LLS Colloquium: Syncretism-defectiveness interactions as evidence about inflectional architecture

On Wednesday 15th March 2023, Andrea Sims (Ohio State University) will be presenting on "Syncretism-defectiveness interactions as evidence about inflectional architecture".

Talk: Syncretism-defectiveness interactions as evidence about inflectional architecture

In inflectional systems, form and meaning are frequently not in a one-to-one relationship. One widely-observed kind of form-meaning “mismatch” is syncretism (Baerman et al. 2005), the inflectional phenomenon in which two or more distinct sets of morphosyntactic values are realized by the same inflected form. Syncretism is an important and long-standing source of evidence about morphosyntactic feature structure and the architecture of inflectional systems, but interactions between syncretism and other kinds of form-meaning mismatches remain underexploited in morphological theory (Corbett 2011). 

In this talk I examine interactions between syncretism and defectiveness, a form-meaning mismatch in which an expected inflected form is missing (Sims 2015). I present examples in which syncretism and defectiveness are found in a feeding or bleeding relationship and compare the ability of Distributed Morphology (DM) and Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM), as two formal models with contrasting approaches to syncretism, to account for these interactions. One particular pattern – in which directional syncretism bleeds defectiveness – turns out to create challenges for the more restrictive approach of DM, even though DM can account for the relevant syncretism by itself. The key issue turns out to lie in whether the model is transformational (DM) or declarative (PFM). The talk thus has entwined empirical and theoretical goals: to add to understanding of how syncretism and defectiveness can interact, and to show that these interactions bring new insight into core aspects of inflectional architecture.

The talk will take place at 3pm on Zoom, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end. Please sign up to receive a zoom invite at this link. Everyone is welcome!