In this volume, Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audring embark on a major reconceptualization of linguistic theory as seen through the lens of morphology. Their approach, Relational Morphology, extends the Parallel Architecture developed by Jackendoff in Foundations of Language (2002), Simpler Syntax (2005), and Meaning and the Lexicon (2010). The framework integrates morphology into the overall architecture of language, enabling it to interact insightfully with phonology, syntax, semantics, and above all, the lexicon. The first part of the book situates morphology in the language faculty, and introduces a novel formalism that unifies the treatment of all morphological patterns, inflectional or derivational, systematic or marginal. Central to the theory is the lexicon, which both incorporates the rules of grammar and explicitly encodes relationships among words and among grammatical patterns. Part II puts the theory to the test, applying it to a wide range of familiar and less familiar morphological phenomena. Part III connects Relational Morphology with issues of language processing and language acquisition, and shows how its formal tools can be extended to a variety of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena outside morphology. The value of Relational Morphology thus lies not only in the fact that it can account for a range of morphological phenomena, but also in how it integrates linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, and human cognition.

In this volume, Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audring embark on a major reconceptualization of linguistic theory as seen through the lens of morphology. Their approach, Relational Morphology, extends the Parallel Architecture developed by Jackendoff in Foundations of Language (2002), Simpler Syntax (2005), and Meaning and the Lexicon (2010). The framework integrates morphology into the overall architecture of language, enabling it to interact insightfully with phonology, syntax, semantics, and above all, the lexicon. The first part of the book situates morphology in the language faculty, and introduces a novel formalism that unifies the treatment of all morphological patterns, inflectional or derivational, systematic or marginal. Central to the theory is the lexicon, which both incorporates the rules of grammar and explicitly encodes relationships among words and among grammatical patterns. Part II puts the theory to the test, applying it to a wide range of familiar and less familiar morphological phenomena. Part III connects Relational Morphology with issues of language processing and language acquisition, and shows how its formal tools can be extended to a variety of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena outside morphology. The value of Relational Morphology thus lies not only in the fact that it can account for a range of morphological phenomena, but also in how it integrates linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, and human cognition.

This book explores the boundaries of the category of gender and their theoretical significance within the framework of Canonical Typology. Grammatical gender is a famously puzzling category: although it has been widely explored from a typological perspective, studies are constantly identifying exciting and unexpected patterns in gender systems, many of which cannot be easily classified or straightforwardly analysed. Some of these patterns stretch or even threaten to cross the largely unexplored outer boundaries of the category. In the canonical approach, morphosyntactic features like gender are established in terms of a canonical ideal: the clearest instance of the phenomenon. The canonical ideal is a clustering of properties that serves as a baseline to measure the actual examples observed. In this volume, international experts use this approach to analyse a range of gender systems that diverge from the canonical ideal, and to determine to what extent each component property of these systems can be considered canonical. Chapters explore a wide range of typologically diverse languages from all over the world, from South America to Melanesia, and from Central Italy to Northern Australia. The book will be of interest to all linguists working in the field of typology, from graduate level upwards, as well as to morphologists and syntacticians of all theoretical stripes who have an interest in grammatical gender.

This volume is the first handbook devoted entirely to the multitude of frameworks adopted in the field of morphology, including Minimalism, Optimality Theory, Network Morphology, Cognitive Grammar, and Canonical Typology. Following an introduction from the editors, the first part of the volume offers critical discussions of the main theoretical issues within morphology, both in word formation and in inflection, as well as providing a short history of morphological theory. In the core part of the handbook, part II, each theory is introduced by an expert in the field, who guides the reader through its principles and technicalities, its advantages and disadvantages, and its points of agreement and disagreement with alternative theories. Chapters in part III explore the bigger picture, connecting morphological theory to other subdisciplines of linguistics, such as diachronic change, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sign language theory. The handbook is intended as a guide for morphologists from all theoretical backgrounds who want to learn more about frameworks other than their own, as well as for linguists in related subfields looking for theoretical connections with the field of morphology.

This volume is the first handbook devoted entirely to the multitude of frameworks adopted in the field of morphology, including Minimalism, Optimality Theory, Network Morphology, Cognitive Grammar, and Canonical Typology. Following an introduction from the editors, the first part of the volume offers critical discussions of the main theoretical issues within morphology, both in word formation and in inflection, as well as providing a short history of morphological theory. In the core part of the handbook, part II, each theory is introduced by an expert in the field, who guides the reader through its principles and technicalities, its advantages and disadvantages, and its points of agreement and disagreement with alternative theories. Chapters in part III explore the bigger picture, connecting morphological theory to other subdisciplines of linguistics, such as diachronic change, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sign language theory. The handbook is intended as a guide for morphologists from all theoretical backgrounds who want to learn more about frameworks other than their own, as well as for linguists in related subfields looking for theoretical connections with the field of morphology.