Morphology Circle: Andrea Sims

Speaker: Andrea Sims (Ohio State)

Title: Modeling trees, theorizing forests: From local to system-level morphological organization

Date and time: 18 November, 4pm (CET)

Place: Zoom

Abstract

Morphological typologists theorize about the nature of language by comparing properties of languages and building explanatory models of identified patterns. Broadly speaking, explanation comes from the interaction of two types of factors: the cognitive principles that determine how speakers make generalizations about their language, and the linguistic data over which they make those generalizations. While the field has focused primarily on the first of these, in this talk I argue for more attention to the latter. The generalizations speakers make about morphology are local in scale, reflecting the influence of lexical neighbors. The relationship between this local organization and system-level properties of the sort that interest typologists is not straightforward but I consider how tools from network science can aid in theorizing about system-level morphological organization in the world’s languages.

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