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Lexical Relatedness
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Lexical Relatedness
A Paradigm-based Model
ANDREW SPENCER
3
3
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First published in 2013
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To my parents
Joan and Ron Spencer
Short contents
Acknowledgements xiv
Lists of gures, tables, and abbreviations xv
1 Introduction: words and paradigms 1
Part I. Lexemes, lexical entries, and lexical relatedness

2 The lexical entry 25
3 Lexical relatedness 55
Part II. Paradigmatic organization and the lexicon

4 Paradigm Function Morphology 143
5 Lexical entries and the generalized paradigm function 173
Part III. The factorized lexicon

6 Representing lexical relatedness 207
7 The form and function of argument-structure representations 276
8 Nominalizations 301
9 Further instances of transposition 344
10 Lexical relatedness in Selkup 380
11 Conclusions 410
References 417
Index of languages 435
Index of names 437
Index of subjects 441
Detailed contents
Acknowledgements xiv
List of gures xv
List of tables xvi
List of abbreviations xvii
1 Introduction: words and paradigms 1

1.1 Morphemes and lexemes 1
1.2 Words and paradigms 3
1.2.1 Lexical relatedness 3
1.2.2 Paradigms 8
1.3 Overview of the book 13
1.4 A note on formalization 20
Part I. Lexemes, lexical entries, and lexical relatedness

2 The lexical entry 25
2.1 Introduction 25
2.2 What is a lexeme? 27
2.2.1 Rening the lexical entry 27
2.2.2 Semantic representations of lexemes 27
2.2.3 Phonological representations of lexemes 30
2.2.4 Syntactic representations of lexemes 33
2.3 Semantics and syntax 33
2.3.1 The semantic function role 33
2.3.2 Relating lexical attributes: the categorial cascade 36
2.3.3 The redundancy of syntactic categories 37
2.4 Lexemes and the inection/derivation distinction 38
2.5 Non-standard types of lexical representation 43
2.5.1 Degenerate lexical entries 43
2.5.2 The lexeme identication problem 51
3 Lexical relatedness 55
3.1 Types of lexical relatedness 55
3.2 Canonical inection vs canonical derivation 58
3.3 Transpositions 63
3.3.1 Action nominals 64
3.3.2 Participles 66
x Detailed contents
3.3.3 Relational and possessive adjectives 67

3.3.4 Property nominalizations 74
3.3.5 Predicative nouns and adjectives 75
3.3.6 Transpositions as mixed categories 77
3.4 Meaning and inection 77
3.4.1 Contextual and inherent inection 77
3.4.2 Putative examples of inherent inection 82
3.4.3 Semantically contentful inection 87
3.5 Argument-structure operations 90
3.5.1 Valency-decreasing operations 92
3.5.2 Valency-increasing operations 94
3.5.3 Argument-structure operations as a form of lexical
relatedness 96
3.5.4 Argument nominalizations 109
3.6 Meaningless derivation 110
3.7 Evaluative morphology: diminutives and augmentatives 113
3.7.1 Evaluative morphology and adjectives 119
3.7.2 Evaluative morphology and verbs 120
3.8 Paradigmatically mixed lexical categories 122
3.8.1 M-inert derivation: stolovaja-nouns 122
3.8.2 Within-lexeme derivation 123
3.8.3 Morphological shift 126
3.8.4 Verbal case in Kayardild 127
3.9 Syntagmatic reexes of mixed categories 131
3.10 The nature of lexical relatedness 133
3.11 Implications of types of lexical relatedness 137
Part II. Paradigmatic organization and the lexicon

4 Paradigm Function Morphology 143
4.1 Introduction 143
4.2 Brief overview of PFM 143
4.2.1 Realization rules 143
4.2.2 Paradigm functions 148
4.3 Afx ordering 149
4.3.1 Three types of deviation 149
4.3.2 Portmanteau position classes 149
4.3.3 Parallel position classes 150
4.3.4 Reversible position classes 151
4.4 Rules of referral 151
4.5 Allomorphy in PFM: morphological metageneralizations 153
4.6 Stems in PFM 154
Detailed contents xi
4.6.1 The nature of stems 154

4.6.2 Paradigm linkage in PFM 160
4.6.3 Stems and the English verb 163
4.7 Derivational morphology in PFM 164
4.7.1 Derivational paradigms 164
4.7.2 Derivational paradigms in PFM 167
4.8 Head marking and the Head-Application Principle 168
4.9 Appendix: revised notational conventions for Paradigm
Function Morphology 171
5 Lexical entries and the generalized paradigm function 173
5.2 Shared information in lexical entries: the role of the
lexemic index 174
5.3 The generalized paradigm functiona rst pass 177
5.4 Representing stems 181
5.5 Morpholexical properties 183
5.5.1 Morpholexical class 183
5.5.2 Morpholexical signatures 184
5.5.3 Stems and the morpholexical signature 186
5.5.4 Morpholexical signature and derivation 188
5.6 The generalized paradigm function and the lexical entry 189
5.6.1 Lexical entries as rules 189
5.6.2 The Default Cascade 191
5.7 Afx order, semantic scope, and the GPF 195
5.8 A unied view of lexical relatedness 198
Part III. The factorized lexicon

6 Representing lexical relatedness 207
6.2 Formal approaches to lexical relatedness 208
6.3 Derivation 213
6.4 Canonical inection and semantic interpretation 219
6.4.1 The problem of meaningful morphology 232
6.4.2 Afx order, syntax, and semantic interpretation 237
6.4.3 The Daghestan case hoax 241
6.4.4 Case stacking in Australian languages 245
6.4.5 Afx ordering: summary 249
6.5 Transpositions 249
6.6 Representing argument structure 252
6.7 Argument nominalizations 253
xii Detailed contents
6.8 Paradigmatically mixed categories 257

6.8.1 M-inert lexical relatedness 258
6.8.2 Within-lexeme derivation 259
6.8.3 Morphological shift: the Russian past tense 260
6.9 Evaluative morphology 263
6.9.1 Transparency and evaluative morphology 263
6.9.2 Analysis of diminutives 265
6.10 Meaningless derivation 270
6.11 Implications of intermediate types for a model of lexical relatedness 272
7 The form and function of argument-structure representations 276
7.2 Justifying argument structure 276
7.3 Semantics and syntax 281
7.3.1 The semantic function role 281
7.3.2 Argument-structure represented as AVMs 285
7.3.3 The causative as a case study for lexical relatedness 286
7.4 Argument-structure alternations mediated by conversion 294
7.4.1 Complementation patterns as constructions 294
7.4.2 Polysemy and lexical relatedness more generally 296
7.5 Conclusions 299
8 Nominalizations 301
8.2 Action nominalizations as syntactically mixed categories 302
8.3 Approaches to categorial mixing 303
8.4 The semantics of nominalizations 310
8.4.1 Nominalizations as asemantic transpositions 310
8.4.2 Eventualities, propositions, and states-of-affairs 312
8.4.3 German nominalizations and lexical aspect 315
8.4.4 Russian nominalizations and grammatical aspect 317
8.5 Analysis of deverbal nominalizations 318
8.5.1 English nominalizations 318
8.5.2 Mixed categories and syntactic category labels 322
8.6 Nominalized adjectives 323
8.7 The interpretation of nominalizations: summary 329
8.8 Dening nominalizations 329
8.8.1 Nominalizations as constructions 329
8.8.2 Morphosyntactic aspects of deverbal nominals 340
8.9 Summary 342
9 Further instances of transposition 344
Detailed contents xiii
9.2 Deverbal participles 346

9.3 Noun-to-adjective transpositions 348
9.3.1 Adjectival genitives 354
9.3.2 Derived adjectives and meaningful transpositions 356
9.4 Transposition to verb 360
9.5 Transpositions of transpositions 373
9.6 Conclusions: when is a lexeme not a lexeme? 375
10 Lexical relatedness in Selkup 380
10.2 Basic parts of speech in Selkup 380
10.2.1 Verbs 381
10.2.2 Nouns 381
10.3 Derivational morphology 383
10.3.1 Argument-structure alternations 383
10.3.2 Modes-of-action 384
10.3.3 Argument nominalizations 385
10.3.4 Evaluative morphology 386
10.3.5 Other types of derived verb or noun 386
10.3.6 Derived adjectives 387
10.4 Deverbal transpositions 388
10.4.1 Participles 388
10.4.2 Deverbal nominalizations 390
10.4.3 Deverbal adverbs (gerunds) 392
10.4.4 Deverbal transpositions: summary 393
10.5 Less important transpositions from adjectives and nouns 394
10.6 Selkup denominal adjectives 397
10.6.1 Three types of N-to-A transposition 397
10.6.2 Summary of Selkup denominal adjectives 399
10.7 Analysis of Selkup lexical relatedness 399
10.8 Selkup summary 404
10.9 Appendices 405
11 Conclusions 410
11.1 Lexical relatedness: a summary 410
11.2 Implications of lexical relatedness 412
References 417
Index of languages 435
Index of names 437
Acknowledgements
This book has developed out of a number of papers and presentations given over the
past ten years. I gratefully acknowledge a period of Study Leave from the Univer-
sity of Essex, 20072008, during which I conducted some of the research reported
here. Parts of Chapter 10 are to appear as Selkup denominal adjectives: a generalized
paradigm function analysis in the proceedings of the 7th Dcembrettes International
Morphology Conference. Parts of Chapter 8 have appeared as Spencer (2010a). I am
grateful to Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg, for permission to reprint parts of that
paper.
I have beneted from discussions with a number of colleagues over the years,
who have provided me with examples, counterexamples, problems, solutions, and
a good many of the ideas expressed in this book. These include Farrell Ackerman,
Olivier Bonami, Grev Corbett, Nick Evans, Danile Godard, Istvn Kenesei, Ferenc
Kiefer, Ana Lus, Rachel Nordlinger, Ryo Otoguro, Gergana Popova, Caity Ross (ne
Taylor), and Louisa Sadler. I am particularly grateful to Bernard Fradin for stimulat-
ing conversations about morphology and the lexicon and for inviting me to Paris VII
in spring 2007. I have learnt a great deal about these questions from working with
Irina Nikolaeva. Particular thanks also go to Jim Blevins for multifarious discussions
and for giving an earlier draft the benet of his insight, and especially to Greg Stump,
for his support over the years, for his penetrating criticism (always constructive),
and for his very detailed commentary on a near-nal draft. Thanks also to Sandy
Nicholson for expert copy-editing, including transcribed foreign-language examples,
AVMs, and lambda-expressions. I am grateful to John Davey for accepting the book
for publication. Just before the nal stages of production, John announced his retire-
ment: I hope its a long and happy one. Finally, a very special thanks to Marina, who
as ever has endured the lot of a linguistics widow with patience and forbearance.
List of gures
8.1 Type hierarchy for English mixed nominals 307
8.2 Type hierarchy for relational adjectives and deadjectival property nominalizations 310
List of tables
1.1 Typological space for lexical relatedness 7
3.1 Diminutive formation in Kikuyu 119
3.2 Stolovaja compared with noun and adjective 123
4.1 Deponency as formcontent mismatch 161
4.2 Heteroclite declension of Czech pramen source 162
6.1 Binary feature denitions of lexico-syntactic categories 209
6.2 Plag/Lieber English derivational categories 214
6.3 Comparison of feature typologies 226
6.4 Localization markers in Tabasaran 242
6.5 Distal and non-distal case system in Tsez 243
6.6 Summary of transpositions as a-structure operations 251
6.7 Participles as subject nominals 257
6.8 Typological space for lexical relatedness 273
6.9 Lexical relatedness without meaning change 275
9.1 Chukchi transitive Past I paradigm 371
9.2 Chukchi Past II paradigm (transitive and intransitive) 372
10.1 Selkup case-marked/possessed denominal adjectives 398
10.2 Selkup vowel system (after KXG: 120) 405
10.3 Selkup vowel system (after Helimski, 1998: 552) 406
10.4 Selkup vowel system, IPA transcription 406
10.5 Selkup consonants (KXG: 120) 406
10.6 Selkup consonants (Helimski, 1998: 551) 407
10.7 Selkup consonants, IPA transcription (?) 407
10.8 Selkup verb inection 408
10.9 Selkup unpossessed noun inection: leader 408
10.10 Selkup 1sg possessed noun inection: my leader 409
List of abbreviations
Abbreviations used in glosses
ABL ablative (case)
ABS absolutive (case)
ACC accusative (case)
ACT actual mood (Kayardild)
ADES adessive (case)
ADJ adjective
ADV adverb(ial)
ALL allative (case)
ANR action nominalizer (Yukaghir)
AOBL associative oblique case (Kayardild)
APPL applicative
ASP aspect
ASSOC associative marker (Bantu)
ATTR attributive
AUG augmentative
AUX auxiliary (verb)
AV active voice
CAR_GER caritive gerund (Selkup)
CAR_PTCP caritive participle (Selkup)
CAUS causative
COLL collective (Chukchi)
COM comitative
CONN connective
COP copular
DAT dative (case)
DEBIT_PTCP debitive participle (Selkup)
DEF denite
DEM demonstrative
DESTIN_PTCP destinative participle (Selkup)
DIM diminutive
xviii List of abbreviations
DIRECT direct (case)

DU dual
DUR durative
E epenthetic schwa (Chukchi)
EMPH emphasizer
EXP experiential
F feminine
FOC focus(ed)
FUT future
FUT_PTCP future participle
FV nal vowel (Bantu)
GEN genitive (case)
GER gerund
HAB habitual
IMP imperative
IMPF_PTCP imperfective passive participle
INCH inchoative
INCL inclusive
INESS inessive (case)
INF innitive
INFR inferential
INS instrumental (case)
INTERROG interrogative
INTJ interjection
INTR intransitive
IPFV imperfective
LOC locative
M masculine
MABL modal ablative case (Kayardild)
MID middle voice
MLOC modal locative case (Kayardild)
MOM momentary
MPROP modal proprietive case (Kayardild)
MS morphosyntactic separator (Ket)
N neuter
List of abbreviations xix
NEG negation, negative

NMLZ nominalizer
NOM nominative (case)
OBJ object
OBJV objective (conjugation) (Selkup)
OBL oblique
OM object marker (Bantu)
ORIG origin
OV object voice
PASS passive
PEJ pejorative
PFV perfective
PL plural
POSS possessive, possessor
POT potential
PPP perfective passive participle
PRED predicative (case) (Yukaghir)
PREP prepositional (case)
PRF_PTCP perfect participle
PRIV privative
PROP proprietive
PRS present
PRS_PASS_PTCP present passive participle
PRS_PTCP present participle
PST past
PST_PTCP past participle
PTCL particle
PTCP participle
Q question marker
QLT qualitative (Yukaghir)
RECP reciprocal
REFL reexive
REGR regressive
RELADJ relational adjective
RELNR relative nominalizer (Yukaghir)
xx List of abbreviations
RES resultative
SBNR subject nominalizer (Yukaghir)
SF subject-focus
SG singular
SIM similitudinal
SIMADJ similitudinal relational adjective (Selkup)
SM subject marker (Bantu)
SS same-subject
STAT stative
SUBJ subject
TR transitive
TRNSF transformative (Yukaghir)
VABL verbal ablative case (Kayardild)
VALL verbal allative case (Kayardild)
VDAT verbal dative case (Kayardild)
VDON verbal donative (case) (Kayardild)
VIALL verbal intransitive allative case (Kayardild)
VR verbal representation (Selkup)
Abbreviations used in the text

2M double marking
A-SUBJ agentive subject (Balinese)
Acc accusative (case)
ADJ adjunct (LFG)
AdvP Adverbial Phrase
ARG argument (LFG)
ATR Advanced Tongue Root
ATTR attribute
AVM attribute value matrix
COMP complementizer
Conj conjugation
D determiner
DEP dependent (HPSG feature)
DP determiner phrase
EM external marking
FCD Function Composition Default
List of abbreviations xxi
FIN nite (LFG)

GDP General Default Principle
GPF generalized paradigm function
HABIL habilitive
HM head marking
HPSG Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
IEPS Inferable Eventual Position or State
IFD Identity Function Default
INFLCLASS inection class (attribute)
KXG Kuznecova et al. (1980)
LCS lexical conceptual structure
LFG Lexical Functional Grammar
LI lexemic index (attribute)
MAS Moscow Academy of Sciences four-volume dictionary, 3rd edn, 1987
MCAT morphological category (attribute)
MORCLASS morphological class (attribute)
MORSIG morpholexical signature (attribute)
N noun
NLP natural language processing
Nom nominative (case)
NON-TARG non-term argument (Balinese)
NP noun phrase
NUM number
OBJ object (LFG)
OED Oxford English Dictionary
OM object marker (Bantu)
PFM Paradigm Function Morphology
PHON phonology (HPSG feature)
POSS possessor (LFG)
PossAgr possessor agreement (feature)
PRED predicate (LFG)
PRI Principle of Representational Independence
REF referent (attribute)
REL relational (attribute)
RELN relation (HPSG)
xxii List of abbreviations
RESTR restriction (HPSG)

SBCG Sign-Based Construction Grammar
SEM semantic (attribute)
SEMFUNCT semantic function role (attribute)
SFR stem formation rule
SIM similitudinal
SIT situation (HPSG)
SM subject marker (Bantu)
SN subject nominal(ization)
SUBJ subject (LFG)
SYN syntactic (attribute)
SYNCLASS syntactic class (attribute)
T-ARG term argument (Balinese)
TAM tense-aspect-mood
V verb
VP verb phrase
WFR Word Formation Rule
1
Introduction: words and paradigms
1.1 Morphemes and lexemes

Beginning students of morphology need to know two obvious things about words
such as cats and dogs. First, these words consist of two parts each, cat, which means
whatever cat means, and -s, which means plural. The combination of cat and -s
gives rise to the meaning of cats, which is, roughly, more than one cat. We can make
our exposition more technical by explaining that the forms cat and -s are morphemes
and that a morphologically complex word consists of a combination of morphemes.
Second, students need to know that the ordinary language term word is ambigu-
ous. In one sense, the set {cat, cats} represents two words, but in another sense the
same set represents merely two forms of the one word, which we can label with small
capitals, cat. The two words {cat, cats} instantiate word in the sense (roughly) what
is counted by the word count facility in a word processing program. I shall call such
words word forms. The single word cat is essentially what we mean by word as
listed in a dictionary, and is given the technical name lexeme, dictionary entry,
lexical entry, or some such. Clearly, if we want to know how many words there are
on the page we need to appeal to the notion of word in the sense of word count,
that is, word forms. If, on the other hand, we want to know how many words of
English a language learner knows, then we need to nd out how many dictionary
entries or lexemes they know. In languages with very extensive inectional morpho-
logy, the distinction between (abstract) lexeme and word form (of a lexeme) is very
apparent. A precocious novice learner of, say, Latin, who memorized the complete
(synthetic) inectional paradigm of the regular verb amo to love but learnt no other
vocabulary items would be misleading her teacher if she claimed that, ipso facto, she
knew some 170 or so words of Latin. She doesnt; she knows one word and one in-
ectional paradigm. Even in English it would be wrong to say that a learner who had
acquired just cat and dog and the regular plural rule knew four words rather than
two words.
Notions such as morpheme, lexeme, and word form are obvious and straight-
forward. It is disturbing therefore that, in their basic form, they are completely
incompatible with each other. You cant rationally believe that cats consists of a cat
2 Lexical relatedness
morpheme cat and a plural morpheme -s and simultaneously believe that there are
lexemes such as cat with forms {cat, cats}.1 The reason is simple: a classical morph-
eme is a Saussurean sign, a pairing of a form and a meaning. But that means that
each individual morpheme is a lexical entry in its own right. Therefore, an inected
form such as cats is effectively a compound word, a combination of two lexical entries
(morphemes), much like catfood. There is no room here for any notion of lexeme-in-
the-abstract vs inected form of a lexeme. In fact, there is no signicant role to be
played in a morpheme-based model by any notion of inectional morphology or
inectional paradigm. The notion of inection is at best a metaconcept that might
be useful as an informal descriptive device.
The morpheme concept bequeathed to us from American Structuralism has come
under sustained attack in recent decades, to the extent that almost no-one is willing
to countenance the idea in its original form. Specialists in morphology are divided
as to whether to modify the notion signicantly so as to preserve some of its proper-
ties or whether to abandon the morpheme doctrine altogether and replace it with
a different set of postulates for morphology. Those of us who subscribe to what
Stump (2001: 13) calls inferentialrealizational models of morphology adopt the
latter strategy, and propose models based on the idea that there are lexemes which are
associated with inectional paradigms, and that the paradigms consist of word forms
paired with the inectional properties that they realize. This means that we propose
a set of rules, constraints, equations, principles, or whatever that provide a denition
of the set of pairings of inected word forms and their grammatical properties.
Now, at a later stage in their undergraduate career linguistics students (even those
who have been taught to identify morphemes) might learn that there is a distinction
between inection and derivation. They may also learn that its very hard to draw
that distinction in a principled fashion. That is a true and honest statement, and one
of the few things that pretty well all linguists agree on. However, the fact that there
is no principled way to distinguish inection and derivation seriously undermines
the lexeme- or paradigm-based approach to morphology. The reason is very simple.
Inectional morphology provides the word forms inhabiting the cells in the lexemes
paradigm. However, a derivational process denes a new lexeme, which may well
have a completely new set of inectional properties. Therefore, derivational morpho-
logy cannot be dened using the same machinery as inectional morphology, because
a derived lexeme is not paradigmatically related to its base and cannot be considered
a word form of anything. Rather, it denes an entirely new set of (possibly inected)
word forms.
The literature contains virtually no discussion of this architectural shortcoming in
inferentialrealizational models, even though it calls into question the entire found-
ation of the approach. In this book I will argue that the problem dissolves when we
look more closely at the reasons for the difculty in distinguishing inection from
1 You should be careful not to mention this to beginning students during their rst lecture.
Introduction: words and paradigms 3
derivation. The solution is to view the prototypical instances of inection and deriv-
ation as just two of many ways in which two words can be related. When we examine
the other, intermediate, types of lexical relatedness we are led to a model of lex-
ical relatedness which can encompass all of these types and from which prototypical
inection and derivation emerge as special cases.
Finally, introductions to linguistics frequently include discussion of relatedness
between words, but the terms of discussion are generally very narrow. What tends
to be understood by relatedness is relatedness between meanings or sense rela-
tions, the familiar relations of synonymy, antonymy, hyper-/hyponymy, and so on.
I will be very little concerned with these types of relatedness, except for one, poly-
semy, which will play a role only when it is systematic. Instead, I focus on a class
of relations that have been subject to rather little research and which are still poorly
understood. These are the intermediate types of relatedness that give rise to dissent
and incongruity when discussed by linguists, such as passive, causative, and applic-
ative alternations, event nominals such as the enemys destroying the city, deverbal
participles, and many more such cases which are not obviously inectional and not
obviously derivational.
The intermediate types of lexical relatedness are varied, and they are found to dif-
ferent degrees in different languages. In some cases a given type may be sporadic and
unsystematic, an occasional fact about the lexicon of the language but not part of the
grammar. In other cases, that same type of relatedness may be a pervasive feature and
hence part of the grammar of that language. I shall argue that systematic relatedness
which is not inectional in the strict sense can nonetheless be described using the de-
scriptive apparatus of inferentialrealizational morphology, suitably extended. In this
sense, we can speak of systematic patterns of lexical relatedness which are paradigm-
driven. Ultimately, we may nd that classical derivational morphology may in some
cases be sufciently regular and systematic to fall into the paradigm-based category
of relatedness. Nonetheless, I will be arguing that much of the derivational mor-
phology discussed in the literature is, in fact, not paradigm-based but rather of the
occasional, accidental kind, and therefore of comparatively little interest to grammar
writers (though it may be of interest to lexicographers, historians of language, psy-
cholinguists, language teachers, and others). Much of this book will be devoted to
providing examples and analyses of such intermediate types of lexical relatedness,
mainly systematic, but sometimes occasional and lexicalized, and providing for the
rst time a unied framework in which to describe it. Along the way we will discover
that the framework also permits us to dene the notion lexical entry itself.
1.2 Words and paradigms

1.2.1 Lexical relatedness
In Part I we look at the two fundamental questions that are central to the book: what
is a word? (in the most general sense of lexical entry in a dictionary) and how are
words related to each other? I will recast the rst question by proposing a set of
properties that we must specify for a word in order to know how to use it. These are
properties of form, syntactic distribution, and meaning. For each of these proper-
ties there are interesting challenges to providing a universal, cross-linguistically valid
set of criteria, so I will outline the most important of these challenges, and I will
propose a way of factorizing the three principal properties into more specic proper-
ties. Ultimately, the most challenging question is that of lexeme individuation, which
in large part amounts to the traditional problem of distinguishing homonymy from
polysemy. How do we know when we are dealing with a single lexeme with more
than one related meaning and/or syntactic distribution (polysemy) as opposed to
two distinct (but possibly still related) lexemes? Within lexicological circles there are
lumpers, who try to gather together as many usages under the umbrella of a single
lexical entry, and splitters, who enumerate as many distinctions as they can detect
and then assign each to a distinct lexeme. The model I adopt predisposes me towards
the splitter strategy. However, its a crucial aspect of the paradigm-based approach
that some of the distinctions we draw in meaning or usage are systematic and can be
explained in terms of grammatical processes operating over the lexicon. This means
that I am also looking for opportunities to justify a lumping strategy and relate words
to each other by means of systematic grammatically dened principles.
In Section 1.1 I raised the problem of distinguishing inection from derivation.
One of the main reasons why it is so difcult to draw the distinction is that there
are a variety of intermediate types of lexical relatedness that cannot be shoehorned
into one category or the other. Prototypical (or indeed, canonical) instances of in-
ection and derivation are separated by a whole host of intermediate types of lexical
relatedness, some of which are discussed in the literature and some of which are all
but ignored. It is the thesis of this book that we can begin to solve the problem of
inection/derivation for inferentialrealizational models by paying more careful at-
tention to these intermediate types of lexical relatedness. My contention is that, far
from being an embarrassment, the wealth of types of relatedness should spur us to
developing an enriched and morphologically informed model of the lexical entry.
When we do this we have the foundations for a model of lexical relatedness that can
make use of the machinery of paradigm-based models without contradiction or in-
coherence. However, the point of this essay goes well beyond the parochial concerns
of a small band of inectional morphologists. Any theory of syntax has to have a the-
ory of morphosyntax, that is, an account of how morphological form interacts with
syntactic structures. But any theory of morphosyntax has to have a theory of mor-
pholexical categories, that is, a theory of the different types of word that exist, how
they relate to each other in the lexicon, and what kinds of dependencies they can sub-
tend with each other in phrases. The literature contains very little discussion of the
syntactic issues raised by the question of intermediate types of word and how they are
to be represented (the question of action nominals in Standard European is the main
exception to this statement, and even that literature ignores several of the more in-
teresting issues). For this reason its difcult to situate the discussion in mainstream
linguistic debate. However, as we proceed I shall point out some of the more sali-
ent implications for syntax, without committing myself to any particular syntactic
analysis of the problems.
The basic idea behind my approach to lexical relatedness emerges from a simple set
of (almost) uncontroversial assumptions about lexical representations and a simple
logical question. The simple set of assumptions is this: a lexical representation con-
sists of information of three types, morphophonological form, syntactic category, and
a representation of meaning. I refer to these properties as FORM, SYN, and SEM
for convenience. That assumption is relatively uncontroversial. However, one of the
very difcult questions facing lexicology (and practical lexicography) is the question
of distinguishing polysemy from homonymy. Its customary to say that polysemous
meanings are distinct usages of a single dictionary entry, while homonymy (or ho-
mophony) is merely accidental sameness of form. Thus, the verb draw in the sense
draw a picture and draw in the sense draw conclusions, water, blood, . . . are dis-
tinct lexical entries which just happen to have all their inected forms in common.
However, draw in the expressions draw a line/picture and draw a tree, while subtly
different in sense, seem to be just variants of a single meaning and thus represent at
most mild polysemy (and perhaps not even that). The difculty faced by dictionary
writers is what to do about intermediate cases. Is draw in the expression draw blood
from a vein the same lexeme as the draw in draw a gun from its holster, that is, a
case of polysemy, or are we dealing with two distinct lexemes (homonymy)? By what
criteria do we make such decisions?
We can think of a dictionary as a relational database in which every distinct lexeme
is given its own unique key. Polysemous readings of a single lexeme will therefore be
distinct readings associated with a single entry in the database, while homonyms will
be represented with distinct keys. This is what lexicographers do if they write, say,
draw1 as one entry and draw2 as a distinct entry, but then give subentries for poly-
semous readings, say, draw1 a. Trace (a line or gure), make (a picture), by drawing a
pen, pencil, etc., across a surface; b. Draw pictures, practise the art of drawing; c. Rep-
resent by a drawing, depict.2 In constructing such a database, then, we can record our
decision about homonymy vs polysemy by deploying the key eld: two homonyms
have distinct keys, while two polysemous readings are associated with a single key.
I shall be arguing that the usefulness of the notion of a database key goes beyond the
practical concerns of compiling dictionaries, and is a useful theoretical notion for a
general model of the lexicon and lexical relatedness. I shall call the key a lexemic index
(LI). This index will be the fourth property possessed by a lexeme. Formally speaking
its best to think of it as an integer (I will expand on that suggestion later in the book).
2 The denitions are slightly adapted from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th edition, 2007.
A prototypical instance of grammatically mandated lexical relatedness that has to

be included in a complete grammatical description of a language is that of regular,
productive, semantically transparent derivational morphology. As I will later argue,
such morphology is quite hard to come by, but lets suppose for the purposes of ar-
gument that English deverbal nominals of the type driver instantiate such regular
relatedness. How does the lexeme driver relate to the base verb lexeme from which
it is derived, drive? I have said that a lexeme has to be thought of as an ensemble of
properties, FORM, SYN, SEM, and LI. The lexeme drive has a set of FORMs {drive,
drives, driving, drove, driven}, it is a verb, it has a meaning (say, DRIVE(x, y) as in
Harriet drives a Lexus), and a lexemic index, say, 57. The lexeme driver has a dif-
ferent set of FORMs ({driver, drivers}), is a noun, means something like PERSON,
x, such that for some y, DRIVE(x, y), and is a distinct lexeme from drive and so
given our conventions has a distinct lexemic index, say, 119. So when we compare the
lexemes drive and its subject nominal, driver, we see that each of the four lexical
properties of each word is non-trivially distinct from those of the other. Its also true
that we can say that the lexical entry for driver in a certain sense subsumes the
lexical entry for drive, motivating the idea that driver is derived from drive, and
the fact that there are many such verb noun pairs motivates a rule or principle of
derivational morphology, of course. However, the crucial point is that the two words
are related and distinct in all four principal attributes.
Now consider the verb form drive and the 3sg present indicative form drives.
Clearly, the FORM attribute for each word is different (again, its also apparent that
the two forms are systematically related, but thats not important here: a pairing like
be is would serve our purposes just as well). However, both forms are syntactic-
ally verbs; indeed, both can be found in the context of present indicative clauses.
Therefore, we can say that they share their SYN attributes, modulo the agreement
property. That distinction arises because drives is associated with the inectional
(morphological, FORM) properties 3sg present indicative, while drive is associated
with different properties, including the properties non-3sg present indicative. Sim-
ilarly, there is no meaning difference between the drives of Harriet drives a Lexus and
the drive of Tom and Harriet drive a Lexus. The two forms are required by a syntactic
rule of agreement and no more. Thus, the two forms have non-distinct SEM values.
Finally, for those of us that believe in lexemes rather than in morphemes, the two
forms are inected forms of a single lexeme and therefore share an LI attribute.
The point of this rather obvious demonstration is that we can take two words or
sets of words and compare their four lexical attributes. If the two words are com-
pletely and utterly unrelated (say, drives and quantized) they will clearly have no
attributes in common. Likewise, in the case of regular derivational morphology we
also nd that the four attributes are distinct. However, in the case of derivational
morphology we have grounds for saying that some at least of the values of those at-
tributes are related to each other. The form driver is obtained by afxation of -er, and
the meaning PERSON, x, such that there is a y such that DRIVE(x, y) is related to the
meaning DRIVE(x, y) essentially by the systematic addition of a semantic predicate.
By contrast, when we consider the drive drives pair we nd that the two forms
have almost identical properties and differ only in their form and in the inectional
features with which they are associated.
We can represent the difference between (almost canonical) inection and (al-
most canonical) derivation by means of Table 1.1. In this table I have recorded all the
logically possible combinations of relationship for the four attributes in a pairwise
comparison of words in a language. The + sign means that there is a difference in the
representations for the attributes of that word pair, while the sign means that there
is no difference between the two attributes for those words. The rationale behind this
slightly unintuitive convention is that most of the relatedness we will be looking at
will involve taking a base representation (for example, a base lexeme or the default
form of a lexeme) and dening a more complex (derived) representation from it.
Therefore, the + sign indicates the morphological relation induces a change in the
attribute, while the sign indicates the morphological relation leaves the attribute
unchanged in the derived representation.
Table 1.1. Typological space for lexical relatedness

(+ = attributes changed, = attributes unchanged)
FORM SYN SEM LI
identity
logical +
impossibility
Same lexeme:
inection +
+
+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ + +
New lexeme:
+ +
+ +
+ + +
+ +
+ + +
+ + +
derivation + + + +
Given two words, and given each of the four attributes, either the two words
have the same value (unchanged) for a given attribute or they have a different value
(changed).
The rst row of Table 1.1 represents the default relation or the identity relation
between any word and itself. Conversely, the second row represents a situation in
which we wish to say that there are two distinct lexemes or lexical entries but all
of their properties are identical. Given our assumptions this situation is logically
impossible. The third row represents the relatedness between inected forms of a
lexeme, and the nal row represents the relatedness dened by standard derivational
morphology. This leaves twelve logically possible intermediate types of relatedness.
You will search in vain for a systematic discussion of these twelve types in the lit-
erature, and yet I will argue that all twelve types are instantiated, and that some of
them are extremely common (virtually universal, in fact) and pose serious analytical
problems for all current approaches to morphosyntax, morphosemantics, and the
morphologysyntaxsemantics interfaces generally.3
The rest of this book will essentially be devoted to lling in those twelve gaps and
providing a semi-formal model of representation for discussing the various types of
relatedness that they imply.
1.2.2 Paradigms
The model of morphology I shall present in this book is paradigm-based or
paradigm-driven, and hence falls into the class of models often called Word-and-
Paradigm models (Hockett, 1958,4 Robins, 1959). In fact, both components of this
term can be misleading (see Blevins, 2013, for further discussion). I shall examine the
notion of word underlying this terminology in later chapters. Here, I shall make a
few brief remarks about the nature of paradigms and how they relate to the model
proposed.
In a lexeme-based model of morphology and the lexicon, a lexeme is asso-
ciated with (realized by) the word forms that express the various morphosyn-
tactic properties that can be associated with that lexeme. For instance, in English
a count noun lexeme is realized by its singular and plural forms. This way of
thinking reects the idea that the concept of lexeme is that of an abstract, mul-
tidimensional object which brings together information about a words meaning,
its syntax and the full, legal set of forms it can take. This is a very old concep-
tion, corresponding broadly to the classical conception of paradigm (by classical
I mean derived from the writings of Ancient Greek and Roman authors). The
idea that we can abstract away from the set of word forms and identify a (possibly
3 For the impatient, the really interesting pattern is the + + pattern, which represents what Beard
(1995) and others call a transposition.
4 A reprinted version of Hockett (1947).
abstract) root is a relatively modern conception, arising out of structuralist models of

language.
There are two commonly found senses attached to the term paradigm. One sense
is the concrete sense of set of word forms associated with a lexeme. In this sense
the paradigms of scissors, justice, and sheep each contain just one member, re-
spectively the forms scissors, justice, and sheep. Another sense of paradigm denes
the paradigm of a lexeme in terms of its grammatical or morphosyntactic words.
A grammatical word is a word form together with a full description of the morpho-
syntactic properties that that word form expresses. In this sense, the paradigms of
cat and sheep have two members each. The lexeme cat, of course, is realized by
the grammatical words {cat, [number:singular], cats, [number:plural]}, but the
lexeme sheep is realized by the grammatical words {sheep, [number:singular],
sheep, [number:plural]}. On the other hand, the paradigms of scissors and
justice still just have one member each, {scissors, [number:plural]} and {justice,
[number:singular]}, respectively.5
There is a third sense of paradigm, and this will prove to be particularly important
when we look at paradigm-based models of morphology. On this third conception
we abstract away from actual word forms and just consider the sets of oppositions
or contrasts that are available in principle to a lexeme (see Stump, 2001: 34f., 37 for
an illustration using Bulgarian verb paradigms). On this conception, a count noun
such as cat or sheep has a paradigm consisting of two cells, dened by the morpho-
syntactic property of [number] and its two legal values: [number:{singular, plural}].
The singulare/plurale tantum nouns have a decient paradigm, lacking cells for the
[number:plural] and [number:singular] properties, respectively.
There seems to be no generally agreed upon terminology for distinguishing these
three distinct notions of paradigm. The rst notion, that of a collection of word
forms, I shall call the form paradigm. Its unclear to me what role such a notion
plays in grammatical theory, if any. The third notion, that of the set of cells embody-
ing the sets of oppositions open to a lexeme of a given class, I shall call the property
paradigm of a lexeme or class of lexemes. The second notion I shall call the form
property paradigm. When I use the term paradigm out of a specic context and
without further elaboration I shall mean formproperty paradigm (essentially the
usage of the term adopted in Stump, 2001: 43).
5 Even here I am oversimplifying considerably by ignoring a variety of tricky issues of conceptuali-

zation and representation, especially where the featural characterization is concerned. For instance, if the
singular/plural cells of the paradigms for scissors and justice are undened, then can we really say that
the word forms scissors and justice realize plural/singular properties? The simple answer might appear
to be that the lexeme scissors is necessarily a plural word because it triggers plural agreement, but its
unclear whether that conclusion really follows for English. It looks plausible mainly because the form
scissors appears to end in -s and this appears to be the plural ending. But the word police is also a plurale
tantum noun and yet it lacks plural morphology.
Its important to appreciate that the notions of paradigm that I have described here
are not specic to morphology (or even to linguistics). Each notion, in fact, is a de-
rived notion, arising from the fact that we chose to code the relationship between
forms of lexemes in terms of a feature structure. Any descriptive system which uses
features of this sort will dene a paradigm, namely the space of possible cells as
dened by the features, their permissible values, and the legally possible ways of com-
bining features with each other. In other words, the property paradigm is entailed by
any formal linguistic model that makes use of a feature system. More concretely,
given any set of features, F, G, . . . , with their permissible values, F(f1, f2, . . .),
G(g1, g2, . . .), . . . , and their permissible combinations, there is a feature space con-
sisting of all and only the combinations of feature values permitted by the grammar
of the language. This feature space is what I have called a property paradigm.
It doesnt matter what forms realize the various feature combinations in a property
paradigm. For instance, we could dene the auxiliary-verb construction paradigm of
English by setting up the features [Mood:{will, can, may, . . .}], [Aspect:{simple,
perfect, progressive}], [Tense:{past, non-past}], and [Voice:{active, passive}], and
dening the way they can combine (for instance, the [Mood] doesnt combine with
the [Tense:past] property). This set of features will then dene the way that aux-
iliaries combine. If we then add a rule telling us the order in which the auxiliaries
occur, we will have dened a complete paradigm for the basic auxiliary system. We
could then include subjectauxiliary inversion by adding a feature [Inv:{yes, no}] or
[Interrog:{yes, no}]. All current models of syntax deploy something like such a sys-
tem. This means that sentence fragments such as has been writing, may be written, or
even Had NP been writing realize cells in a paradigm.
In morphology, the paradigm has a particular status (if only at a heuristic level) be-
cause the features are nite in number, their values are nite, and only a nite number
of combinations of features are permitted; that is, there is (usually!) no recursion of
features. For this reason, the paradigm spaces found in morphology are rather easier
to picture (and to write down in their totality) than an innite space would be, but
that is somewhat accidental. Notice that the property paradigm which denes the
English auxiliary system is also nite, even though it is dened in terms of syntactic
expressions, and even though it permits indenitely long discontinuities. The inter-
esting and important properties lie not in the paradigms but in the feature sets, the
featurevalue mappings, and the relations dened over them (especially those rela-
tions we call syncretisms). A model can be thought of as paradigm-driven if it denes
interesting, non-trivial relations over its featurevalue mappings, for instance, in
order to describe certain types of syncretism.
The discussion of paradigms so far has been restricted to inectional properties
or the properties expressed by function words such as auxiliary verbs. However, we
can also talk about paradigmatic relations holding between words in the lexicon, in
precisely those cases where there seems to be a systematic relation between sets of
lexemes which is encoded in some way in the grammar of the language. In other
words, there exist such things as derivational paradigms. Moreover, such paradigms
exist not just for derivational morphology but also for compounding, in the sense
that it is a grammatical matter whether a language permits compounding and if so
what types.
The notion of derivational paradigm is a somewhat controversial one, however.
Moreover, the term derivational paradigm has been applied to a rather different set
of lexical relationships. Bauer (1997: 243, 245), for instance, cites the following as an
instance of a derivational paradigm: national, nationalize, nationalist, nationalistic,
nationality. Now, it may well be the case that ensembles of words of this kind have an
interesting role to play in theories of the linguistic or mental lexicon. Indeed, Bauers
conception seems close to that of word nest in the East European linguistic tradi-
tion. However, this doesnt dene a coherent notion of paradigm from my point of
view. This is because there is no sense in which any of these words is the realization of
a value of a feature. In fact, prototypical derivational paradigms are generally rather
simple affairs, in which there are just two cells, a base lexeme and a derived lexeme.
On this characterization, Bauers examples national and nationalize would be real-
izations of a deadjectival causative verb relation. We would posit a feature (possibly
univalent), say, [Caus], which could be applied to adjectives and deliver a causative
verb by sufxation of -ize. (This is essentially what Aronoff, 1976, means by a word
formation rule.) Similarly, we might propose a derivational relation of deadjectival
property nominalization governed by a feature [PropNom], which applied to the
base national would derive the lexeme nationality. Additionally, we might posit a de-
verbal action nominalization relation ([ActNom]) which would derive condensation
from condense and nationalization from nationalize.
Such derivational paradigms will be useful only to the extent that they describe
productive, active, regular relations between words. In the same way that a newly
borrowed or coined noun or verb should be inectable, so we would expect that a
lexeme of an appropriate category (perhaps with appropriate semantics) should be
subject to all those derivational processes that are proper to it. Discussions of de-
rivational morphology invariably point out that this desideratum is not usually met.
Derivational paradigms, in other words, are often defective, failing to apply where
we might expect them to. However, if we look carefully enough at lexical-relatedness
patterns, we often nd that there is more paradigmaticity than there seemed to be at
rst.
One difculty is that derivational relations dene new lexemes, and lexemes, if
useful, tend to be subject to semantic drift. This means that the semantic relation-
ship between a base lexeme and its derivative is often obscured. We must therefore
abstract away from such drift and look just at the regular relations. When we do
that we nd that languages have a repertoire of derivational patterns which help
dene the morphology of the language and help distinguish that language from other
languages. They also tend to have a residue of no-longer-productive patterns of re-

latedness, which can in some cases account for large portions of the lexicon. That
kind of historical residue isnt found in inectional systems, and for models of lexical
relatedness it represents a kind of noise. Notice that I am not talking about unpro-
ductive afxation here. For instance, the relation between the adjective warm and its
property nominalization warmth is entirely unproductive at the level of form. How-
ever, I would argue that warmth is simply a rather irregular realization of a perfectly
regular and productive abstract pattern, under which the existence of a qualitative
adjective such as warm entails the existence of some lexeme with the (rough) gloss
property of being warm, a relation which is more often spelled out by sufxes such
as -ity and especially (by default) -ness.
The formal expression of a derivational pattern can sometimes be particularly con-
fusing. A case in point is what I have called Personal Noun formation in English
(Spencer, 1988). Given some name of an institutionalized activity, status, or whatever,
English permits the formation of a word meaning person who is associated with that
activity, status, . . .. For instance, the name of a scientic discipline will generally
correspond to a word meaning person who practises that discipline: mathemat-
ics mathematician, physics physicist, surgery surgeon. In these examples we see
fairly complex allomorphy, but in other cases we see total suppletion: Ancient Greek/
Greece Hellenist. A similar kind of relation is expressed by names of musical and
other instruments and denotes a person who uses that instrument: saxophone sax-
ophonist, machine-gun machine-gunner, hotel hotelier. Finally, ethnonyms seem
to follow a similar pattern: Greece Greek, Denmark Dane, Iceland Icelander.
These pairings of base and Personal Noun are not accidental, but are a part of the
English lexicon and constitute a derivational paradigm. The pressure to create ap-
propriate Personal Nouns from names of institutions, instruments, places, and so on
is so strong that it induces morphosemantic mismatches (bracketing paradoxes) of
a well-known variety. Specically, the base can be a compound headed by one of the
classes of words illustrated above, and in that case the Personal Noun is formed by
replacing that head with the appropriate Personal Noun, allowing the modier to
remain, even though it appears to be inappropriately modifying the derived noun.
For instance, we have applied mathematician, low-temperature physicist, plastic sur-
geon, and hundreds of other such collocations, some of them potentially amusing
(criminal lawyer). The term linguist is ambiguously applied to one who studies lin-
guistics (as in theoretical linguist) and to one who speaks or studies languages (as
in modern linguist, the name given to a specialist in the discipline of Modern Lan-
guages). An alto saxophonist is not necessarily an altoshe just has to play the alto
saxand a baroque autist can be someone who plays the baroque ute in our times.
Its important that Personal Noun formation of this kind is dened over existing
lexical entries or lexicalized phrases. A baroque ute is almost always made out of
wood, but its not possible to describe a specialist on that instrument as a wooden
autist, because wooden ute is simply a combination of adjective and noun and has
no institutionalized status.
There is no particular reason why English should have such a pervasive pattern of
lexical relationship, other than to say that its part of the grammar of English. Most
languages dont permit such morphosemantic mismatches. In Russian, for instance, a
phrase such as barocnyj autist, if possible at all, could only refer to a autist who lived
in the 18th century, and the term teoreticeskij zik, to the extent that its interpretable,
would have to mean someone who was only theoretically a physicist. (To translate
terms such as baroque autist and theoretical physicist into Russian you have to use a
circumlocution along the lines specialist on the baroque ute/in theoretical physics).
The key feature of Personal Noun formation in English, then, is that its a product-
ive part of English grammar with fairly clear input/output characteristics. The fact
that the actual morphology is rather messy is irrelevant; after all, there are plenty of
languages in which (part of) the inectional morphology is rather messy.
1.3 Overview of the book

The book is divided into three parts. In Part I, I lay out what I believe to be the
empirical facts to be accounted for by a systematic study of lexical relatedness. Part II
introduces two paradigm-based approaches to morphology, Stumps (2001) model of
Paradigm Function Morphology and my extension of that model to cover all types
of systematic lexical relatedness. Part III works out the application of the generalized
model to the kinds of relatedness described in Part I.
Chapter 2 offers an apparently uncontroversial characterization of a lexeme or lex-
ical entry as an entry in a relational database dened in terms of four elds, or
attributes. The rst three are FORM, SYNTAX, and SEMANTICS, and the fourth
is a LEXEMIC INDEX, which functions as a kind of database key. The SEMANTICS
attribute will include a notional characterization of the basic meaning in terms of
familiar ontological classes of events, things, properties, and relations. I will adopt
informal representations modelled on those of Jackendoff (1990) but sometimes re-
congured as neo-Davidsonian predicates over event variables. The FORM attribute
will include all the information needed to predict the individual (inected) forms of
a lexeme together with other related forms, such as the root of any derived lexemes.
Characterizing the FORM attribute can be non-trivial when, for instance, we have
languages which make extensive use of discontinuous roots/stems or periphrastic
(multiword) lexemes. I will illustrate that problem, for completeness, but will not
provide a detailed account of it.
The most controversial set of proposals comes in the context of the SYNTAX at-
tribute. I take as basic an argument-structure representation for major word classes
which includes what I shall call a semantic function role. This role is a syntacticized
representation of the ontological category in the SEM attribute. For events (verbs) it
is the E role; for things (nouns) it is the R role; both are familiar from the literature.
However, for adjectives I argue for a special role, A*, which mediates the grammat-
ical function of attributive modier. This in part syntacticizes the ontological class
of property, in that I regard the most natural expression of a property concept to be
attributively modifying a thing concept. (I have little to say about prepositions but as-
sume for them a role syntacticizing the notion of relation.) I then present my views on
the inection/derivation distinction before concluding with a survey of the various
ways in which lexical entries can deviate from the standard or canonical pattern.
In Chapter 3 I present a detailed, though not exhaustive, survey of the various ways
in which words can be related. Inected word forms are obviously related, by virtue
of being forms of a single lexeme (within-lexeme relatedness). Here, it is just the
forms and their grammatical descriptions that are materially distinct (and in the case
of syncretism not even the forms). Regular, productive, and systematic derivational
morphology gives rise to easily recognized relatedness between lexemes. Here, all
four attributes are materially distinct (in canonical/prototypical cases). However, if
all four of the principal attributes of a lexeme are genuinely independent, then there
are many intermediate types of relatedness.
I rst survey transpositions (such as event nominals or relational adjectives), a type
of mixed category, in that a transposition preserves some of the properties of the
base lexeme (a participle is the participial form of a verb). Then, I address the issue
of inection and lexical meaning: some inection seems to be entirely transparent to
meaning, for instance pure agreement, while other types of inection seem to express
a meaning themselves. Such meaning-bearing inection can therefore be difcult to
distinguish from derivation.
How do we know when the added meaning is merely inectional, and therefore
does not dene a new lexeme, and how do we know when the additional semantic
predicate denes a new lexeme and hence that the morphology is really derivational?
I propose that grammars do draw such a distinction and that this is reected in
the value of the LEXEMIC INDEX: we have derivation if and only if we change
the value of the lexemic index. This allows us to capture the inectional qualit-
ies of valency-changing (argument structure) alternations such as the passive voice,
even if the meaning is changed, as in the case of causative verbs. We can do this
without committing ourselves to the view that such alternations share all the proto-
typical properties of inection. We can also provide a systematic characterization of
evaluative morphology (for instance diminutives) on this model.
Inectional morphology is the prototypical instance of within-lexeme lexical re-
latedness: inected word forms are principally related to each other by virtue of being
forms of one and the same lexeme. But characterizing the formal (morphological)
nature of such relatedness can be far less straightforward than is often thought. For
instance, it is not uncommon to nd that an inected form of a lexeme belongs to the
wrong morphosyntactic class. These are the paradigmatically (within-lexeme) mixed
categories. Not infrequently, this within-lexeme category mixing gives rise to mixed
behaviour in the syntax, too (syntagmatic category mixing), a phenomenon very well
known from studies of event nominalizations, but one which is much more wide-
spread and general than that, and can even apply to the inectional paradigm (for
instance a verbs tenseaspectmood paradigm).
In Part II, I introduce the idea of paradigm-based morphology, extending propos-
als designed for inection to all types of lexical relatedness.
Chapter 4 is a brief summary of the classical model of Paradigm Function Mor-
phology (PFM) as developed by Stump (2001). In addition to introducing the reader
to the dominant current approach to inectional morphology (and essentially the
model that I will presuppose for handling the purely inectional types of relatedness),
this chapter will provide a summary of a number of technical devices that I will rely
on later. First is the notion of a paradigm function, a pairing of a lexemes root and a
set of features with the word form that realizes those features. The paradigm function
denes the inectional paradigm for a class of lexemes. It is cashed out in terms of
sets of realization rules, which specify how individual sets of features are realized, for
example, by specic afxes. In languages with more than one afx per word form,
the order of afxation is determined by the device of putting the rules into ordered
blocks, with each realization rule competing with the others in the same block and
application being determined by the principle that the most specic applicable rule
pre-empts all others. Another important device is the rule of referral, which allows
the realization of one part of a paradigm to be dened as the realization of some other
(possibly arbitrary) part. An important aspect of Stumps model, and my extension
of it, is the deployment of the morphomic stem notion due to Aronoff (1994). This
chapter also introduces Stumps later notions of content paradigm and paradigm
linkage, a way of relating the morphologically dened word forms to their realiza-
tion in syntactic structure (Stump, 2002, 2006). I close with discussion of derivational
morphology in PFM and the notion of paradigmatic word formation generally.
In the second chapter of Part II, Chapter 5, I offer a generalization of Stumps
notion of paradigm function, the generalized paradigm function (GPF). I take the
function to be dened over all four attributes of the lexical entry, FORM, SYN, SEM,
and LI, and hence to be an ensemble of four independent functions. In the case of
vanilla inectional morphology, the GPF applies trivially to the SYN, SEM, and LI
attributes, and introduces no change. It therefore reduces to the paradigm function
of classical PFM. However, for regular and productive derivational morphology, the
generalized paradigm function introduces non-trivial changes to all four attributes,
including the lexemic index, LI, thus dening a new lexeme in the lexical database.
I extend the role of the LI in the model from a house-keeping property to a
central architectural component by dening the four component functions over the
LI. Assuming for the sake of argument that English -like adjectives are the result
of regular/productive derivational morphology, we capture this fact by setting up a
derivational feature, Similitudinal, which mediates the denition of similitudinal

like-adjectives from nouns, thus dening a (very small) paradigm, with just two cells
for {base, derivate}. Thus, if cat is the LI of the lexeme cat, then the FORM func-
tion dening the plural is fform (cat, [Number:plural]), and if catlike is a regularly
derived lexeme with cat as its base, then the FORM function is fform (cat, Similit-
udinal]) = /katlaik/, while the SEM function will be something such as fsem (cat,
Similitudinal]) = [SIMILAR_TO[CAT](x)] (or whatever). The actual lexical entry
for a lexeme can be represented as the output of the generalized paradigm func-
tion where the triggering feature set is empty, u: GPF(cat, u) = {FORM:/kat/,
SYN:Noun, SEM:[CAT(x)], LI:cat}. This device allows us to relate the FORM, SYN,
and SEM attributes in a Default Cascade: if a lexeme denotes a thing semantically,
then it will be a syntactic noun and a morphological noun. These defaults can, of
course, be overridden.
Finally, I address the problem with which the book started: how can we model in-
ection in terms of functions over lexical representations with the same machinery
as that used for derivation, given that theres no principled way of distinguishing the
two types of relatedness? The technical problem here is that a derived lexeme typically
has its own inectional paradigm, entirely distinct from that of its base: the derived
subject nominal driver inects as a noun and lacks any of the verbal inectional
properties of the base drive. I account for this by means of a default principle specic
to lexeme-changing morphology, the Derived Lexical Entry Principle: where a gener-
alized paradigm function denes a new LI, either the properties are specied directly
by the appropriate component of the generalized paradigm function, or else they are
replaced by underspecied values. For instance, driver will have a SEM value which
is specied as meaning something like person who drives (something), based on the
meaning of drive, and its basic FORM attribute will be derived from that of drive
by er-sufxation, by stipulation. But the SYN attribute and the inectional properties
of the lexeme will be replaced by the empty property set u. The Default Cascade will
then dene the derived word as syntactically a noun (since driver is ontologically
a thing) and hence morphologically as a noun (so that it will be eligible for nominal
inections).
A recurrent theme in my proposals is the need to factorize traditional categories
into ner ones which can interact independently. In Part III, I begin by justifying this
stance by presenting a detailed account of the material of Chapter 3 in terms of the
generalized paradigm function model outlined in Chapter 5. The rest of Part III is
then essentially a series of case studies looking at various classes of lexical relatedness
and how they might be handled in a systematic description.
While Chapter 5 illustrates the generalized paradigm function model using mainly
typical inection and derivation, Chapter 6 shows how the model accounts for the
intermediate types of lexical relatedness, specically transpositions, argument nom-
inalizations (such as driver), the various paradigmatically mixed categories, such
as nouns which have the morphology of adjectives, evaluative morphology (di-

minutives and augmentatives), and nally derivational morphology, which can be
dened formally but is not associated with any systematic semantics (meaningless
derivation), as illustrated by prexed verbs such as under-stand.
One of the aspects of PFM which is explored in Stumps work on paradigm linkage
and related issues is the question of how inected forms are interpreted semantic-
ally. In this chapter I take up this aspect in more detail. I modify Geert Booijs (1996)
distinction between contextual and inherent inection, arguing that some types of in-
herent inection are best thought of as introducing an additional semantic predicate
into the lexical representation, in addition to realizing the value of a morphosyntactic
feature. As Booij himself points out, inherent inection can be difcult to distinguish
from derivation, so I dene a meaning-bearing class of inherent inection. This is
lexical relatedness which is part of the inectional paradigm of a lexeme, and which
therefore does not alter the lexemic index (within-lexeme relatedness), but which
nonetheless introduces a non-trivial change to the SEM value. Given the architec-
ture of the model, this is a logically possible type of relatedness. One example of such
inherent inection is nominal case-marking, in which the case marker has exactly
the same meaning/function as a spatial preposition in English and no other gram-
matical role. Another example is Aktionsart or mode-of-action inection on verbs,
which modies the event type denoted by the verb by the addition of phasic or other
semantic predicates, but which doesnt seem to create a new lexical entry in its own
right (that is, it creates the completive, attenuative, durative, . . . form of that verb
lexeme).
Chapter 6 glosses over the nature of argument-structure alternations and lexical
relatedness because this is the topic of Chapter 7. The chapter cannot do justice to the
full complexity of the issues, so I simply present a set of formal mechanisms for de-
scribing argument-structure alternations as lexical phenomena which have complex
interactions with syntactic form and with semantic content. To understand the rela-
tion between argument-structure representations and syntax I adopt as a descriptive
convenience an approach to argument structure which incorporates ideas developed
within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (Manning, 1996). I use this to
represent the notion of semantic function role (R, E, A*) used to dene nouns, verbs,
and adjectives. I take the causative alternation as an illustrative case study, basing this
on the work of Matsumoto (1996).
One issue in semantic representation and argument structure that has come to the
fore in recent research is the phenomenon of systematic polysemy in verb represent-
ations and how this relates to multiple complementation structures, in which a single
verb seems to license a large number of different argument-structure patterns, some-
times, but not always, with subtle shifts of meaning (see Levin and Rappaport Hovav,
2005, for a detailed survey). For instance, in English, a verb of sound emission such
as whistle can be interpreted as a verb of communication (Kim whistled to the dog to
come), though in other languages this is either completely excluded, or it would be

expressed by modifying the verb root, say by a prex (as in Russian). Such instances
of potentially systematic polysemy constitute good candidates for a paradigm-driven
process in my terms. I tentatively conclude that such polysemy should be handled
by adopting some form of Construction Morphology approach to the characteri-
zation of the SEM attribute of such words, thereby inducing, by default, changes in
the SYN representation (especially the argument structure/complements list) but not
necessarily changing the FORM attribute (i.e. a species of systematic conversion).
In Chapter 8 I address an issue in morphosyntax that has been the focus of a good
deal of research over the past 50 years, namely that of event nominalizations, or ac-
tion nominalizations, of verbs. Such nominalizations frequently retain many of the
syntactic and semantic properties of the base verb. In many languages they are the
only way of constructing subordinate clauses and hence are so regular that they have
to be regarded as forms of the verb lexeme, just like innitive forms or deverbal par-
ticiples. I illustrate this with examples of innitives (actually, deverbal nouns) in
Turkish.
As transpositions of verbs, event nominalizations often induce syntagmatic cat-
egory mixing, as in the POSS-ACC type of nominalization in English: Harriets
writing the paper so quickly. ... In such examples the phrase seems to start as a noun
but nish as a verb. Languages such as German or Italian can use the innitive form
of the verb as syntagmatically mixed transpositions, and in many ways these are
much more interesting than the more studied nominals in -ung or -azione in these
languages. In particular, they illustrate lexical relatedness in which the base of the
transposition is not the base form of the word but an already inected form. I show
how we can deploy the notion of rule of referral to describe such situations. In Rus-
sian and other Slavic languages, innitives are not used as nouns, but nominalizations
in -anie/-enie are extremely productive, and full a similar role to nominalized innit-
ives or English -ing forms. Russian nominals are interesting in that they are restricted
to an imperfective aspect interpretation, even if they are derived from a perfective
verb. (Polish nominalizations, however, can preserve verbal aspect.)
I show how the generalized paradigm function can be deployed to capture the ba-
sic properties, and then extend that discussion to account for the categorial mixing,
adapting proposals from within the LFG and HPSG literature. Event nominals of-
ten introduce subtle semantic nuances that are lacking in the corresponding nite
clause, with meanings such as the fact that . . . or the proposition that . . .. In ad-
dition, event nominals often introduce subtle aspectual meanings or restrictions on
interpretation (as in Russian). In many cases, of course, the meaning of the nominal
shifts sufciently radically to warrant treating it as genuine derivational morphology,
but in other cases the extra meaning is more like the grammatical meanings associ-
ated with plural or past-tense morphology, and doesnt seem to warrant setting up an
entirely new lexeme. In effect, we have a subtype of transposition, which includes a
semantic enrichment to the lexical representation without (necessarily) the creation

of a new lexeme. Again, I show how these distinctions are expected on the generalized
paradigm function model.
It is not just deverbal nominalizations that have this character, and I show
how the same treatment can be extended to property nominalizations of adject-
ives (for instance shortness from short, or popularity from popular). In addition to
fact/proposition meanings, property nominalizations also systematically convey an
extent meaning (the extent to which X is short/popular). I argue for treating these
semantic enrichments in deverbal and deadjectival nominalizations constructionally,
as part of the nominalization process, and not as a direct enrichment of the base
lexemes lexical entry.
Chapter 9 continues this line of analysis by looking at transpositions to adject-
ives and transpositions to verbs. Having briey touched upon deverbal participles
I discuss nouns used as attributive adjectives, that is, the relational and possessive
adjectives. Some languages distinguish the two types, and I argue that the main dif-
ference between them lies in the nature of the base noun: kin terms, meronyms, and
other nouns which imply some inalienable possessor tend to give rise to possessive
adjectives, while ordinary nouns give rise to relational adjectives. An interesting take
on such constructions is provided by languages in which a noun in the genitive case
can take adjectival agreements when used as an attributive modier, another example
of a transposition being dened over an inected word form. In many languages, de-
nominal adjectives show interesting types of syntagmatic categorial mixing, in that
the base noun of the derived adjective form can still be modied by an attributive
modier, as in English expressions such as many coloured (coat) or three sided (gure).
I then turn to transpositions from noun/adjective to nite verb, that is, predicat-
ive uses of nouns and adjectives corresponding to is a doctor/tall. A very interesting
example of noun-to-verb transposition is that of the proprietive form of a noun used
as a predicate in Yukaghir. I conclude briey by mentioning the possibility that a
transposition may create a word type which itself can undergo further transposition,
notably the Russian present passive participle, which can undergo transposition to a
property nominal.
The nal substantive chapter, Chapter 10, is devoted to lexical relatedness within
a single language, Selkup, a Samoyedic language spoken in Siberia. Selkup has a
variety of derivational processes, and like other Uralic languages it also has a rich
set of modes-of-action categories for verbs, which I analyse as meaning-bearing
inherent inection. However, this remarkable language also has a wide variety
of verb/noun-to-adjective transpositions, verb/adjective-to-noun transpositions and
noun-to-verb transpositions, as well as varieties that I have not hitherto discussed,
namely verb-to-adverb and even noun-to-adverb transpositions. The patterning is
so pervasive that Russian grammarians who have provided the most detailed stud-
ies of the language argue for a special category of representation to capture the
phenomena in as systematic a way as possible. What is particularly remarkable

about the noun-to-adjective transpositions in this language is that they preserve a
crucial inectional property of the base noun, namely possessor agreement. Thus,
we can create relational adjectives from the noun house with the meanings per-
taining to my/your/their . . . house. However, Selkup also has similitudinal and
locative transpositions with the same property, similar to my house, located inside
my house. Formally and semantically these two transpositions are based on two
(meaning-bearing) case forms. Thus, Selkup has transpositions which have to be re-
garded as effectively parts of the inectional paradigm of the noun, but which in
two of the three types are derived from case-marked inected forms which also in-
volve addition of a semantic predicate, a meaning-bearing transposition, dened by
referral to a cell in the inectional paradigm. The chapter concludes with an illustra-
tion of how such relatedness can be analysed on the generalized paradigm function
model.
The nal chapter presents summary conclusions. I start from the observation that
a lexeme can be thought of as a combination of four attributes, FORM, SYNTAX,
SEMANTICS, and LEXEMIC INDEX. I argue that lexical relatedness is found when
one attribute of a given word can be systematically related to the corresponding at-
tribute of another word. I then argue that lexical relatedness so conceived can be
dened over any logical combination of these four attributes, giving a logical re-
latedness space of 16 types. Of these, one is the identity relation, and one is logically
impossible (two distinct lexemes which share all their properties except for the LI).
The other 14 types are all attested, sometimes in various subtypes. I adopt the as-
sumptions of a lexicalist approach to morphosyntax of the kind espoused in LFG
or HPSG, and I adopt an inferentialrealizational approach to morphology. I pro-
pose an extension to Stumps notion of paradigm function in which the paradigm
function is four functions, one for each of the four principal lexical attributes. These
constitute the generalized paradigm function. The generalized paradigm function,
together with principles such as the Default Cascade and the Derived Lexical Entry
Principle, allows us to dene all 16 logically possible types of relatedness, using essen-
tially the same formal machinery for each type. The same machinery can also be used
to dene the notion lexical entry itself. We thus arrive at a unied model of lexical
representation and lexical relatedness.
1.4 A note on formalization

At various points I will express certain central ideas using formal machinery bor-
rowed chiey from lexicalist models of syntax, especially Lexical Functional Gram-
mar (LFG, Bresnan, 2001) and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG, Sag
et al., 2003). However, I refer to the model of lexical relatedness that I am devel-
oping as an informal (or sometimes semi-formal) model. Before introducing the
books subject matter, its worth dwelling briey on the question of formal models
and formalization generally in the context of the ideas presented here.
There are several reasons why a linguist might formalize a set of proposals, ana-
lyses, or a theoretical model. The Mathematicians Motivation for formalization is
an interest in the behaviour of the formalisms themselves. One might ask how a lin-
guistic formalism relates to a branch of formal logic or automata theory, for instance.
I do not have the expertise to ask such formal questions. The Engineers Motivation
for formalization is in developing a formal machinery that can be implemented com-
putationally. In addition to purely practical applications, one advantage of this type of
research for theoretical linguistics is that its possible to check that your theory really
does entail the result that you think it entails. One disadvantage is that the researcher
is separated from the theory by the computers compiler, and it can sometimes be
difcult to know whether a particular computational result is caused by the theory
or by a specic implementation. I dont have any expertise in Natural Language Pro-
cessing or Computational Linguistics, but I would hope that some of the conceptual
solutions I will offer to the problems of lexical representation might prove useful to
the NLP community.
The Linguists Motivation for formalization is explicitness and clarity. Many lin-
guistic concepts can be explained and discussed using little more than enriched
ordinary English, but some notions require some kind of formal implementation to
avoid vagueness and confusion. On the other hand, by adopting a specic formal
approach, the linguist is sometimes tied to formalizing ideas in a particular way.
For instance, both LFG and HPSG are feature-based formalisms, but HPSG makes
extensive use of typed features, while LFG features are untyped. In principle this
might make it easier or harder to state certain generalizations in a simple format.
On the other hand, the LFG formalism operates with an intuitively straightfor-
ward partitioning of types of grammatical information into the constituent-structure
(phrase structure, c-structure) and functional-structure (f-structure) representations,
for grammatical relations and other types of functional information. Other parti-
tionings (projections) are also adopted in the LFG literature, including a separate
argument-structure projection in some models, as well as a semantic representation.
I have adopted a very eclectic approach to formalization. I have where possible
maintained the formalism of Stumps (2001) Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM),
described in Chapter 4, a formalism based on the idea that morphological relations
are expressed as (mathematical) functions and related by principles of default-
inheritance logic. However, some of the leading ideas of PFM have had to be modied
in order to generalize the model to provide an account of all the possible lexical
relationships identied in this book. In order to explore the relationship between
morphological structure and argument-structure alternations (in an extended sense
of that term), I have adopted a version of LFG that distinguishes an argument-
structure projection from the f-structure projection. On the other hand, LFG lacks
an explicit and articulated model of lexical representation. The formal architecture

of HPSG, however, provides a very useful template for dening the various compon-
ents of a lexical entry, namely the four attributes FORM, SYN, SEM, and LI, and
the various component attributes that dene those four main attributes. However,
the default-based architecture of PFM sits uneasily with the unication-based archi-
tecture of LFG, and although HPSG makes considerable use of default-inheritance
hierarchies, it remains a non-trivial task to marry the two formalisms.
The result is that I am not in a position to provide a single overarching formalism
to account for all of the relationships and dependencies that I discuss. But this is
not a serious shortcoming, because it isnt my aim to provide such an overarching
framework. The formalism is there solely to help elucidate the conceptual problems.
By being as explicit as I can (at this stage of research), my hope is that fellow linguists
working within a specic framework will be in a position to adapt my proposals so
as to be able to formalize them properly and implement the crucial ideas in their
framework of choice. But this is the job of others and not part of my goal.
Part I
Lexemes, lexical entries, and lexical

relatedness
2
The lexical entry
2.1 Introduction
Lexicalist approaches to grammar rely on a carefully articulated notion of lexical
entry, and those which presuppose a realizational approach to morphology rely on
its associated notion of lexeme. However, in order to build a satisfactory theory we
will need to clarify a number of conceptual issues surrounding these notions. One
central question that has to be resolved in any theoretical approach to the lexicon is
that of deciding when we have two distincteven if systematically relatedlexemes,
and when we have just one lexeme which appears in two possible guises. The problem
can be put in a nutshell by considering a language with a completely regular and pro-
ductive deverbal morphological causative construction, so that for any verb, such as
hit or ponder, there is a corresponding causative form cause someone to hit/ponder/. . . .
The question is this: is the causative a form of a single lexeme, or does it create a new
lexeme? There are many such types of lexical relatedness (we could call them inec-
tion/derivation borderlines), and different models of grammar tend to handle them
in different ways, so that there is no consensus as to how to approach them. Indeed,
its probably fair to say that there is no real consensus that there is a problem in the
rst place, because the puzzles are generally swept under a terminological carpet to
the extent they are discussed at all. But I will argue that we should take such conun-
drums seriously: any lexically oriented model of grammar must tackle these issues
and propose a way of dealing with them.
Section 2.2 raises a number of lexicological issues about precisely what sort of in-
formation has to go into a lexical representation. Section 2.3 presents my views on the
relationship between the semantic and syntactic aspects of lexical representation, ap-
pealing to an augmented view of argument structure. The details of that view will be
justied in greater depth in subsequent chapters, but one point which emerges from
the bare bones of the proposal given here is that the notion of lexical category can,
to a large extent, be reduced to the ontological matter of semantic categorization.
That is, following the arguments in Spencer (1999, 2005b), I argue for an updated
version of the notional parts of speech doctrine under which nouns denotes things,
verbs denote events, and adjectives denote properties. Part of the justication for this
approach comes from an examination of the morphosyntax and morphosemantics
of attributive modication, a topic hardly touched upon in contemporary theoriz-

ing. The question revolves around the nature of the grammatical relation holding
between the adjective tall and the noun tree in a phrase such as tall tree. I shall argue
in Chapter 3 for a specic account of modication which has ramications for the-
ories of argument structure and lexical representation generally. The leading idea is
that attributive modication should be represented as a relation at the level of argu-
ment structure. The discussion in Sections 2.2 and 2.3 presents the basic ideas behind
these proposals (which include doing away with traditional syntactic category labels
such as N, V, and A).
On the basis of that discussion I will try to clarify a number of issues surround-
ing the nature of lexical representations, before broaching the relationship between
inection and derivation in Section 2.4.
Although there has been a considerable body of research conducted in the past few
decades within lexicalist assumptions, there has been surprisingly little discussion of
the overall architecture of the lexicon and of the notion of lexical entry. In general,
the structure of the lexical entry has been subservient to the needs of syntax (or of
morphology, as in the case of models of morphophonology inspired by Lexical Phon-
ology, Kiparsky, 1982b). The kind of typologically oriented study of lexical structure
that I am engaged on here is almost entirely lacking. For that reason, its somewhat
difcult to point to precise precursors of the ideas that I shall be presenting. In the
morphological literature one important avenue of inquiry is that represented by the
work of Bernard Fradin (see, for instance, Fradin, 2003, and work cited there). In
the domain of syntax I shall be making a fair deal of use of the machinery of Lex-
ical Functional Grammar (Bresnan, 2001), in part because it provides a relatively
clear-cut descriptive framework in which to investigate the relation between lex-
ical structure, morphology, and aspects of morphosyntax that relate closely to them,
specically argument structure. However, LFG analyses tend to be oriented towards
syntactic questions, and tend to presuppose something like a morpheme-based ap-
proach to morphology (at least in informal presentations of the morphology). In
many ways the framework that is closest to my approach is that of HPSG. This model
(or class of models) explicitly presupposes a lexicon organized as a multiple inherit-
ance hierarchy, and I shall be making a good deal of appeal to notions of inheritance
(though not necessarily exactly as implemented in HPSG). HPSG also presupposes
a model of morphology which is essentially inferentialrealizational (and explicitly
so in some works, for instance Miller and Sag, 1997). Moreover, much of the recent
work of Olivier Bonami and colleagues (for instance, Bonami and Boy, 2002, 2006;
Boy and Cabredo Hofherr, 2006) explicitly adopts an inferentialrealizational ap-
proach to morphology, and also explores ideas about morphological structure, and
especially the nature of stems, which are very close to those investigated in this book.
The recent model of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) proposed by Sag
(2007) explores a good many of the issues discussed here and arrives at conclusions
The lexical entry 27
which are in part very similar (though I shall try to point out those places where the
similarities are less clear or merely terminological).
2.2 What is a lexeme?

Here I will try to elucidate a number of closely related notions, which may or may
not turn out to be synonymous, depending on ones descriptive framework and the
level of delicacy with which various distinctions are drawn. These notions are those
of lexeme, lexical representation, and lexical entry (in a lexicon or dictionary). I
will begin by trying to tease out some of the more obvious aspects of lexical repres-
entation, though we will nd that things which are commonly held to be obviously
true arent always all that obvious and arent always even true.
2.2.1 Rening the lexical entry

Realizational models of morphology almost always draw a distinction between the
inected forms of lexemes and the more abstract notion of the lexeme itself, which
is often related to or equated with the notion of lexical entry. By lexical entry I
mean nothing more than a list of information relating to a word, its inected forms,
its syntactic properties, its meaning, and any other idiosyncratic properties. This is
essentially what we mean by dictionary entry. For instance, it is common to assume
that there is a lexical entry for the English verb walk which includes the information
given in (1).
(1) PHONOLOGY /w :k/

c
SYNTAX Verb, intransitive; Verb(SUBJECT)
SEMANTICS Event: WALK(x)
A lexical representation such as this is essentially what we nd in a traditional

dictionary, but it is also quite close to what many linguists would assume is the ap-
propriate format for a lexical entry in a standard model of linguistic description. With
some elaboration, for instance, such a format is essentially that found in many HPSG
descriptions. In addition, such a representation seems to be broadly speaking what is
presupposed in classical Paradigm Function Morphology. However, it is important
to realize that a representation such as (1) brings with it a number of assumptions,
some of which are questionable if not downright wrong. Before we consider these
assumptions, I shall spell out the nature of the representation in a little more detail.
I begin with the semantic representation, then discuss the notion of phonological
form, and nally turn to the syntactic representation.
2.2.2 Semantic representations of lexemes

The most controversial aspect of any lexical representation is likely to be the
SEMANTIC component of the representation. So far I have given a very approximate
indication of what a semantic representation might include. For (1) I have assumed
that walk is a two-place predicate, one of whose arguments denotes a walker, while
the other denotes an event. This is meant to capture the idea that the verb denotes
an event (rather than a thing or a property or whatever), and that there is exactly
one obligatory participant in that event. However, I have made no attempt to spell
out what a walking event actually consists of (that is, I havent given a denition
of walk), rather, I have provided the now traditional capital-letters placeholder for
such a denition. Since walk is a natural-kind term, its unlikely that there could
be anything like a denition of walking in anything like a strict sense of the term, so
the capital-letters predicate has to stand for whatever collection of cognitive repre-
sentations captures the meaning of the verb. I will have very little to say about these
matters. Clearly, our representation will have to have some sort of link to the way we
normally understand locomotion, though how exactly that representation is cashed
out will depend on rather complex factors.
However, I will not wish to avoid altogether the question of semantics in lexical
representation. There is abundant evidence supporting the view that languages make
use of a small number of recurrent semantic predicates (semantic primitives) in or-
ganizing the lexicon, and especially in organizing morphologically determined lexical
relatedness. Thus, many languages have morphology for creating similitudinal ad-
jectives from nouns (cat-like, rhomboid), or causative verbs from adjectives (thicken).
I follow authors from a variety of theoretical persuasions, such as Bierwisch (1969,
1983, 1989), Hale and Keyser (1993), Jackendoff (1990), Levin and Rappaport Hovav
(1995), and Wunderlich (1997), as well as traditional lexicographers, in assuming that
we can fractionate the meanings of many words into lexical-conceptual predicates
such as SIMILAR, CAUSE, and so on, and that such predicates can play a role in the
organization of grammar as well as in the organization of the lexicon. For instance,
following Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1994) I assume that the (transitive) use of
the verb break reects a semantic representation along the lines of (2) (the [x ACT]
predicate is negotiable).
(2) [x ACT] [CAUSE x [BECOME [y BROKEN]]]]
At a more abstract level I assume, following Jackendoff (1990), that the semantic
primitives and the parochial predicates used to dene a lexemes semantics are typed
for their ontological category. Specically, I shall assume that there are Events, Prop-
erties, Things, and Relations. Broadly speaking these correspond to the main parts of
speech identiable across languages: verb, adjective, noun, and adposition.1
1 It seems likely that we will also need to appeal to a notion such as Proposition, as a kind of ontologi-
cally mandated event description. I shall discuss this possibility in more detail when I come to the problem
of deverbal nominalizations in Chapter 8.
Events include dynamic happenings (walks) and also states (is hot, sufced). There
is, of course, a long tradition in linguistics and philosophy of trying to characterize
what an event is, but I will nesse the various problems that the notion entrains and
try to avoid problematical cases. By Property I mean property that we attribute to
objects, rather than property that we attribute to events. Properties are hard to pin
down, and hard to distinguish from states, so I shall limit myself to an intuitive char-
acterization and say that a Property is what we ascribe to a Thing when we describe
it in various ways.
The commonest ways of describing Things is in terms of a small set of Proper-
ties which large numbers of different Things have, the so-called qualia (Pustejovsky,
1995). I would follow Lahav (1989) in effectively restricting the denotation of the
common property words (attributive adjectives) to the qualia of the nouns that they
modify. Thus, the meaning of red ball will not be given by looking at the intersec-
tion of the set of red entities and the set of ball entities, as is customary in formal
semantics. Rather, we take the set of balls and examine the colour property of each
ball to determine whether it satises the description colour = red. Similarly, to in-
terpret the phrase small elephant we examine the predication x is small (for an
elephant). Many adjectives fail to modify any of the standard qualia of a noun. Thus,
there are no qualia proper to balls that would license expressions such as interest-
ing ball or unusual ball. But equally we hardly want to say that the denotation of
interesting ball falls in the intersection of the entities which are balls and the entities
which are interesting. Rather, interesting ball denotes a ball such that it arouses a
particular psychological state (in someone). Similarly, we can modify rather abstract
Things whose qualia structure doesnt lend itself to attributive modication. The
noun idea lacks a quale of size, so we are obliged to interpret big idea in a different
way from the way in which we interpret expressions such as big elephant/mouse. Like-
wise, we can ascribe a property of awed to an analysis, in which case we are taking a
highly abstract Thing, an analysis, and describing it by claiming that it doesnt work.
A complete description of the kind that would justify uttering This is a awed analysis
would, of course, be rather more complex than anything corresponding to an utter-
ance of This elephant is small and would involve interpreting the notions Property
and Thing in a manner that is reminiscent of coercion, but this seems to be the
way that English pictures such situations, so we ought to have a descriptive semantic
framework that allows us to capture that fact.
Although its common to discuss Properties as predicates predicated of a subject,
that is, as predicative adjectives (The tree is tall), I have argued (Spencer, 1999), along
with others (Croft, 1991; Nikolaeva and Spencer, 2012) that the primary function
of property words, adjectives, is attributive modication. Things include concrete
things and abstract objects such as justice or idea. Among the abstract Things, I shall
argue, there are reied Events and Properties, such as Harriets playing the sonata too
fast and redness. This is a controversial proposal which I shall be defending in more
detail in Chapter 8, but it seems to be mandated by grammatical systems. Finally, Re-

lations are meant to cover whatever it is that prepositions, postpositions, cases, and
so on denote, but I shall have little to say about them.
I shall assume, then, that appropriate predicates are ontologically typed, so that the
semantic representations of the lexemes walk, tall, tree, and on will be, to a rst
approximation those shown in (3).
(3) a. [Event WALK(x)]

b. [Property TALL(x)]
c. [Thing TREE(x)]
d. [Relation ON(x, y)]
2.2.3 Phonological representations of lexemes

Returning to the dictionary entry for walk, (1), the PHONOLOGY component of the
denition would appear to be the least controversial element of the representation.
This is the pronunciation of the root of the verb.
There are several issues, however, which make the notion of root less than fully
uncontroversial:
multiword inectional exponence (inectional periphrasis)

multiword derivational/lexemic form (periphrasis in lexical entries, as illustrated
by English particle verbs, certain types of idiom construction, and so on)
discontinuous roots/stems.
Inectional and derivational periphrasis are discussed in Ackerman et al. (2011), and a
summary of the issues surrounding inection and periphrasis is provided in Spencer
and Popova (forthcoming).
Discontinuous roots and stems are found in many languages. A discontinuous root
is the basic form of a lexeme from which other stems and inected forms are derived,
but it is a form which consists of two or more segmentable morphs separated by other
morphological material.
This situation recurs frequently across languages. A particularly spectacular ex-
ample is provided by the Yeniseian language Ket, spoken along the river Yenisei in
Siberia (and recently demonstrated to be distantly related to the Na-Dene language
group). I rely here on the excellent description and analysis of this notoriously com-
plex language provided by Vajda (2002, 2004). (See also Vajda, 2003, 2007. For a
more elaborated analysis of position classes, distinguishing a rather larger number of
positions, see Werner, 1997).
Vajda distinguishes a base position, P0, a sufx position, P1, and eight prex po-
sitions, P1 to P8 (note that the numbering puts negative and positive integers on the
opposite sides of the zero compared with the standard arithmetic convention). The
positions are illustrated in (4) (Vajda, 2004: 45).
(4) Position classes for the Ket verb
P8 P7 P6 P5 P4 P3 P2 P1 P0 P1
agr dur/ agr adpos incorp agr past/ agr base agr
agr imp
P8 houses subject agreement markers. These markers do not behave like canon-
ical afxes, because they encliticize to the previous word form if there is one.
Slot P2 houses tense/aspect prexes. P6, P3, P1 and P1 house other agreement
markers.
Apart from some 100 simplex verbs, all Ket verbs, including all productive pat-
terns, require an overt element in P7. This may be a productively incorporated
element, such as a noun stem functioning as the direct object, or, more often, a
non-compositional element. Examples are given in (58) (Vajda, 2004: 61).2
(5) P7 as direct object

daqssvet
da8 qus7 (s) bet0
3f.subj tent7 (ms) make0
8
She is making a tent.
(6) P7 as instrument
danbaet
da8 in7 ba6 k5 a4 tet0
3f.subj needle 1sg.obj ades dur hit0
8 7 6 5 4
She jabs me with a needle.
(7) P7 as semantic head

ndsuk
en7 di1 suk0
mind 1sg.subj back0
7 1
I forget (once).
2 ms stands for morphosyntactic separator, a consonant which is sometimes inserted between distant
position class elements that happen to appear adjacent to each other in a given form. I have standardized
other abbreviations used by Vajda to conform to the Leipzig Glossing Rules without comment.
In many cases the element occupying P7 cannot be given a gloss and is effectively a
cranberry morph:
(8) Meaningless morph (l) at P7

dqsq
di8 eq7 (s) aq0
1.subj l7 (ms) l0
8
I hear.
P5 houses adpositions, originally spatial markers (Vajda, 2004: 61f.), which now
consist of a single consonant. These are highly lexicalized (and frequently they co-
occur with specic P7 elements). In (9) we see the adposition k with.
(9) dabksq
da8 bo6 k5 (s) aq0
3f.subj 1sg.obj with (ms) go.mom0
8 6 5
She takes me (walks with me somewhere and back).
Rather little attention has been devoted to the problem of discontinuous stems in
the literature on realizational models of morphology, and I will not discuss them in
detail, save to note that they have to be integrated into a complete model at some
stage. I also note that the widespread existence of such morphology provides further
support for a model of word structure that eschews traditional notions of morpheme
and places more emphasis on the notion of stem.
A further renement will quickly prove necessary in order to do justice to the
form properties of lexemes. It will turn out that it is misleading, in the general case,
to think of the root of a lexeme as its most important phonological or formal as-
pect. In many languages its very difcult to identify roots as such, and the notion
of root often plays a very limited role in grammatical description. Of much greater
importance in morphology is the notion of stem. In languages like English this
fact is obscured, because the lexemes root is its default stem, and for most lexemes
its actually the most frequent form. However, in languages with rich inectional
morphology I shall argue that it is the set of stems associated with a lexeme that
constitutes the formal starting point, so to speak. In many cases the root will be one
of those stems and will often be the default stem, but this doesnt have to be the
case. This means that we should think of the PHONOLOGY component of a lexical
entry as a collection of information about the forms a lexeme can take and not just
as the phonological representation of one of those forms. For this reason I shall not
use the misleading label PHONOLOGY but rather will talk about a lexemes FORM
attribute.
2.2.4 Syntactic representations of lexemes

The SYNTAX component of the representation is given in two avours. The annota-
tion Verb(SUBJECT) is meant to indicate that the word is a verb and that it takes a
subject argument. Obviously, this is a very controversial way of representing what is
often called the argument structure of a verb (also called predicate-argument struc-
ture, or PAS), since not all syntactic frameworks recognize the category of SUBJECT
in the rst place. The informal description intransitive verb is less controversial in
that it indicates that the verb takes a single argument, and general principles of Eng-
lish syntax will then guarantee that this argument is a subject (to the extent such a
claim makes sense).
Another way of representing argument structure (abbreviated as a-structure) is in
terms of thematic roles or semantic roles. Thus, a verb such as (transitive) break
might be assigned the roles of Agent, Patient. I shall follow Levin and Rappa-
port Hovav (2005) and the numerous authors they cite, in assuming that semantic
role labels such as Agent and Patient are merely convenient descriptive cover terms
but shouldnt play any serious role in grammatical description. On the other hand, it
does seem very possible that grammars will have to appeal to a blander notion of ar-
gument structure, identifying for break a rst argument (external argument) and a
second argument: breakx, y. Naturally, the x argument will correspond ultimately
to the SUBJECT grammatical role in syntax, and the y argument will ultimately be
mapped to the OBJECT grammatical role. Exactly how this is done, and whether, for
instance, the mapping refers to categories such as SUBJECT, OBJECT, or PIVOT,
or to some complex assemblage of structural relations, is a matter which I wont go
into (since as far as I can tell it wont prove crucial for a proper understanding of lex-
ical relatedness). In principle we should aim at parsimonious, non-redundant lexical
descriptions. However, given the controversy surrounding the nature of argument
structure, it will be helpful to hedge our bets and include both types of representation,
namely breakx, y and breakSUBJ, OBJ.
2.3 Semantics and syntax

2.3.1 The semantic function role
A number of authors have argued that the argument-structure representation, func-
tioning as it does as an interface between purely syntactic representation and the
semantic representation, should include a component which reects the ontolo-
gical status of a word type as referential predicate (noun), eventive predicate (verb),
and so on. For instance, a number of authors have proposed that the eventive se-
mantics of a verb should be reected in the form of an E role (or its equivalent).
Anticipating later discussion, lets say that the a-structure of a verb has two layers,
the inner layer representing the nominal arguments (thematic arguments), and the
outer layer representing the E role. Thus, the a-structure of the intransitive verb to
fall will be fallEx while the a-structure of the transitive verb to fell will be
fellEx, y (or perhaps fellExy). From the point of view of grammar, we can
then tie in the presence of the E role with certain morphosyntactic properties. For
instance, this role serves to anchor an event or situation in time, so by identifying
the eventive predicate with the head of the clause we can associate the E role with
the expression of event-relevant properties of the clause such as tense, aspect, mood,
modality, and so on. Hence, we can say that possession of the E role licenses or
mandates the morphological or morphosyntactic devices expressing those proper-
ties, such as tense morphology, modal auxiliary verbs, interrogative clitics, or what
have you.
This reasoning has been extended to nouns. Specically, Williams (1981a) proposes
that a noun is furnished with a role R which serves to reect the referentiality of
nominals. Thus, the noun tree has an argument-structure representation treeR,
reecting the fact that the usual semantic representation for a common noun is to
treat it as some kind of one-place predicate, tree (x).
In Spencer (1999) I refer to the R and E roles as semantic function roles. I
shall refer to the other type of role as participant role (rather than semantic role
or thematic role as is often done in the literaturethese terms are misleading).
The semantic function roles R and E effectively label their bearers as nouns
and verbs. However, most linguists have not asked what kind of semantic function
role might be borne by an attributive adjective. The canonical grammatical function
of an adjective is attributive modication (of a noun). Despite the fact that adject-
ives are a very commonly occurring word class, and despite the fact that perhaps
all languages have devices for modifying nouns, attributive modication is a very
poorly understood grammatical function. Many recent monographs and textbooks
on syntax ignore the topic altogether (to the extent that its sometimes not possible to
ascertain what representation the author might have in mind for an expression such
as the tall tree), and when it is included in a grammatical framework it generally ap-
pears as an unanalysed and unexplained cover symbol such as MOD, ADJ(UNCT),
or some such.
I have proposed that adjectives (and certain types of derived attributive modier
such as the modier noun in a noun-noun compound) have a semantic function
role which reects the notion of attributive modication as embodied in lambda ab-
straction over properties (Spencer, 1999). The a-structure of an adjective includes
a semantic function role A*. This role is linked to the rst (usually the only)
participant argument of the adjective predicate, which I indicate by coindexation:
tallA*x x. This subscripted coindexation may appear superuous when there is
only one argument, but some adjectives have two arguments (for instance proud (of ),
responsible (for)), and deverbal participles may have the same number of arguments
as their base verb.
The purpose of the A* semantic function role is to mediate the attributive modi-
cation relation between the argument-structure representation of the adjective and
that of the noun modied. This is achieved by coindexing the A* role with the R
role of the modied noun:
(10) Argument structure for attributive modication

adjectiveA*x x, . . . nounR*(y)
(11) a. The tall tree fell

tallA*z z treeR*x fallEx
b. The proud daughter smiled
proudA*z z, w daughterR*x y smileEx
Since the A* role is coindexed with the adjectives (highest) argument, this effect-
ively captures the idea that the adjective is predicated of the noun. However, the
device of coindexation-by-asterisk allows us to map the modied noun expression
to a syntactic representation in which the modier is the dependent, as required.3
A different aspect of the importance of the A* role can be seen when we compare
the representation of tall tree with that of falling tree, in which the noun is modied
by a lexeme which is originally a verb. Its difcult to see how we could distinguish
a purely attributive grammatical relation such as this from a predicated one (as in
The tree fell) if we simply coindexed the argument of the fall predicate with the R
semantic function role of the noun. I argue that transpositions, such as deverbal par-
ticiples, have a complex argument structure in which the original semantic function
role is subordinated to an added semantic function role. Thus, the present active
participle falling has the derived argument structure shown in (12).
(12) fallingA*x Ex
This is now the argument structure of an attributive adjective, and it can therefore
modify the noun in the usual way. I shall ultimately argue that all transpositions
can be analysed along similar lines, that is, by addition of a semantic function role
which subordinates the original semantic function role. That original role may still,
however, be able to license morphosyntactic relations proper to it. For instance, a
participle may show tense or aspect distinctions foreign to true adjectives in the
language.
I follow the general typological consensus that the canonical function of the ad-
jective category is attributive modication of nouns (see, for instance, Croft, 1991).
However, adjectives are frequently used as predicates (indeed, in many languages
this is their prototypical use). In English, a word which is not a verb can only be used
3 In Chapter 7 I discuss ways in which these representations might be reformulated as attributevalue

pairs in the notation of LFG.
as a predicate if it heads a phrase which is the complement to a copular verb, typic-

ally be. However, in many languages, adjectives either assume a special predicative
form when used as the lexical head of the predicate, or they already have a suf-
ciently verb-like morphological structure that they can be used directly as predicates.
For a copula-type construction the representation of predicative adjectives depends
on how we choose to represent the semantics and syntax of the copula itself. I shall
assume for the sake of argument a rough-and-ready representation under which the
copula is simply a two-place predicate taking a noun phrase subject and a comple-
ment of some kind, which can be any kind of phrase (except a nite verb phrase),
denoted here as .
(13) beEx,
Suppose we notate the predication relation in an ad hoc manner by simply coindex-

ing the argument with the argument-structure representation of the complete
predicate expression. Then a predicate adjective construction can be represented as
in (14):
(14) The tree is tall

treeRx beEx, a [a tallA*x]
For adjectival modiers used predicatively, I shall then just assume a convention
under which the asterisk notation for attributive modication is co-opted for predic-
ation, so that (14) comes out meaning something like (15) (with apologies for mixing
predicate calculus and predicate-argument-structure notation):
(15) there-is(x) tallA*x x treeR*
Finally, brief mention should be made of adpositions. Its probably safest to con-
clude that adpositions are effectively functional categories and not conceptually
interpreted categories like nouns, verbs, and adjectives (see, for instance, Baker, 2003,
and Beard, 1995, for arguments to this effect on the basis of very different starting
assumptions). However, Zwarts (1992) proposed that prepositions have a Spatial se-
mantic function role, and it might well prove useful for certain purposes to propose
that certain types of adposition at least have, say, a role Rel, reecting their status
as denoting a relation between two entities. However, I havent yet seen any evidence
that the status of adpositions is crucial for the architectural proposals made here, so
I will gloss over this class of words.
2.3.2 Relating lexical attributes: the categorial cascade

The representation in (1) is an elaborated form of Saussurean sign. This means that
the relationship between the phonological form (or forms) of the lexeme and its
meaning(s) is arbitrary (what Saussure famously refers to as larbitraire du signe).
Beyond that, we can say very little about which aspects of the representation are ar-
bitrary and which aspects can be deduced from other aspects. However, precisely
what can be deduced from what depends very much on exactly how the subparts of
the lexical entry are dened, and what kind of semantic, syntactic, or morphological
subtheory they are referred to.
It is a commonplace to point out that we cant (in English) predict the word class
or syntactic category of a word just from its semantics. That is, just because a word
denotes an event (or more generally, an eventuality) doesnt mean to say its go-
ing to be a verb (a noun such as party denotes an event, for instance). However,
there are rather complex issues at stake here. In (1) I have provided the semantic
representation of the verb with an event semantic role. Now, you could argue (and
indeed, I have argued) that this information, in general, is sufcient to identify
the word as a syntactic verb. Indeed, given a sufciently articulated representation
of argument structure its not obvious that syntactic category labels are ever ne-
cessary (Spencer, 1999). Moreover, the semantic representation identies a single
participant. From this it can in general be concluded that the verb is syntactically
intransitive.
2.3.3 The redundancy of syntactic categories

I have argued (Spencer, 1998, 1999) that we should take seriously the idea that the
main properties of a lexical entry can, by default, be deduced from an appropriately
typed semantic representation, essentially adopting as a default a notional theory of
parts of speech.
Suppose we ascribe a specic semantic weight to the E role in the semantic com-
ponent of (1), such that the E role serves to identify walk as denoting an event that
involves an active participant x, which can be located in time by means of some part
of the grammar (for instance tense/aspect functional categories). Suppose further
that we distinguish this E role from a more general semantic notion of eventuality,
which is not so tied to the grammatical expression of temporal structure, niteness,
and so on. In that case, we might be in a position to dispense entirely with the syn-
tactic category label V and dene all the distributional and combinatorial properties
of the word in terms of the E role and the single x participant. For most of my
purposes it wont matter a great deal how this is done. Essentially, the proposal is
that syntactic phrase-structure representations be couched in terms of the argument-
structure representations of their lexical terminals. These representations will contain
selectional constraints (such as whether a verb takes a non-nite clause, or whether
it takes a dative-case-marked complement), as well as the array of subjects and com-
plements that the predicate can combine with. A lexical terminal and the phrase it
projects will be associated with particular types of functional element, of course, and
the choice of what kinds of functional elements it is associated with can be dened
in large part from the semantic function role: a lexical head with the R role will
be expected to co-occur with functional elements such as deniteness markers or
quantiers, while a lexical head with the E role will be expected to co-occur with
tenseaspectmood markers, and so on.
If we assume that the argument structure is reected in the mapping of phrase-
structure nodes, then its difcult to see what possible role traditional labels like N,
V, or A might play. However, if mixed categories such as deverbal participles are
dened as words with the attributive A* role as their primary semantic function, but
with an additional E role that can play a language-specic part in the grammar of
that derived word, then we have a straightforward way of addressing the vexed issue
of how to represent such mixed categories. The device of superimposed semantic
function roles means that we dont need to invoke notions such as double-headed
lexical category labels (as in Lapointe, 1992, for instance) or underspecication of
binary features, which simply give the wrong answers (as is the case with the feature
systems proposed by Bresnan, 2001, Chomsky, 1981, and Wunderlich, 1996, to name
just three distinguished attempts). I shall elaborate on these points at various times
in the book, since transpositions represent an important test bed for models of lexical
representation.
2.4 Lexemes and the inection/derivation distinction

Having established the basic picture of the lexical representation I shall presently
examine some of the assumptions, tacit or otherwise, that underlie that discussion.
As a preliminary, I discuss in this section a thorny distinction which is implicit in
the realizational approach to morphology but which is far from straightforward, the
distinction between inection and derivation. I shall be returning to this problem in
a number of places in the book, but here I will simply sketch the principal concepts
and issues.
The basic idea behind the inection/derivation distinction is very clear. Inec-
tional morphology species all and only the inected forms of a given lexeme. In
terms of an inferential-realizational theory of inection, we say that the inected
word forms realize the lexeme (Stump, 2005c: 50). Derivational morphology applies
to a lexical representation to deliver a formmeaning pairing which is a new lexeme
(lexical entry) in its own right, and hence with its own inectional paradigm.
Note that the inection/derivation distinction only makes any real sense on a
lexeme-based model. If we take the morpheme to be the basic building block of mor-
phology, there is no obvious need for postulating words and word forms as distinct
types, let alone lexemes. In thoroughgoing and consistent morpheme-based theor-
ies the lexemes are the morphemes themselves. Since each morpheme contributes
its own meaning or feature set, the inection/derivation distinction, to the extent
that it needs to be drawn, is dened in terms of the nature of those meanings or
feature sets. A morpheme with a concrete meaning will probably be interpreted as

derivational, while a morpheme with a very abstract grammatical meaning (such as
gender agreement) will be interpreted as inectional, but theres no obvious reason
why either category should play a role in grammars or in grammatical theory. On the
other hand, the inection/derivation distinction plays a rather important role in most
realizational approaches to morphology, because inection creates forms of lexemes,
while derivation creates new lexemes.
Inection and derivation are said to differ in a number of respects.4 While authors
often outline a number of rules of thumb for distinguishing inection from deriva-
tion, the basic distinction revolves around paradigmaticity: inectional morphology
is supposed to be paradigmatic, while derivational morphology is not paradigmatic;
rather, it displays a form of syntagmaticity. In simplistic terms, inectional morpho-
logy denes a nite, closed set of forms of a lexeme, while derivational morphology
allows us to add successive morphemes to a base lexeme in order to construct new
lexemes. I use the term morpheme deliberately in this connection. Typically, deri-
vational morphology is seen as a process of adding a specic afx which adds a
specic semantic predicate to the meaning of the base. Indeed, the most plausible
defences of the morpheme concept come from its supposed role in derivational
morphology (see, for instance, Plag, 2003). As a result, derivational morphology is
generally seen as a potentially recursive, syntagmatic process: we start with a mor-
phologically simplex lexeme and create a new lexeme, which itself can be the input
to a further word-formation process, and so on. The syntagmatic aspect of deriva-
tion is one of the most important properties of derivational morphology because it
creates an open-world system which, in principle, can give rise to an innite number
of outputs, in contrast to the closed-world inectional system.
Proponents of realizational, lexeme-based models of morphology regularly point
out that all these criteria are problematical. Here I give a brief survey of the main
problems.
An important aspect of inection is that it is obligatory. The importance of the
criterion of obligatoriness is often associated with Roman Jakobson (1971: 492): . . .
the true difference between languages is not in what may or may not be expressed but
in what must or must not be conveyed by the speakers.5 There are two closely related
senses of obligatoriness, however, both of which raise interesting general questions
when we try to distinguish inection and derivation.
First, given a lexeme of a given class, that lexeme will be associated with a set of
morphosyntactic properties which it must express. For instance, we expect a verb to
have all the tense, mood, aspect, and voice forms, etc., and all the agreement forms
4 Surveys of these criteria can be found in most introductory texts on morphology. Two convenient
summaries are those of Booij (2000) and Stump (2005c).
5 See Corbett (2010: footnote 6) for some historical observations on the origins of the idea.
dened for that language. In this sense, inection is expected to be systemically regu-
lar, productive, and transparent. It is systemically regular in the sense that we know
in advance that the cells in the paradigm must be lled by some form or other (even
if the morphological means for producing that form are themselves irregular). It is
productive in the sense that any newly formed lexeme of the right class will also
have this full paradigm of forms. It is transparent in the sense that the meaning or
grammatical function of each of the forms in each of the cells of the paradigm is pre-
determined by the grammar. Thus, although the plural forms knives, teeth, and sheep
are morphologically irregular, the property of singular/plural number is an obligat-
ory property for this class of nouns (i.e. count nouns). Each of these forms realizes
the [Number:plural] cell of the noun paradigm, and that plural number form has the
same effect on the meaning/function whatever the noun is.
Derivation is supposed to differ from inection with respect to the obligatoriness
criterion. First, it is frequently not regular, productive, or transparent. Another way
of thinking of this is to say that derivation is not always paradigmatic. For instance,
although many transitive verbs take the sufx -ee to form an object nominalization
(employee, one who is employed) this is not available to all transitive verbs with po-
tentially human objects (*killee), so we cant speak of a regular, properly paradigmatic
process. Moreover, if we coin a new verb, there is no guarantee that it will take the -ee
sufx, so we cant regard the process as fully productive. Finally, when it is available,
the -ee sufxed form doesnt always denote the right kind of object, so the process
isnt in any obvious sense semantically transparent (see Barker, 1998, for a careful
elaboration of these points). We cant therefore conclude that transitive verbs are as-
sociated with an object nominal paradigm, in the same way that count nouns are
associated with a number paradigm.
In Chapter 3 I shall discuss the phenomenon of meaningless derivation, which
takes derivation as far as is possible from inectional morphology, so that in prin-
ciple it might offer up some kind of criterion for distinguishing the two phenomena.
It is extremely common for languages to exhibit systematic types of lexical related-
ness expressed by derivational processes such as afxation in which the base lexeme
and the derived lexeme have no semantic relation to each other whatsoever. A simple
example of this in English is a verb such as understand. This verb is clearly derived
in the purely formal sense by prexing under- (a recurrent prex in English: under-
take, undergo, undermine, and so on) to the verb stand. We know that the base verb is
stand because the output displays the same irregular inectional allomorphy: under-
stood. Yet there is no semantic relationship between understand and either under- or
stand. In English this phenomenon appears a little marginal, but in other languages a
substantial portion of the verb lexicon has exactly this property (though this is some-
times concealed in descriptive accounts by vain attempts to dene the meanings of
the output in terms of the meanings of the base). The point of meaningless deriva-
tion in the context of the inection/derivation distinction is that its difcult even to
imagine what a similar phenomenon would look like in inection. The equivalent in
inection would be, say, taking a verb such as walk and nding that when inected
for past tense it gave a word form walked meaning, say, understands. However, mean-
ingless derivation is also a very bad exemplar of derivational morphology, since the
whole point of derivation is the systematic expansion of the lexical stock, and this en-
tails the preservation of some sort of semantic compositionality in word formation.
And in any case, semantic non-compositionality isnt entirely foreign to inectional
systems, either.
The second sense of the obligatoriness of inection is that syntactic contexts often
require a lexeme to adopt a particular inected form, sometimes for no other reason
than to respect the rules of grammar (and not, for instance, to express some semantic
distinction). I take this to be what S. R. Anderson means when he speaks of inec-
tion as being morphology that is relevant for syntax (Anderson, 1982). Some kinds
of inection, specically what Booij (1994, 1996, 2007) calls contextual inection, are
motivated entirely by the needs of syntax. Derivation, on the other hand, is motivated
by the need to expand the word stock of the lexicon, and crucially the syntax doesnt
require lexemes to be in a particular derived form.
As is well known, these criteria for distinguishing inection from derivation are
not entirely satisfactory, because there are counterexamples to all of them. Thus, there
are inected forms which deviate from regularity, productivity, and transparency.
Halle (1973) discusses a number of such cases, for instance the instrumental singular
of the Russian word leto summer, letom. This word is not transparent in that it has
a specic (adverbial) meaning of in the summer(time). Recent typological inquiry
has focused on a whole host of ways in which inection can be defective in various
ways.6 For instance, it is very common for words to lack inectional forms for no
apparent reason, so-called inectional gaps.
On the other hand, there are derivational processes which appear to be very regu-
lar, productive, and transparent. The -able sufxation process discussed below is one
such case. Even where the morphological means themselves are not very regular or
productive, the derivational relationship might be so regular as to constitute a kind of
paradigmatic relationship. A case in point is the Personal Noun in English introduced
in Chapter 1 (Spencer, 1988).
If derivational morphology creates new lexemes, then there is no need for the de-
rived lexeme to belong to the same word class as the base lexeme. On the contrary,
we expect derivation to change word class (although for various reasons it may fail
to do so). However, if inected word forms are realizations of a single lexeme, then
the expectation is that those word forms will belong to the same word class, namely
that dened by the lexeme itself. Although this criterion is taken for granted it relies
on a generally unmotivated assumption, namely that all forms of a lexeme have to
6 See the work of the Surrey Morphology Group, <http://www.defectiveness.surrey.ac.uk/>.

belong to the same word class. It isnt obvious why we should have to believe this. As
far as I can tell, it doesnt follow as a consequence of any more general principle ap-
plying to words or the structure of the lexicon. Indeed, if I am right about the need to
factorize categorial information into morpholexical categories, morphosyntactic cat-
egories, and the like, then the question of word class preservation isnt even always
coherent.
The phenomenon of transpositions highlights the problem. In many languages,
a verb can have participle forms. These may inect exactly like adjectives and may
have the canonical morphosyntactic function of adjectives (namely to serve as attrib-
ute modiers to nouns) but they may also retain a variety of verb properties, such
as inecting for morphological categories such as tensemoodaspect or voice, be-
ing modied in the manner of verbs, taking complements in the manner of the base
verb, and even case-marking those complements in the manner of the base verb, and
so on. And yet in languages with completely regular, productive, and transparent
participle formation, grammarians are generally inclined to describe participles as
part of the verb inectional morphology and not as a kind of word formation for de-
riving adjectives. I shall discuss the question of transpositions in much more detail
at various points in the book. For the present, the conclusion must be that there
is no strong motivation behind the assumption that inection cant change word
class.
There is, however, what we may call a practical theoretical reason for observing
the ction that all members of a lexemes paradigm belong to the same word class.
If we admit, say, participles as part of the verb paradigm, then we will face prob-
lems when we come to describe the inected forms of the participles. This is because
the participles typically inect exactly like adjectives. The regular participle therefore
seems to reside in two chapters of a languages grammar, in the verb chapter and in
the adjective chapter. In the era of hypertext this shouldnt be a problem, of course,
and ultimately therein lies the solution to the problem. A theory of lexical related-
ness has to be able allow a verb form to inherit its morphological inections from
another word class. But even so the point remains that a simple-minded appeal to
an unexamined notion of word class is not sufcient to distinguish inection from
derivation.
Another common phenomenon which I shall be discussing in some detail relates
to regular and productive argument-structure alternations in verbs. Many languages
permit verbs to be passivized, causativized, and so on. In many respects such altern-
ations look somewhat like derivation and are often labelled as such (especially when
the alternation is associated with the addition of a semantic predicate, such as the
causative construction), and yet its far from clear that we will always want to say that
the passive form of a verb is a new verb lexeme in any obvious sense.
We can think of phenomena such as transpositions and argument-structure al-
ternations as inection/derivation borderlines. To a large extent its immaterial
whether we label such phenomena as inectional or derivational, since what is of

importance is not the general label but the precise specication of the alternations
or inectional forms themselves. However, if we invest such terms with architectural
signicance in our models we are in danger of serious error. If we continue to draw
the inection/derivation distinction (and to date its hard to see how lexicalist the-
ories have any choice but to draw such a distinction), and if derivation is identied
with new lexeme formation, then inection/derivation borderline cases pose a dif-
cult problem. No coherent theory of the lexicon is possible unless we have an answer
to that problem, and for a lexicalist theory of grammar that means that no coherent
theory of grammar is possible.
2.5 Non-standard types of lexical representation

In Chapter 3 we will look in detail at a whole host of issues surrounding the notion
of lexical relatedness, and these will have important repercussions for any theory
of lexical representations. Here I will simply point out some of the more obvi-
ous ways in which the picture of lexical structure I have painted will need to be
rened.
There are two sets of problems which any model of lexical relatedness will have to
grapple with. The rst set of problems concerns non-canonical or degenerate lex-
ical representations, such as those for function words. Degenerate entries of this
sort can be degenerate in terms of their meaning, their syntax, or their morpho-
logy (or all three, as in the case of many clitics). The second problem is what
I will call the problem of lexeme identication: given two word forms, how can
we determine whether they are forms of a single lexeme or forms of two distinct
lexemes?
However, to begin with we will critically review some of the crucial assumptions
that we have made about lexical representations.
2.5.1 Degenerate lexical entries

We begin with the problem of non-canonical or degenerate lexical entries. In one
common scenario we have content words which become, by a process of grammatic-
alization, function words. That is, we have a process by which the conceptual content
of a lexeme is replaced by some kind of featural denition of the role played by that
word in grammatical structures. Sometimes this can happen with little concomitant
change to the morphosyntax of the word, but in many cases function words acquire
a distinct morphosyntax from content words, so that the semantic change is accom-
panied by a change in the syntactic properties, the morphological properties, or the
way that the morphological forms relate to syntactic structure generally. As phono-
logical erosion of the word forms themselves takes place, we nd that function words
turn into clitics and ultimately into afxes. Clitics represent a particularly problem-
atic phenomenon for a theory of lexical relatedness, because its not clear to what
extent they should be treated as degenerate function words, i.e. as lexemes, and to
what extent they should be treated as afxes, i.e. as realizations of morphosyntactic
property sets which dene forms of lexemes. Unfortunately, there is no clear dividing
line between the members of the sequence content word function word clitic
afx, so that it is often a difcult problem to decide exactly how to dened the lexical
representations of such elements. (For recent discussion of the nature of clitics see
Spencer and Lus, 2012.)
Another common grammaticalization path takes two content words and forms a
compound out of them. Compound words often have morphosyntactic properties
which are distinct from other combinations of words and make them more like lex-
emes than phrases. A theory of lexical relatedness ultimately has to take account of
compounding and provide an explanation of how compound words relate to simplex
words and to phrases. Compounds, of course, are prone to further grammatical-
ization, so that the element with the more abstract meaning may be incorporated
into the derivational morphology of the language. Again, there is no clear divid-
ing line between the elements of the sequence phrase compound stem+afx. If
derivational morphology is to be integrated into a paradigm-driven theory of mor-
phology, as argued here, then a derivational afx needs to be distinguished from
a lexeme which is a member of a compound, but in practice this can often be
difcult.
A somewhat different set of problems is posed by multiword combinations which
are in a paradigmatic relationship with single words. There are two main types,
inectional and derivational.
In inection, the multiword combinations concerned are periphrases. In many
languages with rich inectional paradigms, we nd that occasionally one of the cells
of the paradigm is not lled by a single word form but by a phrase. A well-known
example of this is the periphrastic perfective passive of Latin. Latin verbs inect for
active and passive voice and have imperfective and perfective tense series. In the im-
perfective series (for instance the present indicative tense) the active and passive are
expressed inectionally (synthetically): amo I love, amor I am loved. In the active
perfective (e.g. the preterite/present perfect tense) the form is also synthetic: amavi
I (have) loved. However, in the passive perfective we have to use an analytic or
periphrastic construction consisting of the copular verb and the perfective passive
participle: amatus sum I am/have been loved. This construction clearly consists of
two words, and is clearly syntactic; indeed, it has essentially the same syntax as any
combination of predicatively used adjective and copula (such as laetatus sum I am
happy). As shown by Sadler and Spencer (2001), we have to say that the periphrastic
construction is the realization of the appropriate cells in the morphological paradigm
(the argument hinges on the behaviour of deponent verbs; see Sadler and Spencer,
2001, for the full details).
In derivation we often nd that a lexical entry for a word has to be dened in
terms of two syntactically independent units. One instance of this is the light-verb
construction.7 In many languages it is common for verbs to be expressed by means
of a combination of a content word of some kind and a light verb, that is a verb
which makes little or no semantic contribution to the combination but which bears
the verbal inection features. In English, light-verb constructions can be illustrated
by expressions such as take a bath, have a sleep, do a dance, render assistance, and so
on. In an example such as render assistance, the verb render conveys effectively no
meaning at all and merely serves as the locus of verbal inection.
Light-verb constructions are widespread throughout the worlds languages. In
some language groups, for instance the Iranian group, many of the Indo-Aryan lan-
guages, many Australian languages, and many languages of the Caucasus and Papua
New Guinea, the light-verb construction is the typical verbal construction. Persian,
for instance, has only about two hundred simplex verbs, all its other verb concepts
being expressed by light-verb constructions (Lambton, 1963), and a similar picture
is seen with many Australian languages (Dixon, 1980: 426). In many languages the
light-verb construction is the typical or only way in which the language can bor-
row verb concepts from other languages. In some languages only a single verb is
used for all light-verb constructions (for instance Japanese, which has a wealth of
light-verb expressions in its lexicon, uses only the general-purpose verb suru do).
Other languages make use of a whole host of light verbs, many of them homophon-
ous with meaningful verbs with translation equivalents such as have, become, come,
go, fall, strike, give, take, say, and so on. In many cases the choice of verb is idiosyn-
cratic and lexically determined. Occasionally, there is a choice of which light verb to
use, and this is associated with slightly different semantics. An example from English
would be the difference between take a punch and give/deliver a punch. In Lezgian
verbal compounds (Haspelmath, 1993: 178) there are two commonly used light verbs,
awun do and x un become. These can give rise to minimal pairs: ujax awun to wake
(someone) up (transitive) vs ujax x un to wake up (intransitive); malum awun make
known vs malum x un become known.
The lexical content of a light-verb construction is expressed by the complement of
the light verb. There doesnt seem to be a standard term for this element, so I shall call
it the heavy element. This may be an existing word in its own right in the language.
7 The term light verb originates in Jespersens grammatical analysis of English. Terminology for light-
verb constructions in other language groups can differ somewhat. In descriptive studies such constructions
are often referred to as complex predicates or verbal compounds. A very useful survey of light verbs and
their implications for linguistic models is provided in Butt (2010).
Very commonly such words are nouns. This is overwhelmingly the case with the Ja-
panese light-verb construction, for instance, and most of the Japanese heavy elements
retain some of the morphosyntax of nouns (for instance, in certain constructions they
take case particles). In other languages we nd a greater variety, with adjectives and
adverbials of various sorts combining with light verbs. (If a light verb combines with
another verb, it is likely to be called something different, such as a serial-verb con-
struction). In many instances, the heavy element is a kind of cranberry element,
which doesnt exist as a lexical item outside the light-verb construction, much as
in the English expression to give quarter (to) (= to show mercy to, to have mercy
on), where the word quarter hardly exists in the sense of mercy outside of the xed
light-verb expression.
Another type of multiword lexeme is illustrated by English particle verbs such as
speed up (or speed down), ll in (a form) (or ll out), and so on. Quite often such
constructions pose similar problems to idioms generally, in the sense that we have a
combination of words which independently may have their own meaning and func-
tion but which in combination express a distinct meaning in a non-compositional
fashion. The rst problem that such constructions exhibit is their syntactic structure:
where an idiomatic lexical entry has the syntax of a regularly constructed phrase,
some means must be found in the model of the lexicon for capturing the fact that the
lexeme is expressed by regular syntax while at the same time being a member of the
lexicon. This problem is compounded when the idiom is partially frozen (see Fraser,
1970, for the notion of frozenness in idioms, and Tronenko, 2003, for illustration of
the phenomenon with Russian idioms). It is generally said that idioms such as kick
the bucket in the meaning die fail to undergo the full range of syntactic transforma-
tions that an ordinary verb phrase would undergo (and which that verb phrase itself
undergoes in its literal interpretation). For instance, the idiom (for many speakers)
fails to passive. Idioms of this sort pose very interesting problems both for theories of
the lexicon and for theories of syntax.
I shall now illustrate some of the more important instances of degenerate lexical
entry, taking English as the point of departure where possible, for ease of exposition.
Lexical representations with no semantics We begin with representations which

totally lack one or other of the attributes normally associated with a lexical entry.
The rst such case will be representations which lack any semantic component. In
the kind of model of grammar presupposed here this essentially means any grammat-
ical or function word. This means that a word such as the, of, or the perfect auxiliary
use of have will have no semantic representation, but rather will be a lexical item that
is called up by the occurrence of certain types of feature or syntactic conguration.
By feature I am referring principally to syntactic features (broadly speaking in the
sense of Sadler and Spencer, 2001) rather than morphological features. For example,
the morphology of English does not recognize a feature [Aspect:perfect], but such
a feature is required for a full description of the English auxiliary system, and so we
have to treat it as a syntactic feature.
I shall begin by considering the very common situation in which a word has two
distinct functions, one as a fully edged lexical item and the other as a function
word. English auxiliary verbs such as do, have, and be are typical examples. Con-
sider the verb have. In its use as a lexical verb it is a transitive verb with a rather
general meaning, but a meaning nonetheless, essentially synonymous with own, pos-
sess, and the like. I shall use the name of the verb as a placeholder for its meaning.
The crucial point is that have is semantically a two-place predicate and hence a
transitive verb syntactically (I shall simplify the representations in various obvious
ways):
(16) FORM have, has, had, . . .

SYNTAX Verb(SUBJECT, OBJECT)
SEMANTICS [Event HAVE(x, y)]
Now, the representation in (16) wont do for the perfect auxiliary verb use. The
auxiliary verb is not a transitive verb (indeed, the notion of transitivity seems inap-
plicable to auxiliary verbs in English). Instead of taking a direct object, it takes the past
participle form of whatever verb it precedes (whether lexical or auxiliary), and the
auxiliary use differs in a variety of other syntactic ways from the lexical homophone.
Moreover, the perfect auxiliary clearly contributes in some sense to the meaning of
perfect aspect, and that meaning has nothing to do with the possess meaning of the
main verb.
On the other hand, although the auxiliary and lexical uses of have are entirely
separate, the two verbs share the same (irregular) morphological forms (with inter-
esting discrepancies, as we will see in Chapter 3). This can be seen by comparing
representation (16) with representation (17).
(17) FORM have, has, had, (havent, hasnt, hadnt) . . .

SYNTAX Verb, auxiliary: selects past participle
SEMANTICS undened
The SYNTAX description isnt to be taken too seriously, of course. Its simply a short-
hand for however best to represent the syntactic selectional properties of an auxiliary
and how best to represent the categorial status of an auxiliary. One way to do this
would be to set up various typed syntactic features which would regulate the way that
the different verbs appear in various syntactic constructions. A textbook survey of
how this might be done in HPSG, for instance, is provided in Sag and Wasow (1999:
297f.).
Sag and Wasow (1999: 299) provide a non-null semantic representation for
auxiliary have, shown in (18).
(18) HPSG representation of the meaning of auxiliary have

auxv-lxm

SYN HEAD verb

ARG-ST
[ ] ,

FORM psp

SEM INDEX 3

have,

INDEX s

SEM RELN have

RESTR SIT s

ARG 3
This attributevalue matrix (AVM) is to be interpreted in the following way. The at-
tribute SEM denes the semantic representation. This attribute itself is realized by
two further attributes, INDEX and RESTR (for RESTRICTION). The INDEX attrib-
ute has the value s for situation, indicating that we are dealing with a verbal lexeme
(as opposed to, say, a nominal lexeme). The RESTRICTION attribute species what
conditions must be met by an expression for it to be part of a true (and coherent)
predication. In the case of (18), the conditions are that the predication must refer
to a situation s (the same situation as that referred to by the INDEX attribute) and
that the auxiliary must take a (semantic) argument, labelled 3 , which is identied
in the ARG-ST attribute. That attribute stipulates that the auxiliary has to take the
past participle form ([FORM psp]) of a lexical verb head (the empty argument of
the ARG-ST attribute will end up being identied with the subject of the clause by
general principles).
We can contrast the representation in (18) with the representation corresponding
to the lexical verb have, shown in (19).
(19) HPSG representation of the meaning of lexical verb have

stv-lxm

SYN
HEAD AUX

ARG-ST NPi , NPj

have,

INDEX s

RELN possess

SEM SIT s
RESTR

POSSESSOR i

POSSESSEE j
Here we see that the verbs argument structure consists of two NPs which are as-
sociated with the POSSESSOR/POSSESSEE semantic roles in the RESTRICTION
attribute of SEM. The other difference between the entries for the lexical verb and
the auxiliary is that the lexical verbs semantics is labelled possess (the value of the
RELATION attribute, RELN), while the auxiliary verbs semantics is labelled have.
The auxiliary verb have is distinguished from the auxiliary verb do in this respect,
because do has an empty value for the RESTRICTION attribute and no value at all
recorded for the RELATION attribute (Sag and Wasow, 1999: 304). Sag and Wasow
explicitly state that the intention is to ensure that do makes no semantic contribution
to the predication. But there is no clear sense in which aspectual have makes a se-
mantic contribution to the predication. On the contrary, in the realizational model of
morphosyntax presupposed in this book, the auxiliary have simply serves as a (par-
tial) exponent of the syntactic feature value [Aspect:perfect]. As such, it no more
deserves to be given a semantic representation than does do.
I shall therefore assume representations such as (17) for auxiliary verbs and kindred
elements, in which the semantic representation is simply unspecied. This includes
the s INDEX attribute of HPSG. I assume that an auxiliary verb does not contribute
the information that it is part of a verb construction with eventive semantics, but
that this information is provided by the lexical verb that the auxiliary is in construc-
tion with. Of course, in constructions in which there is an auxiliary-like element in
construction with a non-verb category, that auxiliary-like element will have to con-
tribute eventive semantics to the predication (but such constructions are not actually
auxiliary-verb constructions; rather, they are light-verb constructions).
Essentially Im adopting a version of a very traditional distinction between content
words and function words, but expressed within the framework of an inferential
realizational model extended to the morphosyntax and morphosemantics of function
words. Content words are lexical entries whose SEMANTICS attribute is a predic-
ate (in the sense of this term commonly accepted in formal semantics). Function
words are lexical entries for words which are called up by grammatical processes of
various kinds but which have an undened SEMANTICS attribute. Whatever contri-
bution they make to the meaning of a phrase is via the semantic interpretation of the
function or morphosyntactic property that they realize.
The point of an undened SEMANTICS attribute is particularly obvious with a
word such as of, (20).
(20) FORM of
SYNTAX P(COMPLEMENT)
SEMANTICS undened
There is simply no sense in which we can say that of has a meaning, and yet it has the
same syntax as a meaning preposition such as off.
There is an interesting problem with the HPSG representations for auxiliary verbs
summarized above. Leaving aside the problematical case of be (which appears to be
syntactically an auxiliary verb in all of its uses), we have to say that have and do
share exactly the same morphology irrespective of whether they are being used as
auxiliaries or as lexical verbs.8 Now, there are various technical ways within models
such as HPSG in which such a fact can be captured (for instance, we may regard
both usages as subtypes of a single type which denes the morphological forms but
which bifurcates precisely for SYNSEM values). However, in Chapter 5 I shall suggest
a renement of the structure of lexical entries that will achieve this result for us by
deploying the notion of a lexemic index.
In short, a lexemic index is a unique identier for each lexeme (we can think of it
as an integer, for instance). The auxiliary and lexical uses of, say, have will then be
distinguished not just by their different semantic representations but also by the fact
that they bear distinct lexemic indices. In this way we will not be obliged to use the
semantic representation as a way of individuating lexemes. That would be impossible
if we have a series of lexical entries (say, for auxiliary verbs) none of which have a
dened semantics.
Auxiliary-verb constructions should be distinguished from light-verb construc-
tions (though there is a certain amount of overlap). Typically, a light verb has
absolutely no lexical content but serves solely to realize inectional verbal features. In
this respect it resembles an auxiliary verb. However, an auxiliary verb has the func-
tion of realizing or partially realizing some inectional property such as aspect or
negation, whereas a light verb is a necessary part of the lexeme in all its inectional
forms. In addition, since the heavy element is usually non-verbal, the light verb is the
sole source of an event semantic role. This makes it different from an auxiliary verb,
which combines with a lexical verb which already has such a role.9
Lexical representations which are not syntactically represented The next set of prob-
lematic cases is in a sense the mirror image of the meaningless representations
discussed in the previous sectionwhat are often called clitics. Here we have ele-
ments that have a discourse related function or express morphosyntactic properties
such as tense or case and so cannot be said to have a canonical semantic rep-
resentation. However, they cant be said to be canonical afxes either, of course.
In general, they cant be analysed as syntactic terminals without great articiality
(though there are plenty of clitic-like discourse particles which behave much like
adverbs).
Clitics are generally function words and so often lack a proper semantic represent-
ation too. There are numerous instances of clitics which appear to have a semantics
or at least a pragmatics. These include Wackernagel (second-position) clitics such
as the Czech evidential clitic pr, and many of the Wackernagel clitics of Ancient
8 By basic morphology I mean the nite forms and the participles. The auxiliaries have special negative
forms which lexical verbs lack, of course.
9 For detailed discussion of the importance of distinguishing light verbs from auxiliaries see Butt (1995).
Greek, Sanskrit, and Hittite, and other ancient Indo-European languages, together
with a good many of the clitics of Tagalog.10
Again, a meaningful clitic (i.e. one with a semantic representation) can some-
times be thought of as a kind of inherently inectional clitic. In other words a
discourse/adverbial clitic is essentially the same as a semantic case in Hungarian, or,
indeed, certain sorts of evidential or mood inections in a variety of languages.
In some languages clitics derive from function words which have their own in-
ectional paradigms. This often happens in the case of auxiliary verbs, for instance,
case-marked pronominals, denite articles inecting for number/gender, and so on.
For discussion of how to describe the inecting auxiliary (Wackernagel) clitics of
Slavic languages such as Czech or Serbian/Croatian see Spencer (2005a).
2.5.2 The lexeme identication problem

We now turn to the second problem for models of the lexicon, that of individuating
lexemes. This problem is, of course, most obviously instantiated by the long-standing
issue of the distinction between polysemy and homonymy, which lies at the heart
of a good deal of discussion in lexicology and lexicography, particularly since the
advent of computational lexicons, where practical decisions about what is or is not a
lexical entry are vital for the correct functioning of a computer program. The basic
distinction is familiar from almost any introductory linguistics text. The words bank1
nancial institution and bank2 side of a river are homonyms/homophones because
it is only an accident that they share the same set of forms. Their meanings are entirely
unrelated. However, the two occurrences of bottle in examples (21) illustrate related
meanings:
(21) a. She put the bottle of milk into the fridge
b. She drank (half) a bottle of milk
In (21a) the term bottle denotes a physical object (which happens to contain milk),
while in (21b) the term bottle denotes a quantity (and in principle the milk could
have been drunk from a different container). This type of polysemy is so systematic
that speakers scarcely notice it. Moreover, it is the kind of polysemy which tends to
survive translation into other languages.
In other cases it is more difcult to decide exactly where to draw the line between
homonymy and polysemy, however, because there is no metric allowing us to decide
whether two meanings are sufciently close to be related to each other. An interesting
case in point is the word line, as discussed by Miller (1978). In (22) we see some typical
usages of this word.
(22) a. line1 : a drawn (straight) line
b. line2 : a line of trees/spectators
10 For detailed discussion see Spencer and Lus (2012).

These two sorts of line denote slightly different entities. The line in (22a) is a continu-
ous mark, while the line in (22b) is a sequence of discrete points. The two meanings
converge in an expression such as a dotted line, which denotes a line1 comprised of
discrete points, as in line2 . These two readings of line would often be translated by
different words in other languages, an indication that we are dealing with genuine
differences in meaning. The two senses of line permit conversion to a verb, as seen
in (23), where we also see a third sense, with a somewhat more distant relationship to
the other two meanings:
(23) a. She lined the paper using a ruler and pencil

b. Trees/spectators lined the avenue
c. She lined the jacket
Lexicographic practice stemming from the conventions of the Oxford Eng-

lish Dictionary (OED) adopts a diachronic approach to the problem of poly-
semy/homonymy. Homonyms are granted distinct lexical entries in the dictionary
(for example, being distinguished by means of a superscript numeral), while poly-
semous readings are given under a single headword. If a word in all its senses can be
traced back to a single word at an earlier historical stage of the language, then all of
those senses count as polysemy. If, however, its possible to trace one sense to one
historical source and another sense to a distinct historical source, then we are dealing
with homonymy.
The approach based on historical principles can give rise to extremely counter-
intuitive results in both directions. The commonest problem is when a single word
acquires signicantly distinct meanings as a result of chains of metaphorical exten-
sion and other types of semantic drift. Thus, the OED treats all the senses of fair as
polysemous variants because they can all be traced back to a single adjective in Middle
English. But there is no useful sense in which the meanings light/yellow in colour (of
hair), sufcient, but not exceptionally good (condition of second-hand car, exam
results, etc.), and commensurate with perceived standards of law or morality (of
judgement, comment, etc.) are in any way related to each other in the synchronic
lexicon of English (or any other language presumably). On the other hand, the OED
treats the famous bank1 /bank2 pair as homonyms, even though both are derived
from the same historical source word. Given its adherence to the historical principle,
the OED treats the meaning of the verb line in (23c) as entirely different from the
other two meanings shown in (23), because that verb has a distinct etymology (being
related ultimately to the word linen). Whether speakers of English regard the three
meanings shown in (23) as related or not is surely an empirical matter and not one to
be decided by an (already awed) etymological principle.
The kind of polysemy illustrated by (21) is what Apresjan (1995: 193f.) calls sys-
tematic polysemy (reguljarnaja mnogoznacnost ). The phenomenon of systematic
polysemy is widespread. A further example cited by Apresjan (1995: 205) is verbs

which denote a concept of deforming some object and the resulting characteristic
deformation. For instance, the verb dig takes two kinds of direct object, the rst cor-
responding to the affected entity (to dig the ground), and the second corresponding
to the result (to dig a hole (in the ground)). The notion of systematic polysemy is at
the heart of Pustejovskys (1995) Generative Lexicon program. A frequently cited in-
stance from his work is the kind of systematic polysemy exhibited by words such as
book. This can refer to the physical object (This book weighs 5 kg) or to the abstract
contents (The book was very inuential in antiquity). This polysemy is preserved by
derived words denoting similar kinds of entity, such as translation: I spilled coffee
on your translation of The Aeneid vs Ive memorized your translation of The Aeneid.
Systematic polysemy of the kind studied by Apresjan, Pustejovsky, and others
tends to be widespread across languages (without necessarily being universal in any
strong sense). Other types of systematic polysemy are more language-dependent.
For instance, I earlier noted that English deadjectival verbs often appear in causat-
ive/inchoative pairs, and that the semantic relationship between the members of these
pairs can be highly systematic. This type of relationship is not found in, say, Russian,
because the causative/inchoative distinction is marked morphologically; specically,
the inchoative is derived from the causative by the addition of reexive morpho-
logy. Hebrew, on the other hand, shows just the same systematic polysemy as English
(Borer, 1991).
Systematic polysemy is an important feature of the lexicon of any language, and
any adequate grammatical description should have an account of it. At the same time,
an adequate theory of the lexicon has to have some way of at least describing non-
systematic polysemy of the kind that arises through more serendipitous semantic
shifts, and which is more closely tied to individual word meanings and concepts than
to classes of concepts such as verb of deforming an object or book-like creation.
The basic question can be put in a very simple and concrete fashion: how do we
represent the two main senses of the noun line and the three main senses of the verb
line?
I will take the view that distinct semantic representations entail a distinct lexical
representation, in the sense that we are dealing with distinct lexemes. Thus, there are
(at least) two line nouns and (at least) three line verbs. In this I am essentially neut-
ralizing the distinction between polysemy and homonymy in favour of homonymy.11
In this way we answer an interesting question raised by Plank (2010). He notes that
the German adjective fett has two readings: (i) large in bulk owing to excessive fatty
tissue (DIMENSION reading); and (ii) rich in fat content (CONTENTIVENESS
11 In the pedagogic lexicographic tradition, Cambridge University Press adopts a similar strategy, by
listing all polysemous readings as distinct headwords in its dictionaries aimed at foreign language learners
of English.
reading). Likewise, the noun Fett has readings (i) (excessive) accumulation of fatty
tissue and (ii) the substance fat (esters of glycerol and various fatty acids which are
solid at room temperature). Plank argues that the DIMENSION reading of the ad-
jective is the base of the noun reading (i). This is because DIMENSION adjectives are
generally basic in German, and generally undergo derivational morphology to give
a type (i) noun. On the other hand, he argues that the CONTENTIVENESS reading
of the adjective is derived (synchronically, at least) from the noun reading (ii) (ef-
fectively a kind of ornative derivation), since this is the typical direction of derivation
when the derivation is overtly marked. Plank observes that this means that we cannot
therefore simply say that the noun Fett is derived from the adjective fett or vice versa.
This means that, contra usual lexicographic practice, we cant say that derivational
relations are dened over lexical entries in the sense of headwords in a dictionary.
Rather, we have to specify a particular meaning before we can dene the derivational
relationships.
On the model of lexical representation developed in this book Planks examples
are not problematical. Because the forms fett correspond to two distinct meanings,
both as a noun and as an adjective, we are dealing with two adjective lexemes and
two noun lexemes in each case (following the Cambridge lexicographic principle). In
effect we are treating the polysemous entries as effectively homonyms.
3
Lexical relatedness
3.1 Types of lexical relatedness

In Chapter 2 I examined some fundamental notions centred on the notion of
lexeme. I explored some of the conceptual difculties in characterizing the notions
inectional word form of a lexeme and derived lexeme. The key idea is that in-
ection delivers forms of a single lexeme, while derivation creates new lexemes. But
there are well-known difculties in drawing the inection/derivation distinction. In
this chapter I examine the question in more detail, emphasizing the notion of lexical
relatedness. What I shall conclude is that there is a close relationship between our
notions of the lexeme and relatedness between words and our notions of lexical cat-
egories. Part of the problem in understanding the relationship between inection and
derivation arises, in fact, from misconceptions over the nature of lexical categories.
I shall argue that we need a much more nuanced view of lexical categorization that
goes beyond simply labelling words as noun or verb or whatever. Rather, words
can be categorized in a variety of ways, in terms of their morphological, syntactic, or
semantic properties. Just because a word has a particular set of syntactic properties,
this doesnt necessarily mean that it will also have a particular set of morphological
properties. The correct way to characterize the category of a word is to provide a
complete specication of all of its relevant properties. When we do that we may not
always nd that we have a word type which ts any traditional descriptor. But this
just means that the traditional descriptors are not nely grained enough.
In this chapter I present a survey of what seem to me to be the most important ways
in which words can be related to each other. I begin by briey discussing inection
and derivation. Although these notions are very familiar, we will nd that its neces-
sary to clarify them in various ways, particularly against the background of Geert
Booijs (1994; 1996; 2007) distinction between contextual and inherent inection.
Inectional processes vary along two dimensions. The rst is essentially Booijs dis-
tinction between inherent and contextual inection, that is, whether the inectional
category is determined inherently, as a property of the lexical class itself, or whether
it is imposed by the syntactic context. The second dimension is whether the inection
is semantically contentful in its own right or whether it has to be regarded as simply
a way of realizing a morphosyntactic property set. In most cases, semantically con-

tentful inection is also inherent inection, but the inherent/contextual distinction
depends on precisely where certain lines are drawn in the model of syntax, so the two
dimensions cant be completely identied with each other.
I next turn to the rst of three types of inection/derivation borderline, transposi-
tions, expanding on the discussion in Spencer (1999, 2005b). A typical transposition
is a category such as a deverbal participle, which is adjectival in its surface morpho-
syntax but remains essentially a form of the base verb lexeme. Phenomena of this
sort have been discussed in the literature in a patchwork fashion under the rubric
of mixed categories, but I shall claim that most of this discussion misses the cent-
ral point, namely the question of what form of lexical relatedness a transposition
represents. The majority of the cases of transposition I discuss in this chapter dont
involve additional semantic content of any kind. I return in Chapter 8 to a discussion
of transpositions in which more or less subtle semantic nuances are introduced by
the transposition, and in Chapter 9 I introduce the phenomenon of meaning-bearing
transpositions.
The second type of inection/derivation borderline is semantically contentful in-
ection. In a thoroughgoing inferentialrealizational model of morphology there
should be no such thing as inection which adds semantic content to a lexical repres-
entation. Such an operation could only be found in an incremental model in Stumps
typology, and that would make it incompatible with a realizational architecture.
However, Stumps typology specically relates to the relation between morphological
processes and the content of morphosyntactic features. It is (relatively) silent about
the relationship between morphological processes and the conceptual representation
of the lexeme itself (presupposing that the conceptual or semantic representation
proper remains constant throughout the inectional system). If we decouple the spe-
cication of semantic representations from the individuation of lexemes, however,
then we can easily construct what appears to be a morphosemantic chimera, namely
an inferentialrealizational inectional process which adds semantic content. Under
the heading of semantically contentful inection I present a variety of instances of
such cases, in which it makes sense to say that an inectional process at once realizes
a feature set and at the same time adds a semantic predicate.
Particularly clear arguments for semantically contentful inection are provided by
the third common type of inection/derivation borderline, argument-structure al-
ternations. Some of these serve essentially to rearrange the disposition of grammatical
relations, as in the case of passive/antipassive alternations, or the various voice types
found in Philippine languages. However, in other cases argument-structure alterna-
tions are clearly accompanied by some kind of semantic effect. This is sometimes
found with applicative constructions, but it is also found with argument-structure
operations which create stative intransitive predicates from transitive predicates,
and, arguably, with operations which create reexive or reciprocal predicates. The
Lexical relatedness 57
clearest case of semantically contentful argument-structure operations is, of course,

that of the family of morphological causative constructions, to which I shall devote
particular attention.
Transpositions are puzzling forms of lexical relatedness because they involve
drastic changes in category membership without the expected change in semantics;
semantically contentful inection is challenging because its supposed to be de-
rivation that adds a semantic predicate, not inection; and argument-structure
alternations are puzzling because within one and the same morphological system
they may or may not involve the addition of semantic content (indeed, one and the
same morphological operation may be semantically vacuous or contentful depend-
ing on circumstances). However, in a well-regulated morphological system, we can
identify each of these types with a systematic construction: languages frequently li-
cense deverbal participles, meaningful semantic case afxes, or passive/causative verb
alternations in a completely regular fashion across all appropriate lexemes, in exactly
the manner of inectional morphology. In such cases we have ample grounds for re-
garding that species of lexical relatedness as part of the grammar, and not just a set
of tendencies discernible over the lexicon; indeed, we would be failing to describe
the grammar of the language properly if we didnt account for such relatedness in
the grammatical description proper. The next type of lexical relatedness is a chal-
lenge of a different type. In meaningless derivation we see morphologically dened
patterns of lexical relatedness which cannot be reliably associated with any regular se-
mantic change. Such phenomena are extremely widespread, but again, the literature
is virtually silent about them and their signicance for grammatical and lexicological
models.
In transpositions we see lexemes which assume the clothing of a different morpho-
syntactic category, so that they can appear in syntactic contexts that would otherwise
be unavailable to them: a deverbal participle form allows a verb to function as an
attributive modier, by masquerading as an adjective; an action nominalization per-
mits a verb to be the complement of another predicate in a language in which
complements to verbs or adpositions have to be nouns; and so on. This gives rise
to a kind of benign morphosyntactic mismatch. However, there are plenty of cases of
the opposite kind of morphosyntactic mismatch, in which a word appears to belong
to the wrong morphological category for no good reason. Following the discussion
in Spencer (2005b, 2007), I discuss two subtypes of such morphosyntactic categorial
mismatch. In the rst, the mismatch appears only in a smallish subclass of lexemes,
generally treated as exceptional, and typically it occurs throughout the paradigm.
It is hence essentially a property of that lexeme or that subclass of lexemes. In the
second type, the mismatch occurs with all lexemes of a given class but only in cer-
tain parts of the lexemes inectional paradigm, so that we must regard the mismatch
as a property of the inectional system as such, and not as a property of individual
lexemes.
I conclude the chapter with a discussion of what these different types of lexical
relatedness imply about lexical categories, particularly in the context of so-called
mixed categories. Categorial mismatches can have two distinct but related reexes:
in some cases the mismatch affects just the form that the lexeme takes, while in other
cases (and more commonly) there are implications for the way the word behaves in
the syntax. In the case of transpositions, the whole point of the mismatch is to alter
the syntactic privileges of occurrence of the lexeme undergoing the transposition, of
course. In other cases, however, the categorial mismatch gives rise to mixed syntactic
behaviour. In well-rehearsed cases such as certain types of deverbal nominalization
we might nd that a mixed category, such as an English -ing nominal, behaves like
a noun with respect to speciers, but like a verb with respect to complements and
modiers (the/Toms continually placing the books on the wrong shelves). I briey sur-
vey some of the ways in which such phenomena might bear on the question of lexical
relatedness.
Finally, I summarize the implications of the chapter and anticipate more detailed
discussion later in the book by highlighting a number of questions that are raised
by the types of lexical relatedness discussed here and their relevance for the nature
of lexical representation. The crucial implication is, I argue, that a model of lexical
representation has to be multidimensional or multifactorial. To account for all the
common patterns of variation we need to draw a whole host of distinctions in lex-
ical representations, at least in certain types of lexicon/grammar system. While the
different dimensions can be related to each other in the default case, many mis-
matches are apparent. The upshot is that the kinds of categories that are generally
used to describe words and their relations are frequently too coarse-grained and too
vague to be of descriptive value (let alone explanatory value). A much more artic-
ulated model of lexical description is therefore required. Once such a description
is provided, however, there is no longer any real need of the older, uninformative
(or downright misleading) descriptive categories such as inection and deriva-
tion. However, by drawing the right distinctions in lexical representations, we can
abandon dysfunctional categories of that sort without having to abandon the lexeme
concept and hence without having to abandon an inferentialrealizational model of
morphosyntax. How that can be achieved will be the topic of Chapter 5.
3.2 Canonical inection vs canonical derivation

In this section I set out the most familiar types of lexical relatedness, occupying
two poles of an opposition. On the one hand, words can be related by virtue of
being inected forms of the same lexeme. Where the morphology is restricted to
realizing a set of abstract morphosyntactic features we have the purest form of inec-
tion, that is, the type of inection that is least likely to be confused with derivation.
A typical example would be agreement morphology on an adjective or verb, which
for Booij (1994, 1996, 2007) would be canonical contextual inection.1 In our ex-
ample of the lexeme draw, to dene the 3sg present indicative form we would only
specify the value of the FORM attribute: draws = draw, {3sg PresIndic}. All other
attributes remain unchanged, including the lexemic index, indicating this is a word
form of a given lexeme, not a new lexeme. (I simplify here by abstracting away
from the problem of syncretisms.) Contextual inection is driven by the needs of
morphosyntactic processes such as agreement and government. To the extent that
such processes are obligatory the morphology is also obligatory (canonical inec-
tion is always obligatory). Notice that I have said nothing here about the meaning
expressed by the inection. This is because canonical (contextual) inection doesnt
express a meaning, at any level of representation.
In standard instances of derivation all four attributes of a lexical entry are changed
non-trivially. This entails that the process denes a new lexeme (with its own inec-
tional/syntactic category and so on). An example from English would be the lexeme
drawable. Derivational morphology is a way of enriching the lexical stock, and
hence is not obligatory in the way that contextual inectional morphology is. How-
ever, derivation can sometimes be extremely regular and productive (as in the case
of deverbal potential adjective formation by -able sufxation), making it similar to
inherent inection.
Given the canonical approach to typology advocated by Corbett (2006, 2007,
2010), we can say, to a rst approximation, that contextual inection in Booijs sense
represents canonical inection, while what I have referred to as standard derivation
is close to canonical derivation. It is worth summarizing Corbetts characterization
of canonical derivation here for comparison. He outlines two principles (Corbett,
2010: 142):
Principle I: Canonical derived words have clear indicators of their synchronic

status.
Principle II: Canonical derived words are fully distinct from their base.
These principles are made concrete in the following sets of criteria for canonicity of
derivation.
Criteria realizing Principle I:
Criterion 1: Canonical derived words consist of a base and at least one derivational
marker, each of which can be substituted to yield another derived word.
[Manymany substitutability criterion]
Criterion 2: The meaning of a canonical derived word can be computed regu-
larly from the meaning of the base and the additional meaning of the
derivation. [Transparent semantics criterion]
1 I shall present a critical discussion of Booijs distinction later in this chapter, Section 3.4.
Criterion 3: The form of a canonical derived word is transparent: its structure, con-
sisting of a base and derivational marker(s), is evident. [Transparent
form criterion]
Criteria realizing Principle II:
Criterion 4: A derived word has a separate lexical index. [LI criterion]

Criterion 5: A derived word includes an additional semantic predicate in comparison
with its base. [Semantic predicate criterion]
Together these criteria require that derivation be dened over some complete lexical
representation. Criteria 1 and 3 require a non-trivial morphological operation (at the
level of the FORM attribute) over the base lexeme. Criteria 2 and 5 require a non-
trivial additional semantic predicate. Criterion 4 explicitly requires a new lexemic
index. (Corbett, 2010: 147) is somewhat non-committal about the canonical status
of word-class changing in derivation. None of the criteria require that the derived
lexeme belong to a different word class from the base. He points out that change of
word class is a common concomitant of adding a semantic predicate, but then warns
that it may simply be a typical property rather than a canonical one.
However, there is another way to interpret Corbetts criteria. According to Prin-
ciple II a derived word is fully distinct from its base. One way of thinking of this
is to say that there is no danger of mistaking the derived word for an inected form
of the base lexeme. If the derivational process entrains a change of word class, then
the output is more saliently distinguishable from semantically contentful inherent
inection. For instance, the re- prexation process in English derives new verb lex-
emes very productively and with relatively transparent iterative semantics. But why
do we regard this as (relatively regular) derivation rather than (slightly idiosyncratic)
inherent inection? That is, why do we not set up an (inherent) inectional category
of Aktionsart for English with iterative as one of its values? One of the reasons that
this question is difcult to answer is that re- prexation is not canonical derivation,
in that it fails to change the word class. We might therefore add a sixth criterion so as
to make Principle II even more transparent:
Criterion 6: A derived word belongs to a different syntactic class from its base. [Word
class criterion]
The rst of Corbetts criteria asserts that canonical derivation is realized by (canon-
ical) afxal morphology. In this respect canonical derivation is identical to canonical
inection. Corbett (2010: 144) points out that less canonical morphology can realize
derivation, citing well-known phenomena such as intercalation, reduplication and
stress alternations. Another non-canonical realization type would be conversion, in
which there are no indicators or markers of derivation (other than, possibly, a set of
inections associated with the derived words new lexical class, if, as is customary, the
conversion involves lexical class change).
There are certain respects, however, in which derivational morphology can be non-
canonical and still respect Corbetts criteria. There are many languages in which
inected words fall into distinct inectional classes (conjugation and declension
classes). Sometimes the inectional classes are associated with particular phono-
logical, morphological, or semantic properties, and sometimes they are entirely
arbitrary. In any event the existence of inectional classes is non-canonical. Now,
the inectional classes themselves may well be marked by regular morphology. For
instance, it is not uncommon to nd a language with conjugation classes marked by a
special afx (in Indo-European languages this is often a theme vowel). To the extent
that the inectional class is uniquely identiable in this way, it will be canonically
realized.
Given such a system of classes, the language is now in a position to deploy that
contrast in order to realize a derivational relationship (Stump, 2005a). Often this
seems to be because the class distinctions themselves arise from the semantic bleach-
ing of an earlier derivational distinction. For instance, Russian verbs fall into several
conjugation classes, including the i-Class, signalled by the theme vowel /i/, and the
ej-Class, signalled by the theme element /ej e/; so we have govor-i-t speak, 3pl
govor -at, but sm-e-t dare, 3pl sm-ej-ut. Now, a large proportion of the ej-Class
verbs are deadjectival or denominal verbs with inchoative meanings. On the other
hand, the i-Class is typical of causative verbs. In a fair number of cases we nd
causativeinchoative pairs distinguished solely by conjugation class membership:
belit to whiten, bleach belet to become white. A number of denominal causative
verbs with privative meanings are formed by means of the compound prex o-bez-,
and a proportion of these give rise to such causativeinchoative pairs: obez-deneit
to deprive of money obez-deneet to become deprived of money, obez-ljudit
to depopulate (transitive) obez-ljudet to become depopulated. However, this
doesnt mean that there is an inectional opposition between causative and incho-
ative verbs. This is because the inectional class system exists entirely independently
of the causative/inchoative distinction: there are verbs in the i- and ej-Classes that are
not causative or inchoative, and there are causative and inchoative verbs that belong
to other classes. Therefore, we should analyse the Russian case as an instance of a
derivational relationship that is (sometimes) expressed solely in terms of conversion
to a distinct inectional class.
It seems to me that such derivational types are less canonical than derivational
types which are expressed by dedicated derivational afxes. This is because the
derivational relation is not the principal purpose behind inectional class member-
ship, and indeed, inectional class membership might well be an entirely arbitrary
matter (or one which has nothing to do with semantics). But if this is true, then a
derivational type expressed by conversion-cum-class-shift can be said to be less than
fully canonical, precisely because the means of expression are not uniquely identied
with the derivation.
Another instance in which we have formally and semantically transparent lexical
relatedness which is nonetheless not canonical is discussed in Spencer (2002). In
many languages of the Indo-European type with a sex-based gender system, an at-
tributive adjective agrees in gender (and perhaps other features) with the modied
noun. In many of these languages it is also possible to use an adjective as a noun,
particularly a noun with a human referent. This is vestigially found in English: the
good, the bad, and the ugly. In a language like Russian, where such adjective-to-noun
conversion is very common, we witness an interesting co-option of (contextual) in-
ectional morphology for derivational ends. Where the sex of the referent is known,
and the denotation is singular, the adjective has to be inected as though it were in
an agreement relation with a noun of the appropriate gender. Thus, the word for a
patient is bol noj, literally, the adjective meaning sick, ill. If a doctor is speaking
about a female patient, however, the lexeme takes the feminine form bol naja. It
can be shown by various tests that the converted noun is indeed a noun, and not
an adjective modifying a zero nominal head. We therefore have an instance of deri-
vation, creating a new lexeme with the meaning person who is associated with the
meaning of ADJECTIVE. In many cases, the semantics of the derived lexeme(s) is
transparent, particularly when the base adjective is the participle form of a verb, such
as osudimyj/osudimaja accused, defendant (in court), the present passive parti-
ciple form of osudit to accuse, or zakl uconnyj/zakl uconnaja prisoner, the
past passive participle form of zakl ucit . However, in other cases we see the kind
of semantic drift characteristic of derivation. Indeed, the lexeme bol noj/bol naja
shows a certain degree of non-compositionality. It can refer to someone who is of-
cially registered with a doctor or clinic irrespective of their state of health. Thus,
a doctor can without contradiction say of someone that she is one of their patients
(bol naja), but that theyve never treated her because shes never been ill. In other
words, x is a bol naja does not entail x is sick (bol naja). I discuss such instances
in more detail in Chapter 6 under the heading of m-inert derivation.
To summarize, contextual inection represents a canonical type of inection,
serving in the morphology to dene the form of a cell in a paradigm, and in the
syntax providing a form which is required by some syntactic rule or principle. Such
inection does not add any additional semantic content, not even the kind of func-
tional content associated with, say, denite articles or perfect auxiliaries in English.
Canonical derivation creates a new lexeme through the semantically and morpholo-
gically transparent addition of a semantic predicate to an existing lexeme, typically
(and perhaps even canonically) changing the lexical class of that lexeme.
Between these canonical ideals there are other types of lexical relatedness, which
can be thought of as non-canonical variants of either (or both) of these two canon-
ical types. A clear intermediate case is that of grammatically regular transpositions
such as deverbal participles or relational adjectives. Couching matters in this way is

helpful because it relieves us of the burden of having to ask whether a given instance
of lexical relatedness is really inection or really derivation. But in order to reach
this stage we need a model of lexical relatedness that allows us to provide a clear and
unequivocal description of the various non-canonical types of relatedness. This is a
central goal of the model of lexical relatedness proposed here.
3.3 Transpositions
We next look at a set of word types which fall precisely between the traditional inec-
tional and derivational types, the transpositions (see Beard, 1995, for the background
to the use of this term). I shall devote the bulk of the discussion to the three principal
types of transposition commonly found in European languages: action nominals (de-
verbal nominalizations), participles (deverbal adjectives), and relational adjectives
(denominal adjectives).
The key feature of the true transposition is that it changes the morphosyntactic
category of the word (verb to noun, noun to adjective, and so forth) without altering
the semantic representation of the word. In Chapter 8 I shall return to the question
of the representation of transpositions and discuss in much greater detail the extent
to which transpositions really do lack a semantic effect. For the present, however, we
will take it for granted that a transposition does not add a semantic predicate to the
conceptual representation of the lexeme, and in this respect differs from canonical
derivational morphology. Depending on the language, any of the three major lex-
ical categories (verb, noun, adjective) can be transposed into one of the others. The
possibilities, along with descriptive labels, are enumerated in (1).
(1) (i) Verb Noun action nominal

(ii) Verb Adjective participle
(iii) Noun Adjective relational adjective
(iv) Noun Verb predicative noun
(v) Adjective Noun property nominal
(vi) Adjective Verb predicative adjective
A fuller elaboration and justication of these types is given in Spencer (2005b). Here
I will provide a basic description.
Morphology which can alter the syntactic or lexical class of a word without adding
a semantic predicate, is somewhat problematic in the context of traditional lexico-
logy. We expect the semantic content of a newly derived lexeme to differ from that of
its base. Indeed, according to some, we expect a monotonic increase in the semantic
representation of the derived word (Koontz-Garboden, 2005, 2007). This is not what
happens with transpositions. Here, we have morphology which resembles derivation
in that it changes lexical class, but resembles inection in that it does not add to the
conceptual content of the word.
3.3.1 Action nominals

The morphosyntax literature contains considerable discussion of so-called action
nominals (known also by a variety of other names, including event nominalization,
process nominalization, and sentential/clausal nominalization; traditionally, the term
is Nomen Actionis (for important typological surveys see Comrie and Thompson,
1985; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 1993). These are nouns derived from verbs which preserve
many, or indeed most, of the verbal properties of their base but which function in
clauses as nouns. Since the action nominal introduces no additional semantic predic-
ate, it heads a phrase which functions as the name of the event denoted by the verb,
or more properly, which names the event denoted by the whole clause of which that
verb is the lexical head.
In (2) we see typical cases of action nominals in English.
(2) a. The shooting of the hunters was inaccurate

b. We were appalled at the shooting of the hunters (yesterday, by poachers)
These sentences correspond to sentences in which the -ing nominalized phrase is

expressed as a nite clause, as in (3).
(3) a. They proved that the hunters shot inaccurately

b. We were appalled that the poachers shot the hunters yesterday
Depending on the language and on various specics of the construction, we may

nd that more or fewer of the morphosyntactic properties of the nite clause will be
expressed in the nominal, as in Lakhota (Lakota), where the nominalization process
essentially consists of putting a denite article before a nite clause (see Koptjevskaja-
Tamm, 1993, for a detailed survey of such nominalizations, including her sentential
type, in which most of the clausal information and morphosyntactic structure is re-
tained). An important feature of action nominalizations is that precisely which verbal
or nominal properties are expressed may depend on the syntactic organization of the
phrase, giving rise to what I will call syntagmatic mixing.
As I discuss in greater detail in Chapter 8, the meaning of the resulting nominal-
ization ranges over the name of a proposition, or the name of a fact, or occasionally
the name of a manner of action (Zucchi, 1993, has a detailed discussion of the various
possibilities). The factual or propositional interpretations of action nominals corres-
pond to the typical interpretations of nite clauses. For instance, the that-clauses in
(3a) and (3b) denote a proposition and a fact respectively, while the -ing nominal in
(2b) denotes a fact.
Action nominals of this sort differ from other types of deverbal noun, subject
nominals such as driver, object nominals such as employee, or result nominals, as
in (4):
(4) Marys translation of War and Peace weighs 5 kilos
The latter type of nominal either introduces a new semantic predicate, as in the case
of the result-nominal interpretation of translation, meaning thing which results from
translating something, or it denotes one of the arguments of the base verb, as is argu-
ably the case with subject nominals in many languages (Levin and Rappaport Hovav,
1988), what I shall call an argument nominalization, or else it denotes some complex
mixture of the two (see Barker, 1998, for detailed discussion of -ee nominals in this
connection).
The participle is a form of a verb used when the verb has to serve as an attributive
modier. In many languages, attributive modiers are canonically members of the
adjective class and, as such, may have specic properties. For instance, adjectives of-
ten show agreement or cross-referencing of the properties of the noun they modify,
such as gender, number, case, or deniteness. A participle in such a language typ-
ically has the same adjectival-agreement morphosyntax. Even in English we can see
traces of participial syntax: the -ing active participle and the -en passive participle
have essentially the same syntax as other attributive adjectives and not that of verbs:
a dripping tap a tap which is dripping, a broken vase a vase which has been broken.
Deverbal nouns and adjectives have long puzzled linguists who adopt a monolithic
approach to the inection/derivation distinction. In part the problem is hidden by a
concentration on the rather strange constructions found in English. In the modern
idiom, deverbal nominalizations, including the productive -ing nominals, have ten-
ded to drift more towards the nominal and away from the verbal (Malouf, 2000a,b,
provides interesting discussion of the historical development of -ing nominals, based
on the work of Wescoat, 1994). However, in other languages the nominalization re-
tains much more of the character of the verb. In a number of languages, for instance,
the innitive form of the verb functions as a regular and productive action nominal.
This is true of Spanish and Italian (on which see, for instance, Zucchi, 1993) as well
as German.
In Italian, the so-called innito sostantivato takes subjects and direct objects in
the manner of a nite verb, much like the so-called ACC-ACC construction with
-ing nominals in English, except that the subject in the Italian construction follows
immediately after the innitival verb (Maiden and Robustelli, 2000: 312):
(5) Il cantare i sardi queste ballate mi scandalizz

the sing.inf the Sardinians these ballads me shocked
The fact that the Sardinians sang these ballads shocked me.
Similar constructions are found in Spanish. Likewise, pretty well any German innit-
ive can be furnished with a denite article and turned into a neuter singulare tantum
noun. However, the German nominalized innitive behaves more like a noun than
its Romance counterpart, in that it takes its arguments in the genitive case, in the
manner of arguments of a noun (Durrell, 2002: 27799):
(6) Das Mitnehmen von Hunden ist polizeilich verboten

the.n bring.inf of dogs is by law forbidden
Bringing dogs in is forbidden by law.
Morphologically, the nominalized innitive form Mitnehmen differs from the -

nite verb in that it contains a prex mit- which cannot be separated from the verb
stem. When mitnehmen is used as a nite verb, the prex is dislocated to the right
periphery of the main clause, while the verb itself remains in second position:
(7) Sie nahmen die Hunden mit

they took the dogs with
They brought the dogs.
When an innitive functions as the complement to another verb, it has to be pre-

xed with zu-, which appears to the immediate left of the verb stem, intervening
between the separable prex and the verb:
(8) Sie entschlossen, die Hunden mit-zu-nehmen

they decided the dogs with-to-take
They decided to bring the dogs.
3.3.2 Participles
The question of category membership is also brought into sharp relief in the case of
deverbal participles in morphologically rich Indo-European languages such as Latin,
Greek, Sanskrit, and Russian. In Russian, for instance, effectively all verbs form a
present participle which declines (not conjugates!) exactly like a regular adjective.
However, the participle is also capable of governing arguments in the manner of the
base verb, and even inherits the assignment of quirky case to its arguments. For
instance, the verb komandovat to command (e.g. an army) selects an object in the
instrumental case (9a). This property is preserved by the active present participle (9b)
(see Spencer, 1999, for further discussion).
(9) a. General komanduet vos m-oj armi-ej

the.general commands eighth-f.ins.sg army[f]-ins.sg
The general commands the Eighth Army.
b. general, komanduj-uc-ij
the.general[m].nom.sg command-prs_ptcp-m.nom.sg
vos m-oj armi-ej
eighth-f.ins.sg army[f]-ins.sg
The general commanding/who commands the Eighth Army.
3.3.3 Relational and possessive adjectives

Chukchi has a productive relational adjective construction using the adjectivizer
-kin(e)/-ken(a) (Skorik, 1961: 26880; Dunn, 1999: 151f.). This is the standard way to
modify a noun with another (inanimate) noun (though noun-noun compounding is
also found to a limited extent). Such adjectives express various relations, as shown
in (10).2
(10) emnuA tundra emnuAkin g_nnik tundra animal

lPeleA summer lPeleAkin ewirP_n summer clothing
Aelw_lP_ herd Aelw_lP_kin Paacek youth from the herd
weem river weemkinet w_kw_t rocks in the river
In Chukchi the normal way to express possession is by creating a possessive ad-

jective using the sufx -in(e) (or often -nin(e) for human possessors; see Skorik, 1961:
225f.). Examples (1115) are taken from Dunn (1999).3
Example (11) shows a noun phrase with possessive forms kelPin of the spirits and
wPiremkin of the dead folk.
(11) nk jara-mk--jA--n kelP-in nqen

there house-coll-e-aug-e-3sg.abs spirit-poss.3sg.abs that.3sg.abs
wPi-remk-in
dead-folk-poss.3sg.abs
There was a big group of spirit houses, belonging to the dead folk.
[Dunn, 1999: 149]
Example (12) shows that the possessive form uweq_cin husbands retains its nominal
category, in that it can itself be modied by a possessor, Jaren.
(12) Jare-n uweqc-in tlg--n

Jare-poss.3sg.abs husband-poss.3sg.abs father-e-3sg.abs
[He was] Jares husbands father. [Dunn, 1999: 149]
2 As Dunn notes, the same sufx can sometimes attach to verbs or adverbs to create attributive
modiers of head nouns.
3 In the morpheme glosses, e stands for an epenthetic schwa which cant be afliated to any particular
morpheme; aug = augmentative, nmlz = nominalizer, pfv = perfective, inch = inchoative, dim =
diminutive, com = comitative, coll = collective, and emph = emphasizer.
In (13) we see the possessive form -njiw-in of the noun -njiw- uncle modied by
means of an incorporated adjective Peqe bad.
(13) nrPaq nqen Peqe-njiw-in ekke-t=Pm

then that bad-uncle-poss.3sg.abs son-3pl.abs=emph
lejw--lP--t jet-gPe-t ecgi nqen
walk-e-nmlz-e-3pl.abs come-pfv-3pl as.soon.as that
Pera-mAl-at--AAo-gPa-t
race-announce-intr-e-inch-pfv-3pl
Then that bad uncles sons came, they walked there, as soon as they heard
about the race. [Dunn, 1999: 150]
Plural human possessors are marked by means of the -(_)rg- sufx before -in(e):
(14) enmen nqen Jare npnacg--qaj-rg-en

anyway this Jare.3sg.abs old.person-e-dim-3pl-poss.3sg.abs
Aeekk
daughter.3sg.abs
Anyway, this was Jare, the old peoples daughter. [Dunn, 1999: 151]
Pronouns, including interrogative pronouns, form possessives in the same way: mik-
who, mik-in whose?
Chukchi lacks a genitive case form or a postposition with a possessive function.4
Furthermore, there is no possessor agreement in the language. The possessive ad-
jective is therefore the only way to express NP-internal possession. The possessive
adjectives are like other attributive modiers in the language in almost every respect.
They dont normally take agreements except when the modier itself bears some de-
gree of focus. When unfocused, the adjective is incorporated. With the (circumxal)
comitative and coordinative cases incorporation is obligatory, as illustrated for the
comitative case in (15).
(15) ga-qaa-lP-ena-npnacg-a mtrajalgt Aanenqac

com-reindeer-ptcp-poss-old.man-com we.will.camp tomorrow
Tomorrow we will camp (together) with the old man who has reindeer.
Hindi-Urdu -waalaa In Hindi-Urdu5 we nd a very interesting construction with a

sufx which formally creates a kind of relational adjective, though it commonly func-
tions, in effect, to create a kind of participle, by combining with a verb lexeme in the
4 Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1995) explores the possibility that the possessive forms are a kind of genitive
case, but there is no real justication for such an analysis.
5 My sources are from Hindi. I presume that the situation with Urdu is essentially the same.
innitive form, morphologically a kind of noun. The sufx, transcribed variously as

-waalaa/-vaalaa6 creates forms which are morphosyntactically adjectives and agree
with a head noun in the standard way. (The agreements are -aa for m.sg.direct, -e
for other masculine gender forms, and -ii for all feminine gender forms). It would
appear that very little research has been devoted specically to -waalaa, though the
sufx is discussed in some detail in Dymits (1986a: 168f., 171), Dymits (1986b: 91),
and McGregor (1995: 169f.).7 It is described as an adjective-forming sufx, though of-
ten the adjectives it creates can be converted to nouns (which generally then refer to
humans; the -waalaa adjectives themselves can modify any kind of noun). It attaches
generally to the oblique form of a noun (including the oblique-case form of the in-
nitive), though sometimes it attaches to direct forms. For instance, in addition to
rikse-waalaa rickshaw-puller, rickshaw-wallah, where rikse- is the oblique singular
stem, McGregor (1995: 170) says that riksaa-waalaa, with the direct-case stem, is also
acceptable.
Both McGregor and Dymits explicitly point out that -waalaa is highly product-
ive, especially in the colloquial language. Hence, -waalaa derivates are frequently not
listed in dictionaries. Dymits (1986b: 91) outlines the following denominal usages:
possession: dukaan shop, dukaanwaalaa shopkeeper (alongside

dukaan-daar)
profession, habitual actor: gaarii cart, gaariiwaalaa cart-driver, rot.ii bread,
rot.iiwaalaa baker
associated with place: ahar town, aharwaalaa townsman, city-dweller,
daks.in. south, daks.in.waalaa southerner
member of organization: kaangres Congress, kaangreswaalaa member of Con-
gress
Dymits also mentions that -waalaa can form nouns from certain verb stems (ot
odel nyx glagol nyx osnov): rakhnaa to save, store, rakhwaalaa keeper, guardian.
However, with innitival stems, -waalaa sufxation is a common and productive
process.
McGregor gives a number of denominal forms which function as relational ad-
jectives rather than as nouns themselves, for instance (adapted from examples in
McGregor, 1995: 170):
(16) a. t.opii-waalaa lar.kaa

hat-wala boy
the boy with a hat
6 I shall use /w/. I make other changes to McGregors transcriptions without comment for the sake of
consistency. A doubled vowel is long, and a tilde over a vowel () indicates nasalization.
7 Although McGregor devotes half of his Chapter XXV to -waalaa, curiously, the sufx doesnt gure
in his list of common sufxes, pp. 211f. Perhaps he regards -waalaa as more like a clitic than a true afx.
b. ek pandrah paise-waalaa t.ikat.

one fteen pice-wala stamp
a 15-pice stamp
c. laal saar.ii-waalii aurat
red sari-wala woman
a woman wearing a red sari
d. yah makaan caaraa kaat.ne kii masiin-waal-e
this house fodder cut-inf.obl poss.f machine(f)-wala-m.sg.obl
sardaar lahnaa sim
. h kaa hai
Sardaar Lahnaa Singh poss is
This house belongs to Sardaar Lahnaa Singh, the fodder-cutting-machine
man.
Example (16d) contains a verb phrase caaraa kaat.ne cutting fodder, in the oblique
innitive form, which is followed by the possessive postposition kaa. This post-
position, which corresponds in meaning broadly speaking to English of , creates an
attributive modifying phrase which is adjectival in its morphosyntax, in that it agrees
with the modied noun in gender, number, and case. In (16d), kii agrees with the
feminine noun masiin, here in the oblique case form before -waalaa. It is evident
that the phrase cutting fodder is modifying just the nominal base masiin() and not
the complete expression masiin()waale because masiin()waale is in the masculine
oblique form (ultimately, because it is the complement of the nal kaa), and would
trigger the agreeing form ke, not kii. This example therefore constitutes a violation of
lexical integrity.
McGregor (1995: 171) reports that when sufxed to verbs (i.e. to the oblique form
of the innitive), -waalaa has agentive force:
(17) a. hindii siikhne-waal-e

Hindi learn-wala-pl
students who are learning Hindi (lit. Hindi learning-ones)
b. Kamlaa bhaarat jaane-waal-ii th-ii ki biimaar par. gaii
Kamlaa(f) India go-wala-f be-f when ill fall aux
Kamlaa was about to go to India when she fell ill.
Dymits (1986a: 168f., 171) provides further examples of deverbal -waalaa. These
include examples derived from compound verbs (18a) and from coordinated verbs,
in which both innitive forms appear in the oblique case form (18b). The fact that
-waalaa governs oblique case in the rst of the verb forms, which it is not adjacent
to, suggests that -waalaa is actually a sufx. The examples also include an instance of
-waalaa being sufxed to the auxiliary cukhnaa (18c), which in addition to meaning
nish is generally used as a translation equivalent of already. Finally, in (18d) we

see -waalaa sufxed to the verb jaanaa, here used as the passive auxiliary.
(18) a. koi karne-waalaa

attempt make-wala
attempting
b. aane-jaane-waalaa
come-go-wala
one who is coming and going
c. kar cukne-waalaa
do finish-wala
one who has already done
d. chor.haa jaane-waalaa
throw.ptcp go.inf.obl-wala
one thrown
Although I have followed my sources and treated -waalaa as a sufx, it is not one
which tightly coheres to its host (indeed, McGregor mentions that it is often written
separately in the standard orthography). One piece of evidence which shows this is
the fact that the emphatic particle hii can intervene between -waalaa and its host. For
instance, McGregor (1995: 171f.) gives (19) as an alternative to (17b).
(19) Kamlaa bhaarat jaane hii waal-ii th-ii ki biimaar par. gaii
Kamlaa(f) India go emph wala-f be-f when ill fall aux
Kamlaa was on the very point of leaving for India when she fell ill.
Hindi-Urdu -waalaa, then, is formally a relational adjective construction, though

one which frequently creates forms which have the same function as deverbal parti-
ciples in other languages. Of particular interest is the fact that it clearly takes scope
over whole phrases. This is behaviour usually associated with clitics, not afxes.
A number of interesting questions are raised by -waalaa constructions. For ex-
ample, given that they appear to take phrases in their scope, it would be interesting
to know whether -waalaa phrases can be embedded in each other, as is the case with
possessive kaa phrases. In other words, could we nd constructions of the sort caaraa
kaat.ne-waalii masiin-waalaa pertaining to a fodder-cutting machine, parallel to the
attested caaraa kaat.ne kii masiin-waalaa seen in (16d)?
More specically, the -waalaa constructions raise interesting issues with regard
to lexical relatedness. The formative (whether its a clitic or an afx) creates a word
form which heads an adjectival phrase, derived from a nominal phrase (which itself
might be a nominal form of a verb phrase, complete with verbal complements and
adjuncts). Yet it doesnt add any semantic content of its own whatsoever. Indeed, if
anything it has even less semantic weight than Hindi-Urdu postpositions (including
the possessive postposition, kaa, which has very similar morphosyntax).
The Chukchi -lP_n participle The Chukchi -lP_n noun-participle (Skoriks term
is imja-pricastie) is formed from (intransitive, intransitivized) verbs, nouns, and ad-
jectives (Skorik, 1961: 34586; Dunn, 1999: 13844). It denotes either an attribute or
a noun. The semantics of the participle depends on the base. Deverbal participles
generally denote the subject argument of the verb, deadjectival participles denote a
person/thing possessing the property denoted by the adjective, and denominal parti-
ciples have a generally proprietive meaning, person/thing having N, or, in the case
of nouns with a locational meaning, person/thing from N (Dunn, 1999: 143). Skorik
(1961: 350) provides copious examples, including the following:
Deverbal: g_ntew- run, g_ntew_lP_n runner, one who runs

Deadjectival: n_-gtiA-qin beautiful, g_tiA_-lP_n beautiful person
Denominal: P_ttP_n dog P_ttP_-lP_n having dogs, dog-owner
Transitive verbs can only form participles if they are rst detransitivized, either by
being put in one of the two antipassive forms (with ine- or -tku) or by incorporating
their direct object (Skorik, 1961: 378).
Dunn (1999: 143) cites the following example of a locational participial form from
the noun emnuA tundra:
(20) emnuA--lP--t
tundra-e-ptcp-e-3pl.abs
tundra folk
Dunn explicitly contrasts this form with the corresponding relational adjective
in -kin(e):
(21) emnuA-kine-t
tundra-reladj-3pl.abs
(things) from the tundra [nominal use]
(22) emnuA-kine-t mrenti

tundra-reladj-3pl.abs mosquitoes
mosquitoes from the tundra [attributive use]
He also cites the form jaat-_-lP-_-t ones situated behind from the adverb jaat
behind.
As an adjective functioning as an attributive modier, the participle can agree with
the noun it modies, or it can (and in some cases must) be incorporated into that
noun, in exactly the same way as a normal adjective.
Attributive agreement in number/case is illustrated in the following examples

(Skorik, 1961: 353):
(23) uwicwet--lP--t Ainqeg-ti nlgiqulilPetqinet

play-e-ptcp-e-abs.pl boy-abs.pl loudly.shout
The boys who were playing shouted loudly.
(24) muri mtlwawmk gntewk PttP--lP-ep npnacg-ep

we could.not run.away dog-e-ptcp-abl old.man-abl
Example (24) is explicitly contrasted with the incorporated variant seen in (25).
(25) muri mtlwawmk gntewk PttP--lP--npnacg-ep

we could.not run.away dog-e-ptcp-e-old.man-abl
We couldnt run away from the old man with dogs.
As a noun, the participle can be used as the argument or adjunct of a predicate and
can take appropriate case/number inections. The declension class depends on the
meaning: participial forms which denote humans go into the human inectional class
(and hence have a full set of distinct case forms in the plural), while those which
denote non-humans go into the non-human class and hence only have a different
plural form for the absolutive case.
I focus here on the attributive use of the participle and especially the deadjectival
forms. Skorik (1961: 3746) describes an analytic attributive construction using the
regularly formed -lP_n participle form of the copular verb (t)wa, wa-lP_n, combined
with the dative/allative case form of the attribute (in -et_/-gt_, which triggers strong
vowel harmony, so that weak vowels {/i, e, u/} alternate with strong vowels {/e, a, o/}).
For example, from the adjective n_-korg-_-qen happy we can form the participle
korg-_-lP-_-n, which can be an answer to two types of question, meAin who? and
miAq_ri walP_n what kind of? (literally how being?). In addition, we can answer the
question miAq_ri walP_n analytically, with the phrase korg-et_ walP_n. Skorik (1961:
375) characterizes the difference between the participial and analytic constructions
in the following terms. He glosses (26) as meaning having whiteness (obladajucaja
beliznoj), while he glosses (27) as being white (belo sucaja).
(26) ilg--lP--n menig

white-e-ptcp-e-abs.sg material.abs.sg
(27) elg-et walPn menig

white-dat.all being material
white material
(It must be admitted that neither the English nor the Russian translations seem to
convey a very clear semantic distinction.)
The -et_ walP_n construction is more adjectival than the participial construction
in one sense: it permits a comparative form, by replacing the -et_/-gt_ sufx with
the comparative sufx -A (which triggers strong vowel harmony, even though it is
vowel-less).
(28) a. n-erme-qin strong, root -erme-/-arma-

b. arma-gt_ walP_n strong
c. arma-A walP_n stronger
Like other attributive modiers the analytic constructions can be incorporated into
the head noun (and must be if that noun is in a case marked by a circumx):
(29) a. ga-jq--wa-lP--qaa-ma qekwetgPi

com-fast-e-cop-ptcp-e-reindeer-com leave
Leave with the fast reindeer.
b. gamga-jq--wa-lP--qaa-ta qekwetgPi
any-fast-e-cop-ptcp-e-reindeer-ins leave
Leave on any fast reindeer. [Skorik, 1961: 376]
3.3.4 Property nominalizations

We can also derive nouns from adjectives and from other nouns. The commonest
subcategory is that of property nominalizations. These are discussed in Szymanek
(1989: 154f.) under the name Nomina Essendi. The two most common afxes in Eng-
lish are -ness and -ity (the sufx -th accounts for about ten or so derivations, such as
warmth). The -ity sufx attaches almost exclusively to Latinate stems, but in principle
-ness can attach to any kind of stem. These afxes are often taken to be synonymous,
though Riddle (1985) argues that there are subtle aspectual differences in those (not
frequent) cases in which theres a free choice of sufx. She claims (p. 437) that -ness
tends to denote an embodied attribute or trait, while -ity tends to denote an abstract
or concrete entity. What Riddle means here is that X-ness tends to mean a property
of a particular individual at a particular time, while X-ity tends to mean that property
in general or a permanent instantiation. She cites (p. 438) minimal pairs such as (30).

(a) the ethnicness
(30) The lanterns demonstrated of the restaurant
(b) the ethnicity
Example (30a) means that the lanterns served as evidence that the restaurant was
presented as being ethnic, while (30b) means that the lanterns demonstrated which
ethnic group the restaurant was associated with. Its interesting that ethnicity here
is the nominalization of a relational adjective while ethnicness is the nominalization
of the same adjectival form but in its guise as a gradable adjective (we can say, for
instance, This restaurant is very ethnic). However, Raffelsiefen (2010) argues that this
analysis fails to achieve any generality and that the two sufxes have to be regarded
as equivalent semanticallyin fact, having no meaning at all, but merely serving to

transpose an adjective into a property nominal.
In general, morphological handbooks treat property nominalizations such as red-
ness, sincerity, breadth, and so on as instances of derivation, but there is an important
difference between these words and words such as reddish, insincere, and broaden.
The latter all involve (arguably) the addition of a semantic predicate, giving mean-
ings roughly equivalent to red to an attenuated degree, not sincere, and (cause to)
become more broad. But if redness, sincerity, and breadth are derived lexemes, what
exactly is the meaning difference that distinguishes them from their bases red, sincere,
and broad?
I discuss property nominalizations in more detail in Section 8.6.
3.3.5 Predicative nouns and adjectives

We expect a nite clause to be headed by a nite verb.8 However, in general, lan-
guages have to have devices allowing nouns and adjectives (or other types of phrase,
notably prepositional phrases) to serve as predicates. In many languages, of course,
this is achieved by means of a copular verb which takes the noun/adjective phrase
as its complement, and predicates it of the subject. However, in other languages the
nouns and/or adjectives themselves take nite inections, agreeing with the subject
in the manner of a verb, say, and even taking tense inections.
Selkup nouns inect for person/number when used as predicates (Kuznecova et al.,
1980: 18890, Helimski, 1998: 560, 562).9 What Kuznecova et al. refer to as the verbal
representation of nominals is formed by adding the sufx /- : -A - :A -A :/ to
c c c
the noun stem, and adding person/number sufxes illustrated in (31).
(31) Predicative nominal agreement sufxes

Singular Dual Plural
1st -A :-k2x
c -A-mi: -A-mi-t 2
2nd -A :-nti-
c -A-li: - :A-mi-t 2c
Third person predicate nouns have no special inection.
Examples are:
(32) a. tan ki-pa i:ja-A :-nti-

c
you(sg) little boy-vr-2sg
You are a little boy. [Helimski, 1998: 562]
8 Whatever niteness means. See the contributions to Nikolaeva (2007) for recent discussion.
9 Helimskis (1998) chapter uses the following transcriptional conventions: = ; = -i ; N denotes a
c
velar nasal that alternates with k/g in various contexts; doubling the vowel symbol indicates vowel length.
I use /, c/ to represent IPA /, / (see Chapter 10 for details of the various transcriptions used for Selkup,
as well as further discussion of predicative nouns and adjectives in this language).
b. qoti-l su:ri-cci- qum- :A-li-t

y c
bad hunter person-vr-2pl
You are bad hunters. [Kuznecova et al., 1980: 188]
Selkup nouns dont inect for tense. However, a noun in the predicative form
can combine with a tensed copula. Notice that the noun retains its person/number
marking, even though that marking is also on the copular verb:
(33) a. mat i:ja-A :-k

c :-s-ak
I child-vr-1sg be-pst-1sg
I was a child.
b. t: pynaki-sa-A-li-t :-nt- :li-t c
you(pl) hero-vr-2pl be-fut-2pl
You will be heroes. [Kuznecova et al., 1980: 190]
Salminen (1998: 539) describes a more elaborated system for the predicative forms
of nouns in Nenets, a related Samoyedic language. These inect not only for per-
son/number but also for tense, in both non-possessed (absolute) and possessed
forms (Selkup possessed nouns dont inect for verbal representation):10
(34) Predicative nominals in Nenets

nye woman
Aorist I am/you are/she is a woman
1sg nyedo m
2sg nyeno
3sg nye
Preterite I was/you were/she was a woman

1sg nyedmcyo
2sg nyenmsyo
3sg nyesyo
nya friend
3sg Aorist nyawo He is my friend

3sg Preterite nyawo He was my friend
3pl Aorist nyno They are my friends
3pl Preterite nynsyo They were my friends
(For further discussion of Nenets predicative nouns see Salminen, 1997: 914.)
10 I follow Salminens transcription system, under which the o symbol represents an over-short schwa,
is a reduced (low short) vowel, an acute accent indicates vowel length, c is , and y after a consonant
represents palatalization.
3.3.6 Transpositions as mixed categories

Judging from the extent of the descriptive and theoretical literature devoted to trans-
positions, we can be forgiven for concluding that they do not pose much of a problem
for models of morphology and the lexicon. The structuralist tradition and its suc-
cessors have tended to adopt a polarized view of lexical relatedness based on the
distinction between canonical inection and canonical derivation. The result is that
neither descriptive grammarians nor theoreticians worry greatly about identifying
transpositions (though they do tend to argue about whether to label transpositions
as inection or as derivation; see the discussion in Haspelmath, 1996). The truth of
this assertion is revealed by the rare counterexamples in the literature. For instance,
the Russian anglicist A. I. Smirnickij explicitly denes a category of representation
to describe transpositional lexical relatedness (Smirnickij, 1959), which Haspelmath
(1996) refers to as a supercategory. In their description of Selkup, Kuznecova et al.
(1980) explicitly follow Smirnickijs lead, so that a deverbal participle is the adjectival
representation of a verb, while a relational adjective is the adjectival representation
of a noun (I discuss their analyses in much more detail in Chapter 10). But its ex-
tremely unusual to see grammarians introduce such a category explicitly. This is not
because the phenomenon is rare. On the contrary, it is difcult to nd a language
with any reasonably elaborated system of morphology that lacks such transpositions.
The one transpositional category that has received a good deal of theoretical at-
tention is the action nominalization. Although specialists in theoretical morphology
are undecided about whether to label such action nominals (and deverbal participles)
as derivational or inectional, descriptive grammar writers generally opt for the in-
ectional solution. In the grammars by Maiden and Robustelli (Italian) and Durrell
(German) cited in Section 3.3.1, the information about the formation of innitival
nominals and regular participles is to be found in the chapters on verbs, for instance,
not in the chapters on nouns or adjectives. Nonetheless, its rare to see theoretical
discussion of inectional morphology which takes seriously the problems posed by
inection processes which change word class, and which may therefore enforce a
completely new set of inections (again, Haspelmath, 1996, is an exception, along
with Beard, 1995, and works of his cited there).
3.4 Meaning and inection

3.4.1 Contextual and inherent inection
In a realizational model of inection, the function of the morphological rules is
simply to dene which word forms or partial word forms serve as exponents or
realizations of a given property set. The rules do not themselves alter property
specications or add further properties to that set. However, there are numerous
occasions when it would seem that an inectional rule in a languages morphology
does introduce additional semantic material. This is essentially the import of Booijs
(1994; 1996; 2007) notion of inherent inection (though Booij himself doesnt quite
formulate the issue in this way). Booij (1996) points out that the semantic effects
of inherent inection can make it difcult to distinguish it from derivation (he of-
fers a number of diagnostics, though these are of necessity language-particular and
dont have any universal application). In fact, I will argue that it makes it impossible
to provide a principled distinction between inection and derivation, at least cross-
linguistically. Before I address that issue, however, it will be necessary to clarify a
number of questions regarding the nature of inection and semantic interpretation.
First, we must examine Booijs notion of contextual inection. The basic idea
is very simple: in clear, canonical cases of agreement or government, the agreeing
element or the governed element bears an inection purely because the syntactic
dependency requires it. In that sense, the inection is not under the control of
the speaker, once the speaker has chosen a construction which requires agreement
or government. The examples Booij cites are subjectverb agreement and govern-
ment of direct cases (nominative/accusative or ergative/absolutive) in transitive and
intransitive clauses. A clear example is gender agreement, for instance between at-
tributive modier and noun head. Another instance we might cite, though not one
discussed by Booij, is the Construct State found in many languages, for instance
DhoLuo. In such constructions the head noun (possessum) in a possessorpossessed
construction takes on a form distinct from its default form, but it doesnt show agree-
ment as such with its possessor. Thus, in (35) the forms od and ut are the construct
forms for the singular and plural, respectively, of the lexeme house.
(35) Construct State in DhoLuo (Nilotic)
Base form Construct State

ot house od winyo a birds nest
udi houses ut winyi birds nests
Now, there are a number of problems in dening a notion of contextual inection,

summarized here:
Some grammatical properties seem to belong to both types, e.g. the pro-drop
problem.
Some values of a given property may be contextual (e.g structural cases), and
others inherent (i.e. semantic cases).
A given property such as case (e.g. dativeallative) may itself realize either
structural or semantic functions.
Choice of a contextual inection may itself be meaningful, e.g. differential
subject/object marking to signal agency, animacy, etc.
The pro-drop problem is this: in the vast majority of languages with subject- or
object-agreement morphosyntax, the overt subject or object argument can be elided,
and the pronominal agreement marker then takes over as the sole exponent of the
subject/object properties. In languages such as English the elision of pronominal sub-
ject or object arguments is highly restricted, but English is very much the minority
case. But this means that in a typical pro-drop language, when a clause has a null
subject the agreement morphology is arguably not agreement in any non-circular
sense; rather it is itself the expression of the subject. But in that case it is no longer
contextual in the desired sense.
Booij adduces the example of structural case as an instance of contextual (gov-
erned) inection, but this hides a conceptual problem: it means that the designator
contextual inection only applies to specic values of a morphosyntactic property
(i.e. it applies to specic case values), not to that property as a whole. Now, this may
well be the intention, but it makes the contextual/inherent distinction difcult to
deploy, because it means that some parts of a words paradigm realize contextual in-
ection, while other closely related parts realize inherent inection. In that case, we
might wonder what the purpose of the distinction is.
A similar problem arises with particular values of a property which in some cases
seem to be contextually determined and in other cases seem to be inherent. Thus, in
many languages there is a dative, allative, or other case which in certain morphosyn-
tactic environments fulls very much the role of the (contextual, structural) dative
case of a language such as German (cited by Booij as an instance of contextual in-
ection), while in other environments it fulls the role of a locational/spatial, and
hence inherent, case marker. Of course, we usually nd in such languages that there
are difcult intermediate instances arising from grammaticalization, metaphor, and
so on, in which its very difcult to decide whether we are dealing with semantic case
(inherent) or genuinely structural (contextual) case.
Finally, even if we are agreed that we have an instance of a structurally assigned
case, say, such as nominative/accusative, we often nd that languages can choose
whether or not to mark an object (less often, subject) with that case. For instance,
in many languages a direct object which is left unmarked is topical (non-focal),
specic/denite, or whatever, while a noun phrase overtly marked with accusative
case is focal, indenite, or whatever. Similarly, overt subject marking is sometimes
used to signal animacy, agency, volitionality, and other properties. Is such marking
inherent or contextual (or both)?
Booijs notion of inherent inection is an inectional category which speakers,
in a sense, have control over, as opposed to inections which are mandated by the
syntactic context. As common-or-garden varieties of inherent inection, Booij cites
instances such as (plural) number marking on nouns and (past) tense marking on
verbs. These are inherent inections because the choice of plural form of noun or
past-tense form of verb is decided by the need to express certain types of meaning,
not by some agreement or government process. The reason that inherent inection in
this sense is tightly linked to the question of inectional semantics is now apparent:
the principal reason why a speaker should wish to exercise choice over inectional
forms is the need to express particular meanings. In other words, under the choice
of the speaker and semantically contentful are almost overlapping descriptors for
inections.
Actually, the examples Booij originally chose, while having the virtue of familiarity,
are not necessarily very good examples of inherent inection because the relationship
between the morphological marking and its semantic interpretation can be somewhat
complex with such inectional properties. For instance, we cant straightforwardly
say that the English plural sufx means more than one, and hence we cant say that
a speaker of English will always select the plural form of a noun in order to express
the notion of nominal plurality. This is because in an expression such as no cats the
denotation of the phrase has cardinality less than one, and yet the noun is in the plural
form. Thus, plural cardinality of the denotation of the noun is not a necessary condi-
tion for plural inection. On the other hand, in the expression more than one cat the
speaker has clearly chosen to refer to more than one cat, but the grammar requires the
singular form of the noun. This example would demonstrate that plural semantics is
not a sufcient condition for plural inection either, but the example may be thought
a little unfair. Consider therefore quantied expressions such as two cats. Here, we
can say that cats denotes more than one cat and two narrows the cardinality down
further, and this would be compatible with the idea that plural denotation is suf-
cient for plural inection. However, in other languages matters are more complex.
In Hungarian, the word macska cat has the regular plural form macskk. However,
a phrase quantied by a numeral is headed by a noun in the singular form, so that
two cats is translated kt macska and not *kt macskk. So for Hungarian we cant
say that plural denotation is a sufcient condition for plural inection (the most we
can say is that plural denotation is a necessary condition).
It might be thought that such cases simply reect inadequacies in the way that
the semantics of plural marking is formalized. However, such an objection would
completely miss the point. What we are dealing with here is the relation between
morphologically dened word forms and morphosyntactic constructions such as
agreement and government. The problem is that languages have inectional num-
ber marking which subserves very similar semantics in its basic form (essentially,
set cardinality greater than one), but interacts with the rest of grammar in complex
ways. A clear instance of this is provided by the well-known instance of the Rus-
sian numeral system (see Corbett, 2000, for discussion of this case and many other
similarly complex systems). Russian has a singular/plural distinction expressed to all
intents and purposes exactly as in English. However, complications arise with certain
sorts of quantier. Inecting quantiers such as ves all and mnogie many govern
nouns in whatever case is assigned to the nominal phrase as a whole. Non-inecting
quantiers such as malo few and mnogo many take the genitive plural form. Nu-
merals whose nal element is ve or greater also take the genitive plural form
when the nominal phrase as a whole is in nominative, accusative, or genitive case.
Otherwise, the whole phrase is inected for the appropriate oblique case (dative, in-
strumental, or prepositional). Numerals whose nal element is two, three, or four
take the genitive singular form or the appropriate oblique case form. Numerals whose
nal element is one take the appropriate case form for the nominal phrase, whatever
case that is (including nominative or accusative). Some examples are shown in (36).
(36) a. vse koki

all.nom.pl cat.nom.pl
all cats
b. o vsex kokax
about all.prep.pl cat.prep.pl
about all cats
c. mnogo koek
many cat.gen.pl
many cats
d. pjat koek
ve cat.gen.pl
ve cats
e. sto devjanosto dve koki
hundred ninety two.nom/acc cat.gen.sg
192 cats
f. tysjaca odna koka
thousand one.f.nom.sg cat(f).nom.sg
one thousand and one cats
I foresee no formal semantic account of the notion plural number which could ex-
plain why (36f ) is headed by a singular-marked noun, while its (exact) translation
equivalent in English is headed by a plural-marked noun. This is simply a matter of
the disposition of morphosyntactic features on word forms in phrases, and nothing
to do with semantics.
Tense in English is not necessarily better behaved. In so-called sequence-of-tense
constructions, the past-tense inection may be governed by the purely grammatical
happenstance of the matrix verb being in the past-tense form: I thought you were ar-
riving tomorrow. Similarly, the morphological past-tense form of a verb is found in
hypothetical or distanced conditional clauses which may have future-time reference:
If you left/were to leave this evening, youd have time to meet them at the airport. So
past-time reference is not a necessary condition for past-tense marking. Similarly, a
clause in the perfect aspect, The cat has eaten, denotes an event which occurred prior
to utterance time, too, but with no past-tense marking at all (in contradistinction to
the pluperfect expression, The cat had eaten). Moreover, in innitival clauses the per-
fect aspect can function to denote past time without including any of the meaning
of the perfect aspect: The most likely possibility is for the Mayan civilization to have
collapsed after severe drought; cf. The most likely possibility is that the Mayan civiliza-
tion (*has) collapsed after severe drought. We can conclude, therefore, that past-time
denotation is neither a necessary nor a sufcient condition for past-tense marking.
English tense marking illustrates another problem with pinning down inherent in-
ection. In the canonical cases the inectional category is marked on the word form
which realizes a lexeme of the appropriate category. In other words, tense is a prop-
erty of verbs, so it should be marked on the lexical verb. But in English the past-tense
marker cant always be placed on the lexical verb: The cat had eaten, didnt eat, was
eating. When the subject is a personal pronoun we nd an even more severe instance
of this mismatch. In Youre snoring or Shed already left the clitic tense-bearing aux-
iliary, -re, -d, is actually an afx, because it triggers idiosyncratic allomorphy on the
pronoun. But in that case we have an inherent inection which is marked on a word
of entirely the wrong lexical class (and isnt even in the right syntactic phrase). For
these reasons it may be useful to adopt a more nely grained terminology and speak
of semantically inherent inection where the inection has a semantic interpret-
ation that is in some sense appropriate for words of that (ontological, semantic)
class, and formally inherent inection for inection which is appropriate for words
of that morpholexical class.
3.4.2 Putative examples of inherent inection

Despite plentiful instances of mismatch, it isnt difcult to nd examples of inection
which is simultaneously semantically inherent and formally inherent. In descriptive
accounts of morphologically complex languages, we regularly encounter, say, as-
pectual inections whose only purpose is to add aspectual or Aktionsart information;
and if we take the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives to be inectional
forms, then its hard to see how we can escape the conclusion that such forms have
a different semantic representation from their positive forms (as well as signicantly
different syntactical complementation patterns, of course).
One very common source of semantically inherent inection is languages with
elaborated case systems. There we often nd locational case markers whose function
is essentially the same as that of a spatial preposition in English. In such systems we
might nd no evidence whatever that the syntax makes reference to such properties.
For instance, we might nd that neither attributive modiers nor predicates of any
kind agree with a noun for such features, so that a property such as case would then
necessarily be an inherent inectional category of the noun.
Up to a point, the Hungarian noun system provides a number of examples of such

phenomena. This language has a highly elaborated inectional case system. Nouns
take sufxal inections for number, possessor agreement, and case (in that order).
In general the case sufxes are associated with very specic meanings, including
a rich set of nine locational or spatial oppositions. Admittedly, some of these case
sufxes show a degree of functionalization in the sense that they are specically se-
lected by certain types of verb or other predicate. However, in this respect they are
no different from prepositions/postpositions in a great many languages, including
English.
One of the case markers is what Kenesei et al. (1998: 192) refer to as the essive-
formal case, realized by the sufx -knt, as seen in (37) (adapted from Kenesei et al.,
1998: 227).
(37) Tolmcs-knt dolgoztam

interpreter-essive/formal I.worked
I worked as an interpreter.
This case sufx has the meaning as, in the capacity of and has no other uses (it is not
even idiosyncratically selected by any verb or adjective). The only reason for treating
this sufx as the realization of a case feature value is that the sufx has many of the
morphological properties of the other case sufxes and is in paradigmatic opposition
with them. To all intents and purposes, this case sufx, like most of the case sufxes
of Hungarian, just adds a semantic predicate to the content of the noun lexeme, in
exactly the same way that an English preposition adds semantic content to that of a
noun phrase.
Hungarian is not unique, of course, in having case afxes which impose a spe-
cic semantics on their host. In the Australianist literature such phenomena are
sometimes referred to by the apparently contradictory term derivational case, as in
Simpsons (1998) description of the morphology of Warumungu, a PamaNyungan
language. She notes (p. 724) the proprietive or having sufx -jangu, which can create
new lexemes as shown in (38).
(38) a. kurlppu honey kurlppu-jangu sweet

b. yurrkurlu snake yurrkurlu-jangu Aboriginal doctor
These examples show the hallmarks of traditionally understood derivation. How-

ever, Simpson also reports that the proprietive sufx shows agreement within the
noun phrase, a property of inectional case. This behaviour is also shown by the
proprietive case (prop) -((k)u)ru in Kayardild, a non-PamaNyungan language.
Evans (1995a: 146f.) provides a number of examples of this case used in an essentially
derivational function, but he also cites (p. 157, discussing the Origin case) example
(39), which illustrates the double case marking for which Kayardild is famed (slightly
adapted here).11
(39) (Darirra mardalaaja) mutha-wu ngunymurr-u mutha-wu

newborn was.rubbed much-prop grease-prop much-prop
ngunymurr-u wuran-ku, mak-un-maan-ju wuran-ku,
grease-prop food-prop torch-vdon-orig-prop food-prop
ngimi-waan-ju wuran-ku, kurdala-thirrin-ju ngimi-wan-jinaba-wu
dark-orig-prop food-prop spear-res-prop night-orig-abl-prop
kanthathu-naba-wu
father-abl-prop
(The newborn was rubbed) with lots of grease, lots of greasy food, with food
(speared) by (the light of) a bark torch, with food (speared) at night-time,
speared by (the babys) father at night-time.
Moreover, behaviour of this sort is not limited to proprieties in Australian languages.

Nikolaeva (2008: 9902) reports that the proprietive sufx in Northern Tungusic
languages such as Evenki also shows agreement on attributive modiers, as though it
were a case.
The Australian and Tungusic proprietive examples are different from the Hun-
garian example. With Hungarian -knt, the principal reason for treating the sufx as a
case ending, hence an inection, is that it behaves morphologically like other sufxes
conventionally labelled as cases. However, afxes such as the Kayardild proprietive
also show the morphosyntax of inectional case in that they participate in the double-
case-marking system (which Evans, 1995a: 147 explicitly uses as a diagnostic of
inection). Also noteworthy is the fact that the Kayardild proprietive can also have es-
sentially standard derivational uses with the same meaning as the inectional case us-
age. This shows that it is difcult to ascribe the property of inection or derivation
to particular afxes as a lexical property of that afx. Rather, an afx may be more or
less inectional/derivational in its behaviour in different morphosyntactic contexts.
Turning to verb-oriented morphology, one very common morphological category
is that of aspect or Aktionsart. Languages frequently draw a distinction between an
action that is viewed as completed as opposed to incomplete, and this gives rise to a
perfective/imperfective distinction. Verbs may also bear markers indicating habitual,
iterated, and durative (progressive) actions or events, the beginning of an event (in-
choative), a single punctual event (semelfactive), and so on. In a number of languages
some or other of these distinctions would appear to be part of the inectional system
of the language. For instance, in (Modern) Greek, verbs inect for two sets of forms,
one of which (broadly speaking) denotes a perfective event, while the other denotes
11 abl = ablative, orig = origin, res = resultative (verb form), vdon = verbal donative (type of
verbal case).
an imperfective event (Holton et al., 1997: 10911). In (40) we see various forms of the
verb grafo to write in the 1sg form and the 2sg imperative.
(40) Greek aspect
Aspect
Tense Imperfective Perfective
Non-past grafo grapso
Past egrafa egrapsa
Future tha grafo tha grapso
Imperative grafe grapse
Students of Greek all agree that this aspectual distinction is inection.
On the other hand, there are languages in which aspectual morphology is aligned
more with derivation. An example of a language with rich aspectual/Aktionsart mor-
phology is the Tungusic language Udihe (Nikolaeva and Tolskaya, 2001). Verbs can
take sufxes with the meanings of durative, semelfactive, imperfective, distributive
(plural subjects acting, or subject acting several times on an object), diversative (mo-
tion in several directions), and experiential (action occurred at least once in the past),
among others. Some of these sufxes are very productive and essentially unrestric-
ted, for instance the directive, meaning essentially to go and VERB. Their linear
order is occasionally determined by semantic scope, but mostly it is dened by a mor-
phological template: there are ve sufx zones into which the different derivational
markers fall, including the aspect markers. These are listed in (41).
(41) I comitative, decausative
II durative, semelfactive, singulative
III imperfective, distributive, diversative
IV directive
V other modal: experiential, reciprocal, passive, causative
Nikolaeva and Tolskaya (2001) explicitly claim that this morphology is deriva-
tional. For one thing, the morphology is lexically restricted, unlike the inectional
tenseaspectmood categories. A second justication comes from the morphosyntax
of sentence negation. Udihe expresses negation using a negative auxiliary together
with the bare stem form of the main verb. The negative auxiliary is inected fully for
verbal features, including present, past, and future tense, perfect aspect, permissive,
imperative, subjunctive, and conditional moods, and various non-nite forms (parti-
ciples, innitives, and others). The negative auxiliary inects for all these categories.
The crucial point is that the Aktionsart sufxes remain on the lexical verb and are not
marked on the negative auxiliary, as seen in (42) (Nikolaeva and Tolskaya, 2001: 287).
(42) Eme-gi-se-mi-de ei eme-gi
come-regr-exp-inf-foc neg come-regr
He had to return but didnt return.
The implication of Nikolaeva and Tolskayas descriptive decision is that the Aktion-
sart categories, however transparent and productive they may be, give rise to novel
lexemes. Thus, we shouldnt, strictly speaking, talk of the comitative/imperfective/
directive/. . . form of a verb but rather the comitative/imperfective/directive/. . .
lexeme derived from verb.
Although the negation criterion seems to hold up remarkably well in Udihe, it is
not so easy to apply such a diagnostic in other languages with similar structure. For
instance, Finnish also has a wealth of Aktionsart sufxes, and it expresses negation
using a special negative auxiliary. That auxiliary takes on person/number agreements,
just as in Udihe, but it only inects in the present-tense form (better, in the default,
unmarked-tense form). This means that inectional categories such as past tense, and
conditional and potential mood, appear on the lexical verb, not the negative auxiliary,
in Finnish. However, in other respects the Aktionsart morphology is rather similar to
that of Udihe in overall structure, in the sense that it is expressed by a variety of
sufxes which occur relatively close to the verb stem. If we are prepared to claim that
aspect is a purely derivational category in Udihe, we might, therefore, be obliged to
concede that it is an inherent inectional category in the case of Finnish, and hence
closer in kind to the aspectual system of Greek.
Finally, I cite a case of a category in Hungarian which has in the past been described
as a derivational category (largely on the grounds that it corresponds semantically to
a derivational category in other European languages, I suspect), but which has to be
regarded as more like an inectional category. Many languages code modal notions
in the verbal paradigm, with moods generally labelled potential, necessitive, and
the like, and having translation equivalents of the form perhaps X or it must be that
X. Such forms are generally treated as expressing so-called root or logical modal-
ity, that is, the equivalent of the logicians it is possibly/necessarily the case that. In
addition, many languages have verb morphology which conveys deontic and/or epi-
stemic modal notions such as ability, capability, and permission. A case in point is
the possibility/permission verb sufx -hAt in Hungarian (Kenesei et al., 1998: 359): t
sit, thet can/may hit, ll stand, llhat can/may stand. It is very regular and pro-
ductive, and its semantics is very transparent. The regularity/productivity is a sign of
inectional status, but the fact that the morphology brings with it an unambiguous
semantic predicate makes it look more like derivation (though admittedly the mean-
ing added is often found as a grammaticalized functional feature cross-linguistically).
Kenesei et al. remark that the sufx is generally regarded as a derivational afx, al-
though it can only occur if the verb is nite. . . . In other words, since in contrast to
other deverbal afxes it does not form bases for further derivation . . . , it is an inec-
tional rather than a derivational ending. Bartos (2000: 716f.) is even more explicit in
defending an inectional analysis of -hAt. Clearly, the hAt sufx is a prime candidate,
both formally and semantically, for inherent inection.
3.4.3 Semantically contentful inection

I have presented a number of instances of morpholexical categories which could
plausibly be analysed as inherent inection, in the sense of formally inherent in-
ection which adds a predictable semantic predicate to the semantic representation
of the lexeme. However, there are a number of problems getting such a distinc-
tion to work properly. I shall argue that the correct way to look at such cases
is against the background of the model of lexical representations sketched in the
previous chapter. The problem posed by such constructions is the familiar one:
partial and gradient grammaticalization results in situations in which one and the
same formative may largely retain its original conceptual meaning or may have
that meaning entirely bleached, so that the formative comes to express a purely
morphosyntactic property, but at the same time the formative may have interme-
diate usages in which the original meaning is maintained only partially or only
in a rather abstract form. The problem with simple dichotomies such as that
implied by the contextual/inherent distinction is that partially grammaticalized con-
structions cut across them. The problem is not limited to morphology, of course.
Exactly the same problem is encountered with function words which have not been
morphologized.
Some of the examples already discussed illustrate the difculties quite well. Re-
turning to Hungarian, when we look in more detail at that languages case system
we note that there are accusative and dative cases which behave in nearly all re-
spects just like the other cases. However, its not possible to provide a semantic
representation for either of these cases. They are used with a variety of functions,
but, as one would expect given their names, their primary uses are to realize dir-
ect and indirect objects respectively. Therefore, although they are formally inherent
inections (they still mark nouns) they are not semantically inherent. Instead, we
have to regard them as contextual inections, whose distribution is governed by
syntax.
Matters are made more complex by the fact that some local cases are selected
by grammatical contexts. For instance, there is a large class of what I call pseudo-
postpositions, derived originally from nouns, which have the same kinds of function
as genuine postpositions in Hungarian but dont have the same morphosyntax. True
postpositions, for instance, select nouns in the nominative (or unmarked case) form,
have to be strictly adjacent to the nouns they take as complements, and have to
be repeated after demonstratives, and so on. The pseudo-postpositions, however,
show none of these properties (Spencer, 2008a). On the contrary, they select nouns
marked in some specic case form, typically the superessive form, but also other
cases such as the ablative, adessive, and allative (Kenesei et al., 1998: 33841). In
other words, the pseudo-postpositions exhibit case government, and the expression
of case is therefore determined by the morphosyntax, not by a choice the speaker
can exercise. This means that case selection in these constructions is an instance of
contextual inection.12
Another way in which semantically interpretable case marking can appear to be
contextual inection is when attributive modiers apparently agree in case with their
heads. Now, its far from clear whether we should really treat such phenomena as
agreement proper (Corbett, 2006: 133). The reason Corbett gives is that case itself is a
contextual feature (of noun phrases), being imposed by the construction type (nom-
inative/ergative for the subject, accusative for the object, oblique case of some kind
for the complement of a preposition, and so on). Corbett has in mind here those cases
which have a grammatical function rather than the purely semantic cases of the kind
illustrated by Hungarian -knt or by the locational cases. For semantic cases of that
sort its far from clear in what sense such a case could be said to be imposed extern-
ally. And if, as in Finnish or Estonian, those semantic cases have to be marked on all
the nouns modiers, then Corbetts objections to the notion of case agreement are
somewhat weaker. Evans (2003) argues that the multiple case marking found in Ka-
yardild, for instance, satises enough of the canonical properties of agreement to be
considered a form of agreement. If such a case is reliably associated with some spatial
meaning and also triggers (perhaps not-quite-canonical) agreement, then we have to
admit that the case is both contextual and inherent inection at the same time.
Case can equally constitute a poor exemplar of inherent inection when the prop-
erty of inherence is violated, that is, when the case morphology is found on word
classes other than nouns. Typically, this happens in languages where case mor-
phology is added to verbs to create adverbial forms. Sometimes the verb is overtly
nominalized, in which case we can still perhaps regard case as an inherently nom-
inal property. In other instances, however, the case morphology is added to a verb
form that shows no signs of being other than a verb morphologically, in which case
we can hardly speak of case as being inherently nominal. Chukchi is an example of
this. If we are interested in applying labels to morphological processes, we would
have to say that semantically transparent case marking of nouns in Chukchi is in-
herent inection, while the case marking of verbs to give forms expressing meanings
such as because S, after S, while S, and so on was some other type of inection
(though not contextual inection). We could, if we wished, still regard adverbial uses
of case morphology with verbs as semantically transparent, say, by invoking afxal
polysemy/homonymy. Thus, the common cross-linguistic use of a locative, inessive,
or other case to mean while doing could be treated by saying that there is a poly-
semous/homonymous afx which means in when attached to a noun and while
12 It is also worth pointing out that the contextual/inherent distinction should not be limited to
inectional morphology. For instance, effectively the same contrast is found between the selection of gram-
matical vs meaningful prepositions such as of /off, by as a passive agent marker as opposed to a meaningful
preposition, to as an indirect object marker as opposed to a directional preposition, and so on. One might
also contrast the meaningless passive auxiliary be with the (meaningful) modal auxiliaries in English.
when attached to a verb. A somewhat more problematical interaction between in-

ectional meaning and case marking arises with the grammaticalization of case usage,
such as when certain predicates select cases other than the structural cases normally
associated with verbal direct arguments. Again, the problem is not restricted to gram-
maticalized or lexicalized case selection, of course. Exactly the same question arises
over the meaning/function of English prepositions. The word on has a reasonably
clear spatial meaning, but what is the relationship between the on of on the table
and the on of rely on ones friends?
Returning to the question of aspect marking on verbs, the Slavic languages are
famous for their grammaticalized aspect distinction. Thus, Russian verbs appear in
either the imperfective or the perfective aspect. A small number of simplex (non-
prexed) imperfective verbs have corresponding perfectives with a lexically selected
prex: delat do (ipfv) s-delat do (pfv), pisat write (ipfv) na-pisat write
(pfv), pit drink (ipfv) vy-pit drink (pfv), and many others. Most Russian verbs
are prexed, and as such they are generally telic in their meaning, and by default
perfective in aspect (cf. Brecht, 1985). Such verbs form their corresponding imper-
fectives morphologically (usually by sufxing -yv/-iv immediately after the verb root):
pere-delat redo (pfv) pere-del-yv-at redo (ipfv), za-pisat note down (pfv)
za-pis-yv-at note down (ipfv).
One of the more contentious issues in Russian linguistics is whether the imper-
fective perfective aspectual pairing should be regarded as properly inectional or
properly derivational. Even more contentious is the question of what the two as-
pects mean, and how they contribute to the meaning of the clause as a whole. The
most consistent view is to say that the aspectual pairs are forms of a single lexeme
(see Zaliznjak and melv, 1997, for a summary of the arguments, and Forsyth, 1970,
Smith, 1997, for an English-language summary of the basic issues). This means that
the aspectual alternation is not derivational. If it is inectional, then it certainly isnt
canonical inection. If Slavic aspect is semantically inherent inection, then its very
unclear what meaning is determined by aspectual choice. Indeed, that is the clas-
sic problem in Slavic linguistics, of trying to determine a Gesamtbedeutung for the
aspects. The best that one can say about such efforts is that they are misguided.
Aspect has a default interpretation (probably best characterized as completed vs
not-completed), but aspectual choice itself depends on a host of syntactic, semantic,
pragmatic, and lexical factors.
Aspect is therefore a grammaticalized (obligatory) property of verbs which con-
tributes in highly context-sensitive ways to the overall meaning of the clause and is
marked morphologically on the lexical verb. In some instances, speakers can exercise
a choice over which aspect to use in order to express meanings such as completed
action or habitual action, or in order to express nuances of illocutionary force, such
as when aspect choice is used in Russian to make an imperative more or less per-
emptory. In other cases, aspect choice is determined by the linguistic context, such
as when certain phrasal verbs (with meanings such as begin) obligatorily take im-
perfective aspect. Rather than saying that aspect represents an instance of inherent
or contextual inection, therefore, what we actually have to say is that in some uses
aspect is more or less inherent, and in other uses it is more or less contextual.
I conclude that, although the contextual/inherent distinction is useful in some
cases, its clearly an oversimplication to divide inection into those types which are
purely contextual and those which are purely inherent. The important point about
these types is that there is no obvious way of stating what kinds of semantic rela-
tions there can be between different inected forms of a lexeme. In the general case
the semantic contribution of an inected form is the result of a complex interac-
tion between various meaning-bearing aspects of the construction as a whole, with
the two poles of the contribution of an inection being no semantic contribution
(contextual inection) and uniquely denable semantic contribution which is not
determined elsewhere in the phrase (purely inherent inection); most types occupy
some middle ground.
Now, one approach to this issue might be to draw a strict line between inection
and derivation by denying that any kind of morphology is able to add a semantic
predicate unless it also changes the lexemic index, in other words, unless it creates a
new lexeme and is hence derivational. Transparent inection such as Hungarian pos-
sibilitive -hAt would then be treated as realizing a feature, say, [Mood:possibilitive],
which is interpreted, perhaps at the phrasal or clausal level, by a trivial feature in-
terpretation rule which adds the appropriate predicate to the verb semantics. As we
will see in Section 6.4 there is a sense in which this is precisely what the GPF model
actually claims. However, the model retains the exibility to express the idea that an
inection, triggered by a morphosyntactic property label or feature value, can de-
termine a word form (by the operation of inferentialrealizational rules), and at the
same time can add a semantic predicate to the lexical representation of the predicate.
This is semantically contentful inection. But inections (like functional elements
generally) are frequently polysemous. Therefore, the model also has to retain the ex-
ibility to allow an inected form to express more than one meaning, or to express no
additional meaning at all, so that the distribution of that word form in that usage is
dened solely by appeal to the feature sets that the word form realizes.
3.5 Argument-structure operations

Many languages have a set of morphological devices which alter the argument
structure of a verb (such operations are often discussed under the rubric of voice
alternations or argument-structure alternations). In some cases the valency of the
verb is increased (causatives, some applicative constructions), while in other cases
the valency is decreased (passives, decausatives, middles). In other constructions the
verb may effectively lose an argument because that argument is anaphorically bound
by the valency marker. This occurs in reexive and reciprocal alternations. Textbook
summaries of the morphosyntax of argument-structure alternations can be found in
Kroeger (2004) and Spencer (1991), and further examples of the morphology of such
alternations is also given in Katamba and Stonham (2006).
In this section I shall rst outline, sometimes very schematically, the common-
est types of argument-structure alternation, dividing these broadly into valency-
decreasing and valency-increasing. I shall treat the terms valency and argument
structure as broadly synonymous, though the reader should be aware that authors
often distinguish two distinct notions (for instance treating the argument structure
as a property of the lexical or grammatical predicate itself, while reserving valency for
the structure of the clause which that predicate heads).
Finally, I discuss the vexed question of precisely what sort of lexical relatedness is
implied by such constructions. I shall devote a fair amount of space to the discussion
of these alternations because, as far as I can tell, there has been virtually no debate
in the literature as to the status of argument-structure alternations with regard to the
structure of the lexicon. Put crudely, it is quite unclear whether in a given language
or in a given grammatical description of a language, we are supposed to take a caus-
ative, an applicative, or a stative verb form as a new lexeme or as a form of the base
lexeme. In many descriptions, all such argument-structure alternations are labelled
as derivational (no doubt on the grounds that their morphological expression looks
different from uncontroversial instances of inection), but in general this is done
without any justication. If such alternations are derivational, then this means that
the morphology creates new lexemes (unless the term derivational is being used in
some special new sense, say, as a synonym for Booijs term inherent inection). But
in practice, of course, authors seldom take that logical step, and passives, antipassives,
causatives, applicatives, and the like are generally treated as forms of a verb in some
sense. Yet, clearly, any model of lexical relatedness pretending to completeness and
coherence has to address the question of what sort of lexical relatedness is induced
by argument-structure alternations.
Some languages invest in morphologically expressed argument-structure alter-
nations more than others. To begin with, I shall present some basic examples from
Bantu, mainly Swahili, so that we can gain an impression of a typical language with
a rich array of argument-structure alternations. One type of alternation that has at-
tracted considerable interest is the causative construction. Research over the last three
decades has revealed just how complex causatives can be, and just how many different
ways there are of mapping semantic, syntactic, and morphological representations to
each. I shall therefore dwell on that set of alternations, focusing on the especially
rich set of causative constructions found in Japanese (as described in Matsumoto,
1996, 2000). I shall base the discussion principally on research conducted within the
LFG framework, mainly because it is the framework I am most familiar with and
because argument-structure alternations have been a particular focus of research in
that framework, but partly because the LFG model has remained fairly robust over
time, and so it is easier to compare analyses across time than is the case in, say, the
Government-Binding/Minimalist family of models.
3.5.1 Valency-decreasing operations

Bantu languages generally have a series of morphologically expressed argument-
structure alternations, typically including causative, applicative, reciprocal, and pass-
ive, together with a kind of stative intransitivizing alternation (often called the neut-
ral or middle form). The alternations are expressed by sufxes, often called verbal
extensions or derivational extensions, attached to a basic verb root or stem and fol-
lowed typically by a closing inectional element called the nal vowel. The resulting
forms are therefore clearly word forms: the extensions are sufxes, not clitics. Swahili
is typical in that its verbs accept a wide range of sufxes to form new voices or new
lexemes. The standard Bantu pattern is for verbs to appear in the causative, applic-
ative (applied), passive, and reciprocal forms (these terms will be explained later).
I shall illustrate using examples from Swahili, based mainly on Ashton (1944).
Swahili has a form which is generally referred to as a passive, formed by a sufx
-w (-u). Hence, from pika cook we have pikwa be cooked, and from funga shut,
we have fungwa be shut. The Swahili passive permits expression of the suppressed
external argument, as in (43).
(43) Chakula kilipikwa na mwanamke yule

food pst.cook.pass by woman that
The food was cooked by that woman.
In addition, we nd a class of derivates known as stative verbs formed regularly by

sufxation of -k, illustrated in (44) (Wilson, 1985: 63, Ashton, 1944: 2268):
(44) vunja break vunjika be broken

pasua crack pasuka be cracked
funga shut fungika be shut
fungua open funguka be opened
Stative verbs refer to a resultant state without any indication of an agent, as seen in
(45, 46) (Ashton, 1944: 229/362; Ashtons English glosses).
(45) Sikuvunja kikombe hiki, kimevunjika tu

neg.I.broke cup this broke.stat just
I didnt break this cup; it merely broke. (lit. it has become broken)
(46) Sikufunga mlango, umefungika tu.

neg.I.shut door shut.stat just
I didnt shut the door, it shut of itself. (lit. it has become shut)
The difference between mlango ulifungwa The door was shut (passive) and mlango
umefungika The door is shut is essentially the same as in the English translations:
the passive refers to an event; the stative refers to a state.
Very intriguingly, the stative form is associated with a potential meaning in ad-
dition to the simple intransitive meaning illustrated so far. Thus, the stems fungika
and funguka can also mean be closable and be openable, respectively. This is re-
miniscent of the meaning of the English middle (this book reads easily it is easy
to read this book). The stative construction is also a productive part of the morpho-
a closely related language. Mchombo (1998: 509) lists the following
logy of Chichewa,
differences between the stative and passive constructions:
The stative does not allow the expression of an agent.
The passive applies to predicates with any semantic roles, whereas the stative is
essentially restricted to canonically transitive predicates with agentive subjects
and patientive objects.
In Chichewa at least, the stative is highly restricted in the way that it can combine
with other valency-changing sufxes, and may show semantic idiosyncrasies
with those that it does combine with. The stative of an applicative is not possible,
while the applicative of a stative has a malefactive reading.
Mchombo makes one further interesting point about the stative, given what I shall
say below about the relationship between middle constructions and passive alter-
nations. The derived subject of a stative is more or less constrained to bear a patient
semantic role. This means that the derived stative predication will have the hallmarks
of an unaccusative construction (that is, a construction in which the intransitive
subject has properties expected of a direct object). Locative inversion is an un-
accusative diagnostic in Chichewa, and, unsurprisingly, passivized verbs undergo
locative inversion. In (47, 48), the numbers in the morpheme glosses represent noun
(gender) classes, sm denotes the subject agreement marker, and fv denotes the
nal vowel.13
(47) Pa chulu pa-na-phwny-dw- mngu
16.on 7.anthill 16.sm-pfv-smash-pass-fv 6.pumpkins
On the anthill some pumpkins got smashed.
Stative verbs, too, pass this test:
(48) Pa chulu pa-na-phwny-k- mngu
16.on 7.anthill 16.sm-pfv-smash-stat-fv 6.pumpkins
On the anthill some pumpkins lay smashed.
13 Example (48) is intriguing in the light of the fact that middle verbs in languages such as Dutch and
Russian fail unaccusativity tests (see example (72) in Section 3.5.3) and appear to be unergative predicates
(Ackema and Schoorlemmer, 1994).
The reciprocal14 has the meaning X and Y VERB each other. It is only, therefore,
possible with plural-referent subjects. Notice that the reciprocal is not the same (in
Bantu) as the reexive X VERBs self . The reexive construction is expressed by
choice of object pronominal prex (ji-) and has quite different morphosyntax from
the reciprocal. In (49) we see examples of Swahili reciprocals formed from simple
verbs as well as verbs bearing other valency sufxes:
(49) piga pigana

hit, strike ght
jua juana
know be mutually acquainted
imbia imbiana
sing to sing to one another
ngojea ngojeana
wait for wait for one another
pendeza pendezana
please please one another
shikama shikamana
be in a state of holding be in a state of holding together
ambata amatana
adhere to adhere together
fumuka fumukana
come undone disperse
3.5.2 Valency-increasing operations

The causative form of VERB has the meaning to cause, make, let, allow someone
to VERB something. In Bantu, it is formed by means of one of a number of sufxes
added to the verb root. In Swahili these include -isha/-esha, -iza/-eza (vowel harmony
variants), and -ya (which triggers a variety of morphophonological changes on nal
stem consonants):
(50) a. jaa to be full

Mtungi umejaa
pot be.full
The water-pot is full.
14 Ashton refers to this as the Associative form, not to be confused with the a-of-association construc-
tion (which Ashton calls the a-of-relationship).
b. jaza to ll
Ni-me-uja-za mtungi
3pl-pfv-be.full-caus water-pot
They have lled the water-pot.
(51) a. imba to sing

Watoto wanaimba
children sing
The children are singing.
b. imbisha to make, let sing
Mwalimu anawaimb-isha watoto
teacher sing-caus children
The teacher is giving the children a singing lesson.
(52) a. patana to be in agreement

Wamepatana
They are in agreement.
b. patanisha to reconcile
Kadhi amewapatan-isha mtu huyu na nduguye
judge agree-caus man this and brother
The judge has reconciled this man and his brother.
Ashton (1944: 233) gives a number of examples of causatives which have permissive
as well as compulsive interpretations.
Applicatives (Prepositional or Applied forms in Ashtons terminology, p. 217)
have a variety of interpretations.
Beneciary:
(53) a. Watoto wa-li-tu-imb-i-a nyimbo

2.children 2.sm-pst-om.1pl-sing-appl-fv songs
The children sang songs to us.
b. Ni-ku-pik-i-e chakula?
1sg.sm-2sg.om-cook-appl-fv food
Shall I cook some food for you?
Other types of complement:
(54) Chura alimkasirik-i-a mjusi

frog angry-appl-fv lizard
The frog was angry with the lizard.
Motion towards:
(55) Walipopand-i-a ile mibuyu . . .

they.climbed-appl-fv those.ones baobabs
When they climbed up the baobabs . . .
(56) Nyani mmoja alimwangush-i-a Pwanali buyu bichi la kichwa

baboon one dropped-appl-fv Pwanali baobab green assoc fruit
One baboon dropped a green baobab fruit on Pwanalis head.
Purpose with innitive:
(57) Nataka kisu cha ku-kat-i-a nyama

I.want knife assoc inf-cut-appl-fv meat
I want a knife for cutting meat.
Finality/completeness:
(58) Itup-i-e mbali

throw-appl-fv right away
Throw them right away.
Combinations with passive:
(59) Hamisi a-li-ni-pik-i-a chakula

1.Hamisi 1.sm-pst-1sg.om-cook-appl-fv food
Hamisi cooked me some food.
(60) Ni-li-pik-iw-a chakula na Hamisi

1sg.sm-pst-cook-pass-fv food by Hamisi
Food was cooked for me by Hamisi/I had food cooked for me by Hamisi.
3.5.3 Argument-structure operations as a form of lexical relatedness

In this section I address the central question which argument-structure alternations
pose for any model of lexical relatedness: what kind of lexical relatedness do they
represent? Descriptive practice with regards to argument-structure alternations is
variable. Sometimes the alternation is described overtly as inectional or derivational
(my impression is that the tendency is to treat these alternations as derivational), but
generally without any real motivation or even discussion (and the matter is often con-
fused by the fact that in descriptive grammars the alternations tend to be described
in the chapter on regular verb morphology, and not in the chapter on deverbal deri-
vation, or derivational morphology generally). In other cases the alternation is given
a neutral term, giving theimpression that the author may not regard the alternation
as either inectional or derivational (which in many cases is the most coherent de-
scriptive strategy, of course). The problem is compounded by the fact that one and
the same morphological form of a verb may behave like an inectional form in some
uses and like a derivational form in other uses. (I shall illustrate this below with a
brief discussion of the Russian reexive construction.)
Earlier I described the Bantu system of verbal extensions as exemplied in Swahili.
One language-internal reason for treating the extensions as derivational is that most
of the inectional morphology on a Bantu verb is prexal, in the form of pro-
nominal afxes which cross-reference arguments (including reexive arguments),
tenseaspect markers of various kinds, and usually a negation prex. In the case of
the reciprocal extension there is syntactic evidence from Chichewa to distinguish the
construction from the semantically very similar construction with the reexive pro-
nominal prex (Mchombo, 1993). However, from a cross-linguistic perspective it may
seem a little odd to treat a completely transparent and productive passive construc-
tion as a kind of derivational morphology. Do we really want to say that the passive
form of a Swahili verb is a derived lexeme? If so, then we certainly shouldnt describe
it as the passive form of the verb! The difculty is that the traditional diagnostics for
inection and derivation yield equivocal answers even with passive constructions, es-
pecially when the passive forms part of a series of alternations which have a greater
number of derivational characteristics.
Now, in the case of the passive family of constructions, it is sometimes obvious that
we must treat the alternation as inection simply because of the way the morphology
of the passive is integrated into the rest of the inectional system. This can be seen
from Latin, for instance, where the passive conjugation inections cumulate with
other categories such as tense, mood, aspect, and person/number agreement.
(61) Latin passive conjugation (fragment) amo love
Present indicative Future indicative

Active Passive Active Passive
1sg amo amor amabo amabor
2sg amas amaris amabis amaberis
3sg amat amatur amabit amabitur
1pl amamus amamur amabimus amabimur
2pl amatis amamini amabitis amabimini
3pl amant amantur amabunt amabuntur
2sg imperative Innitive
Active Passive Active Passive
ama amare amare amari
A similar situation arises with Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Modern Greek, as well as
many non-Indo-European languages. It is difcult to imagine anyone proposing that
there are two distinct verb lexemes amo to love and amor to be loved.15
In other cases we may be able to nd evidence of a more subtle kind that the passive
construction is different from other valency alternations. The Northern Tungusic
language, Udihe, has an array of valency alternations. Nikolaeva and Tolskaya (2001:
299f.) distinguish reciprocal, causative, decausative, comitative,16 and passive. The
decausative is not productive, but the reciprocal, causative, and passive appear to
be very productive. The main restrictions appear to be semantic: the reciprocal is
fully productive only with transitive verbs with human subjects, for instance, not a
surprising restriction. (Nikolaeva and Tolskaya, 2001: 301 specically comment on
the high productivity of the principal causative sufx, -wAn.)
These alternations are specically discussed under the heading of verb derivation.
However, the passive alternation is somewhat anomalous in this regard. The other
valency alternations respect the negation diagnostic discussed in the previous sec-
tion: valency markers are not found on the negation auxiliary, but remain on the
lexical verb in negative constructions (see the examples cited in Nikolaeva and Tol-
skaya, 2001: 288). This is expected if the valency alternation is regarded as essentially
a way of creating a new verb rather than inecting a given verb lexeme. However, the
passive construction (Nikolaeva and Tolskaya, 2001: 287) does not behave like the
other alternations. Nikolaeva and Tolskaya (2001: 820) cite examples (62a) and (62b)
of negated passives.
(62) a. Ja: xaba-wa-ni e-u-zeAe umi

cow milk-acc-2sg neg-pass-fut_ptcp drink
One shouldnt drink the milk.
b. Utemi mo:ktoi o:ktoi do-ni-ni uta-wa e-u-ji
therefore bushes grass inside-dat-3sg that-acc neg-pass-prs_ptcp
ise
see
Therefore it cant be seen in the bushes and grass.
In these examples, we can see that it is the negative auxiliary e which is marked
for passive voice sufx -u: e-u(-zeAe), e-u(-ji). This suggests that the passive voice
is closer to being inectional than derivational (note that I say closer to: there is
15 However, we must be a little cautious here. As I mentioned in Section 3.2 it is not uncommon to nd
derivational relationships realized by means of conversion with accompanying shift in inectional class.
But the Latin case is clearly not of this kind, if only because Latin verbs already fall into inectional classes,
each of which has an activepassive paradigm.
16 With the meaning do something together, a meaning which is in some ways closer to an aspectual
meaning, rather like the distributive.
no sense in which such data given us an unequivocal answer to the inection or

derivation? conundrum). The decision to treat valency alternations as derivational
is motivated for Udihe by a clear difference in morphosyntactic behaviour, and in
many respects this makes the description more practical for the general user of the
grammar. However, there is an important sense in which such decisions are arbitrary,
forced on grammarians by social convention rather than by descriptive or theoretical
exigency. Nikolaeva and Tolskaya could equally have described the passive as, say,
pseudo-inectional and the other valency alternants as pseudo-derivational, draw-
ing a four-way distinction between clear-cut inection and derivation, and the two
less clear categories.
Turkish has a very similar verb system to Udihe, in the sense that it has a rich in-
ectional system and an even richer set of aspectual and valency-changing sufxes. It
lacks the Udihe negation auxiliary, however. Instead, negation is expressed by means
of an (inectional) sufx. In the descriptive grammar of Gksel and Kerslake (2005)
tenseaspectmodality and subject agreement are treated as inectional, but so are
negation and the various valency markers (voice sufxes), causative, passive, reex-
ive, and reciprocal. On the other hand, Lewis (1967: 143) doesnt draw a distinction
between inectional forms and derivation in his description of the same facts (he
refers to the valency alternations in terms of an extended stem, a term somewhat
reminiscent of that used by Bantuists). Both these grammars of Turkish provide the
sort of information a grammar should provide. The choice to label the valency al-
ternations as inection, derivation, or some special subcategory such as voice, or not
to provide any particular label has no real effect on the value of the description.
Occasionally we can nd evidence that an alternation in valency is semantically
driven and not really a grammatical relationship at all. This is often found with
so-called middle alternations, for instance, in contrast to the properly grammatical
passive alternation. In English, the middle alternation is illustrated by examples such
as (63).
(63) a. This page prints well

b. Pine saws easily
c. The mince pies sold like hot cakes
This alternation is restricted lexically and in various other ways, both in English
and in various other European languages (Fagan, 1992). Ackema and Schoorlem-
mer (1994) provide a number of interesting arguments to support the view that in
Dutch and English the middle alternation is really an operation over semantic repres-
entations rather than over argument-structure representations, whereas the passive
alternation is dened over argument-structure representations. For instance, middles
cannot express the logical subject by means of a by-phrase (*The page prints easily
by children/by any printer), they cannot control into a purposive clause (*Pine saws
easily in order to make tables), and they cannot combine with agent-oriented adverbi-
als (*This book reads carefully).
Sadler and Spencer (1998: 221f.) make appeal to the passive/middle distinction and
argue that it represents a more general bifurcation of such processes, as reected
in the distinction made in Lexical Functional Grammar between morphosyntactic
operations, such as passive, which operate over argument-structure representations,
and morphosemantic operations, such as middle, which operate over semantic-
conceptual representations and therefore dene derivational relations. The only
complicating factor in the case of alternations such as the middle is that the out-
put lexeme is of the same lexical category as the input. The leading idea behind
the distinction between morphosyntactic and morphosemantic operations is that
the argument-structure effects of morphosemantic operations are simply side ef-
fects of the more general change in semantic representation, in just the same way
that category-changing derivational processes induce a change in argument struc-
ture in their outputs. For instance, we might wish to give the verb print the semantic
representation shown in (64) (roughly following Jackendoff, 1990).
(64) [Event print(printer, printed)]
In its middle use print denotes a state of an object, y, such that some arbitrary person
is able to print y. This corresponds to a semantic representation along the lines of
(65), where ArbPers(x) is intended to denote a quantier with the interpretation
for an arbitrary or generic person x:
(65) [Event ArbPers(x)[able(x, print(x, thing-printed))]]
The base subject (or agent) argument of print now corresponds to a bound variable,
so that the predicate is effectively one-place, and its sole argument is the thing-
printed argument (or patient). The derived verb is therefore intransitive, denoting
a state of the thing printed (roughly speaking, a translation equivalent of be print-
able). Indeed, the semantic representation in (65) is akin to a nite-verb version of
the representation of the derived adjective printable (which would be something
along the lines of [Property ArbPers(x)[able(x, print(x, thing-printed))]]).
The middle contrasts with the passive alternation. If we follow, among many oth-
ers, Grimshaw (1990), Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1998), and Zubizarreta (1987),
and distinguish an argument-structure representation from a semantic-conceptual
representation, then we might say that the argument-structure representation of
print is something like (66), where arg1 corresponds to the argument which nor-
mally gets mapped to the subject grammatical relation and arg2 is the argument
which normally gets mapped to the object grammatical relation.
(66) printarg1, arg2

The passive alternation operates over such argument-structure representations to

suppress the rst argument, in such a way that it is no longer available to be
mapped to the subject position (though it may be mapped to an appropriate oblique
grammatical relation such as by the children). This can be schematized as in (67).
(67) PASSIVE(printarg1, arg2 print(arg1), arg2
General principles of syntax treat the argument structure in (67) as intransitiv-

ized, and hence map the sole remaining obligatory argument, arg2, to the subject
grammatical relation. The passive operation applies over argument-structure repres-
entations and not over semantic-conceptual representations, and so it is very general
and essentially unrestricted, unlike the middle alternation.
Where the alternation is very productive and lexically unrestricted (or at least not
subject to idiosyncratic restrictions), we are wont to speak of the causative/passive
form of a verb, suggesting that were are dealing with a species of inection. How-
ever, causatives in particular satisfy the semantic criterion for derivation, in that they
involve the addition of a semantic predicate.17
Productive and regular valency alternations such as the Udihe causative, passive,
and reciprocal pose the same kind of problem for the inection/derivation distinc-
tion as inherent inection: the output of the alternation appears to be a form of the
base lexeme (and hence we tend to talk about the causative form of verb V). How-
ever, causative constructions clearly add a semantic predicate (indeed, they also add
a semantic participant, the causer role).
The passive alternation in many languages is homophonous with a reexive con-
struction. In Russian the passive of an imperfective verb form is expressed by means
of the reexive construction (the perfective passive is expressed periphrastically, with
a be-auxiliary and the passive participle). The reexive is an inected verb form in
Russian, so that the imperfective passive is effectively an inectional category. The re-
exive is formed by sufxing -sja/-s to the end of a verb form, and its use is illustrated
in (68).
(68) Takie doma obycno strojat-sja innostrannymi rabocimi

such houses usual build.ipfv-refl foreign workers.ins
Such houses are usually built by foreign workers.
In this example the logical subject of build is expressed by an optional adjunct phrase
in the instrumental case. Example (68) is synonymous with the active voice (69).
17 By playing fast and loose with the term predicate we can treat passive alternations as a kind of
derivation, by dening a passive predicate which has the effect of suppressing the subject role of a verbs
argument structure (Manning, 1996). In Chapter 7 I develop the proposal for modelling transpositions in
an LFG-type framework by deploying the notion of an asemantic f-structure predicate.
(69) Takie doma obycno stroj-at innostrannye rabocie

such houses usual build-3pl foreign workers.nom
(It is) foreign workers (that) usually build such houses.
Russian grammatical handbooks, various Academy of Science grammars, and spe-

cialist monographs on Slavic valency such as Janko-Trinickaja (1962) and Gerritsen
(1990) list a large number of different ways in which the reexive construction in -sja
is used, including, of course, the imperfective passive construction. Interestingly, as
is pointed out in Spencer and Zaretskaya (2001), one construction which has gone
largely unnoticed is the translation equivalent of the middle construction familiar
from English, French, Dutch, German, and a variety of other languages:
(70) ta kniga legko citaet-sja

this book easily reads-refl
This book reads easily.
This construction passes all the standard tests for middles rather than passives. Pass-
ive predications are generally assumed to be unaccusative, but the reexive middles
behave like unergative predicates, just like their English and Dutch translation equi-
valents (cf. Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994)). Ordinary passives in Russian pass the
standard unaccusativity test, in that they can take genitive subjects under negation:
(71) Nikak-ix knig zdes ne citaetsja

no-gen.pl book.gen.pl here neg read.refl
No books are read here. [passive]
Middles fail this unaccusativity test, suggesting they are unergative:
(72) * Nikak-ix knig legko ne citaetsja

no-gen.pl book.gen.pl easily neg read.refl
Intended: No books read easily. [middle]
Reexive passives can be nominalized, just like non-reexive verbs (though the
reexive-passive morphology isnt retained). For instance, the regularly formed nom-
inal rasprostranenie dispersal can correspond either to the transitive (causative)
verb form rasprostranit or to the intransitive (decausative) form rasprostranitsja.
However, stative verbs generally cant be nominalized in Russian using the normal
deverbal action nominal sufxes (the default sufxes for productive deverbal nomi-
nalization being -anie/-enie and -tie depending on verb class, Spencer and Zaretskaya,
1998a). This is illustrated in (73).
(73) a. Takie kryki s trudom otkryvajut-sja

such lids with difculty open-refl
Such lids open with difculty
b. * legkoe otkrytie/otkryvanie takix kryek

easy open.nmlz of.such lids
c. * zatrudnitelnoe otkrytie/otkryvanie takix kryek
difcult open.nmlz of.such lids
The only way to nominalize a middle construction is to take the present passive par-
ticiple in -em and nominalize that using the default deadjectival nominalizing sufx
-ost :
(74) otkryva-em-ost takix kryek

open-prs_pass_ptcp-nmlz of.such lids
the openability of such lids
Thus, the Russian reexive middle is just like its counterpart in other European
languages. It satises all the properties of an alternation which is dened purely at
the level of semantic representation, and hence should be regarded as a derivational
relationship. The reexive middle verb therefore has to be analysed as a different
lexeme from the base lexeme. And yet the reexive middle is effectively just one of a
wide variety of uses of the passive of the reexive construction, most of which are oth-
erwise to be treated as inectional (broadly speaking). Cases such as this, in which a
morphosyntactic category turns out to be systematically homophonous to a morpho-
semantic category, have not been studied in any detail from the vantage point of the
organization of the lexicon. What is generally said about such cases is that there is a
fully general and productive relationship, say, a process of causativization, and that
there are lexicalized forms of this. But the middle use of the reexive passive isnt
really a lexicalization of individual verbs. Rather, its a type of valency alternation in
its own right, but one dened over complete semantic representations and not over
argument structures, even though its parent construction is an argument-structure
relationship which produces forms of a lexeme.
Finally, the passive alternation is frequently expressed as a periphrasis. By peri-
phrasis I mean specically a construction involving two or more syntactic terminals
(syntactic words) which expresses a purely grammatical property, that is, a property
which would be inectional if it were expressed morphologically. In this respect we
must draw a distinction between a genuine periphrasis, as opposed to what is simply
an independently motivated syntactic construction which happens to have the same
effect as a passive. In a language such as English it makes no sense to think of the
periphrastic construction as derivational in any sense. If passive is a derivational cat-
egory in English, that means that the verb in a passive construction must instantiate
a new, derived lexeme (thats what derivation means). But if we commit ourselves to
the conclusion that The sandwich was eaten by the child instantiates a distinct verbal
lexeme from The child ate the sandwich, why is the perfect active The child has eaten
the sandwich not an example of a distinct lexeme, and hence derivational?
Note that it doesnt even make sense to think of the passive participle on its own as
derivational, because this would be tantamount to claiming that the whole construc-
tion is derivational. We may, of course, be more tempted to conclude that the passive
participle is derivational for other languages, in which the participle inects like an
adjective. But this too is likely to be a mistake, born of a failure to recognize that
passive participles are participles and hence transpositions, not genuine derivations.
Finally, its worth returning to the Bantu language group to ask how valency-
changing morphology sometimes ts into the wider sphere of lexical and morpho-
logical relatedness.
There are two questions of interest here. First, I shall consider the relationship
between two constructions which appear to be very closely related: the reciprocal
construction (one of the argument-structure alternations of Bantu realized by a
verbal extension) and the reexive object marker. Subject and object markers would
normally be taken to be a straightforward instance of contextual inectional (agree-
ment) morphology, and hence signicantly different from derivation. The second set
of cases I shall consider are Swahili verbal extensions that do not have any obvious
argument-structure implications, together with uses of existing argument-structure
morphology that is unrelated to argument structure as such.
Mchombo (1993) discusses an interesting difference in the syntactic behaviour of
reexives and reciprocals in the Bantu language Chichewa. In Chichewa the object
marker (OM) is optional, and Mchombo treats it as an agreement marker (unlike
the subject marker, SM, which is ambiguous in status between an agreement marker
and an incorporated argument/function). Reexives are realized by a prex dzi-
occupying the OM slot (where fv is the nal vowel):
(75) Mkngo u-na-dz-spul-a

3.lion 3.sm-pst-refl-bruise-fv
The lion bruised itself.
Mchombo argues that the direct object in a reexive construction is syntactically rep-
resented in a way that is not found with the reciprocal construction. This suggests
that the reexive OM really is a kind of agreement prex, whereas the reciprocal
construction is better thought of as a rearrangement of the argument structure of
the verb, with concomitant constraints on the semantic relation between the subject
argument and the object argument.
Mchombos evidence comes from ambiguities in comparative clauses. In (76)
the reexive gives rise to strict as well as sloppy identity readings, and also to a
comparative object (rather than subject) reading.
(76) Alenje -ma-dzi-nyz- kups asodzi

2.hunters 3.sm-hab-refl-despise-fv exceeding 2.shermen
(i) Sloppy identity reading:

The huntersi despise themselvesi more than the shermenj (despise
themselvesj )
(ii) Strict identity reading:
The huntersi despise themselvesi more than the shermenj (despise
themi )
(iii) Comparative object reading:
The huntersi despise themselvesi more than (the huntersi despise) the
shermenj
The existence of strict-identity and comparative-object-deletion readings points to

the presence of a syntactic argument (for Mchombo, in fact, an object) corresponding
to the reexive in the two clauses.
The behaviour of the reexive marker contrasts sharply with that of the reciprocal.
To see this, note its behaviour in comparative clauses. As seen in (77), the reciprocal
gives rise only to the sloppy identity reading.
(77) Alenje -ma-nyoz-n- kups asodzi

2.hunters 2.sm-hab-despise-recp-fv exceeding 2.shermen
The huntersi despise each otheri more than the shermenj (despise each
otherj /*themi )
This strongly suggests that the process involved does not identify the subject and ob-
ject roles in the syntax, in the way that the reexive OM does. Mchombo interprets
this to mean that the reciprocal construction is a (productive) semantic derivation
providing the verb predicate with a slightly altered semantic representation. How-
ever, the question remains whether it is best to regard the alternation as one which
obtains at the level of semantic representation (like true derivation) or at the level of
argument structure, on the interface between the purely semantic representation and
the syntactic representation. Given that the alternation does not add a semantic pre-
dicate as such, it would seem that the appropriate analysis is to say that the reciprocal
adds a constraint at the level of argument structure, specifying that the subject argu-
ment is plural and that the object argument is bound by the subject argument in the
manner of a reciprocal (however we ultimately choose to represent such a relation).
Ashton (1944: Chapter XXXV, p. 236) describes a number of other verbal exten-
sions in Swahili, by no means all of which can be thought of as argument-structure
alternations. These usages tend to be ignored in discussion of Bantu morphosyntax,
which generally concentrates on the extensions which give rise to typologically in-
teresting valency changes. The main types which Ashton distinguishes are the static,
the contactive, and the conversive. In addition, she discusses the role of some of the
extensions as effectively measures of the degree to which an event or result holds
(her augmentatives and subtractives: these are aspectual distinctions, not instances
of evaluative morphology). I discuss each type in turn.18
(78) Static -ma
funga tie, bind fungama be in a xed position

unga join ungama be joined
lowa be wet lowama be in a soaked condition
Notice that the sufx attaches to both to transitive (tie, join) and to intransitive
predicates (be wet).
Ashton notes that the -ma sufx is often followed by the reciprocal sufx -an, and
that, indeed, the combination -mana is more common than -ma on its own:
(79) Staticreciprocal combination -mana
fungama be in a xed position fungamana be interlaced

ungama be joined ungamana be joined together
This is interesting, in that the implied logical order of application of the two processes
has to be rst reciprocal, then stative (its not possible to have a reciprocal form of an
intransitive stative predicate). Such forms therefore violate the Mirror Principle.
The contactive sufx, -ta, is described as creating a verb of contact from a sim-
plex verb. As is clear from Ashtons glosses, the meanings of the resulting verb can
be highly lexicalized. I dont have information on how productive this extension is,
though presumably it is somewhat restricted lexically. The examples cited by Ashton
(p. 238) are:
(80) Contactive -ta
kama squeeze kamata take forcible hold of, arrest

fumba shut by bringing fumbata enclose with
things together hands or arms
kumba press against, shove kumbata hold in the hand
kokoa sweep rubbish kokota drag, haul
together
paka spread, lay on pakata take a child or thing
on knee, lap or shoulder
suka plait sokota twist, twine
with the ngers
18 Ashton also relegates presentation of the reciprocal construction (her associative construction) to
the chapter devoted to the other types of alternation, though not for any theoretical or analytical reason as
far as I can tell, but rather for pedagogical expedience.
okoa take out pots etc. okota pick up

from re with the ngers
Ashton also notes three examples which apparently lack a base: ambuta adhere to,
guruta smooth with a press, mangle clothes, and (go)gota strike, rap.
The Swahili conversive relation expresses essentially the same meaning as the
English reversative un-:
(81) Conversive (reversative) -u/-o
kunja fold kunjua unfold

kunja uso frown kunjua uso smile
ziba stop up zibua unstop
tega put in position, entrap tegua put out of position
tata tangle, complicate tatua unwind, put straight
vaa put on clothes vua take off clothes
fuma weave fumua unpick
cha rise (of sun) chwa set (of sun)
choma pierce, prick chomoa extract
fundika tie a knot fundua untie a knot
inama stoop inua lift up
funika cover up funua uncover
pak(i)a load up a vessel pakua discharge cargo
pakua chakula dish up food
The next four examples are stative forms, though its not entirely clear how to treat
the order of afxation here:
(82) Stative conversive forms
lewa be drunk levuka become sober

angika hang up, suspend anguka fall down
bandika stick on banduka come unstuck
tandika spread out tanduka become gathered up
Ashton further notes the following verbs which are stative forms which include the
conversive sufx: inuka be lifted, funuka be uncovered, tatuka get torn, split.
Ashton also provides examples of causative forms of conversives: levusha make
sober, angusha let fall, throw down, and so on.
In addition to the standard extensions, Ashton (p. 243) describes two construc-
tions which she refers to as augmentative and subtractive forms. The augmentative is
essentially a semantic reinterpretation of certain of the other sufxes, notable the con-
versive, causative and applicative. The meanings expressed are . . . various degrees of
thoroughness and intensiveness, also continuousness and persistence. Examples are

seen in (8386):
(83) Augmentatives expressed by conversive morphology
epa dodge epua remove

songa press songoa wring
(84) Augmentatives expressed by causative morphology19
nya drop like rain nyesha fall in torrents

nyamaa be quiet nyamaza be quite quiet
jubu answer jibisha answer in detail
(85) Augmentatives expressed by applicative morphology
ua kill ulia kill off

ingia enter ingilia interrupt
vaa put on clothes valia dress up
(86) Augmentatives expressed by double applicative morphology
shika hold shikilia hold on, insist, hold on tightly

kata cut katilia cut right off
penda like pendelea favour
pata get patiliza visit upon one
tosha sufce tosheleza be sufcient, satisfy
As Ashton points out, its impossible to predict the precise meaning of these forma-
tions. I presume that they are also lexically restricted. We can therefore assume that
these represent non-productive (but perhaps still morphologically active) processes
of derivation/lexeme formation.
By subtractive, Ashton seems to mean what Slavicists would call attenuative,
expressing a diminished degree to which a situation or result holds. It is expressed by
root reduplication, as in (87) based on the root -piga hit (p. 246).
(87) A-li-m-pigapiga tu
3sg.sm-pst-3sg.om-hitstem only
He only hit him gently.
How productive or regular this type of reduplication is in Swahili isnt clear. In her
chapter on root reduplication, Ashton (p. 316) describes an additional use of verb
root reduplication, namely continuous action or state:
19 Unfortunately, in the gloss for nyamaza, the English adverb quite is ambiguous between a meaning
fairly, to a certain extent and the meaning completely, which is presumably the one intended here.
(88) Tulipotoka nje, tulianza ku-tangatanga huko na huko

when.we.got outside we.began inf-wanderstem about
When we got outside, we began wandering about.
Reduplication generally in Bantu languages is widespread and multifunctional. How

exactly it relates to the notion of lexical relatedness is a complex matter deserving
closer study than I can devote to it here.
One of the criteria that is standardly used to distinguish inection from derivation
is productivity. An inectional process is supposed to be lexically unrestricted, to pro-
duce a uniform semantic effect, and to be completely productive, while a derivational
process is typied as being restricted to certain classes of lexeme (sometimes arbitrar-
ily), producing semantic effects which differ in subtle and unpredictable ways from
lexeme to lexeme, and generally being restricted in productivity. Now, in the case of
Bantu valency alternations, one way in which we can ascertain whether an alternation
is productive and regular is by asking to what extent different sufxes can freely com-
bine with each other. It turns out that different Bantu languages permit combination
to different extents. Petzell (2008: 140) explicitly states that it is uncommon for exten-
sions to be combined in Kagulu. On the other hand, in the Nguni languages such as
Zulu and Xhosa, we can nd very free combinations of passive, causative, reciprocal,
and applicative constructions in a single word (see Hyman, 2003b, for discussion of
some of the combinatorial possibilities, their meanings, and the order of sufxation).
The best we can conclude from such evidence is probably that the verbal extensions
provide equivocal evidence for or against the claim that they are derivational rather
than inectional.
3.5.4 Argument nominalizations

There is one further type of widespread lexical relatedness which involves reference
to argument structure. Many languages have a derivational category of subject nom-
inalization or agent nominalization, akin to that of English drive driver. Indeed,
this type of derivational relation is often used as a parade example of canonical deri-
vational morphology (not least in this book, Chapter 5). Typically, we say that such a
nominal involves the addition of a semantic predicate along the lines PERSON WHO
VERBs. There is usually no harm in this, at least as a matter of expository conveni-
ence, but there is an important sense in which it is misleading to think of subject
nominalizations as entirely on a par with other types of derivation. This is because an
argument nominalization is a type of relatedness in which one of the base lexemes
arguments is promoted to the position of the derived lexemes referent. It doesnt
involve the straightforward addition of a semantic predicate as such. I shall call de-
rived nominals which denote the thematic argument of a verb predicate argument
nominalizations.
In some cases argument nominalizations impose additional semantic require-

ments. In English, for instance, subject nominals are frequently polysemous, de-
noting (human) agents or (inanimate) instruments, but they tend not to denote
intransitive subjects with a theme/patient interpretation. Thus, we can have walker,
where the subject is agentive, but not normally *faller, *fainter, *die-er (one who dies),
or *failer, where the subject has a theme role. Subject nominals expressing an ex-
periencer role are generally only possible in collocation with a phrase denoting the
stimulus of the experience. Thus, its very odd to say *Harriet is an enjoyer, but much
less odd to say Harriet is an enjoyer of ne wines.20
We would expect languages to have object nominalizations. Forms in -ee are often
cited as instantiating this derivational category in English: contrast employee object
of employ with employer subject of employ. However, this category is much less
robust in English than the subject-nominalization category, and is subject to rather
complex conditions (see Barker, 1998, for a detailed study of these). It is therefore
not a very good example of a paradigm-based derivational relationship. There are
languages in which subject nominalizations are formed freely from verbs retaining
tense, aspect, or voice distinctions, such as Classical Nahuatl. That language also has
productive and regular derivation of nouns denoting non-argument event satellites,
namely instruments and locations, but even in Classical Nahuatl, nominalizations
denoting internal arguments are idiosyncratic and unproductive (Stiebels, 1999:
81314).
A special case of argument nominalization is seen when an adjective is converted
into a noun denoting the thematic argument of that adjective, as in English the poor.
In many languages this type of conversion is particularly noticeable with deverbal
participles, so that a participle denoting the subject, akin to English employing or
passive employed, comes to be used with essentially the same meaning as an English
subject nominal (Beard, 1995: 3202). For example, in the Naukan dialect of Yupik
(Menovcikov, 1975: 297308) we nd deverbal participles expressing present, past,
and immediate future tenses used as adjectival attributes to nouns (agreeing in num-
ber and case), but also frequently converted to nouns denoting the base verbs subject.
Such phenomena are very common cross-linguistically, though they have yet to be
the subject of detailed typological study.
3.6 Meaningless derivation

In a good many familiar languages, much if not most of what is generally described as
derivational morphology is independent of semantics. Although we can discern very
20 Matters are further complicated by the fact that there seems to be a homophonous -er sufx deriv-
ing object nominalizations, or at least theme/patient nominalizations, though with additional pragmatic
connotations: broiler (chicken) reared to be broiled, gusher that which gushes (e.g. geyser), cooker
appropriate for cooking (of apples).
clear formal relatedness between words in the lexicon, those words bear no semantic
relationship to each other. In other words, we can identify recurrent types of mor-
phologically complex word structure (morphological constructions in the sense of
Booij, 2002, 2005, 2010a), which are not associated with any systematic meaning re-
lation whatsoever. That is, we have a type of lexical relatedness which is dened solely
over formal equivalence without any reference to semantics. In many languages, this
is perhaps the commonest form of lexical relatedness, though, again, it is hardly
discussed in the literature. This is a form of relatedness which I call meaningless
derivation.
A simple example of this in English is provided by prexed verbs of the kind un-
derstand. This is clearly composed of a prex under- and a root stand, but neither
component has a meaning which it contributes to the meaning of the word as a whole.
Yet it is clear that the verb root, stand, is the same root as that of the fully edged lex-
eme stand assuming a standing position (or whatever), because they share the same
irregular past-tense/past-participle allomorphy. Moreover, this is a recurrent pattern
in English. A variety of meaningless roots which are homophonous with meaningful
roots can combine with a variety of meaningless prexes which are homophonous
with meaningful prexes, witness undertake, undergo, withhold, withdraw, and with-
stand, among others. In some cases the prex can be found with an identiable
meaning, related to that of the homophonous preposition: underestimate, under-
shoot. This, however, just serves to accentuate the semantic non-compositionality of
examples like understand.
A slightly more subtle version of the same phenomenon is found when one part
of a morphologically complex word is meaningless while the other part retains its
meaning. This is common in English with compounds. A textbook example is black-
bird, in which the head element bird is the lexeme bird, but the modier element
black is not, strictly speaking, an instance of the lexeme black. This is because
blackbird does not mean bird which is black but rather member of a particular
bird type/species (Turdus merula). This is why the statement Just over half of all
blackbirds are brown is a contingent truth, not a logical inconsistency.21
Thousands of lexicalized compounds have this property of being headed by a lex-
eme which contributes its own meaning compositionally but is modied by a word
which does not contribute a meaning compositionally. It is not surprising that this
should be true of adjective-noun compounds in English, since this type is unpro-
ductive and hence prone to lexicalization. However, it is also true of noun-noun
compounds. There are innumerable compounds of the form penknife or textbook
in which we can identify what appears to be a modier noun (pen, text), but that
modier noun contributes no semantics whatsoever, and thus has the same se-
mantic status as a cranberry element. Interestingly, its much more difcult to nd
21 Female blackbirds are brown.

similar examples in derivation. In English, it is usually the case that either the pre-
x and stem are both semantically transparent, or neither is. Accidents can happen,
of course. The word inammable (notoriously) has the same meaning as ammable,
and therefore one could say that it is formed by means of a meaningless prex which
preserves the meaning of the head lexeme. Occasionally, we encounter cases such as
pre-empt, in which it appears that the verb stem is a classical cranberry, while the pre-
x is meaningful. But cases like this seem marginal in English. One way of thinking
of plurale tantum nouns such as scissors is to say that they have a morphosyntactic
plural form which is semantically uninterpreted, and hence, in a sense, meaningless.
We also nd instances of jocular formations in which a nonsense stem is given ap-
parently meaningful morphology, such as discombobulated. But its difcult to nd
genuine examples of perfectly transparent afxation applied to stems which are not
meaningful in that particular construction.
In contemporary morphology, attention was rst drawn to the phenomenon of
meaningless derivation by Aronoff (1976), who discussed prexed verbs which are
like understand, but based on Latinate prexes and stems, such as admit, commit,
emit, permit, remit, transmit, and so on. One possible reaction to such examples is
that both the Latinate and Germanic types may be very marginal phenomena in Eng-
lish. However, such an observation cannot be made of languages such as German or
the Slavic languages, where a very large proportion of the verb lexicon (i.e. thousands
of lexemes) has exactly this character: a meaningless prex attached to a meaningless
root. Moreover, in languages with richer verb morphology than English, its obvi-
ous that were dealing with verb roots which are essentially identical in all respects
to real verbs, except that they have no meaning (Spencer, 2001a). For instance, the
German verb versprechen promise inherits all of its inectional morphology from
the verb sprechen to speak, but this meaning is not part of the meaning of promise.
Again, the prex ver- has a homophonous counterpart which can be associated with
a specic semantics of doing badly or incorrectly, as in the alternative meaning of
versprechen to make a slip of the tongue, speak out of turn.
The existence of meaningless derivation is hardly remarked upon in the main-
stream morphological literature within the generative tradition, let alone adequately
described. And yet it can account for much of a languages lexicon. A supercial
glance through Zaliznjaks (2003) grammatical dictionary of Russian, for instance,
reveals nearly 200,000 different verb entries (listing just the forms, without concern
for how many distinct meanings each verb form has). Most of these entries are pre-
xed. I would estimate that between one-third and one-half of these prexed forms
exhibit the kind of non-compositional semantics that I have called meaningless deriv-
ation. And yet the morphological properties of the prexed verbs can almost always
be deduced from the morphology of the base verb. This is not, therefore, a marginal
phenomenon, but a central feature of the Russian lexicon.
The fact of meaningless derivation is extremely important for our understand-

ing of lexical relatedness because it highlights with great clarity the need to separate
meaning from form in analysing lexical relatedness. This effectively extends the sig-
nicance of the Separation Hypothesis (Beard, 1981, 1988, 1995) to cover the entire
lexicon, not just morphology. This in turn means that we must develop models of
lexical relatedness which factor out the various components or attributes of the lex-
ical entry so that relatedness can be dened over each attribute separately from the
others. This is what I refer to as the factorization of lexical relatedness.
3.7 Evaluative morphology: diminutives and augmentatives

The next type of lexical relation that well examine is another case which is notorious
to dene in terms of straightforward derivation, that of evaluative morphology. This
refers to morphology which in its primary meaning expresses size: smallness (dimin-
utive)/largeness (augmentative). As such it is generally applied to noun bases. How-
ever, this concrete meaning is often extended metaphorically to express endearment/
disparagement. Sometimes the effect of putting a single word in the diminutive form
is to add a modal nuance to the whole utterance, e.g. Russian (89).
(89) Peredajte bilet!

pass ticket
Pass me a (bus) ticket.
a. Peredajte bilet-ik!
pass ticket-dim
Do be so kind as to pass me a (bus) ticket.
Compared with some languages English is relatively poor in diminutives, but in

many languages they form an important part of the lexicon. Slavic languages such as
Russian are a case in point, as are some of the Romance languages (Italian, Spanish).
Evaluative morphology, unlike canonical derivational morphology, is very pro-
ductively applied to proper names in many languages. Here, however, we must
distinguish diminutives/augmentatives from a rather similar type of lexical relat-
ive, hypocoristics, or modications of proper names, such as Fred, Liz, and so on.
Hypocoristics are frequently suppletive:
(90) Spanish: Jos Pepe German: Johann(es) Hans English: Margaret

Peggy; Richard Dick
However, hypocoristics, including suppletive ones, do often have the form of dimin-
utives, as in the Russian Aleksandr/Aleksandra Saa.
Evaluative morphology has been the topic of theoretical discussion in the past
because it seems to have properties of both inection and derivation from the stand-
point of certain theoretical models, and in particular it can be transparent to certain
of the morphosyntactic properties of the base lexeme. I discuss this in more detail in
Chapter 6.
Evaluative morphology very frequently arises from nominal morphology express-
ing size. Quite often we nd that a given form is ambiguous between a pure size
denotation and an evaluative denotation. Thus, from Russian ruka hand we have
the diminutive ruc-ka (with characteristic morphophonological k c alternation).
This can refer to a small hand, such as that of a baby or a monkey, or it can refer
to a hand of normal size but with evaluative connotations. Also frequently found is
semantic drift of size-modulated derivatives. Thus, rucka also means handle (of a
door, suitcase, etc.).22
One of the main reasons why evaluative morphology is of theoretical interest is
the difculty of deciding whether it is really inection or really derivation. In many
languages it looks morphologically like derivation. However, the derived form some-
times preserves morphological or morphosyntactic properties of the base lexeme in
ways that are not expected from derivational morphology. In other words, evalu-
ative morphology can be transparent to certain properties, especially gender and
inectional class, but also occasionally number (Stump, 1993).
An interesting point of variation cross-linguistically is in the relationship between
evaluative forms and gender or inectional class. In German, for instance, there are
several diminutive sufxes, all of which create nouns with a specic gender, irrespect-
ive of the gender of the base noun. Thus, -ling gives masculine nouns, as in Liebe love
(feminine) Liebling darling, while -chen gives neuter nouns, as in Wurst sausage
(feminine) Wrstchen little sausage, frankfurter. A similar pattern can be seen
even in languages without gender. Thus, in Nahuatl23 (Andrews, 1975: 159), nouns
take a diminutive/affectionate sufx -pi:l and an augmentative/pejorative sufx -po:l.
Nouns fall into one of three inectional classes, depending on the shape of their ab-
solute (unpossessed) singular stem. Most nouns belong to the class ending in the -tl
sufx, but some have a sufx -in or no sufx. The two evaluative sufxes shift the
derived noun into the zero-marked class, irrespective of the class of the base lex-
eme: to:to:-tl bird to:to:-pi:l (dear) little bird, icka-tl sheep, icka-po:l big sheep.
By contrast, in Spanish (see below) the inectional class and gender of the base are
preserved.
Unfortunately, we often see confusion in the descriptive literature over the rules
dening evaluative morphology, linked to the tendency to confuse inectional class
22 Rucka additionally means ballpoint pen, a good instance of how far semantic drift can take you.
23 I adopt a modied version of the standard orthography for ease of reading: c = //, = //, tl = //,
: = vowel lengthening, h = P.
with gender in languages of the Indo-European type. In those languages, inectional

classes are generally closely linked to gender, in the sense that a given class will
by default have nouns of one gender rather than the other, but the correct gener-
alization is that nouns are assigned inectional class arbitrarily, and they are then
assigned gender on the basis of semantics, phonology, or inectional class (Corbett,
1991). Wade (1992: 11116) provides a usefully compact (though not complete) sum-
mary of Russian diminutives but with confusion between gender and inectional
class (for an analysis of Russian diminutives within the framework of Network Mor-
phology, which gets the facts and analysis right, see Hippisley, 1996). There are four
declension classes in Russian and three genders, masculine (M), feminine (F), and
neuter (N): zakon(n) law/vino(n) wine (Class 1a, 1b), komnata(f) room, Papa(m)
Papa (Class 2), kost (f) bone (Class 3). Nouns of Class 1a are all masculine; non-
diminutive nouns of Class 1b are neuter; nouns of Class 3 are feminine (except for put
path); and nouns of Class 2 are predominantly feminine except for a large subclass
of nouns denoting male humans, which are masculine.
There is a great wealth of diminutive/augmentative sufxes in Russian. Wade lists
them in terms of gender, though this is misleading because its generally inectional
class that determines the set of possible diminutive afxes from which a given sufx
is selected. We can easily see this by observing some of the numerous instances of
multiple diminutives in Russian.24 Thus, from the name Andrej Andrew (Class 1)
we derive the diminutive Andrjua (Class 2 but still masculine gender). The form
Andrjua now selects the Class 2 sufx -en ka, Andrjuen ka. In all cases the gender
of the name remains the same, masculine. The names Aleksandr Alexander (male)
and Aleksandra Alexandra (female) both have a diminutive/hypocoristic form Saa.
This form gives rise to a variety of diminutives, Sa-ka, Sa-en ka, and Sanja, and each
of these preserves the gender of the original name; that is, the gender depends on the
sex of the name-bearer.
Here are some typical examples of Russian diminutives and augmentatives culled
mainly from Wade (1992):25
24 Such iterated use of diminutives or augmentatives is common cross-linguistically, both as evaluative

morphology and as derivation proper. As an attested, if somewhat idiosyncratic, instance of multiple eval-
uative sufxing in Russian I have heard the triple diminutive ruconocki for ruki (in a context where one
adult is explaining to another adult how to handwash a delicate fabric). As an instance of lexical derivation
using diminutive/augmentative morphology in Italian the bass section of a string band is instructive. The
original word for bowed stringed instrument is viola. A small viola is a viol-in-o while a large viola is a
viol-on-e (which nowadays refers to a fretted bowed bass instrument in Renaissance or baroque bands,
with the same role as a modern orchestras double bass). A smaller version of the violone was the viol-on-
cello, literally viola-augmentative-diminutive. In the later baroque, smaller versions of the violin and
cello were built, tuned a third higher than the standard instrument, but these were referred to by analytic
expressions: violino piccolo and violoncello piccolo, literally violin small, violoncello small. For discussion
of double diminutives in Polish see Szymanek (2010: 25565).
25 For a detailed discussion of the very similar system of evaluative morphology in Polish see Szymanek
(2010: 20215).
Diminutives
Class 1a (masculine)
-ec: brat brat-ec little brother

-ik: dom dom-ik little house
-cik: karman karman-cik little pocket
Class 2 (mainly feminine, some masculine)

Feminine gender:
-ica: pros ba pros b-ica little request

-a: Natalja Nataa (girls name)
Masculine gender:
-ulja: Papa Pap-ulja Daddy

Mama Mam-ulja Mummy
See also Andrjuen ka above.
Multiple class selection

Class 1a, 2:
-aka: starik(m) old man (1a) starik-aka(m) little old man (pejor.)
morda(f) face (2) mord-aka(f) mug, (ugly) face (pejor.)
Class 2, 3:
-on ka: kniga(f) (2) kni-on ka(f) little book

load (f)(3) load -on ka(f) little horse
Class 1b (mainly neuter):
-iko: koleso koljos-iko little wheel

-co:
pis mo pisme-co little letter
-iko: dom(m) dom-iko(m) little house
Notice that domiko is masculine because its derived from a Class 1a base noun, dom,
which is masculine in gender.
The diminutive sufx -yek/-yko seems to select bases of Class 1a or 1b, and
preserves the inectional class as well as the gender of the base (but note that these
are not truly evaluative morphology, but rather examples of diminutives co-opted
for derivation):
-yek (1a): kol(m) stake kol-yek tent-pole

-yk-o (1b): gorlo(n) neck gorl-yko neck of bottle
Particularly interesting is the very widespread diminutive sufx which I shall

represent as -Ok:
-(o)k: gorod gorod-ok little town Class 1a, masculine

-k-o: ozero ozer-ko little lake Class 1b, neuter
-ka: Papa Pap-ka Daddy Class 2, masculine
ryba ryb-ka little sh Class 2, feminine
krovat krovat-ka little bed Class 3, feminine
This sufx has the form /k/ preceded in some cases by the vowel /o/, depending
on a complex of factors very familiar to students of Slavic morphophonology,
but not relevant here. When attached to nouns of Class 1a, 1b, or 2, such as gorod
town (1a), ozero lake (1b), and ryba sh (2), it preserves the noun class of the
base. When attached to a noun of Class 3, it shifts the derived word to Class 2 but
preserves the (feminine) gender of the word. From a functional point of view this
is understandable: it would be morphophonologically odd to put a /k/-nal noun
stem into Class 3, because that class is occupied by nouns ending in a palatalized
consonant, and that would give rise to somewhat non-iconic derivatives with Class 3
nouns (*krovatoc , *krovac ). As a result the language selects the next best alternative,
which is to put the derived form into the default feminine gender class, which then
preserves the basic form of the sufx /k/.26
Augmentatives
-ice: dom(m) dom-ice(m) huge great house

-ina: dom-ina(m) vast house
Again, notice that domice is masculine despite being in an inectional class normally
associated with neuter nouns.
In Russian, the evaluative sufx determines the inectional class of the evaluatively
marked noun, and in most, but not all, cases, a specic sufx selects nouns only in
a particular class. However, the gender of the base lexeme is preserved. This often
means that the marked word looks as though it belongs to the wrong inectional
class, as we have seen with domice and domina, from dom house, which belong
to Classes 1b and 2, respectively, and should, therefore be neuter and feminine, re-
spectively, yet they retain the masculine gender of the base noun. Now, both these
sufxes, -ice and -ina, are used also as derivational sufxes. Thus, from ubeat es-
cape, run away we have ubeice shelter, refuge, and such derived nouns are always
26 Note that the -Ok sufx does actually have an appropriate palatalized allomorph, found when a
derivate in -Ok undergoes further diminutive formation with -Ok to give double diminutives in -OcOk, as
in synocek son (endearing) = /syn-Ok-Ok/, from syn son, single diminutive syn-ok, or rybocka tiny little
sh, from ryb-ka = /ryb-Ok-Ok-a/.
neuter. Similarly, -ina has a number of functions as a derivational sufx, adding such
meanings as meat from (animal), e.g. olen (m) deer olen-ina venison, singulat-
ive (from collective nouns), e.g. gorox(m) peas goro-ina pea, and others. In each
case the -ina sufx gives rise to a feminine-gender noun.
On the other hand, a few sufxes are promiscuous with respect to the inec-
tional class of the base: the pejorative -aka attaches to words of Classes 1a and 2,
for instance. But this is not common in Russian.
Spanish diminutives resemble Russian diminutives in that they preserve the gender
of the base lexeme. However, like Russian -Ok or the cognate Polish -Ek, they also
tend to preserve the inectional class of the base. For instance, a common diminut-
ive sufx is -(c)ito/-(c)ita. The -o ending is found with masculine nouns, while the
-a ending is found with feminine nouns: hombre(m) man hombre-cito(m) little
man, mujer(f) woman mujer-cita(f) little woman. In this way we can see that
the diminutive sufxes dont determine all of the properties of the derived noun.
In this respect they are similar to inections: in languages with nominal morpho-
logy and gender a feminine noun remains feminine when inected for number, case,
possessor, or whatever.
A number of NigerCongo languages have a well-developed and highly grammat-
icalized system of evaluative morphology. In some languages, notably Fula and its
relatives (Arnott, 1970), and also a good number of Bantu languages, evaluative mor-
phology is incorporated into the noun class system (Schadeberg, 2003: 83), and to that
extent it belongs to the inectional morphology. Anderson (1992: 802) argues that
diminutives in Fula are inectional forms because they trigger agreement in noun
class, and the same argument can be applied to Bantu (Stump, 1993). In many Bantu
languages diminutives are formed by shifting the class of the original noun into Class
12/13. There are three ways in which this is achieved in Kikuyu (Gikuyu), as we see in
Table 3.1.27
(91) Types of diminutive formation in Kikuyu
Shift to Class 12/13

Shift to Class 12/13 using Class 1 as base (singular)
Shift to Class 12/13 retaining original (Class 3/4) prexes
Other morphological variants are found in the Bantu group. Thus, Hyman (2003a:
265) reports that in the Bantu language Basa (Guthrie classication A43), a diminut-
ive can be formed by reduplicating its stem and then inecting the word as a member
of class 19/13 (with possible other changes including sufxing and tone changes).
Class 19 (singular number) is marked by the prex hi-, while Class 13 (plural number)
27 The Kikuyu orthography writes low mid vowels /, / as e, o, and high mid vowels /e, o/ as high
c
vowels with a tilde accent, , u .
Table 3.1. Diminutive formation in Kikuyu
Base Diminutive
Gender Singular Plural Singular Plural
bed 3/6 u rr marr karr turr
hole 5/6 irima marima karima turima
hill 7/10 krma irma karma turma
goat 9/10 mburi mburi kaburi tuburi
fence 11/12 rugiri ngiri kagiri tugiri
person 1/2 mudu andu kamundu tumundu
friend 1/2 muraata araata kamuraata tumuraata
child 1/10 muana ciana kamuana tumuana
can 3/4 mukebe mkebe kamukebe tumkebe
is marked with di-. Thus, from a Class 5/6 noun j-am/m-am thing we obtain the
variant forms in (92), while from the Class 1/2 noun m-ut/-ot person we obtain the
variant forms in (93) (the symbol = indicates a prexstem boundary).
(92) a. hi =jajm hi =jajama
b. di =jajm di =jajama
c. di =mamama di =majama
(93) a. hi =mumd hi =mumda

b. di =mumd di =mumda
c. di =od di =oda
The (a, b) examples illustrate an order of inection in which the singular noun stem
is rst reduplicated and then marked by the singular/plural diminutive noun class
prexes hi-/di-. In the (c) examples, however, the stem is shifted to the plural class be-
fore being reduplicated, and it is that plural form which is given the plural diminutive
class marker di-.
The kind of interaction between evaluative morphology and other inectional
categories is typical of inection, not of derivation.
3.7.1 Evaluative morphology and adjectives

Russian adjectives take diminutive/augmentative sufxes, too, with evaluative rather
than purely intensifying/attenuating meaning:
(94) -on k: ljogk-ij light ljog-on k-ij really light
-en k: krasiv-ij beautiful krasiv-en k-ij pretty little
-uc: bol -oj big bol -uc-ij great big
Evaluative adjective morphology of this sort can be distinguished from, say, Eng-
lish attenuatives, whose primary meaning is a quantitative modication of the
lexemes base meaning, usually without any evaluative or emotional overtones:

bluish slightly blue. Purely attenuative morphology exists in Russian, too: sin-ij
blue, sin-evat-yj bluish. These are not diminutives; they just mean having property
P but to a lesser extent than the norm.
3.7.2 Evaluative morphology and verbs

It is perfectly possible for a language to apply evaluative morphology to verbs, though
this is less common than diminutive/augmentative morphology on nominals. Some-
times, however, it can be difcult to know whether the grammatical alternations are
instances of verb-directed evaluative morphology or of some kind of honorication
process. In Japanese, for instance, verbs inect for a category of status: the verb is
in either the plain form or the polite form. The latter is used when speaking to or
about people with whom the speaker is not on intimate terms. Thus, the plain form
of the past tense of taberu eat would be tabe-ta, while the polite form would be
tabe-masi-ta. Status is an inectional category. In other languages its less clear what
kind of category is at stake.
As with adjectives we must distinguish evaluative morphology proper from mor-
phology expressing quantication or measure. Specically, in verbs the diminutive/
augmentative category, and generally the category of evaluative morphology, has to
be distinguished from quanticational variants of the verb category of Aktionsart
or mode-of-action, sometimes also referred to as lexical aspect. In many languages
we see verbal morphology which indicates that an action is carried out with greater
or less intensity than normal, or that the result of an action applies to a greater or
lesser degree. In Russian, for instance, there is a category of attenuative Aktionsart,
translated as to do a little, to a slight extent, not very seriously, expressed by vari-
ous prexes, principally po-, pod-: citat to read po-citat to do a bit of reading,
xixikat to laugh pod-xixivat to giggle, snigger, titter.28 Similarly, we nd Ak-
tionsarten meaning to do intensively, excessively: kupit to buy na-kupit knig
to buy (an excess of ) books, beat to run raz-beatsja to run at full pelt. These
are not instances of evaluative morphology (though individual instances may acquire
evaluative nuances, as in the case of any derivation).
Nahuatl (Andrews, 1975: 11617) has a category of pejorative verbs. These are
formed by adding the pejorative sufx -po:l to the perfective verb stem, and then
adding the verb inection -oa and inecting the verb as if in conjugation class C,
whatever the conjugation class of the base verb:
(95) a. o:-ni-wetska-k
pst-1sg-laugh-pst
I laughed [perfect stem wetska]
28 These are plausible but potentially misleading English equivalents; the four-volume Russian diction-
ary glosses the verb as xixikat slegka, that is to laugh a little.
b. o:-ni-wetzka-po:l-oh
pst-1sg-laugh-pej-pst
I laughed (pejorative).
Nahuatl also has a set of honoric verb forms, which serve either to elevate the actor
or the patient/undergoer. The two main ways of forming the honoric are from the
causative form of the verb and from the applicative form (Andrews, 1975: 11216).
Example (96) shows the causative as honoric.
(96) a. kwi t-on-e:wa

q 2sg-directional-leave
Are you leaving?
b. kwi t-on-m-e:wi:-tia
q 2sg-directional-refl-leave-caus
Are you leaving (honoric)? (lit. are you causing yourself to leave?)
Similarly, the applicative as honoric is seen in (97).
(97) a. miki
die.prs.3sg
He is dying.
b. mo-miki-lia
refl-die.appl
He is dying (honoric). (lit. he is dying for his own sake)
From these glosses it should be obvious that the causative/applicative meaning is no

longer to be found with these forms. Indeed, genuinely causative or applicative verbs
can be made honoric by reapplying the causative/applicative morphology:
(98) a. ne:c-tla-ciwal-tia
1sg.obj-3sg.obj-make-caus
He has me make something.
b. ne:c-mo-tla-ciwal-ti-lia
1sg.obj-refl-3sg.obj-make-caus-appl
He (honoric) has me make something. (lit. he has me make something
for his own sake)
(99) a. ne:c-tla-seli-lia
1sg.obj-3sg.obj-receive-appl
He receives something from me.
b. ne:c-mo-tla-seli-li-lia
1sg.obj-refl-3sg.obj-receive-appl-appl
He (honoric) receives something from me. (lit. he receives something

from me for his own benet)
3.8 Paradigmatically mixed lexical categories

We have looked at three problematical, if reasonably well-known and well-studied,
types of lexical relation: transpositions, inherent inections, and argument-structure
alternations.29 In this section I look at types of lexical relatedness that have not been
the focus of morphological research to such an extent. I shall argue that these types
of lexical relatedness are rather important for a proper understanding of the nature
of the lexeme, the nature of lexical categories, and the nature of lexical relatedness. In
each case we will be dealing with a mismatch between the morphological properties
we expect of a given lexical class and the properties we actually observe. I shall call
such categories paradigmatically mixed categories, distinguishing them from syn-
tagmatically mixed categories, which arise by virtue of mixed behaviour within the
phrase or sentence.
3.8.1 M-inert derivation: stolovaja-nouns

I begin with a common, but poorly researched, mismatch in which words of one lex-
ical class take inectional morphology as though they belonged to a different class.
A clear example of this is provided by certain types of Russian noun. In Russian,
nouns and adjectives are, in general, clearly distinguishable from their morphology,
because nearly all nouns inect in a different way from nearly all adjectives. Nouns
and adjectives inect for number (singular/plural) and for six cases. In addition, ad-
jectives inect for gender. The singular declension of a typical feminine-gender noun,
lampa lamp, and an adjective, bol oj big, inected in the feminine, are shown
in Table 3.2. This table also includes the declension of a feminine noun stolovaja
dining room, canteen.
The lexeme stolovaja is a noun in its syntax and semantics but an adjective
in form. In this case the entire paradigm of the noun is taken over from the ad-
jectival declension. Historically, this kind of mismatch typically arises when a word
of one class is derived from a word in a different class, without changing the morpho-
logy. In Spencer (2005b: 104, 117) I refer to this as morphologically inert derivation
(m-inert derivation). The idea behind this terminology is that a noun like sto-
lovaja is, historically at least, usually derived from a base adjective. The adjective
becomes a noun syntactically but remains an adjective morphologically.
In Spencer (2005b) I describe a number of other such types of m-inert de-
rivation which, unlike the stolovaja case, are productive types of lexical related-
ness. First, many languages permit adjectives (including deverbal participles) to be
29 Much of this section is based on Spencer (2007).

Table 3.2. Stolovaja compared with noun and adjective
Noun Adjective Noun

stolovaja bol -oj lampa
dining room big lamp
Nominative stolov-aja bol -aja lamp-a

Accusative stolov-uju bol -uju lamp-u
Genitive stolov-oj bol -oj lamp-i
Dative stolov-oj bol -oj lamp-e
Instrumental stolov-oj bol -oj lamp-oj
Prepositional stolov-oj bol -oj lamp-e
converted into nouns without changing the morphology. In German, an adjective

so transposed even retains the weak/strong declensional distinction. German adject-
ives take two different types of declension depending (roughly) on whether the noun
phrase is denite (weak declension) or indenite (strong declension). If an adjective
such as the passive participle angestellter employed is converted to a noun, it re-
tains that distinction: ein Angestellter an employee (masculine)strong declension,
eine Angestellte an employee (feminine)strong declension, der/die Angestellte the
employee (masculine/feminine)weak declension.
A common kind of m-inert derivation is seen in languages which create nouns
from (effectively) entire clauses, expressed as a single polysynthetic verb form.
Mithun (1999: 59) cites the Mohawk word attken as an example of a word which
is morphologically a verb (literally see oneself ) but syntactically a noun (mirror).
On the other hand, there are also verb forms which are ambiguous between verb and
noun interpretations, such as teiiaks it ickers:
(100) a. teiiaks
te -yo -yaPk -s
duplicative -neuter.patient -cut -ipfv
it ickers
b. akaterohrkhaP k:ken teiiaks
I.would.watch this it.ickers
I would go to the movies.
In many languages that permit this kind of verb-to-noun m-inert shift the process is
used to form proper nouns, a clear instance of paradigmatic categorial mixing.
3.8.2 Within-lexeme derivation

A further type of mismatch is apparent when we look at the way that specic inec-
ted forms of a lexeme, or portions of the inectional paradigm of a lexeme, undergo
semantic drift and effectively become lexemes in their own right. For want of a
traditional term for this phenomenon I shall call it within-lexeme derivation.
An early reference to the phenomenon of within-lexeme derivation in the gen-
erative linguistics literature is found in Halles (1973) programmatic article on
morphology in the context of the difculty of distinguishing inection from deriv-
ation. He points out that instrumental case forms of the words for seasons in Russian
have become independent temporal adverbs; thus, from vesna spring we have ves-
noj in the spring. Similar phenomena can even be seen in English. Thus, there are a
number of plural forms which have acquired semantic content distinct from that of
the singular form from which they are derived, so that we cant really take the plural
form itself to be a form of the same lexeme as the singular. A very clear case of this is a
word such as arms in the sense of weapons, weaponry, armaments. This is a plurale
tantum word in this sense and is clearly not the plural of a lexeme arm, singular arm.
Note that this is different from another very common phenomenon in which a word
in the singular, say, is ambiguous, but the plural is disambiguated morphologically.
For instance, Russian list means leaf or sheet of paper. In the meaning sheet of pa-
per it has a regular plural listy, while in the leaf meaning its plural is irregular, listja.
But this simply means that the two Russian lexemes leaf and sheet-of-paper hap-
pen to have homophonous singular paradigms. The point is that arms weaponry
is morphologically derived from arm, but has no other connection with that
lexeme.
In some cases the distinction is somewhat subtle (and resembles polysemy rather
than homophony). Thus, the word directions as in give someone directions to the
bus station is not semantically the plural of direction, in the sense that the explan-
ation which satises the descriptor directions in that expression is not a collection
of individual objects each of which is a single direction. Indeed, the directions
could be no more than just round the corner. Yet there is clearly some relation
between the meaning of directions in this sense and various meanings of the sin-
gular direction. Here, then, we have a somewhat concealed example of the kind of
morphologysemantics split seen more clearly with arms.
A common example of within-lexeme derivation is found with languages which
have a paradigmatic distinction between an active voice and a non-active (passive,
reexive, middle, medio-passive, etc.) voice. Thus, in Indo-European languages such
as the Romance group, the Balto-Slavic group, Greek, Albanian, Sanskrit, and oth-
ers we see a synthetic (inectional) medio-passive paradigm or an innovated type of
medio-passive using reexive morphosyntax which in its basic form is either a pass-
ive diathesis (valency alternation) or a true reexive construction. However, for many
verbs we nd semantic drift taking place. Innumerable examples can be cited from
verbs with reexive clitics in Romance languages as well as Slavic languages such as
Polish, Czech, Serbian/Croatian, or Bulgarian, but the phenomenon is widespread in
languages in which the medio-passive/reexive is expressed morphologically (for a
detailed discussion of the implications of this mismatch in the Munda language Sora
see Stump, 2005b, and the discussion in Section 6.4).
As we saw in Section 3.5.3, reexive/reciprocal verbs in Russian are formed by
means of a word-nal sufx -sja/-s (see example (68)). However, reexive-form
verbs have a very wide range of readings and meanings, some of them closely re-
lated to that of the active-voice forms. To take one example more or less at random,
consider the verb gnat which means to drive in various senses, e.g. sheep into a
pen, as well as to urge on, travel (too) quickly, chase, persecute, drive out and other
meanings. Its reexive passive form is morphologically impeccable, gnatsja, but this
doesnt serve as the reexive or the passive of any of the meanings of gnat . Rather, its
meanings are pursue, strive after, try to keep up with (usually followed by a prepos-
itional phrase complement headed by za after). The verb dobit has the meaning of
to kill, to nish (someone) off (a kind of completive mode-of-action), as well as the
colloquial meaning of to (nally) get someone to do something. The reexive form,
dobitsja (with a genitive case complement) has the meaning to obtain (usually by
means of some effort). It is not the reexive or passive of either sense of dobit .
Greek transitive (and some intransitive) verbs have a medio-passive paradigm
which canonically expresses the passive valency alternation. The citation form for
Greek verbs is the 1sg present indicative, which usually ends in -o in the act-
ive and -ome, -eme, -ume in the medio-passive depending on conjugation class.
Thus, the verb apokalipt-o to uncover, reveal, unveil has the ordinary passive form
apokalipt-ome to be(come) uncovered etc.. However, apokalipt-ome has an addi-
tional meaning, to raise ones hat to someone, in which sense it lacks the active
forms of the paradigm. The metaphor is obvious, but strictly what has happened is
that there is a lexeme raise-hat which is an inectionally defective, passive-only,
lexeme all of whose forms are homophonous with the genuine passive of apokalipto.
Examples such as these Russian and Greek cases can be multiplied ad libitum. They
show that two distinct lexemes can be related to each other solely in a formal, mor-
phological sense, but the important point is that the inectional paradigm of one of
the lexemes is either a subset of the set of forms of another lexeme, or is a set of
forms that arent actually associated with that lexeme but are theoretically derivable
from it. I have treated this as an instance of paradigmatic mixing because the lexemes
involved require conicting morphosyntactic descriptions.
Within-lexeme derivation, like m-inert derivation discussed in the Section 3.8.2,
is not (usually) systematic, and hence doesnt count as paradigmatic derivation in
our terms.30 Rather, both types reect the kinds of static patterns of relatedness that
we are likely to see in the lexicon of a given language. However, both are relatively
30 A partial exception is the formation of middle-voice verbs from medio-passives, as illustrated in

(70) in Section 3.5.3 for Russian, though it has to be recognized that middle formation of this kind is not
completely regular or productive, and hence not paradigm-driven in the strict sense.
common phenomena when we look for them properly, and each illustrates once
again the need to treat purely morphological, formal relations as distinct from lexical
relatedness based on meaning.
I now turn to a type of paradigmatic mixing which very clearly deserves the de-
scription paradigmatic, because it governs the way cells in an inectional paradigm
are dened.
3.8.3 Morphological shift

Within the inectional paradigm of the lexeme itself, we often see a situation in
which there is a mismatch between morphological form and lexical category. Rus-
sian provides a case in point. In (101) we see the present-tense forms of a regular
verb delat , and in (102) we see the past-tense forms of the same verb along with the
forms of a predicative adjective, mal short. The predicative adjective has a special
inectional pattern used only with a small number of adjectives, and only when the
adjective is used as a predicative.
(101) delat make, present tense

Singular Plural
1st delaj-u delaj-om
2nd delaj-o delaj-ote
3rd delaj-ot delaj-ut
(102) Past tense of delat and declension of mal small

Singular
M F N Plural
Past tense verb delat delal delala delalo delali
Predicative adjective mal mal mala malo maly
The present-tense forms inect in the way expected of Indo-European verbs, while
the past-tense forms inect just like a so-called short form adjective, a class which
is used predicatively. Historically, this situation arose when a perfect-tense series
formed with the l-participle (e.g. dela-l), and the auxiliary verb be was reinterpreted
as a past-tense form, and the auxiliary was lost. Similar situations often arise (see
below on Hindi) either with adjectival forms (participles) or nominal forms (verbal
nouns in many languages). The results are somewhat similar to the morphologic-
ally inert derivation illustrated in deadjectival nouns in Russian and many other
languages, but the perspective is slightly different because what we nd is that one
part of an otherwise well-behaved paradigm acquires mismatched morphology, of-
ten in a relatively small subparadigm. In Spencer (2005b: 104, 125) I refer to this type
of mismatch as a morphological shift.
It is not difcult to nd examples of morphological shift. Such phenomena are

common wherever we have less than full grammaticalization of an earlier peri-
phrastic construction. A spectacular example is provided by the future-tense form
of Hindi-Urdu verbs (Spencer, 2007). In Hindi-Urdu, most verbs inect like ad-
jectives for most of their conjugation and agree with the highest ranked nominative
argument in number and gender. The only verb which has verb inections, that is,
person/number, in its present indicative form is honaa be, and no verb has verb in-
ections in its past-tense forms. Rather, the past-tense forms are effectively adjectival,
much as in the case of the Russian past tense. However, in the subjunctive mood, a
verb takes the person/number inections expected of a verb, as seen in (103).
(103) Hindi subjunctive

write be
Singular Plural Singular Plural
1st likhuu likhe huu gaa hge
2nd likhe likho hogaa hoge
3rd likhe likhe hogaa hge
The Hindi future form is based on the subjunctive, but in an interesting fashion. It
is formed by taking the subjunctive as a base to which is sufxed an adjectival ending
-gaa (104).
(104) Future tense of Hindi write, be

Masculine Feminine
Singular Plural Singular Plural
write 1st likhuu gaa likhege likhuu gii likhegii
2nd likhegaa likhoge likhegii likhogii
3rd likhegaa likhege likhegii likhegii
be 1st huu gaa hge huu gii hgii
2nd hogaa hoge hogii hogii
3rd hogaa hge hogii hgii
Thus, the future form combines the verbal and the adjectival mode of inection in a
single word form.
3.8.4 Verbal case in Kayardild

Finally, I describe an example of the separation of morphological and syntactic cat-
egory features in a language which is well-known for its unusual morphosyntax, the
Tangic (non-PamaNyungan) language Kayardild. The phenomenon is described in
Evans (1995a: 16383), and further data are taken from Evans and Nordlinger (2004).
Kayardild has an extremely rich system of cases, which are used for a great variety
of purposes. One set of case markers, adnominal cases, behave in the expected way,
in that they are added to nominal stems to create words which are syntactically and
morphologically nouns. However, there is another set of case markers which also
attach to noun stems and subserve virtually the same functions. These case markers,
however, create words which are morphologically verbs while remaining syntactically
nouns. In (105) we see the verbal allative case.31
(105) Verbal allative (vall)

a. ngada warra-jarra dathin-kiiwa-tharra ngilirr-iiwa-tharr
1sg.nom go-pst that-vall-pst cave-vall-pst
I went to that cave.
b. ngada warra-ju dathin-kiiwa-thu ngilirr-iiwa-thu
1sg.nom go-pot that-vall-pot cave-vall-pot
I will go to that cave.
c. ngada warra-nangku dathin-kiiwa-nangku ngilirr-iiwa-nangku
1sg.nom go-neg.pot that-vall-neg.pot cave-vall-neg.pot
I will not go to that cave.
The verbal and nominal cases share a number of properties, essentially those
that are associated with the syntax of nouns. Evans and Nordlinger (2004) list the
following:
(i) They apply productively to all (semantically appropriate) nouns.

(ii) They are subcategorized for by verbs, functioning as arguments in exactly the
same way as nouns bearing adnominal case.
(iii) They enter into case-stacking structures with adnominal cases, as seen in
(106).32
(106) [[jatha-naba-yiwa-tha dangka-naba-yiwa-tha]ABL

other-abl-vall-act man-abl-vall-act
mala-yiwa-tha]VALL warra-j
sea-vall-act go-act
(The dugong) went onto another mans sea (territory). (Evans and Nord-
linger 2004: 4)
31 I have normalized some of the abbreviations to conform to the Leipzig Glossing Rules: abl ablative,
act actual, all allative, aobl associative oblique case, du dual, gen genitive, incl inclusive, loc
locative, mid middle voice, mloc modal locative case, mprop modal proprietive case, nmlz nomi-
nalizer, nom nominative, neg negative, pl plural, pot potential, prop proprietive, res resultative,
sg singular, vabl verbal ablative case, vall verbal allative case, vdat verbal dative case, viall verbal
intransitive allative case.
32 Case stacking refers to the obligatory repetition of the case of a head on its dependent. See Chapter 6
for further discussion.
Words bearing verbal case are syntactically nouns. This is shown by a variety of
properties.
(iv) Nouns marked with verbal case obligatorily repeat the verbs TAM marker.
Thus, in (107) the verb give bears the Potential sufx (indicating an irrealis
situation), and this has to be repeated on elder brother and its modier,
because both are case-marked (see also (105, 106)).
(107) ngada wuu-ju dathin-ku wirrin-ku ngijin-maru-thu

1sg.nom give-pot that-mprop money-mprop my-vdat-pot
thabuju-maru-thu
elder.brother-vdat-pot
I will give that money to my elder brother. (Evans and Nordlinger 2004: 4)
(v) Verbal case-marked nouns show the same word order patterns within the NP
as adnominal case-marked nouns.
On the other hand, the verbal case-marked nouns show no verb-like syntactic
properties. For instance, such nouns cannot be modied by adverbs.
The reason why these case markers are verbal is that they turn their hosts into a
word which is morphologically a verb (while remaining syntactically a noun). Evans
and Nordlinger identify three examples of this. Verbal case-marked nominals:
take verbal inections, e.g. negative etc. (105c)

(in a limited way) take argument-changing derivations such as reexive (middle,
(108))
like verbs, can be nominalized (109, 110).
(108) a. nga-ku-l-da buu-ja walbu-ya ngakan-mula-th

1-incl-pl-nom pull-act raft-mloc sandbank-vabl-act
We pulled the raft off the sandbank.
b. biya-ja biya-ja walbu-ya ngakan-mula-a-j
paddle-act paddle-act raft-mloc sandbank-vabl-mid-act
ngarrku-wa-tha tharda-a biya-ja ngakan-mula-a-j
strong-inch-act shoulder-nom paddle-act sandbank-vabl-mid-act
(We) paddled and paddled the raft off the sandbank. Paddling hard with
our shoulders we paddled (ourselves) off the sandbank. (Evans 1995: 172)
(109) ngada barruntha-ya kurri-ja niwan-ji

1sg.nom yesterday-loc see-act 3sg-mloc
[balangkali-iwa-n-ki ba-yii-n-ki]
brown.snake-viall-nmlz-mloc bite-m-nmlz-mloc
Yesterday I saw him being bitten by a brown snake.
(The verbal intransitive allative, viall, is one of the strategies used to mark demoted
agents of passives.)
(110) bi-rr-a bula-n-da thungal-ula-n-da kurda-nth

3-du-nom pull-nmlz-nom tree-vabl-nmlz-nom paperbark-aobl
Those two are pulling paperbark off the trees.
(111) dathin-a burrkun-da dun-maru-thirri-n-da kala-thirri-n-d

that-nom scar-nom husband-vdat-res-nmlz-nom cut-res-nmlz-nom
That scar has been cut for her husband.
Evans and Nordlinger explicitly note that nominalization permits multiple shift-
ing of the morphological category of the noun lexeme without changing its syntactic
category. They write: The extensive morphology in Kayardild allows us to see clearly
the switch back and forth in the morphology between m-nominal and m-verb, while
the category of s-nominal remains unchanged. This data also shows us that while
s-category (corresponding to the traditional notion of syntactic category) is a prop-
erty of lexemes, m-category must be a property of stems. They illustrate their point
with examples (112, 113). (Evans and Nordlinger 2004: 7, 8)
(112) ngada kurrija maku-ya wuu-n-ki wuran-ki

1sg.nom see-act woman-mloc give-nmlz-mloc food-mloc
[[thabuju-karra-maru-n-ki]GEN yarbuny-maru-n-ki]VDAT
elder.brother-gen-vdat-nmlz-mloc dog-vdat-nmlz-mloc
I saw the woman giving food to (my) older brothers dog.
Analysis:
[[[[[thabuju]m-nominal -karra]m-nominal -maru]m-verb -n]m-nominal -ki]m-nominal
elder.brother-gen-vdat-nmlz-mloc
(113) ngada kurri-ja bijarrba-ya warra-n-ki

1sg.nom see-act dugong-mloc go-nmlz-mloc
[[jatha-naba-yiwa-n-ki [dulk-uru-naba-yiwa-n-ki]PROP
other-abl-vall-nmlz-mloc place-prop-abl-vall-nmlz-mloc
dangka-naba-yiwa-n-ki]ABL mala-yiwa-n-ki]VALL
person-abl-vall-nmlz-mloc sea-vall-nmlz-mloc
I saw the dugong going into another custodians [country-having persons]
sea (country).
Analysis:
[[[[[[dulk]m-nominal -uru]m-nominal -naba]m-nominal -yiwa]m-verb -n]m-nominal -ki]m-nominal
place-prop-abl-vall-nmlz-mloc
In both examples a noun lexeme is rst turned into a morphological verb with
verbal case (maru, yiwa respectively) and then turned back into a morphological
noun, while retaining the syntactic functions of a noun throughout. This constitutes
perhaps the clearest evidence to date of the need to distinguish morphological and
syntactic features.
3.9 Syntagmatic reexes of mixed categories

In our survey of category mixing we have concentrated on instances in which we see
unexpected morphology for a given word class. However, category mixing frequently
involves unexpected syntagmatic relationships, too. One example of syntagmatic cat-
egory mixing which has been the subject of considerable research is that shown by a
number of action nominalizations in a variety of languages. In the POSS-ACC type
of nominalization in English, we nd a word which takes a possessive determiner
specier like a noun, but takes a direct object as though it were a canonical verb:
(114) Harriets reading the book (so quickly) (surprised us)
(115) Our sending them expensive presents (was a bad idea)
This contrasts with the more homogeneous types, the all-verbal ACC-ACC, or ACC-
ING, type (116) and the all-nominal POSS-GEN type (117).
(116) Tom/him reading the book (so quickly) (surprised us)
(117) Dicks reading/perusal of the book . . .
A less familiar type of syntagmatic category mixing is found with certain types
of denominal adjective, for instance possessive adjectives in a variety of languages.
One type has become familiar in the theoretical literature from the work of Corbett
(1987, 1995), namely possessive adjectives in Slavic. In (118) we see an example of a
possessive adjective from Upper Sorbian (Slavic) (Corbett, 1987: 300).
(118) mojeho bratr-ow-e dzeci

my.gen.sg.m brotherm-poss.adj-nom.pl child.nom.pl
my brothers children [Upper Sorbian (Slavic)]
However, other types of adjective show similar behaviour. In (119) we see an example
of a proprietive adjective in the Northern Tungusic language Udihe, and in (120) we
see a similitudinal adjective from the Samoyedic language Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva,
2008: 970):
(119) xulaligi wapt-xi koAzo

red lid-prop box
box with a red lid [Udihe (Tungusic)]
(120) pryidyenya-q sarmyiko -rxa-q wenyako-q

black-pl wolf-sim.adj-pl dog-pl
dogs (looking) like black wolves [Tundra Nenets (Samoyedic)]
The Udihe and Nenets adjectives behave in other respects like derivational forms.
There is thus very abundant evidence for numerous instances of mismatch
between morphological category and syntactic category. In fact, I have not yet en-
countered a language with even modest morphological resources (such as those of
English) that doesnt provide some kind of example of a morphology/syntax mis-
match of the kind weve seen in this section. And yet linguistic theory is extremely
ill-equipped even to describe such mismatches.
As an absolute minimum its necessary to recognize that there are always two ways
of describing the category of a morphologically complex word: such a word will al-
ways have a morphological category label (or set of labels) and a syntactic category
label (or set of labels). As a rst approximation we need to be able to furnish a lexical
entry with two typed labels, which I shall call MORCLASS and SYNCLASS.33 In the
default case, of course, these labels will coincide: a noun in the syntax will be a noun
in the morphology. But this is just a reex of a more general principle of default cat-
egorization: by default a predicate which denotes an object (a Thing in Jackendoff s
terms) will be a syntactic and morphological noun, while a predicate which denotes
an event will be a syntactic and morphological verb. Moreover, even where the two
labels grossly coincide, we may need to refer to the MORCLASS label independ-
ently of the SYNCLASS label wherever we have arbitrary inectional classes, for
instance declension classes for nouns. For instance, the fact that the the Latin word
mensa table belongs to the 1st declension is a completely arbitrary property of this
noun. The natural way of stating this inectional class afliation is through its MOR-
CLASS attribute. One possible way to do this would be to furnish the lexeme with the
property specication [MorClass:Noun:NomClass:1]. This states that the word is
morphologically a noun, but the Noun value is itself an attribute which takes as
value NOMCLASS (a synonym for Declension), and that itself is an attribute ran-
ging over arbitrary values {1, . . . , 5}. This is not the only way to code the idea of a
word being in the 1st declension, of course, but it does at least serve to illustrate a pos-
sible function for an attribute such as MORCLASS. Note in particular that this has
nothing to do with syntax. Its generally accepted that inectional class information
is invisible to syntactic processes and representations (Aronoff, 1994).
In Chapter 5 I will offer some simple proposals for capturing such default map-
pings between lexical class attributes. For now, its important to realize that we can
33 I shall use the term class for these categories, and use the term category in a wider sense for any
grammaticalized property that the grammar needs to refer to, subsuming the notion of class.
justify setting up an explicit statement of default mappings. This is because those

defaults can be overridden, as we have seen.
3.10 The nature of lexical relatedness

Consider the inectional word form analyses of the lexeme analyse. The distribution
of this form is determined in part syntactically, in the sense that it is the form used
with a 3sg subject in non-past-tense contexts. The sufx -s adds no meaning as such
to the conceptual content of the lexeme itself. Compare this with the word analys-
able. This word is an adjective, related in meaning and form to the word analyse,
but it is not a form of that word in the way that analyses is a form of the lexeme ana-
lyse. Rather, it is a lexeme in its own right, with its own syntactic/lexical category,
and with a conceptual content that includes an additional semantic predicate over
and above that of the base verb analyse. In a morphologically richer language, it
might have its own inectional paradigm (just as the derived noun analysis has its
own paradigm of singular and plural forms).
The relationship between analyse and analysable is a typical, if not canonical,
instance of derivational morphology, because all three aspects of the two lexemes dif-
fer from each other, form, syntax, and semantics. At the same time, both the form
and the meaning of analysable can be related by productive and regular morpho-
logy to analyse, to the extent that it is typical to regard the sufx -able as bearing
a meaning of its own (say, x, such that one can VERB x). Of course, not all deriv-
ational morphology causes a drastic change in syntactic category: reanalyse is still
a verb. Nonetheless, even where the basic category remains the same, we often nd
that there are subtle syntactic differences between base and derived word. Thus, in
many cases derivational morphology denes a type of lexical relatedness over sets
of lexemes, such that one class of lexemes (for instance transitive verbs) is mapped
onto another set of lexemes (for instance possibilitive or capacity adjectives), and vice
versa.
The relationship between the form analyses and the lexeme analyse is somewhat
more subtle. Here we dont have a relation of base lexeme and derived lexeme, or
even necessarily a relationship of base word form and derived word form. In Eng-
lish it often appears as though an inected word is derived from a simpler, more
basic word form, but this is far from necessary. In languages in which inection is
dened over bound stems, as is the case in many Indo-European languages, we cant
dene relatedness between word forms in such a fashion. The Russian verb delat
is a representative of the default, regular conjugation class. Its present-tense forms
are derived by adding person/number sufxes to the present-tense stem delaj-: delaj-
u, delaj-o, delaj-ot, . . . , and its past-tense form is formed by added the sufx -l to
the past stem dela-: delal. None of these forms can sensibly be derived from some
other word form. The stem form delaj is, admittedly, homophonous with the 2sg
imperative form, but there is no sense in which the present-tense forms are derived
from the imperative. In the case of a verb such as pisat write, even this nonsensical
analysis is not open to us: the present-tense forms are pi-u, pi-o, pi-ot, . . . . The
present stem, pi, doesnt correspond to any word form at all (the 2sg imperative of
this verb is pi-i).34
Of course, derivation too can be dened over bound stems, but here the problem
is less acute. For instance, Russian has a productive deverbal subject-nominalization
process by which a subject nominal is derived from a verb by sufxation of -tel to a
verb stem ending in a theme vowel: pisat write, stem pisa-, subject nominalization
pisatel writer; vodit drive, stem vodi-, subject nominalization voditel driver.
However, there is no guarantee that the stem to which the -tel sufx is attached is
itself a word form. For instance, although vodi exists (again, as the imperative sin-
gular form), the stem pisa- is never found as an independent word form. But in the
case of derivation we simply need to nesse our account by saying that the deriv-
ational process denes afxation over bound elements at the level of form, while
mapping base syntactic and semantic representations to derived representations, as
in the more canonical instances.
To return to inection, we are left with the problem of what precisely the rela-
tionship is between an inected word form and the rest of the lexicon. The intuition
we wish to capture is that there is some relationship between the members of the set
{analyse, analyses, analysing, analysed} which is special and doesnt hold between ar-
bitrarily chosen word forms, even between forms such as {analyse, analyses, reanalyse,
reanalysability}. There are at least four ways of looking at this problem.
The rst, and in many ways the most attractive, solution is to treat it as a non-
problem by denying that there is any notion of inection and derivation at stake
in the rst place: all forms of lexical relatedness are equal. This is the tack taken by
models of morphology which dont accept the notion of lexeme outlined so far, such
as the classical morphemic model as developed by American structuralism. Parsimo-
nious though this view might seem to be, it encounters insurmountable difculties as
a general model of morphology, as has been repeatedly stressed in the morphological
literature. In particular, the model is unable to account for most of the interesting
aspects of inectional morphology, notably the paradigm-based effects. In addition,
the crucial notion of morpheme as Saussurean sign is deeply awed. I shall there-
fore leave the morpheme-based account to one side and examine the alternative
approaches.
Lets assume instead that there are lexemes in the sense outlined in Chapter 2.
The most direct way of relating the inected word forms to each other is to
34 Just because an analysis is nonsensical doesnt mean that someone wont try to apply it, of course.
One could always say that the present-tense sufxes when attached to the 2sg imperative induce truncation
of the -i element. The reader should bear in mind that I will be ignoring pointless analyses of this sort.
enumerate those forms together with their morphosyntactic properties, and dene
lexical relatedness over those sets of forms. On this second approach, we take the fully
specied formfunction paradigm as a given and establish relationships between the
cells of that paradigm. The device of principal parts expedites this enterprise: know-
ing the 1sg present perfect active form of a verb such as amo allows us to deduce a
further subset of the paradigm. This is the classical word-and-paradigm model of
inection, inherited from the classical authors of antiquity.
The Paradigm Function Morphology model adopts a different approach from
the classical word-and-paradigm model. In PFM, inected word forms of a lex-
eme are related to each other rather indirectly. The reason why Latin amavi I have
loved, 1sg present perfect indicative active, and amavissent (that) they might have
loved, 3pl past perfect subjunctive active, are related to each other is that both
forms are derived by means of a function which maps the root am and a set of fea-
tures to the two output word forms. Along the way some of the same rules apply,
triggered by the properties perfect, active. But this is, in effect, an accident. We
can think of this third approach to inection as the root-and-paradigm approach
(Blevins, 2001).
Both the word-and-paradigm and the root-and-paradigm approach to the prob-
lem of inectional lexical relatedness rely on a notion of lexeme which effectively
(though, perhaps, implicitly) presupposes a distinction between inection and de-
rivation. The only way we know that we should relate the forms {analyse, analyses,
analysing, analysed} rather than, say, {analyse, analyses, analysing, analysed, reana-
lysis} is because there is a predened set of properties which are typed as inectional
rather than derivational. This guarantees that reanalysis cannot be a form of ana-
lyse, because the inectional property set for a verb doesnt include properties such
as [Aspect:iterative] (for re-) or (say) [Vform:nominal] (for analys-is). But I have
argued that its far from obvious why these properties cant be regarded as inec-
tional. Conversely, its not entirely obvious why a given property traditionally treated
as inection really is inectional. Beard (1982) once argued that the English plural
category was effectively derivational. We dont necessarily need to accept that con-
clusion to realize that his arguments raise an important series of questions. Just what
are the criteria that allow us to decide that the plural form of a noun is an inectional
form? And how well would those criteria apply, say, to the English past tense, or to
much more controversial categories such as the comparative and superlative forms
of adjectives, generally taken to be inectional, though with virtually no justication,
or the -ly adverb form, generally taken to be derivational with scarcely any greater
justication (though see Zwicky, 1989, for a rare instance of an explicit defence of the
derivational analysis).
A central goal of the current model of lexical relatedness, based on the notion
of a generalized paradigm function, is to provide a descriptive framework which
will allow us to relate inected forms to each other, and allow us to relate derived
lexemes to their bases, as well as handling all the intermediate cases. This is the fourth
approach to inectional lexical relatedness.
I will argue that the key to understanding lexical relatedness lies in the one species
of lexical relatedness that isnt usually viewed in terms of relatedness between lexical
entries, namely the lexical-relatedness properties that hold between inected word
forms of a single lexeme. Although inectional paradigms are not generally viewed
in this manner, it is logical to regard inected word forms as exhibiting lexical re-
latedness both to each other and to forms of other lexemes. In the canonical case
lexical relatedness between members of one inectional paradigm is largely trivial, in
the sense that it is dened largely in terms of identity. What I mean by this is that two
inected word forms generally share exactly the same (gross) semantic representation
and (gross) syntactic representation. The principal differences between two inected
forms of one lexeme are that they realize a different set of morphosyntactic prop-
erties or inectional features (inectional doublets aside), and have different forms
(syncretism aside).
A consequence of this move is that we should now dene lexical relatedness not
just over lexical entries, but over a more elaborated set of objects, namely individual
formfunction cells in the paradigms of lexemes, together with all the rest of the in-
formation in those lexical entries. In other words, when we ask about the relatedness
between the words cat and cats, what we are really asking about is the related-
ness between the cell /kat/, Number:singular of the lexeme cat and the cell /katz/,
Number:plural of the lexeme cat. Similarly, if we want to ask about the lexical
relatedness between the words analysed and analysable, we are asking about the
relatedness between the cell /anlaizd/, Tense:past of the verb lexeme analyse and
the cell /anlaizbl/, of the lexeme analysable. The forms of a regular verb such
"
as analyse are thus all related to each other by virtue of sharing a lexemic index and
(very largely) sharing a semantic and syntactic representation. Each inected form is
also (less directly) related to the word form which instantiates a derived lexeme, such
as the adjective analysable, analysable. In a language with rich adjectival inection,
each word form in the inectional paradigm of analysable might be related to each
word form in the inectional paradigm of analyse. But none of these words would
be related to, say, a word form such as aardvarks because they would have nothing in
common.35
The reason why its important to recognize that inected word forms of a given
lexeme subtend lexical relations with each other is that there are many unclear cases
lying on the border between meaningful inection (inherent inection) and standard
derivational morphology, as well as cases of category shift without meaning change
35 One could say that cats and aardvarks are related to each other by virtue of both being of the SYN
category Noun and both realizing the property [Number:plural]. This is what Williams (1981b) means by
lexically related, but its hard to see it as a useful instance of the notion.
(i.e. what we have been calling transpositions), in which its extremely difcult to
apply the traditional inection/derivation categories with any condence. The only
way to discuss lexical relatedness with any generality is therefore to bear in mind that
lexical relatedness holds of the complete ensemble of lexical information associated
with a given form, its inectional feature content (if any), its syntactic properties, its
conceptual semantic representation, and its lexemic index. The starting point for lex-
ical relatedness is therefore the trivial relationship of complete identity, and further
degrees and types are then dened by successively changing one aspect or another of
the lexical representation associated with a word form.
3.11 Implications of types of lexical relatedness

Having surveyed a fair variety of types of relatedness it is time to take stock briey.
There are a number of important conclusions which arise from this perspective on
lexical relatedness. Lets consider rst the relationships between the main attributes
of a word, FORM, SYN, and SEM.
I have largely adopted a notional approach to the main parts of speech. For the
typical, or indeed canonical, cases, the starting point for the representation of a word
is the SEM attribute, which includes an indication of the ontological class of a word.
From the ontological class we can (usually) predict the argument structure of the
word, though not (quite) always (Koenig and Davis, 2006). Quite often, but by no
means always, the morphological class dened in a words FORM attribute (MOR-
CLASS) is predictable from its syntactic class (itself derived from the ontological class
via the a-structure representation). However, in many languages, the MORCLASS is
dened independently, specically where we have inectional classes.
The examples of relatedness I have summarized fall into two kinds. There are the
systematic types of relatedness that we must assume are represented in the grammar
of the language. These are the types that can be analysed as being paradigm-based.
Then there are non-systematic types which arise, generally, through accidents of his-
torical change, semantic drift, and so on. The Russian stolovaja-nouns are a good
example of this. These types of relatedness are important, especially for a psycholo-
gical model of the mental lexicon, and they often represent very strong tendencies
within the lexicon of a language, but they are not governed by the grammar itself.
Nonetheless, they do constitute lexical relatedness, albeit of a static kind, and it is
important to have some way of describing it in a principled fashion.
We can also distinguish the relatedness that applies within lexemes from that
which applies across or between lexemes. The between-lexeme relatedness is what ac-
counts for lexical stock expansion (Beard, 1981, 1995). An important observation here
is the existence of meaningless derivation. It is an important fact about the lexicon
of German, Russian, or Hungarian that it has prexed verbs, even if a large number
or even a majority of those prex+verb pairings are non-compositional. One of the
reasons that we have to regard such relatedness as part of the grammar is that in
German and Hungarian many of the prexes are actually separable preverbs, which
behave as distinct syntactic terminals in the two languages, though with different
morphosyntax. It is not possible to state generalizations about separable preverbs
unless we acknowledge that verb lexemes can be morphologically complex in this
way, and that means acknowledging that the preverb+verb combination is lexically
related to the bare verb lexeme. Similar remarks hold of verb+particle combinations
in English and in mainland Scandinavian languages, among others. In effect, we are
dealing with a morphological construction in the sense of Booij (2010b), though one
which is purely formal and not linked to any semantic content whatsoever.
For many linguists argument-structure alternations such as passive, causative, or
applicative verb forms are derivational, though it often seems counterintuitive to say
that a completely regular passive construction creates a novel verb lexeme, and that
often makes it difcult to distinguish, say, regular passive alternations from lexically
governed and semantically contentful middle constructions of the kind we see in
English. Likewise, linguists often wish to say that transpositions such as deverbal par-
ticiples are derivational because the word class changes, even though this leads to
equally counterintuitive conclusions about lexemehood. But these qualms are gen-
erally the result of an insistence on categorizing all types of relatedness as either
inectional or derivational. On the GPF model there is no problem with treating
transpositions as within-lexeme relatedness which happens to change the FORM and
SYN attributes. Even the notoriously difcult categories of evaluative morphology
start to look more reasonable on this view: in some cases it is reasonable to treat the
output of, say, diminutive morphology as dening a distinct lexeme, but on other
occasions it is surely more reasonable to view the diminutive form of a word as just
that, a form of the lexeme and not a new lexeme in its own right. This is clear with
diminutive/augmentative forms of proper names, in which by denition the de-
notation is not changed by the morphology. Again, confusion can be avoided by
drawing just the number of distinctions needed, and by not insisting that evaluative
morphology be reduced to inection or derivation.
It is very important for the GPF model that we allow for pure transpositions, in
which the word class is changed without creating a new lexeme. The existence of
transpositional morphology trapped inside the inectional paradigm of a lexeme
(morphological shift) further testies to the need to treat transpositions as distinct
from inection and derivation proper. Here, the unusual pattern of relatedness oc-
curs internally to the FORM attribute (though it may have repercussions for syntactic
dependencies such as agreement and government). It makes no sense whatsoever to
think of Kayardild verbal case as dening a plethora of new lexemes rather than den-
ing forms of a noun lexeme, even though the resulting word behaves morphologically
like a verb.
Finally, the existence of syntagmatically mixed categories, in which a single word

has two distinct sets of categorial behaviours in a single syntactic environment, is very
important for lexical models of grammar. Such mixing demonstrates the need to al-
low syntax to have access to a highly articulated lexical representation. I have argued
that we need such a representation independently just to provide an adequate de-
scription of lexical relatedness itself. The various types of syntagmatic mixing still
pose very interesting challenges for any lexical model and especially for the way
that the interface between the lexicon and syntax is handled. In this book I will re-
strict myself to drawing attention to the key issues. Nonetheless, I would argue that
syntagmatic categorial mixing provides important additional support for the overall
architecture proposed here.
The most important conclusion, however, is one which has been emerging tacitly
from our survey and which I will explicitly state as the Principle of Representational
Independence:
(121) Principle of Representational Independence (PRI):
The (four) components of a lexical representation can be related to the
corresponding components of other lexical representations independently.
The Principle of Representational Independence guarantees that the major com-
ponents of a lexical representation do not show any non-defeasible dependencies
between each other. The only caveat to the PRI is that it is difcult to see how you
would justify treating two entries as distinct lexemes with distinct lexemic indices if
they had exactly the same semantics, syntax, and form.36 In other words, the only
dependency we need to assume between the four attributes is that two distinct lex-
emes have to be distinct in some respect or other. As far as I can tell, this is the rst
time that it has been noticed that the components of a lexical representation can vary
all but independently and can thus dene 15 of the 16 theoretically available types of
relatedness (including strict identity). Much of this book will now be devoted to a
systematic exploration of the PRI.
36 Where two lexical entries have the same values for FORM/SYN but distinct SEM/LI values, we have
classical homonymy, e.g. bank; where two entries have the same SYN/SEM values, but distinct FORM/LI
values, we have (perfect) synonymy.
Part II
Paradigmatic organization
and the lexicon
4
Paradigm Function Morphology
4.1 Introduction
In realization-based morphologies, inectional afxes are not classical morphemes,
that is, lexical entries which contribute a meaning of their own. Realizational mod-
els take as their starting point the full set of features or morphosyntactic properties
which characterize a cell in the paradigm of a lexeme, and then provide a set of
instructions for constructing or accepting the word form which occupies that cell,
and which hence realizes those morphosyntactic properties. In Paradigm Function
Morphology this is achieved by means of the paradigm function for the language.
Stump (2001: 32) characterizes the paradigm function as . . . a function which, when
applied to the root of a lexeme L paired with a set of morphosyntactic properties
appropriate to L, determines the word form occupying the corresponding cell in
Ls paradigm. The paradigm function itself is dened by a set of realization rules,
which determine the way that specic morphosyntactic properties are realized by
stem selection, afxation, and so on. In this chapter I briey summarize those as-
pects of Paradigm Function Morphology that are taken over directly in the model I
present in this book, or are relevant to future discussion. One topic that I dont dis-
cuss in this chapter is the semantic interpretation of inectional (morphosyntactic)
properties. I discuss that in more detail in Chapter 6. For further discussion see also
Stump (2009, 2011).
4.2 Brief overview of PFM

4.2.1 Realization rules
In PFM, inected forms are derived by the successive application of blocks of real-
ization rules. In the most straightforward instances, each rule introduces an afx,
triggered by some set of feature specications. The order in which the rule blocks ap-
ply corresponds to the linear order of afxation. A simple example will illustrate this.
The Finnish noun form talo-i-ssa-ni in my houses consists of the root talo, followed
by plural number, inessive case, and 1sg possessor afxes. These can be introduced
by the rules shown in (1).1
(1) a. RRI, {NUM:plural}, N (X, ) =def Xi,

b. RRII, {CASE:iness}, N (X, ) =def Xssa,
c. RRIII, {POSS:1sg}, N (X, ) =def Xni,
Formally speaking, these rules are functions which map an ordered pair consisting of
set of features, , and a form to another ordered pair consisting of a (possibly distinct)
form and the same set of features. The feature set is a complete characterization of
the feature content of the cell in the paradigm, in this case the plural inessive 1sg
possessed form. The X represents the output of the previous block of rules. For the
rst block it represents the stem dictated by that particular feature set. By default, X
denotes the root of the lexeme, in this case talo.
The subscripts on the rule name RR denote successively (i) the rule block in
which the rule applies, (ii) the set of morphosyntactic properties (feature values) the
rule realizes (which we can refer to as ), and (iii) the class of lexemes to which the
rule applies, for example verbs or Class 3a nouns. The convention for determining
whether a given realization rule can apply is this: we inspect the subscripted feature
set . If is a subset of the complete feature set , and the lexeme is of the appropriate
class, then the rule can apply in that block. The complete feature set is repeated on
the right-hand side of the realization for essentially technical reasons.
The nominative singular unpossessed form of house is just the root, talo. In
a strictly morpheme-based theory this would require a string of zero morphemes
meaning respectively singular, nominative, and unpossessed. This, however, com-
pletely fails to capture the intuition that in Finnish nouns, the root form is the default
form, used to express default meanings. In a paradigm-based theory the grammar
contains a set of features and their permissible values. This will include the specic-
ations [Number:sg], [Case:nom] and [Possessor:none]. Hence, any Finnish noun
is necessarily associated with a cell labelled nominative singular unpossessed, which
must be lled by some appropriate expression (provided the paradigm is not defect-
ive). The PFM model appeals to an important principle, that of the Identity Function
Default. An identify function is a function, f , which when applied to any value, x,
delivers the same element: f (x) = x. In PFM it is assumed that in any block of real-
ization rules there is one realization rule which has exactly the format of the identity
function. This is a realization rule which takes any feature set for any category and
maps X to X, as shown in (2), where U stands for the set of all the lexemes in the
language (Stump, 2001: 53).
1 Stump uses the abbreviation RR for realization rule, noting that he used RR in earlier works to
mean rule of referral. A slightly more perspicuous notation for PFM is developed in Ackerman and Stump
(2004), described in the appendix to this chapter.
Paradigm Function Morphology 145
(2) Identity Function Default

RRn,{},U (X, ) =def X,
For Stump (2001), this is a universal default which applies in any rule block where
no explicit rule has applied. In the case of the word form talo house, we would
nd that Finnish grammar lacks specic realization rules in Blocks I, II, and III for
[Number:sg], [Case:nom], and [Possessor:none] respectively, and so the Identity
Function Default would apply. Since no special form of the root is required, the form
talo serves as the X in the rule set, and this is the output of Block I. This form then
serves as the input to the Block II realization rules, where again there is no Finnish-
specic rule to apply, and the Identity Function Default is invoked. Similarly, talo is
the output of Block III.
In the specication of the form talo-ssa-ni in my house, where the property sin-
gular receives no overt realization, the Identity Function Default applies in Block I,
and the two overt afxation rules apply in Blocks II and III. In the specication of the
unpossessed form talo-i-ssa in (the) houses, the Identity Function Default applies
solely in Block III.
The Identity Function Default is formalized as the most general rule imaginable:
for any set of features, X = X. Other things being equal, the Identity Function Default
would guarantee that no word would ever be overtly inected. Where we have an
explicit realization rule, such as that for [Number:pl], however, the default is pre-
empted by the more specic or narrow rule. This illustrates another important feature
of PFM. Rule-block organization is governed by a principle known under various
names but referred to by Stump as Pan.inis Principle:2 where two rules are in com-
petition, the narrowest applicable rule applies. For instance, imagine that ox is the
only noun in English with an irregular plural. Then, we can state plural formation by
saying: (i) for ox the plural is oxen; (ii) for any noun with root X the plural is X-z.
Without Pan.inis Principle the regular plural rule (ii) would derive *oxes, but this ap-
plication is pre-empted by the more specic rule (i). The fact that rules (i) and (ii) are
in paradigmatic opposition within the same block is captured by that principle.
In models such as PFM, which are based on the logic of default inheritance and
in which the whole grammar can be thought of as a set of nested defaults, Pan.inis
Principle is the chief organizing factor. Indeed, Stump advances the hypothesis of
Pan.inian Determinism under which Pan.inis Principle is the only principle that
governs the order of application of morphological rules. In particular, there are no ar-
bitrarily stipulated orderings (what is often called extrinsic ordering). For example,
consider the Finnish nominative plural form talot houses. This has an unexpected
2 The reference, of course, is to the great Sanskrit grammarian, Panini, whose grammatical description
.
of Vedic Sanskrit, the As..ta dhyay or Eight Books, is widely regarded as the rst such description, as well
as one of the greatest works in formal linguistics. Pan.inis grammar makes crucial use of the default logic
deployed in PFM and other inferential models of linguistics.
(and unique) desinence -t, simultaneously signalling the properties nominative and
plural, what is sometimes known as cumulation. Classical morpheme theory has
problems with cumulation and other deviations from a strict one-to-one relationship
between form and content. Is -t the nominative case ending used with the plural, or
is it the plural ending used in conjunction with the nominative case ending? In other
words, is the form really (3a) or (3b)?
(3) a. talo - -t
house -pl -nom
b. talo -t -
house -pl -nom
In the case of (3a) we would have to explain how the grammar knows that the excep-
tional zero plural marker has to be selected, while in the case of (3b) it would have to
know how the exceptional -t plural marker was selected. In each case we would have
sensitivity to an outer afx. In point of fact, a strict morphemic approach would
probably have to opt for the analysis in (3b), because if (a) were adopted it is un-
clear what would prevent the regular plural afx -i from being inserted to give the
ungrammatical *talo-i-t. In addition, the analysis in (3b) would be regarded as a little
more elegant because it would only require one exceptional allomorph, for the plural.
Nonetheless, the technical problems with such an example remain: assuming the ana-
lysis in (3b), some way has to be found to ensure that the regular plural sufx is not
accepted: *talo-i-, and some way has to be found to ensure that case sufxes other
than the nominative sufx - are not sufxed to the -t form: *talo-t-ssa, etc.3
Even more problematic are cases in which the two afx positions are separated by
other afxes. Stump (2001: 162) exemplies precisely that situation with the Swahili
past negative. The normal past-tense prex in Swahili is li-, and the normal negative
prex is ha-. In simple cases the order of prexes is ha-sm-tense-verb.root (where
sm stands for subject marker). However, just in the past tense there is a special pre-
x found when the verb is in the negative form: ku-. Thus, a negative past-tense verb
has the form ha-sm-ku-verb.root. Clearly, measures have to be taken on a strictly
3 Roark and Sproat (2007), referring to class notes of mine taken from my website, are surprised by my
arguments here. They claim that analysis (3b) is clearly correct and, moreover, that this causes no problems
to a morpheme-based account. All we need to say is that the zero nominative morpheme is marked to
select the t-allomorph of the plural morpheme |i| (in other words, we need to add a statement of the form
if the left adjacent afx is the [Number:plural] morpheme, then it must be the t allomorph. However,
this presupposes some kind of theory of (inwards) allomorph selection. Specically, some way must still
be found in the classical approach of preventing the default forms from being wrongly selected, here, *taloi
for the nominative plural, and of ensuring that the non-default plural allomorph is incompatible with the
other cases. In the classical approach, before the advent of formal or generative ways of thinking, these
matters were not made explicit, so that it was not evident just how inelegant such an analysis would end
up being. (The lectures which the website class notes accompanied did, of course, make all this clear, a
cautionary tale about the dangers of citing informal material culled from internet sources.)
morpheme-based theory to ensure that the incorrect string *ha-sm-li-verb.root

isnt accepted as a grammatical word form.
In PFM this Finnish example could be handled very simply by adding a rule to the
Block I rule set to accommodate the unexpected nominative plural form, as in (4).
(4) a. RRI, {NUM:pl, CASE:nom}, N (X, ) =def Xt,

b. RRI, {NUM:pl}, N (X, ) =def Xi,
Rule (4a) expresses cumulation by allowing one afx to be the realization of two
feature specications. (Extended exponence occurs when a single feature specica-
tion is mentioned in rules from two distinct rule blocks). Note that both rules (4a)
and (4b) could in principle apply to a form bearing the feature set [Number:pl],
[Case:nom]. However, rule (4a) pre-empts rule (4b) because it is the more specic.
Another way of putting this is to say that rule (4b) subsumes rule (4a). Moreover, this
fact can be readily computed by simple feature counting: a rule A is more specic than
rule B if its feature set properly contains that of rule B. Thus, we see how Pan.inian
Determinism captures the idea of disjunctive sets of afxes within a single position
class (in structuralist terms, paradigmatic organization as opposed to syntagmatic
organization).
An alternative solution to the Finnish nominative plural problem would be to
say that there was a single portmanteau sufx which simultaneously realizes the
properties plural and nominative, as shown in (3c).
(3) c. talo -t
house -nom.pl
This, indeed, is the kind of solution often proposed for such data in the classical
approach. However, its important to realize that a solution of this sort represents
an important weakening of the principles of the classical morphemic approach. The
portmanteau type of solution often has much to recommend it, and we will see in
Section 4.3.2 how such an analysis is coded in PFM.
We could imagine a language in which every afx was distinct from every other,
and every feature specication was found just once, associated with a single rule in
a single rule block. A language which exhibited such rule-block coherence would
be a perfectly agglutinating language. However, there are no known languages with
this property, and all the logically possible deviations from the canonical one-to-one
mapping are common. A particularly widespread deviation is underdetermination,
when a set of morphosyntactic feature values receives no overt expression in the
inected word form. In classical morphemics this is handled by postulating zero
morphemes. Thus, on a strictly morpheme-based analysis the Finnish word form
talo house-nom-sg-unpossessed would receive the analysis talo---. However,
in the great majority of cases where such zero morphemes appear to be needed, the
zero expresses the default feature specication for that block, and is therefore handled
in PFM by the Identity Function Default.
Occasionally, we nd genuinely signicative zeros. An instance is provided by the
aorist-tense forms of Bulgarian verbs. This is signalled by a sufx -o: krad-o-x I stole,
krad-o-xme we stole, igra-o-x, I played, igra-o-xte you (pl.) played, dava-o-xme we
gave dava-o-xa they gave. However, in the 3sg forms, the o is elided before the 3sg
agreement sufx -e: krad-e s/he stole, igra-e s/he played, dava-e s/he gave. Stump
(2001: 45) overrides the o-sufxation rule in the rst sufx block with a rule of the
form shown in (5).
(5) RRI, {TNS:aor, AGR:3sg}, V (X, ) =def X,
Again, it is not that we add a zero here; rather, rule (5) stipulates that no afxation
occurs, even though this is not the default situation for this property.
Finally, none of the afxes is a lexical entry with its own meaning. An inectional
afx is simply a marker providing (partial) information about the set of feature
specications associated with the cell in the paradigm occupied by the completed
word form.
4.2.2 Paradigm functions

Stump (2001: 43) gives (6) as the general characterization of the paradigm function.
(6) PF(X, ) =def Y,
Thus, the paradigm function for Finnish applied to the lexeme house, root talo, to
specify the inessive singular non-possessed form talossa in the house would be (7).
(7) PF(talo, {Number:sg, Case:iness, Possessor:no})

= talossa, {Number:sg, Case:iness, Possessor:no}
The function takes a lexemes root, paired with a complete set of features required
to fully specify a cell in the paradigm, and delivers a pairing of that cells features
together with the inected word form that occupies that cell. In other words, the
right-hand side of the function enumerates a paradigm in the sense of formproperty
paradigm as dened in Chapter 1.
Where a word form is dened by the successive application of rule blocks, the
order of application is part of the denition of the paradigm function. Assuming
three rule blocks for Finnish, the paradigm function in (7) can therefore be thought
of as a concrete instantiation of the paradigm function shown in (8), where X is the
root of any (nominal) lexeme, and = {Number:, Case:, Possessor:}.
(8) PF(X, ) =def RRIII (RRII (RRI (X, ))

The paradigm function is dened over the root of the lexeme, and instructs us how
to form completed words from that root. In effect, the root form of the word is
being used as an index for the lexeme of which it is a root. This leads to immedi-
ate problems, of course, wherever we have root homophony. Stump (2001: 43) allows
for this by assuming that each root carries a lexemic index (L-index). In order to
reect the fact that an inected form remains a form of one and the same lexeme,
Stump adds principle (9), the persistence of L-indexing.
(9) For any realization rule, RR(X, ) =def Y, ,

L-index(Y) = L-index(X).
4.3 Afx ordering

4.3.1 Three types of deviation
Afxes do not always line up in the way we expect, and there are several sets
of deviations from the agglutinative ideal presupposed in classical structuralist
morphotactics. There are three main types of deviation. First, a given afx may ap-
pear to straddle a sequence of slots; that is, it may appear to belong simultaneously to
a sequence of two or more consecutive slots (portmanteau position classes). Second,
we may nd that one and the same set of afxes can appear in distinct positions de-
pending on their grammatical function. A common situation is for a single set of
pronominal afxes to be found in different positions when realizing subject and ob-
ject agreement features. This is the problem of parallel position classes. Third, we
may nd that the relative ordering of afxes changes depending on the exact set of
features associated with a word form. Again, subject/object markers provide a com-
mon scenario, and we may nd that a set of markers (not necessarily parallel) can
occur in one order when realizing one feature set, and in the opposite order when
realizing a different feature set (reversible position classes).
4.3.2 Portmanteau position classes

Portmanteau position classes are handled in PFM by portmanteau rule blocks. To
describe such phenomena, we suspend the assumption that the blocks of rules are
necessarily applied sequentially. We can illustrate this situation by returning to the
problem of the Finnish nominative plural. An alternative analysis of the Finnish
case can be given if we suppose that the -t nominative plural sufx occupies not
Slot I, but Slots {I, II} simultaneously. In PFM we would then posit a realization rule
dened over the sequence of slots, notated by the composed block index [II, I] as
shown in (10).
(10) RR[II, I] {NUM:pl, CASE:nom}, N (X, ) =def Xt,

In effect, rule (10) is outside the basic rule-block system of Finnish inection, in that
rule (10) is in paradigmatic opposition simultaneously with the rules of Block I and
those of Block II.
To ensure that rule (10) can apply, we have to ensure that the paradigm function
for Finnish nouns can be realized by such a rule. This means that we must revise the
paradigm function shown in (8), as in (11).
(11) Revised paradigm function for Finnish nouns

Where = {Number:, Case:, Possessor:},
PF(X, ) =def RR[II, I] (X, ).
But now we must ensure that the standard Block I and II rules can realize the
paradigm function. Therefore, Stump (2001: 142) introduces the Function Composi-
tion Default (FCD):
(12) RR[n, m] (X, ) =def RRn (RRm (X, ))
A composed rule such as (10) will by denition always be more specic than the
Function Composition Default. This means that rule (10), in effect, will pre-empt the
application of any other rules in Blocks I and II, including the default plural rule and
any other case rule. Where is other than nominative plural, the FCD, (12), applies,
and the normal realization rule sequence is called into play.
4.3.3 Parallel position classes

Parallel blocks occur when the same set of afxes occupy different position classes
in order to express slightly different functions, such as when identical subject and
object markers occupy different positions depending on the function. For the sake
of exposition let us consider an idealized Bantu language whose verbs inect accord-
ing to the schema in (13) (where SM/OM means subject/object marker and TAM
means tenseaspectmood marker):
(13) Bantu prexes

SM TAM OM Verb stem
III II I 0
Suppose further that the SM and OM cross-reference person and number, and are
identical in form. If we wrote independent realization rules for Slots I and III, then
we would effectively be stating six identical rules twice, but with different rule-block
indices, thus missing a clear generalization about the language. Stump therefore
modies the rule-block model by permitting realization rules which effectively have
no block index specifying an order of application (Stump, 2001: 147). The rules of
Blocks I and III are conated as Block Agr. When the paradigm function comes to
evaluate a feature set in Block I or III, it is referred to the corresponding realization
rule in Block Agr.4 If there is an incomplete overlap between SM and OM (as

in Lingala), then Blocks I and III will contain their own specic rules which will
pre-empt the Block Agr rules because they will make reference specically to subject
or object agreement.
4.3.4 Reversible position classes

Reversible rule blocks are found when we have cases of afxal metathesis. Stump
(2001: 149) discusses cases from Fula subject/object agreement. In Fula in certain
tense forms the default afx order is Verb-stem SM OM. However, for certain person/
number combinations we nd the opposite order. This can be seen from the forms
shown in (14) (cf. Stump, 2001: 151).
(14) a. mall-u-Pon-mo
help-past-2pl-3sg
you(pl) helped him [V-SM-OM]
b. mall-u-mi-Pe
help-past-1sg-3pl
I helped them [V-SM-OM]
c. mall-u-moo-mi
help-past-3sg-1sg
I helped him [V-OM-SM]
The order of application of realization rules is dened as part of the paradigm
function (generally using iconically labelled block indices such as I, II, III, . . .
or A, B, C, . . .). In Stumps (2001) analysis of the Fula verb, the SM and OM
slots are labelled III and IV, respectively. He therefore sets up realization rules
for SM in Block III and rules for OM in Block IV, but adds a portmanteau
rule block [IV, III]. By the FCD, (12), this is normally realized by the sequence
of realization rules RRIV (RRIII (. . .)) to give the order V-SM-OM. However, for
certain feature combinations the FCD is pre-empted by rule (15) (adapted from
Stump, 2001: 154).
(15) Where = {certain feature combinations},
RR[IV, III], , V (X, ) =def RRIII (RRIV (X, )).
4.4 Rules of referral

We often nd that forms occupying cells in one part of a paradigm are systematically
identical to those of other cells. This is inectional homonymy or syncretism. This
arises for a variety of reasons, as detailed minutely and with a wealth of examples in
4 Technically the way this is achieved is by means of a rule of referral, discussed in Section 4.4.
Baerman et al. (2005). In some cases its not actually appropriate to think in terms of
homonymy at all. For instance, in Russian there are three genders, masculine, fem-
inine, and neuter, but this distinction is completely neutralized for all nominals in
the plural. The simplest (i.e. best) way of describing this is to dene a dependency
between gender and number such that the plural subparadigm simply doesnt make
any gender distinctions, i.e. the property gender is undened for [Number:plural].
Alternatively, and perhaps equivalently, we can think of plural number as a kind of
fourth gender. In other cases the homonymy can be explained in terms of an under-
specication of properties. For instance, in Latin it is clearly necessary to distinguish
ve case forms, including the dative and the ablative. However, there are no nomin-
als (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, or whatever) that distinguish the dative and ablative
case in the plural. One possible way of describing this situation is to set up a special
dative/ablative case which splits into dative and ablative in the singular but remains
one case in the plural, fullling all the morphosyntactic functions of both the dative
and ablative. A number of other situations are discussed by Baerman et al., together
with the various logically possible ways of analysing them.
There is one set of syncretisms, however, that are of importance for paradigm-
based realizational models. These are instances in which two featurally distinct cells
are associated systematically with exactly the same forms, but in which one of those
formfeature pairings can (or must) be taken as prior, and the other formfeature
pairing is dened as being identical to the rst. A rule which encapsulates such an
equivalence statement is a rule of referral (Zwicky, 1985). Stump (2001) provides
an interesting case from Bulgarian (and Macedonian) conjugation. Bulgarian has
one present tense and two past tenses, aorist and imperfect. Verb endings consist
of a theme vowel, a tense marker, and an agreement marker. However, there is no
simple correspondence between form and function: the 3sg aorist of rabotja work
is rabot-i while the 3sg imperfect of imam have is im-a-e. Nonetheless, there is an
exception-less generalization in the conjugation system: for any verb, including even
the highly irregular verb be, the 2sg aorist/imperfect forms are identical to the cor-
responding 3sg aorist/imperfect forms. Stump argues that this syncretism should be
expressed by means of a rule of referral, taking the 3sg forms as the basic ones and
referring the 2sg forms to the 3sg in either of the two past tenses.
In PFM, a rule of referral for such a syncretism is dened by referring each real-
ization rule for 2sg forms to the corresponding realization rule for 3sg forms on a
block-by-block (effectively, afx-by-afx) basis. In principle, it would be possible to
refer the entire word form expressing 2sg features to the entire word form express-
ing 3sg features, but Stump (2001: 217) argues that there are instances in which only
some of the afxes of a form need to be subject to a referral. He therefore treats all
referrals as block-by-block referrals, with whole-word syncretism being simply the
limiting case in which all rule blocks are subject to the syncretism. For the Bulgarian
example, Stump (2001: 55) proposes a rule which in prose states the following: let be
a feature set containing the features {[Tense:past], [Agr:2sg]}; let n be any of the rule
blocks needed for describing Bulgarian conjugation. Then, for any realization rule
RRn, , V (X, ) =def Y, serving to (partially) realize the features {[Tense:past],
[Agr:2sg]}, compute the form which would have been delivered if the rule were
realizing [Agr:3sg], and use that form to realize [Agr:2sg].
4.5 Allomorphy in PFM: morphological metageneralizations

The formulation of realization rules given thus far would be sufcient for purely con-
catenative morphology. However, there are instances of inection in which some
kind of morphophonological process applies to a stem in addition to or instead of
afxation. An afxation process itself may involve more than just concatenation, and
may trigger such processes as haplology or other types of truncation. In addition, we
may nd that the afx is an inx. Other processes include ablaut, stress/tone/accent
shift, consonant mutation, truncation, and, very commonly, reduplication.
Many of these effects would normally be subsumed under the operation of the
morphological metageneralizations argued for by Stump (2001: 47). These meta-
generalizations capture the traditional intuition that a morphophonological (non-
automatic) alternation might be a part of the morphological process itself. Stump
generalizes the format of the realization rule to accommodate morphophonolo-
gical alternations. Suppose a realization rule introduces a sufx Z, so that we have
RRn, , C (X, ) =def XZ, . If we designate the output, XZ, as Y, then the gener-
alized realization rule takes the form RRn, , C (X, ) =def Y , . The expression Y
defaults to Y (i.e. XZ), but for certain rules in certain rule blocks Y might be some
phonological alternant of Y. For instance, Y might be X Z, where X is a palatalized
variant of X. This alternation would be captured by means of a morphophonological
redundancy rule with roughly the form of (16).
(16) Where RRn, , C (X, ) =def Y , , if X = WC, where C is a palatalizable

consonant whose palatalized alternant is C , and Y = WCZ, then Y = WC Z.
In prose, (16) states that result of afxing Z to X is to palatalize C, the last consonant
of X, C .
Stump (2001: 47) proposes that . . . for each realization rule R, there is an un-
ordered set R of morphophonological rules constraining the evaluation of R in
any instance of its application. If the palatalization rule is the only morphophono-
logical rule relevant to applications of R, then Stump would assume a morphological
metageneralization of the form Morphophonological rule (16) applies to realization
rule R. In some cases a morphophonological rule would be applicable to just one
realization rule, capturing the idea that a single afx triggers that alternation, while
in other cases every rule in a given block might be subject to the metageneralization.
Since a single block often realizes values of a single morphosyntactic category (such as
non-past tense or subjunctive mood), this would capture the idea that the morpho-
phonological alternation is a partial exponent of that property. To varying degrees it
is possible for the morphophonological rules to capture phonological invariants. For

instance, if all and only front-vowel-initial sufxes trigger a class of palatalizations,
this fact can be written into the rule. On the other hand, if a language has completely
regular [ATR] harmony, such that an afx with a [+ATR] vowel causes all [ATR]
vowels elsewhere in the word to become [+ATR], this can in principle be handled
by underspecifying the [ATR] vowels for the harmonic feature, and by assuming a
default rule which species all vowels underspecied for [ATR] after the application
of all realization rules and morphophonological rules as [ATR].5
4.6 Stems in PFM

Following Aronoff (1992, 1994), Stump (2001) argues for the importance of stems and
stem selection. Stems may be listed lexically for a lexeme, or they may be the result
of a completely general word-formation rule. For instance, in Romance languages,
we nd that the verb in the default conjugation has a root, but most inected forms
are built on a stem formed from the root together with a theme vowel (e.g. Latin
amo love, root am-, stem ama:-). There is no need to assume that the theme vowel
has any meaning or featural content. Indeed, Aronoff argues that there are cases in
which it would be entirely wrong to assume that a stem form expressed a meaning.
He discusses the Latin third stem, illustrated by the form ama:t(um). The stem form
ama:t- is the basis for the passive perfective participle ama:tus (having been) loved,
as well as the supine form ama:tum. However, the third stem is itself the basis for
the active voice future participle ama:tu:r(us) about to love. Aronoff outlines a vari-
ety of other formations from inection and derivation which also appeal to this stem
form. He points out that we know that we are dealing with a specic stem form be-
cause many verbs have an irregular third stem, but this behaves in exactly the same
way as the regular forms. For instance, the verb fero I carry has a suppletive third
stem la:t- which forms both the passive perfective and active future participles: la:tus
carried and la:tu:rus about to carry. Aronoff concludes from such cases that the
Latin third stem is just a form devoid of any feature content or meaning over and
above the lexical meaning associated with the lexeme itself. He argues that morpho-
logy has to be couched in terms of processes and representations that appeal just to
forms and not to meanings. Such asemantic processes and representations he calls
morphomes. Thus, the Latin third stem is an example of a morphomic stem.
4.6.1 The nature of stems

Stump (2001: Chapter 6) provides a very detailed demonstration of the need for
morphomic stems, and an exhaustive illustration of the way that a complex set of
stem alternations may operate, basing his argument on Sanskrit.
5 Stump (1998) argues that the morphological metageneralizations model is superior to the rather
similar system of co-phonologies proposed by Inkelas and Orgun (1998).
We often nd that stems come in groups or sets (the stem sets of Anderson, 1992),
which may be associated with each other by means of regular rules of stem formation.
A particularly common instantiation of this is the phenomenon of the theme exten-
sion to a verb root. This is found throughout Indo-European languages, for instance.
In Latin, verbs fall into four traditional conjugations dened by theme vowels
1st conjugation in -a/-a: (am-a:-re to love), 2nd conjugation in -e: (mon-e:-re to
advise), 3rd conjugation in -e/-i (reg-e-re, reg-i-t to rule, s/he rules), and 4th con-
jugation in -i: (aud-i:-re to hear)but similar phenomena are found throughout the
worlds languages. In other cases, stems may be associated with each other by means
of morphophonological generalizations which dont, nevertheless, have the status of
morphological rules proper, because they are idiosyncratic and lexically conditioned.
In many languages verb stems undergo vowel alternations (ablaut, apophony, laryn-
gealization, and so on), or alternations in tone, accent, and length. We frequently
nd that consonants at the edge of verb stems systematically undergo changes such
as (de)voicing, palatalization, spirantization, and so on.
Stump shows that in Sanskrit there is a class of lexemes for which it is possible
to dene stem sets in terms of their distribution as Strong or Middle, and there is
another set of lexemes for which the Middle class can be divided into Middle and
Weakest. For example, the possessive adjective bhagavant fortunate belongs to
the class which has two stem forms, Strong and Middle, while the perfect active parti-
ciple tasthivans having stood has the three-way stem alternation, Strong, Middle,
and Weakest:
(17) a. Strong(bhagavant) = bhgavant-

Middle(bhagavant) = bhgavat- (morphophonologically bhgavnt)
"
b. Strong(tasthivans) = tasthiv
ans-
Middle(tasthivans) = tasthivt-
Weakest(tasthivans) = tasths.-
In the declension of bhagavant in the masculine, the Strong stem is used for the
nominative/accusative forms, singular and dual, together with the nominative plural
form. In the neuter gender declension, only the nominative/accusative plural uses
the Strong stem. Elsewhere both genders use the Middle stem. This is an instance
of paradigmatic stem selection, which is dealt with by reference to an abstract
morphomic stem furnished with an arbitrary index. In the declension of tasthivans
the Middle stem is divided into a Middle and a Weakest stem. The Middle/Weakest
distinction is effectively allomorphic, in the sense that the Weakest stem is selected
when the following sufx is vowel-initial, and the Middle stem is selected elsewhere
(Stump, 2001: 174), i.e we have phonologically conditioned suppletion. This is syn-
tagmatic stem selection, handled by reference to the morphophonological form of
the stems and afxes, as well as by reference to morphosyntactic and morpholexical
properties. We will briey consider both types, starting with the paradigmatic type of
stem selection.
The three-way characterization of stems into Strong, Middle, and Weakest corres-
ponds in general to their morphophonological characterizations, the traditional Zero,
Gun.a, and Vr.ddhi Grades (Stump, 2001: 186). We might imagine that there is only
need for one of the two sets of labels: by knowing that a stem is, say, Zero Grade we
can usually predict that it has the distribution of a Weak stem, and vice versa, while
the Strong stem generally appears in the Vr.ddhi Grade. However, Stump demon-
strates at great length that the correspondence is not perfect: the default mapping can
be overridden. For instance, there are occasions when the Strong stem is expressed by
the Gun.a Grade rather than the Vr.ddhi Grade. An example is the vocative singular
of a certain class of nouns including rajan king. Similarly, there are occasions when
the Middle stem is expressed by the Zero Grade rather than the Gun.a Grade, among
other mismatches. At the same time, however we identify a stem, whether by default
from its form, or by stipulated labelling, we cannot in general predict how that stem
will be used in the paradigm. In fact, the distribution of the three stem types is very
complex and has to be stated as part of the morphology of Sanskrit, sometimes on a
lexeme-by-lexeme basis. Moreover, if we examine the actual forms of lexemes such
as bhagavant, we nd that one and the same sufx may be associated with different
stems. For instance, in the declension of lexemes such as bhagavant, the mascu-
line accusative plural is based on the Middle stem, while the masculine nominative
plural is based on the Strong stem. Yet the sufx is -as in both cases: masculine nom-
inative plural bhgavant-as; masculine accusative plural bhgavat-as. In other words,
Sanskrit stems are paradigm examples of morphomic stems in Aronoffs sense.
In some cases the selection of stems can be written into the realization rule which
introduces the afxes attached to those stems. Stump provides three compelling rea-
sons why this is not sufcient in the general case to account for stem distribution. He
provides two such reasons on the basis of the Breton partial paradigm shown in (18).
(18) Breton conjugation skrivan write
Present Imperfect Future Imperative

Indicative
1sg skriv-a-n skriv-e-n skriv-i-n
2sg skriv-e-z skriv-e-s skriv-i skriv
3sg skriv skriv-e skriv-o skriv-e-t
1pl skriv-o-m skriv-e-m skriv-i-m skriv-o-m
2pl skriv-i-t skriv-e-ch skriv-int skriv-e-nt
3pl skriv-e-r skriv-e-d skriv-o-r
Stump assumes that the forms skriv, skriv-e, skriv-i, and skriv-o are all stem forms. The
rst point is illustrated by the Future forms skriv-i and skriv-o. Both of these are unin-
ected stem forms (on Stumps analysis), and so they dont involve any (non-trivial)
application of a realization rule. Therefore, we cant link the selection of the two dis-
tinct stems to such a realization rule. The second point is illustrated by the 1pl forms
skriv-o-m, skriv-e-m, and skriv-i-m. In each case these are the result of the (default)
realization rule for the 1pl agreement inection, but in each case the stem is distinct
(the imperative form is syncretic with the present indicative form, so there are, in fact,
only three stem forms here). The third argument comes from Bulgarian conjugation.
The verb jam eat has the stem form jad- for most of the present-tense paradigm,
and this reects the fact that it belongs to the so-called non-truncating consonantal
inectional class, whose 1sg form is regularly -_, as in krad_ I steal. However, the
1sg form of jam is not *jad_, as would be expected, but ja-m. This form is regular on
the assumption that the 1sg form is built on a stem belonging to the non-truncating,
non-consonantal class. But by this reasoning we have to assume that it is the stem
selection which determines the nature of the sufx and not the other way around. In
other words, stem selection is prior to the operation of any realization rules effecting
inection.
Returning to Sanskrit, phonologically conditioned stem allomorphy is illustrated
by the selection of the Middle/Weakest stems of the tasthivans-class of nominals.
Consider the masculine accusative and instrumental plural forms of the relevant
classes of adjectives. The forms for bhagavant are, respectively, {bhgavat-as,
bhgavad-bhis} (where the t/d alternation is purely phonological), but the forms for
tasthivans are {tasths.-as, tasthivd-bhis}. The two case forms of bhagavant are
built on the same stem form (modulo regular phonological voicing assimilation),
but the accusative plural form of tasthivans differs from the instrumental plural
form, in that the accusative form is built on the Weakest stem, while the instru-
mental form is built on the Middle stem. This is because the accusative ending is
vowel-initial, while the instrumental ending is consonant-initial. Stump appeals to
a morphological metageneralization which states, in effect, select the Weakest stem
form when the stem comes before a vowel (see his rules (8, 9), p. 181). Interestingly,
the stem-selection rule for tasths.- cant be attributed solely to the phonology of the
resulting word form. In particular, the Weakest stem is not found prevocalically in
compound formation (rather, the default Middle stem is selected in such cases). For
this reason, Stump argues that the morphological metageneralization is relativized to
Block I sufxation. In this sense the stem selection is governed both by phonological
form and by morphological structure.
Stump (2001: 183) provides the set of rules shown in (19) for determining the
relevant forms of the three stems of an alternating lexeme.
(19) Stem-formation rules for L = perfect active participle

Where L is a perfect active participle, properties (a) and (b) imply each other,
and both imply (c):
a. Ls Strong stem is Xivans-
b. Ls Middle stem is Xivt-
c. Ls Weakest stem is Xs.-.
Now let us turn to the relation between the stem types Strong, Middle, and Weak-
est, and the phonologically dened stem types, Vr.ddhi, Gun.a, and Zero Grades.
These grades are essentially a type of moraically dened ablaut root vowels, show-
ing, respectively, the alternations long-a, short-a, and no vowel. The basic denition
is provided by Stump (2001: 186) in (20).
(20) Sanskrit grades

For any gradational nominal L, each of (a)(c) implies the other two:
a. The Vr.dhi-grade stem of L has the form Xa(R)C0
b. The Gun.a-grade stem of L has the form Xa(R)C0
c. The Zero-grade stem of L has the form X(R)C0
"
In an ideal world these phonological denitions would correspond exactly to the

morphologically dened stem types, but this is not the case for Sanskrit. We nd,
for instance, the following correspondence between grade type and stem type:
(21) bhagavant fortunate: Strong stem = Gun.a Grade

Middle stem = Zero Grade
rajan king: Strong stem = Vr.ddhi Grade
pad foot: Strong stem = Vr.ddhi Grade
Middle stem = Gun.a Grade
a tman soul: Strong stem = Vr.ddhi Grade
Middle stem = Zero Grade
Weakest stem = Gun.a Grade
Moreover, what correspondences there are only apply to gradating nominals. Many
words fail to show gradation at all, so that their morphological stem classes dif-
fer from their phonologically dened stem classes by denition. To be sure we can
identify a default mapping, as shown in (22), but even this rather complex default
statement is frequently overridden.
(22) Sanskrit stem defaults

Where L is a gradational nominal:
a. by default, Ls Strong stem is its Gun.a-grade stem
b. by default, Ls Middle stem is its Zero-grade stem
c. if L belongs to the Weakest class, then by default, Ls Weakest stem is its
Zero-grade stem
d. if L {n-stem nominals, perfective active participles, comparative adject-
ives in -yam
. s, mahant, . . .}, then Ls Strong stem is its Vr.ddhi-grade
stem.
Such deviations from default mappings between the phonological and morpholo-
gical characterizations of stems lead Stump (2001: 199) to conclude that morpholo-
gical theory requires us to distinguish stem forms and stem indices. The stem index is
an arbitrary integer or other label which uniquely identies a given stem for a given
class of lexemes, for instance Strong, Middle, or Weak. Stump (2001: 184, 188)
summarizes these conclusions in (23), as his Indexing Autonomy Hypothesis.
(23) The Indexing Autonomy Hypothesis

The determination of a stems index is in principle independent of the
determination of its form.
Finally, we illustrate stem selection by seeing how it interacts with the notion of
portmanteau position class introduced in Section 4.3.2. Consider the situation in
which an irregular stem serves not as the basis for afxation but as the complete in-
ected word form itself. For instance, the comparative form worse of the lexeme bad
is an irregular stem which doesnt accept the normal comparative sufx -er: *wors-er.
In other words, we must ensure that in such cases the word form-cum-stem doesnt
feed into the normal afxation rules. By contrast, you might wish to analyse the
irregular comparative better as consisting of an irregular (suppletive) stem bett-
followed by the regular -er sufx.
We shall assume that the comparative is an inectional morphosyntactic category
governed by the feature [Degree:{positive, comparative, superlative}]. Here I shall
simplify Stumps rule schemata in obvious ways to make the discussion more per-
spicuous. The analysis of worse and better appeals to the notion of portmanteau
position class and denes worse as the result of applying a stem-selection rule to
the class [I, 0], which in English denes an entire inected word form. Thus, we
dene rule (24), where BAD is the label for the lexical class containing bad as its sole
member (Stump, 2001: 208).
(24) RR[I, 0], {comparative}, BAD (X) =def worse

The Function Composition Default (12) will apply unless pre-empted by rules such
as (24), for example to dene taller as the comparative of tall:
(25) PF(tall, comparative) = RR[I, 0], {comparative}, ADJ (tall)

= RRI (RR0 (tall)) (by FCD)
= RRI (tall) = taller
The Block 0 realization rule selects the root tall as the stem, and the Block I realization
rule is the regular -er sufxation rule.
Now consider better, which, for the sake of argument we are assuming consists of
the suppletive stem bett- with the regular -er afx. The stem-selection rule for better
takes the form (26).
(26) RR0, {comparative}, {GOOD} (X) =def bett
This differs from the stem-selection rule for worse in that it refers only to Block 0. It
thus denes an irregular stem to which the regular sufx is attached in Block I. The
irregular stem-selection rule (26) pre-empts the default stem-selection rule, which
would have selected the root form good.
Stems: summary In sum, we require the following system of rule types and prin-
ciples:
Stem-formation rules, which specify the phonological shape of a stem or set of

stems. In default cases the stem-formation rule will also permit us to predict the
stem index and vice versa, but not always.
Stem-indexing rules, overriding the default specications given by the stem-
formation rules or other default principles.
Stem-selection rules, which specify which stem is to be used in a given cell of the
paradigm. Such rules are the rst rules in the paradigm function of the lexeme
and the rst block of inectional realizational rules proper takes this stem as its
input. Where there is no stem-selection rule, stem-selection proceeds by default
(in which case the input to the realization rules is typically the lexical root).
4.6.2 Paradigm linkage in PFM

Form-paradigms and content-paradigms In a number of works (Stewart and Stump,
2007; Stump, 2002, 2005b, 2006), Stump argues for an enriched conception of the
notion morphosyntactic feature which does justice to the syntactic functions of
features as well as to their morphological functions. He argues that each lexeme is
associated not only with a set of formfunction pairings in the morphology, but also
with a set of pairings between the lexemic index of the lexeme and those properties
which govern the behaviour of that lexeme in the syntax. For instance, an English
count noun such as cat has singular and plural forms, but these forms correspond
to syntactic terminals where appropriate singular and plural forms, respectively, can
appear. This means that, in addition to the form paradigm of the lexeme cat given
in (27a), we also have a content paradigm, as shown in (27b).
(27) a. Form paradigm for cat

|kat|, sg realized as /kat/
|kat|, pl realized as /katz/
b. Content paradigm for cat
cat, SG
cat, PL
An example such as this is trivial, of course, because in the default case the morpho-
logically relevant form paradigm is isomorphic to the content paradigm. Needless
to say, however, there are interesting cases of mismatch in which the default
isomorphism is subverted.
There are several types of mismatch between morphological form and syntactic
function. A classical example is deponency (Stewart and Stump, 2007: 393) such as
that found in Latin conjugation. A whole host of verbs in Latin have passive mor-
phology but are active in meaning. For instance, the verb rego rule has an active
form regit rules (3sg present) and a passive form regitur is ruled (3sg present),
while the verb loquor speak has just the passive form loquitur, which, however,
has active meaning speaks. There is no form *loquit. Therefore, we have to say that
their form paradigms are dened over whatever features distinguish active verb forms
from passive forms, but their content paradigms contain only the active-voice fea-
ture, as illustrated in Table 4.1. The mappings for loquor in brackets in Table 4.1 are
undened for this lexeme. Other types of mismatch include syncretisms, heteroclisis
(Stump, 2002, 2006), periphrasis (Ackerman and Stump, 2004), and principal parts
phenomena of various kinds (Stewart and Stump, 2007).
The (default and non-default) relations between form and content paradigms are
specied by rules of paradigm linkage. The default case is represented by the universal
Table 4.1. Deponency as formcontent mismatch
Verb Form cells Content cells Realization
rego reg, {3sg, pres, act} rego, {3SG, PRES, ACT} regit
rego reg, {3sg, pres, pass} rego, {3SG, PRES, PASS} regitur
loquor lokw, {3sg, pres, pass} loquor, {3SG, PRES, ACT} loquitur
(loquor lokw, {3sg, pres, act} loquor, 3SG, PRES, ACT )
(loquor lokw, {3sg, pres, pass} loquor, {3SG, PRES, PASS} loquitur )
rule of paradigm linkage given in (28) (Stewart and Stump, 2007: 392; see also Stump,
2006: 286):
(28) The universal default rule of paradigm linkage

Given a lexeme L, where R is Ls root, L, R, .
The binary connective is to be interpreted as expressing the relation between

corresponding feature specications in the obvious way.
Heteroclisis One particularly clear instance of the need for a distinction between
form and content paradigms is the phenomenon of heteroclisis, in which a lexeme
inects according to one inectional class for one part of its paradigm but according
to a distinct inectional class for the other part (Stump, 2002, 2006). Heteroclisis also
illustrates the need for an articulated theory of stem selection. We will consider the
example of the Czech noun pramen spring, source. This declines as a soft (palatal-
ized) noun in the singular, like pokoj room, and as a hard (non-palatalized) noun
in the plural, like most bridge, as shown in Table 4.2 (adapted from Stump 2006:
280).
However, although the soft/hard declension pattern in Czech has its historical
origins in phonologically dened stem types, this phonological motivation has been
obscured, so that there is no way of telling from the form of the root that pramen
Table 4.2. Heteroclite declension of Czech pramen source
Soft Heteroclite Hard

Declension pokoj room pramen source most bridge
Singular
Nominative pokoj pramen most
Vocative pokoji prameni moste
Accusative pokoj pramen most
Genitive pokoje pramene mostu
Dative pokoji prameni mostu
Instrumental pokojem pramenem mostem
Locative pokoji prameni moste
Plural
Nominative pokoje prameny mosty
Vocative pokoje prameny mosty
Accusative pokoje prameny mosty
Genitive pokoju pramenu mostu
Dative pokojum pramenum mostum
Instrumental pokoji prameny mosty
Locative pokojch pramenech mostech
takes anything other than the hard set of endings. What this means is that the lex-
ical entry of pramen has to be furnished with a root with two distinct labels, say,
pramensoft and pramenhard. The lexeme is then given a class feature indicating
that the hard root is to be used with plural forms.
The paradigm function for a heteroclitic word now has to made sensitive to the dis-
tinction between the two roots. The way that Stump (2002, 2006) achieves this is by
appeal to the syntactic/content paradigm and a morphological/form paradigm dis-
tinction. The default mappings are illustrated schematically for the non-heteroclite
nouns pokoj room and most bridge (with obvious abbreviations):
(29) Formcontent mappings for pokoj, most

a. pokoj, gen sg pokoj, GEN SG = pokoje
pokoj, gen pl pokoj, GEN PL = pokoju
...
b. most, gen sg most, GEN SG = mostu
most, gen pl most, GEN PL = mostu
...
However, for heteroclite nouns such as pramen this default linkage is subverted.
Taking the soft root to be the default, the hard root form is then a co-radical.
Stump (2001) then denes a special linkage rule, (30), stating that the hard co-radical
is selected for the plural number part of the paradigm.
(30) Czech rule of stem licensing

If lexeme L belongs to the pramen class, then {Number:pl} licenses Ls co-
radical stem.
4.6.3 Stems and the English verb

English provides a simple example of how stem formation and indexing works.6 A
regular transitive verb can express the morphosyntactic features past tense, perfect
participle, and passive participle. However, the form is the same for all three fea-
tures, e.g. walked. We can call this Stem1. This stem is derived by regular afxation
from the root, and on its own can realize each of the three features. However, some
verbs have an irregular Stem1, such as buy: root buy, Stem1 bough- (/b :/) (or perhaps
c
Stem1 = bought). This listed Stem1 form overrides the default stem-formation rule,
but it behaves in other respects exactly like Stem1. In other verbs, the past tense and
perfect/passive-participle features are realized by different stem forms, as in write,
root write, past wrote, participle stem writt- (/rit/). What we can say here is that there
is a Stem2 which is by default identical to Stem1, but which in some verbs has a form
6 For a detailed discussion of stems in English and West Germanic generally see Blevins (2003b).
distinct from Stem1. In all verbs the perfect and passive participles are realized by the
same stem form (Stem2). This patterning of stems is illustrated schematically in (31),
with concrete examples in (32).
(31) English verb stem system

Stem0 (= root) Stem1 Stem2 Example
X X-ed = Stem1 walk (regular)
X Y Y buy
X Y Z write, sing
X Y X take
X X X put
etc.
(32) walk walk-ed walk-ed

buy bough-t bough-t
write wrote writt-en
take took take-n
put put put
The denition of the different stems is made explicit in (33).
(33) Stem-to-feature mapping for English
By default Stem2 = Stem1

Stem2 [vform:perfpart]
Stem2 [vform:passpart]
Stem1 [tense:past]
Rules of morphology dene which stem is used for realizing which set of fea-
tures. For instance, the realization of [vform:perfpart] appeals to Stem2 (by default
set equal to Stem1). In the case of verbs of the class [write], this stem serves as
the basis for -en sufxation. In the case of verbs of the class [sing], Stem2 on its
own realizes that property set, and hence the stem form occupies a portmanteau
position class (Slot[I, 0]; cf. the discussion of portmanteau stem-selection rules,
Stump, 2001: 208).
4.7 Derivational morphology in PFM

4.7.1 Derivational paradigms
A number of authors have argued that derivational relationships can in some cases
exhibit paradigmatic structure, though in some instances different authors may mean
slightly different things by paradigm (or indeed derivation) (Bauer, 1997; Booij,
1997, 2002; Spencer, 1988). Consider the set of words in (34).
(34) Subject nominalizations in English

Verb Nominal Verb Nominal
drive driver apply applicant
walk walker chair chairman/chairperson
act actor guide guide
reside resident cook chef
study student y (an aircraft) pilot
claim claimant
Clearly, the English lexicon is structured in such a way as to warrant us dening a

notion of subject nominalization, under which for any given verb there is (usually)
some noun which denotes the subject argument of that verb. The morphological
means used to realize this correspondence are varied, though its also clear that the
sufxation of -er (which may also include -or as a graphemic variant) is in some sense
the default morphology.
To see these correspondences as a paradigm, we only need to compare the list in
(34) with a similar list of regular and irregular plurals. In each case we have a sys-
tematic relationship, expressed by means of generally afxal morphology, but with
exceptions, including conversion (guide), stem suppletion (applicant), and whole-
word suppletion (chef, pilot). The only disparity in the formal means of realization
found in the list of plurals and that found in the list of subject nominals is illustrated
by chairperson, which is a compound (and which many morphologists, no doubt,
would omit from the list of subject nominals for that reason).
To describe singular/plural inection, we set up a feature [Number] with two val-
ues {singular, plural}. To describe subject nominalization, we cannot deploy a binary
feature in this way, however, because the base verb and its subject nominalization
are not in an equipollent relation to each other. Rather, the subject-nominalization
process is determined by a privative (single-valued) feature subject nominalization.
On this understanding, the subject-nominalization paradigm is a very simple
paradigm, consisting of exactly two cells per verb lexeme, one occupied by the base
verb, and the other by its nominalization. The individual morphological means for
realizing the nominalization are in paradigmatic opposition to each other, hence the
application of the paradigm metaphor.
There is a second notion of paradigm that is of some interest to models of mor-
phology, illustrated by English Personal Noun formation, as discussed in Chapter 1.
Recall that the kinds of expression I have in mind are theoretical linguist, electrical
engineer, . . . . These examples are derived from nominal expressions of the form
Adjective + Noun, and in each case the base expression has to be lexicalized. Thus,
for acionados of pre-classical music, the term baroque ute denotes a specic type
of (pre-Bhm) instrument, almost certainly made out of wood and with at most one
key. It is a xed expression with a xed denotation, and for that reason can serve as
the base for derivation. The fact that baroque autist is the personal noun form can
be deduced from the fact that autist is the personal noun form of the head noun
ute. In other words, the relationship between the base expression baroque ute and
the personal noun baroque autist is crucially dened with respect to the head of the
expression, ute.
A derivational way of picturing this is to deploy what Hoeksema (1985, 1989) has
called a head operation. We rst form the personal noun from the head, to get
autist. Then we take the phrasal base baroque ute, circumscribe out the modi-
er, baroque, apply the personal-noun-forming process to the remaining head, and
replace the modier:
(35) Derivation of baroque autist
baroque ute
ute (circumscription of head noun)
autist (personal noun formation)
baroque autist (reinstatement of modier)
Another way of picturing this is as in (36).

ist
(36) baroque ute (baroque) ute (baroque) autist
And in Spencer (1988) I present the process as a kind of Latin square:
(37) Latin square representation of baroque autist

ute autist

baroque ute baroque autist
However we choose to picture it, the crucial facts are that (i) the base has to be a
lexicalized expression, and (ii) the process is entirely productive.
Point (i) is evident when we look at minimal pairs which involve ordinary phrases
rather than lexicalized phrases. In (38) we see some examples of failure of the
personal-noun-formation process:
(38) wooden ute wooden autist

modern linguistics modern linguist
Wooden autist can only mean autist who is wooden, and modern linguist, if the
output of personal noun formation, can only mean specialist in/student of Modern
Languages, and thus has to be derived from the (xed) expression modern languages,
not the syntactically formed modern linguistics.
A further salient feature of personal noun formation is that it often involves sup-
pletive or subtractive morphology. For this reason it cant sensibly be treated in terms
of ordinary morphemic analysis.7
Personal Noun formation is paradigmatic, though not in quite the sense that in-
ection is paradigmatic. The grammar of English has to include some feature, label,
or whatever which encodes the fact that personal noun formation from nouns and
lexicalized nominal phrases is (in principle always) possible. It must also specify that
the morphological form of a phrase-based derivation is computed from the morpho-
logical form obtained by applying that process to the noun head of the phrase. In this
respect, we have a derivational paradigm, just as we do for deverbal subject nominal-
izations, though not one which can easily be dened in terms of a default afxation
process.
4.7.2 Derivational paradigms in PFM

The notion of derivational paradigm illustrated by (37) is the second of the two in-
terpretations mentioned by Stump (2001: 255). We can think of it as a meaning-,
feature-, or content-driven notion of paradigm, in which formal relationships are
secondary. The rst is that of Stump (1991), devoted to morphosemantic mismatches
of the baroque autist variety, in which he treats a derivational paradigm as be-
ing dened by the (usually afxational) process which derives the new lexeme. On
this interpretation the examples in (34) would all represent distinct paradigms; that
is, there would be an -er/-or paradigm, an -ent/-ant paradigm, and so on. This is a
form-driven notion of paradigm. One consequence of Stumps (1991) way of inter-
preting this type of paradigm is that the semantic relationship between the derived
lexeme and the base lexeme can be very (in principle, completely) different. In fact,
these two notions of paradigm have been current in the East European structuralist
tradition for some time. The meaning-driven notion corresponds to the notion of
derivational category, while the form-driven notion corresponds to the notion of
derivational type (see Szymanek, 1988, 1989, for detailed discussion of these distinc-
tions). I will take the crucial notion here to be that of derivational category, i.e. that
which appeals to the notion of content-paradigm.
Stump (2001: 257) illustrates the application of PFM to derivation by considering
the case of friendless from friend. Since we are assuming a derivational paradigm,
there must be a paradigm function which delivers the derived lexeme. This means
that the paradigm function (in its most general sense) for English must include an
application of the form (39), in which is a syntacticosemantic (i.e. derivational)
category.
7 Ackema and Neeleman (2004) develop a very interesting analysis of these constructions in terms of
an abstract type of morpheme, their AFFIX, which circumvents some of the problems raised for a classical
morphemic approach.
(39) PF(X, ) =def Y,

PF( friend, privative adjective) = friendless, privative adjective
Notice that the paradigm function is dened as usual over a pairing of root and
property to derive a new root.
4.8 Head marking and the Head-Application Principle

In morpheme-based models of morphology, on one interpretation of the notion of
morpheme concatenation, it is natural to suppose that morphology gives rise to
branching structures. Indeed, this will be the case if we regard morphemes as lexical
entries in their own right, so that morpheme concatenation is homologous with com-
pound formation. This is the essence of so-called Word Syntax (see Selkirk, 1982,
for an early model and Toman, 1998, for an overview of the issues). In clear cases
of endocentric compounding, the head is that element which determines the overall
syntactic category of the compound, which determines the meaning of the compound
(by dening a denotation which is then delimited in some way by the non-head)
and receives the inections of the compound as a whole. Thus, mousetrap is headed
by trap because it is a kind of trap and because more than one of them are called
mousetraps rather than *micetrap. Similarly, a blackbird is a bird, and the word black-
bird is a noun, just like bird (but unlike black). Given this background, morphologists
have asked whether afxed words are headed in the same way. For instance, are the
word forms walked, rewrite, or walker headed, and if so what is the head?
The most extreme answer to the question is that given by Williams (1981b), who
argues that for all languages the head is the right-most element. I and many other
observers have been mystied by this claim, so I will leave it to one side. Another
possibility is that the most recently added afx is the head, mimicking compounding.
This would make -ed, re-, and -er, respectively, the heads in our examples. For this to
respect the putative homology with compounding, this would mean that the afxes
would have to have a syntactic category which is the category of the whole word, and
a meaning which is modied by the non-head (the lexical root in this case). While this
may make some sense for walker, its less obvious that it can be applied to examples
other than highly canonical derivational morphology. For rewrite we would have to
say that the basic meaning was that of a repeated event, further delimited by the
concept write. For walked we would have to say that the meaning is that of past
event, modied by the concept walk. Not surprisingly, some theorists have baulked
at this way of analysing inection.
Selkirk (1982) proposed a notion of relativized head, under which different parts
of a complex word can contribute head properties. For instance, we could argue
that the word form walked has two heads. The lexical head walk provides the lexical
semantics (and syntactic class, perhaps) to the word as a whole, while the -ed afx
provides the feature [tense:past]. In a sense, this is equivalent to treating an inected

word form as though it were a periphrastic expression such as has walked. In that
expression the auxiliary verb has is the inectional head (in that it takes tense and
agreement inections), while the verb form walked is the lexical head. The inected
word form as a whole inherits the properties of its parts by a process of feature per-
colation under which morphosyntactic and morphosemantic properties pass from a
lower node to a higher node. In languages which permit several inections per word
form, each inection is a head in its own right. The natural critique of the relativized
head notion is that it evacuates the notion of head of its crucial meaning.
In realizational models the question of headedness doesnt arise in this form, be-
cause there are no afxal morphemes as such to serve as pseudo-syntactic heads,
and morphology is not identical to (endocentric) compounding. However, situations
do arise in which the notion of head seems to be warranted even in realizational
theories. Consider English prexed verbs of the type undertake, understand, with-
stand, withhold, and uphold. These verbs inect in the same way as their unprexed
bases, whether the prexes are unproductive and non-compositional, or productive
and semantically transparent (such as stressed re-). This means that whatever lexical
property it is that verbs such as take, stand, and hold may have which determines their
conjugation, that property is preserved under prexation. A popular way of thinking
of such situations is to say that the prexed words are headed by their verb bases, and
that it is the heads that determine inection. This way of looking at things is partic-
ularly attractive when the inections are also prexes and they appear closer to the
root than the derivational prexes. This is a common situation, being found in clas-
sical Indo-European languages, as well as Modern Greek, German, and a whole host
of other languages. For instance, in German we have the verb nehmen to take, past
participle ge-nommen. A prexed form of this verb, such as mit-nehmen to take with
(one) has the past participle mit-ge-nommen, in which the prexal part of the lexical
root is added to the form inected for past participle.
Stump (1991, 2001: Chapter 4) argues that a necessary (though not, of course, suf-
cient) condition for analysing complex words as headed structures of this type is that
they are the result of derivation or compounding which preserves word category, as
in the examples cited above. If in addition such a process is transparent with respect
to some property of the base, then we can speak of a headed structure. Stump offers
a number of examples of such transparency from diminutives in various languages
(more generally, evaluative morphology, encompassing pejoratives, augmentatives,
and so on, as well as diminutives sensu stricto). Perhaps the commonest use of
evaluative morphology is found with diminutives of nouns, discussed in Chapter 3.
We have seen that Russian is rich in diminutive sufxes, all of which pre-
serve the gender of their bases. Thus, the affectionate/diminutive sufx -ulja cre-
ates a feminine-gender noun mamulja from mama mummy (feminine), and a
masculine-gender noun, papulja, from papa daddy (masculine). In this case the
afx determines the inectional class of the output, but the gender is transparent.
In other cases the gender and also the inectional class are transparent. Thus, the
sufx -ecek -ecka -ecko is added to consonant-nal (masculine), -a nal (fem-
inine), and -o nal (neuter) lexemes, as in celovek celov-ecek person (masculine),
doska doc-ecka board (feminine), slov-o slov-ecko word (neuter), preserving
both gender and inectional class (though it can be added to Class 3 nouns ending
in a palatalized consonant, such as doc doc-ecka daughter, in which case it im-
poses Class 2 membership while preserving gender). Stump (2001: 99) cites further
examples from Southern Barasano and Breton, in which the diminutive-formation
rule preserves syntactic category (noun, adjective, adverb).
The Russian diminutives, while headed in Stumps technical sense, inect in a way
that targets the sufx, not the base noun. In this respect the Russian examples are
not head-marking, and Stump refers to this type of (standard) inection as external
marking (EM). However, the Southern Barasano diminutives do exhibit head mark-
ing. The sufx is -aka. When attached to a noun such as wi house, it gives wiaka
little house, but the plural of the diminutive is formed by sufxing -aka to the plural
inected form of the base, wi-ri, to give wiriaka. This is head-marking (HM). Dimin-
utive formation in Breton is, if anything, even less canonical: the diminutive sufx
-ig gives rise to double plural marking when attached to a noun: bag boat, bag-ig
little boat, bag-o boats, bag-o-ig-o little boats. Thus, Breton exhibits double
marking (2M). The property of being head-marking or not is a property of the de-
rivational or compounding construction itself: either all the outputs of the given
construction (coderivatives) exhibit head marking, or none do (the Coderivative
Uniformity Generalization, Stump, 2001: 98, 108). Moreover, if an output exhibits
head marking in some part of its inectional paradigm, it exhibits head marking
throughout the whole of the paradigm (the Paradigm Uniformity Generalization,
Stump, 2001: 98, 109).
This means that there are three types of category-preserving derivational or com-
pounding construction. Those constructions that exhibit EM are called root-to-root
rules, those constructions that exhibit HM are called word-to-word rules, and those
that exhibit 2M are called word-to-stem rules. The logic of the terminology is this.
In inecting a Russian diminutive, the realization rules apply to the derived word in
exactly the same way they would apply to a simplex word. Thus, the base form of the
derived word behaves itself exactly like a root with respect to the operation of the
realization rules of the inectional component. However, when an HM word such as
the Southern Barasano diminutivized noun is inected, the effect is to take an inec-
ted word (the plural form wi-ri houses) and apply the diminutive process to deliver
another inected word (perhaps word form to word form would be a more accurate
description). In the case of a doubly marked Breton diminutive, the -ig sufxation
applies to an already inected word form, as in Southern Barasano: [bag-o] + -ig.
However, the output, bagoig is not a completed word form; rather, it is the stem to
which a second round of plural afxation applies, to give bagoigo. Hence, the -ig
sufxation creates a stem from a word.
The behaviour of headed constructions produced by word-to-word rules is gov-
erned by the Head-Application Principle (HAP) (Stump, 2001: 115):
(40) Head-Application Principle (HAP)

If M is a word-to-word rule, and Y and Z are roots such that for some (pos-
sibly empty) sequence S, Y = M(Z, S), then where PF(Z, ) = W, ,
PF(Y, ) = M(W, S), .
In simple terms, the HAP states that for any word Y that is headed by Z, every inec-
ted word form of Y is headed by the corresponding word form of Z. For instance, the
prexed verb lexeme undertake is headed by take. This means that each inected
form of undertake (i.e. undertake, undertakes, undertaking, undertook, undertaken)
is headed by the corresponding forms of take.
4.9 Appendix: revised notational conventions for Paradigm

Function Morphology
The notional format of realization rules is revised in Ackerman and Stump (2004:
133) as follows:
For a given rule block: XC , : Y,
where C denotes the class of the lexeme L whose root or selected stem form is X,
denotes the complete set of properties dening the word forms cell in the form-
paradigm and is a subset of , namely the feature set of which Y is the exponent
for L.
The rules introduced in this chapter can therefore be rewritten in the following
fashion:
(1 ) a. Block I
XN , : {NUM:plural} Xi
b. Block II
XN , : {CASE:iness} Xssa
c. Block III
XN , : {Poss:1sg} Xni
(2 ) Identity Function Default

For all blocks,
XU , : {} X
(5 ) Block I
XV , : {TNS:Aor, AGR:3sg} X
(16 ) Where for all blocks,
XC , : Y ,
if X = WC, where C is a palatalizable consonant whose palatalized alternant is
C , and Y = WCZ, then Y = WC Z.
(24 ) For portmanteau Block [I, 0]
XBAD , : {comparative} worse
(26 ) Block 0 (stem selection)
XGOOD , : {comparative} bett
5
Lexical entries and the generalized

paradigm function
5.1 Introduction
A prime motivation for the generalized version of PFM advocated in this book is
the need to provide a unied treatment of derivation and inection. But this brings
with it a serious technical problem. In standard cases of derivation we create a new
lexeme with a completely new set of inections. Except in rather special cases (of-
ten thought of as mixed categories), the inectional properties of the base lexeme
are completely invisible to the inectional morphology as applied to the derived lex-
eme. A subject-nominal form of a verb in English (or Russian) has all the inectional
properties of a noun and no inectional properties of a verb. In other words, when
we relate the set of inected forms of the base lexeme and the set of inected forms
of the derived lexeme, there is an implied priority given to the derivational pro-
cess: rst we derive the new lexeme, and then we inect it. But if both derivation
and inection are handled by the same mechanism, the generalized paradigm func-
tion, how do we guarantee this inherent priority? It is, arguably, the need to ensure
the priority of derivational morphology that has prevented morphologists from tak-
ing seriously the idea that inection and derivation are just end points on a single
scale of lexical relatedness, despite the universal plaint that inection and deriva-
tion cant be distinguished from each other. I show how the problem can be solved
by means of an inferentialrealizational model which deploys default specications
over underspecied representations.
The basic idea is this: to inect a lexeme, the grammar needs to know what prop-
erties the lexeme inects for. This means that we must specify what I will call the
lexemes morpholexical signature. This is a specication of the morphological class of
the lexeme and the morphosyntactic properties that it inects for. The morpholexical
signature is given by default (in general), derived from the syntactic representation
of the lexeme. When a new lexeme is formed, by denition the lexemic index is mod-
ied, creating a new lexeme. The notion creating a new lexeme can now be coded in
the following way: whenever we have a derived lexical entry with a derived lexemic
index of the form ()1 for a derivational category , we also have a lexical entry of
the form (), { }. But this derived lexical entry lacks a morpholexical signature, and
that has to be provided (in the general) case by the morpholexical signature default.
Only then can the lexeme be inected. But this effectively overrides the morpholexical
signature that would have been associated with the base lexeme on its own. Therefore,
we arrive at the required result of the priority of derivation.
One of the goals of this chapter is to clarify certain aspects of lexical structure
by elaborating the FORM attribute. For a typical inecting lexeme in a typical mor-
phologically rich language, we will need to specify a variety of pieces of information
about that lexeme, its lexical class (noun, verb, adjective), what inectional subclasses
it belongs to (for instance conjugation or declension classes), and so on. We will also
need to specify the various morphomic stem forms that the lexeme deploys in its in-
ectional and derivational morphology. From Chapter 4 we know that information
about stems will include an arbitrary morphomic index. In Section 5.6 I shall show
how we can use the idea of the generalized paradigm function to specify the lexical
entry itself.
5.2 Shared information in lexical entries: the role of the lexemic index
In (1) we see simplied lexical entries for two homophonous verbs, which I shall refer
to as draw1 and draw2 . I am assuming that the FORM attribute is articulated into
subattributes denoting various kinds of stems.
(1) a. draw1
FORM
STEM0 draw
STEM1 drew (past tense)
STEM2 drawn (past/passive/perfect participle)
SYN VERBSUBJ, (OBJ)
SEM MAKE_GRAPHITE_IMAGE(x, y)
b. draw2
FORM
STEM0 draw
SYN VERBSUBJ, OBJ
SEM REMOVE_BY_PULLING(x, y)
1 For reasons of calligraphically inspired chauvinism I use the pounds sterling symbol as a vari-
able over lexemic indices. This symbol is an abbreviation of the Latin word libra and is intended to be
pronounced /l/. It would be equally possible to use L, L, or just plain L, of course.
Lexical entries and the GPF 175
The two verbs differ most obviously in their semantics, which is what makes them
homonyms. Partly as a result of this, their syntactic properties are slightly different,
too. draw2 is a purely transitive verb with no null-object uses, while draw1 can de-
note a telic event (draw a picture), in which case it requires a direct object in the
syntax, or it can denote an atelic event (do some drawing), in which case it has an im-
plied semantic object but no syntactic object. What is crucial about the two verbs is
that morphologically they are identical in all respects, and in particular they share ex-
actly the same idiosyncrasies. This is a very common situation across languages and
is particularly striking in languages with rich inectional systems. As pointed out in
Section 3.6, in a language such as Russian there is considerable opportunity for two
homophonous lexemes to share a variety of irregularities.2
Although not often remarked upon, this situation has implications for the the-
ory of lexical representations. Specically, it would be wrong to list the two lexical
entries independently of one another. It is simply not an accident that the inec-
ted forms of draw are identical whatever the meaning. What this means is that we
need to be able to factor the lexical representations into their component attributes,
and link the two distinct SYN and SEM attributes to a single FORM attribute. A
simple way to do this is to introduce a fourth, housekeeping attribute which I shall
call the LEXEMIC INDEX (LI). The lexemic index is a unique identier for each
lexeme. We can think of it as an integer assigned to lexical entries (as though in
the key eld of a database), but for perspicacity Ill use the name of the lexeme in
small capitals as the LI, hence, draw1 and draw2 for our two draw lexemes. Later,
I will propose that the LI can be a somewhat more structured object than just an
integer.
Given the LI, a more complete representation of the two lexical entries is as
in (2).
(2) a. draw1 , revised entry

FORM
STEM0 draw
SYN VERBSUBJ, (OBJ)
SEM MAKE_GRAPHITE_IMAGE(x, y)
LI draw1
2 There is an interesting twist to this situation with the English auxiliary verbs do and have. Super-
cially, these appear to be like draw in that their irregular morphology is found in both the auxiliary use
and the content-word use. However, auxiliary verbs in English take an additional inection for negation
(dont, didnt, hasnt, havent, etc.), which is impossible with content verbs. Thus, we have to be able to say
that the auxiliary verb inherits, so to speak, most of its morphology from the lexical verb, but inherits an
additional set of inected forms by virtue of being a member of the auxiliary subclass.
b. draw2 , revised entry

FORM
STEM0 draw
SYN VERBSUBJ, OBJ
SEM REMOVE_BY_PULLING(x, y)
LI draw2
But now we can deploy the LI to capture the fact that the two lexemes show complete
sharing of the FORM attribute. Lets suppose that the LI is the central property which
individuates lexemes, and that it is the central property which unites the other three
dimensions of a lexeme. In other words, lets represent a lexeme such as cat (LI =
cat) as three pieces of information: the FORMs of cat are /kat, katz/; the SYN of
cat is Noun; the SEM of cat is x.CAT(x). Slightly more formally put, we treat
each of the attributes as a function from an LI to a value. Suppose we now allow the
function to map sets of LIs to a value. Then, the irregular set of morphological forms
for the two draw lexemes will be a single value delivered by a FORM function (and
its various component functions) applied to a set consisting of two LIs, draw1 and
draw2 , as in (3).
(3) FORM({draw1 , draw2 })

STEM0 ({draw1 , draw2 }) = draw
STEM1 ({draw1 , draw2 }) = drew
STEM2 ({draw1 , draw2 }) = drawn
In (3) I adopt an obvious notational convention under which the FORM function
applied to a set of LIs delivers a set of STEM functions applied to the same set, which
in turn map to the actual stem forms. I discuss this elaboration in more detail below.
On the other hand, the lexical entries for the SYN and SEM attributes of the two
verbs will deliver distinct values, and hence can be represented as in (4).
(4) SEM(draw1 ) = MAKE_GRAPHITE_IMAGE(x, y)

SEM(draw2 ) = REMOVE_BY_PULLING(x, y)
Using the LI as the argument of the other attributes allows us to capture very
simple types of lexical relatedness. Here we have seen how to capture pure hom-
onymy. Pure synonymy (assuming such a thing exists) is simply sharing of the SEM
attribute. Thus, if we agree that, say, permit and allow mean the same thing (mod-
ulo modest differences in collocational possibilities), then we can say that they share
a SEM value, shown schematically as:
(5) SEM({permit, allow}) = GIVE_LEAVE_TOSUBJ, OBJ, EVENT

Assuming that this represents the semantic core which is common to these verbs,
then their distinct connotations and collocations can be dened over their distinct
LIs, without affecting the common semantic representation.
Finally, by dening a single constant output for the SYN attribute, independently
of FORM and SEM values, we can dene a notion of syntactic construction (though
its not obvious how useful such a thing would be).
The discussion of the simple case of English homophonous verbs illustrates an im-
portant point which will be a leitmotif in much further discussion: the form of words
and their meanings or functions can often be separated and analysed independently.
Even such an apparently marginal phenomenon as accidental homophony can have
repercussions for the way we view the organization of the lexicon. (And we must bear
in mind that such homophony is neither accidental nor marginal, at least not in the
case of languages with the kind of prexed verb system found commonly in Indo-
European languages.) The picture that has emerged very clearly is that of a lexicon
consisting of independent axes or dimensions of representation which can be related
to each other in somewhat complex ways. This is what I have referred to in Chapter 3
as the factorization of lexical relatedness.
Before we consider the details of lexical representation, it will be useful to have
a preliminary overview of the generalized paradigm function itself, in simplied
form. The format of lexical representations is intimately connected with the relations
those representations subtend to each other, as dened by the languages general-
ized paradigm function; so it is important to understand the way the generalized
paradigm function works in order to understand the choices I have made in setting
up the structure of lexical entries.
5.3 The generalized paradigm functiona rst pass

In Section 5.4 I discuss the details of lexical representations. Here, however, I present
an initial introduction to the generalized paradigm function itself, based on a sim-
plied schema for lexical entries, and characterizing in approximate terms how the
generalized paradigm function denes the two poles of canonical lexical relatedness,
contextual inection and derivation.
In standard PFM, the paradigm function takes a pair consisting of a lexemes root
and a complete set of inectional property specications, and maps that to a pair
consisting of a word form (of that lexeme) and those property specications. In other
words, it serves to dene the formfunction paradigm for given lexeme. In addition,
a derivational version of the function species the form of the root of a regularly de-
rived lexeme, by effectively treating a regular derivational relationship symbolized by
the label as a two-celled paradigm, consisting of base lexeme, derived lexeme, .
In a model of lexical relatedness deploying the generalized paradigm function, the
derivationally enriched version of the paradigm function is extended so as to specify
not only the formfunction paradigm for the lexeme but also any regular meaning
relationship and any regular syntactic relationship holding between the base and the
derived lexeme. In this respect the generalized model is little more than an exten-
sion of the original proposal in Stump (2001), of course. In slightly simplied form
the generalized paradigm function takes the shape given in (6), where lexeme and
lexeme are four-dimensional lexical representations, and is some set of features.
(6) Generalized Paradigm Function

GPF(lexeme, ) =def lexeme
This format is now very similar to that adopted by Stump (2002; 2006) in his dis-
cussion of content-paradigms, in that there the paradigm function is dened over
a more abstract object than simply the root of a lexeme, but instead refers in ef-
fect to the lexemic index. However, it is important to bear in mind that lexeme
means a complete representation of a three-dimensional abstract object consisting
of FORM, SYN, and SEM attributes united by a common lexemic index. The gen-
eralized paradigm function therefore consists of three components, each of which
applies to one of the three attributes fform , fsyn , and fsem .
Where the lexical relatedness dened by the paradigm function is straightforward
(contextual) inection, or the type of inherent inection which doesnt automatically
add a semantic predicate, then the only non-trivial change is that introduced by the
fform function. The syntactic and semantic properties remain unaltered, and since the
function delivers an inected form of the input lexeme, the LI remains unaltered, too:
(7) GPF(write, {3sg, Pres})

fform (write, {3sg, Pres}) = write s, {3sg, Pres}
fsyn , fsem (write, {3sg, Pres}) = (identity function applies)
The identity function mentioned in (7) has the effect of copying whatever informa-
tion is specied in the lexical entry of the base lexeme. This operates in a comparable
way to the Identity Function Default of classical PFM. I will clarify how the effects of
the IFD are achieved later in the chapter.
In the generalized paradigm function model, the derivational paradigm func-
tion deployed by Stump in the standard model is expanded to three functions.
This is illustrated in (8), where SN is a label for the subject-nominal derivational
relationship.
(8) GPF(write, SN)

fform (write, SN) = write er
fsyn (write, SN) = Noun
fsem (write, SN) = [PERSON(x), [WRITE(x, y)]]
In (8), the derivational relationship SN corresponds to the label in Stumps deriv-

ational paradigm function.3 The three component functions tell us that the FORM
of the derived lexeme is |writer|, that its semantic representation includes the added
semantic predicate [PERSON(x)], and that the new lexeme is syntactically a noun.
The new lexeme must have a lexemic index distinct from that of the base lexeme.
I have indicated this in (8) by replacing the LI write with writer. Lets assume that
the subject-nominal relation is entirely general, productive, and regular. In that case,
we can dene a new lexemic index as part of the generalized paradigm function, by
allowing the generalized paradigm function to dene a new lexemic index through
the operation of another function, fli (write, SN) = writer. Recall that each lex-
emic index is no more than a unique integer. We can therefore interpret the function
fli as some arbitrary way of creating a new, unique integer (say, in the manner of a
Gdel numbering). For simplicity I will also represent such derived lexemic indices
as SN(write) (and it would be easy to dene a function which took exactly such a
representation and delivered a unique integer as a value). The label SN is a unary fea-
ture, reecting the fact that derivation is not paradigmatic in exactly the same sense
that inection is paradigmatic: derivational features (syntacticosemantic categories)
dont form cross-cutting multidimensional paradigms in the way that inectional
features do.
Where we have canonical derivational morphology, then all four functions (in-
cluding the fli function) introduce a non-trivial change. In the simplest cases there
will be a single morphological operation, say, the addition of a sufx, and this will
uniquely determine the new lexical form. However, as we saw in Chapter 4 part of
the justication for taking a paradigmatic view of derivational morphology comes
from the fact that there is often competing morphology expressing one and the same
derivational relationship: write writer, claim claimant, y pilot, and so on. By
analogy with inectional afx allomorphy what this means is that verb lexemes fall
into differing lexical classes with respect to the subject-nominal relation.
Assuming that the subject-nominal relation represented in (8) is indeed a rule-
governed part of English morphology, we can represent the rule that gives rise to
-er subject nominalizations as in (9) (where |verb| is a shorthand representation of
the function, say, STEM0(verb), which delivers the actual root form of the lexeme
verb).
(9) GPF(verb, SN)

fform (verb, SN) = |verb| er
fsyn (verb, SN) = Noun
fsem (verb, SN) = [PERSON(x), [VERB(x, y)]]
fli (verb, SN) = SN(verb)
3 Later I will propose a slightly more elaborated version of this feature characterization.
The fform (verb, SN) function corresponds almost exactly to the derivational
paradigm function in the standard model of PFM. As in that model, we can pre-
sumably4 assume that the grammar includes a Block I realization rule which sufxes
-er to the verb root:5
(10) Where write is a lexeme of class V, and the form |write| is the output of the
function STEM0(write), there is a realization rule of the form
writeV , SN write er
The lexeme claimant is the output of the rule (9) applied to the verb claim. This
implies that, for a certain class of verbs, Vant , the subject-nominal rule is implemented
by a different realization rule, that shown in (12), which is the FORM component of
the generalized paradigm function shown in (11).
(11) GPF(Vant , SN)

fform (Vant , SN) = |verb| ant
fsyn (V, SN) = Noun
fsem (V, SN) = [PERSON(x), [VERB(x, y)]]
fli (V, SN) = SN(verb)
(12) |verb|Vant , SN |verb| ant
Clearly, the set of verbs which take the -ant sufx variant of the subject-nominal has
to be specially marked for this (thus creating a kind of derivational conjugation class
for the subject-nominalization relation). Equally clearly, such a marking is unneces-
sary for the other functions in the generalized paradigm function, since the syntactic
and semantic properties retain their default values. For this reason, the remaining
component functions of the generalized paradigm function are the default functions
inherited from the general subject-nominal process.
In (13) we see an exceptional output of this process, the suppletive form pilot, the
subject nominal of the verb fly.
(13) GPF(fly, SN)

fform (fly, SN) = pilot
fsyn (fly, SN) = Noun
fsem (fly, SN) = [PERSON(x), [FLY(x, y)]]
fli (fly, SN) = SN(fly)
4 The discussion of derivational functions in Stump (2001: 25760) doesnt explicitly mention real-
ization rules, but since there is, in general, no difference in the morphological operations deployed by
inection and derivation, we must assume that the same device, the realization rule, is able to implement
both types of morphology.
5 Below, I shall repackage this type of realization rule as a special subtype, a stem-formation rule or
SFR.
Here, the default fform function is overridden by a special function unique to

this one lexeme.
5.4 Representing stems

In our rst pass through the generalized paradigm function, we tacitly assumed that
most of the information that is specied at the level of the basic lexical entry for the
lexeme is preserved under inection. Now, this approach would appear to work for
the simple cases of sufxation in English we have been discussing, but it turns out
to be too simple-minded for general application. The problem is that derived words
in languages with rich morphology often acquire a host of additional morphological
properties. For instance, we might nd that the derived nouns belong to a very spe-
cic declension class. But this isnt recorded in a realization rule of the kind shown in
(10). What is needed is an fform function which species all the crucial morphological
properties of the derived word, not just the form of its root.
We can illustrate this by considering the Russian instantiation of the subject-
nominal relation. The default sufx for this is -tel , which is added to a bound stem
form: pisat , write, stem pisa- pisatel . Nouns so derived fall into declension
Class 1, though this cant be predicted from the form of the sufx. Therefore the de-
rivational rule deducing the form of such nouns must be expanded with appropriate
morphological class information.
To achieve this, I shall modify the notion of realization rule so as to permit the
same kind of morphological operation to dene stems and inected forms. For this
reason I will assume an expanded set of stem-formation rules. Such rules are an im-
portant part of standard PFM, as weve seen in Chapter 4, but they will take on a
much greater role in the present model. I shall assume a separate module of the mor-
phology which deduces the forms of (morphomic) stems, essentially along the lines
of Stumps rules of stem formation and stem indexation. I shall illustrate informally
how this works for standard derivation.
The syntax and semantics of the -tel nominalizations is essentially the same as that
of English subject nominals. Two pieces of morphological information are crucially
required for understanding the Russian -tel subject nominals.6 First, the input is a
special bound stem form (in the case of pisat , root |pis|, the stem form is pisa-),
which I will call STEM1. Second, the output is a regular Class 1 noun. By default,
such nouns are of masculine gender. Subject nominals referring to females can be
constructed by adding the Class 2 sufx -nic(a) to the -tel nominal. I assume that such
nouns can be derived regularly by appeal to another derivational function lacking
6 Strictly speaking, we should distinguish stem formation from stem indexing, but since the simple
Russian examples I present here dont exhibit the kinds of complications found in Sanskrit, I shall conate
the two types of process, for convenience of exposition.
in English, which I shall not discuss here. The default gender for Class 2 nouns is
feminine.
The FORM component of the lexical entry for a -tel noun will therefore be given
by (14).7
(14) fform (verb, SN)

STEM0(verb, SN) = STEM1(verb, u) tel
The signicance of the u in (14) will be made apparent in due course. The STEM1
form of the base verb is dened by the stem-formation rules for verbs. For pisat ,
the fform function will therefore take the stem form pisa- and sufx -tel to it to dene
the STEM0 form of the derived nominal. However, since this morphological process
is nothing more than the same kind of sufxation that we see with all Russian in-
ectional morphology (and most category-changing derivational morphology, too),
we will dene the stem-formation process in terms of a special subset of realization
rules dedicated to stem formation, Stem Formation Rules, or SFR, informally shown
in (15) for pisat and less informally in (16) (I assume that the verb pisat belongs to
an inectional class I shall call Conj:1b).8
(15) a. STEM0(pisat ) = root of pisat = /pis/

b. STEM1(pisat ) = SFR1(STEM0(pisat )
STEM0, we will suppose, is listed in the lexical entry (see Section 5.6 for how the
concept of lexical listing can be recongured within the deductive rule system).
STEM1 for the pisat class of verbs is dened by (16), where I use the labelled arrow
stem
to indicate a Stem Formation Rule.
(16) Where /X/ is the STEM0 form of lexeme , of lexical class {V, Conj:1b},
STEM1() is dened by SFR1:
stem
SFR1: STEM1() STEM0() a
Hence, from (15) and (16) we can deduce that the STEM1 form of pisat will be pisa-.
We can now dene the basic stem of the subject nominal (i.e. STEM0, or what Stump
refers to as the root of the derived noun), as in (17), which sufxes -tel to the STEM1
form of the verb.
7 For ease of reading I have separated the afx from the stem by means of a concatenation marker .
For those that hold that morphology is a-morphous, and that afxation is merely a phonological altera-
tion of a stem, this symbol should be taken as having no theoretical import. However, I believe there are
grounds for treating morphologically complex words as (sometimes) comprised of linearized morphs, in
which case the operator will have its normal meaning: concatenate two morphophonological objects in
this order.
8 The STEM functions are here written over just a single argument, the lexemic index, rather
than a pairing of lexemic index and feature set. More properly, such functions should be written as
STEM0(pisat , u), as described later in the chapter.
stem
(17) SFR0SN : STEM0(SN()) STEM1() tel
These rules are informal in the sense that I have not properly specied the logical
types of the arguments of all of the stem-formation functions. However, the present-
ation should give a sufciently clear idea of how the actual forms themselves are
deduced.
We still have to account for the additional morphological properties that each stem
form has. The STEM1 form of the pisat class of verbs conjugates in a specic way,
and this information has to be included in the lexical entry for the verb. I return
to how this is done in the general case later. As far as the derived -tel nominal is
concerned, we need to specify that this derivate belongs to the Class 1 declension,
since this is not information that can be deduced from anywhere else in the grammar
or the lexicon of Russian. In general, inectional class membership is a property of
the lexeme as a whole (and this information is usually inherited by all the lexemes
stem forms), so the denition of a derived words inectional class must be stated at
the level of the generalized paradigm function. I will postpone discussion of this until
we have seen how the FORM attribute of a lexeme is dened fully.
5.5 Morpholexical properties

In this section I discuss the morphological and morphosyntactic properties that need
to be represented in a lexemes lexical entry. We need to be able to specify a number
of morphomic properties, including morphological class membership and also the
inventory of stems deployed by a given lexeme. However, we also need to be able to
categorize the morphological word class of a lexeme, and for this I will introduce the
notion of morpholexical signature.
5.5.1 Morpholexical class

A complete account of lexical structure needs to include a denition of precisely
which properties govern inection. This means that the grammar has to contain a
declaration of inectional properties together with any conditions that govern their
application. The most obvious condition is that of word class: words of one class, for
instance nouns, will typically inect for a set of properties specic to nouns, while
words of a different class, for instance verbs, will typically inect for an entirely
different set of properties. At the same time we might nd there are classes whose
inectional properties overlap to some extent. For example, it is common for adject-
ives to share features with nouns or with verbs, and in some languages non-nite
verb forms can be inected for case, while in others nouns can be inected for tense.
Each lexeme belongs to a morphological class. By default, this will be the same as
the syntactic class of the word. In Section 5.6.2 we will see how the syntactic class and
the morphological class can be related to each other. The morphological class of a
lexeme is dened by an attribute, MORCLASS, itself a value of the FORM attribute.
In some languages it is not sufcient to know that a given word is morphologically,
say, a noun: we also have to know which inectional class it belongs to. Inectional
classes can be dened in several ways. According to Ackerman et al. (2009) and
Finkel and Stump (2009), all we need is to dene a set of principal parts, and state
implicative relations between those principal parts and the other word forms in the
paradigm. Others argue that for some languages, at least, it is possible to dene in-
ectional classes in terms of the morphophonological shape of certain of the stems
of words (Bermdez-Otero, 2007, 2009). For present purposes I shall assume that in
the general case we still need to label lexemes (and, as we will see, individual stems)
for the types of inections they take, that is for inectional class membership. For
this reason I will assume that the attribute MORCLASS has two values, MCAT and
INFLCLASS. The rst is an attribute which species the morphological category of
the word, while the second is an attribute which species the inectional class that the
word belongs to. Thus a verb belonging to conjugation 2a, say, will bear the attribute
[FORM|MORCLASS:{MCAT:V, INFLCLASS:2a}].
The reason for distinguishing between the syntactic category of a word and its
morphological category is that there are abundant cases in which there is a clear mis-
match. For instance, it is not uncommon to nd words converted from one syntactic
lexical class to another without changing their morphology at all. Thus, we nd that
the derived lexeme is inected according to one category but behaves syntactically
as a member of a distinct category. We have seen that in Russian there are many
nouns, typically denoting persons, which are derived by conversion from adjectives,
such as the word bol noj (doctors) patient, and a good many converted parti-
ciples such as ucacijsja pupil, from the present active participle form of the verb
ucitsja study, obvinjaemyj accused, defendant, from the present passive parti-
ciple of obvinjat accuse, and ranenyj wounded (person), from the past passive
participle of ranit wound (see Section 3.2). These derived nouns all behave like
nouns in the syntax in almost all respects, yet morphologically they inect as adject-
ives, not as nouns (nouns and adjectives have very different inectional paradigms in
Russian). Even more tellingly, there are the stolovaja-nouns in Russian, which can no
longer be analysed as synchronically derived words but which still inect exactly as if
they were adjectives. In addition to stolovaja dining room, restaurant, itself, which
inects like a feminine-gender adjective, we have words such as nasekomoe insect,
which inects like a neuter-gender adjective, and portnoj tailor which inects like a
masculine-gender adjective.
5.5.2 Morpholexical signatures

Once we have identied the morphological category to which a lexeme belongs, we
then need to dene its inected forms, and the rst step is to dene the morphosyn-
tactic properties that the lexeme inects for. In the simplest terms, the grammar states
that nouns inect for number, case, possessor agreement, . . . properties, verbs inect
for tense, aspect, mood, agreement, . . . properties, and so on. The declaration of the
inectional properties is high-level in the sense that we expect all lexemes of a given
class to inect in the appropriate manner (though this expectation is occasionally
confounded by constructions exhibiting morphosyntactic mismatches). What this
means is that we have a general statement of what properties a lexeme class inects
for, and each lexeme in that class inherits that declaration.
In Spencer (2002) I refer to this declaration as the morpholexical signature, which
I shall abbreviate as MORSIG. This is a property of the FORM attribute of the lex-
eme, in that it is governed by the morphological class to which a lexeme belongs.
Hence, for a typical noun in a language such as Finnish or Hungarian, which dis-
tinguishes number, possessor agreement, and case marking, we would typically see
FORM attributes such as those shown in (18).
(18) Typical morpholexical signature for noun of declension

NUMBER:{singular, plural}

POSSESSED:{no, YES:{PERSON:, NUMBER:}}
FORM MORSIG
CASE:{nom, acc, dat, . . .}

...

MCAT Noun
MORCLASS
INFLCLASS
In (18) I have treated the morphological class features as separate from the mor-
pholexical signature. However, these are clearly related very closely, in that a word
inects as a noun because it belongs to the morphological class of nouns. This sug-
gests that we might better treat both the feature declaration and the class properties
as aspects of a single property. A simple way of representing this is to say that the
MORCLASS attribute is itself a value of the MORSIG attribute. This means rewriting
representation (18) as (19).
(19) Typical morpholexical signature for noun of declension

(revised version)

NUMBER:{. . .}

INFL POSSESSED:{. . .}

CASE:{. . .}

FORM MORSIG
. . .

Noun
MORCLASS MCAT
INFLCLASS
5.5.3 Stems and the morpholexical signature

Earlier I sketched the basic picture of stem formation in inection and derivation by
appealing to a set of Stem Formation Rules (following Stump). Now, those rules only
tell us how to deduce the forms of the requisite stems. If a stem also bears morpholo-
gical class information distinct from that which it would inherit by default from the
representation of the lexeme as a whole, then the stem representation has to be more
than just a representation of form. I propose that the FORM attribute of a lexical
entry be dened in part as a list of STEM attributes. Each STEM attribute denes the
form of one of the stems of the lexeme.
The STEM attribute itself may include a range of information. First, there is the
stem index, whose importance we have seen in Stumps discussion of Sanskrit. To
identify a stem index, I assume that stems themselves have an attribute INDEX that
takes arbitrary integer values, conventionally starting with 0 for the root.
Next, each stem belongs to a morphological class. I shall represent this by taking
the attribute MORCLASS to be a property of each stem. This means treating the
morpholexical signature as an inheritable property of each stem. In the default case,
this MORCLASS attribute has the same value for all stems of the lexeme. For such
cases, we can assume a general default principle stating that the MORCLASS value
of a stem is identied with the MORCLASS value dened at the level of FORM. This
default can then be overridden, either lexically or by rule.
The general shape of the STEM attribute as an attribute of the FORM attrib-
ute is as shown in (20) for a typical noun, where |stem0|, . . . , |stem n| are the
morphophonological forms of the stems themselves.

(20)

NUMBER:{. . .}

POSSESSED:{. . .}

INFL CASE:{. . .}

MORSIG
...

Noun
MORCLASS MCAT

INFLCLASS

0

INDEX

FORM
Noun

MCAT

STEM MORSIG|MORCLASS
INFLCLASS

PHON |stem0|

...

n

INDEX

Noun

MCAT
MORSIG|MORCLASS

STEM
INFLCLASS

PHON |stem n|
The MORCLASS values [MCAT:Noun] and [INFLCLASS:] are inherited by default

from the corresponding values for the lexeme as a whole, and dont therefore need to
be stipulated in the entry itself.
Finally, I turn to the role of the lexemic index in dening properties of individual
lexemes, including stems. Recall that in dening lexical entries for homophonous
pairs of verbs such as draw1 , draw2 , I proposed that the FORM, SYN, and SEM at-
tributes be dened over the lexemic indices of each lexeme. In that way we can easily
capture the fact that the two homophonous lexemes share exactly the same mor-
phology (if nothing else). But this means that the FORM attribute has to be dened
over the lexemic index of the lexeme, something which is not shown in (20). Also, a
lexical entry allows us in general to deduce a set of word forms paired with the prop-
erty sets that each word form realizes. In other words, the form of the lexical entry
has to be such that we can apply regular rules of morphology to dene cells in the
paradigm such as writes, {3sg, Pres}, just as shown in example (7) in Section 5.3.
In an important sense, what this means is that each word form constitutes a lexical
entry in its own right, even though the actual form of that word may be mediated by
a battery of realization rules, stem-selection rules, and so on. But to ensure this res-
ult, the value of the lexemic index has to be recorded in the denition of the FORM
of a lexical entry, so that we can dene notions such as the 3sg form of the lexeme
write.
This should come as no surprise, since its implicit in the standard PFM model of
inection. However, there are a number of implications for our conception of the
lexical entry which need to be made explicit. In particular, it means that the FORM
attribute has to be more complex than the representation in (20) suggests. The lead-
ing idea is this. Given any stem form, we can associate that form with some lexeme
(and in the case of homophony, we can associate the stem form with several lexemes
simultaneously). I represent this fact by treating each STEM attribute as a function
which maps (among other things) a lexemic index (more accurately, a set of lexemic
indices) to a form. In other words, the lexicon contains pieces of information of the
form rait is the STEM0 form of the lexeme write. The form itself may be dened
directly by the STEM attribute as part of the lexical entry for that lexeme, or it may
be the result of the application of regular stem-formation rules. Where a lexeme is
associated with several different stems, each of those stems maps the lexemic index
to a stem form, along with the stems morphomic index. In the representations above
I have notated this by treating labels such as STEM0 as functions mapping lexemic
indices to stem forms, e.g. for Russian pisat -class verbs, STEM0(pisat ) = pisa-,
and so on.
Each of the STEM attributevalue pairings is itself one of the values of the FORM
attribute. We can directly represent the idea that a given stem set is the stem set of a
single lexeme by guaranteeing that all the members of the stem set share exactly the
same lexemic index (or set of indices). A simple way to achieve this is to say that the
FORM attribute ranges over lexemic indices, and to then say that each member of
the stem set inherits that property (in the default case) from the FORM attribute. In
(21) we see a schematic example of this.

(21)
LI

NUMBER:{. . .}

POSSESSED:{. . .}
INFL
CASE:{. . .}

MORSIG

. . .

Noun
MORCLASS MCAT

INFLCLASS

LI

INDEX 0

FORM

STEM Noun

MCAT
MORCLASS

INFLCLASS

PHON |stem0|

...

LI

n

INDEX

STEM
MCAT Noun

MORCLASS
INFLCLASS

PHON |stem n|
Again, we take the value of the LI attribute for each of the STEM attributes to be
dened as identical to the LI value of the FORM attribute by default. An example
where this default might be overridden would be a case in which, say, a lexeme took
a stem form of a different lexeme in order to realize one of the members of its stem
sets. For example, in some languages we nd that the verb to be takes forms of the
verb to become to realize certain of its stems.
5.5.4 Morpholexical signature and derivation

In effect, appealing to a notion of morpholexical signature means accepting a per-
haps unwelcome distinction between inectional morphology proper and other types
of morphology. This is potentially unwelcome because we know that such a di-
chotomy is very difcult to draw. Moreover, we also know that there are types of
derivational morphology which are very regular and productive, to such an extent
that descriptive grammars are sometimes unsure whether to describe such processes
as an unusual form of inection. We can reect the existence of highly regular
and lexically unconstrained derivation by proposing a parallel to the morpholex-
ical signaturewhat we might call a derivational signature. This signature will be
somewhat simpler than the morpholexical signature in that it is simply a list of
all those derivational categories that can productively apply to a lexeme of a given
class. For instance, the derivational signature of an English verb lexeme would in-
clude the derivational category of subject nominal, while the derivational signature
of an English transitive verb would include the derivational signature of abilitative
or potential adjectives (that is, -able adjectives). Since derivational categories typic-
ally affect all aspects of a lexeme, the specication of the derivational signature has
to be made at the level of the lexeme itself. I shall therefore assume that for every
(major-class) lexeme there is derivational signature which species what derivational
categories are applicable to that lexeme. The denition of derivational categories is
rather more complex than that of inectional categories, because any of the three
attributes of a lexeme can determine whether or not that lexeme is eligible for a
given derivational process. An informal example of a partial derivational signature is
shown in (22).
(22) For lexemic index ,
if SYN(, (VERBSUBJ, OBJ)), then
{AbleAdj} derivational signature.
This states that a transitive verb is eligible for -able adjective formation.
5.6 The generalized paradigm function and the lexical entry

5.6.1 Lexical entries as rules
Given this preliminary discussion of the nature of the generalized paradigm func-
tion and the nature of the FORM component of lexical entries we are now in a
position to see how we can dene the notion lexical entry itself by deploying the
generalized paradigm function. The idea is very simple, and is closely related to
the rule-based notion of lexical entry rst proposed by Kiparsky (1982a) and re-
vivied by Blevins (2003b). Kiparskys idea was that a lexical entry is a maximally
specic rule (in his case dening the phonological shape of a root morpheme). Being
maximally specic (limited to one lexical item in the limit) the rule would over-
ride any more general phonological rules. In the present context I shall implement
this idea by saying that a lexical entry is a generalized paradigm function dened
over a single lexemic index, but specifying no additional information. In effect,
such an application of the generalized paradigm function denes a lexical entry as
being trivially related to itself. As a rst pass, a lexical entry will therefore have the
form (23):
(23) Lexical entry for write
FORM(write) = fform (write, u) = write

SYN(write) = fsyn (write, u) = Verb
SEM(write) = fsem (write, u) = [WRITE(x, y)]
LI(write) = fli (write, u) = write
(Strictly speaking, the fform function should be dened as fform (write, u) =
STEM0(write, u), with obvious abbreviations, i.e. as dening the root of the
lexeme, at least in morphological systems for which the notion root makes
sense.) The generalized paradigm function takes as its rst argument the lex-
emic index of the lexeme whose entry it denes, and as its second argument an
unspecied feature set, u, which is to be interpreted as unspecied for any fea-
ture. The result is a specication of the basic information required to dene the
lexeme.9
Because the generalized paradigm function ranges over a lexemeproperty set
pairing, we have to be explicit about how default application works. In one respect,
the lexical-entry generalized paradigm function is maximally specic, because by
denition it is dened over a single lexemic index and not over a class of lexemes. This
implies that a lexical entry will pre-empt any more general lexical-relatedness func-
tion, whether derivational, inectional, or some intermediate type. This is precisely
the result we need, since it denes a lexical entry as a maximally specic rule. On the
other hand, by underspecifying the second, feature set, argument of the generalized
paradigm function, we make the generalized paradigm function for the lexical entry
more general than any other lexical-relatedness function. The logic of default inherit-
ance will therefore be left in a quandary: should the maximally specic rst argument
override all other potential applications of generalized paradigm functions, or should
the maximally underspecied second argument be overridden by all other lexical-
relatedness functions? In fact, we want both conclusions to follow: the properties
specied for a given lexeme dene precisely the information content of the lexeme in
the absence of any morphology, derivational, inectional, or otherwise. However, if a
lexeme undergoes inection, derivation, or whatever, then some of those properties
need to be overridden by the appropriate inectional, derivational, etc. generalized
paradigm function. In other words, a lexical entry is at once maximally specic and
maximally underspecied.
In large part the distinction between different types of lexical relatedness will
hinge on which of the four principal attributes of a base lexemes representation are
9 At the beginning of the chapter I represented the unspecied feature set as just { }, which is equivalent
for our purposes to u. In note 8 in Section 5.4 I mentioned that the components of the GPF are dened
over pairings of lexemic index and feature sets. However, for readability we could adopt the convention
that for a lexemic index, , f() is to be interpreted as f(, u).
non-trivially altered. The idea I shall appeal to, then, is that some of the component
functions of the generalized paradigm function effectively apply in the manner of an
identity function in an ordinary algebra, in just the manner of the Identity Function
Default in PFM. An identity function can be dened for any set, and is simply that
function which takes any member or collection of members of a set, {a, b, c, . . .}, and
delivers exactly those members. In order to achieve the effects of the identity function
in the generalized model of lexical relatedness presented here, we can appeal to the
unspecied feature set, u, and employ this as a kind of identity element. I will assume
a General Default Principle, which plays the role of a kind of generalized version of
Stumps Identity Function Default.
(24) General Default Principle (GDP)

For any lexemic index , for all attributes ATTRi of a representation {ATTR1 ,
. . . , ATTRn } and for all feature sets {}, by default GPF(ATTRi (), {} is
evaluated as ATTRi (, u).
The force of the GDP is that all properties that are not explicitly dened by the
generalized paradigm function are inherited from the base lexeme. For instance, in
contextual inection only the form of the word is altered; the SYN, SEM, and LI
attributes remain the same. This is not stated explicitly in any rule of contextual in-
ection, because it arises automatically by application of the GDP. Similarly, in a pure
transposition the FORM and SYN representations are altered but not the SEM and LI
representations, and so the latter two attributes are not mentioned in any transposi-
tional rule. As a result, a transposition retains exactly the semantic representation of
the base, and remains a form of the same lexeme as the base.
5.6.2 The Default Cascade

We have seen that the lexical entry contains a great deal of information, much of
it predictable from a small number of lexical facts. Moreover, the FORM attrib-
ute consists of STEM subattributes which regularly repeat information available at
the higher FORM level of description. In an inferential model of morphology such
default statements are generally made once at the highest node in an inheritance
hierarchy and then inherited by all appropriate nodes within that hierarchy. In the
present model, this amounts to simply specifying which properties a given attribute
needs to have, and specifying where those properties are inherited from. For instance,
the STEM attribute has its own index, but all its other properties are deducible by
default from the values specied for the FORM attribute itself. Hence, for a language
whose morpholexical signature includes the appropriate set of attributes for the given
lexical class, we assume a well-formedness statement of the form (25), and a default
specication along the lines of (26).
(25) a. An attribute FORM is well formed only if there are values , , and m such
that

FORM LI

MCAT
MORCLASS
INFLCLASS m
b. An attribute STEM is well formed only if there are values , n, , and m such
that

STEM LI

n

INDEX

MORCLASS MCAT
INFLCLASS m
(26) By default,

FORM LI

MCAT
MORCLASS
INFLCLASS m
is a well-formed FORM attribute only if

STEM LI

n

INDEX

MORCLASS MCAT

INFLCLASS m
is part of a well-formed STEM attribute.
The Default Cascade just described applies to ll in attributes and their values that
remain unspecied by specic rules. The cascade doesnt just apply to the FORM
attribute. By default, a words FORM attribute inherits its class feature from the SYN
attribute. In other words, if a word is syntactically a noun, then by default it will
be morphologically a noun (and hence will automatically receive the attribute and
property sets appropriate to the morpholexical signature of a morphological noun).
In other words, I assume the operation of the default statement (27).
(27) By default,
SYN[SYNCLASS: ]
iff
FORM[MORCLASS: ]
The default dened in (27) bears a close relationship to the paradigm linkage
default which Stump (2002, 2006) deploys to relate the expression of morpholo-
gical inectional (form) features and syntactic (content) features, as discussed in
Chapter 4. However, in Stumps formulation the two feature sets are entirely dis-
tinct (even though they look very similar because they are given similar labels). This
is because they apply to different linguistic domains, morphology and syntax. For
the formulation of the formcontent default in (27) to work, the value has to be a
value of the same type of feature whether its labelled SYNCLASS or MORCLASS. A
simple way of ensuring this is to say that there is just a single feature type, CLASS,
shared by the SYN and FORM attributes. However, this manoeuvre oversimplies
the situation, because we know that there are MORCLASS properties which have
no SYNCLASS correspondent (for instance inectional class features), and there
are SYNCLASS properties that have no morphological correspondent. This is the
point of the distinction between m-features and s-features drawn in Sadler and
Spencer (2001) (see also Sells, 2004), and discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6.
A simple way of ensuring that the CLASS attributes coincide precisely when they
should but not otherwise is to assume that the attribute itself is typed, which I shall
represent by giving the attribute an additional value, TYPE{mor, syn}. When spe-
cied as CLASS[TYPE:mor] the attribute is valid solely for the FORM attribute, and
when typed as CLASS[TYPE:syn] it is valid solely for the SYN attribute. However,
when the TYPE attribute is unspecied, by convention we take the CLASS attribute
to be available to either the FORM or the SYN attribute. This is the default case. In
future I shall continue to use the attribute labels SYNCLASS and MORCLASS for per-
spicacity. However, these labels are to be taken as abbreviations for CLASS[TYPE:u]
or for CLASS[TYPE:syn] and CLASS[TYPE:mor], respectively, according to the
context.
The Default Cascade extends to the relationship between SEM and SYN attributes
(see Chapter 3). Recall that I have argued that the gross syntactic properties of a lex-
eme are predictable from its semantic representation provided we assume a simple
four-way ontology of Things, Events, Properties, and Relations. These ontological
categories are subtypes of semantic predicates in the more or less standard model of
Lexical Conceptual Representation that I adopt. Following Spencer (1999) I assume
that those categories are mapped in the default case to a semantic function role in
the argument structure of a lexical entry. A simplied example of a SYN attribute
for the transitive use of the verb draw1 is shown in (28), and a simplied semantic
representation is shown in (29).

(28) A-STR SEMFUNCT E

SYN ARG1 x

ARG2 y
(29) [Event MAKE_GRAPHITE_IMAGE(x, y)]
The A-STR attribute in (28) can be derived entirely from the semantic representa-
tion by appropriate linking rules. The rules which derive the argument-structure
representation in the SYN attribute are potentially complex and depend on exactly
how the LCS representation of the SEM attribute is constructed (see Levin and Rap-
paport Hovav, 2005, for a detailed discussion of these complexities and pitfalls).
Although this mapping is of considerable importance for a complete understand-
ing of lexical representation and lexical relatedness, I will have little to say about
it other than to point out that there is a considerable research effort devoted to
such issues, most of which remain to be resolved. By contrast, the specication
of the SEMFUNCT attribute is relatively straightforward because there are fewer
variables.
A language which has a reasonably well-dened set of four morphosyntactic word
classes, Noun, Verb, Adjective, and Adposition will dene those word classes as in
(30).
(30) Noun: [SEMFUNCT R]

Verb: [SEMFUNCT E]
Adjective: [SEMFUNCT A*]
Adposition: [SEMFUNCT Rel]
In languages which lack certain categories (for instance in languages in which Prop-
erty and Relation concepts are expressed by morphosyntactic verbs), the default
mappings will be altered accordingly. The SEMFUNCT values correspond in the de-
fault case to the traditional major-lexical-class parts-of-speech labels. These labels are
usually deployed in syntactic representations of constituent structure as node labels.
However, its very hard to nd any strong justication for this practice. In partic-
ular, its very hard to nd any justication of a syntactic node label such as N or
V whose use would be distinct from that of [SEMFUNCT R] or [SEMFUNCT E].
However, the semantic function roles will prove to be useful in dening mixed cat-
egories of various sorts, such as deverbal nominalizations. When I come to discuss
the treatment of those types of lexical relatedness later in this chapter I will elaborate
on the claims in Spencer (1999) in which I argue that such category mixing is best
dened in terms of composite semantic function roles. This provides a natural solu-
tion to the question of how to label such mixed categories in the syntax, a problem
which plagues most syntactic models in one form or another. For the present, I will
simply note that the SYNCLASS values Noun, Verb, and so on are to be taken as
shorthand representations of the appropriate SEMFUNCT values. By virtue of the

default mappings from semantics to syntax, we dont have to specify syntactic class
information at all. Assuming a solution to the question of linking, we dont have to
specify the argument-structure representation either. This means that for a typical
lexeme there will be no specication at all for the SYN category: all of its values will
be given by the default principles.
In a morphologically complex language, a complete lexical entry for a lexeme will
contain a good deal of information. In addition to the semantics and syntax of the
word, we will have a specication of all the stems used by the lexeme, together with
a statement of all the morphosyntactic properties that the lexeme can be inected
for. However, in straightforward cases nearly all of this information is provided by
default principles. The morphosyntactic property paradigm associated with the lex-
eme is provided by the morpholexical signature default. Pretty well all of the syntactic
properties of the lexeme are derivable from the semantic representation. To a certain
extent this much should be uncontroversial. While very few would accept my claims
that traditional syntactic categories are redundant and should be replaced by a more
articulated set of semantic function roles, pretty well everyone acknowledges that the
greater part of the argument-structure information relevant to a lexeme is derivable
from a properly structured semantic representation. Moreover, its hard to see how
one could quarrel with the idea that the morphological class of a word is by default
identical to its syntactic class, or with the view that the inectional paradigm accord-
ing to which a lexeme inects is predictable from the morphology as a whole, and not
a parochial property of individual lexemes. However, this elaborated statement of the
obvious has some interesting consequences for the notion of lexical relatedness once
we assume the operation of the generalized paradigm function, taken together with
the notion of a lexical entry as a maximally specic generalized paradigm function.
Specically, this machinery allows us to treat all forms of relatedness as essentially of
the same kind, despite rst appearances.
5.7 Afx order, semantic scope, and the GPF

At this point it is necessary to clarify a notational and architectural aspect of the gen-
eralized paradigm function that has remained implicit so far. The fform function is
equivalent to the classical paradigm function, realized by a set of functions (realiza-
tion rules). This set of functions has to be represented as a single composed function
(to serve as input to the Function Composition Default). Thus, if {R1 , . . . , Rn } is
the complete set of realization rules dening the word forms of a lexeme, then the
paradigm function is equivalent to R1 Rn . The order of afxation is regu-
lated by the rule-block indices and various reordering functions dened thereon. In
most cases, inectional properties are an unordered set, and so no linear order needs
to be imposed on them (I discuss exceptions to this in Chapter 6, for instance in
Section 6.4.4, where I discuss Kayardild case stacking).
For the SYN and SEM attributes, we must ask whether there are linear orderings
that need to be specied. I will address the issue of afx order and semantic interpret-
ation later in the chapter, where I will conclude that in most cases there is no clear
relation between linear afx order and semantic scope, for instance. However, there
do appear to be occasional instances in which afx order has a systematic semantic
effect, for which special functions need to be written. For the SYN attribute it is less
easy to see how linear order plays a role.
For these reasons, I will take the default position to be that the SYN and SEM
functions which realize a complete feature set are dened by functions which realize
the individual feature specications within that set. Those functions are composed in
much the same way as the realization rules in the classical PFM model, except that
they are not indexed to an ordering function (the rule-block notation). Thus, they
constitute an unordered set of functions (by commutativity of the function com-
position operator). For instance, consider the SYN attribute of a Hungarian noun,
N, inected for the properties {[Number:plural, Possessed:1pl, Case:inessive}]. We
will dene fsyn ({[Number:plural, Possessed:1pl, Case:inessive]}) as
(31) gsyn (N, [Number:plural]) gsyn (N, [Possessed:1pl])

gsyn (N, [Case:inessive]).
For inection the SYN attribute is generally unchanged, so the functions g that
dene fsyn usually realize the identity function, in the sense that they have the form
gsyn (N, [F:]) = gsyn (N, u).
Suppose now for the sake of argument that the plural and possessive
inections, as well as the inessive case, are inherent inections interpreted
semantically at the lexical level, and hence add a semantic predicate to the
representation. For concreteness lets assume that the plural inection is inter-
preted as Px.P(x) PL(x), and that the possessor inection is interpreted as
Pxy.y = [Person/Number] Poss(y, x) P(x). Then the semantic attribute
of a noun inected for {[Number:plural, Possessed:1pl, Case:inessive}], such as
hzainkban in our houses will be dened by the function
(32) fsem (N, {[Number:plural, Possessed:1pl, Case:inessive]})

=def gsem (N, {[Number:plural]}) gsem (N, {[Possessed:1pl]})
gsem (N, {[Case:inessive]}).
On the assumption that there are no hierarchical relations between these properties,
then this function delivers the value
(33) [Px.P(x) PL(x) [y.y = [1pl] Poss(y, x)] [z.IN(x, z)]](N)

= [Px.P(x) PL(x) [yz.y = [1pl] Poss(y, x) IN(x, z)]](N)
= x.N(x) PL(x) [yz.y = [1pl] Poss(y, x) IN(x, z)].
In Section 6.4.2 I discuss occasions when the order of afxation appears to deter-
mine semantic scope. For instance, argument-structure alternations such as causative
and passive often interact, in such a way that causative morphology applied extern-
ally to the morphology of a passive form gives the causative of a passive, while passive
morphology applied externally to the morphology of a causative form gives the pass-
ive of a causative. In such cases, we will need to specify in some way that the semantic
function imposes a hierarchical structure which is reected in the linear order of
afxation. Suppose that the fform function includes realization rules Rcause and Rpass .
(For convenience of exposition we will suppose that these are both sufxes.) Suppose
too that we code relative afx order for these formatives by means of a lineariza-
tion function dened over rule blocks. Specically, let the two rule blocks be ordered
in positions m, m + i for the order Stem + Rcause + Rpass , and n, n + j for the order
Stem + Rpass + Rcause . Suppose nally that the relative order is reected in the
argument-structure feature organization, in the following sense. Let there be a fea-
ture [Astr] whose values include [Cause] and [Pass]. Suppose further that each
of [Cause, Pass] is itself a feature which can take the other feature as a value:
[Cause:Pass] and [Pass:Cause]. Then as part of the denition of the FORM at-
tribute (fform ), we say that the linearization m, m + i is dened for the feature value
[Pass:Cause] (reecting the passive of a causative), and the linearization n, n + j is
dened for the feature value [Cause:Pass] (reecting the causative of a passive).
Stump (1997) argues that it is possible to tie linear order to semantic scope by en-
suring that the order of application of a realization rule is mirrored in the order of
application of the corresponding semantic rules. However, it isnt entirely clear how
such an idea is to be implemented, especially given that most rules introduced in
most rule blocks dont participate in any scope relations. The device of hierarchic-
ally arranged feature structures permits us to dene scope relations independently
of actual linearization by ensuring that the semantic functions corresponding to
the two scope-taking features apply to each other asymmetrically. In other words,
the causative of a passive is represented schematically as gsem (, [Cause:Pass]) =
CAUSE(x, y, PASS(PRED(z, y, . . .))) = CAUSE(x, y, PREDpass (y, . . . , x)), and
the passive of a causative is represented schematically as gsem (, [Pass:Cause]) =
PASS(CAUSE(x, y, PRED(y, . . .))) = CAUSEpass (y, PRED(y, . . .), x).
Now, it might be objected that this way of representing scope fails to reect any
direct (iconic) relation between linear order and semantic scope. But we have seen
that such iconic relations are not especially common. Moreover, there are well at-
tested cases of anti-iconic order even in languages such as Kayardild in which afx
order generally does reect syntactic order or semantic order (Evans, 1995b). Given
this, it seems that iconic afx ordering and semantic scope is generally a reection of
historical evolution rather than an architecturally embodied property of grammars. If
it turned out to be necessary to yoke linear afx order with semantic scope on a regu-
lar basis in writing grammars, then this would mean that we would have to recognize
the role of morphs in morphological structure. We would then have to dene a way
of measuring the linear position of morphs with respect to each other, specically,
the relative position of an afxal morph and a stem morph. We would then need to
dene a notion of closer than, so that we could establish that, say, a morph serving as
the exponent of a causative alternation was closer to the stem than a morph serving as
the exponent of a passive alternation, and vice versa. Dening such a metric is a non-
trivial task, since at present the device of rule-block indices is essentially arbitrary. To
provide a clear denition of relative position with respect to the stem, we would need
a constant anchor point. This could be the stem itself (or the central component of a
discontinuous stem, however dened), or it could be one or both of the word edges.
It would require a separate study to work out such a model, but the crucial point is
that such a model can be envisaged, and it would remain a member of the class of
inferentialrealizational models.
5.8 A unied view of lexical relatedness

I have proposed that a lexical entry for a lexeme is dened as a set of semantic and
morphosyntactic properties linked to each other via a common lexemic index. The
basic information required to specify a lexeme is a set of forms (minimally a root
form) used as the basis for morphological operations, and a meaning. In straight-
forward cases all the other information required to use the lexeme in a sentence can
be deduced from general default principles, either from the meaning of the lexeme
itself or from the standard set of morphological processes of inection, derivation,
and so on dened by the languages grammar. I have also proposed that all forms
of regular lexical relatedness, from canonical inection, the computation of inec-
ted word forms, to canonical derivation, the computation of sets of lexemes derived
from the base lexeme, are handled by the same grammatical mechanism, the gen-
eralized paradigm function. However, canonical inection and canonical derivation
would appear to be performing very different, and, on the face of it, irreconcilable,
functions. Inection species the forms of a single lexeme that realize the various
morphosyntactic properties associated with the lexeme, while derivation creates an
entirely new lexical entry with its own associated set of morphosyntactic properties.
I will show in this section that the gap can be bridged straightforwardly by deploying
the machinery I have developed so far.
First, lets consider in a little more detail how a paradigm function denes the
inectional paradigm for a word. I have said that we should associate each lexeme
with a morpholexical signature, which effectively denes the property or function
paradigm for that lexeme. That is, the morpholexical signature is a specication of
all of the morphosyntactic properties that a lexeme of a given class must be able to
realize. The actual realization of those properties in the shape of concrete word forms
is achieved by the fform component of the generalized paradigm function. Given a
morpholexical signature, then, the job of the fform function is to map some form onto
each of the cells dened by the morpholexical signature. In a sense, then, we can
think of the specication of the inectional formproperty paradigm of a lexeme as a
two-stage process. The rst stage denes the empty cells, the property paradigm, and
the second stage lls in each empty cell with an appropriate word form. Lets assume
that the second stage is contingent upon the rst. That is, the mapping which denes
inected word forms is constrained to deduce a set of forms and then map them to
appropriate paradigm cells.
There are a number of ways in which one might implement such a require-
ment, but I will simply make a brute-force assertion, in the form of an Inectional
Speciability Principle:
(34) Inectional Speciability Principle:

The fform component of the generalized paradigm function maps a set of
forms to cells in the property paradigm dened by the lexemes morpholexical
signature.
The effect of the Inectional Speciability Principle is that a bare lexical entry is
uninectable. This is because a bare lexical entry for a well-behaved lexeme lacks
a morpholexical signature, and hence by (34) cannot (yet) be inected.
Now consider what happens when a new lexeme is created by regular derivational
morphology. Assume all four components of the generalized paradigm function
introduce non-trivial changes, specically the fli function, as in the case of the deri-
vation of writer from write. I repeat the basic process here, maintaining relatively
informal representations:
(35) GPF(write, SN)

fform (write, SN) = write er
fsyn (write, SN) = Noun
fsem (write, SN) = [PERSON(x), [WRITE(x, y)]]
fli (write, SN) = SN(write)
The process creates a new lexeme and hence creates a new lexemic index. I now as-
sume a general principle governing the interpretation of lexical entries derived by a
non-trivial application of the fli function, that is, any derivation that creates a new
lexeme. The principle is that the output of the generalized paradigm function which
derives the new lexeme is equivalent to a lexical entry in its own right. For instance,
the representation in (8, 35) is equivalent to the lexical entry in (36).
(36) fform (writer, u) = write er

fsyn (writer, u) = Noun
fsem (writer, u) = [PERSON(x), [WRITE(x, y)]]
Here writer is equivalent to SN(write). The representation in (36) simply states

that writer is a lexeme in its own right. More generally, I propose the Derived
Lexical Entry Principle:
(37) Derived Lexical Entry Principle:

If, for a lexeme , and a feature , fli applies non-trivially so that () = , then
given GPF(, {}), the functions
fform (, {}),
fsyn (, {}),
fsem (, {})
are dened, and
fform ((), u) =def fform (, {}),

fsyn ((), u) =def fsyn (, {}),
fsem ((), u) =def fsem (, {}).
The Derived Lexical Entry Principle guarantees that normal derivation gives rise
to lexical entries that have exactly the same kinds of properties as base lexical entries.
In particular, the derived lexical entry will be eligible for the various default prin-
ciples, specically the morpholexical signature default. Before the application of the
morpholexical signature default, it will be impossible to inect a derived lexeme such
as writer, but once that default has applied, the lexeme can be inected as a normal
noun. The Derived Lexical Entry Principle is comparable to principles such as the
Atom Condition of Williams (1981b) and the Adjacency Condition of Allen (1978),
which equally seek to limit feature percolation, that is, the extent to which the prop-
erties of a base are inherited by the derivate. There are crucial differences, however,
between the Derived Lexical Entry Principle and other principles seeking to limit the
transparency of information in derivational processes. These differences all stem
from the fact that I am assuming a factorization of lexical properties such that it is
possible to dene lexical relatedness in terms of a variety of collections of properties,
and not just in terms of inection/derivation (as in current inferentialrealizational
models) or just in terms of afxation (as in morpheme-based models). In particular,
the Derived Lexical Entry Principle is applicable if and only if the lexemic index of the
derived word is distinct from that of the base. This will have important consequences
for the typology of lexical relatedness.10
There is one nal point to be made about the distinction between inection and de-
rivation. The story we have seen for derivation is actually somewhat simplied. I have
argued that the generalized paradigm function for derivation non-trivially species
10 In Spencer (2010b) I suggest an extension of the Derived Lexical Entry Principle, which I call the
Category Erasure Principle. Given the ordering FORM < SYN < SEM < LI, any non-trivial change to
an attribute to the right of the list causes the categorial information associated with lower attributes to
be erased (and later lled in by the Default Cascade). However, this degree of loss of information seems
unwarranted, so I will assume that we see such erasure only when a new lexeme is dened.
an output for all four functions. But we also know that the SYN properties of a lexeme
are often entirely predictable from its semantics. Therefore, in many cases, if a deri-
vational generalized paradigm function were to specify the SYN properties, it would
do so redundantly. Moreover, in languages with simple morphological systems, the
FORM properties are almost entirely derivable from the SYN properties (with the ex-
ception of the specic morphological operation which realizes the derivational type,
of course). Specically, in a language without arbitrary inectional classes, if, say, an
adjective is derived from a verb, then the minimum that needs to be specied is the
form change. Even for a language with inectional classes, if the particular deriva-
tional process creates adjectives of the default inectional class then there is no need
to specify this fact in the denition of the derivation process. All the other FORM
properties can be derived from the SEM properties via the SYN properties, together
with the default specication of the appropriate morpholexical signature.
For these reasons I propose that in the most general case the derivational gener-
alized paradigm function species only three aspects of lexical structure overtly: the
derived LI attribute, the derived SEM attribute, and the FORM operation. Other as-
pects of the FORM attribute, and all aspects of the SYN attribute, are undened, to
be specied by defaults. Of course, as is always the case, some or all of these unspe-
cied properties may be specied by the derivational rule, but in the general case the
specication of a derived lexeme is very similar to the specication of a non-derived
basic lexeme: the generalized paradigm function denes a basic phonological form
(root) and a semantics, together with a derived lexemic index. As in the case of the
generalized paradigm function for a well-behaved base lexeme, the underspecied
properties are given empty values, to be lled by default rules. Thus, assuming that
the subject-nominal formation process in English is completely regular in all import-
ant respects, we can say that the generalized paradigm function for that process is
actually somewhat simpler than the process we have hitherto been assuming. That is,
instead of a function along the lines of (9) in Section 5.3, we can assume a generalized
paradigm function along the lines of (38).11
(38) GPF(verb, SN)

a. fform (verb, SN) =

LI u
MORPHSIG u

LI u
FORM
STEM INDEX 0

MORCLASS u
PHON STEMSN|PHON(verb) er
11 I have couched these relationships in procedural terms for the readers convenience, but they could
equally well be stated as static relationships, as Greg Stump points out to me.
b. fsyn (verb, SN) =

LI u

SYN A-STR u
= SYN u
SYNCLASS u
c. fsem (verb, SN) = [Thing PERSON(x), [VERB(x, y)]]
d. fli (verb, SN) = SN(verb)
Note that derivation is different from inection in its treatment of the default at-
tributes. Whereas inectional generalized paradigm functions simply fail to specify
any function whatsoever for the SYN, SEM, and LI attributes, the derivational gener-
alized paradigm function species a value, but that value is underspecied. In other
words, whereas for inection the General Default Principle applies, silently copying
whatever values are specied in the base lexemes lexical entry, in derivation the base
lexemes values for the properties are overwritten with zero, that is, are despecied.
This reects the more drastic nature of derivational relationships compared with the
relationships between inected forms of a single lexeme.
Suppose, now, that not all of the information associated with a derived lexeme
can be given by completely general defaults. For instance, suppose there is a deriva-
tional process, , which adds a sufx -suff to the base lexemes root, but which also
imposes a specic non-default inection class on its outputs, say, [INFLCLASS: n].
This specication will be part of the generalized paradigm function for the deriva-
tional process; in other words, the FORM function will be roughly as shown in (39),
abstracting away from irrelevant details.
(39) fform (, ) =

FORM MORCLASS
MCAT

INFLCLASS n

INDEX 0

STEM
PHON
STEM0() suff

...

...
Other values will remain unspecied, of course, to be lled in by defaults. In (39) I

have left the MCAT value of the MORCLASS attribute unspecied, on the assump-
tion that this information can be deduced from either the INFLCLASS specication
or the SYNCLASS specication (one that is provided), or both. However, until the
appropriate defaults specify the required information, the morpholexical signature
default will be unable to apply, and it will not be possible to inect the lexeme. This
will be true of any type of derivational relationship which partially species inec-
tional or morpholexical class properties. On the other hand, if a derivational process
happened to specify some unique inectional type, not provided for by the general
defaults of the grammar, then that process (unlikely as it is) would simultaneously
permit the whole inectional paradigm to be deduced. However, even this scenario
would not disrupt the priority of derivation over inection.
The upshot of these rather simple principles and assumptions is that we now have
a way of integrating inection and derivation into a single type of function and at
the same time capturing the fact that canonical derivation involves the wholesale re-
structuring of a lexical entry, including its inectional paradigm. In this way we have
achieved the extension of the standard model of PFM which we were aiming at. In
the rest of the book, I show how each of the intermediate types of lexical relatedness
discussed in Chapter 3 can be dened by means of the generalized paradigm function.
Part III
The factorized lexicon

6
Representing lexical relatedness
6.1 Introduction
In this chapter I show how the model advocated here permits us to describe the types
of lexical relatedness discussed in Chapter 3 and throughout the book. I will address
a question that was raised (in Section 3.2) but not dealt with, namely the question
of how inected forms of lexemes are interpreted semantically. This is important
because in many respects semantic interpretation is what distinguishes inection
from derivation: derivation changes the meaning of a word by adding a semantic
predicate, while inection in its simplest form just realizes a set of morphosyntactic
features or properties. Yet if we encounter inections that have a regular and pre-
dictable semantic effect at the level of the lexeme how can we distinguish these
from derivational processes? This discussion will be important for understanding in-
herent (semantically interpreted) inection and transpositions (including a class of
transpositions that are meaning-bearing).
I then turn to two of the cases of morphosyntactic mismatch discussed in
Chapter 3, m-inert derivation and morphological shift, showing how we can treat
such cases by making use of the idea of a lexical entry as the output of a maximally
specic generalized paradigm function. I then turn to the problem of evaluative mor-
phology, showing how it ts into the lexical-relatedness model proposed here. I will
also briey touch upon the matter of meaningless derivation of the kind illustrated
by prexed verbs such as understand. I conclude the chapter by presenting the ba-
sic typology of relatedness and showing how the various logically expected types are
instantiated. Some of those types will be dealt with in subsequent chapters.
To begin with, however, I shall make brief observations about the kinds of phe-
nomena that are generally taken to be the stuff of derivational morphology. I shall
argue that most of such morphology falls outside the purview of my model of lex-
ical relatedness, because it isnt grammatically driven. In our terms, this means that
such relatedness isnt paradigmatic. This conclusion will perhaps be slightly alarm-
ing for many readers, but it is mandated by the fact that derivational morphology of
the familiar type is generally very messy, ridden with exceptions, and full of semantic
idiosyncrasy, and generally doesnt lend itself to analysis as part of a regular grammar.
Rather, what we see are tendencies dened over existing lexical entries, together with
the ability to coin new words on an occasional basis. I therefore assume that a good
deal of afxational derivation is essentially the same as clipping or blending or other
types of frequently encountered word-creation device, and not a matter of grammar
at all.
6.2 Formal approaches to lexical relatedness

I begin with a very brief and selective summary of the kinds of approaches to lexical
relatedness that have been proposed before. I should confess that I have been able to
nd relatively few references that deal with the central issues of this book, namely the
types of relatedness that fall between inection and derivation, and the kinds of re-
latedness that introduce a mismatch between morphological categories and syntactic
categories (Beard, 1995, is a notable exception). Moreover, most approaches adopt
theoretical assumptions that arent necessarily compatible with some of the assump-
tions I have been making, and therefore its very difcult to provide a point-by-point
comparison between my proposals and those of other scholars.
The rst question that has to be addressed is the matter of morpholexical and
morphosyntactic categories: crudely, how does a given author or a given theoretical
model describe the difference between nouns, verbs, and adjectives? Here there are a
great variety of opinions. One popular approach is to assume a set of two binary fea-
tures, and combine them in such a way as to dene the four main lexical categories,
noun, verb, adjective, and preposition. There are a good many logical possibilities,
some more plausible than others, the most well-known being the [N, V] system
due to Chomsky (1970). However, all of them suffer from the fault of arbitrariness
(see Williams, 1981c, for early discussion of these problems). The three main systems
that have been proposed are shown in Table 6.1.
Feature system (2) is that developed by Bresnan for LFG (Bresnan, 2001), which
is homologous to that developed by Jackendoff (1977), using the feature labels
[Subj, Obj].
Feature system (3) is proposed by Wunderlich (1996), who glosses his feature labels
as follows. The feature specication [referentially dependent] picks out those words
which can be anchored directly establishing an independent utterance. An inde-
pendently uttered would have a vocative function (this seems to make interjections
like Ouch! into [referentially dependent] lexical items). Items marked [+articulated]
have an articulated thematic argument structure. Somehow this is meant to cover
impersonal (zero-place) verbs, which have to be [+art] because theyre verbs. On the
other hand, relational nouns such as mother or leg, have to be [art], even though
they appear to have an argument structure.
Feature systems (1, 2) differentiate nouns and verbs maximally and dene ad-
jectives as being half like nouns and half like verbs. In system (2), prepositions are
Representing lexical relatedness 209
Table 6.1. Binary feature denitions of lexico-syntactic categories
(1) [N, V]
N V
Noun +
Verb +
Adjective + +
Preposition
(2) [predicative, transitive]
predicative transitive
Noun
Verb + +
Adjective +
Preposition +
(3) [referentially dependent, articulated]
referentially dependent articulated
Noun
Verb +
Adjective +
Preposition + +
marked as words which take complements (like verbs), but which cant predicate
(unlike adjectives). System (1) has been implicitly used to account for verb-to-
adjective transpositions (specically, passive participles, Chomsky, 1981). These are
treated by enriching the combinatorial system to allow zero to function as a sig-
nicative feature value, so that participles are labelled [+N, 0V]. In both systems
its difcult to account straightforwardly for event nominal transpositions because
it involves changing both feature values.
System (3) is explicitly developed to handle event nominalizations smoothly as a
process of information loss (Wunderlich assumes a markedness convention under
which + is the marked value for any feature). However, deverbal participles are no
less natural than event nominalizations, and they would require toggling both feature
values. (And the most marked change seems to be one from noun to preposition,
though historically thats precisely how adpositions frequently arise.)
Any two-feature system with binary values is ill-equipped to handle lexical classes.
First, such systems treat the class of adpositions as more or less on a par with other
categories, and yet the category itself is very controversial (a better claim could be
made for identifying a separate class of adverb, for instance; see Payne et al., 2010)
and I know of no languages in which adpositions participate in regular transpos-
itional morphosyntax. Therefore, the fact that such two-feature systems dene a
fourth lexical class in the rst place is something of an embarrassment. Such features
are completely unable to provide a principled description of transpositions. More or
less by denition, any such system will predict that one kind of transposition is more
natural than others, and there is no reason at all to believe this.
All in all it seems that attempts to dene lexical categories in terms of binary
features are wholly misguided. A much more interesting set of proposals has been
made by J. M. Anderson (see particularly Anderson, 1997, 2006, 2007). Ander-
sons system represents one part of a very general model of language and grammar
developed within a dependency-based theory encompassing phonology, case the-
ory, and syntactic categorization and syntactic structure generally. He revivies the
notional approach to lexical categories, under which categories are essentially re-
ections of the semantic content of prototypical instances of those words. In this
respect, my approach is very similar to Andersons, except that I take the locus
of lexical categorization to be a specic level of representation designed to func-
tion as an interface between semantic content and morphosyntax, namely argument
structure.
Andersons basic system is founded on a distinction between predicative (P) and
referentiable (N) (corresponding to the semantic basis of the E and R semantic func-
tion roles respectively).1 For English he takes auxiliary verbs (operatives) to be the
primary instances of predicators, {P}, and determiners and pronouns (determinat-
ives) to be the primary instances of reference-dening elements, {N}. These elements
can combine with each other in such a way that one may predominate over the
other. Predominance of an element is indicated by placing it rst, and separating
it from the second element with a semicolon. Thus, {N;P} indicates a word class
which is principally referential (noun), while {P;N} indicates a word class which is
primarily predicative (verb). Another class can be constructed with the denition
{(N;P)&(P;N)}, showing mutual preponderance, notated more simply as {P:N}.2 This
is how the adjective class is dened.
There are many interesting points of contact between Andersons approach and
the one proposed here. However, it would take us much too far aeld to explore
all these interrelations. One reason for this is that Andersons system depends on a
complex and intricately worked out system of combinatorics involving dependency
notions of government/dependence, and its difcult to map these straightforwardly
onto a description which lacks such notions.
I now briey address the structure of the lexicon and semantic representations.
One of the most important ways in which words are related is through their senses
or semantic representations. However, my focus is much narrower, and so I will
1 I base my description of Anderson (1997) here on the more recent summary provided in Anderson
(2007: Chapter 2).
2 Or equally, one presumes, {N:P}.
be able to discuss the nature of lexical semantic representation only very cursorily.
I will broadly speaking adopt the conventions of semantic analysis arising from works
such as Jackendoff (1990) and work in that tradition (for example, that of Levin and
Rappaport Hovav in many publications; see Levin and Rappaport Hovav, 1995, for
instance, for an introduction to a number of the basic issues that their approach ad-
dresses).3 At the same time, my treatment of argument-structure representations and
my use of the semantic function role meshes better in some respects with the kind of
event-based approach to semantic representation that arises from the work of Donald
Davidson (Davidson, 2001) and is widely adopted in formal semantics (in a modied
form known as Neo-Davidsonian event semantics; see Dowty, 1989, for a concrete
instantiation).
For the most part, my discussion of semantic representation is so coarse-grained
that it makes little difference which approach we adopt, so I will not justify any of
the semantic representations I propose. Of course, its always possible that the details
of semantic representation will turn out to be crucial to the kinds of question I am
exploring here, in which case my discussion will have at least provided the necessary
background for investigating the issue.
Finally, we must consider formal and especially morphological aspects of lexical
relatedness.
One of the rst attempts at a formal characterization of lexical relatedness in-
duced by derivational morphology was that proposed in Aronoffs (1976) model
of word formation, the rst serious attempt at a model of derivational morpho-
logy within the generative paradigm (and one of the earliest studies in morphology
generally within that paradigm). Aronoff assumes that there are Word Formation
Rules (or WFRs), which he denes as follows (p. 22): Every WFR species a unique
phonological operation which is performed on the base. [footnote omitted discuss-
ing the nature of phonological operations] Every WFR also species a syntactic
label and subcategorization for the resulting word, as well as a semantic reading
for it, which is a function of the reading of the base. This, it will be immedi-
ately recognized, is essentially a brief characterization of the generalized paradigm
function.
The main difference between the WFR and the generalized paradigm function is
that the WFR is stated in terms of the addition of morphemes. However, this seems
to go entirely against the spirit of word-formation rules. We can easily recharacterize
the WFR to bring it into line with the kind of paradigm-based model proposed here.
We assume an inventory of word-formation types (the derivational categories), such
3 That tradition relies on the idea that a semantic representation (largely) consists of a rooted tree struc-
ture. However, Koenig and Davis (2006) offer strong arguments in favour of a representation consisting of
sets of smaller representations (Elementary Predications). While I am very sympathetic to that approach,
it isnt directly relevant to the questions addressed in this book.
as subject nominal or similitudinal adjective, and identify each with a feature label, as
in the GPF model. Then, we specify a set of derivational types by specifying a particu-
lar morphophonological operation to realize each derivational category for different
sets of bases. Thus, for the derivational category of deadjectival nominalization or
property nominalization, we would have (at least) three distinct types, dened by
sufxation of -th, -ity, -ness. The rst two would be dened over bases of the warm
and sincere classes and the last would be the default type. This is the essence of the
generalized paradigm function.
Two of the principal approaches to theoretical grammar, Lexical Functional Gram-
mar and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, rely on an articulated model of
the lexicon and lay great emphasis on the role of the lexicon. Those models have
developed detailed proposals for managing the interface between lexical representa-
tions and syntactic and semantic representations for phrases and clauses. However,
even within these lexical frameworks, there has been comparatively little interest in
developing an overarching model of lexical representations that would account for
the full range of types of lexical relatedness surveyed in this book. The most articu-
lated models of the lexicon are found in HPSG approaches. The lexicon is conceived
as a network or hierarchy of types of greater and lesser specicity linked by inherit-
ance. A summary of the model is found in Riehemann (1998), and a very interesting
extension of that model is proposed in Koenig (1999).4
Beards (1995) Lexeme-Morpheme Base Hypothesis presents a model of deriva-
tion which is very close in spirit to the inferentialrealizational model of inection.
The crucial point of contact with Beards model is the doctrine of separationism,
the idea that the form and the function of linguistic expressions (notably, of afxes)
are separable. Beard identies a whole series of abstract L-derivations and shows how
they map onto morphological operations in complex ways that we have seen through-
out this book. Separationism is the idea that underlies all inferentialrealizational
models. The paradigm-driven model presented here respects separationism in the
sense that it separates the specication of the form of a morphologically complex
word from its meaning or function. Indeed, the generalized paradigm function
can be thought of as a radical extension of the separationist doctrine. The gener-
alized paradigm function separates morphological form, syntactic representation,
semantic representation, and lexemic identity, and allows all four properties to
co-vary independently.
4 Koenigs notion of online typing, and his overall approach to derivational morphology and the struc-
ture of the lexicon, seems to have been underappreciated. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this
study to investigate the implications of his approach for my model since this would require an in-depth
explication of the HPSG underpinnings of his model. I therefore leave a proper consideration of Koenigs
proposals for the future.
6.3 Derivation
The main characteristics of canonical derivational morphology were introduced in
Chapter 5. In this and subsequent sections I will clarify certain issues and discuss
the way a number of non-canonical properties can be handled. Somewhat ironically,
perhaps, I shall have relatively little to say about derivational morphology as normally
understood. The reason for this is that much of what is discussed in the context of de-
rivation in familiar European languages, at least, is relatively unsystematic, and prone
to unmotivated lexical gaps, semantic and formal idiosyncrasy, and other types of ir-
regularity. For instance, a good deal of the content of handbooks such as Marchand
(1969), Adams (1973, 2001), Bauer (1983), Szymanek (1989), and Plag (2003) deals
with derivational processes that at best represent strong tendencies in the lexicon,
and that cannot be seriously compared to the paradigm-driven relations that hold
between inected word forms.
A good illustration of this non-paradigmatic feature of derivational morphology
can be seen from Plags (1999) meticulous and carefully argued study of English verbs
derived by means of the sufxes -ize, -ify, and -ate, as in computerize, mythify, and
nitrogenate. Plag explicitly argues against the kind of paradigm-based approach to
morphology advocated here, and for good reason, given the nature of the phenomena
he is examining.
Plag provides a detailed comparison of the semantics and morphophonology of the
three sufxes. He mounts a convincing case for two descriptive generalizations. First,
-ize and -ify are synonyms but, roughly speaking, -ify attaches to stress-nal bases,
while -ize attaches to other bases. On the other hand, -ate attaches to bases meaning
chemical substance giving an ornative-resultative meaning cause to have or be
Noun.5 When -ate is found outside the terminology of chemistry it seems merely to
indicate that the derived word is a verb. However, words formed with -ize/-ify have a
variety of identiable interpretations, listed in Table 6.2, following Lieber (2004: 77)
(cf. Plag, 1999: 125, 196).6
Plag (1999) provides an underspecied Jackendovian LCS aimed at expressing the
common factor in these meanings:
(4) CAUSE ([ ]i , [GO ([Property, Thing ]Theme/Base
5 In Spencer (2001b) I suggest that -ate sufxation seems to be part of a more general phenomenon
which we might call Fachmorphologie, when a scientic discipline engineers morphology for its own pur-
poses. Chemistry does this a great deal: in inorganic chemistry, consider ferric of trivalent iron compound
vs ferrous of divalent iron compound, sulphuric of hexavalent compound of sulphur vs sulphurous of
tetravalent compound of sulphur, etc.; and, in particular, in the hydrocarbon paradigm in organic chem-
istry, consider methane, ethane, propane, etc. vs methanol, ethanol, propanol, etc. vs methyl, ethyl, propyl,
etc. vs methaldehyde, ethaldehyde, propaldehyde, etc.
6 Plag and Lieber list the causative and inchoative categories separately, but for deadjectival verbs they
should arguably be treated as a single category with two subcategories. In English the causative/inchoative
polysemy is systematic.
Table 6.2. Plag/Lieber English derivational categories
Gloss Plags label Example
-ize
make x, cause to become x causative standardize, velarize
resultative crystallize, unionize
make x go to/in/on something ornative apologize, texturize
make something go to/in/on x locative hospitalize, containerize
do/act/make in the manner of or like x similative Boswellize, despotize
do x performative philosophize, theorize
become x inchoative oxidize, aerosolize
-ify
make x, cause to become x causative purify, diversity, acidify
resultative yuppify
make x go to/in/on something ornative glorify
make something go to/in/on x locative syllabify, bourgeoisify, codify
do/act/make in the manner of or like x similative
do x performative speechify, boozify
become x inchoative acidify, calcify
Lieber (2004: 82) expands on Plags representation and earlier analyses of her own,
by proposing (5), in which a causative verb is treated as a relation between two events:
(5) Skeleton for -ize, -ify

[+dynamic ([volitional - i ], [j ])];
[+dynamic ([i ], [+dynamic, +IEPS ([j ], [+Loc ([ ])])]), base]
Lieber glosses this representation as [x does something to y] such that [x causes y to

become z/go to z].
The feature specication [+dynamic] denotes a situation or event predicate
(typically a verb). The feature [IEPS] is Inferable Eventual Position or State (Lieber
and Baayen, 1999). A situation marked positively for this feature is characterized as
a connected sequence of places/states traversed by some participant in the event. In
other words, [+IEPS] corresponds broadly to a measuring-out event, such as one
characterized by an incremental theme in the sense of Dowty (1991). The subject ar-
gument of the causative is taken to be volitional, on the grounds that non-volitional
subjects tend to sound rather odd or strained.
Plag uses his analysis of causative verbs to argue against Beards Separation Hypo-
thesis, and hence indirectly against a paradigm-driven view of such derivation. He
claims that the afxes are signs, and thus are similar to bona de lexemes rather than
mere spell-outs of features. The evidence for this is that the signs show polysemy, just
like real words. On a separationist account each of these meanings would have to be
written into the formmeaning mapping rules separately, and there would be no way
to capture the fact that they are polysemous.
Now, I am not convinced that such phenomena can be used to argue against a
separationist analysis of the sort entailed by Paradigm Function Morphology. I see
no reason why we couldnt set up a very general derivational feature, say, Caus-
ative, and allow this to derive the form of causative verbs while interpreting the
output of the paradigm function semantically by means of a Plag/Lieber-style LCS.
However, I will not implement this proposal here, because I believe that Plag is essen-
tially right to treat such data as mitigating against a paradigm-driven analysis of this
kind of lexical relatedness. Its very noticeable that there is a considerable semantic
distance between the Plag/Lieber skeleton and the full meaning of a given causative
verb in many cases (what Lieber would call the body of the semantic representation).
For instance, to glorify war means more than just to make glory go to/in/on war.
Moreover, the semantic ne-tuning required to get the actual meanings is not de-
terministic, since it depends on detailed aspects of context, pragmatics, and world
knowledge. In this respect, the analyses for afxed words are reminiscent of attempts
by authors such as Hale and Keyser (1993) to provide structurally determinate ana-
lyses for noun-to-verb conversion of the type to saddle a horse, to shelve books. Such
attempts are doomed to failure because the meaning of such verbs is essentially per-
form a pragmatically appropriate and salient act which involves N (Aronoff, 1980;
Clark and Clark, 1979; Kiparsky, 1997, as well as Plag, 1999: 220).
Now, the range of meanings identied by Plag in his very detailed study is delib-
erately restricted to neologisms identied in the complete Oxford English Dictionary
(supplemented by corpus searches). The idea is to pin down just those meanings that
are still live in the language. This is a laudable methodology, of course. However,
it leaves us with a variety of questions. First, there is the problem of how to repre-
sent the meanings of sufxed words (or verbs converted from nouns for that matter)
which were attested earlier and whose semantics fails to t into the template proposed
by Plag. For instance, idolize means to treat someone as an idol, and evangelize and
proselytize mean to try to convert to a religion/ideology (vaguely after the manner of
an evangelist). These simply dont t into any part of Plags typology, but to say that
they represent unproductive formations begs an important question for a model of
lexical relatedness.
Particularly problematic are derivatives of proper names. There is simply no LCS
template, for instance, that will convey the meaning of bowdlerize to remove sup-
posedly indecent passages of a text, in the manner of Thomas Bowdlers (17541825)
editions of Shakespeare. This is no more transparent than the verb to boycott, mean-
ing to ostracize an individual or institution for broadly political ends (as happened
to Captain Boycott in Ireland in 1880). The problem for Plags account of caus-
ative verbs is that there are denominal verbs converted from proper names which
are clearly 20th century in origin and which are completely opaque, in exactly the
manner of boycott. For instance, a curried formula is one which has been conver-
ted by lambda abstraction into a one-place predicate, named for the logician Haskell
Curry. On the other hand, a skolemized formula is one that has been reduced to
Skolem normal form, that is, with all existential quantiers eliminated, after the lo-
gician Thoralf Skolem. The verb skolemize is causative in some sense, but not in any
sense that can be accounted for using the templates proposed by Plag or Lieber.
The overwhelming impression from the denominal -ize/-ify formations is that they
just create a verb from the noun, and that context of coinage and real-world know-
ledge ll in the rest, just as Plag would claim for conversion. But if thats the case, then
theres a fortiori no systematic polysemy in any interesting sense. What we have in-
stead is context-driven semantic specication on the basis of a very general template.
I would argue that this does not represent word formation as such, but rather word
creation, mandated by existing lexical entries, but not the result of a semantically
driven (or paradigm-driven) grammatical process.
There is a very interesting contrast between the causative verbs (afx-mediated
or resulting from conversion) and the semantics of noun-noun compounding in
English. Noun-noun compounds can be constructed very freely and productively,
but there is no specic semantic interpretation for a given compound (Downing,
1977); rather, each compound has to be interpreted in its own context. Compounds
are very frequently lexicalized, however, and those lexicalized compounds tend to
fall into identiable semantic groups (see, for instance, the semantic typology of Levi,
1978). However, even among lexicalized compounds we nd examples whose mean-
ing cannot possibly be related to any general semantic schema or template (Spencer,
2011).
The conclusions I draw from such research is that a very considerable amount
of what is considered the derivational morphology of a standardly described lan-
guage such as English is not part of the system of grammatically dened lexical
relatedness in the sense examined here. Most studies of derivational morphology
have concentrated on highly restricted processes which, crucially, are not truly pro-
ductive. To be sure, these processes are involved in the creation of neologisms, as
is eloquently revealed in painstaking studies such as Plag (1999). But the processes
of -ize/-ify afxation or of noun-to-verb conversion are not productive in the same
sense that un- prexation to adjectives, or subject-nominal formation, is product-
ive. In general, if English acquires a new gradable adjective of the right semantics,
or a transitive verb, then that new word will have respectively a negative form or
a subject-nominal form. Thus, from the recently coined verb to email we can form
expressions such as an inveterate emailer, and from the slang interpretation of the
adjective cool (meaning something like highly prized in a certain social milieu or
whatever) we can form uncool (even though this is not actually possible with cool in
its original neither hot nor cold meaning). More dramatically, English has a highly
productive lexical relatedness schema of personal noun formation which allows us to
create a noun meaning person who (regularly, professionally, . . .) engages in con-

textually determined activity involving X from a noun X: violin violinist, music
musician, athletics athlete, linguistics linguist. This is sufciently productive
that it applies in the face of suppletive allomorphy and even to lexicalized com-
pounds or phrases. Thus, from the lexicalized expression historical linguistics, headed
by linguistics we derive, quite productively, historical linguist, mandated by linguist,
despite the fact that such formations frequently give rise to morphosemantic mis-
matches (Spencer, 1988). Lexical relatedness of the kind dened by negative adjective
formation, subject-nominal formation and personal noun formation has a claim on
being paradigmatically driven, but noun-to-verb conversion and denominal causat-
ive verb formation do not, even though the morphological machineryconversion,
-ize/-ate/-ify sufxationis provided by the grammar of English.
The grammar of English has to record the fact that personal noun forma-
tion is completely productive despite highly irregular allomorphy. That process is
paradigm-driven in the sense that a base of the right sort will always give rise to
a derivative (even though the semantics of that derivative is not given determinist-
ically by the grammar, but instead has to be dened contextually). In this respect
personal noun formation is a grammatical process on a par with, say, noun-noun
compounding. But the grammar of English also has to record the fact that -ize/-ify
derived verbs are possible lexical items, as are verbs converted from nouns. However,
the grammar doesnt have to set up a paradigmatic relationship, as would be the case
if all bases were possible inputs to the process. Such derivational morphology is akin
not to personal noun formation or noun-noun compounding, but rather to noun-
to-verb conversion or, indeed, to blending, such as smog from smoke + fog, clipping,
such as specs from specications (complete with spelling pronunciation: sps spk),
or occasionalisms such as girlcott, based on boycott, and hundreds of other instances
of essentially ludic word creations. Word creation can be very widespread, and can
follow patterns, but it should be kept separate from word formation proper (see
van Marle, 1985, for discussion of the distinction between word creation and word
formation).
I shall therefore assume that there is a core of grammatically determinate word
formation which is regular and productive and is governed by a set of (unary, privat-
ive) derivational features, following Stump (2001: 25260). I shall also assume the
Separation Hypothesis (Beard, 1995) and draw a distinction between the abstract de-
rivational category dened by such a feature (say, SubjectNom) and the concrete
derivational types which realize that category: -er driver, -ant/-ent claimant,
-ist publicist (cf. also Szymanek, 1989). Canonical derivation denes a new lex-
eme by virtue of adding a single semantic predicate to the semantic representation
of a simpler lexeme. The Derived Lexical Entry Principle and the Default Cascade
will guarantee that the derivational rule completely determines the morphological,
syntactic, and semantic properties of the derived lexeme.
Predications based on notions of desire/intention, ability, possibility, similarity,

and others are often incorporated very systematically into the morphological sys-
tem in such a way that we are more inclined to treat those predications as inectional
than derivational. Thus, languages may have extremely productive and regular verbal
morphological categories of desiderative, intentional, possibilitive, abilitive, and so
on, or denominal categories of similitudinal (similar to a cat) and others. Argument-
structure alternations such as causatives, applicatives, passives, reciprocals/reexives,
and so on are particularly clear instances of borderline categories, sharing much of
the morphological organization of inection, but at the same time behaving in im-
portant ways like derivational morphology, as we will see in Chapter 7. It is in these
areas of grammar particularly that each language has to be evaluated on its own
merits.7 This means that we need to provide a model of lexical relatedness that is
sufciently exible to be able to distinguish these extremely regular, inection-like
relations from canonical derivational relations. Ultimately, we need to be able to ex-
plicate in more formal terms the practice we often observe in descriptive grammars
of treating, say, a desiderative form as the form of a verb lexeme as opposed to a new
lexeme in its own right.
A full account of derivational relations would need to take into consideration a
number of additional issues, including the status of polysemous base words, the status
of systematic polysemy, and the status of multiword constructions.
A single derivational relation is often sensitive to the precise semantics of the base.
This means that not all derivations apply to all meanings of a polysemous base lex-
eme. According to Plank (2010) this is not widely appreciated in lexicological circles,
but it has been a well-known problem in morphology since the discussion of Aronoff
(1976). A simple example of the need to distinguish polysemous readings in deri-
vation is provided by Carstairs-McCarthy (2002). He points out that the dictionary
entry for commit corresponds to several polysemous readings, among them, to com-
mit a crime, to commit a prisoner for trial, and to commit oneself to something. Each of
these three readings has distinct nominalizations: commission, committal, and com-
mitment. On the model presented here, the sensitivity to polysemy is not a problem,
7 For instance, in his discussion of the similarities between inectional and derivational paradigms
Stump (2001: 258) mentions the desiderative in Sanskrit, citing it as an instance of a derivational category,
expressing the syntacticosemantic category desiderative verb. However, Stump doesnt say why he re-
gards this part of the conjugation system as derivational rather than inectional (or some intermediate
category). I am not qualied to say whether the Sanskrit desiderative should be treated as a form of de-
rivational category, creating an entirely new lexeme rather than a form of the base verb lexeme (though
I note that Whitneys grammar, 1995, doesnt seem to treat the desiderative as a novel lexeme: [The de-
siderative] conjugation is allowed to be formed from any simple root in the language, and also from any
causative stem. p. 372). However, it seems perverse to treat the completely regular category of desiderative
in languages such as Japanese or Chukchi as dening entirely new lexemes.
however, because I treat all non-systematic polysemy as etymologically more or less

transparent homonymy. Therefore, in the case of commit, we are dealing with three
distinct lexemes which just happen to share a basic FORM attribute, much like
draw1 and draw2 .
Where systematic polysemy is concerned, matters are less clear. To illustrate the
kind of analytical problem that might arise, consider the polysemy between name of
container and measure/contents typical of container, as in to drop a bottle of milk
(on the oor) (bottle as name of container) vs to pour a bottle of milk (down the sink)
(bottle as measure/contents). Similitudinal adjectives formed with -like (if we take
this to be derivation rather than compounding) are possible only with the concrete
container reading. Thus, we cant say This jug contains a bottle-like quantity of milk
to mean This jug contains a quantity of milk similar to that held in a bottle of milk. On
the other hand, -ful sufxation seems to select the measure/contents reading. Thus,
Theres a bottleful of milk in that jug denotes the measure of milk. The milk itself
may have had no physical contact with any bottles. In the absence of a detailed ex-
amination of this type of morphology, I will assume that systematic polysemy can be
treated in a similar vein to homonymy, in that the systematic relationships subtended
between the distinct polysemous readings are readily identiable and in principle can
be selected for by a derivational process.
There are a number of important issues in lexical relatedness that I will not address.
One rather obvious omission will be the various ways in which lexical relatedness
has to be dened over multiword expressions. By this I mean compounds (including
noun-incorporation structures), light-verb constructions, and periphrastic deriva-
tion, as illustrated by the phenomenon of separable preverbs or English verb-particle
constructions. It is very important to incorporate such phenomena into a general
theory of lexical relatedness, of course, but it requires us to provide a very explicit ac-
count of the syntax with which such multiword expressions interact. That will require
a separate study in itself.
6.4 Canonical inection and semantic interpretation

In Chapter 3 I discussed Booijs distinction between inherent and contextual inec-
tion. Booij exemplies inherent inection using plural number and past tense, and
I added the example of semantically interpretable case morphology. The question
arises as to how exactly inherent inections are interpreted semantically.
Recall that there is a simple problem posed by semantically contentful inection:
how do we distinguish it in a motivated fashion from derivation? In the case of nom-
inal number and verb tense, the answer is often that we shouldnt ascribe the meaning
change to the inected form of the lexeme itself in the rst place, as I pointed out in
Chapter 3. But to the extent that there is semantically contentful inection in any
language, this will pose a problem for any classical notion of lexical relatedness based
on the lexeme concept. On the other hand, I also pointed out there that the most
direct interpretation of Booijs contextual/inherent distinction encounters a number
of empirical and conceptual difculties.
In this section, I make some very preliminary and informal observations about
the nature of semantic interpretation and inectional morphology, taking Stumps
notion of paradigm linkage as a point of departure. Recall from Chapter 4 that
Stump assumes two types of paradigm. A form paradigm assigns morphosyntactic
property values to word forms and denes the set of well-formed morphological
words associated with a lexeme. A content paradigm assigns corresponding sets of
morphosyntactic property values to lexemes, determining their distribution in syn-
tactic phrases. The two sets of paradigms are associated by means of a principle of
paradigm linkage. In the default case, this simply states that the form paradigms and
the content paradigms for a lexeme are in one-to-one correspondence. However,
there are interesting deviations from this correspondence. In cases of heteroclisis,
we nd that parts of the content paradigm of certain lexemes correspond to the
form paradigm of a different class of lexemes, overriding the expected morpholo-
gical forms. For instance, the content paradigm for the Czech noun pramen source
is (unexpectedly) realized by a form paradigm corresponding to a soft class noun
such as pokoj room in the singular, and by a form paradigm corresponding to the
(expected) hard class type illustrated by most bridge. In cases of deponency, we
nd that cells in part of a form paradigm correspond to an unexpected set of content
paradigm cells. Thus, in many languages a set of verb forms associated with the pass-
ive construction in regular lexemes have the meaning (content paradigm values) of
the active voice in deponent verbs.
The distinction between form and content paradigms is similar to, but distinct
from, a distinction drawn independently by Sadler and Spencer (2001) between mor-
phological features (m-features) and syntactic features (s-features). The morpho-
logical features dene inected word forms arranged in paradigms which correspond
to Stumps form paradigms. A subset of these features is the set of morphomic class
features, such as those that are required in many languages to distinguish inectional
classes (conjugation and declension classes), as well as other morphomic features
such as English verb form features discussed briey below. The s-features are rather
more general than the features dening Stumps content paradigms. The s-features
include all the content paradigm features, but they also include all those features that
are required to dene the functional syntax of a language.
Discussion of purely morphological features generally mentions the inectional
class features and little more. However, we should appreciate the importance of
Aronoffs (1994) dictum that there is morphology by itself, and that some of the fea-
tures deployed in morphology have no role outside that component. The English verb
system provides a very clear example of the need to distinguish purely morphological
features (though this fact is not universally realized). As is well known, the participle
forms in -ing/-ed and the uninected base form have multiple functions. Moreover,
it is not possible to provide a sensible unied analysis of the different functions of
English verbs. In Aronoffs terms, these are morphomic, that is, purely formal, mor-
phological, categories. One consequence of this is that they correspond to a variety of
different content paradigm properties.
For instance, it probably makes sense for the syntax to distinguish the following
categories expressed by verb forms:
(6) English verb categories in syntax
Finite, present tense/preterite (walk, walks, walked)

Imperative (walk!)
Innitive ((to) walk)
Gerund (Walking down the road, I bumped into an old friend)
Nominalization (Walking is good exercise)
Attributive progressive participle (the walking wounded)
Attributive passive participle (a frequently walked route)
On the other hand, the form paradigm which realizes the properties implied in (6)
can be represented as in (7) (with essentially arbitrary feature labels):
(7) Vform:base walk, break

Vform:s walks, breaks
Vform:ing walking, breaking
Vform:ed walked, broke
Vform:en walked, broken
The grammar of English has to include some principle stating that the [m Vform:en]
for regular verbs is realized as [m Vform:ed] (this is what Aronoff, 1994: 225 refers
to as the fen morphome).
A slightly more complex case is that of the English progressive and perfect aspects.
These are realized by a morphosyntactic construction which combines separate aux-
iliary verbs with specic morphological forms of the following verb. If the aspectual
forms were synthetic, we would dene a set of realization rules which specied the
morphology of the word form realizing the [Aspect:{progressive, perfect}] forms.
For English, we could argue that the construction is still dened by a set of reali-
zation rules but ones which specify a periphrastic realization. Thus, the rules would
state that [Aspect:perfect], say, is realized by a syntactic template which includes
the have-auxiliary followed by the perfect participle of the next verb in the syntactic
sequence (for concrete proposals for Bulgarian periphrases see Popova and Spen-
cer, 2012, and for Persian periphrases see Bonami and Samvelian, forthcoming). Part
of the denition of the periphrasis would then be the specication of the content
paradigm for the two components of the periphrasis. In principle, depending on the
details of the construction, it would be open to us to dene the verb forms purely in
terms of m-features such as [m Vform:{ing, en}] (or whatever).
Turning now to the syntactic/content paradigm features, on the characterization
of syntactic feature given above, the s-feature set includes features which have no dir-
ect morphological correspondents at all, because they belong to the functional syntax
proper. For instance, in English its arguably necessary to distinguish a property of
deniteness, expressed by the determiner system (and in part by the semantic content
of nouns). In English, unlike, say, Latin or Russian, noun phrases have to be specied
for deniteness (in the plural the marker for indeniteness can be zero, but not in the
singular). In Russian, there are (semantically) denite determiners/modiers in the
form of demonstrative adjectives as well as indenite modiers, and deniteness as a
semantic property plays a role in the organization of sentences (by interacting with
information structure), but there is no requirement on a Russian noun phrase to spe-
cify its deniteness, as there is in English. In German, deniteness has a more salient
role. As in English, noun phrases have to be specied for deniteness as a property
of grammar, but in addition deniteness regulates the form of attributive adjectives:
denite noun phrases require adjectives to be in the weak declension, which neut-
ralizes most of the number/gender/case distinctions, while indenite noun phrases
require attributive adjectives to be in the strong declension, with relatively complete
preservations of all three distinctions. However, in English or German, deniteness
doesnt correspond to any strictly morphological category at all. Rather, the grammar
is forced to specify NP/DPs for a specication of the s-feature [Definite:{yes, no}],
and that specication can be accomplished by a variety of means: demonstrative ad-
jective, (in)denite determiner, possessive determiner, or even lexical choice (proper
names are inherently denite).
Despite the existence of purely morphological (morphomic) features, in gen-
eral, morphological inectional categories serve the purpose of helping to express
meanings. As a consequence, an m-feature specication typically corresponds to an
identical s-feature specication in exactly the way described by default paradigm link-
age in PFM. In those circumstances it will often be unnecessary to distinguish the two
types of feature, and we can give them the same label, leaving the context to disam-
biguate the usage. Where its necessary to distinguish the two feature types I shall use
a subscript device. Thus, [m Number:plural] is the m-feature that regulates the afxa-
tion of -s to cat and of -en to ox, while [s Number:plural] is the s-feature that regulates
the appearance of the word forms cats, oxen in the context these two .8 In gen-
eral, a feature characterization such as [Number:plural] is ambiguous, and we could
write it as [m/s Number:plural], to be interpreted as serves equally as m-feature or as
s-feature depending on which component of morphosyntax it is deployed in. That
8 If these distinctions are implemented in LFG it will be necessary to nd a formal alternative to typing
to distinguish m-features and s-features, but this is not an insurmountable problem.
is, a feature [Feature:value] bears the implicit typing [m Feature:value] when part
of the realizational morphology dening form paradigms, and it bears the implicit
typing [s Feature:value] when part of the content paradigm of a lexeme interfa-
cing with syntactic representations. On the other hand, an inectional class feature,
say, [Conjugation:2a] will always be interpreted as [m Conjugation:2a], while a
purely syntactic feature such as English [Definite:yes] will always be interpreted as
[s Definite:yes].
The m-/s-feature distinction, like the form/content paradigm distinction, has
nothing to say about semantic interpretation. On the other hand, Booijs contex-
tual/inherent distinction and related distinctions implicitly make semantically based
distinctions: by their very nature, inherent inections have to be associated with
choices which are ultimately cashed out in meaning differences (under some broad
construal of meaning), while contextual inections, in their pure manifestation,
are solely formal properties and cannot therefore be directly associated with the
expression of semantic contrasts.9
These sets of distinctions are carved up in a slightly different way in the work of
Corbett and colleagues on the typology of features. First, the contextual/inherent
distinction is reinterpreted by Corbett and colleagues in terms of features (in the
sense of attributevalue pairings). Kibort (2007) and Corbett (2012) draw a three-
way distinction between features. Morphological features play a role purely in the
morphology (these are Aronoffs morphomic properties); morphosyntactic features
are deployed in agreement/government dependencies; morphosemantic features ex-
press semantic differences, but dont participate in agreement/government.10 (The
distinction between morphosyntactic and morphosemantic is similar to, but broader
than, the distinction of the same name drawn in LFG, where it tends to be limited,
for historical reasons, to argument-structure alternations.)
The Corbett/Kibort morphosyntactic features correspond broadly to contextual
inections, while the morphosemantic features correspond broadly to inherent in-
ections. A primarily morphosemantic feature is never a morphosyntactic feature.
However, its perfectly possible for a primarily morphosyntactic feature to double
as a morphosemantic feature. For instance, as an agreement property on adject-
ives or verbs, number might be a purely contextual, morphosyntactic feature, whose
9 The caveats here relate to those cases in which agreement or government can be associated with
semantic consequences. For instance, in some languages, we nd that subtle semantic differences related
to animacy, intention, event structure, or information structure (Dalrymple and Nikolaeva, 2011) are sig-
nalled by whether or not a verb agrees with its participants, or which structural case is assigned to a direct
object.
10 Actually, the distinction is drawn between values of features, or rather, featurevalue pairings. For
instance, in Maltese, count nouns distinguish singular/plural number, and agreement is dened in terms of
these two values. This feature is therefore a morphosyntactic feature. A small number of nouns distinguish
a dual number, but the agreement system is blind to that value of the Number feature, so the pairing
[Number:dual] is morphosemantic.
distribution is governed solely by rules of morphosyntax. But as an inherent property

of nouns, it is likely to be a morphosemantic feature, whose distribution is governed
by nothing other than the need to express certain semantic distinctions.
The m-feature/s-feature distinction cuts across the distinction between formal
or contextual morphosyntactic features and semantic or inherent morphoseman-
tic features. However, although we have drawn a distinction between semantically
contentful features and features which do not contribute to semantic interpreta-
tion, we havent seen how the semantically contentful features are actually inter-
preted semantically. Corbett and colleagues dont provide an explicit account of the
semantics of inections. They presuppose that morphological organization is dened
by the theorems of Network Morphology (a model which is very close in its as-
sumptions and architecture to Paradigm Function Morphology). However, Network
Morphology lacks an explicit account of inectional semantics (Brown and Hippis-
ley, 2012). Indeed, its difcult to nd explicit discussion of inectional semantics
generally in the literature. This is not to say that semantics and inection are ig-
nored. There is a huge literature devoted to semantic categories which are regularly
instantiated in inectional systems, specically, the semantics of tense, aspect, and
mood categories, of nominal number, of case, of comparative/superlative forms, and
so on. However, these studies almost invariably concentrate solely on the purported
meanings of inected forms and how these are to be analysed within a given semantic
or logical formalism.
The major models of grammar all have mechanisms for interpreting morphosyn-
tactic constructions semantically. In Principles and Parameters models of syntax,
there is a level of Logical Form which interprets the output of syntactic rules. In LFG,
morphosyntactic representations (the c-structure and f-structure representations, in
particular) are projected onto a semantic representation dened in terms of Glue
Semantics (Dalrymple, 2001). In HPSG, the set of attributevalue matrices which
dene the phonological and morphosyntactic properties of linguistic expressions
also include featural characterizations of semantic and pragmatic properties which
are ultimately cashed out in terms of some logical formalism, generally, Situation
Semantics (Barwise and Perry, 1983). However, with a small number of exceptions,
discussion of the semantics of inectional morphology in these frameworks (to the
extent that it is explicit) seems to presuppose a morpheme-based account of in-
ection. (Exceptions here include Sadler and Nordlinger, 2004, 2006, in the LFG
framework, and Bonami and Boy, 2007; Bonami and Samvelian, 2009, forthcoming,
in HPSG, who explicitly deploy Paradigm Function Morphology as a morphological
model, though without detailed discussion of the semantics of inection.)
In Paradigm Function Morphology itself, there is explicit, if somewhat limited,
discussion of the question of semantic inection. Essentially, the idea is that morpho-
syntactic properties are interpreted semantically by associating them with portions
of a logical representation (based on a variant of Montague Semantics). A concrete
instantiation of the way that inectional properties are interpreted semantically in

PFM is provided by Stump (2005b). Following Dowty (1989), Stump adopts a neo-
Davidsonian approach to semantic form, under which a proposition is represented
as a set of properties (a predicate-set) of an event variable, dening the participant
roles, time of event, and so on. Stumps concerns in that paper are to map the complex
pattern of realization of reexive-like morphology in the Sora verb. Depending on
the verb class, the reexive morphology may indicate a beneciary or a truly reexive
direct object, or it may simply be an arbitrary class marker. In addition, certain verbs
may indicate whether the action is directed towards the speaker or not. A sample
logical form for a Sora verb form paAtenay is given in (8).11
(8) e.Taking(e) Nonpast(e) Agent(xSUBJ , e) Theme(xOBJ , e) Speaker-

directed(e) Reexive(e)
Representations such as (8) are related to morphosyntactic representations which

include a specication of content paradigm features. This is achieved by means of a
set of rules of inectional semantics. In (9) we see a sample of these rules relating to
the interpretation of Sora verbs (Stump, 2005b: 247).
(9) a. If a verb-form X realizes a cell L, in the paradigm of the verbal lexeme L,
then the predicate-set of L is a subset of the predicate-set of X.
b. If a verb-form X realizes L, {Tense:nonpast . . .}, then e.Nonpast(e)
belongs to the predicate-set of X.
c. If a verb-form X realizes L, {Tense:past . . .}, then e.Past(e) belongs to the
predicate-set of X.
d. If X and Y realize the cells L, Refl:yes . . . and L, Refl:no . . ., respectively,
then e.Reexive(e) belongs to the predicate-set of X, and e.Reexive(e)
belongs to the predicate-set of Y.
Notice that cell here properly refers to cell in a content paradigm. Form paradigms
can be regarded as morphomic in the sense that form paradigm property sets are
never directly interpreted semantically.
In order to guarantee the right interpretation of reexive morphology Stump
(2005b: 246) denes a set of meaning-postulates for interpreting the predicate
e[Reexive(e)]:
11 The grammatical relation subscripts on the x variables of the theta-role predicates are non-
standard abbreviations for a much more complex set of mappings. The theta-role predicates themselves
must presumably be interpreted as shorthand abbreviations for a much more complex account of argu-
ment structure, since few researchers, including Dowty (1991), believe that these predicates are semantic
primitives of any kind.
(10) a. Where = Taking, . . . ,

ex.[[(e) Agent(x, e) Reexive(e)] [Beneciary(x, e)]]
b. Where = Shaving, . . . ,
exy.[[(e) Agent(x, e) Theme(y, e) Reexive(e)] [x = y]]
Clearly, we can graft a similar set of projection rules onto any model which deploys
inectional features, and if we wish we can map morphosyntactic representations
in this way onto any logical formalism which draws the appropriate semantic
distinctions.
In Table 6.3 I present a comparison of the three typologies of features developed
by Corbett, Stump, and myself, for ease of reference.
Although Stumps model of semantic interpretation has the virtue of simplicity, it
leaves a number of important questions open. I enumerate some of these in (11).
(11) Questions relating to the semantic interpretation of inections
1. How do we modulate the interpretation of inectional meaning to take

account of semantic overrides of default meanings, e.g. past tense in
English?
2. At exactly what level are inectional features interpreted? Do we always
interpret the features on lexical nodes (syntactic terminals)?
3. How does the mapping from inectional features to semantic representa-
tions relate to the specication of the lexical meaning of lexemes?
4. How does the mapping from inectional features to semantic representa-
tions relate to the specication of meanings in derivational morphology?
I will consider Questions 3 and 4 later in the chapter. For the present I consider
Questions 1 and 2.
Question 1 can be illustrated easily by English past-tense morphosyntax. The
default interpretation of a verb form in the cell marked [Tense:past] will be
Table 6.3. Comparison of feature typologies
Spencer Corbett Stump
m-feature only morphological feature form paradigm only

m-feature and contextual morphosyntactic feature content/form paradigm
s-feature
m-feature and inherent morphosemantic feature content/form paradigm
s-feature + inectional semantics
s-feature only purely syntactic feature purely syntactic feature
e.[. . . Past(e) . . .].12 However, that interpretation will not be found in certain syn-
tactic contexts. For instance, in sequence-of-tense contexts, as in I thought you were
arriving tomorrow, we nd a past-tense-marked verb denoting a future event. Sim-
ilarly, in remote conditionals, we might nd a past-tense-marked verb referring to
the future: If you left tomorrow morning youd get to the airport by noon. Similarly,
in Russian, the past-tense form of a verb is interpreted as a conditional mood form
when it collocates with the particle by, which can be distributed almost anywhere in
the sentence, as can be seen by comparing (12a, 12b).
(12) a. Adam sje-l jabloko

Adam eat-pst apple
Adam ate the apple.
b. Takoe jabloko ja by nikogda ne sje-l
such apple I by never neg eat-pst
I would never eat such an apple.
Similar examples can easily be constructed in other languages (for instance, in Hun-
garian the conditional past is formed by collocating the invariable particle volna with
the indicative past-tense form of the verb).
Question 1 can be asked of a great many inectional properties, because we
frequently nd that inectional meanings are non-compositional. In the case of
contextual inections, we may nd that in some contexts they are meaningless
(morphosyntactic in Corbetts terms), while in other contexts they express mean-
ing (morphosemantic), and this further complicates the morphosyntax-to-semantics
mapping. For this reason we must be very cautious about proposing semantic
interpretations for any feature value or ensemble of feature values.
The problems relating to Question 1 arise in sharp focus when we assume that it is
individual inected word forms whose inectional content is interpreted semantic-
ally. In other words, the difculties arise when we treat a word form such as left or
cats to mean leave-in-the-past or more-than-one-cat without considering the wider
morphosyntactic context. This brings us to Question 2.
One way of making it easier to map inectional properties to meanings might be
to defer semantic interpretation of inectional features so that we interpret those fea-
tures at the level of the phrase headed by the inected word. It goes well beyond the
scope of this study to propose an explicit semantics for any inectional property of
English, but intuitively the idea is very simple. For example, in a sequence-of-tenses
context, we specify the tense property of the whole subordinate clause (or at least
12 I will assume this representation as a shorthand for whatever version of tense logic we adopt for
describing English. I will also assume that no ecologically sound tense logic can account for sequence-of-
tense and kindred phenomena in English.
its verb phrase) with the (content paradigm) s-feature [Tense:past], but the inter-
pretation of that property is decided in part by the tense properties of the whole
sentence. The [Tense:past] marking on the subordinate clause is interpreted by the
default past-tense semantic mapping only if the verb phrase bearing it isnt in some
morphosyntactic context that would override the default interpretation. In the case of
sequence-of-tense constructions, the feature marking is effectively treated as contex-
tual inection and not given any interpretation at all, while in the case of remote
conditions it is part of the expression of the remote/unfullled property of those
conditional constructions.
Highly grammaticalized properties, including number and tense, Slavic aspect, and
certain types of oblique case forms in various languages, require a much more com-
plex statement of semantic interpretation than that which can easily be captured by
rules such as those proposed for Sora by Stump. In fact, it turns out to be remarkably
difcult to nd good evidence that inectional properties ever need to be interpreted
at the level of individual words rather than at the level of the phrase immediately
headed by that word. On the other hand, there are examples of inections which can
only be interpreted at the phrasal level because they make no sense if interpreted at
the level of the words that they inect. This is arguably true of phrasal afxation such
as the English Saxon genitive. There is disagreement in the literature as to whether
this should be regarded as a type of edge inection or whether it should best be re-
garded as a type of cliticization (see Spencer and Lus, 2012, for discussion). However,
there are other, clearer instances of edge inection described in the literature (Ander-
son et al., 2006; Samvelian, 2007), so we should assume that phrase-level inection is
instantiated in at least some languages.
A related argument, which doesnt hinge on edge inection, is provided by the
expression of deniteness in Latvian noun phrases. There is no denite-determiner
contrast as such in Latvian, nor do Latvian nouns inect for deniteness. How-
ever, Latvian attributive adjectives have two declension sets, one for indenite noun
phrases, and the other for denite phrases (adapted from Mathiassen, 1997: 58):13
(13) Indenite Denite
Nominative liels lielais
Accusative lielu lielus
Genitive liela liela
Dative lielam lielajam
Locative liela lielaja
The denite declension is obligatory in noun phrases that are already denite, for
instance in those with a demonstrative adjective/determiner, with a possessor, or with
13 A similar system seems to have operated in early Slavonic, with vestiges in modern Serbian/Croatian.
In Germanic, a system of this sort became the strong/weak adjective declension contrast.
certain universal quantiers. In the absence of these deniteness triggers, a denite

marked adjective renders the whole noun phrase denite: liels suns a big dog vs lielais
suns the big dog.
The only way to analyse the deniteness/indeniteness contrast on Latvian
adjectives is to assume that the adjective is marked for an inection feature
[Definiteness:{yes, no}], and that this feature marking applies to the noun phrase
as a whole. (Note that deniteness here cant even be regarded as a property of the
phrase of which its bearer is the head, because adjective phrases can no more be
interpreted as denite or indenite than can adjectives.)
I will propose, therefore, as a tentative hypothesis, that a certain class of inectional
properties feed into semantic interpretation exclusively at the level of the phrase,
and not at the level of the word. On the other hand, I will also argue that there are
other inectional properties that are most naturally treated as word-level properties,
and these are the semantically contentful inherent inections. But not all of the in-
ectional properties that Booij and others regard as inherent inections are of this
kind.
I shall assume that in the default case the semantic contribution of English plural
inection is mediated via interpretation of s-feature values. In the case of plural
inection, the simplest set of assumptions is the following. We assume a feature
[Number:plural] which by default has two typed correspondents, an m-feature,
[m Number:plural], and an s-feature, [s Number:plural]. I think the best way to in-
terpret this claim is to say that the feature Number, without typing, is automatically
interpreted as an s-feature, and that the morphology imports that feature, thereby
providing it with the additional m-typing. This is effectively a way of saying that
number is a morphological category in English, and it can be implemented by a pro-
cess of feature declaration for the morphology. A purely syntactic functional feature
is then simply a feature which is not so imported into the morphology in the mor-
phological feature declaration. On the other hand, a purely morphomic m-feature
is dened solely in the morphology. In such a case, there will be no mechanism for
declaring that feature as a syntactic feature.
The semantic interpretation of a feature specication such as [Number:plural]
proceeds as follows. A syntactic phrasal node headed by a lexical noun is specied
for the feature value [s Number:plural], and that feature specication contributes
to the semantic interpretation of the phrase as a whole. Depending on the precise
nature of the morphosyntax of the construction, we may well nd that there is a
rule saying that the word-form correspondent of the head (or some other depend-
ent) of that phrase has to be the form which occupies the form paradigm cell labelled
[m Number:plural]. This is the default for English, and it holds equally with nearly
all quantiers: two/both/many/few/most/several/. . . cats. Some universal quantiers,
however, override this default and select the singular form of the noun: compare all
cats and each/every cat. With each/every, the noun phrase as a whole is grammatically
singular: Each/every cat is/*are hungry. The quantier no allows both possibilities: No
cat is hungry/No cats are hungry. The each/every quantiers are, of course, treated as
dening singular terms, for one thing because anaphora take singular forms: Each cat
is hungry, even though it has been fed recently. Thus, despite some complications, the
semantic interpretation of plural number with quantied noun phrases is relatively
straightforward.
In other languages (for instance Slavic, Arabic) the numeral system especially
may impose more or less complex restrictions on the inected forms of head nouns
and satellites, and these may interact in equally complex ways with processes such
as subjectpredicate agreement for number. A particular case is that of languages
such as Hungarian or Turkish, in which plural number marking is found only in
noun phrases that are otherwise not quantied. In Hungarian, for instance, there
is straightforward Number inection: all count nouns have singular/plural inec-
ted forms. On the other hand, plural number is incompatible with other quantiers.
A noun is generally marked plural only if there is no other quantier in the phrase de-
termining plural cardinality (see Kenesei et al., 1998: 96, 254): a macsk-k the cat-s,
with plural sufx -k, but kt/nhny/sok macska two/some/many cats, with mac-
ska cat in the singular (the plural here would be ungrammatical: *kt/nhny/sok
macskk).14
The quantied noun behaves as a singular noun syntactically, in certain import-
ant respects. First, the demonstratives az/ez fail to take number agreement with a
quantied noun:
(14) Az-(*ok) a kt macska
that-pl the two cat
those two cats
Second, a quantied noun phrase functioning as the subject triggers singular agree-
ment on the verbal predicate and on predicative adjectives (while a plural-marked
subject would trigger plural agreements in both cases):
(15) a. Ngy tanr vol-t a teremben
four teacher be-pst.3sg the classroom.in
Four teachers were in the classroom.
b. Ngy tanr vol-t magas
four teacher be-pst.3sg tall.sg
Four teachers were tall.
However, examples such as ngy tanr in (14, 15) are different from English noun
phrases quantied by every/each in one important sense: they are, despite their
14 This behaviour has been discussed in terms of economy; see . Kiss (2002: 152), and for an
optimality-theoretic discussion see Ortmann (2000, 2004).
morphosyntax, semantically plural. Thus, anaphoric pronouns elsewhere in the

discourse will take the plural form, not the singular:
(16) Ngy tanr vol-t a teremben. (Ok) vol-tak

four teacher be-pst.3sg the classroom.in pron.3pl be-pst.3pl
magas-ak
tall-pl
Four teachers were in the classroom. (They) were tall.
This behaviour is in accordance with Corbetts (1983) Agreement Hierarchy, which

states that semantic agreement (here, agreement for plural number) is more likely
as we progress along the hierarchy nominal modier < predicate agreement < re-
lative pronoun < anaphora. Interestingly, relative pronouns occupy a somewhat
intermediate position. In restrictive relative clauses, the pronoun can be either singu-
lar or plural (and the subjectpredicate agreement likewise), while in non-restrictive
relative clauses, we only nd the semantic agreement with the plural (Kenesei et al.,
1998: 40):15
(17) a. (Az) a nyolc lny, aki(-k) olvast-a/k a knyvet, . . .

that the eight girl who(-pl) read-def.sg/pl the book.acc
The eight girls who have read the book . . . [restrictive]
b. (Az) a nyolc lny, aki*(-k) olvast-k a knyvet, . . .
that the eight girl who(-pl) read-def.pl the book.acc
These/The eight girls, who have read the book . . . [non-restrictive]
Note that a non-restrictive relative clause is semantically closer to a separate con-

joined clause than an attributive modier, so the Hungarian pattern illustrates
Corbetts hierarchy quite nicely.
The behaviour of quantied noun phrases in Hungarian means that we have to ex-
ercise caution when applying semantic interpretation to inected forms. At the level
of noun phrase morphosyntax, these are singular-marked elements, but semantic-
ally they have plural denotations, just as they would have if the noun phrase lacked
a quantier and the head noun were marked plural. If we assume that the inected
word form realizing a noun head is interpreted semantically, then we will incorrectly
conclude that the noun phrases in (14, 15, 17) have singular denotations. But equally, if
we run the semantic interpretation off the content paradigm features which annotate
the noun phrases themselves, we will give the phrase the incorrect singular interpret-
ation. This means either that singular marked nouns in Hungarian are actually to
15 Kenesei et al. give the singular olvasta as an alternative in (17b), but I assume that is just a misprint/
copy-and-paste error.
be analysed as unmarked for number,16 or we must permit the semantic interpreta-

tion principles for number features to be overridden by quantiers. Either way, the
semantic interpretation of such phrases is far from trivial.
My discussion of inectional meaning has been somewhat inconclusive, in the
sense that I havent provided an explicit account for even a small fragment of the
inectional system of one language. However, I have at least provided circumstan-
tial evidence in favour of treating a subclass of inections as interpretable only at
the phrasal level. Inected forms then serve as partial instructions for how to inter-
pret larger expressions in the appropriate morphosyntactic or semantico-syntactic
context.
6.4.1 The problem of meaningful morphology

I return now to the question of inections which add meaning. I have suggested that
certain types of case-marking illustrate this type of inherent inection. Lets consider
one such case in more detail, one of the semantic (local) cases of Hungarian, the
inessive case. I assume that the Hungarian case sufxes are added in Block 3 of the
nominal paradigm. Thus, we can set up a Block 3 rule of the form (18) as part of
the paradigm function of a Hungarian noun, ignoring irrelevant details.
(18) N, : {Case:inessive } XbAn,
where X is the stem0 form of the lexeme N.
(19) Inessive case, Hungarian
Where = {singular, inessive, unpossessed}:
GPF(house, )
fform (house, ) = hzban
fsem (house, ) = xy.IN(x, y) HOUSE(y)
Where the noun is inected for plural number, the paradigm function dening the
word form will be partly dened by the Block 1 realization rule shown in (20).
(20) N, : {Number:plural} Yk,
where Y is the inectional stem of the lexeme N.
(21) Hungarian inessive plural
Where = {plural, inessive, unpossessed}:
GPF(house, )
fform (house, ) = hzakban (by (20), (18))
fsem (house, ) = xy.IN(x, y) HOUSE(y)
16 This might make singular Hungarian noun phrases akin to the noun phrases of Mandarin Chinese
(and many other languages) which show general number. See Rullmann and You (2006) for discussion.
Notice that no semantic interpretation is given for [Number:plural].

In (22) we see the general rule/schema/template for inessive case inection (where
N is some legitimate, possibly inected, form of the lexeme).
(22) Realization rule schema for inessive case

Where contains {inessive}, and N is the lexemic index of a noun whose
semantic representation is x.NOUN(x):
GPF(N, )
fform (N, ) = |N |bAn
fsyn (N, ) = (General Default applies)
fsem (N, ) = xyP.IN(x, y) P(y)
The local cases of Hungarian are semantically modiers of the noun denotation
and dont, therefore, alter the syntactic or morphological class of the lexeme. All
true inherent inection is like this (by denition), since if the inection did alter the
word class, it would be an argument-structure alternation, a transposition, or some
other species of lexical relatedness. Therefore, by default, the morpholexical signa-
ture proper to nouns will apply to the inessive case form, exactly as in the case of
contextual inection. Apart from the semantic modication, inherent inection is
therefore effectively handled in exactly the same way as inection in the standard
model. In particular, notice that the inected word inects for all other appropri-
ate nominal properties (number and possessor agreement), and the case-marked
word form is fully transparent syntactically; for instance, it can be modied by an
attributive adjective. In effect, the analysis sketched in (22) treats the case marker as
a fused postposition (Spencer, 2008a; Spencer and Stump, forthcoming).
Not all Hungarian cases are to be handled in the same way. The non-semantic
cases (nominative, accusative, dative) can be given no semantic representation. In
some contexts, the semantic cases will lack the concrete meaning assigned to them by
rules such as (22). For instance, three semantic cases are selected by specic postpos-
itions (Kenesei et al., 1998: 89). Thus, alul under selects the superessive case (literal
meaning on), egytt together selects the instrumental, and kzel near selects the
allative. In this respect the Hungarian case-marked noun behaves in much the same
way as a prepositional phrase in English whose head is selected by some predicate,
such as the on of take on (a task), rely on, go on (= continue), and many others.
However, the way of modelling inherent inection shown in (22) utilizes a kind
of rule which monotonically adds information to the lexical representation whose
properties the rule is realizing. This goes against the spirit of Stumps original
architecture, in which the paradigm function has a purely realizational role and can-
not alter the lexical representation in any way. The type of predicate-adding rule
adopted for contentful inherent inection is reminiscent of a word-formation rule
in the sense of Aronoff (1976). It can still be regarded as part of an inferential

realizational model of inection, however. This is because it retains the classical
property of realizing an inectional feature in order to dene the feature content
of a paradigms cell.
Gregory Stump (personal communication) points out that there are potential
semantic problems with the foregoing analysis, in which the semantic representation
of a lexeme is directly altered in this way. Under the standard assumptions adopted
by formal semanticists, adding a semantic predicate of this sort to a lexical represent-
ation should change its semantic type. This should cause problems with the semantic
interpretation of noun phrases containing attributive modiers. An attributive modi-
er, such as an adjective or a genitive-case-marked noun phrase, selects an item of the
type corresponding to the part of speech noun, while the semantic representation
given in (19) would appear to belong to an entirely different semantic type, corres-
ponding to a prepositional phrase. But adjectives modify nouns, not prepositional
phrases.
Here, we can take advantage of the fact that we are dealing with a species of
inection and not derivation. The lexical relation which denes semantically con-
tentful inherent inection does not create a new lexeme and hence does not change
the lexemic index of the base. Consider how attributive modication is to be rep-
resented. In an expression such as a big house, I have claimed that the attributive
grammatical relation is represented as a coindexing of semantic function roles:
bigA*x, houseR*. I propose that this representation of the grammatical modic-
ation/attribution relation be mapped to semantic representations in terms of lexemes.
For the sake of argument, suppose that attributive modication by an intersect-
ive adjective is represented by adding the adjectives predicate to the predicate-set
of the modied noun. Thus, the adjective big will have a semantic representation
roughly of the form xP.BIG(x) P(x). The problem with a Hungarian modied
noun in the inessive case is to ensure that the argument applied to this function
is of type P and not the type of, say, a prepositional phrase (in the house). But
this is easily solved by adopting the convention that the representation bigA*x,
houseR* is dened over semantic representations which themselves are dened
over lexemic indices. Thus, the representation x.BIG(x) HOUSE(x) is more
properly written as x.fsem (big, u)(x) fsem (house, u)(x). This representation
is dened over lexemes, not over inected word forms. Therefore, exactly the same
representation will be valid for all case, number, and possessed forms of the noun
lexeme. In other words, the expression a nagy hzban in the big house will have a
semantic representation along the lines of xy.HOUSE(x) BIG(x) IN(y, x), as
required.
Having said this, it may well turn out to be advantageous to extend the reasoning
applied to inections such as plurals and past tenses, and treat the inherent inection,
with its attendant added semantic predicate, as a property of the noun phrase and
not as a property of the lexical head lexeme. This would require us to state a rule or
principle according to which the added predicate is associated with the inected form
of the lexeme but not in such a direct fashion.
(23) Semantic contribution of inessive case

Where contains [Case:inessive], and N is the lexemic index of a noun whose
semantic representation is x.NOUN(x), the function fsem (N, ) is dened as
yx.IN(y, x) [SEM(NounPhrase -form, N)],
where [SEM(NounPhrase -form, N)] is the predicate-set of the phrase headed
by the inected noun N (hence including the predicate-set of any attributive
modiers and the predicate-set corresponding to any other meaning-bearing
inections).
This formulation is somewhat cumbersome. The architecture of LFG provides a

much more succinct way of capturing what are at heart rather simple notions. Re-
call that in LFG, morphosyntactic and semantic structure is factorized into several
independent projections. Elements of the phrase structure (constituent structure or
c-structure) are annotated for the functional-structure (f-structure) properties that
they realize or determine, and the f-structure representations are dened by the map-
ping from annotated c-structure nodes to f-structure. Conventionally, the mapping
is represented by the symbol . The corresponding mapping to semantic structure is
conventionally represented as (Dalrymple, 2001: Chapter 9). The details are not
relevant here: the point is that there are architectures in which the required intuition
can be captured naturally.
An inuential approach to case marking in LFG is the constructive case approach
of Nordlinger (1998) (see also Sadler and Nordlinger, 2004). On that approach, an
ergative case marker, say, is taken to be an instruction to build an f-structure with
a transitive subject feature, or better, a constraint on well-formed f-structures stat-
ing the condition that the f-structure must contain a subject grammatical function
whose c-structure correspondent is the phrase whose head bears the ergative case
marker. This is achieved by means of inside-out functional application. The notation
(ATTRIBUTE ) means that the f-structure corresponding to the morphologically
marked word form is the value of a higher function, ATTRIBUTE. For instance,
if a locative case marker is used to designate a place adjunct (grammatical relation
ADJUNCT), the locative case sufx will be furnished with the annotation (CASE)
= LOC, specifying the Case value as locative, and (ADJUNCT ), specifying the
grammatical relation realized by the phrase headed by the locative-case-marked noun
as an adjunct.
Ignoring irrelevant detail, consider the representation (25) we would propose
for (24).
(24) a kis hza-i-nk-ban

the little house-pl-1pl.poss-iness
in our little houses

(25) PRED inOBJ

PRED house

OBJ
POSS 1pl

MOD PRED little
The lexical entry for the inessive case marker in a constructive case approach to
Hungarian would take the form (26).
(26) INESSIVE: (CASE)= INESS
(ADJUNCT )
This lexical entry states that the case sufx on a noun form such as hzban has the
effect of dening the case form as inessive, and constructs a grammatical relation
ADJUNCT, realized by the phrase headed by the noun form hzban. The lexical entry
for the sufx also labels the s-case form in f-structure. However, this is probably su-
peruous for this case sufx, since there are (arguably) no rules of Hungarian syntax
that make reference to the inessive case.17
Constructive case can be thought of as an attempt at ensuring a realizational ap-
proach to case marking, in that the case marker is dened in terms of the grammatical
function it expresses, rather than dening properties of an already given grammat-
ical function. A properly realizational approach could be envisaged which denes the
mapping not from case-marked forms to f-structure attributes but the inverse func-
tion, specifying the case marking required by particular types of grammatical relation
(essentially such an inverse function is proposed in Spencer, 2003c). The constructive
case approach is explicitly reformulated in terms of Paradigm Function Morphology
in Sadler and Nordlinger (2004) (see also Sadler and Nordlinger, 2006). I discuss
their analysis in more detail in the next section in connection with the representation
of afx order.
We can now integrate the classical LFG f-description schema into the set of con-
ventions already developed for dening meaningful inection. The key idea is that
such an inection realizes an m-feature which is linked to an s-feature which in turn
is associated with a function dening a semantic predicate added to the semantic rep-
resentation of the phrase headed by the inected word form. Consider the example
of inessive case in Hungarian:
17 Demonstratives are marked for the number and case of the nouns they modifyezekben a hzak-
ban in these housesbut demonstratives also have to copy a true postposition in construction with the
nounezek mgtt a hzak mgtt behind these housesso its unclear what this implies for the syntax.
(27) Semantic contribution of inessive case

Suppose we are given a lexeme N with semantic representation x.NOUN(x)
and an s-feature set such that {[Case:inessive]} .
Then fsem (N, ) GPFN, is evaluated as ( PRED) = yx.IN(y, x)
NOUN(x).
More generally, we can say that the semantic contribution of the inessive case is given
by the equation ( PRED) = yx.IN(y, x) P(x), where P ranges over open predic-
ates of the type corresponding to nouns. Although the semantic contribution of the
case is stated as a property of the inected form of the lexeme in (27), this property is
inherited by the phrase headed by that lexeme. This means that a syntactic attributive
modier, say, will have its PRED value (i.e. its semantic representation) unied with
that of the semantically enriched noun when the modier is combined with the noun
in the syntactic representation.
In sum, the schema corresponding to a typical instance of inherent inection will
be given by (28).
(28) Suppose we are given a lexeme with semantic representation and an
s-feature set such that {feature} .
Then fsem (, ) GPF(, ) is evaluated as ( PRED) = f() for some
function f.
This relatively simple modication to the original formulation of the semantics
of inherent inection substantially changes the nature of the relation. While it re-
mains the case that the inectional system itself denes a semantic change, it does so
by effectively placing a restriction on the semantic interpretation of the expressions
containing the inected word form.
6.4.2 Afx order, syntax, and semantic interpretation

As we saw in Chapter 4 the order of afxation in Paradigm Function Morphology is
determined by the order of application of rule blocks. In other words, afx ordering is
purely morphomic. However, there are frequent reports of afx order having an effect
on semantic interpretation: in general, the claim is that an afx which is further away
from a root will take wide scope over an afx that is nearer the root. Such examples
give the impression that afx order is itself meaning-bearing. But if afx order is
morphomic, then it cant be used to signal meaning differences in this way. Therefore,
semantically driven afx order is prima facie at odds with a paradigm-based approach
to morphology.
Stump (1997: 236) discusses a number of cases of scope effects which have been
linked to afx ordering, and argues that all such instances can be handled within
an inferentialrealizational framework by linking the semantic interpretation to the
order in which realization rules apply. This is reminiscent of the way that syntax and
semantic interpretation are yoked in Montague Grammar and systems of that sort
related to Categorial Grammar implementations. However, he gives very little detail,
and so this claim must remain programmatic.
In earlier work I have addressed the problem of afx order generally, arguing for a
somewhat different conception of morphology from that presented in PFM (Spencer,
2003b). The model proposed by Stump is a-morphous, in the sense that exponents are
no more than phonological strings and have no morphological status as such (unlike,
say, stems). However, in Spencer (2003b) I suggest a slightly different perspective,
under which realization rules add morphs to strings (see also Lus and Spencer, 2005,
for justication of the morph-based approach from European Portuguese pronom-
inal clitic/afxes.) On that model, linear order is separated from exponence and has
to be stipulated independently, rather than being expressed in a stipulation which
conate exponence and order, as in Stumps realization rules. This means that gen-
eral statements about linear ordering are possible, including semantically motivated
scope statements, as is done in Spencer (2003b) or in the improved statement in
Aronoff and Xu (2010: 389).18
However, it would take us too far aeld to explore the morph-based variant of a
paradigm function model here, and for the most part the question is in any case tan-
gential to questions of lexical relatedness. I will therefore discuss afx ordering from
the perspective of the classical model, as enriched by the generalized paradigm func-
tion. That model makes available the notion of meaning-bearing inection (as well
as meaning-bearing derivation), and therefore raises the possibility of appealing to
aspects of semantics in the statement of scope relations. Nonetheless, it must be con-
ceded that evidence for straightforward relationships between afx order and scope
in synchronic grammars is rather hard to come by. This is curious, given that most
descriptive grammars presuppose a traditional morphemic (meaning-based) analysis
and given that most syntacticians who investigate afx ordering from the perspective
of syntax likewise adopt a morpheme-based view. If there were plenty of clear cases
of afx order determining scope unequivocally, its surprising that we dont know
about them.
In approaches to morphology inuenced by Bakers (1985) Mirror Principle, it is
assumed that the order of afxation is determined outside morphology, by syntax.
This indirectly reects semantic scope, because syntactic order is related to syntactic
constituency/hierarchy relations, and those are a reection of semantic scope. In the
cartographic approach to syntax, the order of functional categories is strictly xed
on a universal basis, and this reects relative scopal relations (Cinque, 1999).
As far as I can tell, the argumentation supporting these claims is largely theory-
internal and for that reason is of little concern to a model of lexical relatedness or
18 Aronoff and Xu deploy Optimality Theory to capture all the minutiae relating to afx ordering.
inection. The crucial question which we need to answer when considering afx or-
der and semantic interpretation is: does the language use systematic alternations in
afx ordering to signal a difference in semantic interpretation or scope?. If the an-
swer to that question is no, then there is no real issue. We might very plausibly
postulate some historical motivation for a given pattern of afx ordering in terms of
semantic scope, but that is completely irrelevant to the job of a descriptive linguist
providing an account of the synchronic grammar. And even where we do nd plaus-
ible historical determinants of xed afx order patterns, in many cases we also nd
that morphology has introduced sufcient noise into the system to render it difcult
or impossible to import those historical determinants into a synchronic description
in any case.19
I have discussed a number of these problems elsewhere, and will just mention
them briey here. Bakers (1985) original Mirror Principle proposes that afxes are
meaningful morphemes distributed by the syntax, such that the order of morphemes
reects the order of syntactic terminals. That order is determined by the paro-
chial syntactic principles of that language or by general principles of wide/narrow
scope and constituency (elements with wide scope occur higher in the tree than
elements with narrow scope, ceteris paribus). Taken seriously, this principle would
entail that DP-internal properties such as number marking and possessor agreement
would have to occur inside externally dened properties such as case. This is true
for some languages (such as Turkish and Hungarian) but blatantly counterexempli-
ed by others (such as Finnish; see Spencer, 1992, for details, and also Anderson,
2001). I cannot see how any version of the Mirror Principle can be salvaged in
the face of such examples, and as far as I can tell there has been no attempt re-
cently to present the Mirror Principle as an empirical claim rather than merely
as a theory-internal architectural assumption to be followed in certain versions of
Minimalism.
A somewhat different tack is taken by Rice (2000). She examines the extremely
complex morphological systems of the Athapaskan languages in great detail and
mounts a series of arguments to establish that the linear order of these prexes is
dictated by semantic scope. These are empirical claims and not susceptible to the
criticism of being merely theory-internal. Ultimately, I think there are very good rea-
sons to reject the strong version of her claim, some conceptual, some empirical (see
Spencer, 2003b, for discussion). However, there remain instances in Athapaskan, as
well as other languages, in which it appears that languages can exercise a choice in
the linear ordering of elements, and this choice realizes scopal relationships. For such
19 There have been many attempts to explain afx order in terms of typological tendencies, psycholin-
guistic processing, and so on. A useful survey is found in Manova and Aronoff (2010). Whatever the virtue
of these principles, they are irrelevant to our present concerns because they dont involve the semiotic use
of ordering to convey meaning contrasts in the synchronic grammar.
situations, then, we need to construct a model of morphology in which such linear

orders are accessible to whatever module of the grammar is responsible for semantic
interpretation.
A very convenient summary of the issues surrounding afx ordering can be found
in Rice (2011). She refers to cases in which afx order alternates so as to change mean-
ing as ab/ba ordering (Rice, 2011: 187f.). The main cases seem to fall into a number
of groups:
(i) Argument-structure alternations, such as the difference between the passive of

a causative (was made to eat the apple) and the causative of a passive (caused
the apple to be eaten).
(ii) Derivational differences originating from lexicalized diminutive/augmentative
morphology, such as the Yupik example cited from Mithun (1999: 43) (and
cited by Manova and Aronoff (2010: 121)), in which PERSON-BIG-LITTLE
small giant is distinguished from PERSON-LITTLE-BIG large midget (see
also the example of Italian violoncello cited in Section 3.7).
(iii) Scope differences induced by aspectual formatives or other types of adver-
bial modier. Rice cites an examples from Oji-Cree, of the kind FINISH-AT.
NIGHT-BE.SNOWING It no longer snows at night vs AT.NIGHT-FINISH-
BE.SNOWING (Having snowed during the day) it was at night that it stopped
snowing.
Other examples can also be found in the literature. Muysken (1981, 1988) cites ex-
amples from Quechua argument-structure morphology in which the relative order of
a causative and a reciprocal afx determines the meaning of the word form (someone
causes Y and Z to beat each other vs Y and Z cause each other to beat someone),
and generally, in languages with a well-developed system of argument-structure af-
xes we tend to nd that some of them can interact in this sort of way. Another
source of scope interactions in morphology is found with afxes realizing modal
meanings of various sorts. Korotkova and Lander (2010) cite an interesting example
from Adyghe verb morphology. That language has a habilitive sufx (HABIL) mean-
ing roughly able to and a similitudinal sufx (SIM) meaning roughly seem to. The
order verb-HABIL-SIM is interpreted as seems to be able to verb while the order
verb-SIM-HABIL is interpreted as is able to pretend to verb. The existence of such
cases raises important questions for any a-morphous, morphomic, paradigm-based
approach to morphology and lexical relatedness.20
20 As Rice (2011) points out, there are also phonological determinants of afx order which are active in
the grammars of languages. A spectacular example is provided by the Kiranti language Chintang (Bickel
et al., 2007). However, such cases dont pose any problem in principle to an inferentialrealizational model
(which is not to say that they dont pose problems for such models).
The most frequently cited cases of afx order determining semantic scope seem to
be those that involve argument-structure alternations (in the widest sense, including
reciprocal/reexive constructions). An interesting set of test cases is found in the
Bantu languages. In a typical member of this group, a verb will take a number of
sufxes known in the Bantuist literature as derivational extensions. These real-
ize argument-structure alternations, typically Causative, Applicative, Reciprocal, and
Passive. The sufxes can interact in complex ways depending on the language, so
that in some cases we can have the causative of a reciprocal or the reciprocal of a
causative (much as in Quechua and many other languages). Hyman (2003b) sur-
veys a great number of cases and concludes that in general the order of sufxes is
xed as CARP, CausativeApplicativeReciprocalPassive, whatever the semantic
relationship between the argument-structure alternants.
Intriguingly, some languages manage to violate both the Mirror Principle and the
CARP template. Thus, in Zulu we nd examples such as (29) (Doke, 1973: 138).
(29) ku-ya-zond-wa-na lapha

10-asp-hate-pass-recp here
There is mutual hatred here [Zulu]
Example (29) is literally the passive of the reciprocal: X hate each other it is hated
by each other. It cannot be formed by applying the reciprocal to the passive form,
because reciprocals can only be formed from transitive predicates. Here, the CARP
template order corresponds to the order predicted by Bakers Mirror Principle, but
the order observed in (29) violates both principles. A similar case is seen in the closely
related language Xhosa (Kirsch et al., 1999: 153):
(30) Ku-ya kutheth-wa-na ngomvuzo

10-asp talk-pass-recp salary
Salary is negotiable
(= there will be talking with each other about salary) [Xhosa]
6.4.3 The Daghestan case hoax

The inferentialrealizational class of models remains controversial to many linguists
because there is the strong intuition that meaningful morphemes can be identied in
complex words. One set of phenomena which have given rise to such an intuition are
compound case systems expressing notions such as from the inside of or towards
the upper surface of . The languages of Daghestan provide an interesting test case.
It is often observed that the languages of Daghestan have highly elaborated case
systems (see Daniel and Ganenkov, 2009, for a recent survey). However, Comrie
and Polinsky (1998) take issue with the idea that Daghestan languages have large
case inventories. A fair number of languages in this group have been reported to
have a large number of cases (with Tabasaran even appearing in The Guinness Book
Table 6.4. Localization markers in

Tabasaran
in (hollow space) -P
on (horizontal) -Pin
behind -q
under -kk
at -xy
near, in front of -h
among -ay
on (vertical) -k
of Records), but Comrie and Polinsky argue that we should look at the inventory
of oppositions, not the total form inventory, when considering such systems. Their
reasoning is interesting because of what it implies for the structure of the lexical
representations of inected words.
Tabasaran has four grammatical (core, structural, non-local) cases, absolutive/
nominative, ergative, genitive, and dative. The other cases are spatial or local cases,
based on a dimension of spatial localization.21 Spatial case relations are dened with
respect to a reference point (landmark) as summarized in Table 6.4 (Comrie and
Polinsky, 1998: 98; the authors note that there is dialect variation and that the table
doesnt actually correspond to the usage of the standard dialect). The localization suf-
xes are attached to a stem form which is homophonous with the ergative case form.
In addition to localization markers, there are two direction or orientation sufxes,
-na towards and -an from. In the absence of one of these orientation/directional
markers, we obtain an essive meaning in (a hollow space), and so on, contrasting
with the allative/ablative directional meanings towards/from the inside of (a hollow
space), e.g. cali-q (located) behind the wall, cali-q-na (to) behind the wall, cali-q-
an from behind the wall. Finally, there is an additional marker -di translative. This
has the meaning of in the direction of when combined with the allative/ablative dir-
ectionals, and has the meaning along, over, across when combined with the simple
essive forms of the cases.
Another Daghestan language, Tsez, has a similarly elaborated case system, though
one which makes slightly different distinctions. The language contrasts distal (over
there) with non-distal (over here) forms. In addition, there are seven orientational
contrasts, similar to Tabasaran, and four directionals, essive (unmarked), allative
21 Comrie and Polinsky refer to this as orientation. However, that term is more usually applied to what
they refer to as directional markers, and their orientation is generally referred to as localization. This
terminology is explained and exemplied in Daniel and Ganenkov (2009: 674f.). I use that terminology
here, so the reader should be aware that the term orientation is interpreted differently by Comrie and
Polinsky.
Table 6.5. Distal and non-distal case system in Tsez
Case
Essive Allative Ablative Versative
Distal case
Localizational in -az -az-a-r -az-ay -az-a
orientation: among --az --az-a-r --az-ay --az-a
on (horizontal) --az --az-a-r --az-ay --az-a
under --az --az-a-r --az-ay --az-a
at -x-az -x-az-a-r -x-az-ay -x-az-a
near -d-az -d-az-a-r -d-az-ay -d-az-a
on (vertical) -q-az -q-az-a-r -q-az-ay -q-az-a
Nondistal case
Spatial in -a -a-r -ay -aaor
orientation: among - --er --ay --xor
on (horizontal) -(o) -o-r --ay --aaor
under - --e-r --ay --xor
at -x(o) -xo-r -x-ay -x-aaor
near -de -de-r -d-ay -d-aaor
on (vertical) -q(o) -qo-r -q-ay -q-aaor
-r, ablative -ay, and versative -aor/-a (towards). The allative directional marker is
identical in form to the dative (non-local) case marker. Comrie and Polinsky (1998:
104f.) summarize the Tsez case sufx system as in Table 6.5.
For Tabasaran, if we assume eight orientations, three directionals, and the translat-
ive opposition, then we obtain 8 3 2 = 48 cases (in addition to the four non-local
cases). For Tsez, the total gure is rather larger, because there is an additional bin-
ary opposition of versative. Comrie and Polinsky argue that it is misleading to count
cases in this way. What is at stake is not the total number of combinations but rather
the original oppositions (and their principles of combination). In effect, they are
treating the case sufxes as akin to self-standing adpositions. Thus, we would pre-
sumably not want to argue that English has compound prepositions of the form from
under or to behind (though into, with the meaning to in, is a compound prepo-
sition). I take it that Comrie and Polinsky essentially regard the Daghestan systems
as homologous to that of English iterated prepositions. Comrie and Polinsky expli-
citly contrast this situation with that of Hungarian and Finnish locational cases. In
those languages, we see the same overall picture of locations and orientations, but
the markers themselves show fusion and morphological and systemic opacity which
contrasts clearly with the Daghestan picture.
Comrie and Polinsky are addressing a general question in morphosyntax con-
cerning the identication of cases. This is important for typological cross-linguistic
comparison (in principle, at least) and to some extent it bears on the writing of
individual grammars. The logic of Comrie and Polinskys argument is that in the
Daghestan languages surveyed, orientation (as well as direction) is a property of
grammar. Such a property therefore has to be coded by means of an explicit feature
or grammatical category in the grammatical description. By contrast, the orienta-
tion property is probably not a feature of the Finnish or Hungarian system, and
it is therefore not to be explicitly represented in the grammar. (Any supercial re-
exes of orientation are to be ascribed to the history of the language, now opaque to
present-day speakers.)
Comrie and Polinsky speak of case morphemes, and we should assume that they
have in mind the traditional understanding of morpheme, as a pairing of form
and meaning: each localization sufx is associated with a locational predicate, and
each orientational sufx is associated with a predicate denoting direction/position.
The translative marker of Tabasaran is systematic polysemous, denoting motion
in a general direction (with allative/ablative orientations) or position across (with
the essive orientation), but this does not prevent us from treating the markers as
inherently meaningful. It would seem, then, that the Daghestan case systems repre-
sent prototypical examples of inherent inection.22 The question then arises of how
we can represent the meaning of case-marked forms in an explicit grammar of such
languages.
From an ontological perspective, the locational meanings of on, inside, under,
and so on and the orientation/direction meanings of towards/from/at bear an in-
herent logical relationship to each other, in that it makes no sense to speak about
an orientation in the absence of a specication of place. Thus, from a conceptual
point of view the location in is prior, and the orientation/direction to is a predicate
which takes that location as its argument (see also the discussion of the preposi-
tion into as conceptually [TO[IN]] in Jackendoff, 1990: 42). The order of afxation
in Daghestan languages is therefore iconic, in the sense that the locational sufx is
internal to the orientation sufx (unlike English into). The obvious way of repre-
senting the meanings of case-marked forms, therefore, is to use exactly the same
representations we would use for phrases headed by adpositions in a language such
as English. In principle, we could deploy the machinery of LFG to specify the orient-
ation and locational components of the meaning, and dene location with respect to
orientation. As we will see later in this section, such a manoeuvre is perfectly possible
within an inferentialrealizational model, without treating case sufxes as classical
morphemes.
22 Comrie and Polinsky (1998: 1013) discuss three other case-like sufxes in Tsez, -ay, -xu character-
ized by, and -tay lacking. These can combine with plural marked nouns, suggesting they are inectional,
but cannot combine with pronouns, suggesting they are derivational. This indeterminacy with respect to
inectional and derivational properties is typical of less-than-fully grammaticalized markers, and is typical
of inherent inection generally, of course.
Before we leave this example, however, its worth pausing to note that, actually,
the facts exhibited by the Daghestan languages do not necessarily require us to incor-
porate added semantic predicates into the representations for inected word forms,
much less into representations of the afxes themselves. An alternative is to treat
such word forms as realizing a set of case properties, as in the default case, and allow
the regularity and iconicity of the system to be used to determine the way the mean-
ings of the case properties interact. Consider a Tsez noun lexeme such as stone with
the inections -x-az-ay under/ablative, from under. A partial representation of the
relevant form of this lexeme is shown in (31).

(31) STONE:

[CaseLoc:under]
[CaseOrient:from]
The properties [CaseLoc] and [CaseOrient] are here unordered. However, we can
say that the correct meaning will be obtained by applying an intuitively straight-
forward default interpretive procedure (possibly applicable to adpositions, too),
under which locations serve as the values of orientation predicates as a funda-
mental semantic property. If such a procedure can be motivated, then the semantic
scope effects will follow without the need to represent the meaning of the case
features explicitly in the word forms lexical representation. The Daghestan case
systems therefore dont necessarily provide evidence in favour of meaning-bearing
inections.23
6.4.4 Case stacking in Australian languages

Sadler and Nordlinger (2004, 2006) consider the phenomenon of case stacking, a
pervasive feature of the grammars of a variety of languages of Australia. A simple
illustration is provided by the (oft-cited) example from Martuthunira (Dench, 1995:
60, and elsewhere):24
(32) Ngayu nhawu-lha ngurnu tharnta-a mirtily-marta-a

I saw-pst that[acc] euro-acc joey-prop-acc
thara-ngka-marta-a
pouch-loc-prop-acc
I saw the euro with a joey in (its) pouch
(Euro = type of kangaroo/wallaby; joey = any infant marsupial.)
23 As far as I can tell, exactly the same remarks hold of the analysis provided by Aronoff and Xu (2010)
of the very similar case system in Lezgian.
24 I change some of abbreviations in the cited examples to conform to the Leipzig Glossing Rules.
Another frequently cited example is (33) from Kayardild, in which four cases are
stacked:
(33) Ngada yalawu-jarra yakuri-na thabuju-karra-nguni-na mijil-nguni-na

I catch-pst sh-mabl brother-gen-ins-mabl net-ins-mabl
I caught the sh with brothers net [Evans, 1995a: 400, example (10)]
Kayardild has a particularly exuberant inventory of cases and case uses. The most
straightforward are the core functions with familiar meanings of spatial location,
instrument, and proprietive/privative, as well as a number of less familiar mean-
ings. The oblique, locative, allative, ablative, and proprietive cases have additional
functions, however. All ve can function as modal cases, which have the function
of signalling tense, aspect, and mood properties of the clause. The modal cases
co-occur with overt verb markers of TAM. For instance, the modal ablative marker
-na indicates that the clause containing a nominal thus marked is in the past tense.
Two of the cases, oblique and locative, function as complementizing case, indicating
interclausal relations. For instance, the verb mungurru know selects a complement
object clause, and every element of the clause (including the verb) has to be marked
with the complementizer oblique case. Finally, the oblique case doubles as an
associative case, marking all the non-subject elements which occur inside a clause
which has been nominalized.
Sadler and Nordlinger adopt the PFM model to describe the morphological forms
associated with case stacking, but recongured so as to account for the recursive
nature of the morphology. They represent the different functions by setting up differ-
ent classes of case feature, CaseCore , CaseModal , CaseComplementizing , and CaseAssociating .
The core cases are realized by standard realization rules in a single rule block.
However, where we have two core cases stacked, or a core case stacked with a
modal case, we need to dene complex (in fact, recursive) feature structures, such
as those in (34) (based on Sadler and Nordlinger, 2006: 473, ex. (29)), and many
others.
(34) a. {CaseCore :abl}

b. {CaseMod :abl, CaseComp :loc}
c. {CaseCore :abl, {CaseCore :loc, CaseAssoc :obl}}
d. {CaseCore :abl, {CaseCore :loc, {CaseMod :All, CaseComp :Obl}}}
There are somewhat complex restrictions on which cases combine in which ways,
summarized in (35).
(35) (i) There can only ever be one Complementizer Case per noun, and this
must appear last in the string.
(ii) Associative Case cannot be followed by Associative or Complementizer
Case.
(iii) Modal Case cannot be followed by Modal, Associative, or Core case.
These constraints can be coded as feature co-occurrence restrictions. Otherwise, any

recursive combination of cases is in principle possible. (In fact, certain combina-
tions are ruled out by additional feature co-occurrence restrictions which I ignore
here).
The basic case exponents are dened by a set of rules in a rule block labelled Case.
The recursive set of case markers is spelled out by a set of realization rules which
apply in a single rule block, StackCase. I give their rule (36) (p. 476) here as (36)
(omitting the reference to the lexeme class index N).
(36) a. X, {Case :, } = X , {Case:}

where for rule block Case
X, {Case:} X
b. X, {Case :} =
narrowest rule in rule block Case such that
X, {Case:} Y
To spell out a recursive feature set whose rst member is [Case :] and the rest of
which is {}, apply the most specic applicable rule from the Case rule block which
realizes [Case:], and then call StackCase on the derived stem and the remainder
of the structured property set. In other words to evaluate a word form with stacked
case, we rst determine the most deeply embedded (and hence, non-recursive) case
feature, , and then work our way up the rest of the feature structure, applying the
rules of block StackCase as we go.
Sadler and Nordlinger illustrate this with the brothers net example (33), whose
case specication is given in (37).
(37) thabuju, {CaseCore :Gen, {CaseCore :Ins, {CaseMod :Abl}}}
Rule (36a) applies to this set and realizes the pairing thabuju, {Case:Gen}. This
denes the form thabuju-karra. The narrowest applicable rule in block StackCase
now applies to the remainder of the representation, i.e. thabujukarra, {CaseCore:
Ins, {CaseMod:Abl}}. Again, rule (36a) is called up, to dene the instrumental-
case-marked form thabujukarra-nguni. This leaves the pairing thabujukarranguni,
{CaseMod:Abl} to be dened, which calls up rule (36b). The specication
{CaseMod :abl} is dened as homophonous with {CaseCore :abl}, and so the nal form
is thabujukarrangunina, as required.
Sadler and Nordlinger note that case marking interacts in interesting ways with
number marking in this language, and so they extend the StackCase block to include
number features (they then rename the block StackFeat).
Sadler and Nordlinger (2004) address the related question of how the case mark-
ing interacts with syntactic representations. They implement their analysis in LFG.
The f-structure for thabuju-karra-nguni-na brother-gen-ins-mabl in (33) is shown
in (38).

(38) TNS PST

CASE INS

ADJins
POSS PRED brother

CASE GEN
This f-structure can be interpreted as follows: it describes a past-tense clause in which

there is an instrumental adjunct (ADJins ). That adjunct is marked with instrumental
case ([Case:ins]), and it contains a possessor phrase (POSS). That phrase consists of
the head noun brother in the genitive case.
The case features in the f-structure representation can be thought of as the
equivalent of Stumps content features or as s-features. These s-features lie in a cor-
respondence to a subset of the form features or m-features. LFG denes a notion
of f-description, which is essentially an equation constraining the construction of f-
structures. The f-description effectively tells us which s-features correspond to which
m-features, and also which grammatical functions a given m-feature may realize
for instance, what kind of grammatical relation a case realizes (subject of transitive
clause, indirect object, possessor, locational adjunct, etc.). In (39) we see some of the
functional realizations of the Kayardild morphological cases.
(39) Mfeature F-description

CaseC :Loc (CASE)=LOC, (ADJ-loc)
CaseC :Abl (CASE)=ABL, (ADJ-abl)
CaseC :Prop (CASE)=PROP, (ADJ-prop)
CaseC :Erg (CASE)=ERG, (SUBJ)
CaseC :Nom (CASE)=NOM, (SUBJ)
CaseM :Abl (TNS)=PST
The details of exactly how a representation such as (38) can be derived are some-
what technical (and introduce a modest innovation into the way LFG handles the
mapping from morphological and syntactic structure to f-structure), so I wont
present the details. The point is that Sadler and Nordlingers studies show that even
a very complex phenomenon such as Kayardild case stacking can be handled by
means of modest extensions to the PFM model, specically by enriching the way
that features are represented, and that morphology can then be integrated with an
explicit account of syntactic structures. None of their analysis at any point requires
reference to the classical morpheme concept.
6.4.5 Afx ordering: summary

What do we conclude from the problem of afx ordering and meaning? Its import-
ant to understand the logic of the problem. Just to say that a given linear ordering
of afxes corresponds to what we would expect if those afxes were themselves
meaningful elements is not sufcient to justify the claim that those afxes really are
meaningful (i.e. classical morphemes). What would be needed would be a systematic
pattern of order alternation, under which different linear orders gave rise to clearly
distinguishable scope effects, ab/ba orders. In fact, its very difcult to nd reliable
scope effects of this sort with logical operators in syntax, even in the syntax of lan-
guages like English, which rely heavily on word order. It should not be surprising,
then, to see that there is very little evidence of linear order being reliably associated
with scope differences. Rices meticulous survey of afxation in Athapaskan, for in-
stance, has revealed a great wealth of fascinating interactions but very few such cases
of systematic ab/ba ordering.
The overall picture that emerges from this brief survey is that afx ordering,
even when those afxes appear to be meaningful, bears a very complex relation to
semantic interpretation. In most of the cases discussed in the literature, authors
are talking about a synchronic status quo that has no doubt arisen by virtue of a
historical connection between (originally syntactic) linear order and semantic scope,
but that order tends to be fossilized, especially in inectional systems. There remain,
however, fairly clear cases in which a language is able to deploy relative order to
distinguish scope-based meaning. To account for such cases, it will be necessary
to develop a much more articulated model of word structure, and especially of
inectional/derivational meaning, than can be attempted here, so I leave the matter
for more detailed future research.
6.5 Transpositions
I now turn to the more complex intermediate cases in which the lexical related-
ness bears important characteristics of both inection and derivation. I start with
pure transpositions. In (40) we see the basic lexical entry for the Russian verb
komandovat to command, and in (41b) we see the result of applying the gen-
eralized paradigm function for the property present participle (PresPart).
(40) Lexical representation of komandovat to command

fform (komandovat , u)
STEM0 = komandova
STEM1 = komanduj
MORCLASS = V
fsyn (komandovat , u)
SYNCLASS = V
A-STR = Exy
SUBJ, OBJ
OBJ CASE = Instrumental
fsem (komandovat , u) = [COMMAND(x, y)]
fli (komandovat , u) = command
(41) Present participle transposition
fform (komandovat , {PresPart})
STEM0 = STEM1+uc(ij)
(= komand-ujuc(ij))
MORCLASS = Adj
fsyn (komandovat , {PresPart})
SYNCLASS = Adjective
A-STR = A*x E(x) y
(SUBJ*), OBJ
(OBJ CASE = Instrumental)
(fsem (komandovat , {PresPart}) = xy.COMMAND(x, y))
(fli (komandovat , {PresPart}) = command)
The asterisk notation in A*x Ev(x)y and (SUBJ*) is an ad hoc way of repre-
senting the fact that the subject argument of the basic verb is not expressed as such,
but rather is coindexed with the noun modied by the participle. The dimensions of
the representation given in parentheses are those which are inherited from the basic
verb representation, and are therefore dened in terms of (the equivalent of) Stumps
Identity Function Default.
Now, the SEM attribute for the transposition is provided by the General Default
Principle (GDP), which means that the participle is categorially still an eventive pre-
dicate and hence should be syntactically (and morphologically) a verb. Therefore,
in contradistinction to canonical derivation, we dont have any overwriting of the
SYN and FORM attributes by unspecied feature values. (Ultimately, I will claim
that this is a direct consequence of the fact that the generalized paradigm func-
tion doesnt change the LI value.) Instead, the transposition must dene a specic
change in the morphosyntactic category. In the straightforward cases (one is tempted

to say in the case of canonical transposition), all the FORM features can be pre-
dicted from the newly specied SYN features (this is true of Russian participles, for
instance, which all inect like default adjectives). In other instances, aspects of the
FORM properties will also be specied. Thus, the Latin passive perfective participle
in -t-, e.g. laudat- praised inects exactly like any adjective in the default inec-
tion class, but the present active participle laudans praising inects as a non-default
3rd declension adjective, and that fact would have to be stated in the grammar of
Latin.
The general form of the generalized paradigm function for a transposition can
therefore be represented schematically as in (42).
(42) FORM morphological change

MORSIG (by default from SYN)
SYN SYNCLASS changed
A-STR changed
SEM, LI GDP
In Spencer (1999) I argue that transpositions can best be thought of in terms of

an operation over the semantic function specication of the A-STR attribute. In
Chapter 7, I sketch a way that this might be coded in LFG.
In Table 6.6 I summarize for future reference the argument-structure operations I
assume are needed to dene the six most typical transpositions: participle, relational
adjective, event/action nominalization (Nomen Actionis), property nominalization
(Nomen Essendi), predicative noun, and predicative adjective.
Table 6.6. Summary of transpositions as a-structure operations
Transposition Base a-structure Transposition a-structure
Verb-to-adjective Ex, . . . A*x E(x), . . .

active participle
A*y E(x) (y), . . .
passive participle
Noun-to-adjective R A*x, + xR+
Verb-to-noun Ex, . . . REx, . . .
Adjective-to-noun A*x x RA*x x
Noun-to-verb R Exi Ri
Adjective-to-verb A*x x Exi A*x xi
The passive participle representation effectively conates two types of lexical rela-
tedness, one which derives the passive diathesis itself, by suppressing the subject role
and promoting the object role to that of subject, and the transposition itself, which
now targets the derived subject role, corresponding to the base lexemes subject.
The representation for the noun-to-adjective (relational adjective) transposition
creates a variable for the noun head modied by the derived adjective. The subscript
+ linking the A* and the R semantic function roles is a shorthand notation indic-
ating that the semantic interpretation of a phrase in which the relational adjective
is a dependent modier involves a pragmatically dened relation of some kind
() between the base noun and the head noun, e.g. (preposition, phrase) for
prepositional phrase, phrase with some contextually dened relation to the notion
preposition. I discuss this in greater detail in Chapter 9.
The noun-to-verb transposition denes a predicate which ascribes the property
of being the noun with semantic function role R to the subject of the predication, x.
The subscripting is a notational shorthand to indicate this. Similarly, in the adjective-
to-verb transposition the base adjective lexeme has (at least) one argument, and this
is coindexed with the R semantic function role of the modied head noun when the
adjective is used attributively. When the adjective is expressed as the clauses predic-
ate, the derived predicative adjective has a new subject argument, but that argument
is identied with the obligatory thematic argument of the attributive adjective, as
shown by the subscripting.
The transpositions seen so far have been pure transpositions in the sense that they
dont involve any enrichment of the lexemes semantic representation. However, in
Chapter 8 we will see that some transpositions, notably deverbal and deadjectival
nominalizations, involve the addition of something akin to an inectional or func-
tional meaning to the meaning of the construction as a whole. We will also see
transpositions that involve much the same kind of meaning change that we see in
inherent (semantically interpretable) inection or derivation.
6.6 Representing argument structure

One type of lexical relatedness that poses particular problems for any attempt at
either a unied or an articulated model of lexical representation and relatedness is
that of argument-structure alternations. The problem is very simple: like inections,
some a-structure alternations seem to have no effect on the semantic concept of the
predicate: active passive, or plain applicative alternates are generally synonym-
ous (up to slight differences due to information structure and so on). On the other
hand, some argument-structure alternations clearly introduce a new semantic pre-
dicate (causatives), while others create a derived syntacticosemantic representation
which determines semantic interpretation (reexive/reciprocal constructions). The
basic question, then, is: do we treat an argument-structure alternant as a form of a
single verb lexeme, or do we treat it as a novel, derived lexeme? There is no guaran-

tee that the same answer will be applicable to all languages, of course, even if their
structures are relatively similar.
This question is of sufcient importance and complexity that I devote the whole of
Chapter 7 to it.
6.7 Argument nominalizations

In Chapter 3 I mentioned the existence of argument nominalizations such as the
subject-nominalization category illustrated by driver. In my exposition in Chapter 5 I
treated this as a straightforward derivation involving the addition of a semantic pre-
dicate denoting the subject. One problem with that analysis is that the subject isnt
always a person. In fact, its probably better to think of the semantics of the subject
nominal as being in part dependent on contextual factors: the derived lexeme denotes
whatever kind of entity is allowed to realize the subject of the base verb.
This suggests that we require a slightly more elaborated form of the general-
ized paradigm function for subject nominalizations (using the same abbreviatory
conventions used in Chapter 5).
(43) For = drive, {SubjNom},
GPF()
fform () = drive er
fsyn () = Ri Exi y
fsem () = [Thing xy.THING(x) DRIVE(x, y)]
fli () = SN(drive)
In (43) the generalized paradigm function denes a new lexeme with LI driver
(= SN(drive)) and with an enriched semantic representation in which the subject
argument of the base lexemes predicate is identied as the denotation. I have dened
the referent as THING(x) rather than PERSON(x) because it is a matter of contextual
interpretation whether the subject is human or inanimate (cf. The main driver of the
global temperature rise is the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases).
The generalized paradigm function likewise denes a new argument structure. In
my illustration in Chapter 5 I simply labelled the derived lexemes syntactic category
Noun, or more properly R. This argument structure can be derived automatically
from the Default Cascade given the derived semantic representation. However, in this
more elaborated version of the subject-nominal derivation I have preserved access
to the argument structure of the base verb, and I have linked the derived semantic
function role R to the subject argument of that verb by the device of coindexation
(indicated by the subscripts).25 Given my current assumptions, this representation
25 Lieber (2004) provides extensive exemplication of a similar coindexing device for such derivations.
would not be possible unless we specied the derived argument structure in this way,
because the argument structure of the base would no longer be accessible, given the
Derived Lexical Category Principle, and the argument structure (plain R) would be
dened by default from the semantic representation.
By retaining access to the base verbs argument structure in this way, we open up
the possibility of referring to the object argument, as is seen in synthetic compounds
and when the derived noun is modied by a phrase denoting the object argument:
train driver, the driver of the train. This modest degree of transparency of structure
makes the subject nominal look a little like a transposition.
A similar analysis could be proposed for object nominals of the sort illustrated by
employee (though this would be something of an oversimplication given what we
know from Barkers 1998 analysis).
(44) For = employ, {ObjectNominal},
GPF()
fform () = employ ee
fsyn () = Ri Ex yi
fsem () = [Thing xy.PERSON(y) EMPLOY(x, y)]
fli () = ON(employ)
As I said in Chapter 3, it isnt clear to what extent languages have regular object-
nominal derivations that have the same range and productivity of typical subject
nominals in familiar European languages.
In some languages, argument nominalizations are extremely close to transpo-
sitions and come to look very much like forms of the base lexeme rather than
autonomous lexemes in their own right (Beard, 1995). A case in point is the agent-
nominal construction in the Bantu language Kikuyu (Gkuyu), as discussed by
Bresnan and Mugane (2006). This is formed by sufxation of -i to the verb stem, and
by prexation with an appropriate class prex (for instance mu- for human agents):
(45) a. mu-in-i u yu w-a nymbo

1-sing-nom 1.dem 1-assoc 10.song
this singer of songs
b. u yu mu-thnj-i mburi u u ru
1.dem 1-slaughter-nom 10.goat badly
this bad goat slaughterer
The agent nominal in (45a) behaves as a noun, in that it takes a post-nominal de-
terminer and a complement marked with the a-of-association (it can also take
other noun modiers such as attributive adjectives and relative clauses; see Bresnan
and Mugane, 2006: 2068). There is also a mixed-category construction headed by
an agent nominalization, however, in which the base verb can undergo a number
of processes before being nominalized. Specically, it can take the applicative and
reciprocal extensions, and can reduplicate, giving an attenuative iterative interpreta-
tion, for instance. The verb may also appear with the reexive object marker prex.
However, the verb cannot take negation or aspect morphology.
The Kikuyu mixed-category construction is illustrated in (47), where the nom-
inal is modied not by an adjective but by an adverb, as though it were still a verb.
Moreover, the object goat is expressed in the manner of a direct object. Such ex-
amples are comparable in many respects to the POSS-ACC nominals of English
(the childrens singing the song so sweetly and so on). The construction even exhib-
its phrasal coherence of the kind seen by mixed-category action nominalizations
(see Chapter 8), in that it is not possible to interleave nominal-type complements or
modiers with verbal-type complements (Bresnan and Mugane, 2006: 213):
(46) * [mu-thnj-i]N [w-a Nairobi] [mburi]NP [wega]ADV

1-slaughter-nom 1-assoc Nairobi 10.goat 1.well
Intended: a good goat slaughterer from Nairobi
The representations adopted by Bresnan and Mugane for the base verb lexeme and
the derived nominal are (p. 227):
(47) a. slaughter: slaughterx, yv

b. slaughterer: agent-ofx, slaughterx, yn
Bresnan and Mugane thus assume that the internal morphological structure of the
agent nominalization is essentially as in (48).
(48) a. [mu-[[thnj]v -i]n ]N

1-slaughter-nom
b. [mu-[[in-r]v -i]n ]N
1-sing-appl-nom
The v and n subscripts are diacritic symbols which instruct the grammar to
map the annotated element to a V node or an N node in the c-structure (phrase
structure) representation. Now, the role of these diacritics in an LFG analysis is some-
what unclear, but their basic insight is easily captured on the GPF model by making
appropriate appeal to argument-structure representations.
(49) For = slaughter, {SubjNom},

GPF()
fform () = (mu)thnj i
fsyn () = Ri Exi y
fsem () = [Thing xy.THING(x) SLAUGHTER(x, y)]
fli () = SN(slaughter)
In (49) the coindexed Ri role corresponds to the predicate agent-ofx, slaughter

x, y in Bresnan and Muganes example (72) (p. 227) (example (45b) above). Notice
that the THING predicate can be specied in a variety of ways, and this will be re-
ected in the choice of class prex, demonstrating again how close this construction
is to inection.
We can now see the true nature of Bresnan and Muganes v/n diacritics: these
correspond to the semantic function roles E and R. As a language/construction-
particular property, therefore, we could say that the E role in (49) licenses the
exocentric VP node in the c-structure representations.26
At this point we might consider whether to treat argument nominalizations such
as the Kikuyu agent nominal as a distinct formal type of relatedness, in the follow-
ing way. We could say that the essential derivational process is an operation over
the argument structure, mapping a representation Exy to Ri Exi y and
subsequently remodelling the SEM representation accordingly, to introduce an overt
predicate denoting the subject argument, mapping [Event xy.SLAUGHTER(x, y)]
to [Thing xy.THING(x) SLAUGHTER(x, y)]. Such a move would require some
technical justication on the GPF model. By allowing the SEM representation to
be dened by the derived a-structure representation we would be going against the
Default Cascade.
It seems that such a move would probably not be the best choice. Subject nom-
inalization processes are very common and often have special properties (as in
Kikuyu) in languages which regularly target verb satellites for nominalization. How-
ever, we often also nd very regular nominalizations of non-arguments, such as
locations or instruments. This is true of Tagalog (Schachter and Otanes, 1972) and
Classical Nahuatl (Stiebels, 1999), for instance. But with nominalizations of non-
core arguments, or of adjuncts, we clearly have to state just what the additional
semantic predicate is in the SEM attribute in any case. Therefore, I will (tenta-
tively) assume that argument nominalizations, including subject nominalizations,
are after all just another instance of derivation, but derivation that has a special ef-
fect on the argument-structure representation. The coindexation between R and
the subject argument x is therefore derived by default from the SEM represent-
ation, with x.THING(x) corresponding to Ri , and the x variable in THING(x),
SLAUGHTER(x, y) being mapped to the x variable in a-structure.
Because subject nominalization creates a coindexation between the R semantic
function role and the subject argument of the predicate, there is a close implicit
connection between subject nominalization and the formation of participles, which
creates a one-place predicate whose sole argument is the original verbs subject
26 This can be done using the inside-out functional application deployed by Bresnan and Mugane. For
reasons of space I will leave interested readers to conrm that by consulting their paper. The analysis
presented here also obviates certain technical problems inherent in Bresnan and Muganes account.
Table 6.7. Participles as subject nominals
Base verb Participle Subject nominal
FORM verb verb-ptcp verb-ptcp

SYN Ex, . . . A*Ex*, . . . Ri AExi , . . .
SEM VERB(x, . . .) VERB(x, . . .) (GDP) PERSON(x) VERB(x, . . .)
LI verb verb (GDP) verb (GDP)
argument. However, for Kikuyu, Bresnan and Mugane (2006: 21720) explicitly point
out that the agent-nominal construction is not an instance of a participle with a null
head, or a participle converted to a noun. Kikuyu has perfect active, passive, and
habitual active participles, of which the latter is semantically closest to the agent nom-
inal. However, the participle has the morphosyntax of an attributive modier, while
the agent nominal has the morphosyntax of a noun head, and in particular cant be
used to modify another noun (such as person) attributively.
Now, although the agent nominals in Kikuyu are clearly not participles, cross-
linguistically we often nd that participles do function as subject or agent-nominal
constructions, as we saw in Chapter 3, when we considered the Chukchi -lP_n parti-
ciple (Section 3.3.3). Indeed, for a number of languages, the correct way to analyse the
nominalized use of such participles is to adopt precisely the analysis which has to be
rejected for Kikuyu, that is, to treat the participle as originally an attributive modier
(by transposition from a verb), which then undergoes a process of argument nomi-
nalization. If the process is entirely productive (as seems to be the case for Chukchi),
it is unclear that we would want to call the resulting subject nominal an autonomous
lexeme as opposed to a form of the original verb lexeme. In that case we would have
the (very schematic) relatedness pattern seen in Table 6.7.
6.8 Paradigmatically mixed categories

The examples weve seen so far have all involved the relationship between a sim-
pler base lexeme and a more complex derived word type (which may or may not
constitute a distinct lexeme in its own right). However, the generalized paradigm
function perspective provides appropriate tools for analysing basic lexemes which ex-
hibit unusual properties. The two main sorts of peculiarity are morphologically inert
(m-inert) derivation, in which lexemes inect throughout their paradigm as though
they belonged to a different word class (I shall call such words stolovaja-lexemes), and
morphological shift, in which lexemes inect as expected for their morphosyntactic
class for most of their paradigm but appear to shift to a different word class for part of
their paradigm. Between these two, I also briey discuss within-lexeme derivations,
in which part of a lexemes paradigm becomes the paradigm for a distinct lexeme.
6.8.1 M-inert lexical relatedness

In cases of m-inert derivation, the base lexeme and the derived word share FORM
properties. If the two words belong to different syntactic classes, this gives rise to a
mismatch between morpholexical category and syntactic category, so that we have,
say, nouns inecting as adjectives, or adjectives inecting as verbs. Here I will briey
discuss two types of m-inert relatedness, that represented by Russian nouns of the
stolovaja-class and that represented by adjectives converted into nouns without any
change in their morphological form.
The stolovaja-class of lexemes presents few problems for our model of lexical
relatedness, because they do not actually involve specifying a relatedness function
between two classes of words. Rather, we simply have an instance of a word which
belongs to the wrong inectional class. What this means is that stolovaja-class words
are dened as nouns whose MorClass value is that of an adjective rather than a
noun. This is easily stated in the GPF model because we have factorized morpho-
logical lexical class features from syntactic lexical class features (in other words,
a syntactic noun doesnt necessarily have to be a noun morphologically). The ex-
ceptionality of such lexemes then resides in the fact that the default realization of
morphological class properties from syntactic class properties is overridden by lexical
stipulation.
Rather more interesting are those cases in which some form of synchronic de-
rivation is implicated, and which are therefore candidates for paradigm-driven
relatedness. A good example is adjective-to-noun conversion, as in the German ex-
ample Angestellte(r) mentioned in Section 3.8.1. There are two cases that need to be
considered.
In the rst case, we have conversion of an adjective to a personal noun denot-
ing a person who bears the property denoted by the adjective. In languages such as
Russian the adjective is frequently a participle form, so that we have an added layer
of intra-lexeme category mixing. Consider a simple example, the adjective bednyj
poor. Like any adjective it can be used in elliptical contexts. In such cases it makes
sense to assume some sort of understood noun head that the adjective modies, but
these contexts can be distinguished from other syntactic contexts in which its en-
tirely articial or even just wrong to postulate a null noun head (Spencer, 2002). We
should therefore assume a regular and productive process allowing us to derive a
personal noun from an adjective. (As in English, the personal noun form is more
common in the plural than in the singular.)
Let us assume that the process is governed by a derivational feature PersNom.
Let us also assume for the present that we are dealing with a kind of derivational
morphology and not with a meaning-bearing transposition.27 Thus, the process
27 Specically, its a species of argument nominalization.

which derives these personal nouns creates a new lexeme. Given these assump-
tions, the generalized paradigm function for deadjectival personal noun formation
must map the representation of an adjective to a representation of a syntactic
noun which has the added semantic predicate person who (VERBs). This is shown
in (50).
(50) Let be bednyj, {PersNom}. Then

GPF()
fform () = fform (bednyj, u)
fsyn () =
fsem () = x.PERSON(x) fsem (bednyj, u)(x)
fli () = PersNom(bednyj)
The generalized paradigm function fails to specify the syntactic class of the derived
word, because that is specied by the Default Cascade: the semantic representation is
that of a Thing. The representation itself is built on the semantic representation of the
base lexeme. However, the form properties of the derived word are specied by the
function. They are copied from the FORM representation of the base lexeme. Notice
that this is an instance of a stipulated identity, a stipulated transparency, so to speak.
As a result, the noun will inect according to the adjectival declension pattern of the
original lexeme.
Exactly the same relation can be postulated for the second case, illustrated by our
earlier example of bol noj sick person, patient. Recall that this noun is derived from
the adjective of the same form, and it shares the adjectival declension pattern with
the base lexeme. However, the word has undergone a degree of semantic drift in one
of its readings, and as a consequence it doesnt necessarily entail that the denotation
is a sick person, but merely someone who has a certain institutional relationship to
the medical profession. This means that we have another instance of unpredictable
polysemy. The simplest way of dealing with this is to allow the generalized paradigm
function illustrated for (50) to derive the semantically transparent reading of sick
person, and then posit an additional lexical entry with a slightly different semantic
representation, which in this case cannot be related to any regular derivational
process or schema of lexical relatedness. This is exactly how other instances of
non-systematic polysemy are dealt with, and it does not represent a paradigm-driven
process.
6.8.2 Within-lexeme derivation

Within-lexeme derivations are found when one part of the derivational paradigm of
a lexeme undergoes semantic drift and effectively forms the paradigm for a distinct
lexeme. It is easy to reect this by referring the fform function of the derived lexeme to
the appropriate part of the paradigm of the base lexeme. For instance, consider from
Chapter 3 the Greek verb apokaliptome. This is either the regular passive of the verb
apokalipto uncover or a separate lexeme meaning to raise ones hat to. The forms
of the second lexeme are obtained by referring to the forms of the passive part of the
paradigm of the rst lexeme:
(51) Let be some legal complete feature set appropriate to an intransitive verb.
Let uncover be the lexemic index of the verb apokalipto, and let raise-hat
be the lexemic index of the verb apokaliptome in the sense to raise ones hat
to. Then fform (raise-hat, ) GPF(raise-hat, ) is evaluated exactly as
fform (uncover, ) GPF(uncover, ), where is exactly like except
that where [Voice:active] , [Voice:passive] .
The statement in (51) is a parochial statement about the raise-hat lexeme, and is not
the result of some paradigm-driven process.
In some cases the relevant parts of the paradigm dont exist. Thus, it happens that
none of the lexemes expressed by the paradigm of the fform function of the Russian
verb gnat to drive has a reexive form. However, there is nothing purely morpho-
logical which rules out reexive forms for such a verb. Therefore, when we come to
dene the fform function for the verb gnat sja in its various meanings, we are referred,
in effect, to a paradigm that doesnt exist (a virtual paradigm):
(52) Let be some legal complete feature set appropriate to an intransitive verb.
Let drive be the lexemic index of the verb gnat , and let pursue be the lexemic
index of the verb gnat sja. Then fform (pursue, ) GPF(pursue, ) is eval-
uated exactly as fform (drive, ) GPF(drive, ) where is exactly like
except that where [Voice:active] , [Voice:reexivepassive] .
6.8.3 Morphological shift: the Russian past tense

In Chapter 3 I discussed the problem of the Russian past-tense form. Here I present
an analysis of the phenomenon based on the types of lexical representation proposed
in the previous chapter.
Recall that the FORM attribute of a lexeme includes an attribute called MORPHO-
LEXICAL SIGNATURE, which denes the morphological properties of that lexeme,
including its morphological lexical category, any inectional class properties it has,
irregular forms, and so on. The morpholexical signature is a property of the FORM
attribute specically, and not a property of the lexeme as a whole, as one might other-
wise expect. As is customary, it is the existence of morphosyntactic mismatches which
motivates the decision to make the morpholexical signature a specically FORM at-
tribute. In Spencer (2007) I discuss a number of morphosyntactic mismatches in
which the morphological category of a word and its syntactic category are to some
extent at variance.
Recall that in the non-past forms, Russian verbs inect in the standard Indo-
European manner for the person/number properties of the subject. However, the
past tense has arisen from a periphrastic perfect construction in Old Russian, formed
from the copular verb be used as an auxiliary, and agreeing with the subject in
person/number features (but not gender), and an adjectival participle form inecting
as a predicate adjective, agreeing with the subject in number/gender features but not
person. In the development of Russian, the auxiliary was gradually dropped, leaving
the participle as the sole exponent of past tense in the modern language. However,
that participle still inects like an adjective, agreeing in number/gender with the sub-
ject. For convenience I repeat the relevant paradigms here, including a comparison
with a predicative adjective mal small.
(53) delat make, present tense

Singular Plural
1st delaj-u delaj-om
2nd delaj-o delaj-ote
3rd delaj-ot delaj-ut
(54) Past tense of delat and declension of mal small

Singular
M F N Plural
Past tense verb delat delal delala delalo delali
Predicative adjective mal mal mala malo maly
It is commonly assumed that the /l/ formative in the l-participle is the exponent of
past tense and hence introduced by realization rules for that tense feature. However,
this leaves unresolved the question of how to account for the unexpected adjectival
agreement properties. To account for the morphosyntactic mismatch, I therefore
propose that Russian verbs have (at least) three stems, which for mnemonic purposes
I will call StemPres, StemInf, and StemL. I will just consider verbs which are (more
or less) regular in their conjugation. The StemL form corresponds to what is tradi-
tionally referred to as the l-participle. The StemInf form is that which is found in
the innitive form, minus the innitive ending -t . The StemPres form is that which
forms the basis of the present-tense paradigm. In (53, 54) the StemPres, StemInf, and
StemL forms for the verb delat are respectively delaj-, dela-, and delal-. This verb
belongs to the default conjugation, which I shall label Conj:1 aj. I shall take the StemL
form to be morphologically a predicate adjective form, and hence of [Mcat:PredA].

I shall assume that stems of this class inect in a particular way determined by an
inectional class feature [InfClass:VerbPast], in contrast to genuine predicative ad-
jectives, which have a very slightly different inectional paradigm governed by the
feature [InfClass:PredAdj]:

(55) LI delat 1

AGR:[. . .]

MORSIG 3 INFL
MORCLASS MCAT V
2

INFLCLASS Conj:1 aj

LI 1

MORSIG
3

STEM INDEX 0

MORCLASS

2

PHON |del|

LI 1

MORSIG 3

STEM
INDEX StemPres

FORM
MORCLASS 2

|del aj|

PHON

LI 1

MORSIG
3

STEM
INDEX StemInf

MORCLASS

2

PHON |del a|

LI 1

MORSIG

INDEX
STEM StemL

PredA
MORCLASS
MCAT

INFLCLASS VerbPast

PHON |dela l|
The agreement properties are left unspecied. For word forms derived from stems
of the morphological class V, the agreement features are (by default) [Person/
Number], while for predicative adjective stems they are [Gender/Number]. The
completely specied entry is therefore that shown in (56).

(56) delat 1

LI

INFL AGR:[PERSON/NUMBER]

MORSIG 3

MORCLASS MCAT V
2

INFLCLASS Conj:1 aj

LI 1

MORSIG 3

STEM INDEX
0
MORCLASS 2

PHON |del|

LI 1

MORSIG 3

STEM INDEX StemPres

FORM MORCLASS 2

|del aj|

PHON

LI 1

MORSIG

3

STEM INDEX
StemInf
MORCLASS 2

PHON |del a|

1

LI

AGR:[GENDER/NUMBER]

INFL

INDEX StemL
STEM
MORSIG
MCAT PredA
MORCLASS
INFLCLASS VerbPast

PHON |dela l|
The syntax of the past tense is now maximally simple: the verb agrees with the
subject. How it agrees is determined by the morphology.28
6.9 Evaluative morphology

6.9.1 Transparency and evaluative morphology
In Chapter 3 I described some of the patterns of evaluative morphology found in
the worlds languages. Here I will summarize some of the main points of interest
revealed by evaluative morphology, and ask how evaluative morphology can be inte-
grated into the model proposed here. Throughout I will mainly be making reference
28 I am grateful to Olivier Bonami for discussion of this point.

to diminutives of nouns, but in principle the discussion is supposed to apply to all

types of evaluative morphology.
As I pointed out in Chapter 3, the reason why evaluative morphology raises
interesting questions for models of lexical relatedness is that it shares some of
the properties of canonical inection and some of the properties of canonical de-
rivation.29 Specically, a process such as diminutivization may be transparent to
properties such as inectional class, gender, and occasionally number (Stump, 1993,
2001). As we have seen, Russian diminutives such as domice huge great house pre-
serve the gender (though not the inectional class) of the base lexeme, and the same
is true of Spanish diminutives. Exactly which properties exhibit this transparency
depends on the language or even on the sufx in question.
The transparency of evaluative morphology, and especially the variable transpar-
ency, raises the very interesting question of how exactly that transparency and that
variability should be reected in the grammar. Recall that for canonical derivational
morphology, I have assumed a principle which effectively destroys information about
the base lexeme to which a derivational process applies, the Derived Lexical Entry
Principle. According to that principle, (canonical) derivation renders all information
about the base lexeme opaque to the derived lexeme, and the only morpholexical,
morphosyntactic, and semantic information that the derived item contains is that
which is specied in the derivational paradigm function. We must therefore ask
how diminutive formation can remain transparent to base lexeme properties if those
properties are in general inaccessible to the derived word.
The question is related to an implementational issue that arises with respect to
Stumps analysis of evaluative morphology, discussed in Chapter 4. Recall that Stump
(2001) discusses three distinct morphological types of evaluative morphology (spe-
cically, diminutives), dened according to how the diminutive form inects when
compared to the base lexeme: by external marking (EM), as in Russian or Span-
ish, by head marking (HM), as in Southern Barasano, or by double marking (2M)
as in Breton. Stump argues that the HM and 2M types provide evidence for a
Head-Application Principle (HAP):
(57) Head-Application Principle (HAP)

If M is a word-to-word rule, and Y and Z are roots such that for some (possibly
empty) sequence S, Y = M(Z, S), then where PF(Z, ) = W, , PF(Y, ) =
M(W, S), .
29 Scalise (1984) argued that evaluative morphology was sufciently special that it deserved to be treated
as a separate type of morphological phenomenon, distinct from inection and derivation. This proposal is
generally rejected (tekauer et al., 2012: 27). In part this is because such a tripartite division still doesnt help
us differentiate inection from derivation. But in any case, the problems Scalise identies for evaluative
morphology in Italian are not specic to evaluative morphology, as demonstrated convincingly by Stump
(1993).
It is not entirely clear how the different types of rule are to be differentiated from
each other in a formal grammar. In particular, its not clear how the head-marking
afxation rules are to be dened. For instance, the Southern Barasano rule of -aka suf-
xation is a word-to-word rule, but what could the descriptor the Southern Barasano
rule of -aka sufxation refer to in PFM? In that model, an afx is a piece of morpho-
phonology which serves to realize a feature set in accordance with the paradigm
function which applies to a given lexeme. In the case of (regular) derivation the
feature set is a derivational feature. But to handle the full set of facts of diminutive
formation cross-linguistically we need to be able to refer to the behaviour of specic
afxes, not of general processes or relationships. Yet its very unclear how we can do
this if the afx itself has no particular morphological status. A possible solution to
this problem is to adopt the morph-based account of morphology mentioned in the
discussion of afx ordering (Section 6.4.2). Under such a model, the afxation pro-
cess would introduce not a phonological string but a morph, which in principle could
be given (limited) non-phonological properties.
For reasons of space I cant pursue such a model here. However, for present
purposes we can imitate the effects of such a model by effectively neutralizing the dis-
tinction between derivational categories and derivational types. Each afxal process
can be associated with a derivational feature, so that, for instance, -ness sufxa-
tion would be triggered by a derivational feature ness, while -ity sufxation would
be triggered by a derivational feature ity, and the two derivational categories so
dened would then by accident dene the same relation of deadjectival property
nominalization. Alternatively, we could set up a set-valued derivational category of
[PropNom:{ness, ity, . . .}]. This would permit us to generalize across derivational
categories while still distinguishing derivational types. This is a slight abuse of form-
alism, of course, because the point of such features is to dene paradigms, not to
identify classes of individual afxes. Nonetheless, for convenience of exposition I
shall adopt that device.
6.9.2 Analysis of diminutives

The basic semantic effect of diminutivization is the addition of a semantic predicate
of smallness to the semantic representation of the noun. Assuming a derivational
feature Dim, then GPF(, Dim) will include the function in (58).
(58) fsem (, Dim) = xP.P(x) SMALL(x)
For cases of pure diminutivization/augmentation, in which the only change is the
addition of the smallness/bigness predicate, perhaps together with connotations of
endearment or pejorativeness, I assume that the output is a form of the original lex-
eme, and not a new lexeme. This is particularly obvious when we consider diminutive
forms of proper names. There is no sense in which the Russian name Sasha denotes a
different entity from the full name of that person, Aleksandr or Aleksandra. Similarly,
I see no sense in which the syntax of the diminutive form is distinct from that of the
base form, so we may assume no change in the syntactic representation.
For the sake of argument I shall assume that Dim is set-valued, such that its
values dene the individual diminutive sufxes. Thus, in Russian, [Dim:ka] refers
to the derivational type of the diminutive derivational category that is realized by
the sufx -ka. In keeping with the Separation Hypothesis, this sufx is only one
of several diminutive sufxes, of course, but in addition, -ka sufxation, complete
with a distinctive set of stem palatalizations and vowel zero alternations, also
serves as the realization of a number of unrelated derivational categories, including
feminine noun formationanglicanin Englishman anglicanka Englishwoman,
student student (of either sex but by default male) studentka female studentand
deverbal nominalizationnaxodit to nd naxodka a nd.
The diminutives are realized by a FORM-level rule schema of the form (59) which
represents the set of rules introducing the various diminutive sufxes, along with the
restrictions on their application (that is, which noun classes they apply to).
(59) N, {Noun, Class n} {, Dim:sufx} Y sufx
Since the diminutive rules dont change the lexemic index, the Derived Lexical Entry
Principle and Default Cascade are inapplicable. It is for this reason that we can nd
transparency of base lexeme properties. Any morphosyntactic or syntacticosemantic
property that is introduced specically as a result of diminutive formation has to be
specied in the paradigm function for that diminutive-formation rule; otherwise, the
derived word will inherit those properties from the base lexeme, just as in the case of
inection.
Here I provide some sample illustrations of the operation of the generalized
paradigm function in dening the various kinds of Russian diminutives described in
Chapter 3. Recall that GDP (General Default Principle) refers to a component func-
tion of the generalized paradigm function which replaces the feature specication of
the generalized paradigm function with the null specication u, thereby ensuring that
the base lexemes properties are inherited by the output of the generalized paradigm
function. For convenience of reading, the restriction to a specic inectional class is
illustrated by specifying that class feature in the input to the rules.
(60) For = noun, {Dim:sufx}, where Stem (noun) is the stem or allostem
selected by sufx, and x.NOUN(x) is the value of fsem (noun, u) (i.e. the
meaning of the base lexeme),
GPF()
fform () = Stem (noun) sufx
MORSIG|Class: n
fsyn () = (GDP)
fsem () = x.NOUN(x) SMALL(x)
fli () = (GDP)
(61) For = ruka, {Dim:ka},

GPF()
fform () = ruk k-(a) (= /ruka/)
MORSIG|Class: 2
fsyn () = (GDP)
fsem () = x.HAND(x) SMALL(x)
fli () = (GDP)
(62) For = dom, {Dim:ik},
GPF()
fform () = dom ik
MORSIG|Class: 1a
fsyn () = (GDP)
fsem () = x.HOUSE(x) SMALL(x)
fli () = (GDP)
(63) For = dom, {Dim:iko},
GPF()
fform () = dom ik-(o)
MORSIG|Class: 1b
fsyn () = (GDP)
fsem () = x.HOUSE(x) SMALL(x)
fli () = (GDP)
(64) For = starik, {Dim:aka},
GPF()
fform () = starik ak-(a)
MORSIG|Class: 2
fsyn () = (GDP)
fsem () = x.OLD_MAN(x) CONTEMPTIBLE(x)
fli () = (GDP)
(from the Class 1a noun starik old man).
(65) For = morda, {Dim:aka},
GPF()
fform () = mord ak-(a)
MORSIG|Class: 2
fsyn () = (GDP)
fsem () = x.FACE(x) CONTEMPTIBLE(x)
fli () = (GDP)
(from the Class 2 noun morda face, snout).
By comparison, the German diminutive in -chen imposes its own morpholexical

class features and gender:
(66) For = Freund, {Dim:chen},

GPF()
fform () = freund chen
MORSIG|Class: zero plural
MORSIG|Gender: Neuter
fsyn () = (GDP)
fsem () = x.FRIEND(x) SMALL(x)
fli () = (GDP)
(from the masculine-gender noun Freund friend).
For languages of the German type, the fform function would be associated with a
specication of the gender of the diminutive, as well as the inectional class. In this
respect, diminutive formation is very similar to derivation and, indeed, could just
as well be treated as derivation where it entails the addition of a semantic predic-
ate (which excludes the diminutive forms of a proper names, of course). However,
recall that in Russian, gender is preserved in diminutives. This is even true of suf-
xes that impose their own gender when used as derivational sufxes proper: ubeice
refuge vs domice house (large), olen-ina venison vs domina house (large). Such
examples provide further motivation for applying the principle of separationism to
lexical relatedness.
Gender transparency arises in the following way. The generalized paradigm func-
tion makes no mention of the inherent property of gender. Since the lexicon is
organized according to the principle of default inheritance, a lexical relation will pre-
serve all those properties of the base unless they are overridden by some more specic
principle. Therefore, we can conclude that gender is preserved by diminutivization
(just as it is for inection). However, the base for diminutive formation is a lexeme,
individuated by a lexemic index. Where diminutive formation is similar to deriv-
ational morphology lies in the structuring of the features which dene the lexical
relatedness between inected forms, and between base forms and their diminutives.
In the case of inected forms the paradigm function is dened over a complete set of
(compatible) inectional feature values. If an obligatory feature is omitted from that
set, then we have an ill-formed (or at best a partially formed) output, and the rep-
resentation cannot be said to properly dene any word form that occupies any cell
in the lexemes paradigm. In the case of diminutives, the triggering feature is effect-
ively privative, in the sense that we are only contrasting a non-diminutive basic form
(stem) with a diminutive stem.
An interesting question arises here with true derivational morphology that de-
ploys the same afxational resources as diminutive morphology, but in which the
diminutive sufx is transparent to gender/inectional class. Recall that one of the

meanings of the diminutive form rucka is handle, which is synchronically unre-
lated to the base ruka hand. Yet, like ruka, rucka is feminine gender, and this is
systematic for this kind of (very frequent) derivational relationship with the sufx
-ka. One simple way to treat this in the grammar of Russian is to mimic the etymo-
logical source of the gender assignment: by default, Class 2 nouns (whose citation
form/nominative singular ends in -a) are feminine gender. Therefore, if nothing
else is said about the noun rucka, it will automatically be assigned to the feminine
gender.
Finally, under the heading of evaluative morphology, we can consider honoric
systems such as that described for Classical Nahuatl verbs in Chapter 3. Recall that
causative and applicative morphology have been commandeered to express respect to
the subject of the clause. The meaning shift is sufciently great that it is possible to ap-
ply such morphology to a verb which is already in a (genuine) causative/applicative
form. This appears to be an instance of lexical morphology expressing a category
of honoric. It is thus somewhat different from the use of honoric pronouns in
European languages, for instance, in which a 2pl or 3sg feminine or 3pl form is the
honoric equivalent of a 2sg. In those cases we are dealing effectively with an hon-
oric naming strategy which pervades the whole grammar, so that in German, say,
the possessive pronoun in Can I borrow your pen? would be 3pl. The Nahuatl case
is different because it is just the causative/applicative morphology that expresses the
honorication.
In effect, we have a new honoric subparadigm, comparable to a passive sub-
paradigm or a past-tense subparadigm. A partial specication is given in the rule
schema shown in (67), assuming a privative triggering feature Hon.
(67) For a verb lexeme V,
GPF(V, Hon)
fsyn (V, Hon) = (GDP)
fsem (V, Hon) = subject honorication
fli (V, Hon) = (GDP)
I leave unspecied the exact semantic import of subject honorication. The point
is that the SYN and LI attributes remain unchanged. How do we specify the
FORM attribute? The least interesting solution is to treat the morphology as an
instance of accidental homophony, but its possible to capture this homophony
in a systematic fashion. For simplicity of exposition let us assume two variants
of the Hon feature, Hon:cause, Hon:appl (I dont know if these are systematic-
ally distinguished semantically). Then to specify the FORM attribute of each, we
simply refer the generalized paradigm function for Hon:cause/appl to the general-
ized paradigm function for the causative/applicative respectively. Assuming that the
a-structure alternations are triggered by features Cause and Appl, this means which
can write a simple rule of referral along the lines of (68) (with obvious abbreviatory
conventions).
(68) For a verb lexeme V, where contains Hon:cause/appl and is like except
that where contains Hon:cause/appl, contains Cause/Appl,
fform (V, ) = fform (V, )
6.10 Meaningless derivation

In Section 3.6 I stressed an extremely important fact about the kind of lexical re-
latedness that most linguists think of when they consider derivational morphology,
namely that a good deal of it is meaningless. This is clear enough with pairs such as
stand understand and take undertake , and groups such as transport trans-
late relate report, but it is very widespread throughout the lexicon of English, for
instance. Thus, although the derived lexemes in (69) are morphologically related to
their bases, they are not semantically related.
(69) Base Derivate
cat catty spiteful
allot allotment small area of land given to an individual
for vegetable gardening
reach overreach to thwart ones purposes by attempting
to do or gain too much
ape to ape to imitate
However, in each case we see instances of morphology which is clearly in some
sense part of the grammar of English and respects the combinatorics of English mor-
phology. How can such relationships be represented in a general model of lexical
relatedness?
The simplest assumption to make would be to claim that there is no relation of any
sort other than an etymological one. Thus, we would not segment catty into cat y,
but treat catty as an unanalysed unit. This is clearly the best solution for some types
of word which originate from etymologically complex words, such as window (Old
Norse vindr wind, auga eye), or husband (Old Norse hs house, bndi occupier
and tiller of the soil). However, even if we could justify this solution for Eng-
lish, it would be entirely inadequate to handle the thousands of non-compositional
prexed verbs in Russian, say, discussed in Chapter 3, since those verbs retain all the
inectional properties of their bases.
We could go to the opposite extreme and try to incorporate etymology into the
synchronic description of the lexicon. This seems to be the tack taken by Stockwell
and Minkova (2001), for instance, and it seems to be the guiding principle behind
much work conducted under the heading of Cognitive Linguistics, especially that
which focuses on metaphorical extension. However, if we take the notion of semantic

representation at all seriously then importing even a moderate degree of etymology
will lead to inconsistency. Thus, we might think that the verb to ape means something
like to imitate, in the manner that a monkey imitates, but this is wrong, linguistic-
ally and zoologically (monkeys are not apes). Similarly, a catty remark has nothing
remotely to do with cats.
An intermediate approach is to propose that morphological principles can be in-
terpreted both statically and dynamically (ofine/online). This means segmenting
the four derived words in (69) as respectively [cat] y, [allot] ment, over [reach],
and [[ape]], where the square brackets enclose a stem, and where conversion is rep-
resented by two sets of brackets. However, we dont have to say that forms such as
catty and to ape are delivered by the generalized paradigm function. Rather, we can
write the segmentation into the lexical entry for these lexemes without any other
commitment. To capture the (sometimes apparent) fact that such words are histor-
ically related to a base lexeme, we can record this fact by reference to the FORM of
the etymological base, but without reference to any other properties. Thus, for our
four examples we would have lexical representations along the lines of (7073) (with
obvious abbreviations and notational simplications; apeV distinguishes the verb to
ape from the noun, ape).
(70) fform (catty, u) = fform (cat, u) y

fsyn (catty, u) = Adj
fsem (catty, u) = SPITEFUL(x)
(71) fform (allotment, u) = fform (allot, u) ment

fsyn (allotment, u) = N
fsem (allotment, u) = VEGETABLE_PLOT(x)
(72) fform (overreach, u) = over fform (reach, u)

fsyn (overreach, u) = V
fsem (overreach, u) = GO_TOO_FAR(x)
(73) fform (apeV, u) = fform (ape, u)

fsyn (apeV, u) = V
fsem (apeV, u) = IMITATE(x, y)
While we may wish to claim that there are productive, regular, semantically com-
positional and hence paradigmatic instances of afxation by -y, -ment, and over-,
there doesnt seem to be any such paradigmatic noun-to-verb conversion process in
English. The conventional meaning of such a word is invariably dened contextu-
ally and in terms of world knowledge, cultural norms, and so on (Kiparsky, 1997).
What this means is that there is no N-to-V conversion process as such to call up in
dening verbs such as to ape. Yet this seems to miss the fact that such conversion is
very common and is, in an important sense, a resource available to English speakers
for coining lexemes (and one which is not necessarily available to speakers of other
languages).
A brute-force solution to this conundrum would be to assume that we can have a
generalized paradigm function dened over a feature Conv that delivers a verb from
a noun but fails to specify a semantic representation, along the lines of (74).
(74) Where ={Conv}, and N is the lexemic index of some noun,
GPF(N, )
fform (N, ) = fform (N, u)
fsyn (N, ) = E. . .
fsem (N, ) = [Event . . .]
fli (N, ) = (V = N)
The generalized paradigm function in (74) thus denes an abstract schema or tem-
plate whose details are lled in on an ad hoc basis, but whose skeleton is that of
a verb. We can, perhaps, think of (74) as something like a construction template or
schema in Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010b).
6.11 Implications of intermediate types for a model of lexical relatedness

In Chapter 1 I summarized the logically possible types of lexical relatedness that
emerge on the assumption of a four-dimensional lexical entry together with the as-
sumption that lexical information is factorized and hence in principle independent.
Here I divide the table shown there into two subtables. In Table 6.8 we see the 12 lo-
gically possible relatedness types on the assumption that a change in lexemic status is
accompanied by a change in semantics.
Note that the annotation in the FORM column is intended to mean that the
lexeme doesnt change any of its inected forms; that is, it retains the inectional
paradigm of the base lexeme, even if this contradicts general principles operating in
the language. The Russian stolovaja-nouns are instances of this. The pattern does not
include conversion as ordinarily construed, because conversion generally results in a
word of a new morphosyntactic class which assumes the inections of the new class
and therefore doesnt preserve FORM properties universally. Conversion is simply a
shift from the inectional paradigm of one morphosyntactic class to the inectional
paradigm of another morphosyntactic class without the need for overt marking of a
stem, and as such is effectively the same as ordinary afxation.
I have lumped together evaluative morphology with inherent inection, its closest
neighbour. Evaluative morphology alters semantic representations in the sense that
it adds connotations of endearment, disparagement, and so on. However, it doesnt
dene a new lexeme. The main differences between inherent inection and evaluative
morphology seem to lie in exactly what formal, morphological properties of the base
Table 6.8. Typological space for lexical relatedness
FORM SYN SEM LI
default representation
contextual inection +
m-inert transposition +
transposition + +
weak polysemy +
inherent inection
+ +
evaluative morphology
Angestellte(r) nouns + +
meaningful transposition + + +
(strong polysemy + +)
syntactically inert derivation + + +
m-inert derivation + + +
canonical derivation + + + +
are preserved. Normally, inherent inection doesnt redene gender or inectional

class afliation, for instance, but this is common with evaluative morphology.
The pattern + + corresponds to a meaning-bearing transposition which pre-
serves the inectional properties of the base. The converted departicipial nouns of
Russian, German, and many other languages belong in this category, for instance
Angestellte(r) employee.
The pattern labelled weak polysemy corresponds to the types of polysemy in-
volving coercion across qualia. In many cases this represents important patterns of
systematic polysemy.
The pattern labelled strong polysemy corresponds to polysemous representations
that are best thought of as homonymy despite the etymological connection between
the lexical entries. Textbook examples such as mouth (of cave, river, . . .) belong here.
This type of polysemy is generally non-systematic, and arises from unpredictable pat-
terns of metaphoric extension and so on. For this reason it is not really part of a
systematic model of lexical relatedness.
We could consider any of the six logically possible transpositions involving major
lexical categories and imagine that they were morphologically inert. The least likely
type would be a transposition from N/A to nite verb, because it would be very dif-
cult to show that the noun/adjective had undergone transposition in the rst place in
a language that had nite verb morphology. However, some of the constructions of
the Philippine languages such as Tagalog are reminiscent of this situation. One could,
in principle, analyse the Japanese nite verb head of a relative clause as an instance
of this pattern (m-inert V-to-A transposition), and this would probably simplify the
syntax. In Spencer (2003a) I point out that attributively used nouns in productive NN
compounds such as London bus could, for all we know, be morpholexically adjectives
that have not undergone relational adjective formation, so this would be an instance
of an m-inert N-to-A transposition. In many languages an adjective is used to de-
note the name of the property denoted by that adjective. In languages with limited
adjectival inection this might lead to a situation in which we found m-inert A-to-
N transposition. In English, we could marginally argue for this pattern in examples
like Theres too much red in this painting, but the example isnt completely convin-
cing, because the transposition isnt possible with comparative or superlative forms
(though these are hardly canonical instances of inection, of course). Since adjectival
inection tends to be related to concord morphosyntax, and since concord is pre-
cisely what would be lost in an A-to-N transposition, we dont expect to see m-inert
transpositions which preserve the full adjectival paradigm in the way that m-inert
derivation does. Note that this situation is distinct from the case of the conversion of
participles into nouns. There we do not have a transposition, because the semantic
function role of the adjective is replaced by the R role of the noun, so that the derived
word can denote the highest argument of the base and not serve as the name of the
property denoted by the base.
Perhaps the most promising sources of m-inert transpositions, however, would be
V-to-N nominalizations. One somewhat degenerate example of this pattern would
be the innito sostantivato or substantivierter Innitiv of Romance and German (dis-
cussed in some detail in Chapter 8). A more convincing example would be instances
of what Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993) calls sentential nominalizations, in which a con-
struction with the form of a nite clause is treated as a noun phrase without any
additional morphology.
The pattern labelled syntactically inert derivation would correspond to a relation
in which the derived word preserved exactly the syntax of the base lexeme. Depending
on how we dene syntax, this is either vanishingly rare or quite common. If we adopt
a weak characterization of the notion same syntax, then we could say that familiar
examples such as boy boyhood (noun), write rewrite (verb), and happy unhappy
(adjective) instantiate this form of relatedness. However, derived words of this kind
always differ distributionally in some way or other from their bases, so it would be
easy to exclude such a possibility by adopting a sufciently strict denition of same
syntactic distribution.
In general the individuation of lexemes is meaning-driven, in the sense that we
expect that two distinct lexemes will have distinct semantic representations. If two
lexical entries are associated with the same cognitive meaning, then we should be
unwilling to treat them as separate lexemes. However, it is certainly possible in prin-
ciple for the lexicon to contain distinct entries with the same semantic representation.
This is precisely what we nd with (perfect) synonymy (see Table 6.9). However,
perfect synonymy is not the kind of lexical relatedness that is grammatically real-
ized; rather, it is a relation between existing lexical entries. Now, in verbal art and
other areas we do nd many cases in which speakers actively create synonymous
Table 6.9. Lexical relatedness without meaning change
FORM SYN SEM LI
not logically possible +

perfect synonymy + +
m-inert transpositional lexeme + +
transpositional lexeme + + +
expressions. An obvious example is the kennings of Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon po-
etry, in which recurrent entities or phenomena such as the sea are referred to by a
wide variety of metaphorical expressions (usually in the form of compounds). But
this is word (or phrase) creation, and out of the ambit of a model of grammatically
realized relatedness. Another instance of the need to create synonyms comes with
so-called mother-in-law language, in which certain words acquire a taboo status and
have to be replaced with others, either by metaphorical extension or by just widening
the extension of existing terms. Again, this is not grammatically realized relatedness.
The rst type given in Table 6.9 is logically impossible in the sense that it would
refer to a pair of lexical entries that were identical in all respects except for their
lexemic index. Such a pure duplication would have no role, and it couldnt possibly
be realized by a grammatically dened process.
The remaining two types of relationship are kinds of transposition because they
involve a change in the syntactic representation as well as possibly the morphology,
but without a change in semantics. The type that I have labelled transpositional lex-
eme is, I will argue, instantiated by old friends such as English relational adjectives
and deadjectival property nominalizations (as well as, possibly, certain types of action
nominal). Thus, as I shall argue in Chapter 9, the adjective prepositional seems to be
a distinct lexeme from the base preposition, even though its impossible to detect any
change in the meaning of prepositional. M-inert transpositional lexemes are harder
to nd. The m-inert examples that we have examined so far have generally fallen
into two types. Either there is an additional semantic predicate, in which case we are
dealing with a kind of derivation or other kind of between-lexeme relatedness (of the
stolovaja type), or there is no added semantics but also no reason to treat the trans-
posed word as representing a new lexeme. Since the existence of m-inert relatedness
rather depends on the precise details of a languages morphology, its difcult to be
categorical about such cases.
In Chapter 7 I shall look in more detail at the difference between transpositional
lexemes and intra-lexemic transpositions. I shall argue that the intra-lexemic trans-
positions are precisely those which tend to give rise to syntagmatically mixed cat-
egories, and that this is one of the chief properties distinguishing such transpositions
from phenomena such as English relational adjectives.
7
The form and function

of argument-structure
representations
7.1 Introduction
In this chapter I look in more detail at the nature of argument structure and alterna-
tions dened over argument structures. I rst present a model of argument structure,
which is intended to be an essentially generic description of proposals that have been
widely discussed in the literature. However, for concreteness I couch some of the
description within a form of LFG. Some practitioners of LFG have argued that we
need a level of argument-structure representation (A-STR) in addition to a level of
semantic representation and a level at which grammatical relations are realized. I
shall briey summarize the claims particularly of Manning and his collaborators, and
of Matsumoto. I shall, however, elaborate on the standard models in two ways. In
this chapter I shall propose an A-STR model of attributive modication, essentially
an LFG-inspired implementation of the proposals of Spencer (1999). In Chapter 8 I
will then use this as the basis for a detailed discussion of transpositions, particularly
transpositions from verbs and nouns to adjectives.
7.2 Justifying argument structure

The idea that grammatical descriptions require appeal to a level of argument struc-
ture mediating between semantic representations proper and other types of syntactic
representation is not uncontroversial. Even models of description such as that of
Jackendoff (1990), which has had a considerable inuence on the approach adop-
ted here, eschew a separate level, preferring to describe the elements I refer to here as
a-structure participants by indexing semantic arguments in lexical-conceptual rep-
resentations. In this section I will try to offer a brief justication for adopting a
level of argument-structure representation, even though it shows much overlap with
semantic representations on the one hand and other types of syntactic representation
on the other. Discussion of argument structure typically focuses on core arguments
Argument-structure representations 277
of a predicate, what I have called the participant roles (corresponding broadly speak-
ing to the terms of Relational Grammar). There are well-known notorious problems
in distinguishing core arguments from (partially) subcategorized adjuncts, and there
are even difculties in some languages distinguishing subjects from topics. I will
completely ignore these difculties, and try to concentrate on relatively clear cases.
The principal reason why we might posit an additional a-structure level is so as
to capture generalizations over semantic representations or syntactic representations
which would require some sort of disjunctive listing if stated in purely semantic or
syntactic terms. In other words, we justify the additional level in the classical fashion,
by identifying mismatches between semantic structures and a-structure, and between
purely syntactic structures and a-structure. A prime example of such a set of mis-
matches is, of course, found with valency alternations of various kinds. Here I will
describe two typical types of example.
In many languages we can identify a passive construction in which any trans-
itive verb (and, perhaps, some intransitive verbs) alternate with a construction in
which the active voice subject argument is demoted. Usually, the direct-object ar-
gument is then promoted to the position of subject. In many languages, the precise
details of these promotions and demotions is rather complex, and active-voice ob-
jects will sometimes retain object properties (such as being marked with accusative
case), suggesting that demotion of subject is the primary element of the construction.
In general, it is not possible to associate any additional meaning with the passive con-
struction (pace Pinker, 1989), although the overall change in the morphosyntax of the
passivized construction usually brings with it at least a shift in the information struc-
ture. In some cases, the passive construction is largely homophonous with a different
construction, the impersonal construction, in which demotion of the subject role is
taken to the logical extreme of removing the subject argument altogether. Moreover,
in other cases the passive construction has been co-opted by the grammar to express
additional grammatical meanings such as evidentiality (Blevins, 2003a). However, the
typical passive construction is an asemantic rearrangement of subject/object roles.
Since the passive alternation is asemantic, it cant be described at the level of
lexical-conceptual or semantic representation. However, in some cases it is im-
possible to provide a unied description of the alternation in any form of syn-
tactic representation. Consider again the Russian passive, introduced in Chapter 3.
Semantically telic verbs in Russian appear in two grammatical aspect forms, perfect-
ive (pfv) and imperfective (ipfv), e.g. postroit build.pfv stroit build.ipfv.
This is a grammatical fact about Russian verbs, not a lexical fact. Thus, grammatical
(verbal) aspect is on a par with any other (inectional) functional category such as
tense or mood:
(1) a. Innostrannaja rma stroit tot dom

foreign rm build.3sg.prs.ipfv this house
A foreign rm is building this house.
b. Innostrannaja rma postroila tot dom

foreign rm build.3sg.pst.pfv this house
A foreign rm built this house.
Russian transitive verbs alternate for active passive voice. In the perfective aspect
the passive is expressed periphrastically, by means of the perfective passive participle
(ppp):
(2) Dom byl postro-en god nazad/innostrannoj rmoj

house was built.pfv-ppp year ago/foreign.ins rm.ins
The house was built a year ago/by a foreign rm.
However, this periphrastic construction is not available to imperfective verbs. They

co-opt the reexive construction using the sufx -sja:
(3) Dom stroit-sja innostrannoj rmoj

house build.3sg-refl foreign.ins rm.ins
The house is being built by a foreign rm.
The difference is conditioned solely by the verbal aspect. Moreover, the imperfective
reexive passive can be used even where the English translation equivalent is cum-
bersome because of a collision of auxiliaries (cf. The house has been being built for four
years):
(4) Dom stroit-sja ue pjatyj god

house build.3sg-refl already fth year
The house has been under construction for four years.
One of the reasons why we know that the perfective/imperfective contrast is gram-
matical and not lexical is the historic present. It is possible to refer to punctual (i.e.
semantically perfective) events in the past using a present-tense form. However, the
present tense is only found in the imperfective aspect (present-tense morphology on
a perfective verb realizes the perfective future tense).
(5) Innostrannaja rma stroit tot dom tol ko god nazad i vot . . .
foreign rm build.3sg.prs.ipfv this house only year ago and see . . .
A foreign rm builds this house only a year ago (and see what happens).
The historic present version of (2) therefore has to be constructed using the imper-
fective reexive passive form:
(6) Dom stroit-sja god nazad/kakoj-to innostrannoj rmoj . . .

house build.3sg.prs-refl year ago/foreign.ins rm.ins
The house was built a year ago/by some foreign rm or other and . . .
Given that the syntax of the passive varies so drastically depending on verbal as-
pect there is clearly no way of stating that both periphrastic and reexive variants are
effectively expressions of the same construction. This is particularly important for

the historical present variant of the perfective past, where it is the morphosyntactic
form of the verb as determined by the morphological choice of tense, not its per-
fective interpretation, that determines the form of the construction overall. At some
level we need to be able to say that there is an expression with the form buildforeign
rm, house and a passive alternant, PASS(buildforeign rm, house), and then al-
low independent principles to tell us that (2) and (4) are aspectual pairs, and that (6)
is synonymous with (2).
Another set of phenomena which has been used to justify the type of argument-
structure level presupposed here is certain of the valency alternations of Balinese,
described by Arka (2003). Arka deploys the notion of argument structure argued for
by Manning (1996: 34f.). Balinese has a number of distinct voice alternations, two of
which are important for the notion of argument structure, the Active Voice (av) and
the Object Voice (ov), illustrated in (7a, b) (Arka, 2003: 5f.).
(7) a. Polisi ng-ejuk Nyoman

police av-arrest Nyoman
b. Nyoman ejuk polisi
Nyoman ov.arrest police
A policeman arrested Nyoman.
Arka demonstrates that both these types of clause are transitive, but that in (7a) it is
polisi that maps to the SUBJECT grammatical function, while in (7b) it is Nyoman
that surfaces as the subject.1
The a-structure representation of a three-place predicate ngejang put is shown in
(8) (slightly adapted from Arka, 2003: 128):2

(8) a. ngejang put put

A-SUBJ . . .

T-ARG . . .

NON-TARG ...
b. put(Ag), (Pt)(Loc)
1 Note that the Object Voice form is not a kind of passive. Balinese has three distinct constructions
which could be called passive, none of which maps a monotransitive clause to a monotransitive clause in
the way we see in (7).
2 A-SUBJ means agentive subject, T-ARG/NON-TARG are, respectively, term and non-term
arguments, i.e. direct and oblique arguments.
The representation in (8b) includes notional labels for the semantic roles of the three
arguments. A more accurate representation would not include such information:
(8) c. put,
The relation between the voice constructions and grammatical function realization is
relatively simple. For transitive predicates in the Active Voice it is the rst argument,
the A-SUBJ that gets mapped to the SUBJECT role. For transitives in the Object Voice
it is any argument except the A-SUBJ that gets mapped to the SUBJECT role. In the
case of ditransitives, such as baang give, this means that either the Theme object or
the Benefactive object can appear as the SUBJECT:
(9) a. Theme subject
[Abesik]SUBJ mula baang tiang beli Man
one really ov.give I brother Man
I really gave you (brother Man) only one.
b. Benefactive subject
[Bli Man]SUBJ mula baang tiang abesik
brother Man really ov.give I one
You (brother Man) are really the person that I gave one.
By carefully considering the way that arguments of verbs are mapped to gram-
matical functions (including various types of clausal complement) in raising and
control constructions, Arka demonstrates that there is a complex and far from
one-to-one mapping between the two levels. And yet the Active, Object, and Pass-
ive Voice constructions can be described fairly straightforwardly in terms of the
argument-structure level.
The argument-structure level of representation can thus be seen as an abstraction
away from detail at two levels. First, we abstract away from semantic detail leaving
behind just those aspects of the semantic representation, the predicate-argument or-
ganization, that play a particular role in the morphosyntax. Second, we abstract away
from functional syntactic information. For instance, we abstract away from word
order, including word-order alternations that realize grammatical functions, and
likewise we abstract away from case marking or verb-argument agreement morpho-
logy. This is crucial if the passive construction is to be described as a unitary process,
for instance. However, we also frequently ignore the semantically interpretable func-
tional information such as the tenseaspectmood properties of a clause, or number,
deniteness, or quantication on nouns. However, this is generally more of an
expedience when describing valency alternations. Part of the rationale of the E ar-
gument of a verb is that the verb should have an argument that can be bound by
tense/aspect operators, and part of the rationale for the nouns R argument is that the
noun should have an argument that can be bound by determiners or quantiers.
Assuming that we accept the need for a level of argument-structure representation,

we must now ask what the role of other parts of speech ishow do adjectives, ad-
verbials, and prepositions gure in argument-structure representations? I shall have
little to say in this book about prepositions. As far as argument structure is concerned,
we can say that a preposition is semantically a two-place predicate (usually) and that
it will therefore be a two-place relation at a-structure: thus, a semantic representa-
tion such as [Relation ON(book, table)] corresponds to an a-structure representation
along the lines of onPRelbook, table, where PRel is the semantic function role
(P-Relation) corresponding to a preposition. As far as verb-modifying adverbs are
concerned, I shall assume that these typically have the function of modifying the
E role of the verb, as in much current literature on the semantico-syntax of verb
modication, and shall say no more about these elements.
Adjectives, and other types of phrase that can function as attributive modiers,
such as prepositional phrases, participial phrases, and relative clauses, are now left as
the only part of speech or phrase type that lacks a systematic description in terms
of argument structure. This is clearly very unsatisfactory. Participial clauses and
relative clauses will obviously have their own internal argument structure because
they are based on verbs, but the standard treatments of argument structure have no
way of expressing the fact that they are attributive modiers in terms of a-structure
representations.
Adjectives, too, have an argument structure of their own, in the sense that they
are one- or two-place predicates. Thus, an adjective such as tall has at least one
participant role: tallA*x. Some adjectives are transitive, in that they dene a
relation between two participants, such as proud-of A*x, y. Actually, one-place ad-
jectival predicates may well become two-place predicates, at least in languages with
a grammaticalized system of adjectival comparison. Thus, taller-than is arguably a
two-place predicate, in which the comparative morphology can be seen as a type
of valency-increasing a-structure alternation. It is difcult to see how morphosyn-
tactic constructions such as the comparative can be viewed as anything other than an
a-structure alternation in a model which countenances a level of a-structure, and so
we had better accept that at some level adjectives have their own a-structure.
I conclude that there is prima facie need for a level of a-structure, and that mem-
bers of all three major parts of speech, V, N, and A, have their own a-structure
including a semantic function role corresponding to eventuality, referentiality, and
attributive modication.
7.3 Semantics and syntax

7.3.1 The semantic function role
In Chapter 3 I introduced the three semantic function roles, E, R, and A*. Some ver-
sion of the Event role, E, has been deployed in a variety of ways by authors such as
Grimshaw (1990), Kratzer (1996), and Zwarts (1992), and it can be said to make an ap-
pearance in other linguistic frameworks, too, as in the [SIT s] (situation) attribute of
HPSG, or the s event variable deployed by Wunderlich and colleagues in a number of
works (for instance, Wunderlich, 1997). The E role has been deployed as an argument
that can be bound by TAM operators and by modiers, such as VP- or sentential ad-
juncts. Some have argued that we should distinguish between dynamic events and
stative situations by means of the E role: only dynamic events are truly eventive and
have the E role (Kratzer, 1996, Zwarts, 1992). I see little to recommend such a move,
not least because of the considerable difculty in determining a clear-cut distinction
between dynamic events and non-dynamic states (Higginbotham, 1985). I shall treat
all predicates that are anchored temporally as eventualities. Broadly speaking, this
means that any word class that functions essentially as a verb in a clause will have its
E role.
A common noun is furnished with the R role, and this is generally the limit of
the argument structure of a noun. In Williamss original proposal (1981a) one of the
principal functions of the R role was to be linked to the argument roles of predicates.
In this way we represent the idea that a term is an argument of a predicate in the
absence of the full machinery of a semantic representation. Thus, the predication
The tree fell would be represented in terms of argument structure as a kind of binding
of the x argument of the verb to the R argument of the noun and a binding of the
E argument by a tense operator (see, for instance, Higginbotham, 1985), as in (10a)
corresponding to a simplied semantic representation (10b).
(10) a. treeR* Pasti (fallEi x*)

b. x.tree (x) PAST(fall (x))
I shall continue to represent the coindexing of arguments by subscripting an argu-

ments semantic function role label. For instance, I shall rewrite (10a) as (11) (ignoring
tense).
(11) treeRx fallEx)
A noun normally has no other argument structure beyond the R role, but it can
be argued that an inalienably possessed noun such as a kin term or body-part term
has two arguments, the referential argument and the possessor argument (Barker,
1995). Thus, corresponding to xs daughter/leg, we will have a-structure representa-
tions such as daughterRx, legRx. Such an R role can now be associated with
the expression of nominal properties such as number morphology or the licensing of
a denite article determiner.3
3 I return to the argument structure of inalienably possessed, or relational, nouns in Chapter 8 and
especially in Section 9.3.
When we come to consider deverbal and deadjectival nominalizations, it will be-

come particularly obvious that we need to be able to deploy an R role if we are going
to make use of the E role: if we nominalize a verb and turn a clause into a kind of
nominal phrase, then its difcult to see how we can get by without assuming some
kind of semantic function role for the nominal if we are going to posit one for the
verb. Similarly, if we take seriously the idea that attributive modication should be
represented at a-structure, then we will have to have some way of capturing the fact
that a participle is at once a verb and an attributive adjective.
I mentioned in Chapter 2 that comparatively little attention has been devoted to
the syntax of attributive modication, and in particular there has been virtually no
discussion of the way that attributes should be represented in argument structure.
Here I elaborate a little on these observations. One of the more detailed discussions
of how the syntax and semantics of attributive modication is supposed to work is
provided in Dalrymples (2001: 256) synopsis of Lexical Functional Grammar.
In English, at the level of phrase structure, an adjective heads a phrase, AP, which
is the sister to an N category. These APs can be iterated, of course. The c-structure
representation is mapped to an f-structure representation of the kind shown in (12)
for the expression tall Swedish man.
(12) tall Swedish man

PRED MAN

PRED

TALL
ADJ

PRED SWEDISH

The head noun is modied by a set of modiers in (12).

In semantics an attributive modier is typically represented as a one-place pre-
dicate: tall (x). In the typed predicate notation adopted here from Jackendoff, this
would correspond to [Property TALL(x)]. Now, representations such as these corre-
spond indifferently to predicative usage and attributive usage. Broadly speaking, both
the expression The tree is tall and the tall tree will correspond to a formula along
the lines of tall (x) tree (x) (or using our typed predicates, [Property TALL(x)]
[Thing TREE(x)]). More accurately, what such representations suggest is that at-
tributive modication is expressed as a kind of predication in logical form. This
can be seen, for instance, from Dalrymples discussion of the intersective adjective
Swedish (Dalrymple, 2001: 258).4 The meaning of Swedish man is presented as (13).
4 Gradable adjectives such as tall are analysed as being predicated with respect to some standard of
comparison, to ensure that a tall child is not construed as an absolutely tall entity, say, compared to a short
giraffe (see Chapter 9 for further discussion), but I will ignore that subtlety here since it has no bearing on
the general point.
(13) x.Swedish (x) man (x)
In standard approaches to the semantics of such expressions, going back to the

proposals of Richard Montague (e.g. Montague, 1974), it has been customary to treat
adjectives as expressions of the semantic type e, t, e, t, that is, expressions which
take a property expression, such as x.man (x), and deliver another expression of
the same type. In the higher-order logic adopted in these models, this can be easily
achieved by abstracting over properties, as in (14).
(14) Px.Swedish (x) P(x)
We apply (14) to an expression of type P such as x.man (x), as in (15).
(15) [Px.Swedish (x) P(x)](x.man (x))
Lambda-conversion then gives us (13).

The device of abstracting over properties permits us to represent the idea of
attributive modication while still deploying the formal apparatus of predication.
However, there remains an obvious and serious problem with relating expressions
such as (15) to normal syntactic structures. In (15) the adjective is treated, in effect,
as the head of the expression, and the noun as its dependent, reversing the head
dependent relationship found in syntactic representations (see Beck, 2002, for further
discussion of this point). We therefore need to ensure that the mapping from se-
mantic to syntactic representations not only presents attributes as attributes and not
predicates, but also presents attributes as dependents and not heads.
The way to achieve this is via the intermediate stage of argument structure, spe-
cically, by means of the A* semantic function role. Recall that the A* role is linked
to the highest participant role of the adjectival predicate, and that attributive modi-
cation consists of coindexing the A* role and the head nouns R role. As we can
see in (16b) we thereby map a straightforward coordinated set of predicates in the
semantic representation, (16a), to a representation in which the Property predicate is
subordinated to the Thing predicate, as required for attributive modication.
(16) a. [Property TALL(x)] [Thing TREE(x)]

b. tallA*x x treeR*(y)
Notice that the A* role does not directly translate the typing of the TALL predicate
as a Property; rather, it creates a representation of attributive modication, which is
a syntactic relation, not a logical or semantic one.
In Section 7.3.2 I discuss how argument-structure representations have been incor-
porated into LFG and show how the semantic function roles can be accommodated
to such a model.
7.3.2 Argument-structure represented as AVMs

At various points in the book I shall be comparing representations proposed within
the LFG framework with some of the proposals made here. For this reason it will
be useful to see how the predicate-argument-structure representations given so far
translate into the conventional LFG attributevalue matrix notation. A number of
authors have made proposals of their own for incorporating a-structure represent-
ations into LFG, including Andrews and Manning (1999), Matsumoto (1996), and
Mohanan (1994). I will present my own notation in order to simplify comparisons
between my own representations and those adopted in various frameworks in the
literature.
The level of argument-structure representation distinguishes core participants
(which generally appear in the syntax as subjects and complements) from others
(which are generally interpreted as adjuncts). The core arguments are often called
terms. The AVM corresponding to the principal predication I shall label REL
(for relation). Following Matsumoto (1996: 12), I shall represent participant roles
with the bland labels ARG1, ARG2, and so on, except where it is convenient to
provide some sort of mnemonic semantic label such as AGENT, INSTRUMENT,
or whatever. Of importance will be the representation of eventive arguments, corre-
sponding to subordinate clauses of various sorts in LFG f-structure representations
(the COMP and XCOMP grammatical relations). For the present we will simply say
that one of the arguments of a predicate can be of type EVENT, consisting itself of
an AVM of the form [REL [. . .], ARG1 [. . .], . . .]. In the same way that an ARG1 role
(say, AGENT) is mapped by general or specic principles to a SUBJECT grammat-
ical relation, so the EVENT a-structure role will be mapped to a COMP, XCOMP,
or ADJT grammatical relation as appropriate. However, I will have little to say about
such mappings.
The three principal a-structure semantic function roles of R, E, and A* can be
treated as attributes taking as values the label of the predicate and its array of par-
ticipant arguments. In AVMs, I shall provide the semantic roles with the labels
REF(ERENT), EVENT, and ATTR(IBUTE).
The REF attribute will take the label naming the noun as its value (an inalienably
possessed relational noun will also have an extra argument position).
(17) Examples of noun argument structures

a. REF tree
b. Inalienably possessed noun (relational noun)

REF daughter/legARG1
The EVENT attribute has already been mentioned as a potential argument of a pre-
dicate, consisting of a REL attribute and an array of participant arguments. Actually,
all eventive predications will be treated as belonging to type EVENT, consisting of a

RELation between various ARGuments. Thus, the EVENT attribute in Matsumotos
representations, which is restricted to serving as the sentential argument of some
predicator, is generalized to all instances of eventive predication, whether of a main
clause or a subordinate clause.
(18) Harriet left

REL leaveARG
EVENT
ARG Harriet
Harriet tried to leave

REL try ARG, EVENT

ARG Harriet

EVENT

EVENT REL leaveARG
ARG []
The ATTRIBUTE feature will be somewhat more complex. An attributive adjective

is (typically) a one-place predicate which has to be associated with a word of class REF
in such a way that its argument is identied with the REF word. This is the point of
the asterisk notation for attributive modication. One way to reect this in AVMs
is to assume that the adjective has an empty participant argument position which is
linked by re-entrancy to a REF attribute. This is illustrated in (19), where participant
arguments are labelled ARGn to cross-refer them to the appropriate places in the
predicate representations.
(19) tall NOUN

REF noun

ATTR tallARG1
ARG1 [ ]
NP fell NP

EVENT fellARG1, ARG2

ARG1 [ ]
ARG2 [ ]
7.3.3 The causative as a case study for lexical relatedness

Since at least the time of Aissens (1974) study it has been customary to treat causat-
ive constructions, whether expressed analytically or synthetically, as either biclausal
or monoclausal. In a biclausal causative construction, the subject of the embedded

predication retains crucial subject properties, such as being the antecedent of a re-
exive. The English make-causative is of this kind: The mother made the children
wash SELF can only be interpreted with the reexive SELF referring to children
(themselves) and not mother (*herself ). On the other hand, in many languages we
see a monoclausal causative, in which the causative formative and the base verb
form a complex predicate. Then, the reexive would only be allowed to refer to
mother.
In LFG terms, biclausal generally means that the causatives f-structure em-
beds a complement clause under the causative predicate (typically a clause with
a controlled SUBJECT position, i.e. XCOMP), while monoclausal means that the
causative predicate is in some sense fused with the base verb to give rise to a
single clausal f-structure with no embedded clause. This raises the important ques-
tion of how such a fused causative structure is to be represented. I return to that
question presently. However, as pointed out by Alsina (1992), there is another di-
mension of variation with causatives which can be seen when the caused event is
itself transitive. Semantically, we can think of such an event in two distinct ways:
either the causer acts on the causee so that the causee brings about the caused event,
or the causer acts on the base verbs object in such a way as to induce the causee
to act.
In some languages this distinction is grammaticalized. Alsina illustrates this dis-
tinction with examples from Catalan and from the Bantu language Chichewa, as
illustrated in (20).
(20) a. Nungu i-na-phik-its-a kadzidzi maungu

porcupine subj-pst-cook-caus-fv owl pumpkins
The porcupine made the owl cook the pumpkins
b. Nungu i-na-phik-its-a maungu kwa kadzidzi
porcupine subj-pst-cook-caus-fv pumpkins to owl
The porcupine had the pumpkins cooked by the owl
In (20a) the causer, the porcupine, acts on the owl, the causee. Semantically, there-
fore, this type of causative resembles an English locution with persuade, force, or
some such predicate. In (20b), however, the porcupine acts on the pumpkins, in such
a way that the owl ends up cooking them. On this interpretation the causation is
somewhat less direct. Alsina argues that in both cases causation must be thought
of as a three-place predicate, roughly, Agent acts on Patient to bring about event.
The Patient argument of the causative predicate is then identied either with the
causee, as in (20a), or with the object of the base verb, as in (20b). This is illustrated
schematically in (21, 22).
(21) Type I causative
cause ag pat, Event ... (pat) . . .
SUBJ, OBJ OBJ

(where is the highest theta role)
(22) Type II causative
cause ag pat, Event (ag) ... (pat) . . .
SUBJ, OBJ OBL
Alsina adduces a variety of diagnostics to show that in examples such as (20) we

have a different relationship between the causative predicate and the arguments. For
instance, (23) is unacceptable essentially for semantic reasons: Chatsalira cannot be
acting on the noise so as to make it audible to the children.
(23) a. Chatsalira a-ku-mv-ets-a ana phokoso

Chatsalira s-prs-hear-caus-fv children noise
Chatsalira is making the children hear the noise
b. * Chatsalira a-ku-mv-ets-a phokoso (kwa ana)
Interestingly, the semantic distinction observed by Alsina is independent of the ques-

tion of biclausal vs monoclausal morphosyntax. Both causative construction types in
Chichewa are monoclausal, even though the expression of arguments in (20a) would
suggest a biclausal organization.
Matsumoto (1996: 133f.), working within the LFG framework, argues that mor-
phological causatives in Japanese, too, have different interpretations depending on
the precise nature of the argument-structure representations, but in addition can be
monoclausal or biclausal depending on their precise meaning. Japanese causatives
are expressed by a very productive sufx, -(s)ase. When the base verb is intransitive
we nd two types of morphosyntactic causative construction, distinguished by the
way they mark the causee argument. In one case the causee is marked by the direct
object (accusative) particle o, while in the other case the causee is marked by the
indirect object (dative) particle ni:5
(24) a. Jon wa Biru o hasir-ase-ta

John top Bill acc run-caus-pst
John made Bill run.
5 I normalize the transcription slightly in examples cited from Matsumotos text.

b. Jon wa Biru ni hasir-ase-ta

John top Bill dat run-caus-pst
John made Bill run.
Matsumoto distinguishes two main interpretations of the causative, inducing and

permissive, corresponding broadly to English make and let causatives respectively.
The inducing type is subdivided into persuasive and coercive types, corresponding
broadly to the English persuade and force. The permissive type is divided into
explicit and implicit subtypes. In an explicit permissive, the causer actively does
something to allow the causee to act. In the implicit subtype, the causer simply fails
to prevent the causee from acting. The four types are summarized in (25).

persuasive ni-causatives

inducing

coercive o-causatives
(25) causative

explicit ni-causatives

permissive
implicit o-causatives
When the base lexeme is a transitive verb, it is not possible to mark both the causee
and the base verbs direct object with o, because of a very general surface constraint,
the double-o constraint, which prevents two constituents in a clause from both be-
ing marked with o. With causativized transitive verbs, the causee is marked with ni,
whatever the interpretation.6
Matsumoto argues that in some uses the causative construction is biclausal, but in
other uses it is monoclausal. The principal tests for biclausality are the usual tests for
the subjecthood of the causee argument. In Japanese, these include reexivization,
but also subject honorication. It is possible to honour the person denoted by the
subject argument of a clause using a periphrastic construction o-V ni naru, where V
is the main verb (adapted from Matsumoto, 1996: 27):
(26) a. Sensei wa hon o o-yomi ni nari-masi-ta

teacher top book acc o-read ni naru-polite-pst
The teacher read a book
b. * Taroo wa hon o o-yomi ni nari-masi-ta
Taro top book acc o-read ni naru-polite-pst
Intended: Taro read a book.
6 This is slightly confusing from a cross-linguistic perspective because Japanese causatives are typically,
though not always, biclausal, but dative case marking of the causee is usually found with monoclausal
types. The discrepancy is due solely to the surface case marking constraint.
The variant in (26) is unacceptable because a speaker will only refer to a person
with a personal name such as Taro if they are of equal or lower social rank than
the speaker, and it is only possible to honorify someone of higher rank than one-
self. (Teachers are prototypical examples of people with high social status.) The
o-V ni naru construction is useful as a diagnostic because the naru component is
itself a verb (its original meaning as a lexical verb is become). In a causative con-
struction, there therefore turns out to be a choice as to which component of the
construction to mark with the causative sufx: (i) o-V-(s)ase ni naru or (ii) o-V ni
nar-ase-ru. If it is possible to mark the base verb for subject honorication as in
(i), then this suggests that the causee is still syntactically active as the subject of
the clause headed by that lexical verb. Matsumoto (1996: 135) cites the examples in
(27) to show that both a ni-marked causee and an o-marked causee can function as
subjects.
(27) a. Sensei ni wa [manozoku ga iku made] o-yasumi no nar-asete

teacher ni top satisfaction nom go till o-rest cop naru-caus
oku no ga ii desyoo
leave nmlz nom good cop
It would be good to leave the teacher to have a rest till s/he is satised.
b. Sensei o [manozoku ga iku made] o-yasumi no nar-asete oku
teacher acc satisfaction nom go till o-rest cop naru-caus leave
no ga ii desyoo
nmlz nom good cop
It would be good to leave the teacher to have a rest till s/he is satised.
Matsumoto shows that the causativized verb can be the target of such type (i) sub-
ject honorication only if it does not express the inducing interpretation with the
object o marker, i.e. the inducing coercive type. Conversely, the whole causative can
be the target of type (ii) subject honorication only if it does express the coercive
reading. Matsumoto takes this as evidence that the coercive subtype is a monoclausal
predicate, while the persuasive subtype and the two types of permissive are biclausal
in structure.7
Matsumoto assumes that the grammar must distinguish three related levels of
representation, which he presents in the form of attributevalue matrices: semantic
7 It is entertaining to compare the permissive causative constructions in Japanese with their translation
equivalents in Urdu (Butt, 1995: 35f.). The Japanese construction is headed by a single morphological word
but has the syntax of two clauses. The Urdu construction is the mirror-image: it is monoclausal even
though it is constructed from a light verb de and the oblique innitive form of the base verb. That is, it
consists of two morphological and syntactic words, and yet it shows the syntax of a single clause.
structure (corresponding broadly to Jackendoffs conception of lexical conceptual

structure), argument structure (a-structure), and standard LFG functional structure
(f-structure). In a-structure representations, the arguments are given semantic role
names such as AGENT and EXPERIENCER, though Matsumoto (1996: 11) points
out that this is just for convenience. The meaning-bearing elements in a-structure
representations are given the label REL, which functions much like the label PRED
at f-structure.
A crucial aspect of a-structure representations is the notion of EVENT argu-
ment and SUBEVENT argument. These are both types of eventive predicate which
themselves serve as arguments of a predicatefor example, a verb taking a sen-
tential complement. The arguments of the EVENT predicate are mapped onto the
f-structure representation of a subordinate clause (for instance an XCOMP attrib-
ute) in the normal way. However, the arguments of a SUBEVENT argument are
not mapped to their own clause. Rather, the SUBEVENT forms a complex predic-
ate at f-structure that incorporates one or more of the arguments of the SUBEVENT
into the new predicate. When the SUBEVENT is an argument of a CAUSE pre-
dicate, this means we have a representation of a monoclausal causative. In such a
causative one of the arguments of the CAUSE predicate is fused with one of the
arguments of the SUBEVENT, following the proposals of Alsina (1992). Matsumoto
argues that this is a necessary condition for a SUBEVENT (his Fused Argument Con-
dition, p. 19). The relevant structure is seen schematically in (28) for a sentence of the
type John made Mary read the book in a language with a monoclausal morphological
causative:
(28) Schematic monoclausal morphological causative
cause ag, pat, subevent
readag, pat
cause-read SUBJ, OBJ OBJpt
According to Matsumoto, both inducing types of causative take a causer, a causee,

and an event as arguments. The coercive takes a subevent controlled by the causer,
and this, therefore, forms a complex predicate with the CAUSE predicate. The
persuasive takes a fully edged event argument, which is then expressed in the
f-structure as an independent clause (XCOMP). Translating Matsumotos formula-
tion of argument-structure representations into the schema adopted in this book,
the a-structure and f-structure of the persuasive reading of (24b) are given in (29),
while the a-structure and f-structure of the coercive reading of (24a) are given in (30)
(Matsumoto, 1996: 154f.).
(29) Persuasive causative

a. a-structure

REL causeAGENT, RECIPIENT, EVENT

AGENT
REL John

RECIPIENT REL Bill

runAGENT
EVENT REL
AGENT
b. f-structure

PRED causeSUBJ, OBJrcpt , XCOMP

SUBJ
PRED John

OBJrcpt PRED Bill

PRED runSUBJ
XCOMP
SUBJ
(30) Coercive causative

a. a-structure

REL causeAGENT, PATIENT, SUBEVENT

AGENT
REL John

PATIENT REL Bill

runAGENT
SUBEVENT REL
AGENT
b. f-structure

PRED cause-to-runSUBJ, OBJ

SUBJ PRED John

OBJ PRED Bill
In the notation for a-structure that I have been adopting here, we can therefore
represent Matsumotos schematic examples of morphological causatives as in (31a,
b), with corresponding a-structure representations in (32a, b).
(31) a. causeE x, y, e JohnRx BillRy runEe y

b. causeE x, y, esub JohnRx BillRy runEesub y
(32) a. Persuade-reading a-structure

REL causeE, ARG1, ARG2, EVENT

ARG1
REL JohnR

ARG2 REL BillR

runE, ARG1
EVENT REL
ARG1
b. Force-reading a-structure

REL causeE, ARG1, ARG2, SUBEVENT

ARG1
REL JohnR

ARG2 REL BillR

runE, ARG1
SUBEVENT REL
ARG1
In sum, we can see that a single morphological operation (indeed, a single suf-
x) can give rise to a variety of different a-structure and f-structure representations,
each linked to slightly different semantic interpretations.8 In addition, the causative
process clearly adds a semantic predicate to the semantic representation of the ori-
ginal base verb. In effect, then, the causative alternation is somewhat like inherent
inection, though it has greater repercussions for the syntax than inherent inection
normally has.
There is one way in which voice alternations of the kind found in Japanese, Bantu
languages, and many others are atypical of inection and more similar to proto-
typical derivation. These voice alternations can apply recursively (in principle, at
least). Thus, we might nd the causative of a passive or the passive of a causative
(as illustrated in Chapter 3). For simplicity, I shall assume that the voice alter-
nation feature can be structured in such a way as to reect recursive application
directly. To begin with we can assume that the voice alternations are in general
determined by a morphological feature [m Voice:passive, causative, . . .]. A simple
way to implement recursion is to assume that the values for the [Voice] attribute
can be extended as attributes themselves. Thus, [Voice:cause] and [Voice:passive]
are both well-formed feature structures, and so are [Voice:cause:passive] and
[Voice:passive:cause], and so on. In principle, this also means that feature structures
such as [Voice:passive:passive:passive: . . .] and [Voice:cause:cause:cause: . . .] are
8 Further very interesting observations about additional subtleties of morphosyntax and semantic
interpretation in Japanese causatives are made by Matsumoto (2000).
also well-formed, though in practice there will obviously be restrictions on whether

such combinations are actually legitimate. The resulting complex feature structures
will then be interpreted in the obvious way, with the outermost feature value taking
scope over the innermost. However, in practice, matters are generally more complex,
and a simple one-to-one mapping between morphological form and semantic scope
is not always found, as we have already seen in Section 6.4.2.
7.4 Argument-structure alternations mediated by conversion

7.4.1 Complementation patterns as constructions
The examples I have discussed so far have all involved lexical relations which are ex-
pressed explicitly by morphology. Where argument-structure or lexical alternations
are mediated formally in this manner, we are apt to try to account for them in terms
of a morphological rule or principle, and hence we are likely to run up against the
question of whether the alternation is inectional or derivational. However, in many
languages, alternations of the kind illustrated in this section are not mediated form-
ally at all. Rather, a given verb root is polyvalent, in the sense that it can be used either
in a basic sense or in some derived sense, showing an argument-structure alternation
or some derivational relation.
English is particularly rich in such alternations. The relation referred to in the
Bantu literature as the applicative construction is essentially the same as the Eng-
lish Dative Shift construction. As Marantz (1984) points out, it is productive: when
the verb email was rst coined (by conversion from a noun, of course!), it could im-
mediately be used with either a to-complement or in the shifted double-object form:
Harriet emailed the recipe to Tom. Moreover, English has a kind of causative altern-
ation, illustrated by pairs such as The vase broke Tom broke the vase. Unless we
are willing to countenance the existence of a series of zero morphemes effecting such
alternations, we have to concede that they are different morphologically from the
form-mediated alternations of, say, Bantu. If we say that the Bantu-type alternations
are essentially grammatical, as I would argue, then we have to decide whether the
English-type alternations are also grammatical, or whether they are of an entirely
different kind, namely purely lexical alternations (however we dene such a notion).
There is nothing illogical about treating these alternations as a matter of gram-
mar. Even if we eschew the zero-morpheme solution, we can always appeal to a
morphological process of conversion and say that that process is what expresses the
argument-structure alternation. On the other hand, we may wish to say that the locus
of the relatedness lies in the semantic representations: rather than saying that a verb
of any form belonging to a particular semantic class undergoes the (morphologic-
ally regular) process of conversion, we might wish to say that a lexeme with a given
type of semantic structure will license the existence in the lexicon of another lexeme
with a slightly different semantic structure. This would entail that all of the English
argument-structure alternations are accompanied by some kind of semantic change

(as argued by Pinker, 1989, for instance).
There is a huge literature devoted to a relatively small dataset from English verb
alternations. The crucial aspects of recent discussion are given an excellent sum-
mary in Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005), and I will not attempt to add to their
exposition. In that book they summarize an important debate over the nature of
argument-structure patterns, which bears crucially on questions of lexical repre-
sentation and lexical relatedness. They draw an important distinction between two
types of approach to English-style verb constructions, which they call projectionist
and constructional. The key empirical issue which they highlight in connection with
this debate is the question of multiple argument realization, when a single verb root
is associated with several syntactic argument or valency frames, with or without a
change in meaning. The alternations such as Dative Shift and the causative in-
choative alternation are just one of a whole host of instances of multiple argument
realization. A avour of the problem can be seen with their examples (33) and (34),
discussed in Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005: 188) and in rather more detail in
Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1998).
(33) a. Kim whistled
b. Kim whistled at the dog
c. Kim whistled a warning
d. Kim whistled me a warning
e. Kim whistled her appreciation
f. Kim whistled to the dog to come
g. The bullet whistled through the air
h. The air whistled with bullets
(34) a. Pat ran to the beach
b. Pat ran herself ragged
c. Pat ran her shoes to shreds
d. Pat ran clear of the falling rocks
e. The coach ran the athletes around the track
Projectionist approaches determine the syntactic expression of arguments by ap-
peal to the semantic representation. This means that multiple argument realization
will entail polysemous representations, that is, representations in which a single verb
form is associated with several, closely related lexemes, each having a lexical entry
dened by slightly different semantics. This type of approach, however, becomes
problematical for English, in which multiple argument realization looks like the norm
rather than the exception. And English is not unique in showing multiple realiza-
tion. Even a morphologically rich language such as Chukchi, which has a variety of
causative, antipassive, and other afx-mediated argument-structure alternations,

shows what Nedjalkov (1976) refers to as labile verbs, that is, verbs which show
more than one valency frame. My suspicion is that it would be rather difcult to nd
a language which didnt show at least some degree of multiple argument realization.
Alternations such as the resultative construction shown in (34b, c) are particularly
problematical for projectionist theories, since the direct objects herself and her shoes
are in no sense licensed by the semantics of the root verb.
For these reasons, alternative approaches have been sought, called constructional
by Levin and Rappaport Hovav. They mention Goldberg (1995) as [t]he earliest
comprehensive constructional approach to multiple argument realization . . .. For
Goldberg and other proponents of this type of Construction Grammar, a construc-
tion is a pairing of form and meaning. The form can be anything from a phrase to an
afx. When a construction is mediated by afxal morphology, we are dealing with a
classical morpheme, of course, and Goldberg (1995: 32) explicitly claims that the no-
tion of construction is essentially an extension of the classical morpheme doctrine.9
The constructional approaches account for multiple argument realization by allow-
ing a syntactic structure to overlay additional semantics onto that of the verb root
(and in the neo-constructional approach, the overlay of syntactic structure accounts
for all aspects of a verbs behaviour, including that which others might associate with
the default semantics of the verb).
It will be important to determine to what extent a constructional approach could
be integrated with the current model of lexical relatedness. For the moment, I leave
that for future research.
7.4.2 Polysemy and lexical relatedness more generally

It is interesting to compare the problem of verb polysemy with that of the semantic
interpretation of inected forms of words. In a sense, the problems posed by English
verbs are somewhat articial, in that English lacks the morphological means to signal
subtle changes in syntactic complementation or semantic selection. There are many
languages for which there is no literal translation for some of the examples in (33, 34).
In Russian, for instance, we might be able to use a single verb root for several of the
sentences, but that root would have to be given some kind of Aktionsart prex, and in
other cases the information packaged in the single verb form in English would have
to be entirely repackaged and distributed across more than one predicator.10
(35) a. Ira svistela
Ira whistled
Ira whistled.
9 This is effectively also true for the neo-constructional approach, inspired by Minimalist syntax, and
represented most systematically in the work of Borer (2005a,b).
10 The examples are selected from the Moscow Academy of Sciences four-volume dictionary, 3rd edn,
1987 (MAS). I am grateful to Marina Zaretskaya for discussion of some of the examples.
b. Ira svist-nu-la sobake/sobaku

Ira whistle-semelfactive-pst dog.dat/acc
Ira whistled to the dog.
c. Zriteli svistjat artista
spectators whistle actor
The audience whistled at the actor (pejoratively).
d. Krugom svistjat puli
around whistle bullets
Bullets are whistling around.
To say Ira whistled a tune we would normally use a variant of the lexeme furnished
with the (meaningless) prex na- (the basic spatial meaning of na is on(to)):
(36) Ira na-svistela melodiju

Ira na-whistled.pfv tune
Ira whistled a tune.
(37) Solovjej na-svistyval

nightingale na-whistled.ipfv
A nightingale was singing.
An example such as The air whistled with bullets is all but impossible to translate
without transforming the structure of the original entirely so as to say something
like There were bullets whistling through the air. Example (33f ) has to be rendered by
something along the lines of She whistled to the dog so that it would come (though
there is hardly any other reason for whistling at a dog). MAS gives the example (38)
(Charlotte is the name of a dog), with the (entirely meaningless) prex po-, noting
that it is colloquial.
(38) On po-svistal arlotu, ctoby legla v nogax

he po-whistled Charlotte.acc so.that lay in legs
He whistled to Charlotte to lie down on his feet.
In general, however, its difcult to follow whistle in Russian with a complement

denoting the content of a message as in (33c) or (33d).
Russian differs from English even more radically with respect to examples such as
those in (34). A verb of motion which a goal complement almost always has to be
given a prex which is essentially a hypernym of the goal preposition found with the
goal complement. The examples with resultative complements (34b, c) are completely
untranslatable (though Russian does have the equivalent of verbs with unselected
resultative objects; see Spencer and Zaretskaya, 1998b). Similarly, example (34d) has
to be translated as something like She ran away from the rocks using a verb of mo-
tion otbeat bearing a prex homophonous with the corresponding preposition ot
(away) from. Finally, the only way to convey the causative (ergative) use of the verb
of motion in (34e) is by means of an overt causative verb The coach made the athletes
run around the track.
In Russian, then, some of the polysemy of the English verb whistle is reected in
the root translation equivalent, but some of it has to be expressed periphrastically
or by means of (derivational?) morphology. This is the typical situation, of course.
It highlights the descriptive challenge posed by English verbs with multiple comple-
mentation structures, however: how exactly are such patterns to be represented in an
explicit grammar/lexicon of English? How are corresponding patterns represented
in languages in which they are expressed morphologically? And how does the con-
structional representation for English verbs compare with that for languages such as
Russian?
I have proposed an implementation of regular, grammaticalized argument-
structure alternations using the architecture of LFG, a thoroughly projectionist
architecture. However, it seems that to accommodate the kinds of polysemous
complementation structures discussed by Levin and Rappaport Hovav, we need to
deploy some notion of construction. What Levin and Rappaport Hovav refer to as
traditional Construction Grammar presupposes a strict connection between the
construction and a meaning. The neo-constructionist approach, however, is more
consonant with the separationist thrust of inferentialrealizational approaches to
morphology. I nd it difcult to reconcile the complexity of formfunction rela-
tions with traditional Construction Grammar approaches of the kind proposed by
Goldberg (1995) and others. Rather, it seems better to follow neo-constructionist ap-
proaches, but without necessarily adopting the syntactic architecture in which those
approaches are generally embedded. The polysemy typically found with verb mor-
phology corresponding to the polysemy of English root verbs suggests that we should
separate out a lexicon of structural templates and a lexicon of constructionally
expressed meanings and permit the grammar to relate forms and functions freely,
reecting the many-to-many mappings typically found. However, such a programme
goes somewhat beyond the scope of this study.
If verb polysemy or polysemous verbal morphology is to be treated as a mani-
festation of a constructional architecture, how does this relate to the projectionist
approach I have proposed for meaningful inection and grammatical argument-
structure alternations? The key point to bear in mind is that the projectionist
architecture is itself somewhat subverted by the reliance on the logic of default in-
heritance which I presuppose. That is, the meaning associated with an inectional
property or an argument-structure alternation is associated only in the default case
and can in principle be overridden. This is the whole point of Stumps notion of
paradigm linkage: we can dene those invariable semantic properties associated with
an inection without having to impose a one-to-one meaning correlation on the
formal, morphosyntactic means by which those properties are expressed.
For languages (or for segments of the lexicon of a given language) in which such
relations are reliably expressed morphologically, we can propose an essentially
derivational approach to the problem, as suggested earlier. Where the alternations
or derivational relationships are expressed constructionally, I propose essentially the
same solution. Thus, English motion verbs often have a causative or ergative
transitive use lacking in intransitive verbs of the same kind in other languages. A
morpheme-based analysis of such alternations might posit a zero causative afx.
However, a syntactically based neo-constructional approach might posit a covert
null verb in the syntax to which the base verb can move in order to acquire its
causative meaning.
I propose a solution in the spirit of the Construction Morphology model proposed
by Booij (2010b). Verbs of the requisite class (dened semantically or by lexical enu-
meration) can be the argument of a generalized paradigm function which includes
a feature caused-verb-of-motion. The generalized paradigm function dened by
this feature induces no formal change, but the fsem associated with the generalized
paradigm function denes the appropriate causative template, along the lines of a
constructional schema in the sense of Booij (2010b).
Many open questions remain, however, in large part because the phenomena are
poorly understood at the empirical level (even for English). In particular, its still un-
clear just which alternations are in some sense regular and productive, and which
are essentially lexicalized. In many respects the problem revolves around the issue
of coercion, as described in Lauwers and Willems (2011a) and the papers in Lauwers
and Willems (2011b) and the numerous references cited in those papers. Coercion
is generally restricted lexically, and so it denes a non-paradigmatic type of lex-
ical relatedness, akin to that found with non-compositional derivation. (If it were
paradigmatic we would be inclined to speak of a regular and productive derivational
process rather than coercion.) As with non-compositional derivation, part of the lex-
icological goal has to be to establish which aspects of the lexical relations can be
factored out and treated as common to the system as a whole, and which aspects
are peculiar to individual cases.
7.5 Conclusions
This chapter has lled in some of the details of the implementation of the generalized
paradigm function for the remaining type of lexical relatedness not treated in the pre-
vious chapter, argument-structure alternations. One (admittedly not mainstream)
strand of LFG provides a convenient way of representing independent argument-
structure representations as hierarchical feature structures which can then interface
with a standard lexicalist syntax (and its semantic interpretation). The choice of LFG
formalism is not crucial or criterial here, of course. Essentially the same proposals
could in principle be implemented, I assume, in HPSG (and indeed, some of the
details of my proposals here would perhaps sit better within the HPSG architecture).
I stress once more that my proposals are not intended as setting an agenda for
research within the LFG framework; rather, they are intended to demonstrate that
in principle, at least, the generalized paradigm function can be interfaced with some
standard model of syntax so as to capture the complexities of morphologysyntax
relations.
The LFG argument-structure projection derived from the proposals of Manning
(1996) allow me to capture the idea of an asemantic a-structure predicate. This means
that I am able to implement the operation of the semantic function role. This is
important for my account of transpositions. There is no general account of transposi-
tions in LFG. A number of proposals have been put forward for handling gerund-type
constructions in English (see Bresnan, 2001) and Tibor Laczk has investigated ac-
tion nominals in Hungarian in great detail in a series of papers (Laczk, 1997; Laczk,
2000; Laczk, 2010), for instance, but there is no general account of participles,
relational adjectives, and the like. An important exception is Ackerman and Webel-
huths (1998) treatment of predicative nouns, though that account has not entered
the mainstream implementation of LFG.
I illustrated the way my approach can handle argument-structure alternations
proper by focusing on causative constructions. I must stress that this is merely a
sketch of the way that such alternations might be handled. A proper treatment would
ensure that the model can handle all the standard interactions between argument-
structure alternations in a variety of languages, and would also ensure that the
representations were properly integrated with the inectional paradigm and with
other derivational processes. This would require a separate monograph-length study,
however.
Finally, I briey broached the question of multiple complementation patterns for
verbs, and tentatively supported a construction-oriented approach to that problem.
Constructions are typically regarded as pairings of a morphosyntactic schema with
a meaning. However, morphosyntactic congurations are frequently associated with
entirely distinct meanings or functions, so that it often makes sense to regard them
independently of any meaning they might express. In other words, we can think of
morphomic constructions. This is possibly the best way to think of some of the de-
rived complementation patterns discussed by Levin, Rappaport Hovav, and others,
in which a base verb lexeme shows systematic polysemy induced by the additional
complement phrase, sometimes with the addition of a specic semantic predicate
and sometimes not. However, these comments must remain particularly speculative,
since they require a carefully articulated account of the morphologylexiconsyntax
interface (and its relation to semantic representations). Since LFG does not generally
implement the notion of construction in the required sense, here an implementation
in HPSG, specically, Sign-Based Construction Grammar Sag (2007), might well be
called for.
8
Nominalizations
8.1 Introduction
In this chapter I look in rather more detail at two types of transposition, the
deverbal action/event/process nominalization and the deadjectival property nomi-
nalization. On the one hand, it is important to consider action nominalizations
because they have gured so prominently in syntactic and typological discussion.1
On the other hand, it is important to consider property nominalizations because
they have been largely ignored in syntactic and typological discussion, yet they raise
similar questions to action nominals.
The issues which are most commonly addressed in the literature on action nomi-
nals are the (related) problems of argument-structure expression and event structure,
on the one hand, and the (also related) problem of syntagmatic category mixing on
the other. A deverbal nominal often allows the expression of (some of) the base verbs
arguments (argument structure inheritance) and this constitutes a type of category
mixing. In some cases, the derived nominal behaves syntactically very much like an
un-derived noun, so that the base verbs arguments are expressed morphosyntactic-
ally in just the way that satellites to a simplex noun are expressed. In such cases we
see the paradigmatic category mixing which is denitional for transpositions, but
without syntagmatic category mixing. In other cases, the transposition retains or
inherits some of the morphosyntax of the base lexeme, giving rise to syntagmatic
mixing. We have seen examples of this with the English POSS-ACC nominaliza-
tions (Harriets reading the book) and Kikuyu agent nominalizations, among others.
I will have little to say about argument-structure and event-structure properties of de-
verbal nominals. The model of lexical relatedness I propose in this book can certainly
be enriched to accommodate such phenomena, of course, because I have specic-
ally included an explicit representation of argument structure in the model of lexical
1 Here is a very short bibliography of key references which are of direct or indirect relevance to my
discussion here, in addition to those cited in the chapter: Alexiadou (2001); Bierwisch (1989); Comrie
(1976); Comrie and Thompson (1985); Engelhardt (2000); Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2003); Lapointe (1993);
Lees (1960); Malchukov (2006); Picallo (1991); Pullum (1991); Rozwadowska (1997); Siloni (1997); Szabolcsi
(1992); Zubizarreta (1987).
representation. The question of syntagmatic category mixing, however, requires a

certain amount of discussion. Unfortunately, a full discussion would require a de-
tailed exposition of the relevant syntactic machinery, which would be well beyond
the scope of this book, so I will just sketch the salient issues.
However, there is another issue that I will be addressing in this chapter which has
been the subject of less discussion. That is the fact that both action and property
nominalizations are regularly associated with subtle additional nuances of meaning.
We therefore have to consider whether or not such nominals are novel, autonomous
lexemes, or whether they are transpositions, and hence forms of the base lexeme, but
ones that involve additional semantics. We must also investigate the nature of the
semantic nuances and how they are to be represented in the grammatical description.
8.2 Action nominalizations as syntactically mixed categories

It seems to have been Lefebvre and Muysken (1988) who introduced the term mixed
category for action nominalizations, in the context of their analysis of Quechua
nominalizations. The problem is very clear from English nominals such as those
illustrated in (1).
(1) a. Harriets drive (lasted two hours)

b. Harriets skilful driving/*having driven of the van (was a great relief)
(POSS-GEN)
c. Harriets driving/having driven the van (so skilfully) (surprised us) (POSS-
ACC)
d. Harriet driving/having driven the van (so skilfully) (surprised us) (ACC-
ACC)
e. We saw Harriet driving the van
f. I stopped Harriet driving the van
g. For Harriet to drive the van (would be sensible)
h. I encouraged Harriet to drive the van
i. I expected Harriet to drive the van
In (1a) we clearly have a noun form (though one which is probably the result of
conversion from the verb). Example (1b) is similar to (1a) in that we have a deverbal
nominal which behaves in almost all respects like a noun, what is often called a POSS-
GEN nominal. In (1g, h, i) we have uncontroversial instances of innitive forms of
verbs. In (1e), we have an -ing form verb after a perception predicate which denotes
a witnessed event, while (1f) is an instance of a verb taking Harriet as a direct object
which then controls the subject argument of the non-nite clause headed by driving.
Nominalizations 303
Most linguists would analyse driving the van in both examples as non-nite clauses
headed by a verb.
In (1d) we have what seems to be another non-nite clause, this time functioning
as the subject. Such clause types have been give a variety of names in the liter-
ature, including gerund(ive) and ACC-ACC construction. They are often equated
with adverbial clauses with a null subject, as in Having driven/Driving the van into
a side street, Harriet parked and went to collect Tom. Note that we can use the peri-
phrastic perfect aspect of the -ing verb form in many of these examples. The innitival
clauses clearly permit the perfect (and progressive) aspect, but this is also true of (1d).
This indicates that the -ing form is effectively a verb form rather than a noun. Its
more difcult to put driving the van into the perfect aspect in (1e, f), presumably for
semantic reasons. In (1b), by contrast, it seems that there are grammatical reasons
why the perfect is impossible: the form driving is essentially a noun. In (1c) we see an
instance of a classically mixed category (the so-called POSS-ACC construction; see
Abney, 1987). The object argument of the verb is expressed in the normal way, but
the subject argument is expressed as a possessor, and the verb itself is modied by
a (prenominal!) adjective skilful, not an adverb skilfully. Note that (1c), unlike (1b),
permits the perfect aspect.
As Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993: 33) points out, citing Russian, innitival forms of
verbs are often easily distinguishable from nominalized forms. However, in a vari-
ety of languages the form which bears closest resemblances to the Standard Average
(Indo)-European type of innitive acquires nominal properties, blurring the cat-
egorial distinction. For instance, we nd languages in which the innitive takes
possessor morphology to cross-reference its subject (Portuguese, Sardinian, and
certain Italian dialects in the Romance family, and Hungarian and Finnish, are well-
known instances). I will discuss the problem of nominalized innitives in more detail
below.
Constructions such as those in (1b), especially where one and the same morpholo-
gical form permits a variety of morphosyntactic construction types, pose very severe
problems for any theory of morphologysyntax interactions, and for any model of
lexical representations. Inasmuch as they are examples of transpositions, they pose
problems enough for linguistic theory, but given their mixed behaviour they under-
mine the most basic categorization systems upon which our analyses are built, and
for that reason are particularly interesting.
8.3 Approaches to categorial mixing

Although there is a huge literature devoted to the problem of deverbal nominali-
zations, a good deal of that literature explores syntactic theories of word-formation
derivation, and is concerned with nding syntactic means for determining the
(morpho)syntax of the expression of arguments, adjuncts, and other satellites. Very
little of the literature explicitly considers the implications for lexical representation
and the notions of word class and lexical relatedness that are our focus here. An im-
portant starting point for lexicalist approaches is Grimshaw (1990), who elaborated a
theory of nominalization in which crucial aspects of the base verb could be preserved,
notably argument structure. She argued that nominalizations which preserve the ob-
ligatory complementation of the base verb were complex event nominals, which
effectively serve as the name of that event. Thus, Grimshaw argued that a nominal
such as destruction can be said to denote the event of destroying, and that when it
does so it can express the direct object of destroy. When the nominal expresses the
underlying subject argument, then it obligatorily expresses the object argument:
(2) a. The destruction (of the city)

b. The destruction *(of the city) by the enemy
Grimshaw refers to such nominalizations as complex event nominals. These retain

lexical aspectual properties associated with the Vendlerian categories of activity,
accomplishment, and so on. They are distinguished from result nominals (straight-
forward derivation of a new lexeme) and also from simple event nominals such as
journey or party, which denote an event but without specication of the aspectual
properties which would be associated with an underlying verbal predication.
Another strand of work on action nominals looks at their behaviour as syn-
tagmatically mixed categories and seeks an explanation for this behaviour. Within
derivational theories of syntax, its normal to assume that the nominalization begins
as a verb which heads a verb phrase and is hence able to take complements and be
modied by adverbial adjuncts. The verb (stem) then raises to combine at some point
with a nominal head element, after which point it behaves like a noun head. However,
it may leave behind phrases that it had licensed earlier in its incarnation as a verb.
A typical example of such an analysis is presented by Borsley and Kornlt (2000). In
schematic terms such analyses look something like that shown in (3).
(3) NP
N VP
Vi N V NP
ti
Here, the verb has moved out of its VP and combined with a nominal functional
head, leaving behind its direct object NP. This would be an instance of what Bresnan
and Mugane (2006: 2246) call a dual projection model. The head representing
Nominalizations 305
the mixed category is associated with two distinct syntactic positions. Implement-
ations of this idea are found in derivational models of syntax and in Sadocks (1991)
Autolexical Syntax model.2
There is a considerable syntactically oriented literature on action nominals in vari-
ous languages which adopts essentially the analysis shown in (3). Important recent
contributions include a special issue of the journal Lingua (vol. 121, 2011) as well as
the edited collections of Alexiadou and Rathert (2010a,b). A very useful summary of
recent research can be found in Alexiadou (2010a,b).
I will have little to say about derivational syntactic approaches to word formation
or lexical relatedness. Many of the issues raised by such analyses are undoubtedly
interesting and of importance. However, if the logic of these approaches is taken seri-
ously, then there is no distinction between syntax and morphology and no distinction
to be drawn between phrase structure and word structure. But that means that the en-
tire notion of lexical relatedness is rendered trivial. Therefore, I will not discuss the
details of these syntactic analyses. One way of viewing such analyses is to say that they
are reincarnations of earlier transformational approaches to word formation, and to
regard the derivational trees as an indication of internal word structure in some sense.
But that would entail imposing a word/phrase dichotomy on the theory which is for-
eign to it. However, an important point of contact between the present model and
much of the work on mixed categories in the derivational syntax mould is a concern
for the nature of lexical categories. In both cases its important to adhere to an Ar-
istotelian view under which linguistic categories are discrete, while at the same time
accounting for the considerable variability in the behaviour of those categories.3 The
solution in both cases is to nd some way to factorize the coarse-grained categories
into ner-grained subcategories that permit just the right kind of recombination.
It is the fact that the complex event nominalization retains crucial verbal properties
that renders it likely to behave as a mixed category. Exactly what form this mixing
takes in terms of morphology, syntax, and morphosyntax more generally is decided
on a language-specic basis, giving rise to a variety of nominalization construction
types cross-linguistically (Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 1993). In fact, it is a little misleading
to think of there being a single morphosyntactic nominalization process. As shown
by Malchukov (2004) the verb-to-noun transposition involves two parallel sets of
processes, the addition of nominal properties to the verb (for instance case marking,
modication by possessors or determiners, modication by adjectives, and so on) and
the loss of verbal properties (for instance loss of verb-like subject agreement, loss of
tense, aspect, mood, voice properties, and so on). Although there are cross-linguistic
2 Sadock doesnt discuss most of the questions raised here, so I will postpone discussion of his work.
3 The alternative is to eat lotus with the functionalists and cognitive grammarians who are content to
talk of clines and continua as though it made sense to think of a word as being 63.74% nouny and
36.26% verby, or whatever. See Baker (2011) for the same point.
tendencies at work here, its very difcult to see what robust implicational universals
there might be in such processes. I do not know how purely syntactic approaches to
nominalization handle the complex interplay of morphosyntactic factors that lead to
nominalization constructions, so, again, I shall leave aside those syntactic approaches
for the most part and concentrate discussion on lexical approaches.
In lexical models of grammar we generally see what Bresnan and Mugane (2006:
2213) refer to as a single projection model: the categorial mixing takes place at the
level of morphological representation; the syntactic nodes bear unambiguous labels.
Bresnan and Mugane identify two ways in which single projection models have been
implemented. One is the type hierarchy model to be discussed below: the mixed cat-
egory inherits some of its properties from one class and some from another. The
other is a feature neutralization model: the mixed category is underspecied for cer-
tain properties so that its feature characterization is non-distinct from that of a noun
and from that of a verb.
Bresnan and Mugane argue that both types of single projection models fail be-
cause they dont account for what they call Haspelmaths Generalization (Haspelmath,
1996): inection tends to preserve a lexemes internal syntax, while derivation tends
to change a lexemes internal syntax. Here, internal syntax refers to the depend-
encies within the phrase headed by that lexemefor instance the way a head noun
relates to attributive modiers or possessive phrases, or the way a verb combines with
its complements.
A second problem is that such approaches have difculties accounting for phrasal
coherence: once a deverbal nominal behaves syntactically like a noun at some point
in its phrase structure, it cant later revert back to behaving like a verb. For instance,
we dont nd the mirror-image of the POSS-ACC construction in English, in which
a nominal marks the base verbs object argument as the satellite of a noun but marks
its subject argument as though it were the subject of a verb: *Harriet reading of the
book. This seems to be a more general tendency with categorial mixing and transpo-
sitions. For instance, in Chapter 9 we will examine denominal adjectives which retain
properties of the base noun lexeme; for instance, that base noun can be modied
by attributive adjectives, giving translation equivalents of, say, [high tidal] ooding
from high tide. In other languages, such modication is impossible, and the deno-
minal adjective can only be modied as an adjective or not at all (as is generally the
case in English). What we dont expect to see is a situation in which the derived ad-
jective closes off the possibility of modifying the base noun, so that *high tidal is
ungrammatical, but then allows the construction to revert to that of a noun, say, by
making the base noun the complement of a preposition or giving it a determiner,
giving expressions such as [due to the tide]-al ooding, meaning ooding due to
the tide.
An inuential approach to mixed categories in the HPSG framework, is the
single projection type hierarchy model of Malouf (1999, 2000a,b). On that approach
Nominalizations 307
syntactic categories are dened in terms of an inheritance hierarchy and mixed

categories are those which inherit from two other categories. I discuss Malouf s pro-
posals below and argue (in part following the arguments of Bresnan and Mugane,
2006) that they are not sufcient to capture the full variety of phenomena exhibited
by action nominals and other types of mixed category.
Malouf (2000a,b) treats the English gerunds (that is, the family of constructions
headed by the -ing form of a verb) as mixed categories which inherit properties from
two other categories. POSS-ACC gerunds as in (1c) present a classic instance of syn-
tagmatic category mixing. The forms driving and especially having driven are clearly
forms of the verb drive, taking a direct object. But it also has a genitive subject ar-
gument, Harriets, as though it were a noun. A genuine noun derived from drive,
namely drive, (1a), cannot be used in this kind of construction because it lacks the
argument-structure properties of the verb: *Harriets skilful drive of the van. . . . The
word form driving is therefore a noun for elements to its left and a verb for elements
to its right. Malouf (2000a: 65) proposes the type hierarchy in Figure 8.1 for English
gerunds (where p-noun/c-noun means proper noun/common noun).
Gerunds will have the syntactic distribution of nouns because they are a subtype
of noun, but they will only inherit selectional properties of verbs, because they are
not subtypes of verb. Instead, they are a subtype of the supertype relational, which
includes verbs, adjectives, and gerunds. In some ways this represents a prototypical
instance of what Bresnan and Mugane refer to as a single projection analysis, in the
sense that the word which shows the category-mixing effects is effectively given two
labels, one for each of the types noun and relational.
(Malouf, 2000a: 31, 66) identies four properties of verbal gerunds:
(4) a. A verbal gerund takes the same complements as the verb from which it is
derived.
b. Verb gerunds are modied by adverbs and not by adjectives.
c. The entire verb gerund phrase has the external distribution of an NP.
d. The subject of the gerund is optional and, if present, can be either a genitive
or an accusative NP.
He argues that properties (4b, c) are an immediate consequence of the type hierarchy.
Gerunds cannot be modied by adjectives because these only modify c-nouns (p. 65).
head
noun relational
p-noun c-noun gerund verb adjective

Figure 8.1 Type hierarchy for English mixed nominals.
Hence, gerunds must be modied in the manner of other members of the relational
type, by adverbs. On the other hand, gerund is a subtype of noun and will therefore
head phrases that have the external distribution of a noun phrase. Specically, the
gerund will not have the distribution of a (true) VP because verb is a distinct subtype
of the supertype relational.
It seems to me, however, that these arguments are very weak. First, it is unclear
why adjectives cannot be said to modify proper nouns, as in Bloomelds famous
sentence Poor John runs. Presumably proper nouns are less likely to be modied by
adjectives than common nouns because there is less need to specify a referent by
means of an attribute, but this is a semantic (or even pragmatic) fact, not a distribu-
tional one. But if we were to accept Malouf s reasoning here, we should also conclude
that only c-nouns and not p-nouns collocate with the denite article. But by parity of
reasoning, this should mean that verbal gerunds, too, are incompatible with the de-
nite article, which is clearly false. But it remains unclear why verbal gerunds have the
distribution of NPs rather than having the intersection of the distributions of verbs
and adjectives. In other words, why is it not the case that verbal gerunds appear solely
in predicate position after a copular verb (the child is happy/sleeping, the child seems
happy/sleeping)? Since the hierarchy doesnt dene any form of directionality, prec-
edence, or default realization, its entirely unclear how it accounts for the observed
distributions.
Malouf then introduces an additional piece of machinery to account for the re-
maining properties in (4). The lexical rule in (5) denes the verbal gerund form of
any verb (including aspectual auxiliaries but excluding modals, which lack non-nite
forms).

(5) verb HEAD gerund
HEAD
VFORM prp SUBJ 1

VALENCE 2
1 NP COMPS
SUBJ

VALENCE
COMPS 2 SPR 1

SPR
The gerund is now able to head either of two constructions, the nonn-head-subj-cx
or the noun-poss-cx, shown below, each independently motivated in English gram-
mar (Malouf, 2000a: 16):

(6) nonn-head-subj-cx
SYNSEM HEAD ROOT

noun
NON-HD-DTR HEAD
CASE acc
Nominalizations 309

(7) noun-poss-cx CAT|HEAD noun
SYNSEM
nom-obj
CONT

noun
NON-HD-DTR|SYNSEM|CAT|HEAD
CASE gen
Clearly, more needs to be said about verbal gerunds to capture the full variety
of their morphosyntax (for instance, its not obvious how Malouf s representations
account for constructions with by-phrases, or intransitive gerunds with of -phrase
subjects). However, in principle, the account could no doubt be elaborated so as to
capture all the relevant facts.
Now, Malouf (2000a: 64) has claimed that he is providing the . . . foundation for an
analysis of verbal gerunds which does not require any categorial change-over. Yet
categories are coded in terms of types on the categorial type hierarchy. This means
that the types gerund and verb are distinct categories (even though each inherits cer-
tain of its properties from the higher type relational). But in that case its hard to see
how (5) is anything other than an instance of a categorial change-over. Again, this
illustrates a deciency in an approach that relies of multiple inheritance hierarchies
as the basic tool of analysis for mixed categories: some of the mixing seems to be dir-
ectional, so that there are logical implications between the types and subtypes that
go beyond mere inheritance.
Moreover, it is not clear how the hierarchy can be elaborated in such a way as to ac-
commodate other types of transposition. As we have seen, any major category can be
transposed into any other major category. Action nominals (gerunds) do not have a
privileged status with respect to the relation of transposition, yet Malouf s hierarchy
will make that mixed category unique. This has undesirable consequences when we
consider the broader picture of transpositions. Given the hierarchy in Figure 8.1,
it is difcult to see how a deverbal participle will be represented except as a joint
subtype of verb and adjective. But by Malouf s interpretation of the hierarchy, this
should mean that participles universally have the syntactic distribution of both verbs
and adjectives. This is because the types adjective, verb, etc. are essentially dened
by distributional properties. And yet participles have the external distribution of an
adjective and the selectional properties of a verb; that is, they show just they same
mixing of distribution as action nominals.
Worse, such a solution would fail to capture an asymmetry implicit in the notion
of transposition, because there would be no representational way of distinguishing a
V A transposition (participle) from an A V transposition (predicate adjective).
Both types are found, for instance in Chukchi: an adjective used attributively will
agree at most in number and occasionally case with its head noun, while a predic-
ate adjective agrees in number/person with the subject, just as an intransitive verb
does, and is an instance of an A V transposition. Similarly, it will be difcult
head
noun relational
p-noun c-noun adjective verb
relational adjective
property nominalization
Figure 8.2 Type hierarchy for relational adjectives and deadjectival property nominaliza-
tions.
to distinguish relational adjectives (N A transposition) from property nomi-

nalizations (A N transposition). The problem is illustrated for N A/A N
transpositions in Figure 8.2.
As we have seen in Chapter 6, Bresnan and Mugane propose a different way
of approaching the problem of syntagmatic category mixing, which is essentially
a kind of single projection model (in spite of the dual-projection diagrams they
draw in their paper). The syntagmatic mixed-category behaviour arises out of a
paradigmatic categorial mixing, notated with their n/v subscripts, together with sets
of mapping principles telling us how a given lexical conguration is mapped to a
phrase structure. The n/v subscripting mechanism is intended to achieve the same
effects as the more thoroughly motivated model of argument structure proposed
in this book (and briey alluded to in Bresnan, 1997). I will not discuss it fur-
ther except to repeat that the mechanisms for mapping lexical representations onto
constituent-structure representations can easily be accommodated to my argument
structure approach without incurring the difculties that Bresnan and Muganes
specic proposal encounters.
8.4 The semantics of nominalizations

A key question for my discussion of nominalizations as transpositions will be the pre-
cise semantic interpretation of a nominalized phrase. What sets pure transpositions
apart from canonical derivational morphology or inherent inection is the fact that
the transposed category doesnt acquire any additional semantic properties. How-
ever, when we look at deverbal and deadjectival nominalizations, it appears that the
transpositions are not entirely pure, but are associated with additional meanings. In
this section I summarize three interesting types of meaning enrichment, but I start
with an example of what appears to be a type of true transposition.
8.4.1 Nominalizations as asemantic transpositions

A nominalization which functioned as a pure transposition would simply take a verb
phrase or clause and express it as a noun phrase, without any additional meaning
Nominalizations 311
change. This type of transposition is found quite often in languages which ex-
press subordination through nominalized clauses. A case in point is Turkish (and
Turkic languages generally).4 Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993: 46f.) cites examples from
the descriptive/pedagogical grammar of Underhill (1976). In (8) the nominalization
is derived by means of sufxation of eceg -/dig- followed by a possessor agreement
marker cross-referencing the genitive-case-marked subject, and nally afxed with
an accusative case marker to indicate that it is the complement of the main verb.
(8) Halilin gel-eceg-in-i bili-yor-um

Halil.gen come-ptcp.fut-3sg.poss-acc know-prs-1sg
I know that Halil will come/came/comes.
In (9) we see the short innitive in -me/-ma, also followed by a possessor

agreement and a case sufx:
(9) Ahmed-in erken yat-ma-sn-a als-yor-uz

Ahmed-gen early go.to.bed-inf-3sg.poss-dat get.used-pres-1pl
We are getting used to Ahmets going to bed early.
The subordinate clause is here expressed by means of a nominalized verb form

(sometimes called a masdar) which takes a subject marked in the genitive case
(rather than the nominative), and which takes possessor agreement with that sub-
ject (rather than agreeing in the manner of a nite verb). Turkish also provides
instances in which the nominalized clause functions as an adverbial (called ger-
unds, converbs among other things). In many cases the nominal morphology adds
a temporal, causal, . . . meaning (before/after/because of/despite . . . doing), but in
some cases the function of the nominal is simply to subordinate the clause to the
main verb. Examples are given in (10, 11) (adapted slightly from Ersen-Rasch, 2007:
151, 186).
(10) -(y)ErEk converb (glossed erek)

Yasemin gl-erek odaya girdi/giriyor/girecek
Yasemin laugh-erek into.room came/comes/will come
Yasemin came/comes/will come into the room laughing.
(11) -(y)Ip converb (glossed ip)

Telefon et-me-yip mektup yazdm
telephone do-neg-ip letter wrote
I didnt phone, but I wrote a letter.
4 Baker (2011) provides an analysis of similar structures in the Turkic language Sakha (Yakut), within a
minimalist framework.
I will take it that these and many other types of clausal nominalization of the
kind discussed in Koptjevskaja-Tamms (1993) survey serve a purely grammatical
function and are not associated with any systematic semantic enrichment (though
Koptjevskaja-Tamm points out that some Turkish nominalizations do involve se-
mantic enrichment).
8.4.2 Eventualities, propositions, and states-of-affairs

However, there is an important sense in which nominalizations are often not pure
transpositions: we often nd that even very regular action or event nominalizations
acquire subtle additional meanings, or undergo subtle alterations in meaning. This
observation has important consequences for any treatment of deverbal nominaliza-
tions, though it is an observation whose signicance is generally overlooked.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993) provides a convenient summary of the meanings
typically expressed by deverbal nominals, under which subordinate clauses and nom-
inalized phrases can denote a proposition, a fact, an event, or a manner of action.5
A somewhat more exhaustive treatment is offered by Zucchi (1993).6 He argues that
we need to distinguish three types of referent for subordinate clauses and nominal-
izations: events (or better, eventualities, including states), propositions, and states of
affairs. Specically, the phrases the performance of the song and the performing of the
song denote eventualities, while her performing the song is close in meaning, though
not identical to, the nite subordinate clause that she performed the song, and there-
fore denotes something like a proposition. For instance, we can say The sopranos
performance of the song lasted three minutes or The singing of all the songs took longer
than expected.
Zucchi (1993: 207f.) argues that gerundive or POSS-ACC constructions such as
her performing the song are different semantically from true nominals such as per-
formance or POSS-GEN nominals such as her performing of NP. The POSS-ACC
construction denotes a state of affairs. States of affairs are not events, and dont have
endpoints, durations, and so on. Just as we can be aware of propositions, we can be
(or be made) aware of states of affairs, but unlike propositions, states of affairs cannot
be true or false, and they cannot be objects of belief. Thus, we can say It is not true that
the soprano performed the song or Mary believes that the soprano performed the song,
but we cannot say *The sopranos performing the song is not true or *Mary believes the
soprano performing the song.
5 A manner-of-action nominal expresses the manner in which an action is carried out, as in the Turk-
ish examples cited by Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993: 48). I will not discuss manner-of-action nominals here
because I dont know enough about them.
6 Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Zucchi, and indeed all commentators on these matters, are heavily indebted
to the writings of Zeno Vendler on nominalizations (Vendler, 1967, 1968). Vendlers discussion still serves
as the best available general introduction to these issues.
Nominalizations 313
Zucchi deploys these distinctions in analysing the Italian innito sostantivato. This
is an innitive verb form used as a nominal, and its syntax is similar to that of the
POSS-ACC nominal in English. It can take a direct object just like a normal innitive,
and it can nominalize the perfect-aspect form of a clause (I use my own glossing for
Zucchis examples):
(12) l-avere egli scritto questa lettera

the-have.inf he written that letter
his having written that letter [S-innitival NP]
(13) il suo mormorare sommessa-mente

the his/her whisper.inf soft-ly
his/her whispering softly [VP-innitival NP]
(14) il suo mormorare parole dolci

the his/her whisper.inf sweet words
his/her whispering sweet words [VP-innitival NP]
The innito sostantivato can be ambiguous, and behave more like a true noun, tak-
ing adjectival modiers and direct-object arguments expressed with a prepositional
phrase:
(15) il mormorare sommesso del mare

the whisper.inf soft of.the sea
the soft whispering of the sea [N-innitival NP]
I have provided Zucchis descriptive labels for the three types of innitival he dis-
tinguishes. The S-innitival behaves like the nominalization of an entire clause,
including the subject, expressed as an ordinary (full-form) personal pronoun, egli,
after the innitival auxiliary. The VP-innitival behaves like a nominalization of
the VP, taking a direct object and being modied by adverbs, but expressing the
verbs subject in the manner of an NP possessor with a possessive adjective, suo. The
N-innitival behaves like a noun.
Zucchi (1993: 248f.) discusses the semantics of the innito sostantivato and points
out that the S-innitival and the VP-innitivals both have the distribution of
propositions, and hence are translation equivalents of il fatto che/the fact that NP:
(16) a. l-avere egli compiuto i primi studi in Francia

the-have.inf he nished the rst studies in France
His having completed his rst degree in France [S-innitival]
b. Il fatto che egli abbia compiuto i primi studi in Francia spiega
the fact that he had nished the rst studies in France explains
come la sua attivit letteraria si irradi da Parigi
how the his activity literary refl spread from Paris
The fact that he had completed his rst degree in France explains how his
literary activity spread from Paris.
(17) a. Gianni apprezza il tuo eseguire la sonata

Gianni appreciates the your perform.inf the sonata
Gianni appreciates your performing the sonata [VP-innitival]
b. Gianni apprezza il fatto che tu abbia eseguito la sonata
Gianni appreciates the fact that you had performed the sonata
Gianni appreciates the fact that you performed the sonata.
Neither type denotes an event. The N-innitivals, on the other hand, do not denote
propositions, but they do denote events. Thus, (17a) does not entail that Gianni ap-
preciated the actual performance, merely the fact that a performance took place. The
N-innitival in (18), however, denotes the event itself.
(18) Gianni apprezza il tuo eseguire della sonata

Gianni appreciates the your perform.inf of.the sonata
Gianni appreciates your performance of the sonata
In fact, it would presumably be more accurate for Zucchi to claim that the
VP-innitival, if not the S-innitival, denoted a state of affairs rather than a pro-
position (see Zucchi, 1993: 262, footnote 22, where he points out that the S-innitival
is incompatible with genuinely propositional predicates such as is true/false).
There are three important points about the Italian nominalized innitive to bear in
mind. First, it is a use of the innitive form of the verb. This is somewhat obvious in
the case of the Italian (and the very similar Spanish) construction, but the signicance
of the observation will become apparent when we consider German nominalized
innitives.
The second point is that the innitive occurs in several different syntactic construc-
tions in which it shows noun and verb properties to varying degrees. The question
arises, therefore, of whether the nominalized innitive is really a noun or really a
verb in constructions such as (1215, 17) above. The same question can be asked about
the POSS-ACC use of the -ing form of English verbs, of course. What this means for a
general theory of lexical relatedness is that the rule relating the base verb (or the total-
ity of inected forms of the base verb) and the nominalized innitive must be able to
impose conditions on the syntax of the resulting nominal, and especially on the way it
does or does not express verbal categories, noun categories, and the underlying verb
arguments.
The third point is that the different uses of the nominalized innitive are associated
with different types of meaning. It isnt particularly relevant to our present con-
cerns just where the semantic differences lie and how they should best be analysed.
There is a general consensus that the more verb-like forms tend to express more
Nominalizations 315
propositional types of meaning (or perhaps states of affairs), while the more noun-
like forms tend to denote something like events. The point is that there are meaning
differences for different usages of one and the same form as well as (more systematic)
meaning differences between different types of nominalization.
Where do these semantic differences come from? On the basis of the Italian innito
sostantivato, the English POSS-ACC construction, and many other such construc-
tions cross-linguistically, we must say that propositional semantics is an effect of the
entire construction in which the nominalization participates. This is the conclusion
originally reached by Vendler (1967): the force of the nominal depends on the se-
mantic class of the matrix predicate which embeds the nominal, what he calls the
container (Vendler, 1968: 7282). The more evidence there seems to be for some
kind of verb phrase or even clausal structure internal to the nominal phrase, the more
sentential, i.e. propositional, the semantics. While there may be some statistical truth
to this, it cannot be held as an absolute principle, however. First, the Turkish masdars
in (8, 9) above illustrate a highly nominal construction that expresses a proposition in
much the same way as an English nite subordinate clause. Second, as Koptjevskaja-
Tamm (1993) points out, there are languages in which a nominalization has almost
the same syntax as a nite clause but still expresses the kinds of meanings associated
with nominalizations.
8.4.3 German nominalizations and lexical aspect

German has a variety of types of nominalization. A summary is provided by Motsch
(2004: 324f.). The two most common and productive types are the -ung nominal
and the nominalized innitive. There are also minor, non-productive morpholo-
gical types, such as -e sufxation (fragen ask, Frage question), ablaut (iegen y,
Flug ying), and conversion (rufen to call, Ruf calling). The -ung nominal is a
feminine-gender noun which can be formed from a large number of verbs. How-
ever, in some cases an -ung derivative is blocked by an exceptional form. Thus, we
do not nd nominals of the form *Fragung, *Fliegung, or *Rufung. The other type
of nominal is the innitive used as a noun (variously called substantivierter Innitiv
or nominalisierte Innitiv). This is simply the innitive form of the verb used as a
noun. It is generally said that any verb can form a nominalized innitive, much as in
Italian, and that there are no semantic restrictions on the resulting nominal (though
see Blume, 2004, for a dissenting view).
I shall ignore the exceptional types of nominal, and contrast the -ung forms and
the nominalized innitive. Motsch (2004: 329) points out that both types can denote
what he calls events-as-facts (Geschehen als Tatsache), processes, and events in
general (generelles Geschehen). From his examples, it seems that generelles Ges-
chehen means essentially a propositional nominalization, corresponding to the fact
that S. In (19, 20) we see examples derived from the verb erstrmen to (take by)
storm.

Die Erstrmung
(19) der Hauptstadt beendete den Krieg
Das Erstrmen
the storming the.gen capital ended the war
The storming of the capital ended the war.

Die Erstrmung
(20) der Hauptstadt bedeutet meist das Ende eines
Das Erstrmen
the storming the.gen capital means usually the end of.a
Krieges
war
The storming of the capital usually means the end of a war.
As can be seen from these examples the morphosyntax of both types of example
is virtually identical, and in each case it is the morphosyntax of a noun. The direct
object of the base verb is expressed as a genitive-case-marked complement to the
noun. The noun itself is specied by a denite article. The nominalized innitive is
modied by an adjective form, such as stndige in (21b).
(21) a. Hans liest stndig Krimis

Hans reads continually crime.novels
Hans is always reading crime novels.
b. Das stndig-e Lesen von Krimis (durch den Hans)
the.n continual-n.sg.nom read.inf of crime.novels (by the Hans)
the continual reading of crime novels (by Hans)
Motsch points out the well-known aspectual difference between the -ung nominal
and the innitival nominal (see also the discussion in Shin, 2001):
(22) Die Erstrmung der Hauptstadt dauerte einen Tag [telic]

Das Erstrmen der Hauptstadt dauerte einen Tag [process]
the storming of.the capital lasted one day
The storming of the capital lasted for one day.
Here, the -ung nominal has a telic or perfective interpretation which is lacking in the
nominalized innitive. That is, Erstrmung refers to the completed act of storming
the city, while Erstrmen denotes the process itself. This is particularly remarkable
given that German verbs dont grammaticalize aspect themselves. In this sense, we
must regard the telic interpretation of the -ung nominal as an additional semantic
component acquired over and above the basic verb semantics.
When we consider the nominalized innitive in German we nd that it has very
much the same uses and distribution as the Italian construction. This means that it
typically expresses a state of affairs. Again, this means that we have a transposition
which is not pure, because it involves the addition of a (subtle) aspect of meaning.
Nominalizations 317
Before I propose a way of describing such a situation, I turn briey to Russian

nominalizations, which help establish a similar point.
8.4.4 Russian nominalizations and grammatical aspect

Russian distinguishes two grammatical aspects, perfective and imperfective. Broadly
speaking, perfective-form verbs denote completed events, while imperfective-form
verbs denote processes, iterated events, habitual events, and so on. A comparatively
small number of verbs have morphologically simple stems, and these are mainly atelic
and imperfective in aspect. Most verbs in Russian are prexed, and nearly all prexes
(to the extent that they have a meaning) induce a telic reading. All verbs with telic
semantics, whether simplex or not, are basically perfective, but they also form an
imperfective (the secondary or derived imperfective), which is required in certain
lexical and grammatical contexts. Thus, the unprexed, simplex verb pisat write
denotes an activity and is imperfective. It can be used either without a direct ob-
ject, or with an indenite object, e.g. pisat pis ma write letters. From this verb stem,
we can derive a telic verb with the prex raz-/ras-: raspisat write out. This form
is perfective. A regular secondary imperfective can be formed by means of the suf-
x -yv: raspis-yv-at . In addition, there is a form prexed with na-, napisat , which
also means write but is telic. A prex such as na- in this case is generally regarded
as semantically empty. The corresponding imperfective form is not, however, the
expected *napisyvat . Rather, we nd the unprexed form used as the secondary
imperfective, which is thus homophonous with the related activity (atelic) verb.7
Russian verbs are nominalized by a variety of morphological means (see Sadler
et al., 1997, for more detailed discussion and references): conversion of the root
with accompanying palatalization of the nal root consonant (rospis mural from
raspisat ), sufxation of -ka (pobelit to whitewash, bleach (perfective), pobelka
whitewashing, bleaching), but most commonly by sufxation of -anie/-enie (the
choice of allomorph is determined principally by conjugation class). Sometimes we
nd perfective verbs taking this sufx. The nominal can have a variety of readings.
For instance, raspisanie from raspisat write out (perfective) has the idiosyncratic
result reading timetable, while spisanie from spisat copy out has a regular process
or action-nominal reading copying out. However, secondary imperfectives derived
with the sufx -yv invariably form a nominal with -anie, and this nominal only ever
gives rise to an action nominalization (with six lexical exceptions): raspisyvanie writ-
ing out, spisyvanie copying out, and so on. Moreover, the meaning of the action
nominal is always processual: it never denotes a completed event. In this respect,
the morphology preserves the imperfective aspect of the base verb. However, this
7 This is the standard picture in Slavic generally, but not in Bulgarian/Macedonian, where the prexed
perfective derived from a simplex stem has two imperfective forms, the original stem and a regularly de-
rived secondary imperfective, as in Bulgarian na-pia I write, imperfective pia/na-pis-yv-am. See Popova
(2006), Markova (2011) for further discussion of the Bulgarian case.
aspect-preservation effect is not found with perfective verb bases. For instance, the
nominalization pobelka whitewashing, bleaching cited above is derived from a per-
fective verb, but the noun is an action nominal with processual, that is, imperfective
meaning. It is not generally possible to derive an action nominal from a perfective
verb, preserving the underlying aspect. In this respect Russian differs from Polish,
where nominalizations can preserve the aspectual contrast: pisac to write (imperfect-
ive) pisanie (process of) writing, przepisac (perfective) przepisanie (completed
act of) writing (see also Rozwadowska, 2000).
What this means is that we have a grammaticalized aspectual distinction which is
(largely) preserved in Polish, but which in Russian is half lost: only the imperfect-
ive verbs preserve the imperfective reading, while perfective verbs behave in a more
or less unpredictable fashion with respect to aspect (and with respect to semantics
generally). This situation can be contrasted with that of German. There, the -ung
nominals acquire an aspectual nuance which is lacking in the base verb. In the case
of Russian nominalizations, the semantics implied by the imperfective aspect form
is preserved, but not that implied by the perfective form. However, in both cases we
nd that the grammar and lexicon need to be able to specify semantic properties of
the nominalization, so that the nominalization process cannot be said to be free of
semantic specication or restriction.
8.5 Analysis of deverbal nominalizations

In this section I sketch an analysis of the morphosyntax of deverbal nominaliza-
tions based on Spencer (1999). I apply this to the English verbal gerunds discussed
by Malouf (2000a,b). A more detailed treatment of other types of mixed categories,
involving denominal transpositions, will be given in Chapter 9.
8.5.1 English nominalizations

To tie together the account of deverbal action nominalizations, lets consider well-
known examples from English. I assume a generalized paradigm function which
denes a form X-ing from a verb root X. The central part of the generalized paradigm
function is the fsyn function. This denes the derived argument structure according
to a general schema (23) valid for inectional and derivational relations generally,
which derives nouns from verbs (where {Nom} is a shorthand for the feature which
characterizes the deverbal nominalization process).
(23) GPF: general action nominal template
fform : X, {Nom} X-ing
fsyn : E. . . RE. . .
The general schema in (23) will be elaborated for the various types of nominalization.
Nominalizations 319
The ACC-ACC type, represented by the enemy destroying the city (appalled us),
requires the least alteration, in that it introduces the R or REF semantic function role
and then maps the verbs arguments to clausal grammatical functions, SUBJ/OBJ:
(24) GPF for the ACC-ACC nominalization; fsyn dening the derived semantic
function role:

REL destroyARG1, ARG2

EVENT ARG1 enemy

ARG2 city

destroyARG1, ARG2

REL

REF EVENT ARG1 enemy

ARG2 city
General principles of LFG syntax Arka (2003); Matsumoto (1996) then map this
a-structure onto an appropriate f-structure:

(25) PRED destroySUBJ, OBJ

SUBJ the enemy

OBJ the city

FIN no
I will assume that independent principles guarantee that a pronominal SUBJ will ap-
pear in the (default) object case form rather than the subject case form reserved for
subjects of nite clauses.
Turning to the POSS-GEN and POSS-ACC types, I shall make the standard as-
sumption that there is a POSS relation which denes the f-structure of nominal
dependents of noun heads. Languages often draw a distinction in morphosyntax
between ordinary non-relational nouns, such as tree or proposition, and nouns which
presuppose a relation with some other nominal denotatum, such as a kin term, a
body part, or some other meronym. Recall from Chapter 7 that inalienably possessed
nouns, being inherently relational, have a more complex argument structure than
ordinary nouns, one which includes a representation of the possessor argument
(Barker, 1995). The a-structure of such nouns can be represented using the notational
schema adopted here as in (26).

(26) REF daughter/hand/cornerARG1
The internal argument, ARG1, of such nouns will then be mapped onto a set of
f-structure representations as appropriate. For English, the possessor argument can
be expressed either by means of an of -phrase or by means of the s phrasal afx. This
argument is realized in f-structure by the grammatical relation POSS. This relation
is mapped onto the m- and c-structures corresponding to those two constructions.

(I ignore the details of this mapping.) The label POSS is meant to be mnemonic; it
carries no commitment to the view that there might be a coherent semantic notion
of possession:

(27) PRED daughter/hand/cornerPOSS
Alienably possessed nouns are comparable to inalienably possessed nouns in many

languages, including English. The alienable-possession relation is semantically and
pragmatically extremely broad, of course, and ultimately denotes nothing more than
some conventionally or pragmatically determined relation between the denotation of
the head noun (possessum) and that of the modifying (possessor) noun phrase. Since
(in English) the morphosyntax is essentially identical to that of inalienable posses-
sion, we can follow Bresnan (2001: 293) in assuming some function which provides
any noun with a possessor argument, schematically:

(28) REF Tom/woman/house REF Tom/woman/houseARG1
This ARG1 will then be mapped onto the POSS grammatical relation in f-structure.8
Given these preliminaries we can now return to the deverbal nominalizations. Lets
rst consider the POSS-GEN type, in which most of the morphosyntax is that of a
nominal. There are two main constructions, illustrated by (29).
(29) a. The enemys destruction of the city (appalled us)

b. The destruction of the city by the enemy (appalled us)
Since the details of the morphosyntactic mapping are peripheral to the central point, I
shall present a brute-force description.9 We just need to assume that the ARG2 argu-
ment is mapped to an of -phrase (in f-structure represented here as OBLof ), and that
the ARG1 argument is mapped to a POSS f-structure argument which is subsequently
mapped to a prenominal possessive phrase (the enemys), or that the ARG1 argument
is mapped to a grammatical relation which ultimately gets realized as a by-phrase,
OBLby :

(30) PRED destroyPOSS, OBLof

POSS the enemy
OBLof the city
8 I return to the semantics of possession in the next chapter, Section 9.3.

9 The LFG literature contains a number of concrete proposals for achieving this mapping, in many
cases using the standard machinery of lexical mapping theory. In particular, as mentioned in Chapter 7, a
number of detailed proposals have been given for the action nominals of Hungarian by Tibor Laczk. See
Laczk (2010) for recent discussion and references therein.
Nominalizations 321

(31) PRED destroyOBLof , OBLby

OBLby the enemy
OBLof the city
In the POSS-ACC construction, illustrated by The enemys destroying the city ap-
palled us, the generalized paradigm function maps the derived a-structure to a slightly
different f-structure, in which the ARG1 position is mapped to the POSS grammatical
relation:

(32) REL destroyARG1, ARG2

REF EVENT
ARG1 enemy

ARG2 city

PRED destroyPOSS, OBJ

POSS the enemy

OBJ the city

FIN no
The mixed-category construction can now be seen as an amalgam of the POSS-GEN

and ACC-ACC constructions. It can be dened by the fsyn function shown in (33).
(33) For X, {Nom}, fsyn

REF EVENT REL PARG1, (ARG2), . . .

PRED PPOSS, (OBJ), . . .
The nal complication in the morphosyntax of the construction is to map this to

an appropriate c-structure representation. To a certain extent this is independent of
the a-structure and f-structure representations (this is, after all, the whole point of
architectures such as that of LFG or HPSG).
This analysis, in which a-structure to f-structure mappings play a crucial role, an-
swers the question raised by Bresnan (2001: 292) in her discussion of gerunds. She
notes that a verb predicate with a POSS subject will violate principles of f-structure
completeness and coherence, because verbs do not normally license a possessor as
their rst argument. She proposes a lexical rule which introduces a possessor func-
tion in f-structure, which is then identied with the subject argument of the verb,
giving an f-structure of the form (34) for the phrase Marys frequently visiting Fred (to
which she assigns the c-structure shown in (35)).

(34) POSS Mary

SUBJ

PRED visiting(SUBJ), (OBJ)

OBJ
Fred

ADJ frequently
(35) DP
DP D
Marys VP
AdvP VP
frequently visiting Fred
However, on the present account, based on argument-structure representations,

there is no need for such a rule, because the precise realization of the base verbs
arguments as grammatical relations is dened by the a-structure to f-structure map-
ping, and it makes use of relations that are for the most part required independently
of the nominalization process.
8.5.2 Mixed categories and syntactic category labels

Finally, I havent actually specied the syntactic category of the nominalization. This
is deliberate. In Spencer (1999) I argue that syntactic category labels are redundant if
we furnish all content words with a semantic function argument. Specically, verbs
are precisely those categories which have the E argument, while nouns are those with
the R argument. To label these additionally as V, N (or worse, by means of some
combination of binary features) is completely superuous. Moreover, in the case of
category mixing it gets us into trouble. The nominalization mixed category is mixed
in that it is a member of the R argument type which is derived from a member of the
E argument type. The extent to which the R and the E semantic functions determine
morphosyntactic behaviour is a language-particular matter (though with possibly
some universal or near-universal propensities).
If, for instance, we follow Bresnans (1997) extended head-sharing proposals, then
we will nd that the constituent-structure syntax provides for positions for canonical
verbs and nouns and their projections, and that the mixed-category head occupies
one of these, the noun position, but is linked to the empty position corresponding to
Nominalizations 323
the other, the verb position. I presuppose essentially this mechanism, together with
Bresnans proposals for the construction of functional structure: each syntactic po-
sition contributes its features by unication to the overall f-structure. In this way
we can capture the idea that a nominalization is surrounded by nominal satellites
(of -phrases, genitive-case-marked phrases, adjectives) which serve to express argu-
ments and attributes of a verbal predicate in f-structure. Arguments such as those
of Bresnan (1997) and Bresnan and Mugane (2006) suggest that such a move would
be somewhat natural within LFG, since labels such as V/VP and N/NP would be
nothing more than cover terms for the more cumbersome but accurate characteriza-
tions node serving as the value of the inverse mapping from an argument structure
containing E/R.
8.6 Nominalized adjectives

In this section we look briey at a largely neglected area of lexicology, that of the
transposition from adjective to noun, what we may call property nominalizations.
Another traditional name for such transpositions in European linguistics is Nomen
Essendi (plural Nomina Essendi). Examples are given in (36).
(36) red redness

kind kindness
sincere sincerity
curious curiosity
warm warmth
I will not present an in-depth analysis of such pairs; rather, I will use a few well-
known and uncontroversial facts about this type of transposition to illustrate some
of the difculties in characterizing the notion precisely.
The basic representation for such a transposition is RA*x*. However, not all
nominalizations have solely transpositional uses. In many cases we see semantic drift.
This turns the transposition into derivation proper, since it induces addition of a
semantic predicate to the lexical representation. For instance, curiosity can denote
a curious object, while kindness can denote an act of kindness. Both of those uses
permit plurals (a shop full of curiosities, her many kindnesses), which is not possible
with genuine property nominalizations as transpositions. In this respect, property
nominals are exactly like action nominals, relational adjectives, or deverbal parti-
ciples in English and many other languages, which also show semantic drift towards
true derivation.
Property nominalizations are like action nominalizations, in that they can result
in subtle additional meanings which dont seem to add up to full blown semantic
predicates of the kind normally associated with lexical derivation. This question is
discussed by Aronoff (1976: 379) in the context of what he calls semantic coherence.
Aronoff identies three readings for the property nominalization transposition, as

illustrated by nouns of the form Xousness, such as callousness:
(37) a. the fact that Y is Xous

His callousness surprised me = The fact that he was callous surprised me
b. the extent to which Y is Xous
His callousness surprised me = The extent to which he was callous surprised
me
c. the quality or state of being Xous
Callousness is not a virtue = The quality of being callous is not a virtue
I shall refer to these readings as the factive, the extent, and the state readings. Aronoff
(1976: 38, footnote 5) mentions the possibility of treating these readings as three sepa-
rate meanings or as one tripartite or ambiguous one. I take this to mean that we have
a choice between distinguishing three distinct polysemous readings or a single read-
ing which is vague with respect to the factive, extent, and state readings. He points
out that the Xousness nominals lack other, non-transpositional, derivational readings,
unlike many of the property nominalizations in -ness/-ity/-th, including nominals of
the form Xosity. In other words, for Xousness nominals it is possible to deduce the
meaning of the nominal from its base Xous. This is what Aronoff means by semantic
coherence.
There are several interesting features of Aronoff s discussion. First, we should note
that Aronoff himself does not speak of transpositions. Rather, even in the case of the
Xousness nouns, he takes nominalization to be a derivational process which induces
a semantic change, specifying some combination of the three meanings shown in
(37). Second, he provides a number of examples of other nominalizations in -ity with
appropriate glosses in terms of the three semantic classes shown in (37). These are
shown in (38).
(38) 1. various/variety
(a, b) The variety of the sh in the pond surprised me
(c) Variety is not always pleasing
(other) How many varieties of sh are there in the pond?
2. notorious/notoriety
(a, b) His notoriety appealed to me
(c) Notoriety is not a virtue
(other) All the towns notables and notorieties were there
3. curious/curiosity
(a, b) His curiosity disturbed me
(c) Curiosity can be dangerous
(other) They admired his dress, but only as a curiosity
Nominalizations 325
4. porous/porosity
(a, b) The porosity of the material is uncanny
(c) Porosity is often a highly desired quality
(other) The high porosity of the clay made it unt for use
5. monstrous/monstrosity
(a, b) The monstrosity of what I had done suddenly dawned upon me
(c) ??Monstrosity is not a pleasant quality
(other) What a monstrosity!
6. continuous/continuity
(a, b) The continuity of ones heritage can be disturbing
(other) This story lacks continuity
The continuities for next weeks episode
7. discontinuous/discontinuity
(? a) There is a sense of discontinuity, failure to follow through
(other) There are many discontinuities in your story
What is striking about these examples is that Aronoff ascribes both the factive and
the extent readings to the rst of the example sentences in each case (except for
discontinuity, where its unclear that the reading is a factive/eventive).
In fact, this indeterminacy between factive and extent readings seems to be found
wherever we have the nominalization of a qualitative and readily gradable adjective.
One determinant of the meaning is the syntax of the noun phrase headed by the
nominalization. For instance, the factive and extent readings given by Aronoff
all have denite determiners (the or a possessive pronoun), while the state-of-
affairs readings generally arise from a determiner-less noun. This suggests that the
factive/extent readings are more readily contextualized, while the state-of-affairs
readings tend to be generic. But this is not necessarily an indication of polysemy,
any more than the word whale shows polysemy in The whales are diving and Whales
are mammals. However, the principal determinant of the meaning seems to be the
predicate of the sentence in which the nominalization is used. Thus, in example (39)
we see the extent meaning of thickness, which is probably the default interpretation,
but that interpretation can easily be overridden by a predicate which presupposes the
factive interpretation, as in (40).
(39) We were surprised at the thickness of the walls

a. = We were surprised at how thick the walls were
b. = We were surprised at the fact that the walls were thick
(40) a. The relative thickness of the walls proves that the building was a fortress
b. = The fact that the walls were relatively thick proves that the building was a
fortress
On the other hand, the most natural reading for (41) is as the name of a state of
affairs:
(41) The besieging army was hampered by the thickness of the walls
Adjectives of size, such as thick, long, and short tend to give nominals which denote
extent, but with the right context it always seems possible to induce a factive or state
reading.
In (42) we see similar instances of three-way indeterminacy of interpretation.
(42) a. The hardness of the water explains the build-up of limescale [factive]
b. The hardness of the water increases with the depth of the water table
[extent]
c. The hardness of the water makes it difcult to wash [state]
It is worth mentioning that a similar type of ambiguity can be found with nominals
that are not actually derived from adjectives. For instance, while truth is a nominaliza-
tion of true, veracity has no corresponding adjectival base. Because truth and veracity
are synonyms in their primary meanings, they behave similarly with respect to the
ne semantic distinctions I am concerned with here.
(43) a. The truth/veracity of Harriets claim is beyond doubt [factive]
= The fact that Harriets claim is true . . .
b. The strength of the evidence depends on the truth/veracity of the witnesss
statement [extent]
= . . . whether the witnesss statement is true (true/false being trivial
measures of extent for truth)
c. The truth/veracity of the original newspaper reports, as revealed by the latest
evidence, has caused a good deal of consternation [state]
When we consider nouns such as truth and falsity, it becomes apparent that prop-
erty nominalizations can also have a propositional reading, as in The truth of the
assertion is beyond doubt. Other deadjectival nominals can also be the argument of the
predicates true/false, or of verbs of belief (44a), but this seems somewhat marginal.
(44) a. They doubt his sincerity (that he is sincere)
b. * They doubt her illness ( = that she is ill)
From the foregoing examples it appears that the interpretation of property nomi-
nals depends ultimately on the semantics of the predicate of which a nominal is an
argument. In that case, it would be wrong to say that the nominals themselves are
ambiguous. Rather, they are vague with respect to the three salient interpretations.
(I take it that what Aronoff means by one tripartite or ambiguous reading is one
tripartite or vague reading.) This means that the morphology need only provide a
Nominalizations 327
nominal form of the adjective, with no additional semantic content. That nominal
form will then be interpreted in a variety of ways that depend on somewhat subtle
selectional requirements imposed (coerced) by the main predicate.
Further light is cast on deadjectival nominalizations by Roy (2010). On the basis
of data from French and English, she argues that nominalizations are only possible
from precisely those adjectives which can be used predicatively, which for her means
the intersective adjectives. She follows standard practice and divides adjectives into
the intersective and non-intersective. The non-intersective are those adjectives which
cant license the paraphrase X is a Noun and X is Adj for the attributive construction
(an) Adj Noun. These include relational adjectives (that is, adjectives transposed
from nouns), adverbial adjectives such as former, alleged, future, possible, . . . , and also
what she calls event-modifying adjectives. These are adjectives such as skilful in Olga
is a skilful surgeon. These adjectives give expressions which are paraphrasable as Olga
is skilful as/in the capacity of a surgeon. As a result they are contextually dependent,
in the sense that they dont license more general inferences. From Olga is a skilful
surgeon and Olga is a mother we cant conclude Olga is a skilful mother.
Roy argues that there are two sorts of nominalization from adjectives, which she
calls State-nominals (S-nominals) and Quality-nominals (Q-nominals). She then ex-
plicitly compares the nominalized adjective with the deverbal nominalizations as
analysed by Grimshaw (1990). Recall that Grimshaw drew an important distinction
between result nominals such as mixture, simple event nominals such as journey,
and complex event nominals, which are nominalizations of verbs which crucially
retain components of the argument structure of the base verb and which permit
modication by eventive adverbs. I have treated such deverbal nominalizations as
transpositions of verb lexical entries which retain the argument array of the base verb
as well as the verbs E role.
Roy argues that the S-nominals are comparable to complex event nominals in the
verb domain, in the sense that they have an obligatory external argument (corre-
sponding to the subject of a predicative adjective or the head noun of an attribute-
head construction). In addition, they have eventive semantics, in that they can be
modied by adjectives such as constant and frequent, just like complex event nomi-
nalizations. The Q-nominals, by contrast, cannot express an external argument and
cannot be modied by eventive adverbs. Roy provides the French examples in (45, 46)
to illustrate the distinction (which carries over almost in its entirety to English).
(45) a. La popularit de ses chansons mimpressionne

the popularity of his songs me.impresses
The popularity of his songs impresses me
b. La popularit est une qualit qui lui fait dfaut
the popularity is a quality that to.him does default
Popularity is a quality that he is lacking
(46) a. La popularit constante *(de ses chansons) mimpressionne

the popularity constant of his songs me.impresses
The continued popularity of his songs impresses me
b. * La popularit constante est une qualit qui lui fait dfaut
the popularity constant is a quality that to.him does shortage
Intended: Continued popularity is a quality that he is lacking.
Roy then argues, correctly in my view, that the difference between S-nominals and
Q-nominals is that the Q-nominals have a generic (arbitrary) subject. This means
that they cannot express an overt subject, and, being generic, they cannot be modi-
ed by eventive adjectives in quite the same way as S-nominals. As far as I can see,
however, there are no other signicant differences between S- and Q-nominals. Now,
the S-nominals correspond, it seems, to the factive nominals discussed above, while
the Q-nominals seem to correspond to the state readings. If this is correct, then we
can say that the factive and state readings are simply particular and generic versions
of the same representation.
Roy doesnt discuss the extent reading. In that reading, no predicational semantics
is required, and the transposition can be dened simply as the nominalization of the
adjective denotation. It remains, though, to account for how a nominalized adjective
can denote an extent. Here I will follow a number of scholars who have argued that
the meaning of a gradable adjective includes an argument which denes a measure
of the extent to which a property word can be truly predicated of its argument. For
example, Kennedy (1999: 90) argues that the meaning of a gradable adjective has
three components:
(47) Semantic constituents of gradable adjective,
(i) a reference value, which indicates the degree to which the subject is
(ii) a standard value, which corresponds to some other degree
(iii) a degree relation, which is asserted to hold between the reference value
and the standard value.
In effect, a gradable adjective in its absolute sense (say, in This star is dense) is a
kind of comparative construction in which the standard and the degree are covert.
Kennedy illustrates the semantics of gradable adjectives by translating (48) (his (27))
as (49) (his (28), p. 96).
(48) The neutron star in the Crab Nebula is dense
(49) The degree to which the neutron star in the Crab Nebula is dense is at least
as great as some standard of denseness (relativized to a comparison class for
neutron stars)
Nominalizations 329
The details of the analysis are not particularly relevant to the rather coarse-grained
analysis I wish to provide for deadjectival extent nominalizations, and in all prob-
ability any analysis which made reference to some kind of degree or measure function
would serve my purposes.10 The point is that there are good grounds for saying that
the concept of extent is part and parcel of the semantic representation of any grad-
able adjective. In that case, we can say that the nominalization targets the degree
component of the adjectives meaning.
We can illustrate this by taking the extent nominalization of dense, namely density,
and substituting this appropriately in (49) to obtain a synonymous sentence:11
(50) The density of the neutron star in the Crab Nebula is at least as great as some
standard density (relativized to a comparison class for neutron stars)
8.7 The interpretation of nominalizations: summary

I have sketched three different ways in which a deverbal nominalization can convey
subtle changes of meaning, and three ways in which property nominalizations can be
interpreted. In each case we are dealing with a different set of semantic distinctions
from those which individuate lexemes. In others words, the various shifts in inter-
pretation do not create new lexical entries in the way that true derivation does. In
fact, what we have here is a kind of systematic polysemy coerced by the predicates of
which the nominals are arguments (cf. Melloni, 2007; Zucchi, 1993). Each morpho-
syntactic type of nominalization, however, may permit different types of coercion.
The polysemy is systematic in the sense of Apresjan (1974), which in the current
context means that it doesnt create a new lexeme.
However, if the action nominals and property nominals are not (necessarily)
distinct lexemes, how can we represent the semantic distinctions which various au-
thors have identied? I turn to that question after sketching a general analysis of
nominalizing transpositions.
8.8 Dening nominalizations

8.8.1 Nominalizations as constructions
I have presented an argument-structure-based analysis of the basic morphosyntax
of deverbal action nominalizations and for deadjectival property nominalizations.
Nominalization in some cases may add no semantic content whatsoever to the base,
serving simply to name the event denoted by the verb phrase or clause headed by the
base verb, or to name the state or property denoted by the adjective. This seems to be
10 A convenient alternative way of formalizing the same ideas is presented, for instance in Kennedy
and McNally (2005), using a formalism originally developed by Cresswell (1976).
11 Kennedys own denition in (49) uses the nominalization denseness, but density seems to be a
perfectly good synonym here.
particularly common in the case of deverbal nominals. In such cases, the nominalized
form is simply a morphosyntactic device, say, for getting a clause embedded under
a particular type of verb. Arguably, one can analyse the semantically neutral con-
verbs or gerunds of Turkish, the Altaic languages, and many other language groups
in exactly this way. The analysis given so far accommodates just such purely trans-
positional nominalizations. The semantic representation of a pure action nominal is
just that of the base eventive verb, but the default argument structure associated with
that verb is enriched by addition of the R semantic function role, guaranteeing that
the clause acquires certain of the properties of a noun syntagma. Likewise, a pure
property nominalization has the argument structure of the adjective enriched by the
R role. The basic representations are shown in (51).
(51) Basic a-structure representations for transpositions to noun

a. Event nominalization: REx, . . .
b. Property nominalization: RA*x*
Now lets consider those nominalizations which acquire semantic nuances of the kind
just reviewed for action nominals and property nominalizations, but which com-
plement the conceptual meaning of the base verb or adjective without substantively
altering it. I begin with deverbal nominalizations.
In Spencer (2010a) I proposed that the semantic contribution of a deverbal nomi-
nalization be handled in a very direct fashion by altering the SEM attribute of the de-
rived nominal itself in a fashion that reects the addition of the R semantic function
role. A verb ontologically denotes an eventuality (Event) as opposed to a Thing, but
a nominalized verb is ontologically an abstract Thing embedding an Event. Thus for
destruction in the destruction of the city by the enemy, we would have a representation
along the lines of [Thing [Event DESTROY(x, y)]]. The different subtypes of nominal
meaning, factive, propositional, and state-of-affairs, identied by Zucchi and oth-
ers were notated by subtyping the ontological category of (abstract) Thing, so that
destruction could be given the SEM attribute [Thing:abstract:SoA [Event DESTROY(x, y)]],
and so on.
That solution is reminiscent of the analysis given by Chierchia (1984: 149f.) for
deadjectival property nominalizations. Chierchia denes two functions to dene the
semantic effects of such a nominalization. The function maps expressions of type
e, p to type e, while maps expressions of type e to expressions of type e, p (where
p stands for a special subtype corresponding to propositions). The denotation of
happiness can now be given as happy, on the assumption that the expression happy
is a function x.happy(x). Chierchias function corresponds, then, to the reica-
tion process associated with X-to-noun transpositions. Translated into the current
framework, it means assigning the property nominalization a SEM attribute of the
form [Thing [Property HAPPY(x)]].
Nominalizations 331
Now, it is interesting to note in this connection that its possible to give factive
or propositional readings to ordinary nouns by means of pragmatic coercion. For
instance, in (52) the noun phrase that gold ring means something like the fact that
she is wearing a gold ring, while in (53) it means something like the proposition that
she is married:
(52) That gold ring on her nger probably means shes married
(53) Im not convinced by that gold ring on her nger (I suspect she wears it to stop
her conservative neighbours from gossiping).
This suggests that the semantic properties associated with nominalizations might be
part of a wider set of phenomena. More generally, I will propose that we should
widen the range over which we discuss such effects beyond the connes of lexical
representations tout court.
Suppose we take more seriously the idea that a deverbal nominalization is the
nominalization of a clause. Recall that I have argued that a good deal of the semantic
contribution of inectional morphology is represented at the level of semantic
interpretation of phrases and not of individual lexical items. Suppose we adopt a
similar approach to the factive, propositional, and state-of-affairs readings of action
nominals. Consider a hypothetical case in which a nominal can be given all the pos-
sible interpretations depending on context. The precise interpretation will depend
on context and especially on the semantics of the predication of which the nominal
is a part. The head of that predicate will impose or coerce a specic reading or set
of readings, and the nominal will impose no restrictions of its own. Now consider
a nominal construction such as the English POSS-ACC, with a state-of-affairs read-
ing, or the various readings identied by Zucchi for the Italian innito sostantivato.
In such cases the form of the nominal may well be identical to the form found in a
different construction (e.g. in English, the POSS-GEN or ACC-ACC construction),
which may well have different possibilities of interpretation.
Rather than writing a series of polysemous lexical representations for such
nominals, suppose we adopt a constructional approach. On such a model, the se-
mantic representation of the derived nominal remains unaltered. This means that the
pure transposition type of lexical relatedness alters only the morphosyntactic rep-
resentation of the base lexeme and not the semantic representation or the lexemic
status. In particular, the transposition has no effect on the ontological category of the
eventive predicate. The nominalization process is sufciently dened at the level of
semantic function role: RE . . ., so that the SEM value of the nominalized verb can
remain [Event PRED]. To account for the behaviour of nominalized verbs, we dene
a constructional template for, say, the POSS-ACC construction by dening a partial
syntactic representation which denes a possessor or denite specier and a direct
object. As part of that constructional template, we dene a mapping to the semantic
interpretation which imposes a semantic condition on the derived LCS represent-

ing the meaning of the entire clause. For instance, we might propose the ontological
subtyping of Spencer (2010a) but dene this only at the level of clausal interpret-
ation. Thus, the state-of-affairs nominal construction would impose the meaning
[Thing:abstract:SoA [Event . . .]] on the whole clause, by unication with the SEM attributes
of the verb and its arguments and adjuncts.
By adopting a constructional approach of this sort, we dene three sources for the
interpretation of derived nominals. First, there remains open the possibility that the
nominal itself may impose its own conditions as a lexical property. This would be an
instance of a meaning-bearing transposition, a logical possibility in the system adopt-
ed here, and one that is instantiated in Yukaghir, as we will see in Chapter 9. Second,
the construction type in which a nominal is found may impose its own conditions,
as a constructional property which is not associated with any specic lexical item
or grammatical marker. Third, the grammatical, lexical, or pragmatic context more
widely might impose (by coercion) some interpretation. Where the second and third
possibilities interact, we might then nd that coercion is constrained by the semantic
requirements of the construction.
A proper treatment of such constructions would require a detailed consideration of
the syntactic representations that are implicated in them, so here I will simply sketch
the kinds of morpholexical demands that such a complete analysis must meet. As far
as I can see it should be relatively straightforward to incorporate such proposals into
recent construction-based models of morphosyntax.
Consider the aspectual semantic restrictions/enrichment described for German
and Russian. Suppose for the sake of argument that (a)telicity can be represented
by addition of a predicate BOUNDED/NOT(BOUNDED) as a modier of events in
LCS representations, as in (54) (Jackendoff, 1996, offers detailed proposals for doing
this).
(54) s.s = [Event STORM(enemy, city)] BOUNDED(s)
This example, following existential closure, might correspond to the German ex-
ample with Erstrmung in (22), denoting a completed event of storming of the city.
The telic semantics seems to be a property of the -ung nominal, so here we might
be justied in saying that there is a transposition from verb to noun, but that it is
associated with enrichment of the aspectual/eventive semantics, in other words a
meaning-bearing transposition. The SEM attribute for the derived nominal would
then include the BOUNDED predicate.
This seems to be the right way of describing -ung nominals. On the one hand,
they behave much like transpositions in that they are basically a nominal form of a
verb/clause. Moreover, they are rather regular and transparent (though not as regu-
lar/productive as nominalized innitives). On the other hand, they are also subject
Nominalizations 333
to lexical idiosyncrasy (by undergoing semantic drift), and they add an aspectual re-
striction not found in the original verb meaning. All of this amounts to a description
of the form process which turns a verb into a (morphological and syntactic) noun
and which adds an element of extra meaning, but which doesnt seem to create a
brand new lexeme. This is a transposition which adds content to the SEM attribute
but which doesnt change the LI, that is, a meaning-bearing transposition.
The nominalized innitive, however, behaves much more like its Romance
counterparts, and so I will assume a constructional analysis for that.
The case of imperfective aspect retention in Russian -anie/-enie nominalizations
poses additional problems in that in Russian the aspectual opposition is gram-
maticalized. In other words, the Russian inectional system includes the property
[Aspect:{perfective, imperfective}]. Now, the semantic interpretation of the perfect-
ive and imperfective forms of verbs is extremely complex and ultimately depends
on a host of contextual, grammatical, and lexical factors. However, the default in-
terpretation for perfective is telic (i.e. BOUNDED), and the default interpretation for
imperfective is NOT(BOUNDED), so that a Russian imperfective nominalization has
a representation like that of (55).
(55) s.s = [Event . . .] NOT(BOUNDED(s))
The question now arises as to whether the representation in (55) is a lexical property
or a constructional property. For Russian, the answer again seems to be that this is a
lexical property of the transposition, because it doesnt depend on other properties of
the construction and it cant be coerced. Therefore, we should assume a generalized
paradigm function for the -anie/-enie transposition which includes the SEM function
in (56).
(56) GPF(VERB, {Nom, [Aspect:imperfective]})

fsem = s.s = [Event . . .] NOT(BOUNDED(s))
...
However, this seems unsatisfactory as it is. The NOT(BOUNDED(s)) interpretation

is, after all, the default interpretation of the {imperfective} value of the aspect prop-
erty, and so it can hardly be an accident that all of the imperfective nominalizations
are derived from imperfective verb forms. Moreover, in Polish we actually retain the
perfective/imperfective opposition in nominals. Therefore, we need to nd some way
of deriving the semantic contribution of the aspect from the aspectual feature value.
Of course, the problem is solved relatively easily if we assume that the
[Aspect:imperfective] property is always interpreted as unbounded in the lexical
representation of the verb. The problem with that assumption is that it isnt true.12
12 To cite all the relevant literature on Slavic aspect would double the size of this books bibliography.
For a convenient summary of the facts within an inuential model of verbal aspect generally see Smith
Imperfective verb forms in the present tense, for instance, can be given a historic in-
terpretation with past perfective meaning (corresponding to English historic present
tenses such as A man walks into a bar and orders a drink). In addition, Russian
past-tense imperfectives can be given a statement of fact reading with a perfective
interpretation:
(57) A: Ty cital Vojnu i Mir?

you read.pst.ipfv War and Peace
Have you read War and Peace?

B: Cital
read.pst.ipfv
Yes, Ive read it.
These kinds of observations strongly suggest that verbal aspect is a property which
is interpreted at the level of the phrase, and that it isnt an instance of inherent inec-
tion. The simplest solution, then, is to say that -anie/-enie nominalization is dened
only over the imperfective subparadigm of a given lexeme. That imperfective mark-
ing then carries over to the derived nominal representation. Ceteris paribus, it will be
interpreted at the level of the nominal phrase by the general principles of inectional
semantic interpretation. The default interpretation is NOT(BOUNDED). We assume
that none of the verb construction types that override that default are applicable to
the nominal, because their structural description will not be met (they only apply to
clauses, not noun phrases).
To demonstrate that this approach will work, it will be necessary to provide a fairly
complete account of the morphosyntax of the Russian nominalization construction,
as well as a very complete morphosyntax of Russian verbal aspect, which goes well
beyond the scope of this study. However, I see no reason why such an account would
encounter insurmountable problems. On the contrary, I think it is only by factorizing
lexical properties in the manner proposed in this model that some of the thornier
problems of Slavic aspectology can be solved.
I turn now to nominalized adjectives. We have identied three principal means for
the adjective-to-noun transposition or property nominalization, the factive, extent,
and state readings. The state reading is best interpreted as the name of the prop-
erty expressed by the adjective with no further semantic embellishment. This, then,
is a pure transposition. The factive reading corresponds rather closely to the state-
of-affairs reading that is equally translated as the fact that P. There appears to be
no systematic correlate with adjectives to the propositional reading of nominalized
verbs. That is, its very difcult to interpret property nominalizations as being true
or false or as objects of belief. However, the scalar property of gradable adjectives is
(1997). For a descriptive survey of Russian aspect see Forsyth (1970). For an approachable summary of the
theoretical perspectives on Russian aspect see Zaliznjak and melv (2000).
Nominalizations 335
a property that can be reied and named in a nominalization with the extent read-
ing. The semantics of gradable adjectives implies an extent predicate at some level of
representation (indeed, Zwarts, 1992, assumes that such a property functions as the
semantic function role for adjectives). Presumably, it is this semantic component of
adjectival meanings that is accessed by comparative/superlative constructions. I am
not qualied to develop a semantics for gradable predicates, but I will simply assume
that some such component is available and can be the object of the transpositional
naming function.
In Section 8.6 I mentioned the analysis of deadjectival nominals recently pro-
posed by Roy (2010). Roys comparison between deadjectival nominals and deverbal
nominals is very interesting and raises an important question. On the model pro-
posed here, the complex event semantics of deverbal nominals can be associated with
the fact that the nominal is a transposed event, effectively the name of an event,
and that transposition retains aspects of the verbs argument structure, including
the E semantic function role. We have seen that the factive/stative interpretation of
the deadjectival nominalization, like the nominalized verb, in effect seems to be the
nominalization of an entire predication: the fact that he is callous/his being callous.
Yet, on the model I propose here, there is no source for a propositional reading of an
adjective. In its lexical representation, an adjective is simply a property word, with no
predicational content whatsoever.
Roys analysis is syntactic. She assumes that predicative adjectives are com-
plements of a Pred head, but she also assumes that intersective adjectives used
attributively are constituents of the same PredP (in effect, this is a variant on old
transformational analyses of attributive adjectives as reduced and moved relative
clauses). The intersective adjectives contrast with the non-intersective adjectives
which are not constituents of a PredP and which combine with the noun they
modify through some kind of functional head, F. In terms of the model proposed
here, what Roy is effectively proposing is a type distinction for intersective adject-
ives (though she doesnt explore the semantic implications of her syntactic choice).
Thus, for her, an intersective adjective will be of a similar type to an intransitive verb
(while a non-intersective adjective will be of type, say, n, n, where n is the type of
nominal expressions embedded inside the FP constituent; in the simplest case, such
adjectives would be of type e, e).
Apart from the eventive semantics of deadjectival nominalizations its very difcult
to see why an attributive adjective of any sort should be treated as a kind of predicate
phrase, and the justications provided by Roy herself are entirely theory-internal.
Moreover, its very difcult to see how Roy would account for Aronoffs extent
reading without great articiality.13 However, Roy s principal insight concerning
13 Roy herself doesnt cite Aronoff s work, and appears to be unaware of the extent interpretation of
nominalized adjectives.
the factive/stative readings is important: these are essentially nominalizations of

propositions, not of adjective denotations.
I have no particularly insightful observations to make about the way that a
factive/stative, proposition-based, reading might come about, so I will present the
obvious analysis that emerges from the proposed model. Recall that one of the trans-
positions that is available to a language is the X-to-verb transposition, which creates
predicative nouns and adjectives (and prepositional phrases, as in Harriet is in the
garden). In some languages this is realized morphologically, while in most it is real-
ized by means of a functional element, the copular verb (Ackerman and Webelhuth,
1998). The argument-structure representation of an adjective which has been trans-
posed into a predicate will be a complex in which the basic a-structure, A*x*,
has been enriched with an eventive semantic function role: Ex*A*x*. In a -
nite predication, the E role would be realized as the copula. However, suppose that
a grammar is allowed to take the representation of a predicative adjective and fur-
ther transpose it to a nominalization, to give REx*A*x*. This can then be
interpreted semantically as the nominalization of a predicate, in effect the adjectival
equivalent of the complex event nominalization of a verb.
In sum, a pure adjective-to-noun transposition with factive/stative reading will
take a lexical entry (58a) for an adjective such as popular and deliver the virtual
adjective-to-verb transposition (58b). This will then be transposed to a noun as
shown in (59):

(58) a. STEM0 /popular/
FORM
MORCLASS A

SYN A*x*

SEM
[Property POPULAR(x)]
LI popular

b. STEM0 /popular/
FORM
MORCLASS A

SYN Ex*A*x*

SEM
(GDP)
LI (GDP)

(59) STEM0 /popularity/
FORM
MORCLASS A

SYN REx*A*x*

SEM
(GDP)
LI (GDP)
Nominalizations 337
The derived argument structure is interpreted by the same conventions that I have
adopted for deverbal event nominalizations: the R semantic function role serves to
introduce the name of the event represented by the E role. In effect, (59) means the
property of being popular. It is largely synonymous with the phrase being popular, as
seen in the synonymy between the alternatives in (60).

Popularity
(60) hasnt changed her
Being popular
Finally, to obtain the extent nominal reading, I shall assume that the semantic
representation of a gradable adjective includes some representation of degree or
measure. Kennedy and McNally (2005: 367) (following Cresswell, 1976) take (61) to
be the general representation for a gradable adjective.
(61) A = dx.mA (x) = d
This expression denotes the relation between the degree, d, to which adjective A holds
of objects x, the individuals of which A is predicated. The term mA (x) represents the
projection of x onto the scale associated with the adjective A. To obtain a satisfact-
ory semantics for the adjective, it is also necessary to add a comparison class (tall
for a basketball player, Sequoia, seven-year-old, . . .), which I ignore here. Lets use
the name of the adjective lexeme to represent the scale projection term itself. Thus,
dx.POPULAR(x) will represent the degree to which we can truthfully assert that x
is popular.
Given that notational convention, it is rather easy to represent an extent nominal-
ization, provided we enrich the argument-structure representation slightly. Suppose
we transfer the degree component of the semantics of the adjective to the a-structure
representation itself, say, as A*dx*. This is only possible for a gradable adject-
ive, of course, since other types of adjectives will lack the relevant semantic degree
component. Arguably, such an argument structure element is precisely what degree
modiers target in syntactic representations, but I will not pursue that possibility
here (for one thing, it isnt just adjectives which show scalar semantics). However,
on the KennedyMcNally analysis the principal component of the meaning of a
gradable adjective is that of degree, so it would be a reasonable extension of the
notion of extended argument structure advocated here. In a sense, this would also
represent a compromise with the proposals of Zwarts (1992), for whom an argument-
structure element such as d (his G) is the sole semantic function role associated
with (gradable) adjectives.
The extent nominal is now simply an adjective-to-noun transposition in which
the nominalized component is the degree itself. We can notate this by some form of
subscripting to clarify the idea that the nominalization names the degree denoted by
the adjective:
(62) Argument structure for extent nominalization

Rd A*dx*

(63) a. STEM0 /popular/
FORM
MORCLASS A

SYN A*dx*

SEM
[Property POPULAR(x)]
LI popular

b. STEM0 /popularity/
FORM
MORCLASS N

SYN R A*dx*
d
SEM
(GDP)
LI (GDP)
Notice that Im assuming that the property nominalization is a form of the adject-
ive lexeme, that is, a genuine transposition rather than a genuine derivational process.
Also, Im assuming that the additional semantic properties of the nominalization are
dened constructionally, not lexically, just as in the case of deverbal nominalizations.
The need for a constructional account is not so obvious in the case of deadjectival
nominalizations, but it is easy to see that the semantics of the nominalization apply
to an entire noun phrase subject Her considerable popularity in (64a), and not just to
the nominal head. Thus, by far the easiest way to account for the properties of (64),
comparable to (60), is to assume that the semantic interpretation is run off the en-
tire noun phrase, which can then be thought of as the nominal correspondent of the
subject phrases in (64b, c).

(64) a. Her considerable popularity
b. Being extremely popular hasnt changed her

c. The fact that she is extremely popular
I have devoted rather little attention to nominalized adjectives, and my analysis

has been unavoidably supercial. There are several reasons for this. First, its dif-
cult to get good cross-linguistic comparisons for these constructions, because there
are few descriptions which address the relevant questions. Second, there are fewer
languages with deadjectival nominal transpositions than there are languages with
deverbal nominal transpositions, simply because there are many languages which
lack a well-dened category of adjective altogether. Third, in comparison to deverbal
nominalizations, languages are under little pressure to grammaticalize property
nominalizations. For many languages the standard or indeed the only way to express
a clause as the complement of a lexical head or as a clausal adjunct is to nominalize
Nominalizations 339
it. However, outside philosophical and literary discourse, many languages experience
little functional pressure to name a property rather than simply ascribe it. Moreover,
as is well known, for core property concepts of size, shape, and so on, the marked
semantic value of a dimension commonly gives rise to a nominal which is neutral
in terms of its degree. For example, the nouns length, height, width, depth, . . . dont
just represent nominalizations of the notions longer, higher/taller, wider, deeper, . . .
than some standard reference. Rather, they stand just for that dimension, without any
hint of a contextually dened standard: The piece is seven minutes long, which is rather
short for a symphony. A further complication arises with the precise semantics of
property nominalizations: its not always clear whether we are dealing with a factive/
stative reading or an extent reading. In a sentence such as The density of the star
surprised the astronomers, is it the fact of the star being dense or the extent thats sur-
prising? Or is it rather the fact/proposition that the star is dense to such-and-such a
degree that is surprising?
Finally, to end on an intriguing note, recall that Aronoff s stative nominals can be
analysed as ordinary factive nominals with generic subjects. These lend themselves
to comparison with middle constructions, such as This shirt washes easily, which are
generics in the verbal domain. In Russian, such middles are expressed using the re-
exive passive construction. Thus, the transitive verb otglaivat iron (clothes) can
be used in the passive with middle meaning, as in (65) (Spencer and Zaretskaya,
1998a, 2001).
(65) Takie tkani ploxo otglaivajutsja
such fabrics badly iron
Such fabrics dont iron well.
There is a deverbal nominalization of this verb which nominalizes both the active and
the (reexive) passive uses, but that nominal cant be used to nominalize the middle
reading:
(66) ploxoe otglaivanie takix tkanej
bad iron.nom of.such fabrics
the bad ironing of such fabrics
= the poor capacity of such fabrics to be ironed
Intriguingly, the way to express such a nominalization is by taking as the base form
the present passive participle of the verb, otglaivaem-yj. This participle tends to have
the possibilitive modal meaning associated with the middle construction. We there-
fore nominalize that participle as we would any other adjective, with the deadjectival
nominal sufx -ost :
(67) ploxaja otglaivaemost takix tkanej
bad ironability of.such fabrics
the poor capacity of such fabrics to be ironed
8.8.2 Morphosyntactic aspects of deverbal nominals

Finally, I return briey to the formal, morphological side of nominalization. In gen-
eral the morphology is just like that realizing any other morphosyntactic property:
some morphophonological operation of afxation, ablaut, conversion, or whatever
is dened by the fform function of the generalized paradigm function. In the case of
specialized nominalizing morphology such as the -ung of German or the -anie/-enie
sufx of Russian (or, indeed, the lexical nominalizations in -azione in Italian), the suf-
xational morphology is dened by the FORM function of the generalized paradigm
function, as in (68).
(68) GPF(verb, {Nom})

fform = Vroot + ung anie azione eceg etc.
MORCLASS = N
...
Notice that I have dened the morphological class of the derived form to be noun. In
some cases this might be derivable by default from the R semantic function argument
in the SYN representation, but this will not always be true of nominalizations. Indeed,
this is the crux of the problem of mixed categories. In that case, it may not be entirely
clear how best to label the morphological class of the resulting form. What, for in-
stance, is the correct morphological class label for the -ing form of an English verb
in the enemys storming the city? The question is ill-dened, and so the [Morclass]
subattribute for such a form should remain undened. Since the -ing form has no
interesting morphological properties of its own, this gives us the right answer.
Where a nominalization process is expressed by some dedicated morphological
operation, the formal side of the problem is relatively simple. However, with the
various instances of nominalized innitive, we appear to have a problem. There, an
inected form of the verb lexeme is being used in the wrong category, with (some of)
the wrong syntax. In general, any theory that relies on something like the classical
morpheme concept is likely to encounter severe difculties in nding a satisfactory
and natural solution to the descriptive problem of nominalized innitives. And yet
innitives in a great many languages acquire more or less nominal morphology or
syntax in a variety of ways.
It is relatively unusual to nd a complete inected form of a word being converted
to an entirely different word class, in the way that we nd with the nominalized inni-
tive. Normally, such conversions involve not just a single form but a whole paradigm
of forms. For instance, in the case of morphologically inert derivation, for example
the personal nouns converted from adjectives, we have an adjective lexeme which
undergoes conversion to a noun but without changing its declension pattern. But this
is not exactly what is happening with the nominalized innitive. Here, we take just
one inected form of the verb and convert that one inected form into a noun stem,
Nominalizations 341
which may then take a variety of nominal morphology, such as possessor agreement,
deniteness marking, case marking, and so on, depending on the language.
It is not a trivial matter to account for the fact that the nominalized innitive
in German, Italian, Spanish, and other languages is a single inected form of the
verb lexeme. It poses particular problems for accounts that rely on the notion of
the classical morpheme. For instance, Motsch (2004: 329) is forced to claim that the
nominalized innitive in German is the result of derivational morphology that just
happens to produce a form identical to the innitive. For German, this seems po-
tentially workable at rst, because the -en sufx has a great many functions already.
Clearly, such an approach would be just plain silly for the Italian innito sostantivato.
But there seem to be very few concrete proposals in the literature for accounting for
the fact that a verb form can also be a noun.
Given the approach proposed here, the nominalized innitive is a transposition
and hence a form of the base verb lexeme, not a distinct derived lexeme. In effect,
then, this is a type of syncretism, in which one inected form systematically serves
as the realization of distinct property sets. In Paradigm Function Morphology, such
syncretisms are handled by means of rules of referral, and so I propose to adopt the
same device to account for the nominalized innitives. In (69) we see a schematic
version of the rule.
(69) For = verb, {NomInf }), where [VForm:inf ] denes the innitive form of
the verb,
GPF()
fform () = fform (verb, [VForm:inf ])
MORCLASS() = N
...
Notice that the general rule for forming an innitive will not specify a [Morclass]
value, because this is provided by default. The more specic designation of
[Morclass:N] in (69) will therefore override that default. I am assuming that we are
dealing with languages in which nouns and verbs can be distinguished morpholo-
gically, and in which the innitive behaves morphologically like a noun. This is true
of German and Hungarian, for instance, because their nominalized innitives can
take case marking (and even plural marking in some cases). For Italian its unclear
whether we can dene a morphological category for the nominalized innitive, so
there we may simply leave that subeld undened, as we did for the English -ing form.
The morphological form of the nominalization can be more or less close to that of
an ordinary noun, depending on the language and on the construction type. There
will be some interaction expected with the SYN properties here: if a language requires
its verbal predicates to agree with its subjects, then this property may or may not be
carried over to the nominalization. If it is carried over, the nominal may be forced
to adopt verb-like agreements (resulting in a morphologically mixed category). More

commonly, however, those agreements will take the canonically nominal form, for
instance as possessor agreement. This is what we nd in Turkish. But the possibilities
are limited only by the plausibility of grammaticalization paths.
Finally, we come to the fourth and least well-dened attribute in the lexical rep-
resentation, the lexemic index, LI. Recall that the primary function of this attribute
is effectively a house-keeping one. We will nd it convenient to keep track of our
decisions as to whether to treat a lexical entry as a new lexeme or as a form of a
single lexeme family. Seen in these terms, the lexemic index attribute has largely
descriptive and practical utility, and it must ultimately be cashed out in terms of a
model of the mental lexicon and psycholinguistically justied patterns of linguistic
data storage. However, a lexical-relatedness mapping that denes a new lexemic in-
dex triggers the Derived Lexical Entry Principle and the Default Cascade (Chapter 5),
so that the semantics of the derived lexeme effectively determines all its other prop-
erties, whereas a transposition retains the bases lexemic index, and therefore the
morpholexical and morphosyntactic properties of the derived word have to be stipu-
lated in the transposition itself. We will see in Chapter 9 that subtle morphosyntactic
distinctions can be accounted for if we assume that closely related patterns of lexical
relatedness are distinguished solely in terms of lexemic identity. In particular, I shall
argue that the categories of relational or possessive adjective have different syntactic
properties depending on whether they are treated as forms of a noun lexeme or as
distinct lexemes in their own right.
Given the logic of the model of lexical relatedness defended here, it is possible,
and indeed desirable, to treat the highly productive nominalizations, which pre-
serve the verbs argument structure and other aspects of event semantics, as forms
of the verb lexeme, that is, as straightforward transpositions. The fact that in some
cases we need to introduce subtle semantic distinctions doesnt mean that we are
adding a semantic predicate to the lexemes semantic representation in the way that
we add a semantic predicate in canonical derivational morphology. Rather, we are
introducing a semantically based typing into our basic ontology, and for that reason
the semantic differences realized by genuine transpositions are of a different kind
from those introduced by genuine derivation.
8.9 Summary
Nominalized transpositions of adjectives and, especially, of verbs provide a par-
ticularly good illustration of the need for lexicology and grammatical theory generally
to factorize lexical representations into independent components. As earlier studies
of nominalizations, such as Comrie (1985) and especially Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993)
have demonstrated, and as Malchukovs (2004) typological studies have conrmed,
deverbal nominalizations can nominalize their verb bases to very varying extents,
Nominalizations 343
and a simple-minded story which simply places a verbal root under a syntactic N ter-
minal, or a lexical rule which simply replaces V with N and adds act of . . . to the
semantic representation, is far from sufcient.
The type of transposition described in earlier chapters is a form of lexical re-
latedness which induces non-trivial change in the morphological and syntactic
representation of a word without creating a new lexeme (no change in lexemic in-
dex) and which in the pure case doesnt affect the lexical semantics of the verb (or
adjective). Such transpositions are abundantly represented in the worlds languages,
since in many languages the preferred strategy for creating subordinate clauses is to
nominalize the clause and effectively treat that clause like any other subject, com-
plement, or adjunct noun phrase. However, when the transposition creates, in effect,
the name of an event type, this opens up the way for slight semantic nuances to be
added. For deverbal nominalizations, the principal added nuance is the factive mean-
ing, corresponding to a noun phrase of the form the fact that . . .. For deadjectival
nominalizations, the principal additional semantics is to name the extent to which a
gradable property holds.
I treat these additional semantic contributions as different in kind from the typical
derivational semantic predicates used to create new lexemes. For languages in which
a factive action nominal preserves a good many verb properties (like the English -ing
nominalizations), this seems the only reasonable analytic choice. It makes no lexico-
graphic or morphosyntactic sense to say that singing in the childrens merrily singing
the song or even the childrens merry singing of the song is a distinct lexeme from the
singing of (We were charmed by) the children singing the song so merrily (and it would
make even less sense to say that the rst two tokens of singing, in the POSS-of and
POSS-ACC constructions, are distinct from each other). But in that case the factive
(or for adjectives, the extent) semantics must therefore be of a different type from that
which we nd in canonical derivation, or in the kind of inherent inection that intro-
duces, say, spatial relations through case markers on nouns, or Aktionsarten through
aspect markers on verbs. Similar considerations hold for the deadjectival property
nominalizations.
The best way to think of action/property nominalizations is in terms of the entire
construction into which the nominalization enters. Thus, the added meanings are a
property of a constructional template, not a property of the derived lexical repres-
entation. Hence, the standard instances of nominalization discussed in this chapter
involve just a change to the FORM and SYN attributes of the lexeme, with the SEM
and LI attributes being dened by the General Default Principle.14
14 This solution supersedes the solution proposed in Spencer (2010a).

9
Further instances of transposition
9.1 Introduction
The existence of transpositions is one of the central reasons for factorizing lexical
entries into independent sets of attributes. Given traditional morpholexical cat-
egories of noun, verb, and adjective, there are six logically possible types of pure
transposition. We have seen transpositions to noun, so this leaves four major types:
transpositions to adjective and transpositions to verb. I shall begin this chapter by
very briey expanding on the discussion in Chapter 5 on deverbal participles, but I
will devote somewhat more time to the less familiar category of noun-to-adjective
transpositions. I then turn to the way that nouns and adjectives can be used as nite
predicates.
In Chapter 8 we noted that there are transpositions which are systematically as-
sociated with additional semantic content even though that content is essentially
grammatical and not lexical-conceptual in nature. Verbs and adjectives can be nomi-
nalized in such a way that they denote facts, propositions, states-of-affairs, or extents,
and they may also reect aspectual and other distinctions. These implicit aspects of
verbal or adjectival meaning can then be named by the nominalization process, but
the nominalization is still the nominalized form of the base verb or adjective lexeme,
and not a separate lexeme in its own right. This is particularly clear in the case of those
deverbal nominalizations whose principal purpose is to permit clauses to function as
clause elements, such as the Turkish nominalizations. However, nominalizations fre-
quently undergo lexical drift, and so it isnt surprising to see that nominalized forms
of verbs or adjectives sit side by side with polysemous entries denoting results and
other types of derived lexeme. Moreover, even if a nominalization doesnt seem to
add any content to the semantic representation of the lexeme, there may be good
reasons for treating it as a distinct lexeme from its base.
In this chapter I will look at transpositions to adjectives, where we will see a similar
picture: some transpositions are pure in the sense that they simply permit a verb or
noun to function as an attributive modier in the syntax. However, other transposi-
tions pick out specic types of attributive semantics and effectively create a subclass
of deverbal and especially of denominal adjective. In some respects, deverbal par-
ticiples are relatively straightforward with respect to semantics. The verb typically
Further instances of transposition 345
expresses a host of properties which potentially establish a meaningful contrast, to

do with time reference (tense/aspect), modality, and especially argument structure.
In this study I shall devote relatively little attention to these (though there are surely
many important things to say about the semantic subclasses of deverbal participles).
Instead, I shall focus on a less studied set of phenomena, the denominal adjectives.
Weve seen that there are two ways in which a noun can be turned into an at-
tributive adjective. In the simplest case the noun simply functions as an attribute,
establishing a pragmatically dened relation between itself and the head noun it
modies, in much the way we see with English noun-noun compounding. There
is a somewhat more complex type, however, the possessive adjective, in which the
denominal adjective is said to express a specic relation of possession between the
dependent and the head noun. I will briey survey the notions of modication-
by-noun and possessive adjective (based on work conducted jointly with Irina
Nikolaeva), and illustrate a possible way of representing the possessive adjective
construction.
One of the leitmotifs that has run through this book has been the idea that distinct
words with distinct sets of grammatical properties can nonetheless be related to each
other so closely that they should be treated as forms of one and the same lexeme. One
of the ways in which we can tell that a pair of words belong to the same lexeme is the
phenomenon of transparency: an inected form of a lexeme combines in the syntax
with other words, and contributes its lexical content to the meaning of the phrase,
but its grammatical properties, and especially the inectional meanings it expresses,
appear as properties of the whole phrase of which that word is a head, and not as a
property of the lexical item as such. Thus, the additional spatial meaning imparted by
a local case marker on a noun contributes to the meaning of phrases containing that
noun in the way that an adposition would, and not in the way that a derivational afx
would. But weve also seen that meaningful morphology can readily induce semantic
drift in such a way that the morphologically complex form comes to behave as a
separate lexeme. In that case we would expect that one of the diagnostic properties of
such lexemes would be that they would lose (to some extent, at least) the transparency
that characterizes an inected word.
To illustrate with a schematic, but easily attested, example, we may have a language
in which nouns inect for a caritive case (meaning without N, lacking N), and we
may nd a language with a derivational process which derives privative adjectives
from nouns, that is, which derives lexemes with the meaning without N, lacking
N. In an ideal world, what we would nd is that the caritive case-inected nouns
would behave in an entirely transparent way with respect to syntax, and in particular
would behave as nouns, taking determiners, attributive modiers, and so on. Equally,
we would expect to nd the derived adjectives behaving as adjectives, taking degree
modiers and, specically, not behaving as nouns. But we also know that transpo-
sitions give rise to category mixing, in which the mixed category preserves some of
the categorial properties of its base lexeme in addition to acquiring new categorial
properties. With caritive-case-marked nouns vs privative denominal adjectives, we
sometimes encounter just such instances of mixing. One symptom of this is that a
word which appears to be a derived adjective may get modied by an attributive
modier which targets its nominal base, effectively treating the derived adjective as
though it were still a noun. The question then arises of whether we are dealing with
a new lexeme which has unexpectedly preserved properties of its base, or whether
we are dealing with a form of the original lexeme which has nonetheless acquired
categorial properties normally foreign to words of that category, that is, an instance
of the syntagmatic category mixing described in Section 3.9 and Chapter 8.
The next two sections are devoted to transpositions to adjective. I start in Sec-
tion 9.2 with a brief summary of deverbal participles, but I devote more time, in
Section 9.3, to the less familiar topic of denominal adjectival transpositions. In Eng-
lish, these transpositions, relational adjectives, raise an interesting question about
lexemic status. Recall that I introduced the notion of purely relational adjective
with examples such as prepositional phrase, which is entirely synonymous with the
compound noun preposition phrase. The question here is whether its better to treat
prepositional as a separate lexeme from preposition, or whether the relational adject-
ive should be treated as a form of the noun lexeme. I will argue, largely on the basis
of transparency, that it makes more sense in English (and most other European lan-
guages) to treat the relational adjective as a separate lexeme. But this means that we
have discovered an unusual lexicological animal: a lexeme that is derived from a dis-
tinct base lexeme, but which has the same semantic content as that base. Examples of
this sort complete our taxonomy of lexical relatedness.
I will next briey look at the transpositions which produce nite verbs, before
very briey considering the question of whether a transposition can be the input to a
transpositional process (I conclude that it can).
9.2 Deverbal participles

I have discussed participles in passing at various points. Here I will summarize their
representation by the generalized paradigm function, and suggest a further subtype.
Recall from Chapter 3 and from Table 6.6 that a participle derived from a verb with
argument structure Ex, . . . has the derived argument structure A*x Ex, . . . .
This represents an attribute modifying a head noun whose semantic function role
R is coindexed by means of the asterisk notation. The thematic argument of the par-
ticiple is identied as the highest argument of the base verbs argument structure
grid. Consider a language in which there is a completely productive active/passive
voice alternation as well as a set of participles for each voice. I represented the passive
participle in Table 6.6 as A*y E(x) (y) . . . , where (x) represents the suppressed
subject argument, and (y) is the highest remaining argument, which is then identied
with the head modied by the participle. How is this representation dened by the
generalized paradigm function?
There are two possibilities, only one of which I will discuss here. For passive
participles of the familiar Indo-European kind, we would probably want to dene
a composite set of participles, identied by the feature set (say) [VForm:{prs.ptcp,
pass.ptcp}].1 For instance, a regular transitive verb in Latin has present and passive
participles, so that from amo, stem ama: we obtain the present participle amans and
the passive participle ama:tus. The present participle can be dened by means of a
generalized paradigm function such as (1).
(1) Where = {[VForm:prs.ptcp]},
GPF(amo, )
fform (amo, ) = amans
MORCLASS = [Decl:3]
fsyn (amo, ) = A*x (fsyn|a-str (amo, u))
...
The denition A*x (fsyn|a-str ) indicates that we embed the argument structure of the
base verb into that of the transposition, giving in this case A*x E(x)y.2
The passive participle can be dened by means of the slightly more complex
generalized paradigm function shown in (2).
(2) Where = {[VForm:pass.ptcp]},
GPF(amo, )
fform (amo, ) = amatus
MORCLASS = [Decl:1/2]
fsyn (amo, ) = A*y E(x)(y)
...
Here I have explicitly written in the modied argument structure for the base verb.
However, one might wish to argue that there is a more general function. Suppose
we adopt the notational convention that h is a variable which stands for the highest
available argument in an argument structure grid. Then the X-to-adjective class of
transpositions will be dened in terms of a semantic function role A*h , picking out
the highest argument as that which is identied with the modied head noun. Now
suppose we have a feature [Voice:passive] which governs the passive alternation.
Then for the argument structure component of the SYN attribute we will have a
1 In Chapter 10 I suggest for Selkup a more general way of representing all transpositions by means of
a supercategory of [Representation].
2 I assume a notational convention in such cases under which the highest argument of the base verb is
automatically suppressed and coindexed with the A* semantic function role.
function fsyn|a-str such that for a verb lexeme V with argument structure Exy. . . ,
fsyn|a-str (V, {[Voice:pass]}) = E(x)y. . . . By application of our h conven-
tion, this is equivalent to E(x)h. . . . We can now dene the verb-to-adjective
transposition as a function which maps E. . . h. . . to A*h E. . . (h). . . , as
required.
By virtue of our revised representation of the passive alternation, we can now
rewrite (2) as (3).
(3) GPF(amo, )
fform (amo, ) = amatus
MORCLASS = [Decl:1/2]
fsyn (amo, ) = A*h (fsyn|a-str (amo, {[Voice:passive]}))
...
In both present and passive participles, the Inectional Speciability Principle and
the denition of the appropriate morpholexical signature for the derived adjectives
will dene the nal representation.
It is possible that for languages with more agglutinating morphology we can even
factor out the passive and the participial morphology so that a passive participle will
be dened over the feature set {[Voice:passive], ptcp}. This is the second possibility I
mentioned. I have not investigated languages with the relevant properties in sufcient
detail to make specic suggestions, however.
Most participles in most languages are overtly marked as such morphologically.
However, in principle we might imagine a type of morphologically inert transposi-
tion, in which the verbal head inected like a verb but had the syntax of an adjective.
In Spencer (2005b) I propose that this is exactly how we should analyse Japanese
nite relative clauses. I refer the reader to that discussion for further details.
9.3 Noun-to-adjective transpositions

To understand the nature of denominal adjective transformations, it will rst be
necessary to review the ways in which a noun or noun phrase can serve as an at-
tributive modier to another noun, a relationship I shall call modication-by-noun.
Modication-by-noun is not the canonical function of a noun, and given my current
assumptions, there is no way that a noun could be so used. This is because I have
been assuming that all attributive modication is mediated by the A* semantic func-
tion role, which is canonically associated with adjective representations. However,
languages typically have a variety of means of establishing an attributive relationship
between a dependent noun and a head noun. These include Germanic-style com-
pounding, (genitive) case marking of the dependent noun, possessor agreement on
the head noun, use of an adposition with genitive-like function/semantics, devices
such as the Semitic construct, the ezafe and similar constructions, and, of course,
transposition of the noun to a relational adjective.
The modier noun retains its nominal denotation, but typically it isnt referen-
tial. This is because the modier is usually expressed as a bare noun or some word
or phrase derived from a bare noun. Such attributive constructions are endocentric,
which means that the denotation of the modiermodied pair is a subset of the de-
notation of the head noun. This subset is conventionally dened in terms of some
pragmatically (contextually) determined relation, say, : (Nmod , Nh ); hence, cat-
food means food which bears some relation to the notion of cat (see Downing,
1977, for detailed justication of this view). In Spencer (1999) it is argued that the
relation in productively formed compounds is introduced by the compounding
construction itself. This contrasts with the case of relational adjectives, in which
the morphological process of transposition from noun to adjective introduces the
relation into the representation of the relational adjective itself. The relation is
the semantic effect of the attributive modication relation induced by the semantic
function role A*.
As soon as we begin to investigate the way that a noun can modify a noun, we en-
counter the problem of possessive constructions, and so it will be necessary to pause
briey to consider what we mean by terms such as possessive construction, pos-
sessor, possessee, and related terms. The phenomenon of the possessive adjective
has received rather little attention in the literature to date, and so its difcult to nd
reliable sources of typologically valid information about the phenomenon.
As we have seen before, it is well established that cross-linguistically, certain nouns
in certain usages have a semantics which effectively implies an argument structure
(Barker, 1995). For instance, body parts imply the existence of a body, meronyms en-
tail the existence of a whole (such as a box) in a partwhole relationship (such as the
corner of a box), and kin terms imply their relatives: mother child, sister sister,
and so on. Such nouns are normally referred to as relational nouns. In many lan-
guages with possessive-agreement morphology, such words cannot be used without
the possessor agreements (Nichols and Bickel, 2005).
Barker (1995: 52) adopts the usual assumption that a common noun is a one-
place predicate normally, so that tree has the structure x.TREE(x) or some
such, but that relational nouns are two-place predicates. We could represent them
as xy.HEAD(x, y), where the x variable ranges over possible possessors. The
representations for Harriets leg/daughter will therefore be roughly as in (4).
(4) a. [xy.LEG(x, y)](Harriet)

b. [xy.DAUGHTER(x, y)](Harriet)
Alienable possession is a much less determinate relationship, which can be dif-

cult to distinguish from modication-by-noun. In its basic form we have an
alienable-possession relationship when there is some pragmatically dened rela-

tion between some (non-relational) noun, Nx, and the denotation of some
NP/DP (usually animate, and typically human). Thus, the meaning expressed by
the construction Harriets book or the girls book might be represented as some
contextual relation between an individual Harriet or x.GIRL(x) and the book prop-
erty: (HARRIET, x.BOOK(x)), (x.GIRL(x), x.BOOK(x)). For languages which
neutralize the alienable/inalienable distinction, is interpreted as argument satisfac-
tion for relational nouns. However, the distinction between relational and possessive
adjectives can be very difcult to draw.
The distinction is well-represented in Chukchi, which has very productive
relational-adjective formation as well as possessive-adjective formation (see Section
3.3.3). The only way to express standard possession of the sort fathers hand/spear
in Chukchi is by means of a possessive adjectivethere is no genitive case and no
possessive adposition construction.
Skorik (1961: 268f.) offers the minimal pair reproduced in (5).
(5) a. weem-in pcPcPn

river-poss.adj current
the river(s) current
b. weem-kine-t wkw-t
river-reladj-pl rock-pl
the rocks in the river
This rather nicely illustrates the point that a relational noun such as current
(which can hardly be said to exist in the absence of river) combines most natu-
rally with a possessive adjective, weemin, while rock, which denotes entities whose
existence is independent of the river, combines with the relational adjective weemkin.
Modication-by-noun is just that, a relation between a head noun and a modify-
ing noun (not NP): (N, N). That is, an expression such as cat food or preposition(al)
phrase establishes a (pragmatically dened) relation between the concepts repre-
sented as x.CAT(x) and x.FOOD(x) on the one hand, or x.PREPOSITION(x)
and x.PHRASE(x) on the other hand. Notice that I have not dened this as a re-
lation between a head noun (food, phrase) and a phrase. In the case of English
compounds, of course, it is possible for the modifying noun itself to be modied by an
adjective or especially by another noun, and minimal pairs such as American history
teacher have become textbook examples. However, what is of interest from my point
of view is the fact that such modication is somewhat restricted. Essentially, when a
modier is itself modied, the resulting phrase is usually lexicalized in some way. In
other words, it is extremely difcult to nd ad hoc nonce modication of the modify-
ing noun in a noun-noun compound. For instance, we hardly ever nd a possessive
expression modifying within a noun-noun compound, and when we do nd such a
construction, the possessive is part of a xed phrase: childrens literature critic. What
is not possible is to nd a modier which renders the modifying noun referential, as
in our cats food in the sense of the cat food bought for our cat. The expression our cats
food can only refer to food (of whatever kind) which we (at the moment) associate
with our cat. It cannot be derived by combining our with cat food, nor can it be used
to denote a kind of food. Similarly, suppose we notice that our neighbour has a black
cat and buys a certain brand of cat food for that cat. We cannot then refer to that
kind of food, or any concrete instantiation of it, as black cat food. Such an expres-
sion would only be acceptable in a world in which special food was manufactured for
black cats in general.
What this shows us is that English noun-noun compounds are islands with respect
to syntactic modication (a kind of lexical integrity). For this reason, it makes sense
to think of the compounding construction as establishing a relation between two
noun denotations, not between the denotations of a fully edged NP and a noun.
This is the major difference, then, between English modication-by-noun expressed
by compounding and alienable possession.
In (6) I very informally summarize the four different types of modication that I
have established.
(6) Inalienable possession: Nx, y NNP, y
Alienable possession: (NP, Nx)
Modication-by-noun: (N, N)
Modication-by-adjective: (A*, Nx*)
We now proceed to see how this typology of modication throws light on the noun-
to-adjective transpositions that are the subject of this section.
I illustrate possessive adjective morphosemantics with examples from Russian.3
Kin terms and especially proper names frequently give rise to possessive forms which
can express either alienable or inalienable possession. They are formed by one of
two sufxes: -in, which attaches to nouns of the second declension; and -ov, which
attaches to rst-declension nouns.
(7) a. mam-in-a noga/kniga Mummys leg/book from Mama
b. Ivan-ov-a noga/kniga Ivans leg/book from Ivan
When they modify non-relational nouns, possessive adjectives have a similar mean-
ing and interpretation to English possessive constructions with s. The term pos-
sessive is entirely misleading, because possession in the sense of legal ownership is
only one of an indenite set of interpretations that is possible, depending on context.
Thus, mamina kniga, like its English translation, can refer to the book that Mummy
3 Szymanek (2010: 937) describes similar formations in Polish, though he doesnt go into quite as
much semantic detail.
owns, or that she wrote, or that she is illustrating, or that she stole. . . . When pos-
sessive adjectives modify relational nouns, they give rise to the inalienable possession
reading. As in English, however, an alienable reading can be coerced pragmatically.
Thus, mamina noga could, in the right context, refer to a leg of lamb that Mummy
is buying, eating, preparing, drawing a picture of, . . . . I shall call such adjectives
in/ov-adjectives.
A closely related type of denominal adjective is found with nouns denoting ani-
mals, professions, and certain kin terms and other words denoting types of people.
This is formed by taking the noun stem, palatalizing the nal consonant, and adding
adjectival inections: ryb-a sh, ryb-ij ([ri-bj ij) pertaining to a sh: rybja ceuja sh
bone/scale, rybij xvost/plavnik sh tail/n (inalienable body part), rybij ir/klej sh
fat/glue (derived from sh). Often the -ij sufx is added to a special stem form.
Zaliznjak (1987)4 lists well over a hundred such adjectives (though some are rather
specialized). I shall call this type of possessive adjective ij-adjectives.
(8) Adjective Source noun

lebaij lebed swan
lisicij lisica vixen
lisij lisa fox

medveacij
medved bear
medveij
olenij olen reindeer
ovecij ovec sheep
In general these adjectives are used to relate the kind term to a specic object as-
sociated with that kind, often expressing inalienable possession. However, we also
nd that the ij-adjective does double duty as a relational adjective-forming device.
For instance, in the four-volume (Shorter) Academy of Sciences dictionary of Rus-
sian (MAS) we nd the adjective nerpicij from nerpa seal, with examples nerpicij ir
seal blubber, nerpicje maso seal meat, but also nerpicij promysel seal hunting. The
adjective rybij from ryba sh cannot be used in the latter type of expression: rybnaja
promylennost sh industry, with an ordinary relational adjective rybnyj, but not
*rybja promylennost from the possessive adjective.
In addition, we often nd that other sufxes full the role of the ij-adjective where
the latter doesnt exist for a particular noun. For instance, there is no ij-adjective from
load horse, the in-adjective loadinyj being used instead. While vorona crow has
the ij-adjective voronij, the word voron raven seems to lack a possessive adjective, at
least according to MAS.
4 Fourth edition published as Zaliznjak (2003).

A second group of derived words consists of adjectives from nouns denoting

professions, ethnicities, and so on:

kazacij kazak Cossack
oxotnicij oxotnik huntsman
rybacij rybak sherman, angler
Finally, we see adjectives denoting kin relationships or other person classes
(excluding professions):

vdovij vdova widow
starodevicij staraja deva old maid
boij Bog God
There are also a handful of other types which dont t into the three-way clas-
sication given above, as in the case of merluecij, merlukovyj from merluka
lambskin.
Some nouns permit both a possessive adjective and a relational adjective: in addi-
tion to a possessive adjective, ryba gives the relational adjective rybnyj as in rybnyj
zapax, magazin, rynok sh smell, shop, market, rybnaja promylennost , rybnye kot-
lety, rybnyj pirog sh industry, cakes, pie. However, in Russian, such pairs as rybij/
rybnyj seem to be rather infrequent (which also seems to be true of Polish; see
Szymanek, 2010: 95).5
As with many relational adjectives, semantic drift can lead to a qualitative reading
for rybnyj, which then permits a predicative usage, as in (11).
(11) Ozero bylo rybnoe

lake was sh.reladj
The lake was full of sh.
Here, rybnyj has acquired a proprietive or ornative meaning, abounding in N.

Possessive adjectives in Russian have to be recognized as a distinct morpholexical
subcategory because they have a different inectional system from ordinary nouns
and ordinary adjectives (see Spencer, 2007, for discussion of the implications for
morphological mismatches). Indeed, the rybij type of adjective has a different declen-
sional pattern from the mamin/Ivanov type. However, this is a relatively low-level
morphological fact and cant be ascribed to the morphosyntactic function of these
adjectives. This is because there are adjectives with the standard declension pattern
5 We nd an interesting semantic shift in the colloquial forms rybnye ruki, rybnaja loka, literally, sh
hands, sh spoon, with the meaning hands/spoon stained with sh.
which have the same functions as ij-adjectives, and because there are uses of the
ij-adjective which are not possessive.
The main difference between the two types of possessive adjective seems to lie
in the semantics of the base noun. When an ij-adjective is formed from a common
noun denoting an animal kind, that adjective establishes a relation between a generic
animal and a body part etc. On the other hand, the in/ov-adjectives apply to nouns
with specic referents, such as people or household pets, and not to kind terms. With
some nouns we see minimal pairs. The noun koka cat has an ij-adjective, koacij,
as in koacie glaza cats eyes, namely the kind of eyes proper to a cat. However, the
same noun also has an in/ov-adjectival form kokin, as in kokiny glaza the cats eyes,
referring to the specic eyes of our pet cat. The two types of possessive adjective can
therefore be thought of as referential possessives and non-referential possessives.
Each of the two subtypes of possessive adjective is different in use from the re-
lational adjective. However, not all animal terms can form distinct ij-adjectives and
relational adjectives. Thus, there is no relational adjective *kocnyj, or whatever, to
parallel rybnyj. This is true also of nouns where we might expect a relational adject-
ive in -nyj to be possible on phonological grounds. Thus, medved bear gives the
ij-adjective medveij, but there is no relational adjective *medvednyj, *medvediny, or
whatever. Instead, the ij-adjective is polysemous between a non-referential possessive
reading and a relational reading:
(12) Uses of medveij bears
a. Non-referential/kind interpretation:
medveja lapa bear paw
medveje maso bear meat
medveij berlog bears den
b. Relational interpretation:
medveja uba bear coat (i.e. made from bear fur)
medveja gura bear shape
medveja poxodka bear gait
medveij sled bears track
Notice that medveja gura and medveja poxodka are close to similitudinal adject-
ives: shape/gait similar to that of a bear.
9.3.1 Adjectival genitives

One important set of questions that arises when we look at possessive adjectives
cross-linguistically is how such adjectives relate in meaning and usage to genitive-
case-marked nouns or noun phrases which are the complements of possessive
adpositions like English of. This is an extremely complex question, and here I will
simply draw attention to particular types of phenomena which highlight the close
relationship between genitive-type possessive marking, possessive adjectives, and

modication-by-noun generally (for a more detailed discussion of some of these
issues see Nikolaeva and Spencer, 2012).
I mentioned in passing that a compound noun in English can sometimes have
as its modifying element a noun in the possessive form. Examples are childrens lit-
erature, womens magazine, mens room.6 In many languages, such constructions are
commonplace with genitive-case-marked modier nouns whose status as modiers
is conrmed by the fact that they agree like adjectives with the head noun. A variety
of examples of such constructions have been described in the literature, often under
the German heading of Sufxaufnahme (see Plank, 1995), though this is misleading.
Sufxaufnahme is prototypically used to refer to those situations in which a genitive-
case-marked noun is further marked with another case (a limited instance of case
stacking, of the kind exploited throughout the grammar of Kayardild; see Chapter 3).
In the agreeing genitive, however, the genitive-case-marked noun behaves to all
intents and purposes like a kind of adjective. We thus have a noun-to-adjective
transposition, but one based on an inected form of the base lexeme.
The basic shape of such constructions is shown in (13), where i ranges over nominal
properties such as gender, number, case.
(13) NOUN-GEN-AGRi + NOUN[i]
Agreeing genitives have been reported in Daghestanian languages (Boguslavskaja,

1995; Kibrik, 1995) and Central Cushitic languages. Thus, Hetzron (1995: 326) reports
an agreeing genitive construction in the Central Cushitic language Awngi. In that
language, nouns inect for number and a variety of cases, and have masculine or
feminine gender (distinguished in the singular only). Attributive adjectives agree in
number, gender, and case. The genitive inection exists in masculine, feminine, and
plural forms, agreeing with the possessum:
(14) a. mur-w aq
village-gen(m) man(m)
the man of the village
6 In technical vocabularies we also nd xed expressions with the possessive form of proper names:
Brocas aphasia, Alekhines Defence, Plancks constant, Halleys comet, Maxwells equations, and thousands
of others. These are lexicalized possessor phrases. By contrast, we also nd something which shouldnt
be possible if noun modiers are bare nouns and not referring expressions, namely compounds whose
modier is a bare proper name: Chomsky adjunction, Fourier transform, Purkinje cell, Kuiper belt, Golgi
body, Turing machine, Queen Anne chair, and thousands of others. Here we are not dealing with lexicalized
phrases, because the phrase would be ungrammatical. Rather, the proper name has ceased to be used as a
proper name and hence doesnt refer. There are, it must be admitted, tricky cases where it seems that the
modifying proper noun is still referential, mainly with nouns denoting results of creation: a Bach prelude, a
Brahms string quintet, an Adams replace, a Hitchcock lm, a Rodin sculpture, a Turner watercolour. I dont
yet know what to say about such cases.
b. mur-t una
village-gen(f) woman(f)
the woman of the village
c. mur-kw aq(k)/unan
village-gen(pl) men(pl)/women(pl)
the men/women of the village
This agreeing genitive form then takes on the case endings of a case-marked
possessum:
(15) wolij-w-des aq-w-des An-des

old-gen(m)-abl man-gen(m)-abl house(m)-abl
from the old mans house
Noticeable in example (15) is the fact that the other case sufxes (which include
accusative, dative, ablative, directive towards, adverbial in the manner of , and in-
vocative for the sake of ) all follow the genitive sufx. For this reason it might seem
that the genitive is really an adjectivizing element rather than a noun sufx. However,
Hetzron (1995: 3279) adduces a variety of properties of the agreeing genitive, show-
ing that the genitive form is essentially a noun and not an adjective. For instance,
the construction is recursive, and when a genitive modies a noun which itself is in
the genitive, the rst noun agrees with the second in case. This is shown somewhat
spectacularly in example (16).
(16) gud-a-w-skw -da una-w-skw -da

good-f-gen(m)-gen(pl)-loc woman(f)-gen(m)-gen(pl)-loc
cnkt-kw -da An-kw -da wodel-k-da bjl-k-da
nice-gen(pl)-loc house(m)-gen(pl)-loc large-pl-loc doorway-pl-loc
in the large doorways of the nice house of the good woman
Perhaps most compellingly, the genitive marker triggers the same sort of agreement
as on other nouns in number, gender, and case, as seen in (16).
9.3.2 Derived adjectives and meaningful transpositions

In Chapter 6 I identied what seems at rst sight to be a paradoxical type of lexical
relatedness, a transposition which introduces a change in the lexical meaning. Now,
transposition is a term that I have used systematically to refer to a type of relatedness
that doesnt effect a change in lexemic status, that is, which preserves the lexemic
index of the base. Therefore, a meaning-bearing transposition will be a form of lexical
relatedness in which all attributes of the base lexeme receive non-trivial change except
the LI. With noun-to-adjective transpositions, we have the potential for further types
of meaning-bearing transposition.
To begin with, consider the most characteristic types of straightforwardly deriva-

tional relationships relating nouns to adjectives. Among the derivational categories
we see most frequently are (i) similitudinal adjectives similar-to-N, (ii) proprietive/
ornative adjectives possessing N, and (iii) privative adjectives lacking N. In English,
examples would be: (i) milky (colour) similar to milk (in colour), cat-like (walk)
(a walk) like that of a cat; (ii) milky (drink) drink containing milk, feathered
(dinosaur) dinosaur which had feathers, ve-pointed (star) (star) with ve points;
(iii) friendless. In a number of languages, these categories are well-developed and pro-
ductive. However, in languages which lack a clear morphological distinction between
nouns and adjectives, the more productive these categories become, the more
likely they are to become reanalysed (by language learners and/or by linguists) as
case-markers.
There is an interesting example of this type of reanalysis in the history of schol-
arship on Chukchi. Dunn (1999) provides convincing arguments for distinguishing
four forms for Chukchi nominals that were not described as such in earlier grammars
(notably the standard two-volume grammar of Skorik, 1961, 1977). Three of these are
what seem to be recently grammaticalized spatial cases, which are still homophon-
ous with derivational sufxes. The other extra case is a privative case. This is formed
by means of the circumx e/a- . . . -ke/ka, as in a-r_nn-_-ka toothless (Dunn, 1999:
117). This is exactly the same circumx that is found with verb stems in one of the
commonest verb-negating strategies in Chukchi. In Skoriks grammar, the privative
is treated as a denominal adverbial in this use. In other language groups, too, we not
infrequently encounter a case meaning without in the case inventory (often labelled
caritive rather than privative). Likewise, many languages with well-developed case
systems have a comitative case (Chukchi has two comitatives), which has a semantics
which is very similar to that of a proprietive derived adjective (and sometimes the
term proprietive is used as a case label).
Now, a caritive/privative case or a comitative/proprietive case is a good candidate
for inherent inection, and so such case forms would be given a derived semantic
representation along the lines of HAVING(N)/LACKING(N) on the present model.
What distinguishes a comitative/caritive case from a derived proprietive/privative
adjective is therefore not semantics as such but (a) morphosyntactic category and
(b) lexemic status. An inherent case-marked noun is still a noun and still a form of the
base lexeme, while a proprietive/privative adjective is a derived lexeme and an adject-
ive. But how would we describe a form of lexical relatedness in which the proprietive/
privative adjective retained sufciently many of its base nominal properties to look
like a form of the base noun? In other words, could we have a meaning-bearing
transposition from noun to adjective which added the HAVING(N)/LACKING(N)
predicate?
In Section 3.9, we saw instances of syntagmatic category mixing involving deno-
minal adjectives in Upper Sorbian, Udihe, and Nenets. For instance, in Nenets it is
possible to form a similitudinal adjective from the word for, say, wolf to obtain an
adjective meaning (looking) like a wolf . However, the noun base of that adject-
ive is still syntactically accessible and can be modied by an adjective such as black.
Such constructions are important for a model of lexical relatedness, because they raise
questions about the status of the derived word: is it really an adjective or is it really
(in some sense) still a noun? In many respects, a derived denominal adjective that can
be modied as though it were still a noun is close to the agreeing genitive of Awngi.
Indeed, Nikolaeva (2008) specically points out that in some respects the propriet-
ive adjectives of some Tungusic languages behave more like case-marked forms than
derivational forms. When we come to look at Selkup in Chapter 10, we will see that
similar phenomena are observed in denominal adjectives in that language.
The parallels between inecting/agreeing genitives and syntagmatically mixed pro-
prietive and similitudinal adjectives are suggestive. A strong hypothesis would be the
following: whenever a denominal attributive modier form can itself be modied in
the manner of the base noun, then we are dealing with a non-lexemic relation, that is,
a lexical relation that does not dene a new lexeme. In other words, all and only such
attributive modier forms are forms of the base noun lexeme. I shall refer to this as
the Strong Derived Category Membership Hypothesis.
(17) Strong Derived Category Membership Hypothesis:

Given a word Wd of category C derived from a base Wb of category C:
(i) if Wd has some signicant combinatorial property common to words of

category C and not proper to words of category C , then we say that there
is non-lexemic derivational relation between Wb and Wd ; that is, Wb and
Wd share the same lexemic index;
(ii) if Wd has no signicant combinatorial property common to words of cat-
egory C and only those properties proper to words of category C , then
we say that there is a lexemic derivational relation between Wb and Wd ;
that is, Wb and Wd have distinct lexemic indices.
The advantage of such a move is that it automatically accounts for the syntagmatic
categorial mixing: we expect an inected form of a noun to be modied as a noun, not
as some other part of speech. Moreover, such an analysis brings denominal adjectival
transpositions into line with deverbal adjectival transpositions, that is, participles: a
participle is typically modied in the same way as a verb, not an adjective (for instance
with event-modifying adverbials). Similarly, part (ii) of the hypothesis permits us
to determine when two words are distinct lexemes, even if they share a number of
important properties.
Unfortunately, relatively little is known about such constructions, and so its dif-
cult to present rm evidence to support or to disconrm such a hypothesis. However,
it will be interesting to adopt it provisionally.7 If it proves to be a robust principle,

then we will have further evidence for the existence of a class of meaningful transpo-
sitions, except in this case the change in meaning is relatively substantial and overlaps
with derivational meanings.
Armed with the Derived Category Membership Hypothesis, we can also invest-
igate relational adjectives and other transpositions in English in rather more detail.
Consider our example of a relational adjective, prepositional. Is this a form of the
lexeme preposition, or is it a lexeme/lexical entry in its own right?
The Derived Category Membership Hypothesis, part (ii), would lead us to the con-
clusion that we have a distinct lexeme, prepositional. It is not possible to modify the
preposition component of prepositional as a noun, even though this does seem pos-
sible when we look at synonymous noun-noun compounds with preposition. Thus, in
the compound construction (18b), its possible (just) to obtain a reading synonymous
with (18a), but this is not possible with the relational adjective construction, (18c).
(18) a. a construction with a monosyllabic preposition

b. monosyllabic preposition construction
c. monosyllabic prepositional construction
Example (18c) could only refer an entire prepositional phrase that consisted of just
one syllable. Generally speaking, it seems not to be possible to modify the nominal
base of any denominal adjective. This provides (rather modest) evidence in favour of
the claim that the relational adjective in English, at least, is not a pure transposition,
in that it is an autonomous adjectival lexeme in its own right and not a form of the
base noun lexeme.
The conclusion that we can have autonomous relational adjective lexemes seems
incontrovertible when we consider the numerous Latinate relational adjectives that
have been coined for English over the centuries, as discussed in detail in Koshiishi
(2011). These are relational adjectives based on Latin originals which often lack a base
lexeme with a related form, as in father paternal, sea marine, spring vernal, . . . .
Although many of these adjectives have acquired qualitative meanings, their basic use
remains relational, as in paternal grandfather, marine life, vernal equinox. However,
many of these adjectives are extremely restricted in their distribution. As Giegerich
(2005: 576) points out, vernal is found only in conjunction with equinox and not with
any other entity that might be associated with the springtime. Therefore, it would be
entirely mistaken to claim that spring and vernal are in any paradigmatic relationship,
and hence that vernal is a form of the lexeme spring. And yet there is no difference
in the conceptual content of vernal and spring, so in cases like this we have clear
7 I have had to hedge the statement of the hypothesis slightly to limit it to properties that are in some
intuitive sense signicant. This is a difcult question. For instance, many deverbal nominals, including
vanilla examples like English subject nominals, preserve aspects of the verbs argument structure (a driver
of fast cars), yet we dont want that (necessarily) to force us to say that driver is a form of the lexeme drive.
instances of distinct lexemes with the same meaning which are not synonyms. Thus,
relational adjectives such as vernal and hundreds of others represent the kind of lex-
ical relatedness which I referred to as the transpositional lexeme in Chapter 6 (see
Table 6.9), in which we have the rather strange situation of two distinct lexemes with
the same semantic representation which are not synonymous because they belong to
distinct word classes.
We can contrast the situation for English relational adjectives with that for cer-
tain types of modier noun in English noun-noun compounds. There is important
discussion of these matters in Giegerich (2004, 2005, 2009a,b). The natural inter-
pretation of stone wall, steel girder, leather jacket, and so on is X made of/consisting
of Y. Giegerich (2005, 2009a) refers to the relation between modier and head as
ascriptive attribution, essentially the default relation for ordinary qualitative adject-
ives. Now, the modifying nouns stone, steel, leather are presumably still the same
lexeme whether they are used referentially or ascriptionally. The same applies, of
course, to the word preposition in the compound preposition phrase. So the question
of the status of prepositional revolves around whether the lack of clear syntagmatic
category mixing prevents us from treating the relational adjective as a true trans-
position. Given that relational adjective formation is not entirely productive and is
lexically restricted, this, together with the lack of lexical transparency strongly sup-
ports the view that we are dealing with two distinct lexemes. However, it would be
good to have additional stronger criteria.
To summarize, we have seen the following sets of contrasts in our investigation of
denominal adjectives:
Relational adjectives vs possessive adjectives

Adjectival case-marked nouns vs derived adjectives (e.g. comitatives vs propri-
etives)
Meaning-bearing transpositions to adjective vs pure transpositions
The difference between purely relational adjectives and possessive adjectives seems
to be in the way that the semantics of the base noun is perceived.
9.4 Transposition to verb

In a number of languages, a noun or an adjective can be inected with verbal mor-
phology so as to serve as the head of the nite predicate even though there is a
clear-cut distinction between adjectives and verbs and especially between nouns and
verbs. I am not thinking here of the common situation which there is no adjective/
verb distinction, and translation equivalents of English adjectives are a stative sub-
class of verbs. Even in languages for which an adjective/verb categorial distinction
can be motivated, we have to be careful about assigning categorial status to adjectives
used as predicates.
For instance, for Japanese we can argue in favour of a three-way distinction

between nouns, verbs, and adjectives (Backhouse, 2004; Spencer, 2008b). There are
two classes of adjectives. The rst co-occurs with a copular-like element na, and
doesnt show any inection itself: kirei na pretty. The other ends characteristically in
-i and inects for verbal properties of tense (past, non-past), conditional mood, and
gerund: takai (is) tall; takakattapast tense; takakattara, takakerebaconditional
I, II; takakutegerund. When used as predicates the inecting adjectives therefore
resemble a verb such as kau buy (non-past); kattapast tense; kattara, kaeba
conditional I, II; kattegerund. One major difference is seen in the negated forms.
Adjectives are negated periphrastically by combining the negative copula with the
adverbial stem in -ku: takaku nai is not tall. Morphophonologically this behaves as
a combination of two words. A verb takes instead an afxal allomorph of the nai
element to give a single morphophonological word: kawanai. Interestingly, in both
allomorphs, the nai element inects in much the same way as an adjective. Thus, the
past tenses of the adjective takaku nai and the verb kawanai are takaku nakatta and
kawanakatta, respectively.
What we see here, however, is not an instance of transposition of an adjective
category to a verb category in predicational structures. This is easily seen because
inecting adjectives have exactly the same forms whether they are predicates or
attributes. Thus, what we have in Japanese is a complex set of morphosyntactic de-
pendencies between verb and adjective categories, with each class being inected
like the other for particular sets of properties (that is, we have an instance of
morphological shift).
The kind of evidence that illustrates adjective-to-verb transposition is seen when a
predicative adjective assumes additional inection distinct from that which it would
have in attributive position. Stassen (2005) distinguishes several criteria for decid-
ing whether an adjective is being used as a predicate in its own right (in my sense,
whether it has undergone pure transposition to a verb). First, if the predicative ad-
jective takes subject agreement markers then it has been transposed (has what Stassen
calls verbal encoding). If this criterion is inapplicable because the language lacks
subjectpredicate agreement, the second criterion is applied: if the adjective requires
the support of a copula, then it has not been transposed. If the language has neither
agreement nor a non-zero copula, then the third criterion comes into play: if the
adjective is negated in a different way from the verbal predicate, then it has not
been transposed. In the examples he cites, Stassen effectively uses the second and
third criteria as a way of establishing that an adjective lacks verbal encoding, i.e.
to demonstrate that the adjective has not been transposed. The copula and negation
criteria are somewhat weak criteria for judging categorial status, and so I shall con-
centrate on those instances in which a predicative adjective (or noun) shows clearer
signs of verbal morphosyntax, namely subject agreement and tenseaspectmood
marking.
A typical illustration of the rst criterion is found in Chukchi. In attributive po-

sition, adjectives are treated in one of three ways. If they are unfocused, then their
root is incorporated into the head noun to form a compound. If they are moderately
focused, they are given the characteristic adjectival circumxes (n- . . . -qin singular,
n- . . . -qine-t plural) but are otherwise uninected. Finally, in other contexts, they
may also receive number and case inections to agree with the head noun (though in
many cases this construction is no doubt better analysed as a kind of appositive con-
struction, towards the houses, the large ones). As predicates, however, adjectives
retain their n- prex, but the -qin sufx is replaced by pronominal afx forms cross-
referencing the person/number of the subject. Thus, from the root erme strong we
have the forms shown in (19) (Skorik, 1961: 423).
(19) Singular Plural

1st n-erme-j-g_m n-erme-muri
2nd n-erme-j-g_t n-erme-turi
3rd n-erme-qin n-erme-qine-t
The 1sg and 2sg forms have an epenthetic -j- element missing in the plural forms.
However, as is often the case, predicative adjectives fail to show other types of
verbal inection, specically tenseaspectmood. Outside the present indicative, pre-
dicative adjectives have to be combined with an appropriate form of the copula verb.8
Thus, we can say that predicative adjectives undergo (a mild degree of) transposition
to verb.
Chukchi nouns show similar behaviour when used as predicates (Skorik, 1961:
216). Here noun encompasses proper names, and demonstrative and interrogative
pronouns:9
(20) a. gm tAano-j-gm
I Tyngano-j-1sg
I am Tyngano.
b. gm Aotqena-j-gm
I that-j-1sg
Im here, here I am.
c. muri mik-muri
we who-1pl
Who are we?
8 The 3rd person forms of the adjective are not different in predicative and attributive use. However,
since genuinely attributive adjectives are almost always incorporated, its probably better to think of the
inected attributes as having a predicative (e.g. appositional) usage.
9 The 2pl sufx in (20e) exhibits vowel harmony.
d. turi qutne-turi
you.pl other-2pl
You are the others.
e. turi cawcwa-tore
you nomad-2pl
You are nomads.
Like the adjectives, the predicative nouns fail to inect for other verbal properties.
The actual inections associated with the subject agreement category for nouns
and adjectives are clearly derived from weak pronominal forms (indeed they are
largely homophonous with absolutive singular pronoun forms). In this respect they
resemble certain of the inections found on verbs. However, the overlap is far from
complete, and its clear that we are dealing with two different systems of conjugation.
In the Samoyedic language Nenets we see a greater degree of transposition to verb
with predicative nouns (Salminen, 1997: 130; Salminen, 1998: 539) (adjectives are hard
to distinguish categorially from nouns, so I will concentrate on nouns). Nouns in
Nenets inect for number, case, and possessor agreement. When used predicatively,
the base (nominative singular) forms additionally inect for person/number of the
subject, and for aorist (essentially present) and preterite tenses. Relevant paradigms
for the unpossessed forms of the lexeme lca are shown in (21).10
(21) Person/number forms of aorist (non-past) tense of lca Russian

1st 2nd 3rd
Singular lcado m lcano lca
Dual lcanyih lcadyih lcaxo h
Plural lcawaq lcadaq lcaq
The preterite forms are obtained by conjugating the forms in (21) as though they were
verb forms, by sufxing -sy ([sj ]) to the person/number marked forms.11
The Nenets example is used by Ackerman and Webelhuth (1998: 458) to mo-
tivate a category of Predicate. They argue that it is only in this way that we can
explain how a noun can conjugate for verb properties. A key part of their argument-
ation from these data is the observation that nominal inections (for case, number,
and possessor agreement) show lexically governed allomorphy: nominal stems fall
into two subclasses which select different sets of afxes. Verbs, however, show no
such allomorphy or inectional class distinctions. The predicative nouns inected for
10 The symbols q, h both represent glottal stops which alternate with zero. The h variant also alternates
with nasal consonants before obstruents. The symbol o is described as schwa, while the symbol is a
reduced vowel, apparently a short low back vowel. An accent over a vowel indicates length. The symbol
y indicates palatalization of the previous consonant.
11 Salminen (1997: 94) explains why this formative is a sufx and not a clitic.
person/number, however, exhibit the same kind of inectional allomorphy as non-

predicative nouns. This tells Ackerman and Webelhuth that the predicative nouns
remain nouns categorially and are changed into verbs by what they call zero con-
version (which we can take to mean either zero afxation or conversion by category
reassignment). Instead, the predicative noun inections are triggered by the fact that
the noun heads a syntactic category of Predicate. In fact, we can accept Ackerman
and Webelhuths syntactic conclusions about the need for a Predicate category, and
still assume a type of categorial change. Its simply that the category change doesnt
have to affect the inectional class to which the noun belongs. Thus, the transposi-
tion to verb shown by Nenets nouns amounts to no more than the addition of the
E semantic role function to the argument-structure representation, and the specic-
ation of person/number agreement in the derived morpholexical signature for the
predicate noun.
The X-to-verb transpositions I have described are somewhat different from the
transpositions to adjective or to noun that we have seen. In the latter type of trans-
position, we typically see that the derived word assumes the full inectional potential
of the derived category: participles and relational/possessive adjectives agree in num-
ber, gender, and case with their head nouns, and action and property nominalizations
typically take the full set of case markers in case-marking languages. Admittedly,
nominalizations tend not to inect for number, but that can be explained semantic-
ally. Similarly, relational/possessive adjectives generally dont have comparative/
superlative forms, but this again is a consequence of semantics. However, with trans-
positions to verb, we tend to nd a rather restricted set of inectional possibilities
compared to those of verbs denoting dynamic event types. This is not necessarily
too surprising, since some of the inectional categories are no doubt excluded by
semantics, but nonetheless its not entirely clear why its impossible to say in Nen-
ets they were probably Russians or are you Russians?, given that genuine verbs in
this language inect for a wide range of modal categories including interrogative,
probabilitive, and many other tensemood forms.
I turn now to a particularly striking example of the need to factorize lexical prop-
erties and combine them in unexpected ways, as illustrated by the predicate nominal
forms and especially the proprietive verbal forms of nouns in Kolyma Yukaghir
(a language isolate of Siberia, possibly a marginal member of the Uralic family).
Nouns in Yukaghir are inected for number, possessor agreement, and case in
that order. Two cases in particular will be of interest to us, the predicative case and
the comitative case.
The predicative case is formed with the sufxes -lek and -(e)k, with subtle differ-
ences in usage which are not relevant here. Unlike the other cases in Yukaghir, the
predicative case has a restricted distribution in the noun paradigm, in that it is in-
compatible with possessor marking. It is also not found with proper names or 3rd
person pronouns. The main function of the predicative case form is to indicate that
the NP (or its attribute) is in focus. However, it can also be used to realize the noun
as the predicate of the clause. Simple examples are seen in (22, 23).
(22) u js omo-se oromo-lek

workman good-attr person-pred
The workman is a good person.
(23) comolben lebie-n+endod-ek

elk earth-attr+animal-pred
The elk is a land animal [Maslova, 2003: 91]
Maslova (2003) devotes an entire chapter to nominal predicates (and their relation
to Focus, an important grammatical category in Yukaghir).
There are two further constructions which can be classed as noun-to-verb trans-
positions, the proprietive form and the stative form (Maslova, 2003: 1226). The
stative form is effectively a periphrasis involving the copula, but the proprietive form
appears to be an instance of a transposition from (case inected?) noun to verb.
The proprietive form is built using a sufx which is partly homophonous with the
comitative case sufx, namely -ne -n. However, case sufxes dont inect as verbs,
and so Maslova (2003: 122) takes this to be a distinct, non-case form.
Maslova provides a wealth of examples illustrating how the proprietive form con-
jugates for standard verb properties, including inferential mood (24b), future tense
(24c), and same-subject marking on subordinate clauses (24d, e):12
(24) a. met el+lebie-ne-je

I neg+land-prop-intr.1sg
I have no land.
b. tiA amde-l marqil kj-ne-lel
this [die-anr] girl boy-prop-infr.3sg
This girl that died used to have a boyfriend.
c. musin endon pugil-ne-t-i
various animal lord-prop-fut-intr.3sg
Every variety of animal will have a lord.
d. mit-kele gamie-Ai-te-m legul-e legul-ne-Aide
we-acc help-3pl-fut-tr food-ins food-prop-ss:cond
They will help us with food, if they have some.
12 I have changed some of Maslovas abbreviations to t the conventions used elsewhere in the book,
specically the Leipzig Glossing Rules. I gloss Maslovas proprietive form as PROP, though this doesnt, of
course, mean that it can be equated with other categories in other languages given the label proprietive.
The + symbol seems to link two elements that constitute a single phonological word (Maslova isnt ex-
plicit about this). In places I correct obvious typographical errors or minor infelicities of English without
comment.
e. taA el+terike-n-de oromo pugee-j-delle mon-i . . .

that neg+wife-prop-attr person run.out-pfv-ss:pfv say-intr.3sg
That unmarried man ran out and said: . . . [Maslova, 2003: 122f.]
However, she stresses the fact that the proprietive form remains a noun, and
provides examples in which it is modied as a noun head by attributive modiers,
including a numeral (25a), a relative clause (25b, c), and the attributive form of a
noun (25a, d) or pronoun (25e, f ):
(25) a. ataq-un mal-u-ne-j ja-n

two-attr girl-child-prop-intr.3sg three-attr
kjpe-d+u-ne-j
boy-attr+child-prop-intr.3sg
She had two daughters and three sons.
b. irk-in terikie-die juko-de u-ne-lel
one-attr old.woman-dim small-attr child-prop-infr.3sg
One old woman had a little child.
c. ca-je oromo-n-i
few-attr person-prop-intr.3sg
He has a small family.
d. t aqale-n ferma-n-don-pe o -dli
here fox-attr farm-prop-sbnr-pl cop-intr.1pl
We used to have a fox farm here.
e. jo tat-mie imi-ne-j-ben qodo mit mal-u-gele
intj that-qlt neck-prop-attr-relnr how our girl-child-acc
terike+Aon min-te-m
wife+trnsf take-fut-tr.3sg
Oh, how will somebody with a neck like that marry our daughter?
f. qam-un oromo-n-dek?
how.many-attr person-prop-intr.2sg
How many people do you have (= are there in your family)? [Maslova,
2003: 123]
These examples are reminiscent of the Tungusic proprietive forms, except that
in Tungusic the proprietive is an adjectival form (an attributive modier) based
on a noun, whereas the Yukaghir proprietive is a noun-to-verb transposition.
Given our transparency criterion, we should regard the fully conjugated verbal
proprietive as a set of inected forms of the base noun lexeme. However, the trans-
position isnt pure, in the sense that the proprietive brings with it a semantic
contribution.
One of the main functions of the proprietive is to predicate possession, that is, to
translate English have. This can be seen from the glosses provided for the examples
already cited. Further examples are provided in Maslova (2003: 4448).
(26) a. pulun-die ilek-un aAde-n-de jowje-n-i

old.man-dim four-attr eye-prop-attr net-prop-intr.3sg
The old man had a net with four cells.
b. irk-in qoki kie-ne-j
one-attr layer slit-prop-intr.3sg
One layer had slits.
c. naha kusie-ne-j
very mosquito-prop-intr.3sg
There are a lot of mosquitoes.
d. tok-ne-j
perch-prop-intr.3sg
There was a perch.
Note that (26a) is an instance of a proprietive marked noun, aAdende, which is mod-
ied by a numeral, but which itself is turned into an attribute modifying the noun
base of another proprietive marked noun, jowjenie.
The overwhelming impression is that the proprietives main use is to create a pos-
sessive predication, based on a noun with comitative meaning. In this connection its
worth looking in more detail at the comitative case with which the proprietive sufx
is homophonous. It is described in Maslova (2003: 1013). The comitative is clearly a
case form because it is in paradigmatic contrast with other uncontroversial cases and
because it enters into the overall nominal inectional system like any other case. In
particular, it combines with plural noun forms (in both the major classes) and with
possessed noun forms (singular and plural). There are two comitative sufxes. The
more basic of the two has the forms -ne/-n.
(27) a. alme nanulben-ne

shaman devil-com
The shaman and the devil [Title of a fairy tale]
b. irk-in omn modo-lel pulut terike-de-ne
one-attr family sit-infr.3sg old.man old.woman-poss-com
There lived one family, an old man and his wife.
(28) a. kie, met-ne qon met num-Ain

friend me-com go.imp.2sg my house-dat
Friend, go with me to my place.
b. samuj mitek+te kel-te-l erpeje-pul-ne nied-lle ace-le

self we.pred+conn come-fut-sf Even-pl-com speak-ss.pfv deer-ins
min-delle
take-ss.pfv
We will also come ourselves, after having discussed (it) with the Evens and
taken the deer.
From Maslovas descriptions (and further examples she provides, Maslova, 2003:
31316) its clear that the basic meaning of the comitative is with N. Yukaghir has a
comitative NP conjunction strategy, so that NP1 and NP2 is generally expressed as
NP1 with NP2, i.e. NP1 NP2-com.
Given the meaning of the comitative, and given the function of the proprietive, it
seems reasonable to conclude that what we have here is an instance of a transposition
of a case-marked noun form to a verb, with essentially no change in the semantics
of the case marker other than the typologically familiar use of the comitative strategy
for the expression of possessive predications.
In purely formal terms, the Yukaghir proprietive verb is an example of exactly the
same kind of morphology as the German nominalized innitive: in each case we take
a specic inected form of a base lexeme and dene a transposition over that form,
effectively using it as a stem. In schematic form, the way that such transpositions
should be handled is by dening a stem-formation rule for the transposition which
denes the stem as the relevant inected form. Thus, for the Yukaghir case we assume
a feature {PropVerb} which denes the form component of the generalized paradigm
function in the manner sketched in (29).
(29) Where = {Number:sg, Possessor:no, Case:com},
GPF(N, {PropVerb})
fform (N, {PropVerb}) = ...
STEM0(N, {PropVerb}) = fform (N, )
fli (N, {PropVerb}) = (GDP)
The fsyn and fsem components of the relation are more difcult to dene. This is
because the comitative meaning of the original case-marked noun acquires a posses-
sional meaning. Languages generally have one of two types of possession predication,
what we can call have-possession, where possession is expressed by means of a
transitive verb such as have, and with- or locational-possession (often called be-
long possession), where possession is expressed by a locution which literally means
to be with/at (Heine, 1997: 2933). The Yukaghir proprietive verb construction
is an example of the second type of construction (belong possession). However,
it isnt clear to me what kind of semantics to give to either type of possession
construction. I shall therefore offer the most direct and literal semantics, along the
lines of (30).
(30) fsem (N, {PropVerb}) = [Event x.SEM(N, )(x) y.WITH/AT(x, y)]
This is meant to represent a predication which says roughly an event/situation such

that given a noun denotation, x.N(x), x is located with/at y (i.e. y has x). The derived
verb will have the argument structure of a verb, and hence the E semantic function
role.
Given our literal localist interpretation of possession, we might expect that the
derived argument structure would also include the argument structure of the loc-
ative predicate. This will follow if we adopt the analysis of locative cases as fused
adpositions (Spencer, 2008a; Spencer and Stump, forthcoming). On that analysis, we
assume a transposition from a noun to a prepositional phrase (a partially saturated
two-place predicate), expressing the notion with/at N. This would entail that the
argument-structure representation is rst enriched with the Rel semantic function
role, briey mentioned in Chapter 5 as a way of identifying the lexico-syntactic class
of adpositions.
I havent discussed the adposition class, partly because its existence as a lexical class
is somewhat controversial, but mainly because it doesnt generally participate in any
type of lexical relationship other than agreement with its complement. This means
that the argument-structure representation of an adposition + complement structure
such as with/in a house is very different from that of a transposition or derived lex-
eme. An adposition + complement phrase denotes a two-place relation between a
subject, say y and the property of being with/in x, where x is a house. Since the base
noun lexeme has a semantic function role R, this means that the derived argument
structure for the adposition phrase/fused adposition word has to be dened over R as
well as Rel. We can notate such a relation in terms of coindexation. Thus, the derived
argument-structure representation for in the house will be (31).
(31) Relx*, y R*
Given these assumptions, the syntactic representation for the derived proprietive
verb will be broadly as in (32).
(32) fsyn (N, {PropVerb}) = ERelx*, y R*
However, I am not convinced of the need to provide such detailed argument-

structure representations for adpositional elements of this sort. The whole point of
identifying a distinct argument-structure level or projection is to capture generali-
zations that cannot be captured at the more detailed level of semantic representation,
but it is not clear that there are such generalizations to be stated over classes of adpos-
itions. For this reason, therefore, I shall assume a somewhat simpler representation
of the derived argument structure for the proprietive verb, which treats the construc-
tions as just a noun-to-verb transposition:
(33) fsyn (N, {PropVerb}) = ER
For a noun which is being used solely as a predicate, like (is) a doctor in Har-
riet is a doctor, a representation such as (33) expresses the simple idea that the
noun denotation is part of a (syntactic) predication. This can be inferred from
the fact that a pure noun-to-verb transposition of that kind will be associated
with no semantic change other than possibly a retyping of the ontological status of
the word in parallel with the argument-structure representation. That is, the noun
with denotation [Thing x.NOUN(x)] will have the derived semantic representation
[Event [Thing x.NOUN(x)]].13 The proprietive verb construction entails a non-trivial
change in the semantic representation, as illustrated in (30), but the result is still a
construction in which a noun heads a verbal nite predication, which is exactly what
the argument structure in (33) states.
The proprietive verb construction thus denes a derived lexical entry for a noun,
but that derived lexical entry is a transposition, in that it preserves the lexemic in-
dex of the base noun. This means that the Derived Lexical Entry Principle is not
applicable.
I conclude with a nal example of a meaningful transposition from noun to verb
which is very similar in form to the Kolyma Yukaghir proprietive verb construction,
found in the entirely unrelated Chukotko-Kamchatkan group. It provides an enter-
taining example of how the morphology engine can operate in blissful ignorance of
the syntactic purposes to which it is put.
In Chukchi, possessive predications are typically expressed by taking the possessed
noun, inecting it with the prexal part of the comitative case circumx, ge-/ga-, and
conjugating the result as though it were a predicative nominal (Skorik, 1961: 21625;
Dunn, 1999: 323):
(34) a. ekke son g(e)-ekke-j-gm I have a son

b. Aotqen this ga-Aotqena-tore you(pl) have this
c. nikAut something or other, whatsit
ge-nike-j-gt you(sg) have got that thingummy
13 It isnt clear to me to what extent we really need to say that transpositions to verb/predicate entail a
change in ontological status over and above the change in argument-structure representation. It is more in
keeping with the spirit of the generalized paradigm function model to assume that it is just the argument
structure that changes, and that seems to be the correct way of describing predicative nouns/adjectives in
a language like Chukchi, in which the predicative word only shows subject agreement and doesnt per-
mit any genuinely event-related verb inections. But we may wish to keep open the possibility that the
nominal becomes ontologically an eventive predicator, to handle languages such as Nenets and especially
the Yukaghir case, where the predicative nominal realizes genuinely eventive inectional meanings.
The full paradigm is seen in (35), where N stands for a noun root.
(35) Singular Plural

1st ge-N-ig_m ge-N-muri
2nd ge-N-ig_t ge-N-turi
3rd ge-N-lin ge-N-line-t
This is virtually a morpheme-by-morpheme translation of the Yukaghir idiom, of

course. It is also almost identical to the predicative adjective inectional paradigm
seen in (19) above. However, the base of derivation for the proprietive form gekkejg_m
isnt quite the same as either of the two comitative case forms, g-ekke-te, g-akka-ma.
Also, the 3rd person sufx differs slightly from any of the other adjectival 3rd person
endings. Nonetheless, what we see is a verb form which derives from a noun and
which takes predicative inections typical of nominals, not verbs.14
The morphology seen in predicative nouns/adjectives and in possessional pre-
dications is also found in the nite verb paradigm, however. Chukchi has four
tense/aspect forms (which I shall call Past I, Present I, and Future I and II, following
Skoriks description), as well as a conditional and an imperative mood. Transit-
ive verbs agree with the direct object and with the subject; intransitive verbs agree
with the subject. The agreement morphology is a complex mix of prexation and
sufxation, with partial cumulation of the tenseaspectmood and person/number
categories. However, Chukchi verbs also have a Present II or habitual tense and a
Past II or stative perfect. In Tables 9.1 and 9.2, I show the schematic paradigms for a
transitive verb in the Past I (aorist) form (adapted from Dunn, 1999: 177, Figure 10.4)
and for the Past II (stative perfect) form (adapted from Dunn, 1999: 193, Figure 10.24).
In these tables, A refers to the transitive subject, S refers to the intransitive subject,
and O refers to the direct object (Chukchi is an ergative language).
Table 9.1. Chukchi transitive Past I paradigm
1sgO 1plO 2sgO 2plO 3sgO 3plO

1sgA t-X-g_t t-X-t_k t-X-(gPe)n t-X-net
1plA m_t-X-g_t m_t-X-t_k m_t-X-(gPe)n m_t-X-net
2sgA ine-X-(gP)i X-tku-gPi X-(gPe)n X-net

2plA ine-X-t_k X-tku-t_k X-tk_ X-tk_
3sgA ine-X-(gP)i X-nin X-ninet

ne-X-m_k ne-X-g_t ne-X-t_k
3plA ne-X-g_m ne-X-(gPe)n ne-X-net
14 Dunn (1999: 323) notes that he has only two examples of this possessive construction in his corpus,
so its difcult to know whether the transposed noun could ever be modied as a noun.
Table 9.2. Chukchi Past II paradigm (transitive and intransitive)
1sgO/S 1plO/S 2sgO/S 2plO/S 3sgO/S 3plO/S

1sgA
ge-X-ig_t ge-X-ig_t ge-X-lin ge-X-linet
1plA
2sgA g-ine-X-ig_t ge-X-tku-ig_t

ge-X-lin ge-X-linet
2plA g-ine-X-turi ge-X-tku-turi
3sgA g-ine-X-lin
ge-X-muri ge-X-ig_t ge-X-turi ge-X-lin ge-X-linet
3plA ge-X-g_m
Although the correspondence isnt perfect (and I have omitted an additional com-
plication in that the Present II also makes use of a further prex, ine), its clear that
the Present/Past II forms are ultimately derived from predicative adjective/possessed
noun constructions and have very little in common with the rest of the nite verb
paradigm (and even less if transitive conjugations are taken into account). The Chuk-
chi Present/Past II forms thus represent an instance of a (partial) m-shift, akin to
the Russian past tense (and with a similar participial origin). While the Present II
forms are simply verb roots inected as though they were adjectives, the Past II
forms are more complex, in that they represent verb roots inected as though they
were noun roots transposed into adjectives with proprietive meanings. The shift to
the nite verb paradigm removes any hint of the nominal, adjectival, or propriet-
ive origins, however. The Chukchi Past II is therefore a particularly clear instance of
the need to fractionate the morphological, syntactic, and semantic aspects of lexical
representations.
To summarize, we have seen that nouns and adjectives can be transposed to verbs
so as to become predicative nominals. The extent to which the nominal inects
for verb features depends on the language, and it is relatively rare for a predicative
nominal to inect for the full ensemble of verbal properties in a language with rich
verb inection. From a typological perspective, we would expect to see the mirror
image of the situation described by Malchukov (2004) for deverbal nominalizations:
predicative nominal formation can be thought of simultaneously as loss of nomi-
nal properties and gain of verbal properties, with the nominal being progressively
more resistant to acquiring a property the more verbal it is. (This is one way of
interpreting Stassens three criteria above.)
In other cases of pure transpositions, we have assumed that the general-
ized paradigm function effects a non-trivial change solely in the morphosyn-
tactic representations (FORM/SYN attributes), leaving the semantic representation
unchanged.
9.5 Transpositions of transpositions

I have argued that some types of derived word arise from a double application of the
transpositional process under which the principal change which occurs in the repre-
sentation is the addition of an overlaid semantic function role, effectively changing
the words morphosyntactic category, but nothing else. However, I have given very
few examples of this kind. In general, transpositions dont seem to apply to the output
of other pure transpositional processes.
The kind of derivation that we tend not to see can be illustrated by examples of
pseudo-English (English lacks X-to-verb transpositions, of course, which limits the
scope of the exercise):
(36) Examples of non-attested transpositions of transpositions

a. destroy (action nominalization) destruction
(relational adjective) *destructional
b. destroy (participle) destroying/destroyed
(property nominalization) *destroyingness, *destroyedness
* The destroyingness of the new type of bomb is alarming
(cf. The destructiveness of the new type of bomb is alarming)
* The destroyedness of the village suggests that a war crime has been com-
mitted
(cf. The fact of the village having been destroyed suggests that a war crime
has been committed)
c. sincere (property nominalization) sincerity
(relational adjective) *sinceritial
* The discourse violates sinceritial conditions
(cf. The discourse violates sincerity conditions)
d. preposition (relational adjective) prepositional
(property nominalization) *prepositionality
* The phrase is prevented from appearing prenominally by its preposition-
ality
(cf. The phrase cannot appear prenominally because it is a prepositional
phrase)
The picture may be muddied slightly by the existence of nominalizations in -ality

which arent actually derived as double transpositions, such as conditionality. This is
derived either directly from the noun condition(s) or from a qualitative reading of the
adjective conditional.
This point is made explicitly by Szymanek (2010: 96) in the context of rela-
tional and possessive adjectives in Polish. He notes that we cant form the relational
adjective of an action nominalization, or of a property nominalization. For instance,

the action nominalization from robic make, do, robienie, fails to give a relational
adjective (*robieniowy), as does the property nominalization from the adjective rza-
dki rare, rzadkosc: *rzadkosciowy. Szymanek points out that this is not a property
of the afxes themselves, because lexicalized words bearing the same sufxes do give
rise to relational adjectives: podanie an application, podaniowy, sprawnosc tness,
sprawnosciowy.
There do, however, appear to be occasions when we see what seems to be a trans-
position of a transposition. Indeed, we have already seen such examples in Russian,
such as (67) in Chapter 8. In fact, in Russian, both the present (imperfective) passive
participle in -m(yj) and the past (perfective) passive participle in -nn(yj) regularly
permit nominalization with the default deadjectival nominalizer -ost . In some cases
its clear that the participle has been lexicalized as a qualitative adjective, but there
remain plenty of examples in which it seems that we have the property nominali-
zation of a true participle (the present/imperfective passive participle generally has
a modal meaning of abilitative such that can be corrected, another instance of a
meaning-bearing transposition):15
(37) ispravljat correct, imperfective passive participle ispravljemyj
ispravljaem-ost oibki
correct.impf_ptcp-nom error.gen
the correctibility of the error
(38) koncit nish, perfective passive participle koncennyj
koncenn-ost dejstvija
complete.prf_ptcp-nom action.gen
the state of completion of the action, the completedness of the action
Furthermore, evidence from English compounds suggests that its perfectly possible
for transpositions to be used with the wrong grammatical function, as though they
had been transposed. For example, an action nominal of the form reading can be the
modier in a noun-noun compound such as reading activity, in which the only way to
interpret the action nominal is as a transposition, not some lexicalized noun derived
from an action nominal.
Evidence such as this suggests that transpositions can indeed be the input to
further transposition. One line of inquiry would be to investigate those languages
15 Notice that its rather difcult to nd an adequate idiomatic translation for (38) because English lacks
the ability to form a property nominalization from a pure past participle. The variant with completedness
is the sort of term that a logician or linguist would dream up, and is not really a genuine word of ordinary
English. That is, its better thought of as an instance of Fachmorphologie.
which have X-to-verb transpositions and also deverbal participles and/or deverbal
nominalizations, to determine whether the transposition to predicate can feed the
participle/nominalization transposition. In other words, in those languages in which
nouns can be transposed into nite verbs to give word forms with meanings like was
a barrier, are houses, and so on, is it possible for those denominal verbs to form
participles and nominals along the lines of the being-a-barrier (log) (the log which
was a barrier) or (their) being houses (the fact that they are houses).
9.6 Conclusions: when is a lexeme not a lexeme?

In this and the previous chapter we have seen illustrations of more or less all the the-
oretically possible types of lexical relatedness, including transpositions which change
meaning, and transposition-like types of derivation which dont change meaning. To
draw the ne distinctions exhibited by the data I have reviewed, I have assumed that
its possible to individuate lexemes by furnishing each distinct lexeme with a unique
identier, the lexemic index. I have also assumed that the lexical-relatedness map-
ping, the generalized paradigm function, is allowed to redene the lexeme index in
order to dene a new lexeme. Where the lexemic index remains unchanged we have
an instance of intra-lexemic or within-lexeme relatedness, and where the lexemic
index is changed we have an instance of inter-lexemic or between-lexeme relatedness.
Now, this kind of lexemic individuation isnt forced on us. In principle, for the pur-
poses of basic description we could probably get by without asking whether preposi-
tion and prepositional are distinct lexemes or not. We would effectively be in the same
position as practical lexicographers, who lack any principled means of distinguishing
between semantically divergent polysemy within a lexical entry on the one hand, and
etymologically transparent homonymy across lexemes on the other hand. It would
then be a matter of practicality whether we describe prepositional under the head-
word preposition or make it a separate headword in its own right and cross-refer it
to preposition, provided we record in the lexical entries all the relevant properties
of their representations. The question is whether, as morphologists, lexicologists, and
grammarians, we could do that without missing important generalizations.
It is widely assumed that a true derivational process, which denes a new, derived
lexeme, renders the properties of the base lexeme opaque to nearly all morphosyn-
tactic processes. The only properties a truly derived lexeme can inherit from its base
seem to be certain argument-structure-like properties that are associated with the
bases semantic representation. However, on the GPF model, that opacity (or lexical
integrity) is an automatic consequence of derivation only if the base and derived word
have distinct lexemic indices. This is because the opacity of true derivational mor-
phology is entailed by the Derived Lexical Entry Principle and the Default Cascade.
Those principles require us to be able to identify those types of lexical relatedness
that dene distinct lexemes.
In cases of within-lexeme relatedness, we have seen constructions in which aspects

of the base lexemes representation are still visible in the derived words representa-
tion. The strongest possible hypothesis would be that we have complete transparency
for all instances of within-lexeme lexical relatedness, that is, whenever the lexemic
index is unchanged, and complete opacity for all instances of between-lexeme re-
latedness, that is, whenever the lexemic index is changed non-trivially. However,
this seems too strong, at least in one direction: not all transpositions and similar
forms of relatedness permit access to all properties of their base lexemes. But it seems
worth entertaining the hypothesis that the derivation of a genuinely new lexeme al-
ways entails lexical opacity, so that violations of opacity will be correlated with other
properties characteristic of within-lexeme relatedness as opposed to between-lexeme
relatedness.
In this section I shall briey summarize the claims for lexemic individuation that I
have made in this and the previous chapter. The principal diagnostic is that provided
by the Strong Derived Category Membership Hypothesis, namely morphosyntactic
opacitymorphosyntactic principles and processes cannot treat the derived lexeme
as though it were still the base lexeme. One diagnostic for lexemehood which one
would have thought would be straightforward is meaning: if two lexical entries have
distinct meanings, they are distinct lexemes, and if they have the same meaning, they
are either forms of one lexeme or they are perfect synonyms. However, the meaning
criterion has turned out to be one of the least reliable. Inection and even trans-
position can be associated with meaning change yet remain within-lexeme relations,
while its possible for a transposition to create a new lexeme (such as an English
relational adjective) without adding any semantic content whatsoever.
Throughout this book I have been stressing the independence of wordhood cri-
teria, so by the logic of this approach we should expect to see that the transpositions
I have discussed should all be capable of analysis either as within-lexeme or between-
lexeme relations. I shall conclude this chapter by briey sketching the kinds of criteria
that we can bring to bear on that question for examples that we are already familiar
with.
The simplest cases are perhaps the transposition-to-verb or predicative nouns/
adjectives. In the languages that have them, these constructions are uniformly treated
as forms of the base lexeme; indeed, they are usually considered inected forms of the
base lexeme. This may well be analytical prejudice on the part of European linguists
who are used to translating such derived verbs as a copular verb + noun/adjective
construction, of course, but setting aside that possibility, we have a reasonably clear
instance of a categorial shift which isnt generally taken to entail a derivational
relationship.
If we consider deverbal nominalizations, it seems clear that English -ing nominals,
at least, can be treated in some of their uses as within-lexeme transpositions. Thus,
the eating of the POSS-ACC expression Adams eating the apple would be taken to be
a clear instance of the nominal form of the lexeme eat by virtue of the fact that it is
a syntagmatically mixed category, with nominal syntax to the left and verbal syntax
to the right. The situation with the gerund construction Adam/him eating the apple is
slightly more complex because here theres little reason to say we are dealing with a
nominalization in the rst place; that is, we could just as easily treat the construction
as a non-nite verb-headed clause. The most complex case is the POSS-GEN type,
Adams eating of the apple. The literature contains reports that such constructions,
too, are inherently verbal because they can (marginally) be modied by adverbials
rather than (or in addition to) adjectives (Fu et al., 2001). If that is really a syntactic
phenomenon rather than one of semantic interpretation, then we have evidence that
the -ing nominal is a syntagmatically mixed category in the POSS-GEN construction,
too, and hence that eating is a form of the lexeme eat in all such cases. This, how-
ever, would probably also force us to conclude that the nominalization consumption,
in Adams consumption of the apple, is a form of the lexeme consume. At the very
least this means that lexicographers should include reference to consumption under
the headword consume rather than listing consumption as a separate headword and
cross-referring that word back to its base consume. Similarly, the criterion of syn-
tagmatic mixing would lead us to conclude that Romance nominalized innitives are
forms of the verbal lexeme and not distinct lexemes. The situation with the German
nominalized innitive is very similar (Bierwisch, 2009; Spencer, 2010a: 257). On the
other hand, the situation with the -ung nominalizations seems to be that they may
constitute distinct lexemes in many or even most of their uses.
The Kikuyu agent-nominal construction is a further instance of syntagmatic cat-
egory mixing. On the GPF model, such a construction would therefore be analysed
as an instance of within-lexeme transposition, this time targeting a thematic argu-
ment of the base verb. In many respects, this case is similar to the typologically very
common type of agent/subject nominalization which takes the form of a deverbal
participle which has been transposed to a noun. The Chukchi participles in -lP_n dis-
cussed in Chapter 3 illustrate the same phenomenon. However, if agent nominals in
Kikuyu or Chukchi are effectively forms of the verb lexeme, what of the parade ex-
ample of derivational morphology, the English -er agent/subject nominal? In fact, this
example has never been a particularly good choice of poster-child for prototypical
(much less canonical) derivational morphology. This is because it denotes one of the
arguments of the base verb rather than being a relation which adds a semantic predic-
ate to the semantic representation of the base. One of the consequences of this is that
the other argument in a transitive verb is still partly accessible, and can be saturated in
synthetic compounds (train driver) and by prepositional phrase satellites (the driver
of the train, a driver of trains), the problem of argument inheritance (Booij, 1988).
Should we regard this as indicating syntagmatic category mixing? There is certainly
no other evidence of verbal morphosyntax. For instance, it isnt generally possible
to modify an agent/subject nominal with an adverb (*the train driver carelessly/
without due care, *the driver of the train carelessly/without due care), in contrast to
similar expressions with driving: the driving of the train without due care.16 Therefore,
we can conclude that English -er nominals (and no doubt those formed with other
morphology) do not show syntagmatic mixing, and are not therefore forms of the
base verb, but are autonomous lexemes. (This, of course, doesnt solve the problem
of how to account for argument inheritance.)
The situation with property nominalizations of adjectives is somewhat more com-
plicated, mainly because there has been rather little discussion of the problem, and
therefore there is only a limited empirical base. I have argued that words such as pop-
ularity, when they are used as transpositions, should be regarded as forms of the base
noun lexeme. This will perhaps be disconcerting to some lexicographers, though its
unclear why. Property nominalizations in -ness are regularly listed under the base ad-
jective lexemes, and so there can be no logical reason for not treating transpositions
in -ity in exactly the same way.
However, my reasons for treating English property nominalizations as within-
lexeme formations are not in this case underpinned by syntagmatic category mixing.
On the contrary, its quite impossible to modify a property nominalization as though
it were still an adjective, on any of the types of interpretation: very popular *very
popularity, highly popular *highly popularity (high popularity), and so on. Exactly
the same is true of the Russian nominalized passive participles which act as nominal-
izations of middle reexive verbs. The nominal has to be modied with an adjective,
for instance ploxaja bad.f.sg, as in ploxaja otglaivaemost poor ironability, and not
with an adverb: ploxo badly, *ploxo otglaivaemost . The adverb is required, however,
for modifying the base nite verb and participle forms: ploxo otglaivaetsja irons
badly, ploxo otglaivaemye badly ironable (plural), but not *ploxie otglaivaemye
bad.pl ironable.pl.
On the other hand, adjectival complementation patterns are sometimes preserved
under nominalization: the programme is popular with teenagers the programmes
popularity with teenagers, willing to consider willingness to consider, unfair to col-
leagues unfairness to colleagues, adept at getting his own way (his) adeptness at
getting his own way, partial to red wine partiality to red wine, . . . . However, not all
derived nouns inherit their bases complements: proud of her daughter *pride of her
daughter. Consequently, we have to recognize that there is little evidence one way or
the other for deciding whether property nominal transpositions are new lexemes or
within-lexeme derivations.
We next considered relational and possessive adjectives. Possessive adjective con-
structions are sometimes mistaken for a kind of genitive case. This suggests that there
16 Even with an -ing nominal, I nd a solitary adverb modier sounds very awkward in contrast to a
PP modier: ??the driving of the train carelessly. The example is improved if the adverb is conjoined with a
PP, however: the driving of the train carelessly and without proper regard for safety.
is a strong tie between the possessive form and the base, and that the possessive is
therefore a form of the base lexeme. Occasionally we nd good reasons from syn-
tagmatic mixing for treating the possessive as a kind of noun, for instance in Upper
Sorbian. For relational adjectives in a language like English there is little evidence,
if any, from syntagmatic category mixing to support a within-lexeme treatment. For
some cases, such as suppletive Latinate relational adjectives, its reasonably safe to
assume that we are dealing with a distinct lexeme that happens to play the role of
a transposition. However, for derived adjectives that have few restrictions on their
meaning or distribution, the verdict has to remain open until we can develop better
diagnostic criteria.
10
Lexical relatedness in Selkup
10.1 Introduction
In this book I have argued for a whole host of types of lexical relatedness which lie
somewhere between traditional inection and derivation. A key type of relatedness
has been the transposition. Such derivations are found ubiquitously, but it will be
useful to see an instance of a language which invests a particularly large part of its
grammatical capital in such morphosyntax. The language Selkup,1 a member of the
Southern Samoyedic group of Uralic languages, is spoken by a few hundred people
in Western Siberia. In order to fully appreciate the position of the category of trans-
position or representation in Selkup, it will be necessary to compare it with typical
inection and derivation, so I will present a fair amount of the morphosyntax of the
language in addition to just the transpositions.
My main sources are the short English-language sketch in Helimski (1998), the
grammar by Kuznecova et al. (1980) on which that sketch is based, and a collection
of texts with a vocabulary, Kuznecova et al. (1993). All these descriptions are based
on the Taz, or Northern, dialect. I will refer to the principal source, Kuznecova et al.
(1980), as KXG.
10.2 Basic parts of speech in Selkup

Selkup distinguishes nouns and verbs. Nouns inect for number, possessor agree-
ment, and case. Verbs are either perfective or imperfective, and nite forms agree
with their subject (and also signal certain properties of their direct objects) and in-
ect for a variety of tenses and moods. There is a highly developed set of aspectual
categories or modes of action as well as three main argument-structure alternations.
All of these are integrated into the inectional paradigm. Selkup also has a category
of adjectives, but these are not strongly differentiated from nouns. A number of basic
adjectives have no special morphological marking, though a great many adjectives
1 It might be better to call it a language group or a dialect continuum. See Helimski (1998: 54850) for
a brief summary of the cultural background to the language.
Lexical relatedness in Selkup 381
end in - .2 These include un-derived adjectives as well as derived ones, such as the
y
adjectival transpositions. There are also various adverbs, particles, and postpositions.
KXG explicitly draw attention to the range of transpositional relations in Selkup,
which they refer to as the category of representation (reprezentacija), following
Smirnickij (1959) (see Section 3.3.6). We will see that nouns can be transposed into
adjectives, adverbs, and nite verbs, and verbs can be transposed into adjectives,
adverbs, and nouns. Several of these general transpositional categories split into
subcategories expressing semantic nuances of various kinds.
10.2.1 Verbs
Transitive verbs have two sets of subject agreement markers, the subjective conju-
gation and the objective conjugation (KXG: 234f.). The subjective conjugation is
used in the following cases:
(i) intransitive verbs
(ii) transitive verbs with 1st or 2nd person direct object
(iii) transitive verbs with indenite direct object
(iv) transitive verbs in the imperative issuing requests rather than commands
(v) verbs with innitival complement.
The objective conjugation is used elsewhere. KXG (p. 235) illustrate the contrast
implied in (iii) by examples (1).
(1) a. tp kanap qonti-rtnti-Ai-ti-
he dog.acc will.see.3sg.objv
He will see the dog [objective conjugation]
(Russian: On uvidit (tu) sobaku)
b. tp kanap qonti-rtnta
he dog.acc will.see.3sg
He will see a dog [subjective conjugation]
(Russian: On uvidit (kakuju-to) sobaku)
I shall not mark the subjective conjugation specically, but I will mark the objective
conjugation with the abbreviation objv where this is necessary.
10.2.2 Nouns
Nouns have three sufx position slots for:
number: [Number:{singular, dual, plural, collective}]
possessor agreement in person/number: [PossAgr:{[Person:{1, 2, 3}],
[Number:{singular, plural}]}]
2 This is the symbol I use in transcription for IPA [lj ]. See Appendix A to this chapter for details of the
transcription of Selkup.
case: [Case:{nominative, genitive, accusative, instrumental, caritive, translative,

coordinative, dativeallative, illative, locative, elative, prolative, vocative}].
The three features are paradigmatic, i.e. the values of [Num], [PossAgr], [Case] are
mutually exclusive (KXG: 210).
In Table 10.9 in Appendix C, I provide a sample fragment of the paradigm for |qok|
leader.3
When we look at possessor agreement for inanimate nouns, we nd an interesting
twist in the paradigm for certain case forms (KXG: 1846). The basic possessor agree-
ment sufxes differ slightly depending on the case of the noun (part of the reason for
regarding cases as inections). Thus, for the nominative case we have the forms in
(2), while for the accusative and genitive cases we have the forms in (3).
(2) Nominative case

Possessed
1 -mi-, -m -mi: -mi-t
Possessor 2 -li-, -l -li: -li-t
3 -ti- -ti: -ti-t
(3) Accusative and genitive cases

Possessed
1 -i- -i: -i-t
Possessor
2, 3 -ti- -ti: -ti-t
For most of the semantic cases the possessed case-marked form is obtained by
adding the appropriate case sufx to the form corresponding to the possessed form
of the genitive case for the appropriate number-marked noun. For instance, the in-
strumental case sufx is -s. The instrumental case of the 1sg possessed dual number
form of the noun leader is therefore qoqqini-s. This can be segmented as qoqqini- -
s, where qoqqini- is identical to the genitive-marked word form of my (two) leaders.
That form in turn is built from qo(k) (noun stem), qi dual possessed, ni- genitive.
However, for the illative, elative, and locative cases we see a slightly different pic-
ture. The sufxes for these cases are -ti-, -qi-ni-, and -qi-n, respectively. The sufxes for
possessed nouns in these cases are identical, and take the forms shown in (4).
3 When specically naming lexemes, as opposed to word forms, in Selkup, I will place the lexemes
name inside vertical lines. This is because I have been using IPA symbols to transcribe the Selkup examples,
and small capital versions of some IPA symbols are not available.
(4) Illative, elative, and locative cases

Possessed
1 -qk -qi-ni: -qi-ni-t
Possessor 2 -qnti- -qi-nti: -qi-nti-t
3 -qi-nti- -qi-nti: -qi-nti-t
Although there is a certain amount of afxal fusion here, the general picture is
clear: the order of the afxes is reversed, with the exponents of possessor agreement
appearing to the right of the exponent of the spatial cases, qk/qi-n.
10.3 Derivational morphology

Helimski (1998: 5714) lists the principal types of derivational morphology found
in the Selkup lexicon. I shall split his list into ve groups: (i) argument-structure
alternations; (ii) modes-of-action; (iii) argument nominalizations; (iv) evaluative
morphology; (v) other types.
10.3.1 Argument-structure alternations

Selkup verb roots are sometimes lexically specied as transitive or intransitive, but
are sometimes labile. Some intransitives are marked with a sufx -m :t, which is re- c
placed by the sufx -alti- to obtain the transitive alternant (KXG: 21112): ei- -m :t c
gets angry e-alti-4 makes angry. Most verbs can be causativized with a suf-
x whose allomorphs are -ralti-, -talti-, - alti-, -allalti-.5 An example of a causative
yy
verb is shown in (5), from which it can be seen that the derived verb is a typical
monoclausal morphological causative, with the causer role serving as the main clause
subject (controlling the reexive pronoun) and the causee expressed with the oblique
dative/allative case.6
(5) mat tima-ni- -ni-k na alako-m i:ti- -ralti- -s-am

1sg.nom brother-1sg.poss-dat/all this boat-acc take-caus-pst-1sg.objv
on-k c :ti- c
self-1sg.poss for
I made my brother take this boat for me [Helimski, 1998: 573]
4 Misprint corrected.
5 KXG (pp. 214, 231) point out that the causative sufx is really bimorphic and ends in -alti-. This is seen
by the fact that transitivizing -alti- is replaced by the form -pti- in the attenuative mode-of-action form,
and this replacement takes place in causative verbs, too: ori-m-{t-alti-} cause to grow, ori-m-{t-pti-}, where
-{t-alti-} is the (compound) causative allomorph.
6 Actually, things are a little more complex than this: see KXG (p. 213).
Selkup also has a reexive alternation, which is rather like reexive morphology
in Romance or Slavic languages in that it expresses a whole host of intransitive al-
ternations and sometimes is simply a lexically dened property of the verb. There is
also a kind of passive alternation, though this, in fact, is a special use of the durative
mode-of-action.
The causative and reexive alternations are intimately tied up with the rest of
the conjugation system, in the sense that we nd cumulation in the realization
of causative/reexive categories and various tensemood categories throughout the
conjugation system.
10.3.2 Modes-of-action
Selkup is typical of Uralic languages in having a well-developed set of modes-of-
action (Aktionsarten) aspectual morphology.7 This is distinct from the perfective/
imperfective aspect distinction also found in the language: all verbs are either per-
fective or imperfective (and many verb roots can be used in either aspect), but
the modes-of-action are additional event-modifying meanings laid over the event
semantics of the base verb. In this respect Selkup is rather like the Slavic languages,
though there are subtle differences between the perfective/imperfective aspect in
Selkup and that of, say, Russian.8
Helimski (1998: 57375) lists the following nine modes-of-action:
(i) iterative
(ii) habitual
(iii) durative (gives passive interpretation in subjective conjugation)
(iv) non-perfective (type of incompletive mode-of-action)
(v) intensive/perfective
(vi) multiobjectival (type of transitive distributive)
(vii) multisubjectival (intransitive distributive)
(viii) inchoative
(ix) attenuative.
KXG (pp. 228f.) also describe a semelfactive mode-of-action and a biphasal mode
(dvuxaktno-nitivnaja soveraemost ), which denotes an action and its reaction. Ex-
amples of the biphasal mode-of-action are mi-nti-r- give and receive back, lend, from
7 There is a wealth of terminology in the literature to describe this type of event-related morphology,
including terms with the word aspect. For languages like Selkup, which have distinct categories of verbal
aspect and modes-of-action, its better to reserve the term aspect for the aspectual category proper. I
therefore use the English term mode-of-action (with hyphens) as a translation of the Russian sposob
dejstvija (which itself is calqued from German Aktionsart).
8 There is no reason to believe that the Uralic perfective/imperfective distinction is the result of inu-
ence from Slavic. On the contrary, that system arose much later than the Uralic system, in all probability
under the inuence of Uralic.
mi- give, patqi-l-ti-r- dive and surface again from patqi-l- dive, and pyAko -ci-r- roll y
to and fro from pyAki- -i mpi- - roll.
y
The modes-of-action can be combined in a single verb form. (Helimski, 1998: 574)
provides this example:
(6) catt-lt-tnti- -ki- o pi-

y y
throw-multiobjectival-non.perfective-iterative
makes numerous attempts at throwing many things
Again, we nd complex morphological dependencies (cumulation and so on)

between the realizations of modes-of-action and the realizations of other verbal in-
ectional categories, showing that the mode-of-action category is fully integrated into
the languages inectional system.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to nd further information about the combin-
ability of modes-of-action or about determinants of afx order. We might expect
to see that there is a certain freedom of order and that this reects semantic scope
distinctions (see Chapter 6), as has been reported for other Uralic languages. For
instance, Kiefer and Komlsy (2011: 207f.) cite the examples in (7) to illustrate the
interaction between causative (here, a permissive causative) and iterative/attenuative
sufxes in Hungarian:9
(7) a. olvas -tat -gat

read -caus -attenuative
from time to time it is true that x lets y read
b. olvas -gat -tat
read -attenuative -caus
let read from time to time
Kiefer and Komlsy also discuss the sufx -hAt expressing possibility/permission.
In Chapter 3 I mentioned that some linguists regard this as an inectional sufx
rather than a derivational sufx. One reason for this is that it obligatorily comes
last in the sufx string, and therefore scopes over other sufxes. Thus, it is unable
to express order-based scope alternations.
10.3.3 Argument nominalizations

Any expression with adjectival meaning (including participles) can be turned into a
noun denoting the subject argument of that adjective with mi-:
(8) soma mi- something good

taqi-ti-ti- mi- something which closes, is closed
y
9 They label the causative factitive, and the attenuative mode-of-action diminutive. I normalize their
terminology to bring it more into line with that used in this book.
taqi-ti-nti- mi- something which closes, is closed

y
qopi- /qompi- mi- something which found, was found
y y
Helimski (1998: 574) says that this is virtually a sufxal form.

KXG (pp. 338f.) describe two types of subject/agent nominalizer. The rst is clearly
a partially grammaticalized formation with the noun qup person. This appears after
the rst stem, the second stem, or a truncated form of a noun, or after an adjectival
or participial form. Thus, from oli- head (rst stem oli-, second stem oli-t, truncated
stem ol) we have oli- -qup, (oli-t-qup, ol-qup) leader, boss and from parti-ki-ti- milking
y
(participial form parti-ki- - to milk) we have parti-ki- -qup. The ethnonym Selkup
y
itself derives from from the taiga/forest (t taiga, forest).
y
The second type of agent nominal derives nouns from verbs, and is formed with
-aca, -a, -ka. It often has a pejorative meaning: cu:ri- to cry, cu:raca cry-baby.
10.3.4 Evaluative morphology

Helimski (1998: 571f.) lists a diminutive sufx - a used with nouns. The singulative
y
sufxes -laka, -saji-, and -qu give words meaning piece/lump of X, and are described
as having a diminutive nuance in KXG (p. 336). However, Helimski describes these
forms as compounds, because they are formed from the adjectival representation of
the noun, and not a base form.
10.3.5 Other types of derived verb or noun

KXG (pp. 33453) describe a number of derivational processes of varying productiv-
ity. Among these are a number of quite common sufxes whose meaning is very
unclear. The impression is that the derived verb or noun means to do something
characteristic with noun or thing characteristically associated with action denoted
by verb. The sufxes KXG discuss include (KXG: 3403, 347):
(9) - verb noun
-san noun verb
-A adjective/noun verb
-mti- adjective/noun verb
-m noun verb
-l noun verb
- :lti-
c verb verb
-tti-/-ti-/-t noun verb
-ri- noun verb (KXG: 347)
Examples of these sufxes are: yt to sew yti- - a stitch; pu: to blow pu:nt-san
bellows; yi- householder yi- -A to become a householder; :li- weak :li--mti-
c c
to become weak; or strength ori- -m to grow; apti- a smell apta-l to smell;
wi-ti-l-alti- to make smooth wi-ti-l- :lti- to roll smooth; kekki- suffering kekki- -tti-
c
to suffer; w_rqi- big w_rqi- -tti- to put on airs. Note also Russian borrowings such
as uci- -tti- to learn (from Russian ucitsja), k_ winter k_ri- to winter. Conversion
is also widespread, with similarly uid meaning (I give verbs with the innitive sufx
-qo): apti- a smell apti- -qo to smell (transitive); mi- something mi- -qo to do
something.
KXG (p. 348) point out that some of the words derived in different ways end up
being more or less synonymous because of the uidity of meaning of these sufxes,
citing apti- -qo, apta-l-qo, and apti- -r-qo, all of which mean to smell (something). On
the other hand, some sufxes have a straightforward meaning, such as:
(10) -i- noun verb smell or taste of

-i-r noun verb collect, forage for
- noun verb hunt (an animal), gather supplies of
-i-/i: noun verb turn into, acquire the properties of
-ki-li-m noun verb become deprived of, lose
-ki-li- -ti- noun verb deprive of
-r/ar noun verb come to own/have
Helimski (1998: 572) lists two denominal derivations denoting persons, the in-
structive noun and the caritive noun, meaning HAVING N and LACKING N,
respectively (KXG: 338f.).
(11) a. Instructive noun: N-si-ma, HAVING(NOUN)

ima wife, ima-si-ma married man
b. Caritive noun: N-ki-ta, LACKING(NOUN)
saji- eye, saji- -ki-ta blind person
10.3.6 Derived adjectives

We will wish to compare genuine derivational morphological processes which give
rise to adjectives with the category of transposition to adjective, so it will be useful
to survey the derived adjectives found in Selkup. KXG (pp. 34952) list a number of
examples.
The sufx -qi- forms qualitative adjectives from verbs: s_ ci- -qi- smooth from
y y y
s_ ci-m :t to become smooth. It also forms adjectives from relational adjectives in - ,
y c y
meaning containing N: yti- - water-reladj, yti- -qi- containing a lot of water. The
y y y
sufx -ti- derives adjectives from nouns, giving the meaning intended for making N:
y
anti- canoe, anti- -ti-: intended for making a canoe.
Closely related to the instructive/caritive derived nouns are the proprietive and
privative adjectives, essentially adjectival forms of the instructive and caritive cases
respectively.
(12) Proprietive adjective: N-si-mi- , HAVING(NOUN)

y
ys-si-mi- y torqi-
water-prop pot
pot with water
(13) Privative adjective: N-ki-ti- , LACKING(NOUN)
y
ima-ki-ti- t:ti-pi-
y
wife-priv shaman
an unmarried shaman
Notice that the proprietive and privative adjectives are not actually relational ad-
jective forms of the nouns they are formally derived from. That is, imaki-ti- doesnt y
mean having some relationship to the concept of being an unmarried man, but
rather means unmarried. I shall return to the proprietive/privative adjectives after
discussing the relational adjectives.
10.4 Deverbal transpositions

10.4.1 Participles
Selkup is particularly rich in deverbal participles, expressing tense and mood categor-
ies, as well as a specic kind of negative (KXG: 2536).
There are ve participles, formed by sufxes added to the basic verb stem (on
active/passive variation, see below):
(14) present (prs_ptcp): -(n)ti- y
past (pst_ptcp): -(m)pi- y
debitive (obligation) (debit_ptcp): -(p)s :ti-
y c
destinative (intended for) (destin_ptcp): -(p)so/-(p)sa
caritive (negation) (car_ptcp): -kuci-ti- y
The allomorph with the additional initial consonant is found with vowel-nal
stems, the other allomorph is found with consonant-nal stems. All but one of the
sufxes ends in the characteristic adjective formative - . y
Present participle:
l :q-ti- standing, c:ti- being, pe:nti- searching
c y y y
Past participle:
pin-pi- placed, i:-pi- , i:-mpi- taken, ni-ta-pi- , ni-ta-mpi- torn10
y y y y y
Debitive:
taqqi-l-s :ti- such that it should collect/be collected
y c
10 Vowel-nal stems can taken either participle allomorph, consonant-nal stems only take the -pi-
y
allomorph.
(15) maco:qi-n ili- -ps :ti-

y c qumi-t
in.the.forest live-debit_ptcp people
those who ought to live in the forest
Destinative:
miri-k-so intended for sale (miri-A sell)
k_ri- -pso intended for wintering (k_ri- to spend the winter)
Caritive:
qonti- -ku ci-ti- sleepless, not sleeping
y
pisi--ku ci-ti- not laughing/laughed at
y
When used as clauses (for example, as attributive modier clauses, the translation
equivalent of an English relative clause), deverbal participles have the same valency
as nite verb forms except that the subject appears in the genitive:
(16) a. qum :t-t-i-p
c taqqi-ltnti-lori-i-ti-
man.nom reindeer-pl-acc herd
The man herds the reindeer
b. qum-i-t taqqi-ltnti- -ti- :t-t
c y
man-gen herd-prs_ptcp reindeer-pl.nom
the reindeer which the man herds [KXG: 254]
Active/passive diathesis is not indicated morphologically, so that the participle
forms are ambiguous for voice. Thus, corresponding to the clause in (17a) we see
the two participial clauses in (17b, c):
(17) a. qorqi- :t-p
c qtpati-
bear.nom reindeer-acc killed
The bear killed the reindeer
b. :t-p
c qt-pi- y qorqi-
reindeer-acc kill-pst_ptcp bear.nom
bear which has killed a reindeer
c. qorqi- -t qt-pi- y :tc
bear-gen kill-pst_ptcp reindeer.nom
a reindeer killed by a bear
Passive voice participles can also be formed from intransitives:
(18) a. ili- -pi-
y ttti-
live-pst_ptcp place
an inhabited place cf.:
b. ti-mti- ili- -pi-
y qum
here live-pst_ptcp person
a person who has lived here
(19) a. ty-pi- y wtti-

travel-pst_ptcp road
a travelled road
b. ty-pi- y ce:li-
arrive-pst_ptcp day
the day of arrival cf.:
c. ty-pi- y qum
arrive-pst_ptcp person
a person who has arrived
10.4.2 Deverbal nominalizations

The rst type of deverbal nominalization is the innitive. This is formed by means of
a sufx -qo, which is homophonous with the translative case sufx. Presumably the
two categories are historically related. KXG (p. 249) cite examples (20) in which the
verb selects the translative case form of the noun and the -qo innitive of a verb.
(20) a. qomtt-qo m :ti-rna c
money-trans asks.for
He is asking for money.
b. yti-r-qo m :ti-rna
c
drink-inf asks.for
He is asking to drink.
On reason for treating the innitive as a nominalization (hence, a verb-to-noun
transposition) is that it has possessed forms, marked by a sufx string identical to
that found with the possessed forms of a translative-case-marked noun.
(21) Possessed forms of innitive
1st -qi-no:qo qi-no: -qi-ni:qo -qi-ni-tqo
2nd/3rd -qi-nto:qo qi-nto: -qi-nti:qo -qi-nti-tqo
Innitives are used as complements to verbs expressing modal, inchoative, and
similar meanings, and as purposive adjuncts, in which the possessive inection marks
the subordinate clause subject:
(22) tpi-t tmi-s :ti-t poqqi-p q:li--qi-nti-t-qo
c
they bought net.acc catch.sh-3pl.poss-inf
They bought a net so that they could catch sh/to catch sh. (lit. for their
catching sh)
In addition to the innitive, KXG (pp. 2503) identify two categories which they
call Nomen Actionis I and Nomen Actionis II. The second of these does not seem to
be very common, and the authors give few details, so I shall restrict my description
to the rst type, which I shall simply label as action nominal.
The action nominal is realized by a sufx with the following allomorphy and
selectional requirements:
(23) Action nominal morphology:

-pt after vowel-nal stem
- after stem ending in /r/
-c after stem ending in /, / y
-t elsewhere
The action nominal preserves the following verbal properties:
valence
modication by adverbs
complementation (except that the subject is realized by possessor agreement).
The action nominal acquires the following nominal properties:
case marking: the nominal can appear in nominative, genitive, translative,

locative, and occasionally accusative or elative cases
possessor agreement for realization of subject.
Examples of genitive subjects/possessor agreement with the action nominal are

seen in (24).
(24) a. ami-r-:-qk
eat-nmlz-loc.1sg.poss
when I eat
b. ami-r-:-qnti-
eat-nmlz-loc.2sg.poss
when you eat
c. i:ja-ti-n pisi-c-c-nti-t c :ti-
c
child-gen.pl laugh-nmlz-gen.sg-3pl for
in order that the children should laugh (lit. for the childrens laughing)
KXG (p. 252) report an interesting case of grammaticalization in progress which

illustrates well the way that non-nite transpositions of verbs can become integrated
into the nite inectional system and thereby lead to traces of nominal morpho-
logy inside verbal paradigms (the morphological shift phenomenon). The standard
sentence-negation construction for non-imperative clauses is realized by simply
combining the negative particle aa with the appropriate form of the verb. How-
ever, there is an alternative negation construction formed with the action nominal
and a negation particle historically derived from a Uralic negative auxiliary, c:Aka,
used for reporting real events in the past (Helimski, 1998: 575):
(25) man ami-r--mi- c:Aka

1sg eat-nmlz-1sg.poss neg
I havent eaten.
The negative particle often gets truncated to c, and for some speakers this then
combines with a form of the action nominal furnished with nite agreement markers
rather than the possessive agreement markers:
(26) a. mat inti- c qonti-r--k

1sg 2sg neg saw-nmlz-1sg
I didnt see you.
b. c su:ri-cc--nti-
neg hunted-nmlz-2sg
You didnt go hunting.
In more conservative idiolects the verb forms in (26) would appear with possessive
sufxes, qonti-r--p, su:ri-cc--l.
10.4.3 Deverbal adverbs (gerunds)

I have not so far discussed the possibility of transposing a major category into the
minor category of adverb, though such transpositions are certainly found. For in-
stance, if we assume that English has a category of adverb (Payne et al., 2010), then
presumably we can analyse regularly formed -ly adverbs as adjective-to-adverb trans-
positions. Similarly, in Polish, adjectives form adverbs by means of a unique sufx -o,
which is only used for that purpose. Assuming that there is a distinct category of
adverb, available in principle universally, then a theory of lexical relatedness should
have a way of representing that category. Although there is a very rich literature on
the way that phrases can modify verbs or clauses, the lexical category of adverb has
rather a small role to play in anyones model of lexical relatedness, so I will leave the
category of adverb in the same limbo as the category of preposition, and await further
cross-linguistic research. Nonetheless, its worth being aware that there is potentially
a set of empirical questions to answer, so I will present the basic facts from Selkup
without detailed analysis.
In many languages verbs are transposed into gerund forms. These are often
effectively case-marked nominalizations functioning as clause adjuncts. From the
point of view of lexical organization, they are probably best regarded as exactly what
they look like and analysed semantically in whatever way we choose to analyse the
semantics of clausal-modier adpositional phrases, that is, treating those nominali-
zations as a kind of noun (this may well be the best way to treat prepositional phrases,
too, as a species of adorned noun phrase). For Selkup, however, KXG (pp. 25665)
identify a specic adverbial representation for verbs (and as we shall see, nouns),
which seems to require a different analysis. There are three representations: the
simple gerund, the past gerund, and the caritive gerund, a kind of non-nite negated
verb.
Simple gerund:
This is formed with the sufx -l, and it expresses an action contemporaneous with
that of the main verb.
(27) c:ntalpi- -l laAka pa

y
rejoice-ger he.cried.out
He cried out joyfully.
Past gerund:
This is formed by concatenating the simple (present) gerund with the particle pu:l.
(28) sni- qu-l pu:l man apsqo qumpak

my.father.gen die-ger ptcl I hunger die
Since my father died, I am starving.
Caritive gerund:
This is formed by sufxing kuc :li-k2x to the verb stem.
c
(29) [tat plti- -kuc :li-A] me: kuttar ilnt :mi-t

c c
you.gen help-car_ger we how will.live
Without your help, how are we going to live?
As should be clear from these examples, the subject of the gerund is either
controlled by the matrix subject, or it appears in genitive case.
10.4.4 Deverbal transpositions: summary

Verbs can be transposed into adjectives, nouns, or adverbs. In the simplest cases
the transposed verb form expresses a neutral tense/aspect corresponding to one of
the inectional categories of the verb, namely the present/past participle and the
present/past gerunds, but in other cases we see additional meanings, the debitive and
destinative participles, and the caritive or negative participles and gerunds. The ac-
tion nominal and the innitive both retain a certain degree of verbal morphosyntax.
In particular, both can take complements and adjuncts in the manner of their base
verbs. However, the subject is expressed as though it were the subject of a nominal,
hence in the genitive case.
10.5 Less important transpositions from adjectives and nouns

In this section I briey mention a number of minor constructions involving nomi-
nals (that is, adjectives and/or nouns) before turning to the much more interesting
category of noun-to-adjective transpositions in Section 10.6. I shall have relatively
little to say about deadjectival transpositions generally.
KXG (pp. 196f.) identify a typologically interesting kind of transposition, that of a
noun to an adverb. This employs the same -N2x sufx11 used in adjective-to-adverb
transpositions. This adverbial form is also used in predicative constructions, as seen
in (30b, c, d).
(30) a. _si- father _si- -A in the manner of a father

_si-k k_:ti-mpati- brought up (a child) in a fatherly manner
_si-A manni-mpa looks (at someone) with a fathers/fatherly gaze, in the
manner of a father
b. qi-t, qi-ti- - moss qi-ti- -A
munti-k t_tti- qi-ti-A c:Aa The whole earth is mossy, covered in moss
c. ori-m, ori- - strength ori- -A
ori-A orqi-lpati- grasped strongly
ori-A c:Aa strong (predicative)
d. tinoli- - cloud
tinoli-A csi-mpa it became cloudy
An interesting feature of the denominal adverbs is that they can be modied

attributively like nouns (p. 197), rather as though they were indeed case-marked
forms:
(31) [kuttar:ti- y ori-]-A orqi-lpati-

what.kind.of.be.ptcp strength-adv seized
He seized with all his might.
(32) [wrqi- tinoli-]-A si-mpa

large cloud-adv appeared
A large cloud appeared.
By the Derived Category Membership Hypothesis, such examples show that the ad-
verbial representation is essentially a form of a nominal lexeme, and not a distinct
lexeme; that is, they are genuine transpositions.
Adverbs can be formed from adjectives in the same way that they are formed from
nouns (see below), by addition of the sufx -A2x (Helimski, 1998: 562f.):
11 As explained in Appendix A, the annotation -N indicates a stem- or sufx-nal consonant which

2x
alternates freely between a nasal and oral stop in prepausal position, and which doesnt occur in inection.
(33) soma good soma-k

soopi- sharp soopi- -k
y
KXG (pp. 18890, 266) and Helimski (1998: 562f.) mention the formation of pre-
dicative nouns and adjectives. Normally, adjectival predicates can only be formed
periphrastically, by combining the adjective base form, its stem, or its adverbial rep-
resentation with the copula. However, the copular verb is beginning to be reanalysed
as a sufx, so that there appear to be recently grammaticalized synthetic forms.
The adverbial representation of adjectives can be used in the predicative adjective
construction. In (34, 35) we see two denominal relational adjectives (to be discussed
below) being turned into adverbs so that the relational adjective can be used as a
predicate (KXG: 197).12
(34) a. sori-mt- ce:li-

y
rain-adj day
rainy day
b. ce:li- sori-mt-A :Aa
day rain-adv is
Its a rainy day.
(35) a. :t-
c y qopi-
reindeer-adj skin
reindeer skin
b. na qopi- :t-A
c :Aa
this skin reindeer-adv is
This is a reindeer skin.
Now, its very common, of course, for case-marked nouns to be used with ad-
verbial functions, but KXG dont describe the adverbial representation as a kind of
case marker. And yet the adverbial representation is formed from the second stem
form of the noun; it cant, for instance, be formed from a case-marked form. This
means that the adverbial representation is in paradigmatic opposition to all those case
markers which select the second stem form (namely the genitive, accusative, translat-
ive, coordinative, and dativeallative). However, its also in paradigmatic opposition
to all other noun inections, including possessor agreement and number marking,
and this justies the treatment given in KXG as a separate type of transposition.
Nouns occur in the verbal representation, that is, as noun-to-verb transpositions.
This is a defective synthetic form, however, because it doesnt show TAM distinc-
tions. For other TAM forms, the predicative form is combined with an appropriate
12 Its rather unusual cross-linguistically for relational adjectives to be used as predicates, and some
commentators (e.g. Koshiishi, 2011) even exclude the possibility in principle.
form of the copula. KXG (pp. 18890) mention a fair deal of idiolectal variation in
the formation of predicative nouns. Helimski (1998: 560) provides the paradigm in
(36) for the lexeme |nom| God, heaven (with irregular stem alternation), and KXG
(p. 189) provide the paradigm in (37) for the lexeme |i:ja| child.
(36) Predicative forms (verbal representation) for |nom| god

1st nom- :k
c nom-i-Ami: nom-i-Ami-t
I am a god we(2) are gods we(3+) are gods
2nd nom- :nti-
c nom-i-Ali: nom-i-Ali-t
3rd nom nop-qi nuu-t
(37) Predicative forms (verbal representation) for |i:ja| child

1st i:ja-A :k
c i:ja-Ami: i:ja-Ami-t
I am a child we(2) are children we(3+) are children
2nd i:ja-A :nti-
c i:ja-Ali: i:ja-Ali-t
3rd i:ja i:ja:-qi i:ja-t
These are clearly forms of the noun lexeme. In particular, they are modied just
like nouns, as the examples cited by KXG (p. 188) show:
(38) mat scar:qi-n ti-:ni- qnpi- tima-A :k

y c
I long.ago from.here having.left brother-1sg
Im the brother that left from here long ago.
(39) qaj t:ti-p- :nti- qaj ku qum- :nti-

c y y c
or shaman-2sg or ordinary man-2sg
Are you a shaman or an ordinary man?
(40) tina torat ti: wrqi- :ta-t c

those calves already big reindeer-pl
Those calves are already big reindeer.
(41) qoti- su:ri-cci- qum- :Ali-t

y y c
bad hunting man-2pl
You(3+) are bad hunters.
(42) me: ni-mti- ki-pa i:ja-Ami-t :si-mi-t

we then little child-1pl be.pst.1pl
We were little children then.
Notice that in (38) the predicative noun is modied by a participial clause, and in (41)
the predicative noun qum :Ali-t is effectively modied twice. In (42) notice that the
c
copular agrees in person/number with the subject, but the predicative noun i:jaAmi-t
shows the same agreement.
These examples all show nouns in the unmarked-case form (i.e. the nominative).
Nouns in other cases can form predicates but only with the copular construc-
tion, though a synthetic construction appears to be developing as the copular verb
coalesces optionally with the noun:
(43) a. munti-k yr-o:mi-nti- :Aa

all order-3sg.poss.prolative be.3sg
b. munti-k yr-o:mi-nt:
all order-3sg.poss.prolative.3sg
Everything is in order [KXG: 190]
10.6 Selkup denominal adjectives

10.6.1 Three types of N-to-A transposition
KXG (pp. 1905) describe three adjectival transpositions of nouns, differing in
semantic nuances: a purely relational adjective, a similitudinal adjective form, and
a locational adjective. I illustrate with the lexemes |qok| leader and |m :t| house.
c
The simplest type of noun-to-adjective transposition is the (pure) relational ad-
jective (otnositel naja forma, abbreviated here as reladj), formed by adding - to the
y
nouns second stem: qo:- pertaining to a/the leader
y
The similitudinal adjective (koordinativnaja adjektivnaja forma, abbreviated here
as simadj) is derived by adding the sufx -a to the genitive singular form of the
y
noun. Since that form ends in /t/, we see the assimilation process /t/ //: qo:a y
corresponding to the leader, identical to the leader in size or some other property.
The locational adjective (lokativnaja adjektivnaja forma) is derived by sufxing
-qi- to the nouns rst stem: m :tqi- situated in a house.
y c y
KXG draw attention to the fact that the similitudinal and locational adjective trans-
positions are formally and semantically essentially the adjectival representations of
the coordinative and locative case, respectively: qoak (to act) roughly like a leader,
m :tqi-n in the house.
c
These three transpositions are much closer to inectional forms than to normal
derivation. The reason is that all three types can be derived from (singular num-
ber) nouns inected for possessor inection. This is illustrated in Table 10.1 for
the relational and similitudinal forms of |qok| and the locative adjectival forms of
|qopi-| skin, hide (KXG: 202). (See also Helimski, 1998: 560, for the corresponding
paradigm of |nom| God, heaven).
Table 10.1. Selkup case-marked/possessed denominal adjectives
Relational adjective Similitudinal adjective Locational adjective

of Xs leader like Xs leader on Xs skin
Possessor |qo:k| |qo:k| |qopi-|
None qo: y qo:ay qopo:qi- y

1sg qoAni- y qoAni-a y qopaq y
2sg qokti- y qokti-a y qopaqnti- y
3sg qokti- y qokti-a y qopo:qi-nti- y
1du qoAni: y qoAni:a y qopo:qi-ni: y
2/3du qokti: y qokti:a y qopo:qi-nti: y
1pl qoAni-ti- y qoAni-a y qopo:qi-ni-ti-y
2/3pl qokti-ti- y qokti-a y y
qopo:qi-nti-ti-
KXG (pp. 191, 194f.) are careful to point out that the three types of relational
adjective can readily be modied by attributive modiers, but as nouns:
(44) a. qorqi- -t tar

bear-gen skin
bear skin
b. [qorqi-t tari-]- porqi-
y
bear skin-reladj clothing
clothing made out of bear skin
(45) [wrqi- alako]-a anti- y

big boat-simadj canoe
a canoe the size of a large boat
(46) [uti-t t :nti-]-a po:

c y
hand size-simadj tree
a tree the width of an arm
The patterning of the three relational adjective types is in stark contrast to that
of supercially similar derived lexical items. Consider the proprietive and privative
adjectives discussed above, repeated here as (47, 48).
(47) ys-si-mi- ytorqi-

water-prop pot
pot with water
(48) ima-ki-ti- t:ti-pi-

y
wife-priv shaman
an unmarried shaman
The proprietive and privative adjectives are typical derived lexemes and differ in at
least two important respects from the relational, similitudinal, and locational ad-
jectival transpositions (KXG: 196, footnote 1). First, they cannot be inected for
possessor agreement, and in fact they cannot be marked for any of the morphosyn-
tactic properties of nouns, as we would expect from derived words which are distinct
adjectival lexemes in their own right. Second, they cannot be modied in the manner
of nouns; that is, they show the lexical opacity typical of true derivation.
10.6.2 Summary of Selkup denominal adjectives

In sum, Selkup has uncontroversially inectional nominal categories of number,
possessor agreement, and case.
The nominative, coordinative, and locative case forms of a noun feed a noun-to-
adjective transposition which preserves possessor agreement inection (though not,
apparently, number inection).
In addition, there are more standard types of denominal adjective derivation, two
of which have meanings which are very similar to those of the transpositions.
The most natural way of analysing the relational adjective (derived from the nomi-
native case form) is as a pure transposition. The most natural way of analysing the
similitudinal and locational adjective transpositions (derived from the coordinat-
ive/locative case forms) is to assume that the untransposed case forms are themselves
enriched with a semantic predicate expressing the similitudinal/locational meaning,
and that this meaning is then preserved by the transposition. This means that the co-
ordinative and locative cases are then instances of semantic inherent inection. The
similitudinal and locational adjectives are thus similar in paradigmatic status to the
nominalized innitives of Romance and German, or the proprietive verbs of Yuk-
aghir, in that the transposition is dened not over some default stem or root form of
the lexeme but over an already inected form.
10.7 Analysis of Selkup lexical relatedness

Given the foregoing description of the Selkup system, the analysis of the various
types of lexical relatedness should be relatively clear. I shall compare and contrast the
semantic inherent caritive case with the semantically very similar derived privative
adjective. I shall then turn to the three noun-to-adjective transpositions. In present-
ing the generalized paradigm function which denes a particular type of relatedness
I shall used an informal schematic representation for ease of reading. Recall that
GDP stands for the General Default Principle, under which a representation which
isnt specically mentioned in the generalized paradigm function is taken to be
identical to the base representation. Throughout I will use highly informal semantic
representations.
I assume that the caritive case form introduces a semantic predicate, which I will
represent in a shorthand way as [WITHOUT(y, LEADER(x))]. This form is still
an inectional case form, so it still serves as the realization of a set of inectional
morphosyntactic properties, including the property of caritive case. Thus, for a fea-
ture set = {[Num:plural, PossAgr:2plural], [Case:caritive]} we would have the
generalized paradigm function sketched in (49):
(49) GPF(leader, {}):

maps to:
FORM: /qo:/ /qoqq :li-k/
c
SYN: R (GDP)
SEM: [LEADER(x)] [WITHOUT(y, LEADER(x))]
LI: leader (GDP)
For the grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and presumably also genitive),
the SEM attribute would also be dened by the GDP.
Now consider a derivational relation, the privative (denominal) adjective, illus-
trated by the example seen in (13) (where PrivAdj is the name of the derivational
feature which governs this derivation).
(50) GPF(woman, {PrivAdj}):

maps to:
FORM: /ima/ /ima-ki-ti- /
y
SYN: R A*x*
SEM: [WOMAN(x)] [WITHOUT(y, WOMAN(x))]
LI: woman unmarried
(For the sake of argument I assume here that the derivation is compositional. How-
ever, if the derived adjective can only mean specically unmarried, then we have a
typical example of non-compositional derivation.)
Lets turn now to the noun-to-adjective transpositions. A simple way of rep-
resenting transpositions in a language like Selkup, in which transpositions are a
pervasive feature, is to set up what Haspelmath (1996) refers to as a supercategory.
I shall therefore assume that there is a purely formal set-valued feature Repr (for
KXGs property of reprezentacija, or representation) which has the partial structure
illustrated in (51).
(51) Repr: Basic

N2V
Trans2V:
A2V

V2N
Trans2N:
A2N

V2A
Trans2Adj:
N2A

A2Adv/N2Adv
Trans2Adv:
V2Adv
The specic values for the individual classes of transposition are given in (52).
(52) N2V predicative noun

(A2V periphrastic)
V2N innitive; action nominal I, II
(A2N not attested)
V2A participles: present, past, debitive, destinative, caritive
N2A relational, similitudinal, locational
A2Adv/N2Adv
V2Adv gerunds: simple, past, caritive
The value [Repr:Basic] is simply the normal representation of that word class. The
other four values represent transpositions to adjectives, verbs, nouns, and adverbs,
respectively. The general rule for realizing the [N2A] property is shown schematically
in (53) (using the notation for realization rules introduced in Ackerman and Stump,
2004, illustrated in the appendix to Chapter 4):
(53) (Block IV) XN, : {N2A} X y
Selkup noun inections are generally segmentable into three sufxes. In the
paradigm-function model, this means that there are three blocks of realization rules
which introduce exponents of number, possessor agreement, and case (generally
in that order). Rule (53) adds the adjectival - sufx to some appropriate stem
y
form.
Noun-to-adjective transpositions are not available for all inected forms of a noun.
Specically, the noun must be in the singular, and must be in one of just three case
forms. This means that the noun-to-adjective transpositions respect certain feature
co-occurrence restrictions. The feature set is constrained to contain the feature

value [Num:singular]:13
(54) [Repr:[Trans2Adj:[N2A]]] [Number:singular]
In addition we can assume the case feature dependencies shown in (55):
(55) i. [Repr:[Trans2Adj:[N2A:reladj]]] [Case:nom]

ii. [Repr:[Trans2Adj:[N2A:simadj]]] [Case:coord]
iii. [Repr:[Trans2Adj:[N2A:locadj]]] [Case:loc]
For the basic relational adjective, derived from the nominative form, we would
have the generalized paradigm function shown in (56) (with obvious feature name
abbreviations).
(56) Where = {[Num:sg], [PossAgr:1sg], [N2A:reladj]},

GPF(leader, {}):
maps to:
FORM: /qok/ /qoAni- /y
SYN: R A*x*R
SEM: [LEADER(x)] (GDP)
LI: leader (GDP)
This mapping presupposes a rule of the form (57) which determines the effect on the
SYN attribute of the relational adjective formation process.
(57) Suppose we are given a lexemic index and a feature set such that
[N2A:reladj] , and GPF(, ) = . . . , fsyn , . . . . Then
fsyn (, ) = A*x*R.
Rule (57) simply says that the relational-adjective process denes a word whose syn-
tactic class is that of a denominal adjective. In fact, since there are three relational ad-
jectives, we can generalize rule (57) by dening it not over the specic attributevalue
pairing [N2A:reladj], but over the pairing [Repr:[Trans-to-A:N2A]].
The similitudinal adjective is based on the coordinative case, so that by (55ii), if
= {[Num:sg], [PossAgr:1sg], [N2A:simadj]}, then is evaluated as though it were
{[Num:sg], [PossAgr:1sg], [Case:coord], [N2A:reladj]}. Now, the coordinative case
in Selkup is a meaning-bearing inection. This means that the generalized paradigm
function which denes the coordinative case form of a noun will include a specica-
tion of the added semantic predicate which enriches the semantic representation of
the base noun lexeme, as in (58).
13 Or more plausibly, we might want to say that a transposition by default is dened over representa-
tions that are undened for inectional features like number. See also footnote 14 below.
(58) Where = {[Num:sg], [PossAgr:1sg], [N2A:simadj]},

GPF(leader, {}):
maps to:
FORM: /qoA-ni- -/ /qoAni- -ak/
SYN: R (GDP)
SEM: [LEADER(x)] [SIMILAR(y, [LEADER(x)])]
LI: leader (GDP)
We must therefore assume that the grammar of Selkup includes the rule (59),
specifying the meaning of the coordinative case marker.
(59) Suppose we are given a lexemic index and a feature set such that
[Case:coordinative] , and GPF(, ) = . . . , fsem , . . . . Let [N(x)] be the
value of fsem (, u). Then
fsem (, ) = [SIMILAR(y, [N(x)])].
This rule simply adds the appropriate similitudinal meaning to that of the base
noun lexeme. Corresponding fsem functions can, of course, be written for the other
meaning-bearing cases.
The meaning of the similitudinal adjective is derived from that of the coordinative-
case-marked noun. However, this is not reected in the formulation of the gen-
eralized paradigm function in (58). This is because the feature set realized by that
generalized paradigm function doesnt actually contain the value [Case:coord]. Re-
call, however, that we have dened a feature dependency in (55) according to
which a feature set containing the value [N2A:simadj] also has to contain the value
[Case:coord]. The effects of (55) on the evaluation of the generalized paradigm
function are made explicit in (60).14
(60) a. For any such that [N2A:reladj] , and for all such that GPF(, ) is
dened, [Case] is undened in .
b. For any such that [N2A:simadj] , and for all such that GPF(, )
is dened, GPF = GPF(, ), where = {[Case:coord]}.
c. For any such that [N2A:locadj] , and for all such that GPF(, )
is dened, GPF = GPF(, ), where = {[Case:loc]}.
The joint effects of the coordinative case rule and the (general form of the)
relational adjective rule are seen in (61).
14 Rule (60a) denes the relational adjective in terms of a non-case-marked form of the noun. Note that
most transpositions cross-linguistically are dened over representations that are completely unmarked for
the normal suite of inectional features associated with the base lexeme, so that we could regard (60a) as
an explicit statement of a default principle (the GDP, in fact). It would equally be possible in principle to
dene the Selkup relational adjective in terms of the nominative form, but that seems pointless here.
(61) Suppose we are given = {[Num:sg], [PossAgr:1sg], [N2A:simadj]}. Then

GPF(leader, {}) is evaluated as GPF(leader, { }), where =
{[Case:coord]} (by (60b)).
GPF(leader, { }):
maps to:
FORM: /qoA-ni- -/ /qoAni- -ak/
SYN: R A*x*R
SEM: [LEADER(x)] [SIMILAR(y, [LEADER(x)])]
LI: leader (GDP)
Finally, recall that the locative case undergoes a form of metathesis with possessor-
agreement sufxes. However, this is a purely formal matter and will have no effect on
the denition of the syntactic or semantic components of the locational adjective,
because those are dened globally at the level of the generalized paradigm function.
The rst three rule blocks will realize the (possibly possessed) locative case form (of
the singular noun, of course). The Block IV rule will then sufx the - formative to
y
provide the adjectival representation. The Block III case-sufxing rule will dene the
meaning of the inected word as [AT(y, NOUN(x))]. For the noun qaqli- sledge, we
will thus have the locative 1sg possessed form qaqlaqk in my sledge, and for the
locational adjective we will have qaqlaq (with regular truncation of the nal /k/).
y
10.8 Selkup summary

The Selkup morphological system is unusual for a number of reasons, but I have
focused on the characteristics which are most relevant for a model of lexical repre-
sentation, namely the transpositions. We have seen that Selkup has a well-developed
set of transpositions that I have not discussed hitherto, namely transposition of noun,
adjective, or verb to adverb. There are also a wealth of deverbal transpositions, of a
more or less familiar sort, some of them pure transpositions, others (namely some of
the participles) involving additional meanings.
The most interesting transpositions from our perspective are the transpositions
from noun to adjective. Here we see relational adjectives which can be formed from
three distinct case-marked forms of a noun, two of which seem to bear their own ad-
ditional semantics as inherent inections. By virtue of being transpositions of forms
which themselves involve added semantics, the similitudinal and locative adjectives
are transpositions which themselves are meaning-bearing. At the same time, these
transpositions are also fully embedded in the purely inectional system of the noun,
because they also take possessor-agreement morphology. This represents a particu-
larly striking exemplication of the need to factorize the components of a lexical
representation in order to dene lexical relatedness. If we were to adopt a denition of
derivation in which all category-changing morphology was necessarily derivational,
then we would have the strange situation of derivation which preserved a large seg-
ment of the base nouns inectional paradigm. On the other hand, the derived lexical
forms are undoubtedly adjectives and not nouns, at least from their outward mor-
phological form and their morphosyntactic properties. The factorized lexicon and
the articulated generalized paradigm function, which allows lexical relatedness state-
ments to refer independently to the individual attributes of a lexical representation,
allow us to state these complex relationships efciently but without committing us to
nonsensical or paradoxical denitions of wordhood or derivational relationship.
The GPF analysis of language systems like that of Selkup illustrates the way that we
can avoid confusion by making the right distinctions and abandoning distinctions
that are no longer useful. In traditional terms, it is very difcult to know what kind of
a word category the Selkup similitudinal and locational adjectives really belong to.
In such circumstances I always advocate following a principle which I (immodestly)
refer to as Spencers Razor: if you nd that all the answers to a research question are
absurd, ask a different question. In this case we dont ask whether a given process is
inectional or derivational. Rather we ask how the lexical representations of the two
related lexical items compare: which attributes are the same, and which attributes are
different, and in what way. Once we have answered those questions, we have fully
dened the lexical relatedness. We dont need to answer any other questions.
10.9 Appendices
Appendix A: Selkup transcription
Vowel transcription systems are given in Tables 10.210.4. KXG and Helimski (1998)
represent the phonological neutralization of the tense/lax distinction and of the cen-
tral/back distinction in low vowels by allowing the symbols in their tables to straddle
the tense/lax columns. In the IPA transcription (which I use throughout), I have
represented the low vowels simply as tense front or back.
Consonant transcription systems are given in Tables 10.510.7. The pronunciation
of the palatal series isnt entirely clear from the descriptions. They are represented as
Table 10.2. Selkup vowel system (after KXG: 120)
Front Central Back

Unrounded Rounded (unrounded) (rounded)
Tense Lax Tense Lax
High i i u y y u u
Mid e e o
o
c
Low a a
Table 10.3. Selkup vowel system (after Helimski, 1998: 552)
Front Central Back

Tense Lax Tense Lax
High i ii i ii u uu
Mid e ee o oo
Low a aa
Table 10.4. Selkup vowel system, IPA transcription
Front Central Back

Tense Lax Tense Lax
High i i: i i: y y: -i -i : u u:
Mid e e: : : : o o: cc :
Low : a aa
Table 10.5. Selkup consonants (KXG: 120)
Labials Dentals Palatals Velars Uvulars

Stops p t k q
Affricates
c
Fricatives s
s
Nasals m n n A
Laterals l l
Trills r
Glides w j
alveolar/dental stops or as palato-alveolar fricatives/affricates with secondary pala-

talization. However, for the fricative/affricate obstruents this may simply indicate
that the sound lacks the slightly velarized quality of the nearest equivalent in Standard
Russian. The palatalized /n l/ symbols seem to represent palatal consonants rather
than palatalized dentals, and I have transcribed them thus. In my transcriptions, I
use the IPA symbols for the palatal /n l/, namely / /. To improve readability, I adopt
y
Americanist/Slavicist usage to transcribe // as //, and I transcribe // as /c/.
One nal transcriptional point requires clarication. Selkup lexical roots and a
number of sufxes undergo a complex pattern of allomorphic alternations involving
Table 10.6. Selkup consonants (Helimski, 1998: 551)

Stops p t k q
Affricates cj
Fricatives s j
Nasals m n nj A
Laterals l lj
Trills r
Glides w j
Table 10.7. Selkup consonants, IPA transcription (?)

Stops p t k q
Affricates
Fricatives s
Nasals m n A
Laterals l y
Trills r
Glides w j
nasal stops and homorganic plosives (Helimski, 1998: 554f.; Kuznecova et al., 1980:
1414). We distinguish nasal consonants, N, from oral stops, T, to denote the type of
consonant that is typically found as the default pronunciation in inected forms.
In some words/sufxes, the nal nasals and plosives are stable and fail to alternate
at all. This is group N/T1 .
In some words/sufxes, the nal nasal/plosive pairs are in free variation in pre-
pausal position, but in one group the nasal variant appears in inected stems, and in
the other group the plosive variant appears. This is group N/T2 .
In some items, we see a three-way alternation prepausally between nasal, plosive,
and zero, with the zero alternant appearing in inecting stems. This is group N3 .
Finally, there is a group of items which show the two-way alternation but dont
form inectional stems. This is group N2x
The upshot of this is that cited forms of words may sometimes end in {m, n, A}, and
sometimes in {p, t, k}, and in some cases may lose their nal consonant altogether.
Appendix B: Verb paradigms

Table 10.8 shows verb paradigms for indicative mood, slightly simplied after KXG
(pp. 25865). (See also the paradigms in Helimski, 1998: 567f.)
Table 10.8. Selkup verb inection
c:qo to be ili-qo to live ytqo to sew
Present tense
1sg :Aak ilak ynnam
2sg :Aanti- ilanti- ynnal
3sg :Aa ila ynni-ti-
1du :Ai-mi:, :Aj ili-mi:, ilj ynni:, ynnj
2du :Ai-li: ili-li: ynni-li:
3du :A :qi
c il :qi
c ynn :ti:
c
1pl :Ai-mi-t ili-mi-t ynni-mi-t

2pl :Ai-li-t ili-li-t ynni-li-t
3pl :A :ti-t
c il :ti-t
c ynn :ti-t
c
Past tense
1sg :sak ili-sak yssam
2sg :santi- ili-santi- yssal
3sg :sa ili-sa yssi-ti-
1du :si:, :sj ili-si:, ili-sj yssi:, yssj
2du :syli: ili-si-li: yssi-li:
3du :s :qi
c ili-s :qi
c yssi-ti:
1pl :si-mi-t ili-si-mi-t yssi-mi-t
2pl :si-li-t ili-si-li-t yssi-li-t
3pl :s :ti-t
c ili-s :ti-t
c yss :ti-t
c
Appendix C: Selkup noun inection

Tables 10.9 and 10.10 show example noun paradigms, following KXG (pp. 197201).
(See also the paradigms in Helimski, 1998: 558f.)
Table 10.9. Selkup unpossessed noun inection: leader
Singular Dual Plural Collective

Nominative qok qoq-qi qo:-t qo: y mi-
Genitive qo:-n qoq-qi-n qo:-ti- -n qo: y mi- -n
Accusative qo:-m qoq-qi-m qo:-ti- -m qo: y mi- -m
Instrumental qok-s qoq-qi-s qo:-s-s qo: y mi- -s
Caritive qok-k :li-k
c qoq-qi-k :li-k
c qo:-t-k :li-k
c qo: y mi- -k :li-k
c
Translative qo:-tqo qoq-qi-tqo qo:-ti- -tqo qo: y mi- -tqo
Coordinative qo:-ak qoq-qi-ak qo:-ti- -ak qo:
y mi- -ak
qo:-ni-k qo: y mi- -ni-k
Dativeallative qo:-tkini qoq-qi-tkini qo:-ti- -tkini qo: y mi- -tkini
Illative qok-ti- qoq-qi-tkini qo:-ti- -tkini qo: y mi- -nti-
Prolative qoA-mi-n qoq-qi:-mi-n qo:-n-mi-n qo: y mi-:-mi-n
Vocative qoA-: qoq-q: qo:-n-:
Table 10.10. Selkup 1sg possessed noun inection: my leader
Singular Dual Plural Collective

Nominative qoA-mi- qoq-qim(i-) qo:-i:-m(i-) qo: y mi-mi-
Genitive qoA-ni- qoq-qi-ni- qo:-i:-ni- qo: y mi- -ni-
Accusative qoA-mi- qoq-qi-mi- qo:-i:-mi- qo: y mi- -mi-
Instrumental qoA-ni- -s qoq-qi-ni- -s qo:-i:-ni- -s qo: y mi- -ni- -s
Caritive qoA-ni- -k :li-k
c qoq-qi-ni- -k :li-k
c qo:-i:-ni- -k :li-k
c qo: y mi- -ni- -k :li-k
c
Translative qoA-no:-(qo) qoq-qi-no:-(qo) qo:-i:-no:(qo) qo: y mi- -no:-(qo)
Coordinative qoA-ni
- -ak qoq-qi-ni- -ak qo:-i:-ni- -ak qo:
y mi- -ni- -ak
qoA-ni- -ni-k qo: y mi- -ni- -ni-k
Dativeallative qoq-qi-ni- -kini qo:-i:-ni- -kini
qoA-ni- -kini qo: y mi- -ni- -kini
Illative qoq-qk qoq-qi:-qk qo:-i:-qk qo: y mi-:-qk
Prolative qoA-mk qoq-qi:-mk qo:-i:-mk qo: y mi-:-mk
11
Conclusions
11.1 Lexical relatedness: a summary

This book has explored some of the key ways in which words can be said to be related
to each other. I have paid particular attention to those types of relatedness which ap-
pear to be systematic in a given language, and which therefore should be considered
part of the grammar of that language, but I have also looked at recurrent patterns
of static relatedness that arise from accidents of history or from systematic historical
shifts in organization.
One of the central claims of the book has been that words can be related to each
other along several dimensions independently. I have taken a minimal characteriza-
tion of the lexeme or lexical entry as a three-dimensional object comprising FORM,
SYNTAX, and SEMANTICS attributes, together with a unique lexeme identier, the
LEXEMIC INDEX. Traditional views of relatedness are dened largely over semantic
representations (the so-called sense relations of synonymy, antonymy, and so on),
but my understanding of relatedness is more general than this. Words are related
to each other if they share crucial aspects of any of the four principal attributes of
a lexical representation. On this understanding, inected forms of a word are (very
closely) related to each other because they share the same SYN, SEM, and LI attrib-
utes, and because they have overlapping FORM attributes (for instance, they will
typically share a root or stem form). On the other hand derived lexemes will typ-
ically differ along all four dimensions, but the FORM and SEM attributes, at least, of
the derived word will be extensions or modications of the FORM/SEM attributes of
the base lexeme.
I have shown that lexical relatedness so conceived can be dened over any logical
combination of these four attributes, giving a logical relatedness space of 16 types. Of
these, one is the identity relation, and one is logically impossible (two distinct lexemes
which share all their properties except for the LI). The other 14 types are all attested,
sometimes in various subtypes. I have adopted the assumptions of a lexicalist ap-
proach to morphosyntax of the kind espoused in LFG or HPSG, and I have adopted
an inferentialrealizational approach to morphology. I have proposed an extension
to Stumps notion of paradigm function, in which the paradigm function consists
Conclusions 411
of four functions, one for each of the four principal lexical attributes. These consti-
tute the generalized paradigm function (GPF). The generalized paradigm function,
together with principles such as the Default Cascade and the Derived Lexical Entry
Principle, allows us to dene all 16 logically possible types of relatedness but using
essentially the same formal machinery for each type.
I now briey summarize the way that the GPF model characterizes some salient
types of lexical relatedness. The lexical entry itself is dened by a GPF, as a set of
functions which map a pairing of lexemic index and unspecied feature set, u, to a
set of forms, syntactic representations, and semantic representations (FORM, SYN,
and SEM attributes) (and trivially to the LI itself). Derived forms of words are dened
when the GPF applies to a pairing of LI and non-empty feature set. Where the GPF
denes a novel lexeme, distinct from the base lexeme, the function fli denes that new
lexemes LI. However, the component functions of the GPF can be also be co-opted to
dene formal relatedness which isnt the result of some live, synchronic, productive
relation. This is seen most commonly in the case of meaningless derivation, in which
two distinct lexemes are related morphologically but not necessarily in any other way.
Assuming that there is a regular subject-nominalization process in English, the
relation drive driver is expressible as a GPF which takes the LI of drive (lets
call that LI 59) and denes a new lexeme with LI, say, SN(59). The SEM value of
the derived lexeme is a function of the SEM value of 59. It denes a word type whose
SYN value is specied as noun by the Default Cascade. The referent of that noun is
identied with the subject argument of the base verb. To the extent that other parts
of the argument structure of the base verb lexeme are preserved or inherited, that is
stipulated in the subject-nominalization process. The FORM of SN(59) is dened by
the default morphology as -er sufxation to STEM0(59).
We can tell a similar story for regular, but morphologically idiosyncratic, action
nominals such as transmission from transmit, as in the transmission of the in-
formation to the students by the teachers. If we take seriously the idea that this is a
transposition, then transmission, in such a use as a pure action or event nominal, is
effectively a form of the base lexeme. If we suppose that transmit has LI 67, say,
then this will also be the LI of transmission. The SEM value of the action nominal is
hence non-distinct from that of the base verb. However, the semantic function role
of the base verb is enriched by the addition of the R role, effectively creating a word
naming the event denoted by the verb. The FORM attribute of the nominal is dened
by a special morphological rule applying to a stipulated set of Latinate verb stems.
As Aronoff (1976) points out, there is another interpretation for the noun transmis-
sion, under which it denotes the gearing system of a car engine. This meaning cannot
be derived from that of the base lexeme. Lets call the LI for this reading 76. This
LI is not given by any component function of any GPF: it is simply the LI assigned
to that particular lexeme. Similarly, the meaning or SEM value of 76 is stipulated to
be engine gearing system or whatever. The SYN value of the word can be dened
as noun by the Default Cascade from the ontological category of the SEM value. In
these respects, transmission is just like any other simplex word. However, the FORM
of transmission can be dened in terms of the FORM of transmit. If we let the
regular action nominal be dened by the derivational feature AN, then we can dene
the base form of lexeme 76 as the form dened by applying the FORM function to
the pairing 67, {AN}. In other words, we dene the base form of the lexeme trans-
mission to be identical to that of the action nominal form of the lexeme transmit.
This captures the notion of meaningless derivation.
Finally, consider relational adjectives in a language such as English or Russian. The
English adjective prepositional and the Russian adjective kninyj can be related to
the nouns preposition and kniga book, respectively. Syntactically, each word be-
haves as a distinct adjectival lexeme and shows no sign of its nominal origins. In
particular, it isnt possible to modify the noun component of the adjective with an
attributive modier which targets nouns. We therefore regard the adjective as hav-
ing a different lexemic index from the original noun. If we treat relational-adjective
formation as a fully regular and productive process, then we will set up a derivational
feature, say RA, and dene the LI of the relational adjective in terms of this feature.
If preposition and kniga have LI, say, 81 in English and Russian, then the LI of
prepositional, kninyj will be RA(81) in each language. The SYN value of each ad-
jective will be that of an adjective, so that each word will have a semantic function
role of A* R. The SEM value, however, will be that of the base noun lexeme. Since
the GPF for relational adjectives fails to specify a separate semantic function, the
SEM value of the adjective will be that of the noun, by the General Default Principle
(the equivalent of the Identity Function Default in Paradigm Function Morphology).
In this way we obtain a novel lexeme whose meaning is non-distinct from that of
its base. Such relational adjectives contrast markedly with the relational adjectives
found in Selkup. Those relational adjectives are integrated fully into the inectional
paradigm of the noun, and therefore the LI of the adjective is identical to the LI of
the noun.
11.2 Implications of lexical relatedness

My conception of lexical entry, under which the FORM, SYN, and SEM attributes
of a lexeme are dened over the LEXEMIC INDEX, , is somewhat different from
the characterization current in lexicological practice. The new proposal immediately
permits us to capture the fact that pure homonyms may share FORM properties, in-
cluding idiosyncratic properties, such as when an irregular verb like draw has two
or more unrelated meanings, all of which share the same morphological idiosyn-
crasies. This move also opens up the possibility for giving the LI a more prominent
role in dening relatedness, because we can introduce the concept of a derived LI for
systematic and productive derivational relations.
Conclusions 413
By factorizing the FORM attribute further we can dene stem sets in terms of
functions such as STEM0(). The FORM attribute contains a declaration of which
lexical and grammatical properties are relevant for the inection of a lexeme. This
is enshrined in the morpholexical signature, which effectively allows a lexeme to be
inected (through the Inectional Speciability Principle).
The SYN attribute denes purely distributional properties of a lexeme, such as
whether it takes an innitival complement or an -ing complement, but it also denes
a level of argument structure, an interface between syntax and semantics. The ar-
gument structure of a noun, verb, or adjective includes a semantic function role, R
for a noun, E for a verb and A* for an adjective. The A* role is a way of notating
the function of attributive modication of a noun. These roles have a variety of uses.
In the architecture developed here they allow us to dene a notion of mixed cat-
egory, because I allow a representation to superimpose one semantic function role
over another. Thus, a deverbal nominalization has the compound role RE. . . ,
and a relational adjective has the compound role A*R. In this manner we can
successfully avoid having to answer awkward (in fact, incoherent) questions about
categorial membership. Some theories of morphosyntax are obliged to say whether
a deverbal nominal is really a noun or really a verb, while others nesse the issue
with a temporal metaphor: the word starts out as a verb and then is transformed
into (or coalesces with) a nominal higher in a constituent-structure tree. This can
provide a satisfactory representation of the duality of category membership, but it
usually leaves open the important question of how the grammar decides that such a
process is available. In the current model, that is decided by the rules and principles
of morphology and the nature of lexical representations.
The R, E, and A* roles are sometimes mistaken for notational alternatives to the
syntactic category labels N, V, and A. However, they are combinatorially entirely dif-
ferent from any standard interpretation of the traditional category labels or the more
recent featural recharacterizations of those categories. In fact, the traditional notions
of noun, verb, and adjective dont really have any useful correlate in my model. In
the most general case it doesnt make any sense to ask whether a word is a noun or
a verb. Rather, we have to ask: (i) what its FORM properties are (for instance, does
it take inections associated with traditional nouns, traditional verbs, a bit of both,
something else?); (ii) what its syntactic distribution is, and especially what kinds of
complements, modiers, speciers, and so on it collocates with; and (iii) what its
semantic function role(s) are. In some cases the answers will converge onto some-
thing we all recognize as a typical noun or verb, but in other cases the answer to the
traditional question will be equivocal. But the R, E, and A* roles have a clearly dened
combinatorics, and therefore they cant be mere notational variants of a set of labels
that have no clearly dened combinatorics. If you wish to claim that the R, E, and A*
roles are just synonyms for noun, verb, and adjective, then it is incumbent on you to
provide a coherent denition of the latter terms. But the whole burden of the thesis
explored in this book is that there is no unitary characterization of these traditional

notions.
One of the conceptual problems that this book aims to address is that posed by
inferentialrealizational models such as Paradigm Function Morphology. It is widely
agreed that there is no clear dividing line between inection and derivation. Yet mod-
els of inection such as PFM presuppose that inectional rules dene inected forms
of lexemes, while derivational rules dene new lexemes (or relatedness between lex-
emes). But in that case, the rules of derivation ought to be architecturally distinct
from rules of inection. But this seems to presuppose that we can draw a distinction
between inection and derivation, counter to fact.
This problem is solved in the GPF model because any generalized paradigm func-
tion that denes a new lexemic index for a word automatically entrains a redenition
of the other attributes of the word by virtue of the Derived Category Membership
Hypothesis and the operation of the Default Cascade and other principles. In this
way, we capture the notion that there is derivational morphology of the traditional
kind. However, we are still able to dene derivational processes within the same ar-
chitecture as inectional morphology. At the same time, we must also recognize that
a great deal of what is often studied under the rubric of derivational morphology is
not to be regarded as properly paradigmatic. Much of the derivational relatedness we
see in the lexicon of a language is either non-compositional, and hence the result of
some kind of semantic drift to polysemy, or is even frankly meaningless, a collection
of entirely opaque morphological idioms, whose only vestigial form of relatedness
is that they reect the more general morphological patterns of afxation, ablaut, or
whatever seen in the regular parts of the lexicon.
Its extremely important for linguistic theory to recognize that the mechanisms
and principles deployed for describing completely regular patterns will not always be
appropriate for describing completely irregular, semantically opaque patterns, even
where certain aspects of structural organization are preserved. In the case of deriva-
tional relatedness that exhibits semantic opacity, this means that we can at best dene
static patterns which may or may not play some role in online processing, but which
cant be said to be part of the grammar proper. At the same time, we also need to be
able to characterize intermediate patterns of grammaticalization and lexicalization,
under which we can discern a certain degree of regularity which is nonetheless par-
tially obscured by varying degrees of opacity. Some of the architectural proposals of
Construction Grammar and especially Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010b) will
no doubt be very valuable here, in that they can be interpreted as entirely regular re-
lationships if necessary (equivalent to a generalized paradigm function), or they can
be interpreted as default relationships, some of whose components can be overridden
by particular classes of lexemes or by individual lexemes.
Clearly, there are many problems and phenomena that I have barely touched on
in this book. I am also aware that many of the phenomena that I have been able to
Conclusions 415
discuss are poorly understood (or sometimes, plain misunderstood) by the eld as
a whole. The principal aim of this essay, therefore, is to alert fellow linguists to the
complexities of lexical relatedness, and to encourage others, especially those who are
versed in or native speakers of less well-studied languages, to explore some of the less
trodden lexicological byways, and reveal further complexity and richness of lexical
organization.
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Index of languages
A 341, 343, 345, 346, 35051, 354, 355,
Albanian 124 357, 35960, 373, 374, 376, 37779, 392,
Anglo-Saxon 275 411, 412
Arabic 230 Middle 52
Athapaskan 239, 249 Eskimo, see Yupik
Awngi 355, 358 Estonian 88
Evenki 84
B
Balinese 279 F
Balto-Slavic, see Latvian, Slavic Finnish 86, 88, 14345, 14750, 185, 239, 243,
Bantu 91, 92, 94, 97, 104, 105, 109, 118, 150, 244, 303
241, 254, 287, 293, 294, see also Basa, French 102, 327
Kikuyu, Kagulu, Swahili,
Chichewa,
Xhosa, Zulu G
Barasano, see Southern Barasano German 18, 53, 54, 656, 79, 102, 112, 113, 114,
Basa 118 123, 137, 138, 169, 222, 258, 268, 269, 273,
Breton 156, 170, 264 274, 314, 31517, 318, 332, 340, 341, 368,
Bulgarian 9, 124, 148, 152, 153, 157, 221, 318 377, 399
Germanic 112, 228, 348, see also West
C Germanic
Catalan 288 Gkuyu, see Kikuyu
93, 97, 28788
Chichewa Greek 66, 85, 86, 98, 124, 125, 260
Chinese (Mandarin) 232 Ancient 51, 98
Chukchi 678, 724, 88, 218, 257, 29596, Modern 84, 85, 98, 169
309, 350, 357, 36263, 37072, 377
Classical Nahuatl, see Nahuatl
H
Croatian, see Serbian/Croatian
Hindi-Urdu 6872, 12627
Czech 50, 51, 124, 16263, 220
Hittite 51
Hungarian 51, 80, 83, 84, 868, 90, 137, 138,
D
185, 196, 23034, 236, 239, 243, 244, 300,
Daghestan 24145, 355
303, 320, 341, 385
DhoLuo 78
Dutch 93, 99, 102
I
E Italian 18, 65, 77, 113, 115, 240, 264, 303,
English 1, 5, 6, 813, 15, 1719, 27, 29, 30, 32, 31315, 316, 331, 340, 341
35, 37, 40, 41, 457, 52, 53, 58, 5960, 62,
64, 65, 70, 79, 80, 812, 83, 88, 89, 93, J
99, 102, 103, 107, 109, 110, 11112, 113, Japanese 45, 46, 91, 120, 218, 274, 28893, 348,
11920, 124, 132, 135, 138, 145, 159, 160, 361
16364, 16567, 169, 173, 175, 177, 179,
181, 182, 189, 201, 210, 21319, 22022, K
223, 22628, 229, 230, 233, 243, 244, 255, Kagulu 109
270272, 274, 275, 283, 287, 289, 29496, Kayardild 83, 84, 12731, 138, 195, 197,
297, 29899, 3023, 306, 307310, 313, 24649, 355
314, 315, 31822, 323, 327, 331, 334, 340, Ket 302
436 Index of languages
Kikuyu 11819, 25457, 301, 377 339, 340, 35153, 372, 374, 378, 384, 387,
Kolyma Yukaghir, see Yukaghir 406, 412
Old 261
L
Lak(h)ota 64 S
Latin 1, 44, 66, 978, 132, 135, 152, 154, 155, Sakha 311
161, 222, 251, 347, 359 Sanskrit 51, 66, 98, 124, 145, 15456, 15759,
Latvian 22829 181, 186, 218
Lezgian 45, 245 Sardinian 303
Luo, see DhoLuo Selkup 1920, 756, 77, 347, 358, 380409,
412
M Serbian/Croatian 51, 124, 228
Macedonian 152, 317 Slavic 18, 51, 89, 102, 112, 113, 117, 124, 131, 228,
Maltese 223 230, 317, 33334, 384
Mandarin, see Chinese Sora 125, 22526, 228
Mohawk 123 Sorbian, see Upper Sorbian
Southern Barasano 170, 264, 265
N Spanish 65, 66, 113, 114, 118, 264, 314, 341
Na-Dene 30 Swahili 9193, 94, 97, 104, 1059, 146
Nahuatl 110, 114, 12022, 256, 26970
Nenets 76, 131, 132, 357, 363, 364, 370 T
Nguni, see Xhosa, Zulu Tabasaran 24144
Niger-Congo, see Bantu, Fula Tagalog 51, 256, 273
Nilotic, see DhoLuo Tsez 24345
Northern Tungusic, see Evenki, Udihe Tungusic 84, 85, 359, 367, see also Evenki,
Udihe
O Turkish 18, 99, 230, 239, 31113, 316, 331, 343,
Old Norse 270, 275 345
P U
Persian 45, 221 Udihe 856, 989, 101, 13132, 357
Philippine 56, 274, see also Tagalog Upper Sorbian 131, 357, 379
Polish 18, 115, 118, 124, 318, 333, 351, 353, Urdu 68, 290, see also Hindi-Urdu
373, 392
Portuguese 238, 303 W
Warumungu 83
Q West Germanic 163, see also Dutch, English,
Quechua 240, 241, 302 German
R X
Romance 66, 113, 124, 154, 274, 303, 333, Xhosa 109, 241
377, 384, 399, see also Catalan, French,
Italian, Portugese, Spanish Y
Russian 13, 18, 19, 41, 46, 53, 61, 62, 66, 73, Yakut, see Sakha
80, 89, 93, 97, 1013, 112, 11315, 11718, Yukaghir 19, 332, 36469
11920, 122, 12427, 133, 134, 137, 152, Yupik 110, 240
169, 170, 173, 175, 18184, 187, 222, 227,
24951, 258, 26069, 270, 272, 273, Z
27779, 29698, 303, 31718, 33234, Zulu 109, 241
Index of names
A Borsley, Robert 304
Abney, Stephen 303 Boy, Gilles 26, 224
Ackema, Peter 93 n.13, 99, 102, 167 n.7 Brecht, Richard 89
Ackerman, Farrell 30, 93 n.13, 144 n.1, 161, Bresnan, Joan 20, 26, 38, 208, 25457, 300,
167 n.7, 171, 184, 300, 336, 36364, 401 304, 3067, 310, 32023
Adams, Valerie 213 Brown, Dunstan 224
Aissen, Judith 286 Butt, Miriam 45 n.7, 50 n.9, 290 n.7
Alexiadou, Artemis 301 n.1, 305
Allen, Margaret 200 C
Alsina, Alex 28788, 291 Cabredo Hofherr, Patricia 26
Anderson, John 210 Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew 218
Anderson, Stephen R. 41, 118, 155, 228, 239 Chierchia, Gennaro 330
Andrews, Avery 285 Chomsky, Noam 38, 2089
Andrews, J. Richard 114, 12021 Cinque, Guglielmo 238
Apresjan, Jurij Derekinovic 5253, 329 Clark, Eve 215
Arka, I Wayan 27980, 319 Clark, Herbert 215
Arnott, D.W. 118 Comrie, Bernard 64, 24144, 301 n.1, 342,
Aronoff, Mark 11, 15, 112, 132, 154, 156, 211, Corbett, Greville 39 n.4, 5961, 80, 88, 115,
215, 218, 22021, 223, 234, 238, 239 n.19, 131, 22324, 22627, 231
240, 245 n.23, 32326, 335, 339, 411 Cresswell, Michael 329 n.10, 337
Ashton, E. 92, 94 n.14, 95, 1058 Croft, William 29, 35
B D
Baayen, Harald 214 Dalrymple, Mary 223 n.9, 224, 235, 283
Backhouse, Anthony 361 Daniel, Michael 241, 242 n.21
Baerman, Matthew 152 Davidson, David 13, 211, 225
Baker, Mark 36, 23839, 241, 305 n.3, 311 n.4 Davis, Anthony 137, 211 n.3
Barker, Christopher 40, 65, 110, 254, 282, Dench, Alan 245
319, 349 Dixon, R. M. W. 45
Bartos, Huba 86 Doke, Clement 241
Barwise, Jon 224 Downing, Pamela 216, 349
Bauer, Laurie 165, 213 Dowty, David 211, 214, 225
Beard, Robert 8 n.3, 36, 63, 77, 110, 113, 135, Dunn, Michael 678, 72, 357, 3701
137, 208, 212, 214, 217, 254 Durrell, Martin 66, 77
Beck, David 284 Dymits, Zalman Movevic 6970
Bermdez-Otero, Ricardo 184
Bickel, Balthasar 240 n.20, 349 E
Bierwisch, Manfred 28, 301 n.1, 377 . Kiss, Katalin 230 n.14
Blevins, James 8, 135, 163 n.6, 189, 277 Engelhardt, Miriam 301 n.1
Blume, Kerstin 315 Ersen-Rasch, Margarete 311
Boguslavskaja, Olga Jurievna 355 Evans, Nicholas 834, 88, 12730, 197, 246
Bonami, Olivier 26, 221, 224, 263
Booij, Geert 17, 39 n.4, 41, 55, 59, 7880, 91, F
111, 138, 165, 21920, 223, 229 272, 299, Fagan, Sarah 99
377, 414 Finkel, Raphael 184
Borer, Hagit 53, 296 n.9 Forsyth, James 89, 334 n.12
438 Index of names
Fradin, Bernard 26 Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria 64, 68 n.4, 274,

Fraser, Bruce 46 301 n.10, 303, 305, 31112, 315, 342
Fu, Jingqi 377 Kornlt, Jacklin 304
Korotkova, Natalia 240
G Koshiishi, Tetsuya 359, 395 n.12
Ganenkov, Dmitry 241, 242 n.241 Kratzer, Angelika 282
Gerritsen, Nellike 102 Kroeger, Paul 91
Giegerich, Heinz 35960 Kuznecova, Ariadna Ivanovna 756, 77,
Gksel, Asl 99 38084, 38691, 393400, 4058
Goldberg, Adele 296, 298
Grimshaw, Jane 100, 282, 304, 327 L
Grukina, Elena Vladislavovna 38084, Laczk, Tibor 300, 320 n.9
38691, 393400, 4058 Lahav, Ran 29
Lambton, A. K. S. 45
H Lander, Yuri 240
Hale, Kenneth 28, 215 Lapointe, Stephen 38, 301 n.1
Halle, Morris 41, 124 Lauwers, Peter 299
Haspelmath, Martin 45, 77, 306, 400 Lees, Robert 301 n.1
Heine, Bernd 368 Lefebvre, Claire 302
Helimski, Eugene 75, 380400, 4058 Levi, Judith 216
Hetzron, Robert 35556 Levin, Beth 17, 28, 33, 65, 100, 194, 211,
Higginbotham, James 282 29596, 298, 300,
Hippisley, Andrew 115, 224 Lewis, G. L. 99
Hockett, Charles 8 Lieber, Rochelle 21316, 253 n.25
Hoeksema, Jack 166 Lus, Ana 44, 51 n.10, 228, 238
Holton, David 85
Hyman, Larry 109, 118, 241 M
Maiden, Martin 65, 77
I Malchukov, Andrej 301 n.1, 305, 342, 372
Inkelas, Sharon 154 n.5 Malouf, Robert 65, 3069, 318
Manning, Christopher 17, 101 n.17, 276, 279,
J 285, 300
Jackendoff, Ray 13, 28, 100, 132, 208, 211, 213, Manova, Stela 239 n.19, 240
244, 276, 283, 291, 332 Marantz, Alec 294
Jakobson, Roman 39 Marchand, Hans 213
Janko-Trinickaja, Nadeda Markova, Angelina 317 n.7
Aleksandrovna 102 Maslova, Elena 36568
Mathiassen, Terje 228
K Matsumoto, Yo 17, 91, 276, 28594, 319
Katamba, Francis 91 McGregor, R. S. 6971
Kenesei, Istvn 83, 867, 23031, 233 Mchombo, Sam 93, 97, 1045
Kennedy, Christopher 328, 329 n.10,11, 337 McNally, Louise 329 n.10, 337
Kerslake, Celia 99 Melloni, Chiara 329
Keyser, Jay 28, 215 Menovcikov, Georgij Alekseevic 110
Kibort, Anna 223 Miller, George 51
Kibrik, Aleksandr Evgenjevic 355 Miller, Philip 26
Kiefer, Ferenc 385 Minkova, Donka 270
Kiparsky, Paul 26, 189, 215, 271 Mithun, Marianne 123, 240
Kirsch, Beverley 241 Mohanan, Tara 285
Kiss, see . Kiss Montague, Richard 284
Koenig, Jean-Pierre 137, 211 n.3, 212 Motsch, Wolfgang 31516, 351
Komlsy, Andrs 385 Mugane, John 25457, 304, 3067, 310, 323
Koontz-Garboden, Andrew 63 Muysken, Piet 240, 302
Index of names 439
N Schadeberg, Tilo 118

Nedjalkov, Vladimir Petrovic 296 Schoorlemmer, Maaike 93 n.13, 99, 102
Neeleman, Ad 167 n.7 Selkirk, Elizabeth 168
Nichols, Johanna 349 Sells, Peter 193
Nikolaeva, Irina 29, 75 n.8, 846, 989, 131, Shin, Soo-Song 316
223 n.9, 345, 355, 358 Siloni, Tal 301 n.1
Nordlinger, Rachel 12730, 224, 23556, Simpson, Jane 83
24549 Skorik, Pjotr Jakovlevic 67, 724, 350, 357,
362, 37071
O melv, Aleksei Dmitrievic 89, 334 n.12
Orgun, Orhan 154 n.5 Smirnickij, Aleksandr Ivanovic 77, 381
Ortmann, Albert 230 n.14 Smith, Carlotta 89, 333 n.12
Otanes, Fe 256 Spencer, Andrew 12, 25, 29, 30, 34, 37, 41,
446, 51, 567, 623, 66, 87, 91, 1002,
P 112, 122, 12627, 16566, 185, 19394,
Pan.ini 145 200 n.10, 213 n.5, 21617, 220, 221, 226,
Payne, John 209, 392 228, 233, 236, 238, 239, 251, 258, 260, 273,
Perry, John 224 276, 297, 318, 322, 330, 332, 339, 343 n.14,
Petzell, Malin 109 34849, 353, 355, 361, 369, 377, 405
Picallo, Maria 301 n.1 Sproat, Richard 146 n.3
Pinker, Steven 277, 295 Stassen, L.eon 361, 372
Plag, Ingo 39, 21316 tekauer, Pavol 264 n.29
Plank, Frans 534, 218, 355 Stewart, Thomas 16062
Polinsky, Maria 24144 Stiebels, Barbara 110, 256
Popova, Gergana 30, 221, 317 n.7 Stockwell, Robert 270
Pullum, Geoffrey 301 n.1 Stonham, John 91
Pustejovsky, James 29, 53 Stump, Gregory 2, 9, 13, 15, 17, 201, 38,
39 n.4, 56, 61, 114, 118, 125, 14346,
R 14864, 167, 16970, 17879, 180 n.4, 181,
Raffelsiefen, Renate 74 182, 184, 186, 191, 193, 197, 201 n.11, 217,
Rappaport Hovav, Malka 17, 28, 33, 65, 100, 218 n.7, 220, 22526, 233, 234, 23738,
194, 211, 29596, 298, 300 248, 250, 264, 298, 369, 401, 410
Rathert, Monika 305 Szabolcsi, Anna 301 n.1
Rice, Keren 23940, 249 Szymanek, Bogdan 74, 115 n.25, 167, 213, 217,
Riddle, Elizabeth 74 351 n.3, 353, 37374
Riehemann, Susannah 212
Roark, Brian 146 n.3 T
Robins, Robert 8 Thompson, Sarah 64, 301 n.1
Robustelli, Cecilia 65, 77 Tolskaya, Maria 856, 989
Roy, Isabelle 32728, 335 Toman, Jindrich 168
Rozwadowska, Bozena 301 n.1, 318 Tronenko, Natalia 46
Rullmann, Hotze 232 n.16
U
S Underhill, Robert 311
Sadler, Louisa 446, 100, 193, 220, 224,
23536, 24549, 317 V
Sadock, Jerrold 305 Vajda, Edward 302
Sag, Ivan 20, 267, 479, 300, van Marle, Jaap 217
Salminen, Tapani 76, 363 Vendler, Zeno 304, 312 n.6, 315
Samvelian, Pollet 221, 224, 228
Saussure, Ferdinand de 36 W
Scalise, Sergio 264 n.29 Wade, Terence 115
Schachter, Paul 256 Wasow, Thomas 479
440 Index of names
Webelhuth, Gert 300, 336, 36364 Y

Werner, Heinrich 30 You, Aili 232 n.16
Wescoat, Michael 65
Whitney, William Dwight 218 n.7 Z
Willems, Dominique 299 Zaliznjak, Andrej Anatoljevic 112, 352
Williams, Edwin 34, 136 n.35, 168, 200, 208,
Zaliznjak, Anna Andreevna 89, 334 n.12
282
Wilson, Peter 92 Zaretskaya, Marina 102, 296 n.10, 297, 339
Wunderlich, Dieter 28, 38, 2089, 282 Zubizarreta, Maria-Lusa 101, 301 n.1
Zucchi, Alessandro 645, 31214, 32931
X Zwarts, Joost 36, 282, 335, 337
Xu, Zheng 238, 245 n.23 Zwicky, Arnold 135, 152
Index of subjects
A qualitative 12, 325, 353, 35960, 366, 373,
A role, see role 374, 387
a-morphous (morphology) 182 n.7, 238, 240 relational 14, 19, 20, 63, 678, 71, 72, 74, 77,
a-of-association (Bantu) 94, 254 25152, 27475, 300, 323, 342, 37374,
A-STR, see attribute 376, 379, 4023, 412
a-structure, see argument structure similitudinal 16, 20, 28, 131, 212, 21918,
240, 354, 357, 358, 39799, 4015
ACC-ing nominalization, see nominalization
adposition 28, 32, 36, 57, 194, 209, 243, 244,
action nominal, see also nominalization, 245, 345, 348, 350, 354, 369, 392
transposition 4, 11, 18, 57, 636, 77,
adverb(ial) 19, 41, 46, 501, 67, 72, 88,
102, 131, 251, 255, 275, 300, 301, 30223,
100, 124, 129, 135, 170, 209, 240, 255,
32934, 343, 364, 373, 37475, 39093,
281, 304, 307, 308, 311, 313, 327, 357,
401, 411, 412
358, 377, 378, 381, 391, 39293, 39495,
Adjacency Condition 200 401, 404
adjective, see also attributive modier, afx order 106, 107, 109, 119, 143, 145, 146,
participle 11, 12, 14, 1516, 17, 19, 20, 25, 148, 14951, 182, 19598, 236,
26, 28, 29, 346, 42, 44, 46, 52, 534, 237249, 265
57, 58, 59, 623, 65, 66, 678, 69, 716, agent, see role
77, 82, 83, 100, 104, 110, 111, 11920, agent nominal construction
12223, 126, 127, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, (Kikuyu) 25457, 301, 377
152, 157, 165, 168, 170, 174, 18384, 194, agent nominalization, see subject
201, 208, 20910, 216, 222, 22829, nominalization
230, 23334, 25052, 254, 255, 25859,
agreement, see also possessor agreement 6,
26162, 273, 274, 275, 276, 281, 28384,
9, 14, 19, 31, 39, 58, 59, 62, 65, 68, 69, 73,
286, 305, 306, 307, 308, 30910, 316, 323,
75, 7880, 84, 83, 86, 88, 97, 99, 104,
32529, 32930, 33438, 339, 340, 342,
118, 138, 149, 151, 152, 169, 185, 223, 230,
343, 34446, 34748, 34860, 36064,
231, 233, 261, 262, 280, 305, 311, 342, 356,
370 n.13, 372, 37374, 376, 377, 378, 379,
361, 363, 364, 369, 370, 372, 381, 392,
38081, 385, 386, 38788, 388, 392, 393,
397
39697, 39799, 399405, 412, 413
Agreement Hierarchy 231
attributive 14, 19, 26, 29, 3436, 57, 65, 67, aktionsart 17, 60, 82, 84, 85, 86, 120, 296, 343,
68, 70, 72, 734, 82, 84, 88, 221, 222, 38485
228, 231, 233, 23435, 237, 252, 254,
allative case, see case
257, 273, 276, 281, 28384, 286, 306,
allomorphy 12, 82, 111, 15354, 157, 217, 363,
309, 327, 335, 366, 345, 346, 34849,
391
355, 358, 383, 362, 366, 389, 394, 398,
412, 413 allostem 266
antipassive 56, 72, 91, 296
locational 39799, 4045
applicative 56, 90, 91, 92, 93, 956, 1079, 121,
negative 217
138, 218, 241, 252, 255, 269, 294
possessive 19, 678, 131, 155, 313, 342, 345, argument structure, see also predicate-
34955, 360, 364, 373, 378 argument structure 13, 14, 17, 18, 21,
potential 59, 189 256, 33, 346, 37, 38, 42, 48, 49, 567, 65,
predicative 37071 90113, 122, 129, 137, 138, 19395, 197, 208,
privative 16768, 246, 345, 346, 357, 210, 211, 218, 223, 233, 240, 241, 25157,
38788, 39899, 400 276300, 301, 304, 307, 310, 318, 319, 320,
proprietive 131, 357, 38788, 39899 322, 323, 327, 329, 330, 335, 336, 337, 338,
442 Index of subjects
342, 34547, 349, 359, 364, 36970, 375, augmentative (evaluative morphology) 17,
37778, 380, 38384, 38586, 411, 413 67 n.2, 11315, 11718, 119, 120, 138, 169,
aspect 18, 35, 46, 47, 49, 50, 82, 84, 856, 240
8990, 97, 99, 106, 135, 222, 228, 240, Augmentative (Swahili derivation) 106,
27779, 280, 303, 313, 316, 31718, 332, 1078
33334, 343, 344, 380, 384 Autolexical Syntax 305
imperfective 846, 8990, 1012, 27779, auxiliary (verb) 10, 34, 4651, 62, 70, 71, 82,
31718, 33334, 380, 384 856, 88 n.12, 989, 101, 126, 169, 175 n.2,
perfective 67 n.3, 846, 8990, 1012, 120, 210, 221, 261, 278, 308, 313, 392
27779, 316, 31718, 33334, 380, 384
Associative (Swahili) 94, 106 B
associative case, see case beneciary, see role
Atom Condition 200 biclausal, see causative
attribute, in lexical entry 68, 1318, 20, 22, bound stem, see stem
36, 489, 59, 113, 132, 137, 139, 183, 189, BOUNDED (aspect) 33234
193, 2012, 250, 259, 343, 405, 41011, 412
A-STR 194, 251 C
EVENT 28586, 330 canonical
FORM 57, 13, 1516, 18, 20, 22, 24, 32, 47, derivation 7, 5863, 77, 109, 113, 133, 168,
489, 5960, 13738, 17489, 18993, 179, 198, 203, 213, 217, 218, 250, 264,
197, 199202, 219, 23233, 251, 257, 273, 310, 34243, 377
25860, 266, 268, 27173, 275, 341, 372, inection, see also contextual inection 7,
412, 413 5863, 77, 82, 89, 198, 219, 264, 274
INFLCLASS 18488, 192, 202, 26263 caritive case, see case
LEXEMIC INDEX 57, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, CARP template 241
50, 59, 60, 90, 13637, 173, 17477, case, see also case stacking, double case
17879, 182 n.8, 187, 18991, 198, marking 30, 46, 50, 61, 65, 69, 70, 73,
199201, 233, 234, 235, 282, 266, 268, 74, 7880, 81, 82, 83, 84, 869, 110, 118,
272, 275, 342, 356, 358, 375, 376, 402, 122, 125, 14447, 148, 149, 150, 152, 157,
403, 410, 411, 412, 414 171, 183, 185, 186, 188, 210, 219, 222, 224,
MORCLASS 132, 137, 18488, 19293, 23237, 24149, 280, 289 n.6, 305, 308,
2012, 250, 26263, 336, 338, 340, 311, 319, 341, 343, 355, 356, 357, 358, 360,
341, 34748 362, 363, 364, 365, 367, 368, 38283,
MORSIG 18586, 188, 251, 260, 26263, 39091, 392, 394, 395, 397404
26668 allative, see dative
REF(ERENT) 28586, 31921 associative 24647
RESTRICTION 489 caritive 34546, 357, 382, 387, 388, 389, 393,
SYN(TAX) 57, 13, 1516, 18, 20, 22, 33, 399400, 401, 4089
47, 136 n.35, 137, 138, 139 n.36, 17577, comitative 67 n.3, 68, 357, 360, 364, 365,
178, 187, 19195, 196, 200 n.10, 2012, 36768, 37071
25051, 257, 269, 273, 275, 340, 341, complementizer 24647
343, 347, 372, 402, 41113 dative(/allative) 37, 73, 78, 79, 81, 87, 123,
SYNCLASS 132, 193, 194, 202, 251 128 n.31, 152, 162, 228, 233, 242, 243,
SEM 57, 13, 1518, 20, 22, 2730, 467, 49, 288, 289 n.6, 356, 382, 383, 395, 4089
137, 139, 17578, 187, 191, 193, 196, 256, derivational 83
330, 332, 333, 400, 41112 direct 69, 78
SEMFUNCT 19495 ergative 78, 88, 235, 242, 298
STEM 17475, 18083, 18688, 190, 191, genitive 19, 66, 68, 81, 102, 123, 125, 128,
192, 250, 26263, 368, 411, 412, 413 162, 228, 234, 242, 248, 307, 311, 316,
attribute-value matrix (AVM) 35 n.3, 48, 323, 348, 350, 35456, 358, 378, 382,
224, 285, 290 389, 391, 393, 395, 397, 400, 4089
attributive adjective, see adjective inessive 88, 144, 148, 196, 23237
attributive modier, see modier inherent 78, 79, 357, 399
instrumental 41, 66, 101, 124, 157, 162, 233, ontological 1315, 16, 28, 30, 33, 82, 137,
24748, 250, 382, 4089 193, 33032, 412
local 87, 233, 242, 345 semantic 224
locative 88, 128 n.31, 162, 214, 228, 235, 246, syntactic 5, 26, 37, 57, 59, 130, 132, 133, 168,
369, 38283, 391, 397, 399, 404 170, 184, 195, 2089, 210, 221, 253, 258,
meaning-bearing, see also semantic 261, 307, 322, 364, 413
case 20, 57 syntactico-semantic, see derivational
modal 128 n.31, 24648 category
oblique 69, 70, 81, 88, 128 n.31, 228, 246, word, see lexical category
290 n.7, 283 category preservation 170
predicative 364 category shift 376
privative 246, 357 Category Erasure Principle 200n
proprietive 83, 84, 128 n.31, 246, 364, causative 3, 11, 14, 17, 25, 28, 42, 53, 57, 61, 85,
36570, 371, 372 90, 91, 92, 945, 98, 99, 101, 103, 107, 108,
quirky case, see semantic case 109, 121, 138, 197, 198, 213 n.6, 21416,
semantic 51, 57, 66, 78, 79, 88, 233, 382, 399 218, 240, 241, 252, 269, 28694, 295, 296,
structural 78, 79, 223 n.9 298, 299, 300, 383, 384, 385
biclausal 287, 289
translative 382, 390
coercive 289, 292
verbal (Kayardild) 12731, 138
inducing 289, 291
case stacking, see also double case
monoclausal 28791, 383
marking 128, 195, 24549
morphological 25, 57, 28894, 383
categorial cascade, see also Default
permissive 289, 290 n.7, 385
Cascade 367
persuasive 289, 292
Categorial Grammar 238 causee, see role
categorial mismatch, mixing, see category, causer, see role
mixed class, see also category, INFLCLASS,
category MORCLASS, position class,
aspectual 304, 344, 380, 384 n.7, 385 SYNCLASS, word class
derivational 86, 10910, 137, 167, 174, 179, comparison 32829, 337,
189, 21112, 214218, 265, 266 conjugation 61, 12021, 125, 180
functional 36, 37, 238, 277 declension 132
grammatical 244, 365 inection, see also conjugation class,
inectional 59, 60, 79, 82, 856, 101, 119, INFLCLASS 61, 62, 63, 73, 98 n.15,
120, 137, 222, 277, 364, 385 11418, 132, 137, 157, 162, 170, 174,
lexical 25, 38, 57, 58, 63, 100, 112, 126, 133, 18384, 2012, 220, 223, 258, 260, 262,
169, 2089, 210, 260, 273, 305, 353, 392, 263, 264, 26869, 273, 36364
393, 405 lexical 57, 61, 634, 82, 122, 144, 171, 174,
mixed, see also paradigmatic category 179, 20910, 369
mixing, syntagmatic category morpholexical 82, 18384, 203, 268
mixing 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 38, 56, 57, morphological 42, 137, 173, 181, 18386,
58, 77, 12233, 139, 173, 196, 25457, 195, 233, 258, 262, 340
25763, 275, 30210, 318, 321, 32223, noun 93, 11819, 254, 256
340, 342, 345, 358, 377, 413 ontological 1314, 82, 137
mode-of-action, see aspectual category semantic 315, 324
morpholexical 4, 42, 87, 208, 258, 344, 353 stem 158
morphological, (morphosyntactic, syntactic 60, 63, 183, 195, 258, 402
morphosemantic) 42, 57, 63, 84, 87, word, see also lexical class 11, 34, 37, 412,
103, 130, 132, 153, 159, 184, 208, 218, 60, 77, 88, 131, 138, 183, 194, 210, 233,
221, 222, 229, 251, 258, 260, 261, 341, 257, 282, 304, 340
357, 373 clitic 31, 34, 43, 44, 501, 69 n.7, 71, 82, 92,
morphologically mixed, see paradigmatic 124, 228, 238, 363 n.11
category mixing coercion 29, 273, 299, 329, 331, 332
Cognitive Grammar, Linguistics 270, 305 n.3 2068, 211, 212, 21319, 226, 238, 240,
COMP (LFG) 285 244 n.22, 249, 25254, 256, 258, 259,
comitative, see case 26465, 268, 269, 272, 275, 293, 294, 298,
complementizer case, see case 299, 300, 303, 304, 306, 318, 323, 324, 329,
comparison class, see class 338, 341, 342, 343, 345, 357, 358, 359, 371,
compositional(ity) 41, 400 373, 37578, 380, 397, 399, 400, 4045,
compound 2, 11, 12, 34, 44, 67, 70, 111, 157, 412
165, 168, 169, 170, 21617, 219, 274, 275, in Paradigm Function Morphology 16471
345, 346, 34951, 355, 359, 360, 362, 374, in Selkup 38388
386 vs inection 3843, 55, 56, 5863, 65, 78,
(in chemistry) 213 n.5 84, 8990, 969, 101, 109, 114, 119, 134,
synthetic 254, 377 135, 138, 169, 173, 174, 177, 203, 234,
verbal 45 264 n.29, 294, 414
compound case 24145 vs transposition 57
compound preposition 243 canonical 5863, 77, 109, 113, 133, 168, 198,
conjugation, see class 217, 250, 310, 342, 343
constituent structure, see c-structure m-inert 62, 12223, 126, 257, 25859, 274,
Construct State 78, 349 340
Construction Grammar 298, 414 meaningless 401, 57, 11013, 137, 27072,
Construction Morphology 18, 272, 299, 414 41112
constructional approach (to argument within-lexeme 12326, 25960
structure) 29496 derivational case 83
constructional approach (to derivational category, see category
nominalization) 32934, 338 derivational extension (Bantu) 92, 241
Constructive Case 23536 derivational feature, see feature
content paradigm, see paradigm derivational (paradigm) function 178,
contextual inection, see inection 180 n.4, 181, 264
conversion 18, 52, 60, 612, 98 n.15, 108, derivation, meaningless, see meaningless
110, 165, 184, 21517, 258, 271, 272, 274, derivation
29499, 302, 315, 317, 340, 364, 387 derivational model (of syntax) 3046
copula 36, 44, 73, 75, 76, 261, 308, 336, 361, derivational morphology, see derivation
362, 365, 376, 39597 derivational paradigm, see paradigm
cranberry (morph, morpheme) 32, 46, 111, derivational process, relationship, see
112 derivation
c-structure (constituent structure, LFG) 21, derivational rule 201, 217, 414
224, 235, 25556, 283, 310, 32021, 322, derivational signature 189
413 derivational type 61, 63, 167, 201, 212, 217,
26566
D Derived Category Membership
dative(/allative), see case Hypothesis 35859, 376, 394, 414
Dative Shift, see also applicative 294, 295 Derived Lexical Entry Principle 16, 20, 200,
decausative 85, 90, 98, 102 217, 254, 264, 266, 342, 370, 375, 411
declension, see class desiderative 218
Default Cascade 16, 20, 19195, 200 n.10, 217, dictionary 1, 3, 5, 27, 52, 54, 112, 215, 296 n.10,
253, 256, 259, 266, 342, 375, 41112, 414 252
defective paradigm, see paradigm entry, see also lexical entry 5, 27, 30, 52, 218
deponent (verb) 45, 161, 220 diminutive 14, 67, 113122, 138, 169, 170, 240,
derivation 24, 68, 11, 14, 1517, 18, 19, 25, 264270, 385 n.9, 386
26, 30, 445, 54, 55, 57, 75, 77, 836, 91, direct case, see case
98 n.15, 1004, 105, 108, 10910, 11214, discontinuous root/stem, see stem
116, 11718, 119, 120, 12326, 129, 132, double case marking 84
13337, 138, 154, 169, 170, 173, 174, 17781, dual projection model (of mixed
181, 182, 186, 18889, 190, 198203, categories) 304, 310
E m(orphological)- 46, 128, 131, 193, 220,

E role, see role 222, 22324, 226, 229, 23637, 293
entry, see dictionary entry, lexical entry phonological 153
ergative case, see case privative (univalent) 11, 165, 179, 217, 268,
ergative predicate, verb 93, 298, 299 269
evaluative morphology, see also augment- set-valued 400
ative, deprecative, diminutive 14, 17, s(yntactic)- 47, 49, 128, 131, 193, 220, 222,
106, 11322, 138, 169, 207, 26365, 269, 22324, 226, 22829, 23637
27273, 383, 386 focus 68, 362, 365
Event(uality), see also SUBEVENT 13, 17, 25, FORM (attribute), see attribute
2730, 34, 37, 47, 50, 64, 82, 845, 93, form paradigm, see paradigm
100, 105, 110, 132, 168, 175, 176, 19394, form-property paradigm, see paradigm
211, 214, 225, 227, 250, 256, 272, 278, f-structure (functional structure,
28182, 28586, 28788, 29193, 301, 302, LFG) 101 n.17, 224, 23536, 248,
304, 31215, 317, 319, 321, 327, 329, 33037, 283, 287, 29193, 31923
342, 343, 364, 369, 370, 384, 392, 411 function (mathematical) 144
EVENT (attribute), see attribute derivational, see derivational
event nominal, see action nominal identity, see identity
event structure 223 n.9, 301 inverse, see inverse
event variable 13, 225, 282 semantic role, see semantic function role
evidential 50, 51, 277 function composition 150, 196
experiencer, see role Function Composition Default 150, 160
function word, see word
F functional structure, see f-structure
f-description (LFG) 236, 248 Fused Argument Condition 291
Fachmorphologie 213 n.5, 374 n.15
factorization (of lexicon, lexical entry) 4, 16, G
42, 113, 177, 200, 235, 238, 272, 305, 334, gender 39, 51, 62, 65, 6970, 78, 93, 114119,
342, 344, 364, 4045, 413 127, 152, 155, 16970, 18182, 184, 222,
feature 7, 1011, 1517, 21, 38, 39, 45, 46, 47, 26163, 264, 26869, 273, 355, 356, 364
50, 56, 58, 81, 823, 85, 86, 90, 13637, genitive case, see case
143, 14445, 147, 148150, 15153, 160, General Default Principle 186, 191, 202, 233,
162, 162, 16465, 167, 169, 171, 17879, 250, 251, 257, 26669, 336, 338, 343, 368,
179, 183, 185, 19091, 19293, 19697, 400, 402, 403, 404, 412
207, 20810, 212, 215, 221, 22324, 226, Generalized Paradigm Function 1520,
227, 22829, 231, 232, 234, 235, 24549, 173203, 204, 21112, 251, 253, 257, 259,
25051, 258, 260, 261, 262, 26566, 266, 269, 27172, 299, 300, 318, 319, 321,
26869, 29394, 306, 34748, 382, 333, 340, 34648, 368, 372, 375, 399, 400,
402403, 411 4025, 411, 414
[articulated] 2089 Generative Lexicon 53
[N] 2089 gerund(ive) 221, 300, 303, 3079, 311, 312, 318,
[predicative] 209 321, 330, 361, 377, 39293, 401
predicative (J.M. Anderson) 210 Grade (Sanskrit) 15659
referentiable (J.M. Anderson) 210 grammatical role, see role
[referentially dependent] 2089 grammatical word, see word
[transitive] 209 grammaticalization 44, 79, 87, 89, 127, 342,
[V] 2089 391, 414
binary 38, 131, 2089, 322 Gun.a, see Grade
contextual 223
cooccurrence restriction 402 H
derivational 16, 179, 200, 21517, 258, 265, harmony, see vowel harmony
412 Head-Application Principle 168, 171, 264
hierarchy L
agreement, see Agreement Hierarchy L-index 149
(multiple) inheritance 26, 191 landmark 242
type 212, 30610 Leipzig Glossing Rules 31 n.2, 128 n.31,
homonymy 45, 5153, 88, 139 n.36, 152, 219, 245 n.24, 365 n.12
273, 375 Lexeme-Morpheme Base Hypothesis 212
inectional, see syncretism LEXEMIC INDEX (attribute), see attribute
honoric 12022, 269, 28990 lexical class, see class
HPSG 18, 202, 26, 27, 47, 4850, 212, 224, lexical category, see category
282, 299, 300, 30610, 410, 321 lexical entry 16, 13, 1517, 19, 20, 22, 2554,
59, 113, 132, 148, 163, 17376, 178, 181,
I 18283, 18687, 18995, 198203, 207,
imperfective aspect, see aspect 236, 249, 259, 26263, 271, 272, 295, 336,
identity function 144, 178, 191, 196 342, 359, 370, 375, 41012
Identity Function Default 14445, 148, 171, as rule 18991
178, 191, 250, 412 degenerate 4351
idiom 30, 46, 414 LFG 18, 202, 26, 35 n.3, 912, 101 n.17, 208,
impersonal 208, 277 223, 224, 23537, 244, 248, 251, 255,
incorporation 68, 219 276, 28485, 28789, 222 n.8, 291, 298,
obligatory noun 68 299300, 319323, 410
incremental theme 214 lexical integrity 70, 351, 375
index, see L-index, lexemic index lexical opacity, see opacity
INDEX attribute (HPSG) 4849 Lexical Phonology 26
Indexing Autonomy Hypothesis 159 lexical representation 5, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21,
inessive case, see case 22, 258, 38, 4354, 58, 60, 90, 139, 175,
inferential(-realizational model, morpho- 17778, 212, 242, 245, 250, 252, 260, 271,
logy, rule) 2, 3, 4, 20, 26, 38, 49, 56, 58, 3012, 303, 304, 323, 331, 335, 342, 410, 413
90, 145 n.2, 195, 191, 198, 200, 212, 234, lexicalized (compound, phrase) 12, 103, 111,
237, 240n, 241, 244, 298, 410, 414 16567, 21617, 350, 355
inferential mood 365 LI (attribute), see attribute
innito sostantivato 65, 274, 31315, 331, 341 light verb 4546, 50, 219
inection local case, see case
contextual 88 localization (Daghestan case), see also
inherent 17, 19, 51, 556, 5960, 7790, 91, orientation 24244
101, 122, 136, 178, 196, 21920, 223, 224, vs orientation 242 n.21
226, 229, 232, 233, 234, 237, 244, 252, locational adjective, see adjective
272, 273, 293, 310, 334, 343, 357, 399, locative case, see case
404 locative inversion 93
meaning-bearing 14, 17, 19, 20, 90, 235, l-participle, see participle
238, 245, 4023
class, see class M
vs derivation, see derivation m-inert derivation, see derivation
inectional gap, see defective paradigm m-inert transposition, see transposition
Inectional Speciability Principle 199, 348, meaning-bearing afx order 23841
413 meaning-bearing case, see case
inherent case, see case meaning-bearing inection, see inection
inherent inection, see inection meaning-bearing transposition, see
inheritance hierarchy, see hierarchy transposition
inside-out functional application 235, meaningless derivation 17, 401, 57, 11013,
256 n.26 137, 207, 27072, 41112
instrument, see role mental lexicon 137, 342
instrumental case, see case metageneralization, see morphological
inverse function 236, 323 metageneralization
Middle (alternation, voice) 923, 99103, morphomic stem, see stem

124, 125 n.30, 128 n.31, 129, 138, 339, 378 morphophonology, see also phonology 26,
Middle stem (Sanskrit) 15559 15355, 156, 184, 186, 212, 213, 340, 361
Minimalism 92, 239, 296 n.9, 311 n.4 morphosemantic feature, property 22224,
Mirror Principle 106, 23839, 241 226
mixed category, see category morphosyntactic feature, property 22224,
modal case, see case 226
mode-of-action, see aktionsart morphosyntactic word, see word
modier, see also attributive modier 12, 14, morphotactics 149
19, 345, 42, 578, 65, 67 n.2, 68, 72, 78, MORSIG (attribute), see attribute
82, 84, 88, 111, 129, 166, 222, 231, 233, 240, multiword (combination, expression), see
252, 254-55, 282, 283, 332, 34951, 355, also periphrasis 13, 30, 44, 46, 218, 219
360, 374, 378 n.16, 392
monoclausal, see causative N
Montague Grammar, Semantics 224, 238, negation 50, 856, 978, 99, 102, 175 n.2, 255,
284 361, 388, 39192
MORCLASS (attribute), see attribute Nomen Essendi, see property nominalization
morph 30, 32, 182 n.7, 198, 238, 265 nominalization, see also subject (SubjNom),
cranberry, see cranberry morpheme object
morpheme, see also cranberry morpheme, in Kayardild 13031
zero morpheme 12, 6, 26, 32, 389, 134, of adjective, see property nominalization
144, 14647, 167, 168, 169, 189, 200, 211, of verb 19, 28 n.1, 58, 63, 646, 102, 194,
224, 23839, 241, 244, 249, 296, 299, 340, 218, 221, 25152, 266, 274, 283, 30223,
341 330, 331, 33334, 338, 339, 343, 364, 372,
zero 144, 147, 294 37375, 376, 377, 39092, 411
morpholexical category, see category ACC-ACC 65, 131, 303, 331
morpholexical class, see class action 18, 57, 646, 77, 131, 251, 30223
morpholexical signature 17374, 18389, agent, see subject nominalization
19192, 195, 19899, 201, 202, 260, 348, argument 16, 65, 10910, 25357, 258 n.27,
364, 413 383, 38586
m(orphological) feature, see feature event, see also action nominalization 15,
morphological metageneralization 153, 18, 64, 209, 3045, 31215, 327, 330,
154 n.5, 157 336, 337
morphological category, see also morpholo- POSS-ACC nominalization 18, 131, 301,
gical class 57, 84, 130, 132, 184, 208, 221, 302, 303, 306, 307, 312, 313, 314, 315,
222, 229, 26061, 341 321, 343
morphological causative, see causative POSS-GEN nominalization 302, 312, 320,
morphological class, see class 343, 377
morphological shift 12631, 138, 207, 257, process, see action nominalization
26063, 361, 372, 391 propositional interpretation of 19, 64,
morphological word, see word 31215, 326, 33031, 33436, 339, 344
m(orphologically)-inert derivation, see sentential 64, 274
derivation non-canonical 434, 603, 213
m(orphologically)-inert transposition, see non-compositional(ity) 31, 41, 46, 62, 11113,
transposition 137, 169, 227, 270, 299, 400, 414
morphologically mixed category, see noun class, see class
paradigmatic category mixing noun incorporation, see incorporation
morphome 15, 15456, 174, 221, 225, 237, 240, null head, see also zero head 25758
300 null specication 266, 367
morphomic (class, feature, index) 174, 220, null subject 79, 303
222 numeral 801, 230, 366, 367
O l-participle (Russian) 126, 261

object marker (OM) 104, 149, 150, 255 passive 19, 44, 478, 62, 65, 101, 104, 110,
object nominalization 40, 65, 110, 254 123, 154, 16364, 169, 184, 209, 221, 251,
object role, see grammatical role 252, 257, 278, 339, 34648, 374, 378,
Object Voice (Balinese) 279 38898
obligatory argument 28, 101, 252, 304, 327 passive 3, 10, 14, 42, 44, 46, 567, 71, 85,
obligatory inection 3941, 59, 89, 128 n.32, 88 n.12, 901, 923, 96, 97104, 109,
129, 228, 268 12426, 138, 161, 19798, 218, 220, 240,
obligatory noun incorporation, see 241, 252, 260, 269, 27780, 293, 339,
incorporation 34648, 384, 388, 389
oblique case, see case patient, see role
ontological class, see class perfective aspect, see also aspect 67 n.3, 846,
ontological category, see category 8990, 1012, 120, 27779, 316, 31718,
ontology, see also ontological category 25, 33334, 380, 384
193, 244, 330, 342, 370 periphrasis 30, 103, 161, 221
opacity (of meaning, lexical) 215, 244, 264, personal noun 12, 41, 166, 25859, 340
37576, 399, 414 Personal Noun Formation 1213, 16567,
orientation 24244, 245 21617, 259
vs localization (Daghestan case) 242 n.21 phonological word, see word
ornative 54, see also proprietive phonology 27, 30, 32, 115, 117, 157, 210, 213,
265
P PIVOT 33
Pan.inis Principle 145, 147 plural 1, 2, 9, 16, 18, 40, 68, 73, 75, 7981, 85,
Pan.inian Determinism 145, 147 94, 106, 112, 11819, 122, 124, 126, 127, 133,
paradigm 135, 136, 14447, 149, 150, 152, 155, 156,
content 15, 16063, 167, 178, 22026, 228, 157, 16061, 16263, 165, 17071, 185, 196,
231 219, 222, 223 n.10, 22933, 234, 244 n.22,
defective 11, 41, 125, 144, 395 258, 261, 268, 323, 341, 355, 362, 363, 367,
derivational 1112, 164, 16768, 17980, 371, 38183, 390, 396, 400, 4089
218n, 259, 264 plurale tantum 9, 112, 124
form 9, 16063, 22026, 228 polysemy 35, 513, 124, 214, 21819, 259,
form-property 9, 148, 199 29699, 325, 375, 414
property 9, 10, 195, 199 afxal 88
Paradigm Function 15, 20, 14849, 150, 151, strong 273
163, 16768, 17172, 17780, 195, 198, 215, systematic 1718, 523, 213 n.6, 216, 218,
232, 233, 249, 264, 26566, 268, 410 219, 273, 300, 329
Paradigm Function Morphology 13, 15, 27, weak, see also systematic polysemy 273
135, 14372, 215, 224, 237, 238, 341, 401, position class 301, 147, 149151, 159, 164
412, 413, 414 POSS-ACC nominalization, see
paradigm linkage 15, 17, 16063, 193, 220, nominalization
222, 298 POSS-GEN nominalization, see
paradigmatic category mixing, see also nominalization
category, mixed 301, 307, 345 possessive adjective, see adjective
paradigmatic derivation, see also derivational possessor agreement 20, 68, 83, 185, 233,
paradigm 125, 179 311, 341, 342, 348, 349, 363, 364, 381,
participant (role), see role 382, 383, 391, 392, 395, 399, 401,
participle 3, 14, 19, 345, 38, 42, 567, 404
623, 65, 667, 68, 724, 77, 104, 110, postposition 30, 70, 72, 87, 233, 236 n.17
122, 126, 154, 158, 159, 163, 169, 184, 209, fused 233, 369
221, 249, 250, 251, 256, 257, 258, 261, 274, pseudo- 87
283, 300, 309, 323, 339, 344, 345, 34648, potential adjective, see adjective
358, 364, 37475, 377, 385, 38890, 393, PRED (value) (LFG) 236, 237, 283, 291
401, 404 Predicate (category) 36364
predicate R
adverb used as 394 R role, see role
causative 28788, 291 reciprocal 56, 85, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 99, 101,
complex 45 n.7, 287, 291 1045, 106, 109, 125, 218, 24041, 252, 255
semantic 7, 15, 17, 20, 29, 39, 42, 56, 57, 60, recursion 10, 293
62, 63, 65, 75, 83, 86, 87, 90, 101, 105, reduplication 60, 108, 153
109, 133, 178, 179, 193, 196, 207, 217, REF(ERENT) (attribute), see attribute
23336, 245, 256, 259, 265, 275, 293,
reexive 53, 56, 58, 91, 94, 97, 99, 1015, 121,
300, 323, 342, 343, 399, 400, 402
12425, 129, 218, 225, 241, 252, 255, 260,
predicate-argument structure, see also
278, 287, 289, 339, 378, 383, 384
a-structure, argument structure 33,
280, 285 Rel, see role
predicate set 225, 23435 Relation 28, 30, 193, 194, 281
predicate/predicative adjective, see also relational adjective, see adjective
adjective Relational Grammar 277
predicative 29, 36, 44, 63, 756, 126, 230, representation, reprezentacija (Selkup
25152, 26162, 283, 327, 335, 336, 353, grammar) 77, 347, 381, 400, see also
36162, 370 n.13, 37172, 376, 395 transposition
predicate/predicative noun 19, 63, 756, 251, RESTRICTION (attribute), see attribute
300, 309, 336, 36264, 370 n.13, 37172, reversative 107
376, 395, 39697, 401 role
predicative case, see case A , see also semantic function role 14,
predicative (feature), see feature 3438, 38, 234, 25052, 257, 281, 283,
preverb 138, 219 284, 285, 33637, 34647, 34849, 412,
Principle of Representational Independence 413
(PRI) 139 agent 33, 93, 100, 22526, 279 n.2, 285, 287,
Principles and Parameters 224 29192
privative case, see case beneciary 95, 22526
privative adjective, see adjective causee 28791, 383
privative feature, see feature causer 101, 287, 289, 291, 383
pro-drop, see also null subject 7879
E, see also semantic function role 14, 334,
projectionist approach (to argument
378, 210, 256, 28083, 285, 322, 327,
structure) 29596, 298
331, 335, 336, 346, 364, 369, 413
promiscuous attachment 118
experiencer 110, 291
Property (in ontology) 2930, 194, 28384
property, see morphosyntactic property grammatical 17, 105, 252, 277, 280
property paradigm, see paradigm instrument 31, 110, 246, 256, 285
property nominalization 11, 12, 19, 63, 745, object, see grammatical role
212, 25152, 265, 275, 301, 302, 310, participant 28, 34, 101, 223 n.9, 225,
32329, 330, 33439, 343, 364, 37374, 378 27677, 281, 28486
proposition, see nominalization, patient 33, 93, 100, 110, 121, 287, 292
propositional interpretation of R, see also semantic function role 14, 348,
proprietive, see also proprietive adjective, 210, 25253, 256, 274, 28183, 284, 285,
proprietive case 72, 83, 353 319, 322, 323, 330, 331, 33637, 346, 369,
proprietive case, see case 411, 413
proprietive adjective, see adjective Rel 36, 194, 369
prosodic word, see word semantic 33, 34, 50, 93, 291
pseudo-postposition, see postposition semantic function, see also SEMFUNCT
13, 17, 337, 19395, 21011, 234,
Q 25152, 253, 256, 274, 28186, 300, 319,
qualitative adjective, see adjective 322, 330, 331, 335, 33637, 340, 346,
quirky case, see semantic case 349, 364, 369, 370 n.13, 373, 411, 412
subject, see grammatical role allomorphy 15557, 266

thematic, see also semantic role 33, 34, class, see class
225 n.11, 288 formation, see also Stem Formation
theme 110, 213, 214, 22526, 280 Function/Rule 155, 158, 163, 180 n.5,
theta, see thematic role 181, 182, 186
root 9, 13, 15, 18, 30, 32, 89, 92, 94, 108, 111, in Paradigm Function Morphology 144,
112, 135, 14345, 14647, 14849, 15455, 153, 15464, 17172
158, 160, 16264, 168, 16971, 177, 178, index(ing) 15556, 15960, 163, 181, 18687
179, 180, 181, 182, 186, 18990, 198, 201, selection 143, 154, 15557, 15960, 162, 164,
202, 237, 294, 295, 296, 298, 317, 318, 343, 187
362, 399, 410 set 155, 18788
root-and-paradigm morphology 135 STEM (attribute), see attribute
root-to-root rule 170 Stem Formation Function/Rule 18283, 186,
root modal 86 368
root reduplication, see reduplication stolovaja-nouns, see also m(orphologically)-
inert derivation 12223, 137, 184, 25758,
S 272, 275
Saussurean sign 2, 36, 134 strict identity (reading) 105
scope 71, 85, 19598, 23741, 245, 249, 294, Strong stem (Sanskrit) 15559
385 structural case, see case
SEM(ANTICS) attribute, see attribute SUBEVENT 291
semantic case see case subject nominalization (SubjectNominal,
semantic class, see class SubjNom), see also agent nominal
semantic role, see role construction (Kikuyu) 6, 16, 65, 10910,
semantic predicate, see predicate 134, 165, 167, 17880, 18182, 189, 201,
semantic primitive 28, 225 n.11 21617, 25354, 25657, 301, 359 n.7, 377,
semantic representation (SEM), see 411
SEM(ANTICS) attribute subject marker 104, 146, 149, 150
semantic role, see role subject role, see grammatical role
SEMFUNCT, see also semantic function Subtractive (Swahili) 1068
role 19495 subtractive morphology 167
Separation Hypothesis 113, 214, 217, 266 supercategory 77, 347 n.1, 400
shift, see morphological shift suppletion 12, 113, 154, 155, 15960, 165, 167,
sign, see Saussurean sign 180, 217, 379
Sign-Based Construction Grammar 26, 300 Surrey Morphology Group 41 n.6
signature, see derivational signature, SYN(TAX) (attribute), see attribute
morpholexical signature SYNCLASS (attribute), see attribute
similitudinal adjective, see adjective SYNSEM (HPSG) 50
single projection model (of mixed syntactic class, see class
categories) 3067, 310 syntactic word, see word
sloppy identity (reading) 1045 syntagmatic category mixing 15, 18, 19, 64,
Spencers Razor 405 122, 13133, 139, 275, 3013, 304, 3078,
stacking, see case stacking 310, 346, 35760, 37779
stem, see also attribute 26, 44, 69, 94, 112,
11819, 130, 13334, 16364, 17071, T
18183, 184, 18688, 195, 198, 238, 26162, terminal
272, 317 n.7, 368, 386, 391, 395, 396, 397, lexical 37
399, 407, 410 syntactic 50, 103, 138, 161, 226, 239, 343
bound 13334, 181 thematic
discontinuous 13, 30, 312, 198 argument 33, 10910, 208, 252, 346, 377
extended (Turkish) 99 role, see role
morphomic 15, 174 theme, see role
suppletive 165 theme extension, vowel 61, 134, 152, 154, 155
theta role, see thematic role Philippine 56

Thing 2830, 132, 193, 259, 284, 330, 332, 370 vowel harmony 734, 154
tone 118, 153, 155
translative, see case W
transposition, see also representation 8 n.3, Weakest stem (Sanskrit) 15558
14, 18, 1920, 35, 38, 42, 568, 62, 6377, word
104, 122, 137, 138, 191, 207, 20910, function 434, 4651, 87, 90
233, 24952, 254, 257, 27375, 276, 300,
grammatical 9
30143, 34479, 38081, 387, 38899,
4004, 411 morphological 220, 290 n.7
of transpositions 37375 morphosyntactic 9
meaning-bearing 20, 56, 207, 258, 273, 316, phonological 361, 365 n.12
33233, 35660, 366, 370, 374, 404 prosodic 361, 365 n.12
m-inert 27374, 275, 348 syntactic 103, 290 n.7
type hierarchy, see hierarchy class, see class
nest 11
U word-to-word rule 17071, 26465
unergative predicate, verb 93 n.13, 102 word-to-stem rule 170
V X
valence, valency, see also argument XCOMP (LFG) 285, 287, 291, 292
structure 14, 906, 989, 1015, 109,
124, 125, 277, 27981, 29496, 308,
Z
389, 391
verbal case, see case zero conversion, see conversion
versative 243 zero feature value 202, 209
violoncello 115 n.24, 240 Zero Grade, see Grade
voice (alternation), see also argument zero head, see also null head 62
structure 10, 14, 39, 42, 44, 90, 92, zero marking 222, 299
989, 110, 125, 128 n.31, 27880, 293, 305, zero morpheme 144, 146 n.3, 14748, 294
34648, 389 zero-place verb 208

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Lexical Relatedness

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1 Introduction: words and paradigms 1

Part I. Lexemes, lexical entries, and lexical relatedness

Part II. Paradigmatic organization and the lexicon

Part III. The factorized lexicon

1 Introduction: words and paradigms 1

Part I. Lexemes, lexical entries, and lexical relatedness

3.3.3 Relational and possessive adjectives 67

Part II. Paradigmatic organization and the lexicon

4.6.1 The nature of stems 154

Part III. The factorized lexicon

6.8 Paradigmatically mixed categories 257

9.2 Deverbal participles 346

DIRECT direct (case)

NEG negation, negative

Abbreviations used in the text

FIN nite (LFG)

RESTR restriction (HPSG)

Introduction: words and paradigms

1.1 Morphemes and lexemes

1.2 Words and paradigms

A prototypical instance of grammatically mandated lexical relatedness that has to

Table 1.1. Typological space for lexical relatedness

FORM SYN SEM LI

abstract) root is a relatively modern conception, arising out of structuralist models of

5 Even here I am oversimplifying considerably by ignoring a variety of tricky issues of conceptuali-

languages. They also tend to have a residue of no-longer-productive patterns of re-

1.3 Overview of the book

derivational feature, Similitudinal, which mediates the denition of similitudinal

as nouns which have the morphology of adjectives, evaluative morphology (di-

come), though in other languages this is either completely excluded, or it would be

semantic enrichment to the lexical representation without (necessarily) the creation

phenomena in as systematic a way as possible. What is particularly remarkable

1.4 A note on formalization

an explicit and articulated model of lexical representation. The formal architecture

Lexemes, lexical entries, and lexical

The lexical entry

of attributive modication, a topic hardly touched upon in contemporary theoriz-

2.2 What is a lexeme?

2.2.1 Rening the lexical entry

(1) PHONOLOGY /w :k/

A lexical representation such as this is essentially what we nd in a traditional

2.2.2 Semantic representations of lexemes

(2) [x ACT] [CAUSE x [BECOME [y BROKEN]]]]

detail in Chapter 8, but it seems to be mandated by grammatical systems. Finally, Re-

(3) a. [Event WALK(x)]

2.2.3 Phonological representations of lexemes

multiword inectional exponence (inectional periphrasis)

(4) Position classes for the Ket verb

(5) P7 as direct object

She is making a tent.

She jabs me with a needle.

(7) P7 as semantic head

(8) Meaningless morph (l) at P7

She takes me (walks with me somewhere and back).

2.2.4 Syntactic representations of lexemes

2.3 Semantics and syntax

(10) Argument structure for attributive modication

(11) a. The tall tree fell

(12) fallingA*x Ex

3 In Chapter 7 I discuss ways in which these representations might be reformulated as attributevalue

as a predicate if it heads a phrase which is the complement to a copular verb, typic-

Suppose we notate the predication relation in an ad hoc manner by simply coindex-

(15) there-is(x) tallAx x treeR

(9) a. General komanduet vos m-oj armi-ej