Joan L. Bybee

Regular morphology and the lexicon.

Abstract Three models of morphological storage and processing are compared: the dual-processing model of Pinker, Marcus and colleagues, the connectionist model of Marchman, Plunkett, Seidenberg and others, and the network model of Bybee and Langacker. In line with predictions made in the latter two frameworks, type frequency of a morphological pattern is shown to be important in determining productivity. In addition, the paper considers the nature of lexical schemas in the network model, which are of two types: source-oriented and product-oriented. The interaction of phonological properties of lexical patterns with frequency and the interaction of type and token frequency are shown to influence degree of productivity. Data are drawn from English, German, Arabic and Hausa.

Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change

The literature on frequency effects in lexical diffusion shows that even phonetically gradual changes that in some cases are destined to be lexically regular show lexical diffusion while they are in progress. Change that is both phonetically and lexically gradual presents a serious challenge to theories with phonemic underlying forms. An alternate exemplar model that can account for lexical variation in phonetic detail is outlined here. This model predicts that the frequency with which words are used in the contexts for change will affect how readily the word undergoes a change in progress. This prediction is tested on data from /t, d/ deletion in American English. Finally, the effect of bound morphemes on the diffusion of a sound change is examined. The data suggest that instances of a bound morpheme can affect the rate of change for that morpheme overall.

Alternatives to the combinatorial paradigm of linguistic theory based on domain general principles of human cognition

Abstract It is argued that the principles needed to explain linguistic behavior are domain-general and based on the impact that specific experiences have on the mental organization and representation of language. This organization must be sensitive to both specific information and generalized patterns. In addition, knowledge of language is highly sensitive to frequency of use: frequently-used linguistic sequences become more frequent, more accessible and better integrated. The evidence adduced is mainly from phonology and morphology and addresses the issue of gradience and specificity found in postulated units, categories, and dichotomies such as regular and irregular, but the points apply to all levels of linguistic analysis including the syntactic, semantic, and discourse levels. Appropriate models for representing such phenomena are considered, including exemplar models and connectionist models, which are evolving to achieve a better fit with linguistic data. The major criticism of connectionist models often raised from within the combinatorial paradigm of much existing linguistic theory – that they do not capture ‘free combination’ to the extent that rule-based systems do, is regarded as a strength rather than a weakness. Recent connectionist models exhibit greater productivity and systematicity than earlier variants, but still show less uniformity of generalization than combinatorial models do. The remaining non-uniformity that the connectionist models show is appropriate, given that such non-uniformity is the rule in language structure and language behavior.

Phonological Evidence for Exemplar Storage of Multiword Sequences

Phonological evidence supports the frequency-based model proposed in the article by Nick Ellis. Phonological reduction occurs earlier and to a greater extent in high-frequency words and phrases than in low-frequency ones. A model that accounts for this effect needs both an exemplar representation to show phonetic variation and the ability to represent multiword combinations. The maintenance of alternations conditioned by word boundaries, such as French liaison, also provides evidence that multiword sequences are stored and can accrue representational strength. The reorganization of phonetic exemplars in favor of the more frequent types provides evidence for some abstraction in categories beyond the simple registration of tokens of experience.

Explanation in morphophonemics: Changes in provençal and Spanish preterite forms

The degree of autonomy of a word is the extent to which a word is likely to have its own lexical representation. Autonomy is determined by semantic complexity, word frequency, and morphophonemic irregularity, such that the semantically simpler, more frequent, and more irregular words are more autonomous. In morphological systems, nonautonomous words are derived from autonomous words by rule. Dynamic data from psycholinguistics and diachrony are presented in support of this hypothesis. The diachronic discussion centers around the person forms of the preterite in Provencal and Spanish, where the third singular and the first singular are the most autonomous. There is considerable dialectal evidence that one or both of these forms can serve as the morphophonemic base(s) from which the other person forms of the preterite are derived.

Gradience of Gradience: A reply to Jackendoff

Abstract Jackendoff and other linguists have acknowledged that there is gradience in language but have tended to treat gradient phenomena as separate from the core of language, which is viewed as fully productive and compositional. This perspective suffuses Jackendoffs (2007) response to our position paper (Bybee and McClelland 2005). We argue that gradience is an inherent feature of language representation, processing, and learning, and that natural language exhibits all degrees of gradience. Contrary to Jackendoffs assertions, we do not reject the possibility of innate constraints on language, feeling only that the jury is out on the nature and specificity of such constraints. We address a number of questions Jackendoff raises about the process of grammaticalization, drawing on extant literature of which he appears to be unaware. We also address Jackendoffs views on the prospect that connectionist models can address core aspects of language processing and representation. Here again extant literature of which Jackendoff seems unaware addresses all four of his general objections to connectionist approaches.

Use impacts morphological representation

The distinction between regular and irregular morphology is not clear-cut enough to suggest two distinct modular structures. Instead, regularity is tied directly to the type frequency of a pattern. Evidence from experiments as well as from naturally occurring sound change suggests that even regular forms have lexical storage. Finally, the development trajectory entailed by the dual-processing model is much more complex than that entailed by associative network models.

Restrictions on phonemes in affixes: A crosslinguistic test of a popular hypothesis

Abstract The hypothesis that inflectional affixes use a restricted set of phonemes and that these are the less marked phonemes of the language is discussed and tested on the verbal affixes in a sample of twenty-three maximally unrelated languages. The results show that the tendency for languages to use only a smaller subset of their phonemes in verbal inflection than would be predicted by chance is only a weak trend and not by any means a universal of language. In addition, the tendency to use less marked or less complex segments in affixes is also only a trend and not a universal. However, some generalizations can be made about languages that have patterned exclusions from affixes. It is argued that no one explanation covers all the facts and that multiple diachronic trends, such as phonological reduction in grammaticization and the re-use of old affixes in creating new grammaticized affixes, produce the weak tendency evidenced by the data.

Phonological and Grammatical Variation in Exemplar Models

Abstract Phonological and grammatical structure is shaped by usage patterns, as demonstrated by the effects of context and frequency on variation and change. We argue for an exemplar model of lexical representations, in which tokens of use are registered in memory, including phonetic detail as well as linguistic and social contextual information. Since variation is omnipresent in the input, it comes to be represented directly in cognitive representations, which are a record of speakers’ experience with language. Frequency of use and other lexical effects in sound change, which is gradual both phonetically and lexically, are built into exemplar models as the strengthening of exemplars by use and the clustering of exemplars based on phonetic and semantic similarities. The effects of particular lexical items and collocational discourse routines in morpho-syntactic variation and change, including the interaction of the particular and the general in grammaticization, are similarly modeled by the representation of specific instances of constructions and the gradient associations among related forms. Since variation in language use is pervasive and highly conditioned by context, exemplar models are particularly wellsuited to account for variation and change.

Grammatical and lexical factors in sound change: A usage-based approach

The question of whether or not grammatical factors can condition or block sound change has been discussed from many perspectives for more than a century without resolution (Melchert, 1975). Here we consider studies of sound change in progress which show that words or phrases that are used frequently in the phonetic environment for change undergo the change before those whose use is less frequent in these contexts. Because words of different categories and with different structures also have different distributions, they may occur preferentially in certain phonetic environments. Thus, some apparent cases of influence by grammatical and lexical factors can be explained by phonetic factors if we expand our notion of phonetic environment to include frequency within the environment for change, which includes the segmental environment as well as factors that affect the degree of prominence a word receives in context.