Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics

I will discuss some fundamental issues with categorical segmentation in inflection. Much of morphology relies on segmentations of words into morphs. For inflection, this is usually stems and affixes. Underlying this practice is a model of morphology which predicts that some part of the word contributes lexical information, while the rest contributes morphological information. Yet we find that this prediction does not hold. In numerous common situations, parts of forms carry both lexical and grammatical information, licensing multiple concurrent segmentations. From this, I will propose some ways forward for quantitative morphology, trying to move away from adjudicating in favour of a single "correct" solution.

*** The talk will be delivered in person (MFF UK, Malostranské nám. 25, 4th floor, room S1) and will be streamed via Zoom. For details how to join the Zoom meeting, please write to sevcikova et ufal.mff.cuni.cz ***