Studies in A-Morphous Morphology

摘要本研究发展了一种研究自然语言中复杂词语结构的方法，它将词语之间的关系视为由交互规则网络来定义，而不是通过他们共享的最小符号(或语素)的内容。因此，在省略语素而不是在缺乏形式的意义上，它是一种形式。将解决三个普遍存在的问题领域。首先，如果规则而不是语素是单词结构的基础，那么单词的内部非语音形式应该比人们通常认为的要少得多。研究人员将考察这样一种观点，即大多数这样的结构，例如通常与边界或连接点的存在有关的结构，以及与词素进入更高级别成分的短语标记类似的排列，都可以被消除。其次，这项研究将追求这样的概念，即对词形的单一音系操作是音系学、词水平词法的特征，也是音系依赖偏态的引入。把词组视为“短语层面的词法”对于句法上的几个问题以及音系学和词法上的问题都有重要的意义。最后，研究人员将探索以计算机程序的形式实现这种类型的词结构的语法。这种实现涉及到几个困难的问题，例如单词完整的自切分和韵律结构的正确表示；在声音结构规则的相互作用中一般原则和语言特殊原则之间的平衡；以及适用于形态结构分析的并行性的程度和性质。词汇层面的语法结构语言学理论--“词法”--长期以来一直存在着特殊的问题。在某些方面，单词层面的结构似乎直观地比其他层面的语法结构(如句子)更明显，但事实证明，它对全面、连贯的理论解释更具抵抗力。其中一个原因是，从一种语言到另一种语言，说话者所感知的单个单词的性质存在着巨大的差异。这个项目的研究人员一直在开发一种相当新颖的形态理论，它解释了许多在其他理论模型中无法解释的现象。下一阶段的研究将针对来自各种不同语言的某些有问题的案例来测试这一理论，并将把该理论作为计算机程序来实施，以进一步测试其对各种案例的一致性和适用性。

ABSTRACT This research develops an approach to the structure of complex words in natural languages which treats relations among words as defined by a network of interacting rules instead of by their shared content of minimal signs (or 'morphemes'). It is thus 'a-morphous' in dispensing with morphemes rather than in the sense of lacking form. Three general problem areas will be addressed. First, if rules rather than morphemes are the foundation of word structure, words should have much less internal non- phonological form than commonly assumed. The investigator will examine the idea that most such structure, such as that usually associated with the presence of boundaries or junctures, and with a phrase-marker-like arrangement of morphemes into higher level constituents, can be eliminated. Secondly, the research will pursue the notion that a single class of phonological operations on word forms characterizes phonology, word level morphology, and also the introduction of phonologically dependent clitics. Treating clitics as "phrase level morphology" has significant implications for several problems in syntax as well as for phonology and morphology. Finally, the investigator will explore the implementation of grammars of word structure of this type in the form of computer programs. Such implementation involves several difficult issues, such as the proper representation of the full autosegmental and metrical structure of a word; the balance between general and language particular principles in the interaction of sound structural rules; and the degree and nature of parallelism appropriate to the parsing of morphological structure. %%% The linguistic theory of grammatical structure at the level of the word -- "morphology" -- has long presented special problems. In some ways structure at the level of the word seems intuitively more obvious than other levels of grammatical struc- ture, such as the sentence, and yet it has proven much more resistant to a comprehensive, coherent theoretical account. One reason for this is the great diversity from one language to another in the nature of what the speakers perceive as individual words. The investigator in this project has been developing a quite novel theory of morphology, which accounts for a number of phenomena which have been unexplained in other theoretical models. The next phase of the research will test the theory against certain problematic cases from a variety of different languages, and will also implement the theory as a computer program, to enable further testing of its consistency and applicability to a wide variety of cases.