Abstract
Apart from being a system of structures, language is a system of relations. Understanding the particular regularities underlying these relations helps us predict both possibilities and gaps in linguistic organization. This paper follows Graf’s work [13] in positing monotonicity as a substantial underlying restriction on possible patterns in morphosyntactic paradigms. This approach not only extends the notion of monotonicity outside semantics, but also combines this formal explanation with extralinguistic motivations. The tense hierarchy I propose for syncretism in verbal paradigms is independently motivated by Reichenbach’s tense system [22]. The gender hierarchy used for gender resolution rules is directly extracted from the organization of the linguistic data. The restriction on both types of paradigms is readily explained by the fact that they only allow monotonic mappings from a base hierarchy to output forms.
The work reported in this article is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-1845344. Special thanks go to Thomas Graf for his support of this project and his valuable comments on earlier versions of this work.
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Notes
- 1.
In adjectival paradigms AAB pattern, where positive and comparative share a root distinct from superlative, is also missing cross-linguistically [3]. The absence of this pattern does not concern us here.
- 2.
There is always a great danger resulting from terminology. It is likely that, in some descriptive traditions, the term perfect is used for an aspectual rather than a tense distinction. This is true in the Semitic tradition, for example, where perfect and imperfect are used for what is likely perfective and imperfective. The -ive distinction is usually aspectual.
- 3.
Like the absence of AAB patterns in adjectival gradation, this might be due to independent factors [7].
- 4.
The resolution rules in Telugu, another Dravidian language, is the same as Tamil. This happens despite the fact that in Telugu, feminine and neuter are not distinguished in the singular.
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Moradi, S. (2020). Morphosyntactic Patterns Follow Monotonic Mappings. In: Deng, D., Liu, F., Liu, M., Westerståhl, D. (eds) Monotonicity in Logic and Language. TLLM 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12564. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-62843-0_8
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