Cart

Unlocking potential with the best learning and research solutions

Look Inside Morphological Complexity

Morphological Complexity

$31.99 (F)

Part of Cambridge Studies in Linguistics

Authors:
Matthew Baerman, University of Surrey
Dunstan Brown, University of York
Greville G. Corbett, University of Surrey

Date Published: July 2023
availability: Available
format: Paperback
isbn: 9781107543614

Rate & review

$ 31.99 (F)
Paperback

Add to cart Add to wishlist

Other available formats:
Hardback, eBook

Looking for an examination copy?

This title is not currently available for examination. However, if you are interested in the title for your course we can consider offering an examination copy. To register your interest please contact [email protected] providing details of the course you are teaching.

Description

Contents

Resources

Courses

About the Authors

Inflectional morphology plays a paradoxical role in language. On the one hand it tells us useful things, for example that a noun is plural or a verb is in the past tense. On the other hand many languages get along perfectly well without it, so the baroquely ornamented forms we sometimes find come across as a gratuitous over-elaboration. This is especially apparent where the morphological structures operate at cross purposes to the general systems of meaning and function that govern a language, yielding inflection classes and arbitrarily configured paradigms. This is what we call morphological complexity. Manipulating the forms of words requires learning a whole new system of structures and relationships. This book confronts the typological challenge of characterising the wildly diverse sorts of morphological complexity we find in the languages of the world, offering both a unified descriptive framework and quantitative measures that can be applied to such heterogeneous systems.
- Uses a much wider range of data than is usually discussed to demonstrate the impressive typological variation in the world's languages
- Clearly presents complex data using tables, careful glossing and helpful introductions to the less well-known languages
- Uses data drawn from an extensive empirical base, available on the associated website www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/complexity
Read more
Customer reviews

Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review

Log in to review

Review was not posted due to profanity
×

, create a review

(If you're not , sign out)

Please enter the right captcha value

Please enter a star rating.

Your review must be a minimum of 12 words.

How do you rate this item?

Reviews must contain at least 12 words about the product.

×

Product details
- Date Published: July 2023
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781107543614
- length: 208 pages
- dimensions: 228 x 151 x 12 mm
- weight: 0.32kg
- contains: 5 b/w illus. 150 tables
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. External typology of inflection classes
3. Features
4. Motivation
5. Conditions on paradigms
6. Paradigm structure
7. Lexicon and grammar
8. Morphological complexity and morphological autonomy
Appendix
References
Indices.
Look Inside
Authors
Matthew Baerman, University of Surrey
Matthew Baerman is Senior Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group at the University of Surrey, whose work concentrates on the description, typology and diachrony of morphology, particularly complex infllectional systems. He is the editor of the recent Oxford Handbook of Inflection (2015).
Dunstan Brown, University of York
Dunstan Brown is Professor and Head of the Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York and a Visiting Professor in the Surrey Morphology Group. Recent publications include: Network Morphology (with Andrew Hippisley, 2012); and as co-editor, Canonical Morphology and Syntax (2012), Understanding and Measuring Morphological Complexity (2015) and Archi: Complexities of Agreement in Cross-Theoretical Perspective (2016).
Greville G. Corbett, University of Surrey
Greville G. Corbett is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of Surrey, where he leads the Surrey Morphology Group. He works on the typology of features, as in the previously published Gender (Cambridge, 1991), Number (Cambridge, 2000), Agreement (Cambridge, 2006) and Features (Cambridge, 2012). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Member of the Academia Europaea and an Honorary Member of the Linguistic Society of America.