On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian Nouns
Markedness has a long tradition in linguistics as a way to describe linguistic asymmetries. In this paper, I investigate an argument about the necessity of markedness as a tool for capturing the structural distribution of inflectional affixes and predicting the behavioral consequences of that distri...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2021-07-01
|
| Series: | Languages |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/6/3/130 |
| _version_ | 1797518517423046656 |
|---|---|
| author | Jeff Parker |
| author_facet | Jeff Parker |
| author_sort | Jeff Parker |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Markedness has a long tradition in linguistics as a way to describe linguistic asymmetries. In this paper, I investigate an argument about the necessity of markedness as a tool for capturing the structural distribution of inflectional affixes and predicting the behavioral consequences of that distribution. Based on evidence from German adjectives, Clahsen et al. argue that the number of specified features of inflectional affixes (which I argue represents a type of markedness) affects reaction times in lexical access. Affixes’ features, however, overlap with how frequently they occur. Clahsen et al. investigate only three affixes in German, leaving open questions about the relationship between the two factors and whether features are necessary as a predictor of lexical processing. In this paper, I use a larger set of inflectional affixes in Russian to test the relationship between affix features and affix frequency. I find that the two traits of affixes are correlated based on frequencies from a corpus and that in a lexical decision task, affix frequency is the better predictor of response times. My results suggest that we should question the necessity of featural markedness for explaining how inflectional structure is processed and, more generally, that both corpus and experimental data suggest a surprisingly close relationship between affix features and affix frequency. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T07:31:26Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-f276d60713024516985be4cabd77389a |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2226-471X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T07:31:26Z |
| publishDate | 2021-07-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Languages |
| spelling | doaj.art-f276d60713024516985be4cabd77389a2023-11-22T13:54:26ZengMDPI AGLanguages2226-471X2021-07-016313010.3390/languages6030130On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian NounsJeff Parker0Department of Linguistics, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USAMarkedness has a long tradition in linguistics as a way to describe linguistic asymmetries. In this paper, I investigate an argument about the necessity of markedness as a tool for capturing the structural distribution of inflectional affixes and predicting the behavioral consequences of that distribution. Based on evidence from German adjectives, Clahsen et al. argue that the number of specified features of inflectional affixes (which I argue represents a type of markedness) affects reaction times in lexical access. Affixes’ features, however, overlap with how frequently they occur. Clahsen et al. investigate only three affixes in German, leaving open questions about the relationship between the two factors and whether features are necessary as a predictor of lexical processing. In this paper, I use a larger set of inflectional affixes in Russian to test the relationship between affix features and affix frequency. I find that the two traits of affixes are correlated based on frequencies from a corpus and that in a lexical decision task, affix frequency is the better predictor of response times. My results suggest that we should question the necessity of featural markedness for explaining how inflectional structure is processed and, more generally, that both corpus and experimental data suggest a surprisingly close relationship between affix features and affix frequency.https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/6/3/130inflectionmorphologyfrequencyfeaturesmarkednessRussian |
| spellingShingle | Jeff Parker On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian Nouns Languages inflection morphology frequency features markedness Russian |
| title | On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian Nouns |
| title_full | On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian Nouns |
| title_fullStr | On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian Nouns |
| title_full_unstemmed | On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian Nouns |
| title_short | On the Relationship between Frequency, Features, and Markedness in Inflection: Experimental Evidence from Russian Nouns |
| title_sort | on the relationship between frequency features and markedness in inflection experimental evidence from russian nouns |
| topic | inflection morphology frequency features markedness Russian |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/6/3/130 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT jeffparker ontherelationshipbetweenfrequencyfeaturesandmarkednessininflectionexperimentalevidencefromrussiannouns |