Distributed Morphology and historical linguistics
Andrea Calabrese, Laura Grestenberger
May 2024 

Distributed Morphology (DM) has only been systematically applied to problems of historical morphology and morphological change in the past 10–15 years but has already given rise to many promising research avenues. This chapter provides a survey of the type of research in historical linguistics conducted in DM, as well as research gaps and desiderata for future work. The focus is on changes affecting the morphosyntax of complex word forms, such as fusion, pruning, resegmentation, and the rise of ornamental morphology, as well as the diachrony of periphrastic constructions and synthetic word forms and the role of directionality and locality in reanalysis. We also discuss impoverishment and markedness in the treatment of case syncretism from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. In the realm of morphophonology, we discuss the diachronic development of irregular morphology, metaphony, ablaut, and “crazy rules”, as well as analogical or “morpholexical” changes that affect root shape and root-specific diacritics. The chapter thus aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to the way DM handles these issues and to show that DM provides a fruitful avenue for understanding the morphology of “dead” languages as well as the typology of morphological change itself.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008003 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	The Cambridge Handbook of Distributed Morphology (submitted)
keywords:	distributed morphology, historical linguistics, language change, morphosyntax, morphophonology, reanalysis, morphological theory, lexical change, analogy, readjustment, morphology
previous versions:	v1 [March 2024]
Downloaded:	422 times

 

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