A typology of defectiveness

缺陷类型学

• 批准号: AH/D001579/1
• 负责人: Greville Corbett
• 金额: $ 28.99万
• 依托单位: University of Surrey
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2006 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FD001579%2F1
• 关键词: typology; defectiveness

An important design feature of language is the use of productive patterns. We have 'enjoy' ~ 'enjoyed', 'agree' ~ 'agreed', and many others. On the basis of this productive pattern, if we meet a new verb 'transduce' we know that there will be the form 'transduced'. Even if the pattern is not fully regular, there will be a form available, as in 'understand' ~ 'understood'. Surprisingly, this principle is sometimes violated, a phenomenon known as defectiveness, which means there a gap in a word's set of forms. The missing singular form of English 'scissors' is one example, and more striking instances can be found in languages with more complex systems of inflection (for example, Russian nouns that lack a genitive plural, or verbs which lack a first person singular form). Although such gaps have been known to us since the days of Classical grammarians, they remain poorly understood. It is generally assumed that the rules of language encode how things are to be done, and that speakers extrapolate these rules to all the words they encounter. This is how language is structured, and this how language is learned, or so we think. Defectiveness contradicts these assumptions, because it seems to require that speakers know that for certain words, not only should one not employ the expected rule, one should not employ any rule at all. This is a serious problem, since it is probably safe to say that all reigning models of grammar were designed as if defectiveness did not exist, and would lose a considerable amount of their elegance if it were properly factored in. However, at present, we cannot go very far in addressing the issue, since we have only fragments of data from an odd assortment of languages, each with its own peculiarities and each being given its own analysis. But the problem is too challenging to yield to this piecemeal approach. In order to make any substantial assessment of what defectiveness implies for grammatical theory, we need a much deeper and more extensive understanding of its typological range. We pose the following research questions: 1. How prevalent is defectiveness in the world's languages? 2. What grammatical features can be affected? 3. What kinds of paradigms are subject to gaps? 4. How does defectiveness arise historically? What happens to it over the course of time?These questions will be addressed by the construction of larges-scale cross-linguistic and typological databases (which will be made publicly available over the internet as part of the Surrey Morphological Databases project), and historical case studies of selected phenomena. Further, we will raise awareness of the importance of defectiveness for linguistic theory by holding a dissemination conference. The results of these investigations will be of interest to all linguists interested in the architecture of inflection, to typologists, to psycholinguists and to researchers in language acquisition.

语言的一个重要设计特征是使用产出性模式。我们有‘享受’~‘享受’，‘同意’~‘同意’，还有很多其他的。在这一产生式的基础上，如果我们遇到一个新的动词‘转换’，我们就知道会有‘转换’的形式。即使模式不是完全规则的，也会有一种形式可用，如‘理解’~‘理解’。令人惊讶的是，这一原则有时会被违反，这一现象被称为缺陷性，这意味着一个词的一套形式存在缺口。缺少单数形式的英语“剪刀”就是一个例子，在词尾变化系统更复杂的语言中也可以找到更引人注目的例子(例如，俄语名词没有所有格复数，或者动词没有第一人称单数形式)。尽管从古典语法学家的时代起，我们就已经知道了这样的差距，但我们对它们仍然知之甚少。人们通常认为，语言的规则编码了做事的方式，说话者根据他们遇到的所有单词来推断这些规则。这就是语言的结构，语言是如何学习的，或者说我们是这样认为的。缺陷与这些假设相矛盾，因为它似乎要求说话者知道，对于某些单词，一个人不仅不应该使用预期的规则，而且根本不应该使用任何规则。这是一个严重的问题，因为可以肯定地说，所有占统治地位的语法模型都被设计得好像不存在缺陷一样，如果考虑到这一点，它们将失去相当大的优雅。然而，目前我们在解决这一问题方面还不能走得很远，因为我们只有几种语言的零碎数据，每一种语言都有自己的特点，每一种语言都有自己的分析。但这个问题太具挑战性，不能屈服于这种零敲碎打的方法。为了对缺陷对语法理论意味着什么做出任何实质性的评估，我们需要对其类型范围进行更深入和更广泛的理解。我们提出了以下研究问题：1.缺陷在世界语言中有多普遍？2.什么语法特征会受到影响？3.哪种范式会受到差距的影响？4.缺陷是如何在历史上产生的？随着时间的推移，它会发生什么？这些问题将通过构建大规模的跨语言和类型学数据库(将作为萨里形态数据库项目的一部分在互联网上公开提供)和选定现象的历史案例研究来解决。此外，我们将通过举办传播会议来提高人们对语言理论缺陷的重要性的认识。这些研究的结果将会引起所有对屈折结构感兴趣的语言学家、类型学家、心理语言学家和语言习得研究者的兴趣。

项目成果

The use of databases in cross-linguistic studies

• DOI: 10.1515/9783110198744
• 发表时间: 2009-01
• 作者: M. Everaert;S. Musgrave;A. Dimitriadis

Defective Paradigms: Missing Forms and What They Tell Us

有缺陷的范式：缺失的形式以及它们告诉我们什么

• 发表时间: 2010
• 作者: Baerman, M

Morphological reversals

形态逆转

• DOI: 10.1017/s0022226706004440
• 发表时间: 2007
• 期刊: Journal of Linguistics
• 影响因子: 1.1
• 作者: BAERMAN M

Prolegomena to a typology of morphological features

形态特征类型学导论

• DOI: 10.1007/s11525-006-9105-3
• 发表时间: 2007
• 期刊: Morphology
• 影响因子: 1.4
• 作者: Corbett G

The diachrony of defectiveness

缺陷的历时性

• 发表时间: 2009
• 期刊: Chicago Linguistic Society 43 (2)
• 作者: Baerman, M