On Morphomic Defectiveness: Evidence from the Romance Languages of the Iberian Peninsula1

This chapter discusses the overall paradigmatic distribution of gaps in the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula. It revisits the Spanish data from a historical and comparative perspective, considering the closely related language, Portuguese. Ibero-Romance paradigm gaps are determined by the lexical rarity and the morphemic patterning. Paradigm gaps are also affected by ‘low speaker confidence’. This behaviour defines the avoidance of allomorphy even in the absence of reasonable grounds to expect the occurrence of allomorphy. Such behaviour is triggered by the speaker's sensitivity to a major distributional pattern of root allomorphy in Spanish and Portuguese such as that in non-first conjunction verbs, the first person singular present indicative together with all persons and numbers of the present subjunctive in shared root allomorph. In addition to determining the defectiveness in the Ibero-Romance languages, the chapter also provides a discussion on the general domains and determinants of defectiveness.

Relative Acceptability of Missing Adjective Forms in Swedish

This chapter discusses the implications of an acceptability test designed to evaluate the Swedish native speakers's reluctance to form the neuter gender of certain adjectives such as the defective adjectives. This chapter provides some observations related to the Löwenadler paper. While the paper focused on the certain Swedish adjective forms which are regarded as ungrammatical by most Swedish speakers, the present chapter places emphasis on the actual evaluation of the logically possible yet unacceptable neuter alternatives. To provide a better understanding of the reluctance of speakers to use neuter gender, the chapter provides some additional factors aside from the inflectional process that define the judgements derived from the acceptability test.

Defective Paradigms of Reflexive Nouns and Participles in Latvian

This chapter discusses the defective paradigms of the reflexive nouns and participles in the Latvian language. In Latvian, the reflexiveness of the nouns and the verbs functions as a complex derivational and inflectional system. In this language, the reflexive verbs, participles, and nouns are formed through the fusion of verbal or noun forms with enclitic accusative form of the reflexive pronoun. Reflexive verbs have full person, tense and mood paradigms whilst reflexive nouns and participles have defective paradigms in Latvian. Although the rationale behind defectiveness of the paradigms of the reflexive nouns and participles are difficult to pinpoint, there are several types of compensation for the defectiveness in the Modern Latvian. These include the use of non-standard forms, the use of corresponding non-reflexive participle and noun forms, and the use of other forms of paradigms in lieu of the missing ones. These alternative paradigms depend however on the syntactic function of the word-form. Some topics discussed herein include: derivation and semantics of reflexive nouns; paradigmatic system of reflexive nouns and participles; and functioning of the paradigms of reflexive nouns and participles.

Defectiveness as Stem Suppletion in French and Spanish Verbs1

This chapter examines some particular types of defectiveness in French and Spanish verbs. In the cases considered herein, the gaps in the paradigm exhibit the same zones of stem suppletion patterns prevalent in irregular verbs. The defective paradigms of the French and Spanish verbs which are assumed to be associated to the level of the stem are examined through stem suppletion and through the lexicalization of the gaps in the stem space. Discussed herein are: the three kinds of defectiveness that can be found in verbal paradigms; the morphology of the defective verbs in French and Spanish; and the analysis of the Spanish verb morphology according to Boyé and Cabredo Hoffer. This analysis suggests that each zone of the systematic co-variation in the verbal paradigm corresponds to the forms built on the same stem. Stems are generally organized by a graph that presents the links between stems which define implicative relations. Regular verbs only need one stem to be specified while irregular verbs need more than one stem to be specified. Included as well is a discussion on how the zones of defectiveness identified in the French and Spanish verbs coincide with the independently established zones of stem suppletion in the study of irregular verbs. The chapter concludes with the three ways that can lead to defectiveness, stem indeterminacy, stem gaps, and stem avoidance.

Ineffability through Modularity: Gaps in the French Clitic Cluster*

This chapter discusses the gaps in some of the combinations of the preverbal clitics in French. These gaps present a powerful tool for evaluating the foundational hypothesis governing the architecture of the language, particularly the morphophonology-free syntax (MFS) of the language. In the French clitic cluster, the gaps are divided into two categories: the syntactic groups and non-syntactic groups. The syntactic groups invoke syntactic information. The non-syntactic groups meanwhile are comprised of gaps invisible to syntax and dependent on morphophonological information and mechanisms. Also discussed in the chapter is the Person Case Constraint, a syntactic principle that forms the foundation against which other gaps may be measured. Some anomalous combinations are also discussed in the chapter. These combinations betray the workings of the extra-syntactic system which manipulates the morphological features and which imposes constraints on such combinations.

Failing One’s Obligations: Defectiveness in Rumantsch Reflexes* of DĒBĒRE

This chapter examines the Surmiran dialect which is a form of Swiss Rumantsch. Surmiran is a Romance language which is one of the spoken languages in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. The emphasis of this chapter is on a single verb which lacks many of the forms other verbs possess, hence forcing the speakers to use a distinct, but almost synonymous verb as an alternative. Treated within a broader context, the verb dueir in Sumiran which is a Latin reflex of the dēbēre, provides an opportunity to evaluate how gaps should be treated within the context of Optimal Theory. This defectiveness in the Surmiran dueir was a result of the morphologization of the vowel alternations of the Swiss Rumantsch.

Interactions between Defectiveness and Syncretism

This chapter examines some defective patterns that interact with the language's patterns of syncretism. It examines the early Indic declensional morphology to determine some varied interactions between defectiveness and syncretism. In the Indic morphology, three canonical kinds of interaction were defined: defectiveness may override syncretism, syncretism may determine the domain of defectiveness, and syncretism may override defectiveness. Theoretical explanation of these interactions suggests that the language's morphology makes reference to two distinct paradigms. These paradigms are: 1) content paradigms which express the range of syntactic uses to which the lexemes may be put; and 2) form paradigms which express the range of inflectional realization to which the root may arise. Syncretism is a property of form paradigms while defectiveness is a property of both form and content paradigms. Whilst various assumptions are presented herein on the possible interactions between defectiveness and syncretism, the chapter suggests that a wide-ranging and careful examination of such interactions in a variety of languages is needed.

The Search for Regularity in Irregularity: Defectiveness and its Implications for our Knowledge of Words

The longstanding issue in morphological theory has been the status of inflected forms in the memory. In general, the irregular forms of words are assumed to be learned, stored, and retrieved for use. While the contention on the storage of irregular forms seemed to be clear and cohesive, the views on the nature of storage of regular words vary. For some, all inflected forms are stored while some contend that storage is not homogenous, wherein the frequently-used forms are stored and retrieved for use while the rarer forms are more likely to be assembled by analogy to stored forms or by rule. This chapter investigates inflectional gaps or defectiveness in languages exhibiting extensive inflection. Such languages are rich sources of inflection by rule. In what follows is an extensive investigation of the defectiveness in two unrelated polysynthetic languages with extensive but regular inflectional paradigms. The first language examined is the Central Alaskan Yup'ik which is an Eskimo-Aleut language of the southwestern Alaska. The second language evaluated is the Mohawk, an Iroquoian language of the northeastern North America. The patterns of defectiveness of both languages provide insight into the patterns of storage of some regular inflected forms and the effect of the frequency of occurrence of some regular forms of words on the storage patterns.

Defective Verbal Paradigms in Hungarian—Description and Experimental Study

This chapter evaluates the defective verbal paradigms in the Hungarian language. The first section of the chapter provides an overview of the defectiveness in Hungarian, with emphasis on the systematic, phonotactically motivated defectiveness of the paradigms of some verbal stems. The aim of this section is to be as theoretically neutral and descriptive as possible to facilitate a good comparison with other types of defectiveness in other languages. The second section of the chapter discusses the results of the experiments which are conducted in order to determine the various aspects of the defectiveness in the verbal paradigm. Some of the aspects tested include: the gap locations such as the occurrence and variation of forms in other designated cells of the verbal paradigm, and the correlations between the occurrence of forms in some designated cells; and the gap properties such as the differences in the classification of some verb stems into various stem-classes, and the range of variation exhibited by the forms that native Hungarian speakers accept as fill-ins for the gaps that are present in the paradigms of the defective verbs.

Introduction: Defectiveness: Typology and Diachrony

A defective word is defined by paradigm as incomplete compared with the major class it belongs to. Defectiveness signifies the unwanted intrusion of morphological idiosyncrasy into syntax. Although this phenomenon has been a constant subject of studies, it has been ill incorporated into the theories of language. This present volume brings together scholars from various theoretical schools for an overdue typological view of defectiveness. It concentrates on some samples of idiosyncratic gaps which are assumed as indicative of the phenomenon of defectiveness. Before delving into the specified topics of each chapter, this introductory chapter presents a typology of defective paradigms. It discusses terms used to describe defectiveness in synchronotic terms, and the possible diachrony of defective paradigms.