Matthew Baerman

Andrew Hippisley

Dunstan Brown

Greville G. Corbett

This collection of essays by leading linguists on the theory and typology of mismatches between syntax and morphology will establish the important role that research on deponency has to play in contemporary linguistics, and set the standard for future work.

Deponency and Morphological Mismatches

A study of word structure using a specific theoretical framework known as 'Network Morphology'.

A Defaults-based Theory of Word Structure

Network Morphology

Morphology is particularly challenging, because it is pervaded by irregularity and idiosyncrasy. This book is a study of word structure using a specific theoretical framework known as 'Network Morphology'. It describes the systems of rules which determine the structure of words by construing irregularity as a matter of degree, using examples from a diverse range of languages and phenomena to illustrate. Many languages share common word building strategies and many diverge in interesting ways. These strategies can be understood by distinguishing different notions of 'default'. The Network Morphology philosophy promotes the use of computational implementation to check theories. The accompanying website provides the computer coded version of the Network Morphology model of word structure for readers to test, customize and develop. This book will be a valuable contribution to the fields of linguistic typology and morphology and will be welcomed by researchers and graduate students in these areas.

Deponency and Morphological Mismatches edited by Matthew Baerman, Greville G. Corbett, Dunstan Brown & Andrew Hippisley --

Missing Forms and What They Tell Us

Defective Paradigms

Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group Matthew Baerman

The first full-length study of inflectional syncretism, where a single form serves two or more morphosyntactic functions.

A Study of Syncretism

The Syntax-Morphology Interface

This book characterises the diverse morphological complexity we find in the languages of the world. Richly illustrated, examples are drawn from dozens of different languages and are subjected to rigorous quantitative analysis. It will be ideal reading for academic researchers and graduate students of linguistics, with a special interest in morphology and English language.

Morphological Complexity

This book presents a controlled evaluation of three widely practised syntactic theories on the basis of the extremely complex agreement system of Archi, an endangered Nakh-Daghestanian language. Even straightforward agreement examples are puzzling for syntacticians because agreement involves both redundancy and arbitrariness. Agreement is a significant source of syntactic complexity, exacerbated by the great diversity of its morphological expression. Imagine how the discipline of linguistics would be if expert practitioners of different theories met in a collaborative setting to tackle such challenging agreement data - to test the limits of their models and examine how the predictions of their theories differ given the same linguistic facts. Following an overview of the essentials of Archi grammar and an introduction to the remarkable agreement phenomena found in this language, three distinct accounts of the Archi data examine the tractability and predictive power of major syntactic theories: Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, and Minimalism. The final chapter compares the problems encountered and the solutions proposed in the different syntactic analyses and outlines the implications of the challenges that the Archi agreement system poses for linguistic theory.

Dunstan Brown

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