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Defective Paradigms

Defective Paradigms

Hardcover

Series: Proceedings of the British Academy, Book 163

Grammar & StyleLinguistics

ISBN10: 0197264603
ISBN13: 9780197264607
Publisher: British Academy
Published: May 20 2010
Pages: 230
Weight: 1.15
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.40 Depth: 9.30
Language: English

An important design feature of language is the use of productive patterns in inflection. In English, we have pairs such as 'enjoy' 'enjoyed', 'agree' 'agreed', and many others. On the basis of this productive pattern, if we meet a new verb 'transduce' we know that there will be the form 'transduced'. Even if the pattern is not fully regular, there will be a form available, as in 'understand' 'understood'. Surprisingly, this principle is sometimes violated, a phenomenon known as defectiveness, which means there is a gap in a word's set of forms: for example, given the verb 'forego', many if not most people are unwilling to produce a past tense.

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Baerman, Matthew

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Linguistics