pitch, stress, etc.).
It will be seen that in addition to signalling content by the combination of minimal sign-
like units (“morphemes”), Sapir envisions a variety of ways in which systematic modifica-
tion of the shape of a base can be used to indicate additional conceptual material. As a
typology, the granularity of this classification is clearly much finer than that of whole
languages, and it should rather be thought of as a way to characterize individual morpho-
logically significant relations. As a theory of morphology, this is fairly clearly an inferential
rather than a lexical one, in the terms of Stump ().
Sapir’s other significant dimension, that of concepts, distinguishes four basic types:
• basic (radical) concepts;
• derivational concepts;
• concrete relational concepts;
• pure relational concepts.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
The last two are essentially the sorts of thing that are generally ascribed to inflection, and
the difference between them corresponds to the distinction between inflectionally signifi-
cant properties that also bear semantic content (e.g. grammatical number) and those with
purely grammatical significance, such as the use of the Latin Nominative to mark subjects.
Every language has to have basic and pure relational concepts (even if the latter are
signalled only by word order, and not by formal modification), but languages can differ
as to the degree of elaboration of the other two types.
Rather interestingly, Sapir takes the grammatical form of a sentence to be described in a
way that attends to the distribution of relational concepts without reference to its actual
morphological or semantic content. Thus, after comparing the two sentences The farmer
kills the duckling and The man takes the chick, he observes that
we feel instinctively, without the slightest attempt at conscious analysis, that the two sentences
fit precisely the same pattern, differing only in their material trappings. In other words, they
express identical relational concepts in an identical manner.
(Sapir : )
The relevant grammatical patterns, then, are to be described independently of the concrete
lexical (and morphological) material that will instantiate them. As far as the actual appara-
tus of syntactic description, Sapir’s view is no more fleshed out than others of the period prior
to the focus on syntax associated with the rise of Generative Grammar, but it does not seem
unfair to characterize it as a precursor to subsequent Late Insertion theories such as those of
Otero (), Anderson (), Halle and Marantz (), and others.
Had Sapir been as engaged by morphology as he was by phonology, the typological
framework he developed in Sapir () suggests that the theoretical position he would have
arrived at would have been quite interesting in contemporary terms. However, there is little
evidence of a continuing interest in these issues in his later work. In any event, his
conception of language as an aspect of the mind put him rather at odds with the emerging
positivist climate of the s and s; while linguists continued to recognize his
importance, he had little influence on the views that came to define Structural Linguistics.
.. Leonard Bloomfield
Much more central to the field of Linguistics as it developed an identity independent of
its origins in Classical Philology and in Anthropology were the proposals of Leonard
Bloomfield.4 Although his textbook (Bloomfield ) bears the same title as Sapir’s earlier
work, the views of the subject matter expressed in the two works were vastly different.
As opposed to earlier linguists whose conception of language was shaped in large part by
traditional grammar of the European sort, Bloomfield was strongly influenced by his study of
the Sanskrit grammarians. Where traditional grammar largely saw morphological relations as
grounded in paradigmatic relations among word forms, the Sanskrit view emphasized
4
Matthews () shows that Bloomfield’s actual views on morphology, and the history of those
views, should be understood as significantly more complex and nuanced than the version in which they
were understood by the “neo-Bloomfieldians” who developed the theoretical position to be outlined
below in §... The presentation here is intended to represent the picture of morphology that was
attributed to Bloomfield and that served as the basis for later theorizing.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
.
breaking complex words down as combinations of basic parts, and Bloomfield pursued this
program of analyzing words as structured arrangements of irreducible morphemes.
Bloomfield defines the morpheme as “a linguistic form which bears no partial phonetic-
semantic resemblance to any other form” (Bloomfield : ), that is, a meaningful compo-
nent of a word that cannot be analyzed into smaller meaningful sub-parts. This requires that
phonetic and semantic resemblances among words are correlated, and the ‘morphemes’ are the
units that result when further sub-division would destroy that correlation. This includes not
only roots, but also affixes of all kinds; and the lexicon of a language is precisely an inventory of
all of the morphemes of all kinds that can be identified. The grammar of the language is largely
the set of principles by which these morphemes are arranged into larger constructions.
Bloomfield’s definition leads to a variety of problems, including the proper analysis of
“phonæsthemes” and some of the phenomena referred to in the literature on ideophones
(Kwon and Round ). For example, the set of English words including glow, gleam,
glisten, glitter, glimmer, glare, etc. share phonetic material (the initial gl‑) and semantics
(‘light emitting from a fixed source’), but the notion that these facts motivate positing a
morpheme {gl} with that meaning seems wrong to virtually all linguists. Similarly, pairs of
words in Korean such as piŋkɨl/pεŋkɨl ‘twirling of a larger/smaller object’, pipi/pεpε ‘state
of bigger/smaller things being entwined’, cilcil/calcal ‘dragging of a heavier/lighter object’,
etc. differ systematically in that the difference between high and non-high vowels in the word
corresponds to a difference between relatively larger and smaller referents. Again, treating the
vowel height dimension as a separable morpheme would be broadly rejected, despite the
presence in such cases of a “partial phonetic-semantic resemblance” among the words.
It would appear that Ferdinand de Saussure’s notion of word structure, grounded
directly in relations among forms rather than in their decomposition, could describe
such phenomena without particular problems, but phonæsthemes in particular pose a
serious issue for the position Bloomfield wished to maintain. In fact, going back to his
earlier work (as noted by Matthews ), he enumerates a number of such examples in
English which he characterizes (Bloomfield : ) as constituting “a system of root-
forming morphemes, of vague signification”, though he does not elaborate on the problems
they pose for his definition of the morpheme.
Bloomfield’s morphology was a fairly pure example of a lexical theory; indeed, he
introduced the term “lexicon” to designate the inventory of a language’s morphemes, the
analysis of which constituted the basic task in grammatical analysis. His definition,
however, appeared to present a number of technical difficulties, and the attempts of his
followers in the Structuralist tradition to identify and deal with these led to slightly different
theories within the same general range.5
.. Classical American structuralism
One problem that Bloomfield’s definition of the morpheme appeared to present was that it
relied on an association of specific phonetic material with specific semantics, thereby
assuming that morphemes have determinate phonetic content. In many cases, though,
we wish to say that we have to do with a single morpheme even when multiple distinct
5
See Stewart, Chapter this volume, for a general discussion of structuralist morphology.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
phonetic forms are involved. For example, surely there is a single plural morpheme to be
found in the English words cats, dogs, and horses, but not only are the surface forms [s], [z],
and [ɨz] distinct, they are also phonemically distinct in terms of the analyses of sound
structure prevalent at the time. Now in fact Bloomfield’s practice quite freely allows such
identification: he treats duke and duchess as sharing a single morpheme with two alternants,
but his definition does not make clear the basis for such a description.
This was addressed directly, initially by Harris (), who proposed to consider the
sound side of the morpheme not as a single phonetic (or phonemic) shape, but rather as a
set of such shapes, each associated with the same semantics and in a relation of comple-
mentary distribution such that (ignoring the issue of free variation) each member of the set
is associated with particular environments, where the environments linked to any two
members of the set are disjoint. The individual phonological forms are then referred to as
the distinct allomorphs of the morpheme.
The notion that morphemes are realized by members of a set of allomorphs standing in
complementary distribution is obviously quite similar to that of phonemes as realized by
phonetic segments that constitute the set of their allophones, also in complementary
distribution. Indeed, the American Structuralists of the s and s saw the discovery
and analysis of phonemes, minimal contrastive units of sound structure, as probably their
most important contribution to the science of language, and plunged with alacrity into a
view of morphemes as entirely parallel minimal units of word (and ultimately sentence)
structure. The view of the morpheme as an analytic unit entirely like the phoneme, but
constituting the next level up of abstraction, was developed in various papers throughout
the period by linguists such as Bloch () and Nida (), reaching its most explicit
formulation in the definitive work of Harris ().
Within traditional grammar (and to some extent in the linguistics of the early years of
the twentieth century), the theory of word structure, morphology, was primarily a matter of
characterizing the relations among surface words, especially word forms that together
constituted a paradigm. In contrast, the American Structuralist theory of morphology
was centrally a theory of the morpheme, and that in turn broke down into two aspects:
allomorphy, or the characterization of the relations in form among the allomorphs of
individual morphemes; and morphotactics, or the characterization of the combinatory
principles that group morphemes together into larger units.
The resulting view involves a commitment to several basic principles:
• Morphemes are indivisible units of linguistic form linking some component(s) of
meaning with a set of mutually exclusive allomorphs that express it, similar in nature
to Saussurean minimal signs.
• Each morpheme has a determinate semantic content, and each allomorph has a
determinate phonological form.
• Words are composed exhaustively of morphemes.
• Each morpheme in a word is represented by one and only one allomorph; and each
allomorph represents one and only one morpheme.
Once such principles are made explicit, it becomes clear that many situations in actual
languages are not directly analyzed in such terms. Hockett (; cf. also Anderson b)
discusses a number of these, including discontinuous morphological expression, zero
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
.
morphs and their counterparts empty morphs, portmanteaux, replacive and subtractive
morphs, etc. Somewhat puzzlingly, Hockett seems to treat the identification of these
anomalies as constituting their resolution, but in any event, an agenda of potential
problems for the structuralist conception of morphological structure had been laid out.
. M
G G
..................................................................................................................................
With the rise of Generative Grammar6 in the s and s came a rather precipitous
decline of interest in morphological issues per se. This was largely a consequence of the
absorption of much of the territory of morphology into other aspects of grammar. As
phonological theory discarded the limitations imposed by the definition of the phoneme as
a unit of surface contrast, and allowed for rather more abstract phonological representa-
tions, virtually all of the treatment of allomorphy apart from pure suppletion came to fall
within phonology. On the other hand, as substantive theories of syntax emerged, these were
considered to govern the distribution of morphemes directly, leaving nothing of conse-
quence for a distinct domain of morphotactics. This latter development was really just a
turning on its head of the existing view: where structuralists had imagined that morpho-
tactics, once extended above the level of the word, would provide a framework for syntax,
the new theories presumed that syntax extended to domains smaller than the word would
account for what had been called morphotactics. As a result of these combined developments,
though, there was very little of interest left for a morphological theory to account for.
.. Early Transformational Grammar
The notion that classical Generative Grammar did not really have a theory of morphology,
however, is somewhat oversimplified.7 As a student of Zellig Harris, Chomsky brought with
him assumptions about word structure similar to those laid out in Harris , apart from
the effort in that work to ground those conceptions in discovery procedures that would lead
from a corpus of surface forms to an analysis. In particular, from his earliest significant
publication in syntax, Chomsky () assumes that the fundamental units of syntactic
analysis (and of the internal form of words) are morphemes, each of which is a link between
determinate components of meaning (semantic or grammatical) and a set of their surface
phonological instantiations, with explicit references to Harris’s work. Chomsky’s earlier
exploration of the morphology of Hebrew (Chomsky []) led him to maintain a
much more complex and abstract notion of the relation between morphemes and their
phonological realizations than that of Harris (), but morphemes were nonetheless an
unquestioned component of an analysis.
Ten Hacken, Chapter this volume, provides a survey of early generative theory.
6
7
The discussion of these matters in this section is based on the somewhat fuller treatment in
Anderson ().
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/11/2018, SPi
In the central work of this early period, Chomsky ( [–]) lays out an analysis of
the structure of natural language in terms of a number of significant levels, each with its
own primitives and systematic connections with adjacent levels. One of these is the level M,
where linguistic objects are represented as complexes of morphemes. The elements of M, on
the one hand, largely correspond to the terminal elements of Phrase Markers (on the level P).
On the other hand, representations on the level M correspond to words (on the level W),
ultimately mapped onto phonological form by a system of morphophonemic rules.
In this theory, then, morphemes correspond to the objects whose distribution is governed
by the syntax. This fact is quite essential, since it is on this that the analysis of English
auxiliary sequences by means of the transformation which has come to be known as “Affix
Hopping” crucially depends. In that analysis auxiliaries such as Perfect have, Progressive
be, etc. are introduced in phrase structure in combination with morphological markers (‑ed
‘Past Participle’, ‑ing ‘Progressive’, etc.). Affix Hopping then permutes these markers with a
following verbal element to attach them as suffixes to it, yielding a compact and appealing
account of the dependencies within the auxiliary sequence in a way that depends crucially
on the ability of syntactic rules to refer directly to morphemes. It is probably no exaggera-
tion to say that this analysis (as it was presented in Chomsky ) was uniquely influential
in attracting other linguists of the period to the emerging theory of Transformational
Grammar—and to the set of assumptions it relied on.
The role of morphemes as syntactic primitives in this view is clear, but it is also
compromised to a limited extent in a way that elicited little if any discussion. Chomsky
( [–]: ) notes that some elements on level M play a role in word structure, but
not in the syntax: his example is the ‑ess of actress, lioness, mistress, etc. On this basis he
distinguishes the set of syntactically relevant morphemes as a level M “embedded into the
level [of phrase structure] P”, where the elements of M are a proper subset of the elements
of M. The difference between M and the remaining elements of M (e.g. ‑ess) is said to
approximate the traditional distinction between inflection and “composition”, thus leaving
the door open for a theory of derivational morphology that would not be part of the syntax
but rather of word structure, but this possibility was not explored. Syntacticians had more
important matters to occupy their attention.
Another aspect of morphological theory in this early work, partially taken over from
Harris but largely based on his own experience in analyzing Hebrew, was the rather abstract
nature of the relation between morphemes and their phonological realizations. While
Bloomfield and at least some of the structuralists had seen the allomorphy of individual
morphemes as somewhat limited, Chomsky (: , fn. ) explicitly allows for analyses
such that “[i]n the morphophonemics of English we shall have rules: wh + he ! /huw/,
wh + him ! /huwm/, wh + it ! /wat/”, and the analyses of Hebrew in Chomsky (
[]) are even more abstract. There is thus no obvious constraint on the relation between
sequences of morphemes and their phonological realization in words.
Early generative theory, then, was not without a theory of morphology: a rather rich and
substantive theory was in fact taken for granted, though this was based on premises inherited
with little examination from earlier structuralist views. The lack of attention to these matters
in theoretical discussion was surely a result of the fact that developments in syntax and in
phonology were much more dramatic and therefore captured most of the attention. But as a
result, a version of the structuralist morpheme and its attendant assumptions about the
structure of words persisted into linguistic theory without explicit justification.
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
Money, which the Believers, having sold their Possessions, gave unto
them, and finding themselves overcharged with that Burthen,
appointed Deacons for that Business, that they might give
themselves continually to Prayer, and to the Ministry of the Word;
not leaving that, to serve Tables. This cannot be Deacons
meant of any sacramental Eating, or religious Acts appointed for
of Worship; seeing our Adversaries make the serving Tables.
Distributing of that the proper Act of Ministers, not of Deacons: And
yet there can be no Reason alleged, That that breaking of Bread,
which they are said to have continued in, and to have done from
House to House, was other than those Tables which the Apostles
served; but here gave over, as finding themselves overcharged with
it. Now as the Increase of the Disciples did incapacitate the Apostles
any more to manage this; so it would seem their further Increase,
and dispersing in divers Places, hindered the Continuance of that
Practice of having Things in common: But notwithstanding, so far at
least to remember or continue that ancient Community, they did at
certain Times come together, and break Bread together. Hence it is
said, Acts xx. 7. on Paul’s coming to Troas, That At Troas the
upon the fist Day of the Week, when the Disciples Supper deferred
came together to break Bread, Paul preached unto till Midnight.
them, ready to depart on the Morrow, and continued his Speech
until Midnight. Here is no Mention made of any sacramental Eating;
but only that Paul took Occasion from their being together to preach
unto them. And it seems it was a Supper they intended (not a
Morning-bit of Bread, and Sup of Wine) else it is not very probable
that Paul would from the Morning have preached until Midnight. But
the 11th Verse puts the Matter out of Dispute, which is thus: When
he therefore was come up again, and had broken Bread, and eaten,
and talked a long While, even till Break of Day, so he departed. This
shews, That the breaking of Bread was deferred till that Time; for
these Words [and when he had broken Bread, and eaten] do shew,
That it had a Relation to the breaking of Bread before-mentioned,
and that that was the Time he did it. Secondly, These Words joined
together [and when he had broken Bread, and eaten, and talked]
shew, it was no religious Act of Worship, but only an Eating for
bodily Refreshment, for which the Christians used They only did eat
to meet together some Time; and doing it in God’s for refreshing the
Fear, and Singleness of Heart, doth Body.
notwithstanding difference it from the Eating or Feasting of profane
Persons. And this by some is called a Love-feast, or By some called a
a being together, not merely to feed their Bellies, Love-feast.
or for outward Ends; but to take thence Occasion
to eat and drink together, in the Dread and Presence of the Lord, as
his People; which Custom we shall not condemn. But let it be
observed, That in all the Acts there is no other nor further Mention
of this Matter. But if that Ceremony had been some solemn Sacrifice,
as some will have it, or such a special Sacrament as others plead it
to be; it is strange that that History, which in many less Things gives
a particular Account of the Christians Behaviour, should have been
so silent in the Matter: Only we find, That they used sometimes to
meet together to break Bread, and eat. Now as the The Christians
early Christians began by Degrees to depart from began by Degrees
that primitive Purity and Simplicity, so did they also to depart from the
Primitive Purity.
to accumulate superstitious Traditions, and vitiate
the innocent Practices of their Predecessors, by the Intermixing
either of Jewish or Heathenish Rites; and likewise in the Use of this,
Abuses began very early to creep in among Christians, so that it was
needful for the Apostle Paul to reform them, and reprove them for it,
as he doth at large, 1 Cor. xi. from Ver. 17. to the End: Which Place
we shall particularly examine, because our 1 Cor. 11. 17.
Adversaries lay the chief Stress of their Matter
upon it; and we shall see whether it will infer any Concerning the
more than we have above granted. First, Because Supper of the
they were apt to use that Practice in a superstitious Lord (so called)
explained.
Mind beyond the true Use of it, so as to make of it
some mystical Supper of the Lord, he tells them, Ver. 20. That their
coming together into one Place, is not to eat the Lord’s Supper; he
saith not, This is not the right Manner to eat; but, This is NOT to eat
the Lord’s Supper; because the Supper of the Lord is spiritual, and a
Mystery. Secondly, He blames them, in that they came together for
the Worse, and not for the Better; the Reason he gives of this is, Ver.
21. For in Eating every one hath taken before his own Supper; and
one is hungry, and another is drunken. Here it is Why the Custom
plain that the Apostle condemns them in that of Supping in
(because this Custom of Supping in General was common was
used among
used among Christians to increase their Love, and Christians.
as a Memorial of Christ’s Supping with the
Disciples) they had so vitiated it, as to eat it apart, and to come full,
who had Abundance; and hungry, who had little at Home; whereby
the very Use and End of this Practice was lost and perverted: And
therefore he blames them, that they did not either eat this in
Common at Home, or reserve their Eating till they came all together
to the publick Assembly. This appears plainly by the following Ver.
22. Have ye not Houses to eat and drink in? Or despise ye the
Church of God, and shame them that have not? Where he blames
them for their irregular Practice herein, in that they despised to eat
orderly, or reserve their Eating to the publick Assembly; and so
shaming such, as not having Houses, nor Fulness at Home, came to
partake of the common Table; who, being hungry, thereby were
shamed, when they observed others come thither full and drunken.
Those that without Prejudice will look to the Place, will see this must
have been the Case among the Corinthians: For supposing the Use
of this to have been then, as now used either by Papists, Lutherans,
or Calvinists, it is hard making Sense of the Apostle’s Words, or
indeed to conceive what was the Abuse the Corinthians committed in
this Thing. Having thus observed what the Apostle said above,
because this Custom of Eating and Drinking The Rise of that
together some Time had its Rise from Christ’s Act Custom.
with the Apostles the Night he was betrayed;
therefore the Apostle proceeds, Ver. 23. to give them an Account of
that: For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto
you, that the Lord Jesus, the same Night in which he was betrayed,
took Bread, &c. Those that understand the Difference betwixt a
Narration of a Thing, and a Command, cannot but see, if they will,
That there is no Command in this Place, but only an Account of
Matter of Fact; he saith not, I received of the Lord, that as he took
Bread, so I should command it to you to do so likewise; there is
nothing like this in the Place: Yea, on the contrary, Ver. 25. where he
repeats Christ’s imperative Words to his Apostles, he placeth them so
as they import no Command; This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in
Remembrance of me: And then he adds, For as often as ye eat this
Bread, and drink this Cup, ye do shew the Lord’s Death till he come:
But these Words [As often] import no more a That [As often]
Command, than to say, As often as thou goest to imports no
Rome, see the Capitol, will infer a Command to me Command of this
Supper.
to go thither.
But whereas they urge the last Words, Ye shew Object.
forth the Lord’s Death till he come; insinuating,
That this imports a necessary Continuance of that Ceremony, until
Christ come at the End of the World to Judgment;
I answer, They take two of the chief Parts of the Answ.
Controversy here for granted, without Proof. First,
That [as often] imports a Command; the contrary whereof is shewn;
neither will they ever be able to prove it. Secondly, Christ’s outward
That this Coming is to be understood of Christ’s and inward
last outward Coming, and not of his inward and Coming.
spiritual, that remains to be proved: Whereas the Apostle might well
understand it of his inward Coming and Appearance, which perhaps
some of those carnal Corinthians, that used to come drunken
together, had not yet known; and others, being weak among them,
and inclinable to dote upon Externals, this might have been indulged
to them for a Season, and even used by them who knew Christ’s
Appearance in Spirit (as other Things were, of which we shall speak
hereafter) especially by the Apostle, who became weak to the Weak,
and all to All, that he might save some. Now those To remember
weak and carnal Corinthians might be permitted Christ’s Death till
the Use of this, to shew forth, or remember Christ’s he come to arise
in the Heart.
Death, till he came to arise in them; for though
such need those outward Things to put them in Mind of Christ’s
Death, yet those who are dead with Christ, and not only dead with
Christ, but buried, and also arisen with him, need not such Signs to
remember him: And to such therefore the Apostle saith, Col. iii. 1. If
ye then be risen with Christ, seek those Things which are above,
where Christ sitteth on the right Hand of God: But Bread and Wine
are not those Things that are above, but are Things of the Earth. But
that this whole Matter was a mere Act of Indulgence and
Condescension of the Apostle Paul to the weak and carnal
Corinthians, appears yet more by the Syriack[133] Copy, which Ver.
17. in his entering upon this Matter, hath it thus; In that concerning
which I am about to command you (or instruct you) I commend you
not, because ye have not gone forward, but are descended unto that
which is less, or of less Consequence: Clearly importing, That the
Apostle was grieved that such was their Condition, that he was
forced to give them Instructions concerning those outward Things;
and doting upon which, they shewed they were not gone forward in
the Life of Christianity, but rather sticking in beggarly Elements. And
therefore Ver. 20. the same Version hath it thus, When then ye meet
together, ye do not do it, as it is just ye should do in the Day of the
Lord, ye eat and drink it: Therefore shewing to them, That to meet
together to eat and drink outward Bread and Wine, was not the
Labour and Work of that Day of the Lord. But since our Adversaries
are so zealous for this Ceremony, because used by the Church of
Corinth (though with how little Ground is already shewn) how come
they to pass over far more positive Commands of the Apostles, as
Matters of no Moment? As First, Acts xv. 29. where the Apostles
peremptorily command the Gentiles, as that which To abstain from
was the Mind of the Holy Ghost, To abstain from Things strangled.
Things strangled, and from Blood: And James v.
14. where it is expresly commanded, That the Sick The Anointing
be anointed with Oil in the Name of the Lord. with Oil.
[133] And likewise the other Oriental Versions, as the Arabick and
Æthiopick, have it the same Way.
If they say, Those were only temporary Things, but Object.
not to continue;
What have they more to shew for this; there being Answ.
no express Repeal of them?
If they say, The Repeal is implied, because the Object.
Apostle saith, We ought not to be judged in Meats
and Drinks;
I admit the Answer: But how can it be prevented Answ.
from militating the same Way against the other
Practice? Surely not at all: Nor can there be any Thing urged for the
one more than for the other, but Custom and Tradition.
As for that of James, they say, There followed a Object.
Miracle upon it, to wit, The Recovery of the Sick;
but this being ceased, so should the Ceremony.
Though this might many Ways be answered, to wit, Answ.
That Prayer then might as well be forborn, to which
also the Saving of the Sick is there ascribed; yet I shall accept of it,
because I judge indeed that Ceremony is ceased; A Ceremony
only methinks, since our Adversaries, and that ought to cease,
rightly, think a Ceremony ought to cease where the its Virtue failing.
Virtue fails, they ought by the same Rule to forbear the laying on of
Hands, in Imitation of the Apostles, since the Gift Thus laying on of
of the Holy Ghost doth not follow upon it. Hands.
§. IX. But since we find that several Testimonies of Scripture do
sufficiently shew, That such external Rites are no necessary Part of
the New Covenant Dispensation, therefore not needful now to
continue, however they were for a Season practised of old, I shall
instance some few of them, whereby from the Nature of the Thing,
as well as those Testimonies, it may appear, That the Ceremony of
Bread and Wine is ceased, as well as those other Things confessed
by our Adversaries to be so. The first is Rom. xiv. The Ceremony of
17. For the Kingdom of God is not Meat and Drink, Bread and Wine is
but Righteousness and Peace, and Joy in the Holy ceased.
Ghost: Here the Apostle evidently shews, That the Kingdom of God,
or Gospel of Christ, stands not in Meats and Drinks, and such like
Things, but in Righteousness, &c. as by the Context doth appear,
where he is speaking of the Guilt and Hazard of judging one another
about Meats and Drinks. So then, if the Kingdom of God stand not in
them, nor the Gospel, nor Work of Christ, then the eating of outward
Bread and Wine can be no necessary Part of the Gospel-worship, nor
any perpetual Ordinance of it. Another of the same Apostle is yet
more plain, Col. ii. 16. the Apostle throughout this whole second
Chapter doth clearly plead for us, and against the Formality and
Superstition of our Opposers: For in the Beginning he holds forth the
great Privileges which Christians have by Christ, who are indeed
come to the Life of Christianity; and therefore he desires them, Ver.
6. As they have received Christ, so to walk in him; and to beware,
lest they be spoiled through Philosophy and vain Deceit, after the
Rudiments or Elements of the World; because that in Christ, whom
they have received, is all Fulness: And that they are circumcised with
the Circumcision made without Hands (which he calls the
Circumcision of Christ) and being buried with him by Baptism, are
also arisen with him through the Faith of the Operation of God. Here
also they did partake of the true Baptism of Christ; and being such
as are arisen with him, let us see whether he thinks it needful they
should make use of such Meat and Drink as Bread and Wine, to put
them in Remembrance of Christ’s Death; or whether they ought to
be judged, that they did it not; Ver. 16. Let no Man therefore judge
you in Meat and Drink: Is not Bread and Wine Meat and Drink? But
why? Which are a Shadow of Things to come: But the Body is of
Christ. Then since our Adversaries confess, That ’Tis but a Sign
their Bread and Wine is a Sign or Shadow; and Shadow they
therefore, according to the Apostle’s Doctrine, we confess.
ought not to be judged in the Non-observation of it. But is it not fit
for those that are dead with Christ to be subject to such Ordinances?
See what he saith, Ver. 20. Wherefore if ye be dead And which do
with Christ from the Rudiments of the World, why, perish with the
as though living in the World, are ye subject to Using.
Ordinances? (Touch not, taste not, handle not: Which all are to
perish with the Using) after the Commandments and Doctrines of
Men. What can be more plain? If this serve not to take away the
absolute Necessity of the Use of Bread and Wine, what can it serve
to take away? Sure I am, the Reason here given is applicable to
them, which all do perish with the Using; since Bread and Wine
perish with the Using, as much as other Things. But further, If the
Use of Water, and Bread and Wine, were that wherein the very Seals
of the New Covenant stood, and did pertain to the chief Sacraments
of the Gospel and Evangelical Ordinances (so called) then would not
the Gospel differ from the Law, or be preferable to it. Whereas the
Apostle shews the Difference, Heb. ix. 10. in that The Law was
such Kind of Observations of the Jews were as a Meats and Drinks;
Sign of the Gospel, for that they stood only in not so the Gospel.
Meats and Drinks, and divers Washings. But if the Gospel-worship
and Service stand in the same, where is the Difference?
If it be said, These under the Gospel have a Object.
spiritual Signification;
So had those under the Law; God was the Author Answ.
of those, as well as Christ is pretended to be the
Author of these. But doth not this contending for the Use of Water,
Bread and Wine, as necessary Parts of the Gospel-worship, destroy
the Nature of it, as if the Gospel were a Dispensation of Shadows,
and not of the Substance? Whereas the Apostle, in The Law has
that of the Colossians above-mentioned, argues Shadows, the
against the Use of these Things, as needful to Gospel brings the
Substance.
those that are dead and arisen with Christ, because
they are but Shadows. And since, through the whole Epistle to the
Hebrews, he argues with the Jews, to wean them from their old
Worship, for this Reason, because it was typical and figurative; is it
agreeable to right Reason to bring them to another of the same
Nature? What Ground from Scripture or Reason can our Adversaries
bring us, to evince that one Shadow or Figure should point to
another Shadow or Figure, and not to the Substance? And yet they
make the Figure of Circumcision to point to Water-baptism, and the
Paschal Lamb to Bread and Wine. But was it ever known that one
Figure was the Anti-type of the other, especially seeing Protestants
make not these their Anti-types to have any more Virtue and Efficacy
than the Type had? For since, as they say, and that Their Sacraments
truly, That their Sacraments confer not Grace, but confer not Grace.
that it is conferred according to the Faith of the
Receiver, it will not be denied but the Faithful among the Jews
received also Grace in the Use of their Figurative Worship. And
though Papists boast that their Sacraments confer Grace ex opere
operato, yet Experience abundantly proveth the contrary.
§. X. But supposing the Use of Water-baptism Opposers claim a
Power to give
and Bread and Wine to have been in the Primitive their Sacraments;
Church, as was also that of abstaining from Things from whence do
strangled, and from Blood, the Use of Legal they derive it?
Purification, Acts xxi. 23, 24, 25. and anointing of the Sick with Oil,
for the Reasons and Grounds before mentioned; yet it remains for
our Adversaries to shew us how they come by Power or Authority to
administer them. It cannot be from the Letter of the Scripture, else
they ought also to do those other Things, which the Letter declares
also they did, and which in the Letter have as much Foundation.
Then their Power must be derived from the Apostles, either
mediately or immediately; but we have shewn before, in the tenth
Proposition, that they have no mediate Power, because of the
Interruption made by the Apostasy; and for an immediate Power or
Command by the Spirit of God to administer these Things, none of
our Adversaries pretend to it. We know that in this, as in other
Things, they make a Noise of the constant Consent of the Church,
and of Christians in all Ages; but as Tradition is not Tradition no
a sufficient Ground for Faith, so in this Matter sufficient Ground
especially it ought to have but small Weight; for for Faith.
that in this Point of Ceremonies and superstitious Observations the
Apostasy began very early, as may appear in the Epistle of Paul to
the Galatians and Colossians; and we have no Ground to imitate
them in those Things, whose Entrance the Apostle so much
withstood, so heavily regretted, and so sharply reproved. But if we
look to Antiquity, we find that in such Kind of Observances and
Traditions they were very uncertain and changeable; so that neither
Protestants nor Papists do observe this Ceremony as they did, both
in that they gave it to young Boys, and to little Children: And for
aught can be learned, the Use of this and Infant- The Supper they
baptism are of a like Age, though the one be laid gave to young
aside both by Papists and Protestants, and the Boys and
Children.
other, to wit, Baptism of Infants, be stuck to. And
we have so much the less Reason to lay Weight upon Antiquity, for
that if we consider their Profession of Religion, especially as to
Worship, and the ceremonial Part of it, we shall not find any Church
now, whether Popish or Protestant, who differ not widely from them
in many Things, as Dallæus, in his Treatise Dallæus.
concerning the Use of the Fathers, well observeth
and demonstrateth. And why they should obtrude this upon us
because of the Ancients Practice, which they themselves follow not,
or why we may not reject this, as well as they do other Things no
less zealously practised by the Ancients, no sufficient Reason can be
assigned.
Nevertheless I doubt not but many, whose Understandings have
been clouded with these Ceremonies, have notwithstanding, by the
Mercy of God, had some secret Sense of the Mystery, which they
could not clearly understand, because it was sealed from them by
their sticking to such outward Things; and that through that secret
Sense diving in their Comprehensions they ran themselves into these
carnal Apprehensions, as imagining the Substance of the Bread was
changed, or that if the Substance was not changed, yet the Body
was there, &c. And indeed I am inclinable very Calvin’s ingenuous
favourably to judge of Calvin in this Particular, in Confession
that he deals so ingenuously to confess he neither commended.
comprehends it, nor can express it in Words; but yet by a feeling
Experience can say, The Lord is spiritually present. Now as I doubt
not but Calvin sometimes had a Sense of his Presence without the
Use of this Ceremony, so as the Understanding given him of God
made him justly reject the false Notions of Transubstantiation and
Consubstantiation, though he knew not what to establish instead of
them, if he had fully waited in the [134]Light that makes all Things
manifest, and had not laboured in his own Comprehension to settle
upon that external Ceremony, by affixing the spiritual Presence as
chiefly or principally, though not only, as he well knew by
Experience, there, or especially to relate to it, he might have further
reached unto the Knowledge of this Mystery than many that went
before him.
[134] Ephes. 5. 13.
§. XI. Lastly, If any now at this Day, from a true In Tenderness of
Conscience, God
Tenderness of Spirit, and with real Conscience winketh at our
towards God, did practise this Ceremony in the Ignorance.
same Way, Method, and Manner as did the
Primitive Christians recorded in Scripture, I should not doubt to
affirm but they might be indulged in it, and the Lord might regard
them, and for a Season appear to them in the Use of these Things,
as many of us have known him to do to us in the Time of our
Ignorance; provided always they did not seek to obtrude them upon
others, nor judge such as found themselves delivered from them, or
that they do not pertinaciously adhere to them. For The Day is
we certainly know that the Day is dawned, in which dawned wherein
God hath arisen, and hath dismissed all those God is risen, and
worshipped in
Ceremonies and Rites, and is only to be Spirit.
worshipped in Spirit, and that he appears to them
who wait upon him; and that to seek God in these Things is, with
Mary at the Sepulchre, to seek the Living among the Dead: For we
know that he is risen, and revealed in Spirit, leading his Children out
of these Rudiments, that they may walk with him in his Light: To
whom be Glory for ever. Amen.
PROPOSITION XIV.
Concerning the Power of the Civil Magistrate in Matters purely
Religious, and pertaining to the Conscience.
[135]Since God hath assumed to himself the Power and Dominion of
the Conscience, who alone can rightly instruct and govern it,
therefore it is not lawful for any whosoever, by Virtue of any
Authority or Principality they bear in the Government of this
World, to force the Consciences of others; and therefore all
Killing, Banishing, Fining, Imprisoning, and other such Things
which are inflicted upon Men for the alone Exercise of their
Conscience, or Difference in Worship or Opinion, proceedeth
from the Spirit of Cain the Murderer, and is contrary to the
Truth; providing always, that no Man, under the Pretence of
Conscience, prejudice his Neighbour in his Life or Estate, or do
any Thing destructive to, or inconsistent with, Human Society;
in which Case the Law is for the Transgressor, and Justice is to
be administered upon all, without Respect of Persons.
[135] Luke 9. 55, 56. Matt. 7. 12, 13. 29. Tit. 3. 10.
§. I. Liberty of Conscience from the Power of the Civil Magistrate
hath been of late Years so largely and learnedly handled, that I shall
need to be but brief in it; yet it is to be lamented that few have
walked answerably to this Principle, each pleading it for themselves,
but scarce allowing it to others, as hereafter I shall have Occasion
more at length to observe.
It will be fit in the first Place, for clearing of Mistakes, to say
something of the State of the Controversy, that what follows may be
the more clearly understood.
By Conscience then, as in the Explanation of the What Conscience
fifth and sixth Propositions I have observed, is to is.
be understood, That Persuasion of the Mind which arises from the
Understanding’s being possessed with the Belief of the Truth or
Falsity of any Thing; which though it may be false or evil upon the
Matter, yet if a Man should go against his Persuasion or Conscience,
he would commit a Sin; because what a Man doth contrary to his
Faith, though his Faith be wrong, is no Ways acceptable to God.
Hence the Apostle saith, [136]Whatsoever is not of Faith, is Sin; and
he that doubteth is damned if he eat; though the Thing might have
been lawful to another; and that this Doubting to eat some Kind of
Meats (since all the Creatures of God are good, and for the Use of
Man, if received with Thanksgiving) might be a Superstition, or at
least a Weakness, which were better removed. Hence Ames. de Cas.
Cons. saith, The Conscience, although erring, doth evermore bind,
so as that he sinneth who doth contrary to his Conscience,[137]
because he doth contrary to the Will of God, although not materially
and truly, yet formally and interpretatively.
[136] Rom. 14. 23.
[137] i. e. As he supposeth.
So the Question is First, Whether the Civil Magistrate hath Power to
force Men in Things religious to do contrary to their Conscience; and
if they will not, to punish them in their Goods, Liberties, and Lives?
This we hold in the Negative. But Secondly, As we would have the
Magistrate to avoid this Extreme of incroaching upon Men’s
Consciences, so on the other Hand we are far from joining with or
strengthening such Libertines as would stretch the Liberty of their
Consciences to the Prejudice of their Neighbours, or to the Ruin of
Human Society. We understand therefore by Matters of Conscience
such as immediately relate betwixt God and Man, or Men and Men,
that are under the same Persuasion, as to meet together and
worship God in that Way which they judge is most acceptable unto
him, and not to incroach upon, or seek to force their Neighbours,
otherwise than by Reason, or such other Means as Christ and his
Apostles used, viz. Preaching and instructing such as will hear and
receive it; but not at all for Men, under the Notion of Conscience, to
do any Thing contrary to the moral and perpetual Statutes generally
acknowledged by all Christians; in which Case the Magistrate may
very lawfully use his Authority; as on those, who, under a Pretence
of Conscience, make it a Principle to kill and destroy all the Wicked,
id est, all that differ from them, that they, to wit, the Saints, may
rule, and who therefore seek to make all Things common, and would
force their Neighbours to share their Estates with them, and many
such wild Notions, as is reported of the Anabaptists of Munster;
which evidently appears to proceed from Pride and Covetousness,
and not from Purity or Conscience; and therefore I have sufficiently
guarded against that in the latter Part of the Proposition. But the
Liberty we lay claim to is such as the Primitive Church justly fought
under the Heathen Emperors, to wit, for Men of Sobriety, Honesty,
and a peaceable Conversation, to enjoy the Liberty and Exercise of
their Conscience towards God and among themselves, and to admit
among them such as by their Persuasion and Influence come to be
convinced of the same Truth with them, without being therefore
molested by the Civil Magistrate. Thirdly, Though we would not have
Men hurt in their Temporals, nor robbed of their Privileges as Men
and Members of the Commonwealth, because of their inward
Persuasion; yet we are far from judging that in the Church of God
there should not be Censures exercised against such as fall into
Error, as well as such as commit open Evils; and therefore we believe
it may be very lawful for a Christian Church, if she find any of her
Members fall into any Error, after due Admonitions and Instructions
according to Gospel Order, if she find them pertinacious, to cut them
off from her Fellowship by the Sword of the Spirit, and deprive them
of those Privileges which they had as Fellow-members; but not to
cut them off from the World by the temporal Sword, or rob them of
their common Privileges as Men, seeing they enjoy not these as
Christians, or under such a Fellowship, but as Men, and Members of
the Creation. Hence Chrysostom saith well, (de Anath.) We must
condemn and reprove the evil Doctrines that proceed from
Hereticks; but spare the Men, and pray for their Salvation.
§. II. But that no Man, by Virtue of any Power or Principality he
hath in the Government of this World, hath Power over the
Consciences of Men, is apparent, because the Conscience the
Conscience of Man is the Seat and Throne of God Throne of God.
in him, of which God is the alone proper and
infallible Judge, who by his Power and Spirit can alone rectify the
Mistakes of Conscience, and therefore hath reserved to himself the
Power of punishing the Errors thereof as he seeth meet. Now for the
Magistrate to assume this, is to take upon him to meddle with
Things not within the Compass of his Jurisdiction; for if this were
within the Compass of his Jurisdiction, he should be the proper
Judge in these Things; and also it were needful to him, as an
essential Qualification of his being a Magistrate, to be capable to
judge in them. But that the Magistrate, as a Magistrate, is neither
proper Judge in these Cases, nor yet that the Capacity so to be is
requisite in him as a Magistrate, our Adversaries cannot deny; or
else they must say, That all the Heathen Magistrates were either no
lawful Magistrates, as wanting something essential to Magistracy,
and this were contrary to the express Doctrine of the Apostle, Rom.
xiii. or else (which is more absurd) that those Heathen Magistrates
were proper Judges in Matters of Conscience among Christians. As
for that Evasion that the Magistrate ought to punish according to the
Church Censure and Determination, which is indeed no less than to
make the Magistrate the Church’s Hangman, we shall have Occasion
to speak of it hereafter. But if the chief Members of the Church,
though ordained to inform, instruct, and reprove, are not to have
Dominion over the Faith nor Consciences of the Faithful, as the
Apostle expresly affirms, 2 Cor. i. 24. then far less ought they to
usurp this Dominion, or stir up the Magistrate to persecute and
murder those who cannot yield to them therein.
Secondly, This pretended Power of the Magistrate is both contrary
unto, and inconsistent with the Nature of the Gospel, which is a
Thing altogether extrinsick to the Rule and Government of political
States, as Christ expresly signified, saying, His Kingdom was not of
this World; and if the propagating of the Gospel had had any
necessary Relation thereunto, then Christ had not said so. But he
abundantly hath shewn by his Example, whom we are chiefly to
imitate in Matters of that Nature, that it is by Persuasion and the
Power of God, not by Whips, Imprisonments, Banishments, and
Murderings, that the Gospel is to be propagated; and that those that
are the Propagators of it are often to suffer by the Wicked, but never
to cause the Wicked to suffer. When he sends forth his Disciples, he
tells them, he sends them forth as [138]Lambs among Wolves, to be
willing to be devoured, not to devour: He tells them of their being
whipped, imprisoned, and killed for their Conscience; but never that
they shall either whip, imprison, or kill: And indeed if Christians must
be as Lambs, it is not the Nature of Lambs to destroy or devour any.
It serves nothing to allege, that in Christ’s and his Apostles Times
the Magistrates were Heathens, and therefore Christ and his
Apostles, nor yet any of the Believers, being no Magistrates, could
not exercise the Power; because it cannot be denied but Christ,
being the Son of God, had a true Right to all Kingdoms, and was
righteous Heir of the Earth. [139]Next, as to his Power, it cannot be
denied but he could, if he had seen meet, have called for Legions of
Angels to defend him, and have forced the Princes and Potentates of
the Earth to be subject unto him, Matt. xxvi. 53. So that it was only
because it was contrary to the Nature of Christ’s Gospel and Ministry
to use any Force or Violence in the gathering of Souls to him. This
he abundantly expressed in his Reproof to the two Sons of Zebedee,
who would have been calling for Fire from Heaven to burn those that
refused to receive Christ: It is not to be doubted but this was as
great a Crime as now to be in an Error concerning the Faith and
Doctrine of Christ. That there was not Power wanting to have
punished those Refusers of Christ cannot be doubted; for they that
could do other Miracles, might have done this also. And moreover,
they wanted not the Precedent of a holy Man under the Law, as did
Elias; yet we see what Christ saith to them, Ye know not what Spirit
ye are of, Luke ix. 55. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy
Men’s Lives, but to save them. Here Christ shews that such Kind of
Zeal was no Ways approved of him; and such as think to make Way
for Christ or his Gospel by this Means, do not understand what Spirit
they are of. But if it was not lawful to call for Fire from Heaven to
destroy such as refuse to receive Christ, it is far less lawful to kindle
Fire upon Earth to destroy those that believe in Christ, because they
will not believe, nor can believe, as the Magistrates do, for
Conscience Sake. And if it was not lawful for the Apostles, who had
so large a Measure of the Spirit, and were so little liable to Mistake,
to force others to their Judgment, it can be far less lawful now for
Men, who as Experience declareth, and many of themselves confess,
are fallible, and often mistaken, to kill and destroy all such as
cannot, because otherwise persuaded in their Minds, judge and
believe in Matters of Conscience just as they do. And if it was not
according to the Wisdom of Christ, who was and is King of Kings, by
outward Force to constrain others to believe him or receive him, as
being a Thing inconsistent with the Nature of his Ministry and
spiritual Government, do not they grosly offend him, who will needs
be wiser than he, and think to force Men against their Persuasion to
conform to their Doctrine and Worship? The Word of the Lord said,
Not by Power and by Might, but by the Spirit of the Lord, Zech. iv. 6.
But these say, Not by the Spirit of the Lord, but by Might and carnal
Power. The Apostle saith plainly, [140]We wrestle not with Flesh and
Blood; and the Weapons of our Warfare are not carnal, but spiritual:
But these Men will needs wrestle with Flesh and Blood, when they
cannot prevail with the Spirit and the Understanding; and not having
spiritual Weapons, go about with carnal Weapons to establish
Christ’s Kingdom, which they can never do: And therefore when the
Matter is well sifted, it is found to be more out of Love to Self, and
from a Principle of Pride in Man to have all others to bow to him,
than from the Love of God. [141]Christ indeed takes another Method;
for he saith, He will make his People a willing People in the Day of
his Power; but these Men labour against Men’s Wills and
Consciences, not by Christ’s Power, but by the outward Sword, to
make Men the People of Christ, which they never can do, as shall
hereafter be shewn.
[138] Matt. 10. 16.
[139] Matt. 28. 18.
[140] 2 Cor. 10. 4.
[141] Psal. 110. 3.
But Thirdly, Christ fully and plainly declareth to us his Sense in this
Matter in the Parable of the Tares, Matt. xiii. of which we have
himself the Interpreter, Ver. 38, 39, 40, 41. where he expounds them
to be the Children of the Wicked One, and yet he will not have the
Servants to meddle with them, lest they pull up the Wheat
therewith. Now it cannot be denied but Hereticks are here included;
and although these Servants saw the Tares, and had a certain
Discerning of them; yet Christ would not they should meddle, lest
they should hurt the Wheat: Thereby intimating, That that Capacity
in Man to be mistaken, ought to be a Bridle upon him, to make him
wary in such Matters; and therefore, to prevent this Hurt, he gives a
positive Prohibition, But he said, Nay, Ver. 29. So that they who will
notwithstanding be pulling up that which they judge is Tares, do
openly declare, That they make no Scruple to break the Commands
of Christ. Miserable is that Evasion which some of our Adversaries
use here, in alleging these Tares are meant of Hypocrites, and not of
Hereticks! But how to evince that, seeing Hereticks, as well as
Hypocrites, are Children of the Wicked One, they have not any Thing
but their own bare Affirmation, which is therefore justly rejected.
If they say, Because Hypocrites cannot be Object.
discerned, but so may Hereticks;
This is both false and a begging of the Question. Answ.
For those that have a spiritual Discerning, can
discern both Hypocrites and Hereticks; and those that want it,
cannot certainly discern either. Seeing the Question will arise,
Whether that is a Heresy which the Magistrate saith is so? And
seeing it is both possible, and confessed by all to have often fallen
out, that some Magistrates have judged that Heresy which was not,
punishing Men accordingly for Truth, instead of Error; there can be
no Argument drawn from the Obviousness or Evidence of Heresy,
unless we should conclude Heresy could never be mistaken for
Truth, nor Truth for Heresy; whereof Experience shews daily the
contrary, even among Christians. But neither is this Shift applicable
to this Place; for the Servants did discern the Tares, and yet were
liable to hurt the Wheat, if they had offered to pull them up.
§. III. But they object against this Liberty of Object.
Conscience, Deut. xiii. 5. Where false Prophets are appointed to be
put to Death; and accordingly they give Example thereof.
The Case no Way holds parallel; those particular Answ.
Commands to the Jews, and Practices following
upon them, are not a Rule for Christians; else we might by the same
Rule say, It were lawful for us to borrow of our Neighbours their
Goods, and so carry them away, because the Jews did so by God’s
Command; or that it is lawful for Christians to invade their
Neighbours Kingdoms, and cut them all off without Mercy, because
the Jews did so to the Canaanites, by the Command of God.
If they urge, That these Commands ought to Object.
stand, except they be repealed in the Gospel;
I say, The Precepts and Practices of Christ and his Answ.
Apostles mentioned are a sufficient Repeal: For if
we should plead, That every Command given to the Jews is binding
upon us, except there be a particular Repeal; then would it follow,
That because it was lawful for the Jews, if any Man killed one, for
the nearest Kindred presently to kill the Murderer, without any Order
of Law, it were lawful for us to do so likewise. And doth not this
Command of Deut. xiii. 9. openly order him who is enticed by
another to forsake the Lord, though it were his Brother, his Son, his
Daughter, or his Wife, presently to kill him or her? Thou shalt surely
kill him, thy Hand shall be first upon him, to put him to Death. If this
Command were to be followed there needed neither Inquisition nor
Magistrate to do the Business; and yet there is no Reason why they
should shuffle by this Part, and not the other; yea, to argue this Way
from the Practice among the Jews, were to overturn the very Gospel,
and to set up again the carnal Ordinances among the Jews, to pull
down the spiritual Ones of the Gospel. Indeed we can far better
argue from the Analogy betwixt the figurative and carnal State of the
Jews, and the real and spiritual One under the Gospel; that as Moses
delivered the Jews out of outward Egypt, by an outward Force, and
established them in an outward Kingdom, by destroying their
outward Enemies for them; so Christ, not by overcoming outwardly,
and killing others, but by suffering and being killed, doth deliver his
chosen ones, the inward Jews, out of mystical Egypt, destroying
their spiritual Enemies before them, and establishing among them
his spiritual Kingdom, which is not of this World. And as such as
departed from the Fellowship of outward Israel were to be cut off by
the outward Sword, so those that depart from the inward Israel are
to be cut off by the Sword of the Spirit: For it answers very well,
That as the Jews were to cut off their Enemies outwardly, in order to
establish their Kingdom and outward Worship, so they were to
uphold it the same Way: But as the Kingdom and Gospel of Christ
was not to be established or propagated by cutting off or destroying
the Gentiles, but by persuading them, so neither is it to be upheld
otherwise.
But Secondly, they urge, Rom. xiii. where the Object.
Magistrate is said, Not to bear the Sword in vain,
because he is the Minister of God, to execute Wrath upon such as do
Evil. But Heresy, say they, is Evil. Ergo.
But so is Hypocrisy also; yet they confess he ought Answ.
not to punish that. Therefore this must be
understood of moral Evils, relative to Affairs betwixt Man and Man,
not of Matters of Judgment or Worship; or else what great
Absurdities would follow, considering that Paul wrote here to the
Church of Rome, which was under the Government of Nero, an
impious Heathen, and Persecutor of the Church? Now if a Power to
punish in Point of Heresy be here included, it will necessarily follow,
That Nero had this Power; yea, and that he had it of God; for
because the Power was of God, therefore the Apostle urges their
Obedience. But can there be any Thing more absurd, than to say
that Nero had Power to judge in such Cases? Surely if Christian
Magistrates be not to punish for Hypocrisy, because they cannot
outwardly discern it; far less could Nero punish any Body for Heresy,
which he was uncapable to discern. And if Nero had not Power to
judge or punish in Point of Heresy, then nothing can be urged from
this Place; since all that is said here, is spoken as applicable to Nero,
with a particular Relation to whom it was written. And if Nero had
such a Power, surely he was to exercise it according to his Judgment
and Conscience, and in doing thereof he was not to be blamed;
which is enough to justify him in his persecuting of the Apostles, and
murdering the Christians.
Thirdly, They object that Saying of the Apostle to Object.
the Galatians, v. 12. I would they were even cut off
which trouble you.
But how this imports any more than a Cutting off Answ.
from the Church, is not, nor can be shewn. Beza
upon the Place saith, We cannot understand that otherwise than of
Excommunication, such as was that of the incestuous Corinthian.
And indeed it is Madness to suppose it otherwise; for Paul would not
have these cut off otherwise than he did Hymenæus and Philetus,
who were Blasphemers; which was by giving them over to Satan,
not by cutting of their Heads.
The same Way may be answered that other Argument, drawn from
Rev. ii. 20. where the Church of Thyatira is reproved for suffering the
Woman Jezabel: Which can be no other Ways understood, than that
they did not excommunicate her, or cut her off by a Church Censure.
For as to Corporal Punishment, it is known that at that Time the
Christians had not Power to punish Hereticks so, if they had had a
Mind to it.
Fourthly, They allege, That Heresies are numbered Object.
among the Works of the Flesh, Gal. v. 20. Ergo, &c.
That Magistrates have Power to punish all the Answ.
Works of the Flesh, is denied, and not yet proved.
Every Evil is a Work of the Flesh, but every Evil comes not under the
Magistrate’s Cognizance. Is not Hypocrisy a Work of the Flesh, which
our Adversaries confess the Magistrates ought not to punish? Yea,
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.
More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge
connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.
Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and
personal growth every day!
ebookbell.com
You might also like
- Development of A Virtual Reality Safety-Training System For Construction WorkersNo ratings yetDevelopment of A Virtual Reality Safety-Training System For Construction Workers9 pages
- Essentials of Modern Communications - 2020 - MynbaevNo ratings yetEssentials of Modern Communications - 2020 - Mynbaev8 pages
- Parvalbumin Interneurons Regulate Rehabilitation-Induced Functional Recovery After Stroke and Identify A Rehabilitation DrugNo ratings yetParvalbumin Interneurons Regulate Rehabilitation-Induced Functional Recovery After Stroke and Identify A Rehabilitation Drug25 pages
- Jedtalk Principles and Strategies of Teaching Gifted and Talented LearnersNo ratings yetJedtalk Principles and Strategies of Teaching Gifted and Talented Learners5 pages
- Ultrasound of Congenital Fetal Anomalies: Differential Diagnosis and Prognostic Indicators. Second EditionNo ratings yetUltrasound of Congenital Fetal Anomalies: Differential Diagnosis and Prognostic Indicators. Second Edition30 pages
- (Ebook PDF) Addressing Cultural Complexities in Practice, Third Edition: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Therapyinstant Download100% (3)(Ebook PDF) Addressing Cultural Complexities in Practice, Third Edition: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Therapyinstant Download52 pages
- Radiology 101 The Basics & Fundamentals of Imaging (4th Edition) SmithNo ratings yetRadiology 101 The Basics & Fundamentals of Imaging (4th Edition) Smith10 pages
- Full Braunwald's Heart Disease - Part 2 - A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine 12th Edition Peter Libby - Ebook PDF PDF All Chapters80% (5)Full Braunwald's Heart Disease - Part 2 - A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine 12th Edition Peter Libby - Ebook PDF PDF All Chapters69 pages
